by E A Comiskey
“Short of a barrel. Yeah, yeah.” She sighed. “Stay there. I’ll come around and help you out.”
“Don’t need no help,” he muttered, but pushing the door open caused a sensation akin to being stabbed in the side, so he waited for the girl to make her way over to him. She reached out her arms and he leaned on her far more heavily than he wanted to, but he managed to get both feet on the ground and balance on those unreliable pins.
They walked across the bridge together, the sturdy planks giving no protest under their feet. Crossing was like walking from the inside of an enormous freezer out into the most perfect of summer days. He realized as their feet touched the cobblestone that they were still clinging to one another. It was impossible to say if he was holding on to her or if she was holding on to him, but, either way, he was grateful for her presence.
The ugliest cat he ever saw slinked out of the bushes and trotted directly toward them, looking up at them with a single yellow eye. Where the other should have been, there was only an ugly scar. It meowed loudly, rubbed its head against Burke’s leg, and ran off, disappearing behind the house.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” she said.
As if someone inside had heard her voice, the door swung open and a figure that looked perfectly at home in this surreal setting stepped out. The man was tall enough that he had to duck to get through the door. He wore a long robe that resembled Gandalf the Grey’s and a black tactical vest. In his left hand he held a long-handled garden spade that he leaned against as if it were really a magical staff. His long, shaggy black beard reached nearly to his belly and little glass beads had been woven into it. They sparkled in the bright sun. Atop his wild mop of hair, a Cleveland Browns cap perched like a bizarre star adorning the uppermost branch of the world’s homeliest Christmas tree.
His eyes gazed in their direction, two white orbs with no color at all. “A hunter has fallen?” he asked by way of greeting.
Richard was still standing there with his mouth hanging open when Burke said, “Stanley Kapcheck was taken.”
“By whom?” his voice was warm maple syrup spreading over a fresh stack of hotcakes. Introduced to the executives at RCA, he could have given Elvis a run for his money.
“The Devil,” Burke said.
The man burst into a fit of hysteria. His laughter filled the glen and echoed from the trees. Tears spilled from his milky eyes. If not for the garden spade, he would have fallen to the ground in hilarity. He gasped and waved a hand in front of him. “Sorry! Sorry, it’s just that…” and the laughter began again.
Richard and Burke looked at each other and shrugged.
The man, still bent nearly in half and shaking with amusement, turned his back on them and motioned for them to follow him into the house.
They stepped across the threshold into a warm, airy space that smelled of loose-leaf tea and cinnamon. Colorful, overstuffed furniture made a cozy seating area around the stone fireplace. A heavy wooden table dominated the space in front of the potbelly stove. One wall sported a single closed door painted with fantastical symbols from top to bottom. The remainder of the wall space held shelves of books. The ugly cat watched them from the uppermost ledge, it’s tail twitching slowly back and forth.
“I’m sorry,” the man said again, still a little breathless, but apparently under control. He propped the shovel against the counter, took three mugs from a cabinet, and filled them with tea from a pot on the stove. Each was placed upon the table in front of one of the mismatched chairs. “Sit, sit. We have a great deal to discuss and I know enough about hunters to know the two of you are anxious to be on your way.”
He moved with total ease and assurance, turning toward the counter once more to retrieve a large metal tin and bringing it to the table. The three of them sat and the man took the lid off the tin and helped himself to a chocolate chip cookie the size of a bread plate. “Help yourselves,” he said. “I find there is nothing so good in the whole world as tea and cookies for boosting the spirits.”
Richard braced his hand against the table and lowered himself into the chair directly across from the man. He glanced at the cup in front of him. In a bold, looping script it said Adulting is hard. Tea is easy. He glanced over at the large black mug already in Burke’s hands. World’s Okayest Employee. The strange man’s read FBI - Female Body Inspector.
Burke sipped her tea. Her shoulders relaxed as though a great weight had been removed. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to have found you, Jeremiah.”
The man guffawed and Richard was afraid he’d fall into another fit of hysterics, but he managed to keep himself together. “I’m not Jeremiah,” he said when his laughter had died away.
Burke’s hands gripped the edge of the table. “Who are you, then?”
“Name’s Nathaniel. Jeremiah’s been watchin’ over me for a while now. I guess you could say I’m something like a… a…” He tapped his hand on the table. “Whaddaya call it? Ha!” he burst out, causing Richard to jump.
The sudden movement sent a sharp pain through his side and he hissed through his teeth.
“Oh, dear. That does sound bad,” the man said. “Here.” He patted the pockets of the tactical vest, apparently found the one he wanted, opened it and produced a little red and white mint tin. “It isn’t really mints. I mixed it myself and put it in the container. Reduce, reuse, recycle, you know? Rub it on your sore spot and you’ll be right as rain in a minute.”
Richard picked up the little container and sniffed it. He glanced at Burke. She shrugged.
“So, who are you?” she asked again.
“That’s right. I apologize. I got distracted. My name is Nathaniel. I’m sort of an administrative assistant to Jeremiah. That’s the word I was looking for.”
“Stanley told me to find Jeremiah. He said he had what we need.”
“Did he? That sounds like something Stanley would say. Leave it to that old codger to run off with the most stunning monster in town and leave a couple of freshmen to do his dirty work.”
“I don’t think he ran off with her, exactly,” she said. “He was sort of kidnapped.”
The man chuckled, shaking his head. “Okay, then.”
Richard knew he had never been a patient man, nor a tolerant one. This weirdo and his hysterical, cryptic words were too much for his weary soul. “So, can this Jeremiah help us out or not?”
The man wagged a finger at him. “A hunter must be in control of his emotions at all times.”
“You listen to me—” Richard said, pointing a finger at him.
“We need help,” Burke interrupted. “Are we in the place to find it?”
Nathaniel chomped down on his cookie, letting the crumbs fall into the tangle of his beard. “I believe you are, Ma’am. This place is nothing if not a haven for the ones who need help.”
“So, Jeremiah is here?” she asked.
“He is.”
“And he’ll help us?”
He cocked his head. “I’m not really sure, but we’ll see what we can do.” He turned his unseeing eyes toward Richard. “You really should try that balm. It’ll do you a world of good. Promise, I’m not a monster. If I was, you’d have been dead ten minutes ago.”
“Let me help you.” Burke started to rise from her chair.
“Don’t need no help,” Richard insisted. “I ain’t some kind of invalid.”
“Everyone needs help sometimes,” Nathaniel quipped over the lip of his mug. “The inability to admit that is, in itself, a handicap.”
Since everything from the armpits down had seized up and he had no way of getting out of the chair without an undignified amount of groaning and leaning on the table, Richard remained in his chair, scowling at the man. “Fine.” He slid the little tin across the table toward Burke. “You can rub that hoodoo on my bruise, if it’ll get you off my back, so we can get something accomplished.”
Burke came around the table to kneel next to him. She lifted the hem of his shirt, exposing the spectacular bruis
es there. “Oh!”
“I’m fine.”
“Grandpa, this—”
“The salve will help,” the man said. “Feel free to use it for your own bruises, as well, dear girl. May I ask what caused all this trouble?”
She opened the little hinged lid. With her long, thin fingers, she scooped a bit out and dabbed it with infinite care along the bottom-most edge of the injury and then began working her way up. “It was a hidebehind,” she said.
“Two,” Richard corrected.
The man’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Two? That is rare. Yet, you’re both still alive. Stanley chose you well. You obviously have a natural talent. You fought them on your way here? Are they nearby?”
Burke finished, tugged his shirt back down, returned to the table, and accepted a napkin to wipe her fingers. His side didn’t feel any better. Greasier, but not better.
“No, they were at the junction of Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas. There’s a small wooded patch there.”
“Hmmm…” He sipped at the tea again, making a loud slurping noise. “These are strange times we are living in. Strange, indeed. Keep your eyes out,” he warned, pointing a thick finger at no one in particular. “If things ever get normal, it’s a good sign the end is nigh upon us.”
The hideous cat jumped down with a soft thud. It padded over to them and leapt onto the table, circled the perimeter a few times, sniffed the cookies and then settled down in a tightly curled ball in front of Nathaniel.
While these feline investigations took place, the man said, “Tell me the whole story, please, so I know best how Stanley wanted me to help you.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Burke replied, “Stanley didn’t say he wanted you to help us.”
If he was offended, it didn’t show. His blind, white eyes still crinkled at the corners.
“I can promise you, Jeremiah is hearing everything you’re saying right now.”
Richard glanced around nervously. “He some sort of spook?”
Nathaniel’s laughter lent a sparkling softness to his tone. “Nothing like that, I assure you.”
Burke raised her eyebrows and shrugged, leaving her grandfather to assume that she was letting him make the call on this one.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll tell you, but I reckon it’ll be the Reader’s Digest version or we’ll be here ‘til the cows come home.”
The cat twitched its tail and watched him with its one golden eye.
He didn’t trust that cat.
Truth be told, he didn’t trust any cat. Or any cat-sized yappy little dog, either, but there didn’t seem to be any of those around. The creepy feline likely chased ‘em away.
“Stan saved me from a strigoi back in Michigan. After that one was dealt with, her friends came after us and Stan and I took care of them.” He hadn’t intended to make himself seem brave or heroic, but he rather liked that he came out sounding that way.
“‘Course, I ain’t never encountered a thing like that, so I thought…so it was...” he trailed off, not sure what it was, exactly.
“Unsettling, I’m sure,” Nathaniel finished for him.
Close enough. “Yeah. Unsettling,” Richard agreed. “Stan and I talked. In all that talkin’, it came out that he didn’t come to that place because of the strigoi. He came for me.”
“How unusual!” Nathaniel exclaimed.
“You can say that again.”
“How unusual!” he said again, and burst into another round of laughter, not quite as uncontrolled as before. “Ah,” he said, running a hand through his long beard, dislodging cookie crumbs. “I’m sorry. Do go on.”
“So anyway,” Richard continued, “‘parently, Stan’s been hunting one specific thing all his life and his teacher was after it before him.”
“The skinwalker.” No amusement colored those words.
“Right.”
“And he brought you, of all people, into that hunt? How unusual,” he said again.
Richard was offended. “I ain’t a helpless little girl.”
Burke shot him a look that told him he’d stepped in it again with her.
“Of course not,” Nathaniel agreed. “But you said yourself you’d no experience in this field. Hunters are often chosen as children and trained up in the life. Nevertheless, Stanley chose you. I’m sure he had his reasons.”
“The skinwalker killed my wife,” Richard said.
Nathaniel didn’t interrupt again, but nodded. His hands formed a little steeple under his chin.
The cat continued to stare, rudely.
“So, I told him I’d go with him, but Stan said we had to make a few stops along the way.”
“A hunter on the move can never resist doing battle with any monster remotely near his path.”
“That’s what he said, more or less,” Richard agreed. “We got as far as Minneapolis and stopped to rest. That’s where The Devil found us. We gave her the slip and carried on to South Dakota. Stan thought there was a chupacabra there, but when we went out, turned out to be a bowrow instead. Took us both by surprise and Stan got hurt.”
“You didn’t exactly come out unscathed,” Burke quipped.
“You gonna let me tell it?” he asked.
She lifted her mug and sipped her tea by way of answer.
“There we were in the middle of nowhere, and all of a sudden she was there. I snatched her phone and called for help.”
“Well played! You used one of her own tools against her.”
“Next thing I knew, she was gone, and we were tucked into a couple o’ hospital gurneys. Girl made off with Stan’s car, though.”
Nathaniel gasped. “She took the Cadillac?”
“Yup.”
“Oh, my. That is serious business.”
“Well, Stan weren’t none too happy ‘bout it, but he was laid up with a broken leg so not much he can do, right? Still, we couldn’t quit on the skinwalker, so we called my granddaughter to help us out.”
Nathaniel inclined his head toward Burke. “And you came. Well done, young lady. The ties of family run deep. Too many of your generation have forgotten that important truth.”
Burke directed her eyes to her tea mug and said nothing.
“Stan said we oughta head south. Said we had a job to do on the way. So, we went to Colorado and he sent Burke and me to deal with the hidebehinds. When we got back to the car, he was gone.”
“You are certain it was The Devil who took him?” Nathaniel asked.
“Smelled like roses when we got back to the car,” Richard answered.
“He knew she was coming,” Burke said. “He told me she’d take him as soon as he was alone. He gave me his book and told me we should come here as soon as we could because Jeremiah has what we need to defeat the skinwalker.”
Nathaniel stroked the cat curled on the table in front of him. “Jeremiah has it, huh?”
“That’s what he said.”
The man nodded. “Have you read the book? Do you know what you need to do to kill the skinwalker?”
Richard produced the book from a pocket and placed it on the table. “Says we need to get it under our power by using its real name—the name it went by in life, before it turned bad. Then we have to dismember it in the light of the full moon and burn the pieces to ash before sunrise.” He avoided Burke’s eye, not wanting to see her reaction. If the girl looked scared, he wasn’t sure he’d have the gumption to carry on. “Also says it’s faster than a greased pig and smarter than a whip, has a temper that sits on a fuse shorter than a mouse’s pecker and it’ll rip the heart out of anyone who gets in the way of its plans.”
Nathaniel’s raised eyebrows disappeared into the tangle of hair sticking out from under the brim of his ballcap. “Is that really what it says?”
Richard shrugged. “More or less.”
The joyous, booming laughter filled the tiny house again. “Oh, I do like you two, very much.”
“I’m glad you’re amused.” Burke pushed her chair back
and stood up. Like a tiger in a cage, she paced back and forth across the short distance between the kitchen counter and the front door. “Is Jeremiah going to help us or not? Because this is nuts. Nuts!” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. She stopped and grasped the back of her chair. “We are not hunters. We don’t know anything. We have no tools. We have no guide. This. Is. Insane.”
Nathaniel sipped his tea. “If you weren’t hunters, you wouldn’t have been able to get to this place. It’s powerfully protected. You know everything you need to know. The only tool you need is a sharp blade.” He reached inside the vest and produced a shining blade with a serrated edge. “Take it, if you want. I have more where that came from. And take Stanley’s book. He will continue to guide you just as Busar guided him.”
Burke sank back into her chair and lay her head down on her crossed arms.
“How are we s’posed to learn the thing’s name?” Richard asked. “If that’s the magic that binds it, I don’t guess it’ll have it stitched on its breast pocket.”
The other man nodded. “You’re right. Creatures of magic guard their real names jealously, but I think Stanley already solved that mystery for you.” He gestured to the cat. “This is Jeremiah.”
“He sent us to find a darn cat?” The old familiar heat rose into Richard’s cheeks, along with the desire to punch Stan Kapcheck’s grinning face.
“Don’t be silly, now. Stanley didn’t send you to find a cat. He sent you to find a name.”
“Jeremiah,” Burke whispered.
“Why didn’t the old fool just tell us?” Richard asked.
Nathaniel shrugged. “Stanley is a great hunter. I’m just a hermit in the woods with an unusually extensive library. He must have had his reasons. I don’t pretend to know how The hunter’s mind works, but I suspect by the time he gave you this information he was well aware that The Devil was on his trail.”
Burke was nodding enthusiastically. “Of course, he wouldn’t want her to know the details of what we were doing. The whole reason she was after him was because she didn’t want him to kill the skinwalker.”