“Didn’t get much sleep last night?” Ramon asked.
Riley gave Ramon a guilty look, one that said perhaps he’d spent the previous night indulging in a few rounds with something strong and toxic, despite not looking of age to do so. And Ramon could only assume there were at least a few illegal substances sprinkled throughout the evening as well.
“Well, this is the kind of job where you need your sleep, Riley. Else sleep will come for you. Hard to fight it off when you’re just sitting there doing nothing. Trust me; I’ve been on enough stakeouts to know.”
Riley nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Ramon gave Riley a quizzical look, appreciative of the formality the kid had just displayed. Maybe he’d misjudged Riley Tackard, he considered, though, in fairness, he’d never really passed judgement on his character to begin with, only his abilities.
“Do you think he’s dead?” Riley asked, breaking Ramon’s moment of sentimental thought.
Ramon chuckled, startled by the question. “Uh, if you mean Jerry, it wasn’t my first guess, no.”
“Then where is he? What other explanation could there be?”
“I don’t know, Riley. You said yourself you never made it up to the telescope. Maybe he went up there himself.”
“Then why didn’t he take his truck?”
Ramon frowned and nodded, anticipating the question for which he had no answer. “I don’t know. That’s why were—”
“What was that?” Riley’s words came out in a high-pitched chirp, though quietly, under his breath, as if speaking to himself.
“What was what?”
Ramon glanced to his right to see Riley turned fully toward the window, his stare directed into the thick woods that lined the entirety of the mountain road. His nose was pressed against the window like a child staring through the glass façade of a toy store.
“Riley?”
“Did you see that?” Riley spun his head toward Ramon for just a glance, his eyes bulging, pleading, and then he was back to the window. “In the woods there? Did you see it?”
Ramon had already begun to slow the cruiser, but the panic in Riley caused him to step on the brake pedal with a bit too much force, causing Riley to lurch forward, banging his left shoulder against the dash. The kid never wavered in his gaze, however, and Ramon quickly pulled the car to the side of the road, his eyes fixed to the woods, trying to find the mystery of Riley’s focus. “What the hell is it, Riley? What are you seeing?”
Riley continued surveying the forest for several seconds before slowly breaking from his trance. He looked back to Ramon. “I don’t think we should be stopping. Not here.”
“You’re acting like you just saw Bigfoot, Riley. I shouldn’t stop?”
“No. You didn’t see...let’s just keep going.” Riley was breathing heavily now, nearly hyperventilating.
Ramon lowered his tone and locked the kid’s eyes with his. “Riley, relax. What did you see?”
“I don’t know. It was black. And moving. Something...I don’t know. I just—”
And then Ramon saw it too.
He raised his hand in a Stop gesture, cutting Riley off as he tried to bring into focus the figure wavering in his line of sight. There was just a blur though, a shadow, a second or two of motion perhaps twenty yards out beyond where the trees began. And then the scene cleared again, leaving only the lazy bounce of the leaves and branches.
Ramon blinked and shook his head in a quivering, clearing motion, stretching his eyes wide as he leaned toward Riley’s side of the cruiser, staring through the window.
What in the holy F.
“You saw it, right?” Riley asked, nearly crying now, choking on his words.
Ramon nodded. “I...I think so. What was that?” His voice was dreamy, mystical.
“I don’t know, man, but I’m not good with shit like this. This is not what I was promised.”
Ramon ignored Riley, his mind flexing as it tried to process what he’d just seen. The figure was tall and angular, moving in what Ramon could only have described as a walking motion, though its form was somewhat amorphous. It was as if one of the trees had suddenly uprooted or broken off and then turned into some dusty version of a man.
But it wasn’t quite that. The figure he had just seen was darker than any of the trees. Black, like Riley had noted, as if one of the existing trees had been consumed in a fire before suddenly morphing into human form.
Ramon drew his pistol and opened the door, and then he stepped slowly from his cruiser, keeping his eyes focused on the area of the sighting.
“Stay here,” he told Riley, a command as unnecessary as telling the kid not to flap his arms and fly away.
Riley kept silent and nodded, but the minute Ramon was outside and clear of the car, he heard the clunk! of the locks depressing into their respective cartridges.
Ramon gave a half-glance back to the car, noting the issue for later if he needed to retreat, and then he marched forward into the trees, blowing out a long breath to relax himself.
Within seconds, he was in the deep foliage, the damp leaves brushing against him with every step, threatening to soak his clothes in minutes. The rain, however, had softened the ground, making his footfalls silent, which Ramon considered a small victory, though it also meant it would be difficult to hear whatever was moving in front of him.
Ramon turned left toward the upslope now, allowing his eyes to adjust to the clutter of trunks and branches and ferns that occupied the vista. The thing had been moving in that direction, up the mountain, and Ramon suddenly considered if there was much point blindly pursuing it under these conditions. To this point, what he’d seen was only a shadow, and, as he considered it further, it was obviously some type of animal, some rare woodland creature that his eyes (and Riley’s) had misinterpreted. In fact, if Jerry Kellerman weren’t missing at the moment, Ramon wondered if Riley would have even noticed the movement in the woods.
But Jerry was missing, and Riley had seen it. And Ramon had too. And whatever the shape was that he had seen—or shadow of a shape, if that’s what it was—it was unlike any animal his mind could conceive.
Still though, it didn’t change the folly of his pursuit. He wasn’t prepared for a manhunt into the woods that formed the natural buffer of the Grieg telescope, especially not with Riley Tackard still quivering back inside the cruiser. The kid was his responsibility now, like it or not, and with this new sense of sobriety, Ramon lowered his weapon and turned back to the car. Within seconds, he was back at the passenger window, knuckling on the glass for Riley to open up.
Riley sat staring blankly through the window, his eyes half-closed, suspicious and disbelieving. He was shaking his head defiantly, the way a toddler would who’s been told to eat his spinach.
“Riley, the quicker you open up, the quicker we get out of here,” Ramon announced calmly, but with a tone that suggested those words would be the last ones he spoke with anything resembling civility. If he had to ask again, he was going to make sure his pistol was chest-high and visible.
“Riley!” Ramon barked again, lifting his hand to slap the window and emphasize his seriousness.
But as Ramon reared his open palm in a backhand motion, the crook of his elbow wrapped by his chin, he saw Riley’s eyes suddenly dart past him and blossom, and then the shake of his head went from a gentle, disobedient tremble to a horror-filled quake. A large lump developed in his throat and the guard moved slowly away from the window toward the center console of the car, and then beyond it, until he was as far away from the passenger door as he could be.
Ramon swallowed down his own throat lump and then spun quickly back toward the woods. At first, he saw nothing, but then, as his eyes adjusted again to the green and brown and yellow of the forest, the image of the figure from earlier emerged like a mirage, this time standing as tall and still as a totem pole. Despite the clarity of the figure, however, the outline and form were nebulous, and Ramon doubted whether that was a characteristic of the creatu
re or whether his vision needed attention.
“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary.”
Ramon’s words were a whisper, but they were spiked with terror, and before they had finished leaving his mouth, he was already sliding his body around to the front of the cruiser, his backside edging along the frame of the car until he reached the driver’s side again. At that point, the tops of his thighs were against the left fender, his eyes never once leaving the sight of the creature.
“Open the fucking door, Riley,” Ramon barked through locked teeth as he reached for the driver’s side handle. The pitch of his voice was so low it strained his throat.
Riley’s back was to Ramon, but Ramon could see the kid was still entranced by the scene outside, locked on the creature that seemed to hover amongst the trees like an ebony ghost.
Ramon directed his eyes back to the forest just as the black monster began moving forward, toward the car, and the instant his eyes landed on the beast, it stopped, now at least ten feet closer to him than before. Then, with little more than a second or two pause, the creature started moving toward them again, this time in long quick strides.
“Riley! Riley, open the goddamn door!”
Riley pressed his back hard against the driver’s door now, the skin of his neck flattening against the window like a starfish. Ramon slapped his hand against the glass now repeatedly, never taking his eyes from the forest. Then, as if the ground beneath the black creature suddenly evaporated, the figure fell from Ramon’s sight, dropping to the forest floor like a sea of coal cascading down a chute, leaving a mist of black in its wake.
“What the hell?”
It was on the ground now—Ramon could hear it shuffling through the leaves, crackling over the fallen branches—and he quickly moved away from the car, shifting into action as he did, his weapon now poised for killing. He took several steps back from the car and to his left, then forward around the hood, now moving in the direction from where he’d just come, toward the passenger side.
The sound of the rustling suddenly ceased, the creature seeming to sense the danger of Ramon and his pistol.
Ramon craned his neck dramatically over the hood, his eyes attempting to locate the crawling beast somewhere on the ground at the base of the cruiser.
Ramon was standing directly in front of the car now, and he glanced at Riley again through the windshield. The young man’s face displayed a look that was both terrified and confused; his eyes were searching, desperate, as if trying to get his focus back on the approaching danger. But the form was too low, out of his eye line, and Riley, whose back was still pressed tightly against the driver’s side window, leaned forward and began to move again toward his side of the car, trying to get a vantage of the thing somewhere below him.
Ramon kept his gaze on Riley, using him as a measure to determine for himself where the creature was exactly, watching the guard anxiously as he slid another couple feet toward the window.
Riley’s body was pressed against the passenger door now, his knees planted on the seat, his eyes tilted down from the top of the window, scanning the ground.
Riley was frozen in his kneeling perch for two or three beats, his mind clearly racing as it processed the impossible sighting.
And then the destruction began.
Ramon heard the breaking glass first, the sound exploding through the air like a pail of gravel dumped onto a plywood table.
And then he watched in horror as Riley’s head was instantly consumed in the clutches of the black monster.
What in God’s name was happening!
The thing’s hands were like dusty obsidian claws, unwavering as they pulled Riley through the broken side window with an ease that was almost beyond comprehension. Ramon could only stare in disbelief, and absently he conjured the image of a gorilla seizing a newborn baby from a stroller. He tried to bring the black beast into focus, but its form wavered in the air, fading into translucence and then back to solid every few seconds, never quite holding its figure long enough to be describable. And with Riley now standing in front of the creature, it made identifying the thing nearly impossible.
Ramon could only gaze at the sight before him, rapt in stunned amazement at the sight of Riley, who now stood before the creature like a child before a schoolmarm. His head remained in the thing’s clutches, but he made no move to fight it. His attention seemed fixed, possessed.
“Riley,” Ramon said, softly, barely a whisper. His mind was racing, losing its focus, irrelevant memories beginning to emerge.
Was the same thing happening to Riley? Only with more force?
Instinctively, Ramon closed his eyes and attempted to clear his mind, focusing only on his breathing and the feelings in his hands, techniques he’d learned through his practice of meditation which he’d taken up several years earlier.
Only a few seconds passed however when he heard the word ‘No’ uttered from Riley’s mouth, followed by a full-throated shout. “No!”
Broken from whatever spell had been cast upon him, Riley was now struggling to free himself from the creature’s grip, writhing in vain, now screaming, “Never! Never.”
But there was to be no escape. In a movement that contained both ferocity and grace, the creature wrenched Riley Tackard’s body backwards, twisting it as he did before discarding it to the ground like a cardboard box that had been opened, emptied, and broken down into a flat sheet.
Ramon was also now free of the images in his mind, whether through his own mindfulness practice or because of the creature’s allowance he didn’t know, but he moved quickly around to the passenger side of the car, his index finger now curved around the trigger of his M&P9.
But he was far too late.
As Ramon cleared the left fender of his cruiser, the black mass was already twenty yards away, slinking quickly back toward the trees, smoky and amorphous as it faded into the forest, its total form growing in and out of focus like the shimmer of a desert road on a hot day. It moved in a slumping slither now, as low to the ground as a lizard, crawling crooked and gruesomely like some giant mutant stick bug, though with an ease of motion unlike any insect Ramon had ever seen. Its angular limbs and joints protruded in every direction, the monster so flat against the forest floor that the shape of the creature was barely distinguishable from the ground itself.
Ramon fired four shots in rapid succession toward the creature—two of which he was certain landed somewhere around the upper back of the thing—and then he sprinted the ten yards or so needed to reach the tree line again, firing as he went. But he lost sight of the beast almost immediately as it reached the denser sections of the woods where the foliage rose to nearly knee-height. Ramon stood still and listened to the clamber of its retreat for a few seconds longer, and then, as if it had never been there at all, all evidence of the figure disappeared into the trees like a whisper at sea.
Ramon stood staring into the thickets for a few moments more, trying to slow his breathing, simultaneously hoping it would re-appear and praying it was dead. And when it was clear that the black killer was not coming back, at least not at that moment, he turned back to the cruiser where the obliterated heap of Riley Tackard lay mangled in a bed of glass below the door.
Ramon walked quickly but apprehensively toward the kid, and when he reached him, he put a hand to his eyes as a current of nausea surged through his belly and chest.
Riley Tackard’s body was twisted and broken, so destroyed and misshapen that the back of the guard’s head was bent in a way that it was resting on his own calves. His clothes were shredded by the glass and talons of the monster and dyed with blood from his neck to his shoes.
But it wasn’t the blood that had turned Ramon’s stomach, or even the unnatural contortion of Riley’s body; it was the color of the young man’s skin. His entire face and neck—as well as his hands, which were the only other visible part of him—were consumed in blackness, as if he’d been pulled from a house the day after a fire, or had been caught at the epicenter of a lava-sp
ewing volcano. Yet, the damage to his body didn’t suggest it had come from burning or electrocution—where the skin melts away leaving only a smiling crisp skeleton—but rather, it was as if Riley’s skin had been sucked of all its moisture and life. Like the cells themselves had been poisoned to death, desiccated to black.
“Jesus, my god,” Ramon uttered, his hand across his mouth now as he continued checking over his shoulder every few seconds, his heart still pounding against the inside of his sternum.
He swallowed and reached through the broken glass of the cruiser, unlocking the door, and then he quickly opened it and grabbed the radio, depressing the call button.
He cleared his throat, trying to gather himself. “Gloria! Gloria, it’s Ramon. Do you copy?”
Ramon released the switch and waited. Nothing.
“Gloria, are you there?” He paused again, still nothing. Then he said, “Allie, do you copy?”
Ramon wiped away the glass from the passenger seat and sat now, becoming increasingly unsettled by the lack of reply as he stared out to the forest, expecting the black figure to emerge at any moment.
“Dammit where is every—”
“Copy, Sheriff.” It was Allie. “What’s up, boss?”
Ramon let out a sigh. He closed his eyes. “Allie. Thank god. Where’s Gloria?”
“Don’t know, Sheriff. Haven’t been back to the station yet. I’m out on 91 checking on that sinkhole. No pileups here, but there is definitely something.”
Ramon ignored the cryptic tease for the moment. “Listen to me, Allie. Something’s happened...” Ramon felt his voice racing and he calmed himself, not wanting to cause a panic, especially within his own ranks. “Something’s happened up here at the Grieg. It’s...there’s a new kid—was a new kid—related to the Tackards. He was on duty this morning and now...he’s dead. Jesus Christ, Allie; it happened right in front of me.” Ramon swallowed. “You copying that, Allie?”
There was a moderate delay and then, “Copy that, Sheriff. It...it happened in front of you? What happened? What the hell went down?”
Ramon considered telling her the story, but he hadn’t replayed the events yet in his own mind and thought it better to do so first before trying to describe it to someone else. “It’s not...” He felt the sting of terror and despair creeping back in and he took a full breath, closing his eyes again as the cool morning air filled his lungs. He thought of the images that had sprung up in his mind, at just the wrong time, events in his life that he wouldn’t have remembered if he lived another hundred years. If his mind had slipped like that at any other time in his work, he would have taken himself to the doctor immediately, figuring it was early onset dementia or some other mental sickness. But it had happened then, in the presence of something that couldn’t exist on earth, something that had killed a boy who, Ramon was nearly certain, was also experiencing something hypnotic in his mind.
They Came With the Rain Page 7
