Return to Red Creek

by Nathan Hystad

  “Then we should go,” her mom whispered, and as if remembering her son, she called into the living room. “Stevie?”

  He didn’t answer, and Taylor’s dad was up in an instant. “Stevie!” he shouted, and Taylor followed him into the empty living room. The TV showed a paused video game, but there was no sign of her little brother.

  “Check the front,” her dad ordered.

  Taylor ran to it, finding it locked from inside. He hadn’t gone that way. She heard a cacophony of voices calling for her brother, who had somehow vanished from in front of their eyes.

  “The back door’s unlocked!” Isabelle called from the rear of the house, and they ran there in a pack. Taylor’s dad was the first one out, and she was close behind him as he turned the porch light on. Stevie was sitting there, headphones on, head bobbing.

  Taylor’s dad scooped him up in his arms, her brother looking much too large for the motion. Stevie’s headphones fell off his head, and he shouted, “What are you doing, Dad?”

  “You scared us, Stevie. What did I tell you about staying in the living room?” her dad asked. The others had migrated into the house, leaving the scolding to the privacy of the backyard. Taylor stayed, walking over to her mom and dad, who were hugging Stevie.

  “Kid, you don’t want to be out here alone,” Taylor said softly, extending her gaze around the yard. “Dad, let’s go inside.”

  “Let me down, Dad,” Stevie said, wiggling free from his dad’s embrace.

  “Get inside,” Terri said angrily. She stopped on the porch and turned to Taylor, grabbing her arms as Paul entered the house with Stevie. “I know you felt the need to come here and help with the missing kids, but I don’t think this was a good idea. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

  “We know much more than we did before,” Taylor retorted.

  “Honey, you were there. Do you remember when Grandpa was in the hospital and you ran down the hall ahead of me? Your dad was in Red Creek. You saw the shadow then. If it was here and there at the same time, have you measured in your mind how powerful it must be? It’s survived for two hundred years, traveling with a family, feeding on the souls of children wherever it lands.”

  “That’s why we have to stop it,” Taylor said, feeling resolve firm in her veins as she said the words.

  Her mom’s eyes had filled with tears. “That’s why we should leave here and never look back.”

  “We can’t. I have a hunch, and I think I’m right,” Taylor said.

  Terri let go of Taylor’s hands and wiped her tears away. “What’s the hunch?”

  “Will you promise we all stick together and see this through?” Taylor asked. She had a feeling they were going to need all the help they could get.

  “If that’s what it takes, then yes.”

  Taylor’s dad was hovering outside on the porch, the chilly evening air making his breath mist out. He held his wife’s hand and waited for Taylor to speak.

  “It’s not fully powerful yet. It still needs to feed. And we have what it wants most, right here in this house.”

  Her dad was frowning. “What’s that?”

  “Good old-fashioned Smith blood.”

  _______________

  Paul was driving the SUV to the orchard, and Darrel was in the lead in his pickup truck. Beth had stayed home with Terri and Stevie, and Paul hated the thought of leaving them behind. Stevie was their blood, and the youngest. Taylor hadn’t suggested her brother might be the bait, but to Paul, it felt like she might have suspected.

  There was no way he was going to let this thing get his son. He was of half a mind to drive Taylor out of town now, but she’d find a way to come back. Paul could see his own bullheaded behavior mirrored in his daughter, and there was no stopping that level of stubbornness.

  Beth had never seen the shadow. Even when Taylor had been taken twelve years ago outside Chuck’s, they hadn’t seen it, so he was reasonably sure it wouldn’t go there. His old house, on the other hand, seemed to be a hotspot for it.

  “You’re sure about this?” he asked Taylor, who was in the passenger seat of the Range Rover. Brent was sitting in the middle seat behind them, leaning between the seats so he could hear the conversation. He seemed like a decent kid, and Paul could tell Taylor was into him. Paul was also surprised by how well the young man had taken to all the insane and open discussion of their family’s secret history.

  “Of course I’m not sure, Dad!” Taylor answered loudly. She adjusted her voice, and Paul could hear how petrified she was. “Trevor Hayes saw this thing repeatedly, over the span of six months or so. Not once did it attack him. But he was the right age. It wanted him. It needed his soul, or heart, or liver, or whatever the hell this monster feeds on.”

  They’d spent hours researching various shadow figures online but hadn’t come up with much. There was a lot of folklore around shadow people, but it didn’t quite fit. First, most of the time they were seen from the corner of one’s eyes, often when in bed or waking. They might be shades of the underworld or other supernatural creatures, but Paul didn’t think that was what they were dealing with.

  Most of these sightings didn’t result in harm, which might line up, but they didn’t see anything close to missing children in the volume of their Schattenmann. There were various Greek mythological creatures that ate children or stole them, but none quite fit the bill.

  The duelling laptops they had on the table at his sister’s house couldn’t find a demon folklore that quite matched this case either. Paul let out a grim laugh as he thought of it as a “case.” This was much more. This was their lives, the lives of kids. Real kids. His friend Jason Benning’s kid had been taken and killed; a year later, Jason was gone, dead by its hands.

  So many deaths in the last hundred years. Paul guessed the number of people killed by the monster would be in the three hundreds, dating back to Germany, England, and more recently, upstate New York.

  “You think it’s still too weak?” Brent asked from behind them.

  “I don’t know. The two kids prove otherwise.” Taylor pointed to the lights as they flickered throughout Wood Street.

  Paul wasn’t so sure. The shadow might be alive, but they’d caught someone on the missing children. A physical man, and not someone related to him, as far as Paul knew. “What about what the deputy said?”

  “Dad, it’s lived this long. Do you think it would still be around if it was stupid?” Taylor asked, her tone so teenaged, it reminded him of a younger Taylor: one in her eye-rolling phase.

  “Good point. We don’t know how to kill it. I wish we’d found something useful about them,” Paul said, gripping the steering wheel hard as he headed toward his old house. It was pitch black out, and the clouds had rolled in overhead. The lights flickered a few more times, but only on three lamp posts. Paul guessed their photocells were faulty. When something broke in Red Creek, it took a long time for anyone to fix it.

  He stopped as they spotted the path at the end of the block. He had a wave of déjà vu as he stared at it, the SUV still in the middle of the road.

  “Dad, what are you doing?” Taylor asked, but Paul hardly heard her. He parked and got out of the car, the interior light of the Rover turning on. A speaker chimed, advising him the driver’s door was open while the vehicle was running. He only noticed those things peripherally as he walked, one foot after the other, down the road.

  He heard doors open and shut behind him, but he kept moving. Taylor shouted at him, but he could hardly hear her through the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears. Warm liquid spilled over his lips and chin. He ran when he felt the touch of a hand on his shoulder.

  A warm summer day. The smell of rotting apples. A damp dirt cave. The sensation of that day so long ago filled his senses. It was like if Paul stretched his hand out, he’d find a wall of musty soil.

  “Dad! Dad, stop!” The words broke through, and Paul’s eyes snapped open, as if seeing for the first time in minutes. Arms were wrapped around him, pulli
ng him toward the SUV.

  He woke from the dreamlike state as if he’d been shoved to the ground. “What the hell was that?” he asked, his voice a shrill shriek.

  “Dad.” Taylor was crying. “You’re bleeding.”

  Paul wiped his face and saw blood smear on his hand. Another nosebleed. He hadn’t had one since… since he’d been back in Red Creek, looking at this same path.

  Paul stood on the road, and Darrel and Isabelle were running from his parking spot in front of Paul’s old house. Darrel had a rifle in his hands and was puffing air by the time he arrived. “What was it? Did you see the thing?”

  Taylor answered for him. “No. He just started walking for the path. And then his nose began to bleed. It was like he was possessed.”

  Paul trembled at the word. “I wasn’t possessed. But I think it wants me to enter that path. We have a history, and it senses I’m here now.” Paul wasn’t sure how he knew all this, but he could feel it in his bones. “Shit, why didn’t I see this? If what you think is accurate, about it being too weak and needing help, then it needs someone of our blood to aid it. It wants me. It wants to take me and use me like it used Conway, and a long line before him.”

  Taylor was dragging him away now, heading for the house. “Dad, we can’t stand in the middle of the street like lunatics. Uncle Darrel, can you put that away?” She pointed to his rifle, and Darrel leaned it on his shoulder, shaking his head.

  “No way. I’ve seen this thing before. There’s no way I’m giving up the gun,” Darrel said.

  “You shot Jason last time. Do you think bullets are going to help us kill a shadow?” Paul asked.

  “I think it’s more than that. A shadow can’t kill, can it?” Isabelle asked. She was under the impression it needed a corporeal body to carry it. She might be right, but they had no proof of that.

  They needed to find the nest, but first, Paul wanted to see it with his own two eyes. If the kid who’d lived in their house had viewed it, then Paul thought it would show itself to him.

  He shook the cobwebs from his head and found his nose was finished bleeding. Small victories. “We’ll take the path,” he said with finality. He grabbed a jacket from the trunk of his SUV and passed the girls flashlights. Brent took Stevie’s baseball bat, and Paul almost told him to leave it, assuming an aluminum bat wouldn’t do much against mist, but it couldn’t hurt.

  Paul opened the compartment under the back mat and pulled out a handgun lock box. It was a 9MM pistol, and he’d made himself learn how to fire it at the range after the last time he’d been in the Creek. He’d told people it was research for a book, but Terri and Taylor knew better. He made sure the safety was on, then slipped it into a holster, drawing his jacket overtop.

  Brent was wide-eyed, and Taylor hugged in close to the young man. His eyes met Paul’s, but he quickly averted his gaze. The kid was scared and had every right to be. Paul was scared too. The only one who seemed unfazed by it all was Darrel. He was already moving past his truck, toward the path between the houses.

  Paul and that path had a lot of history, and even a day ago, he would never have suspected he’d be walking it again. He took a deep breath and began walking, Taylor and Brent close beside him, Isabelle right behind.

  They were an odd bunch, but they were family. Paul worried that might be exactly what the monster wanted, but he kept going anyway. Taylor was right. They had to deal with this now. There would be no more hiding out in his fancy townhouse overlooking Central Park. He’d pulled his head from the sand, and there was no heading back.

  Seventeen

  The day had been long, and after the last seventy-two hours, Tom was dead tired. He was already dozing off, and it was only nine thirty.

  “What about the Beatles? You have to like the Beatles,” Rich said, continuing his unmatched droning about all sorts of subjects Tom didn’t give a rat’s ass about.

  Tom didn’t reply, but he blinked his eyes open as someone moved outside the condo building. Occasionally, he saw the glowing ember of a cigarette being smoked from the main floor suite that pointed toward the fields. Buzz was out there pacing around, his woman noticeably absent tonight. Tom didn’t think the man had anything to do with what was going on. He usually had a good sense about these things.

  Carl, on the other hand. The way the hair elastic had been settled on the nightstand; it was just what he’d expect from the guy, but there was the chance he was wrong. Carl had looked petrified as they’d questioned him. There was none of the arrogance Tom might expect from a cold, calculating killer.

  That was why Tom was still here, watching the building. It was the epicenter of the missing children. It had to be. The Gilden dealership connection bothered him. There had to be something there. If nothing turned up here, he was going to drive to Gilden and take a look around the lot. There were a lot of places to hide a body in a big building like that, and the few hundred car trunks wouldn’t hurt either.

  Now that Tom thought about it, there was a forested lot behind the dealership too. It made for a picturesque sight as you drove by the lot in the summer. Now, with the trees not quite in bloom, it would look a little ominous, like the skeletal ones surrounding Tom at that moment. He glanced around, seeing naked branches jutting out in all directions.

  The movement he’d discovered a minute ago was just Emma Jeanne lugging some bags toward her car. After she started it, he could hear the fan belt from his perch a quarter-mile away, as chilly spring air blew in through his open window.

  “Who’s that?” Rich asked, finally noticing the car leaving the condo.

  “Ms. Jeanne. She’s harmless. Probably heading away for the weekend until this all settles down,” Tom said. She’d been nice enough, and he felt sorry for the older lady, living alone in such an undesirable location, surrounded by other odd and unlucky folks. He wondered what had brought her to Red Creek from Florida. It seemed like quite the departure.

  The deputy’s radio buzzed, and Sheriff Tyler’s crisp voice came through. “There’s something weird happening on Wood Street. Guy walking around with a gun, standing in the middle of the road. Might want to go check it out.”

  Before Rich could respond, Tom grabbed the radio. “Any news from Carl, Sheriff?”

  “Nothing. He’s zipped up. Lawyer’s gone, for the time being,” Tyler said.

  “Gotcha. All quiet here at the orchard, so we’ll go check out the disturbance,” Tom said.

  “Bartlett,” Tyler said.

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful.”

  “Will do.” Tom passed the radio over, and Rich was already throwing his seatbelt on.

  “Wood Street. Isn’t that where Brittany Tremblay lived?” Rich asked.

  Tom didn’t like the way he said the word “lived,” as if her fate was already sealed. “It is.”

  “Quite the famous street around here,” Rich said nonchalantly.

  “What do you mean?” Tom asked, wishing he didn’t have to go deal with a gun-toting local on this Saturday night of all nights.

  “Just the… you’ve heard about the Red Creek Killer, right?” the deputy asked, straight-faced.

  “If you mean this local urban legend of some entity that steals children, then yes. But I thought all that was over when the Smiths were linked to it,” Tom said, not wanting to get into a supernatural discussion with this peculiar, much younger deputy beside him.

  Rich cleared his throat and looked out the window. “I don’t know what to believe. I’ve seen a lot. I was one of Tommy O’Brian’s best friends. The year before, I lost one of my baseball teammates, Isaac Benning. He was a great kid. I find it hard to believe that those orchard owners could have done it. There are too many holes.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know.” Tom guessed Rich was around twenty-five, and that would put him at thirteen when Tommy O’Brian was killed. “What does the sheriff think about it all?”

  “He was there. He didn’t see the shadow, but his friends did.” Rich was still turned a
way, and Tom wondered if the guy was having fun with him.

  “What do you mean, he was there?” Tom asked as he drove the gravel road. He slowed as he neared an intersection, stopping at the red octagon. Too many people roared through the signs on the quiet back roads, and Tom had seen his fair share of accidents resulting in death because of it. He wasn’t going to become a statistic.

  “The night the Smiths were busted, Tyler was there. He was deputized by Sheriff Cliff. God, we used to make fun of that guy when we were kids. He was always sitting in his car like a slob, parked on Main and eating cheeseburgers. Turns out he was the one who saved Paul Alenn in the nineties, and saved his daughter that night,” Rich said.

  “Are you telling me the sheriff believes there’s a monster living in Red Creek? A supernatural thing that goes bump in the night?” Tom asked. It was incredible. He’d heard about the horror author’s involvement but had always thought it was a publicity stunt to sell more books.

  Rich nodded and faced forward in his seat, eyes on the road. “He does, and so do I. Humans couldn’t do what the Smiths were accused of. There had to be a hundred skeletons in that hole. Did you see the footage?” he asked, referring to the camera footage a local man had filmed that evening.

  “I think the guys at the Gilden PD like to haze the newbies with the footage. They warned me what I might be getting involved with when I first started. They all seem to want to stay away from your town, Rich, but I don’t think it’s because of a monster,” Tom said as they entered the town limits. Soon he was moving toward Wood Street in his unmarked car.

  All this talk about monsters and shadows was getting to him. His gaze darted from side to side as he scanned parked cars, trying to spot a gunman. Street lights flickered ahead, all in time with each other.

  “That’s not good,” Rich said, gulping loudly.

  “What?”

  “The lights. They’re surrounding the Alenn house. The sheriff always said that his friend Paul was tied up in all this,” Rich said as Tom pulled over directly in front of the derelict home.