by Tom Abrahams
Linh stared at the mudslide where he’d fought for his life. The mess resembled the remnants of a sand castle after the tide washed over it. He could tell something had happened there by looking at the slop, but there was nothing distinct about it.
“I thought you were a fool,” said Due. “Now I know it.”
Linh didn’t acknowledge his uncle. He’d endured enough chastisement during the trip back here. He put his hands on his hips and sucked in a deep breath, puffed his cheeks, and released it.
“This really is stupid,” said Due. “If you’re trying to find the ghost, you’re asking to die.”
Linh glanced off toward the river below. “I didn’t say I wanted to find the ghost. I said I need to produce another story.”
“Are you just going to stand here all day?”
Linh rolled his eyes. “No. It’s already getting late in the day. Let’s go.”
“I’m not going.”
“What?”
“I’m staying with the car. I’ll wait for you.”
“But—”
Due raised his hands in protest. “You asked for a driver. I drove. Now shoo.” He flung his hands in the direction of the village.
Linh didn’t have the strength to argue. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
Due huffed and walked back to his car. He swung open the door and dropped into the driver’s seat. He cranked back the seat, folded his arms across his chest, and closed his eyes. Linh thought he saw his uncle crack open a lid for a second to see if Linh was still watching him.
The young reporter draped his satchel over his shoulder like a messenger bag and navigated his way around the mud without looking again at Due. The bag flapped against his back as he moved, and within minutes his sweat-soaked shirt was plastered to the small of his back.
Linh trudged along the edge of the road, his eyes dancing across the grass and densely packed canopy of trees that separated his path from the Da River. The river ran parallel to the road. The air was thick with humidity and the scent of rot. It was at once sweet and foul. It was the smell of death. The rancid, unmistakable odor was stained into his memory and was instantly recognizable. Linh had never seen a dead person before, but he’d seen plenty of dead animals.
He had been in year six of his schooling and was just eleven years old when dead dogs began appearing on street corners, in parks, and in back alleys near his home. The dogs weren’t only dead. They were mutilated. Sometimes it was days before the dogs were discovered or removed. Their scent lingered and hung in the air as a constant reminder to those, like Linh, who’d have preferred to forget.
At first, authorities chalked it up to dog fights. There were a fair number of angry strays that roamed his neighborhood and they’d been aggressive. The numbers of dead dogs, however, and their increasingly grotesque injuries, soon changed public opinion. Someone was hunting the dogs and torturing them.
Linh didn’t have a dog as a child. His parents weren’t interested. They were busy with the business, and a dog, they’d told him, was too much responsibility for a young boy. Still, he loved animals, and when he found one of the mutilated dogs in a gutter on his way home from school, he’d made a decision. He would do something about it.
Without his parents’ knowledge, he’d visited the local Metropolitan Police station and offered his help. They’d told him he was too young. So he went to the neighborhood weekly newspaper and volunteered to write stories about the dogs in the hopes the attention might lead to the killer.
The older couple who ran the newspaper out of their flat was gracious. They’d told Linh they couldn’t afford to pay him, but they’d publish whatever he wrote.
Linh immediately got to work. Every day after school, he’d stop by the police station and ask for any new reports about dead dogs. The constable on duty would take pity on the young boy and give him the information along with a warning to be careful.
Once a week for three months, Linh’s articles about the dogs, their injuries, and any clues he could find would appear in the paper under Linh’s nom de plume, Francis James. He didn’t want his parents to know.
The London Daily Reflector picked up and reprinted, with permission, the last of his articles in its new coverage of what it called The Hunt For Jack The Dog Ripper. The Reflector’s piece led to a suspect, which led to an arrest, which led to the conviction of a local auto mechanic.
Once he was behind bars, the killings stopped. It was then that Jimmy Linh knew what he wanted to do when he grew up. He’d seen the power of the media. He’d seen how he could make a difference.
He never got credit for what he’d done. He wanted to keep Francis James’s real identity a secret. But when he’d applied for a job at the Reflector, in the back of his portfolio of work he included his series of articles from the community newspaper.
Gertrude Wombley had asked him, “How do I know you’re Francis James? Anybody could claim it.”
Linh had explained to her he’d chosen the name because Francis was the patron saint of animals. James was the patron saint of veterinarians. He’d also suggested that nobody other than the author of the articles or the killer himself would keep them in a scrapbook for more than a decade. He wasn’t the killer. Wombley had laughed out loud at his response. Then she’d hired him at a ridiculously low wage with the promise of only slightly more money if he performed as she demanded he should. He’d gotten the job. A job that, at the moment, smelled like death.
Linh tried breathing through his mouth to mitigate the growing pungency. It didn’t work. A few steps more along the edge of the road, he learned why. There was part of a rotting human leg, a shred of canvas pant still wrapped around the calf. Next to it was a foot. Linh looked away and his eyes caught another chunk of flesh. There was a bone, maybe a rib, spiked through the striated meat. Large flies swarmed the carnage. Linh drew his shirt up over his nose and mouth and swallowed the urge to vomit.
Carefully, he swung his satchel around his waist and unzipped it. He pulled his camera from the bag, aimed the lens at the scraps, and snapped a half dozen pictures.
He was less than a half mile from Hòa Bình. The victim, man or woman, had to be from there. No question. He needed to get there and find out who was missing. Some of the villagers would talk to him even if his Vietnamese wasn’t the same dialect. But he had to push forward. he couldn’t just stand there. Linh gathered his nerve, tucked the camera back into his bag, and kept trekking toward the town.
He hadn’t gotten another hundred meters when a chill ran from his neck down his spine. A familiar howl barked through the air. Linh stopped and closed his eyes to try to figure out the direction of the wail. He listened, trying to ignore the buzz of insects and the rush of the still-swollen river.
A full two minutes passed before there was another howl. This one was different. It was somehow…celebratory. And it was coming from the north, behind him. Linh looked over his shoulder, back from where he’d come. He couldn’t be sure until another bloodcurdling call confirmed it. The White Ghost, Ma Trang, was close. Too close.
Uncle Due!
Linh shifted his weight and turned back to the north. He held his satchel strap tight against his body and began running. His feet slipped in the grass and he almost lost his balance as he made his way onto the road. His feet pounded. His chest heaved. Sweat stung his eyes. He picked up speed, ignoring the tightening cramp in his gut. His uncle was in danger. He knew it.
The road snaked along the edge of the river and Linh kept his pace north. Visions snapped in his mind: the monster attacking his uncle, his uncle fighting back, his uncle losing. Images of the body parts he’d just encountered flashed before his eyes. No matter how much of a judgmental, money-grubbing jerk Uncle Due could be, he was family. Linh didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. He prayed to himself as he pushed north, his thighs and calves burning with fatigue. Sweat poured into his eyes and onto his lips.
He rounded a final curve and saw t
he mudslide up ahead. Beyond the mud was Due’s car. Linh winced past the sweat, his eyes blurred. He couldn’t be sure what he was seeing, and he dug deep to keep his pace. He bounded from the road, slid down the embankment past the mudslide, and then climbed back up the incline to his uncle’s car.
Linh’s heart was pounding in his chest. His pulse thumped against his neck. He blinked and wiped the sweat from his face and focused on the scene in front of him. His heart nearly stopped.
The driver’s side door was open. From underneath the frame, a man’s foot was dangling, blood dripping into a thickening pool on the road. The door’s window was shattered, as was the one behind it.
Linh looked back to the mud and then north up the road. He glanced over his shoulder, his pulse racing again. His fingers tingled as he flexed his hands.
Where is Ma Trang?
Linh swallowed hard and stepped slowly to the car. He approached and leaned over to look inside. His stomach convulsed and Linh vomited onto the road.
Due, or what was left of him, was lying on his back across the front seats. One arm was missing. There was a quartet of parallel wounds that ran from his left shoulder to his right hip. He was shirtless.
He was headless.
Linh bent over at his waist and spit the remnants of the puke from his lips. He leaned on his knees. His breathing sped up and his breaths became deeper and deeper until he couldn’t catch his breath.
I’ve gotten Due killed. My family. It is my fault.
Linh’s body shuddered. A cry he didn’t recognize as his own voice leaked from his mouth. His knees weakened and he dropped to the road on his backside. One thought consumed him as he struggled to breathe, to move.
Due is dead. Due is dead. Due is dead.
Linh was breathing so heavily, he was so much in his own head, he didn’t hear the footsteps behind him. He didn’t hear the clicking and popping of joints as they moved closer. He did see his uncle’s head fall from the sky and land inches in front of him with a sickening thud.
Due’s face was frozen in pain and fear, his mouth agape, his tongue hanging limply to one side. One eye socket was mangled. The other eye was looking blankly at Linh.
Linh screamed and scrambled backward until his hands hit something rough and hot. He rolled over and looked up. The Ma Trang was staring down at him. Its face was soaked in Due’s blood. A fresh new adornment that looked like an eyeball hung from the necklace around its neck. It held an arm in one hand and had it draped over its shoulder like a baseball bat. Its lips were smacking and popping. Its eyes narrowed, it lowered its head, and it spoke in a low, guttural growl that almost sounded like an engine purring.
“I know you.”
It drew the arm from its shoulder and whipped it forward, slamming it against the side of Linh’s head. Linh’s neck snapped to the side and his body slumped to the road. His vision blurred again as he lost consciousness.
***
Womack’s team had stopped the UAZ when they’d heard the howls. Wolf had to take a leak and had refused to do it into his canteen.
“Give me Wilco’s,” he’d said. “He drinks his own piss all the time. He likes it.”
“Your mother likes it,” quipped Wilco.
“Enough, children,” Womack said. “We’ll stop.”
He acquiesced and pulled off to the edge of the highway. He’d told everyone to get out and do their business. He wasn’t going to stop again. The first of the three howls sounded unearthly. The next two were worse. Womack wasn’t sure if he was glad he’d heard the cries or regretful.
Ferg thumped Womack on the shoulder. “You hear that?”
“I hear it.”
“That can’t be more than a mile,” said Ferg. “Even with the wind, the mountains to our right, and that valley to the left, I can tell it ain’t far.”
Wolf was zipping up his pants as he emerged from behind a tree. He motioned with his head toward the south. “That noise coming from the thing we’re looking for?”
“It’s not a thing,” said Shine. He shouldered his way past Wolf. “He’s a Marine.”
“Whatever,” said Wolf. “Thing. Marine. Leatherneck. Grunt. Jarhead. It’s our target. He’s our target. Get off your high horse, Shine.”
Shine had stopped a step in front of Wolf. Without turning around, he said, “Now ain’t the time or place, Wolf. I ain’t interested in your crap today. Maybe Wilco likes it. Not me.”
Wolf mocked Shine behind his back. He mouthed, “Ooooh!” with his lips.
“I see you, Wolf,” said Shine, and he kept walking toward the truck. “Quit mocking me.”
Wolf’s cheeks flushed. He lowered his head and followed the wall of a man back to their ride.
“Men,” said Womack, “I think we can agree that noise is coming from our VX-99 Marine. When we load back up, make sure you check your weapons. Lock and load. Understood?”
The team agreed and they piled into the truck. Womack was alone in the front seat. He put the truck into gear and started rolling south again. They’d gone three-quarters of a mile when Womack spotted something crouching in the grass not far from the road. He stopped the truck and turned off the engine.
“We’re here,” he said. The men climbed from the truck. Each of them had a sidearm strapped to his thigh and a more potent weapon in his hands. Womack was carrying the tranquilizer rifle. “Remember, we keep it alive.”
He moved the men in a tight formation into the grass. His eyes stayed on the figure up ahead. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought the thing, the so-called White Ghost, had seen him as they dipped off the road into the relative cover of the vegetation. If it had, it didn’t react or didn’t care.
Womack had split the team. Two men worked on either side of him. One pair had moved faster and deeper into the brush before turning parallel to the road. The other had stayed to Womack’s right and kept pace.
They were within fifty meters when he saw a man on the road. The man was bent over and vomiting. He collapsed onto the road and was wailing. Womack saw a leg sticking from beneath the car door. From his position he was able to see half of a body.
Then the thing emerged from the grass. As it leapt onto the road, it tossed a human head over the sitting, crying man. It inched its way closer to the man.
Ferg was next to Womack. “It’s playing with him. Taunting him.” Ferg raised the China Lake Launcher to his shoulder.
Womack shook his head. “We don’t kill it,” he whispered. “Wait.”
The man scurried backward and bumped into the thing. He turned around and the thing paused before slapping the man across the head with a severed arm. The man’s head jerked and he fell onto the road.
“Did he just say something?” asked Ferg. “Did the thing talk?”
“I don’t think so,” said Womack. He didn’t want to think so. He signaled for both teams to collapse quickly on the ghost.
Wilco and Shine, who’d worked their way deep into the brush, rushed forward toward the road and moved directly behind the beast. Womack, Ferg, and Wolf approached from the north. Ferg and Wolf stayed off the road. Womack stepped onto the concrete and called out to the beast. It was leaning over the man on the road.
“Hey,” he called. “You. Are you Trevor Brett, or are you Richard Fern?”
Still holding the severed arm, the beast snapped his head to the right and turned to face Womack. Womack had never seen anything like it. The photograph didn’t do it justice.
The beast was thin and muscular. Its skin was so white, it was nearly translucent. Thick, dark veins strained against its chest and neck and arms. Its hands and feet looked like claws or talons. Its body, however, was nothing compared to its bloodstained face.
The mouth looked like a parasitic sucker. The nose was wide, and its nostrils flared. The eyes were bloodshot, but the pupils were vertical and yellow, like an alligator. Stringy long hair hung from the ghost’s angular face.
Womack swallowed hard and repeated himself. He was buying time fo
r the others to position themselves and trap the beast. “Are you Trevor Brett, or are you Richard Fern?”
The ghost cocked its head to the right, like a curious dog, and then pulled the arm to its mouth and tore off a bite of fresh meat. It chewed with its tiny razor teeth. Its lips smacked and slurped, but it said nothing. Its eyes blinked, revealing what looked like two layers of eyelids.
Womack stepped closer. He was only ten meters from the ghost. His tranquilizer rifle was aimed at the ghost’s chest. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Wilco and Shine approaching from the east. Ferg and Wolf were at the edge of the road, emerging from the tall grass. Both of them had their weapons in the low ready position.
The team tightened its position as the monster chewed. It seemed unfazed, if not disinterested, by the quintet of armed operators closing in on it.
The man on the ground at the beast’s feet moaned, drawing its attention away from Womack and his team. At the moment it dropped its head to look down, Womack squeezed his trigger, unleashing the high-powered drug-injecting dart. It hit the ghost squarely in the chest as Womack applied pressure a second time and sent another tranquilizer into its neck.
The ghost jerked, reacting to the hit, and plucked one of the projectiles from its skin. It tossed the dart to the ground, threw back its head, and unleashed an ear-piercing scream. Its sucker lips pulled back, its tongue lunged forward between its teeth, and it roared.
Before the men could react, the ghost dropped the severed arm, reached down, and grabbed the man by his shirt collar. It yanked the man to his feet and, in one single motion, leapt from the road and into the grass.
Its joints made unnatural clicking noises as it bounded deeper into the brush, dragging the man behind it. The man was coming to and was screaming for help.
Womack raced forward and sent another dart toward the monster, but he missed. It was too quick. Womack signaled his men to give chase.
“Do not kill it,” he yelled as he saw Shiner drop to one knee and take aim.
The Stoner 63 unleashed a rapid volley of shots into the brush. The men advanced another thirty meters but saw nothing. The screaming man was silent. The beast was gone.
