The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  Dwayne made a series of hand motions. Max managed to interpret them, he hoped, and nodded. Next was a hand wave to Tritter. The vamp at the gate hid the shotgun behind the fence and pressed the button.

  Max heard the buzzer go off inside, followed by a profanity laced debate about who would answer the call. Max’s heart pounded as the footsteps moved closer. He pressed his back to the wall and locked the shotgun to his chest with the barrel down. Dwayne lifted his shotgun to his shoulder and aimed it at the door. When it swung open, Max caught the side of Leroy’s face.

  Dwayne’s suppressed shotgun sounded like a balloon popping under a pillow. Blood splattered on the porch. Leroy shook and fell to his knees. Dwayne pumped the empty cartridge and fired another blast. Leroy’s head exploded, splattering blood and brains on Max’s legs. Dwayne folded up the shotgun and ran to the back of the trailer while Max spun around the corner and brought up the muzzle. He scanned the room as he stepped over Leroy’s bloody, trembling body.

  Ollie rolled away from the couch as Max leveled the shotgun at his fat chest. Max hadn’t fired a shotgun in a while, especially at a moving target. The kick threw a cluster of shot into the couch just behind the fleeing skinhead. Max swore and pumped out an empty shell before firing again as Ollie hit the floor. He screamed when a few bits of shot scrapped his leg, but it didn’t stop him from going for the coffee table.

  Max moved in and pumped out another empty shell. Ollie flipped the coffee table over just as Max squeezed the trigger. Some of the shot punched through, but most of it got absorbed by the cheap particleboard. He didn’t hear Ollie scream again, so he assumed he’d missed.

  Max dropped the shotgun and tightened the sling so it was tight against his back and drew his pistol. He advanced until he saw a porcine mountain of white flesh quivering behind the cracked table. He popped two rounds into Ollie’s back.

  “Die, you fat bastard,” He popped one more round into him before Ollie kicked the coffee table into Max’s leg, knocking him back with a sharp blast of pain. “Son of a whore.”

  Ollie crawled towards a revolver that had fallen off the coffee table. Max turned the pistol to Ollie and fired into his shoulder. It didn’t stop him so Max fired again. Ollie managed to roll just before the shot so the round went into the linoleum. Of course it didn’t wound him, but it kept Ollie from the gun.

  It also brought him directly under Dwayne. He looked up at the shotgun barrel leveled at his bloody face. The vampire had come in so quietly Max hadn’t noticed he was there. Apparently, neither had Ollie—the corpulent skinhead moaned and stopped.

  “Goddammned ni—”

  Dwayne pulled the trigger. Ollie’s face exploded and the back of his head decorated the wall.

  “Thanks.” Max rubbed his leg. Dwayne started feeding fresh shells into his shotgun. Max holstered his Glock and did the same.

  “You hurt?” asked Dwayne as he chambered another shell.

  “Like you care?” Max pumped his shotgun and held it at his chest.

  “Naw, I don’t.”

  Tritter ran into the room. “Shit, you got ‘em all?”

  “Oh shut up,” Dwayne moaned. “Where’re the other two idiots?”

  “They comin’,” He looked at the bloodied bodies and licked his lips. “Hey, can I—?”

  “What?” Dwayne’s lips curled up as he winced at Tritter. “They’s already dead.”

  Tritter shrugged. “Just for a minute or two…”

  Max shook his head. “Please don’t.”

  Tritter sneered at him. “I didn’t ask you, fag!”

  Max thought about shooting him, but self-control got the lesser of him again. He lowered his shotgun as Tritter stepped over the headless corpse and moved to the bloody mess that used to be Ollie. He went to his knees at the corpse’s side and found a trickling bullet hole in his back to suck on. Max rolled his eyes and looked away, ignoring the sucking sound.

  Paul and Kearny popped into the room next, with the former almost tripping over the corpse in the doorway. Kearny kicked it out of the way, so that it flopped like a rag doll into the room.

  “What’d you do?” asked Dwayne.

  “Paul shot the hillbilly in the balls then cracked his skull.” Kearny demonstrated the maneuver with the butt of his shotgun. He grinned. “His brains came out like a walnut.”

  “What about the bitch?”

  Paul replied, “She had a piece and almost took a shot. I shot her between the tits. She ought to be dead right about…” He looked at his watch. “Yeah, she’s dead.”

  Max snapped back, “Asshole, she was probably just some junkie. We’re just here to kill the skinheads.”

  Paul took that as a challenge and stepped towards Max with his fists up. Kearny stepped in the way and put his hand up like a wall. Paul stopped, but continued to glare his way. Max tensed his fingers against the trigger guard of the shotgun. A bit of silence was interrupted by a loud sucking noise as Tritter continued his meal, unabated.

  “Hey, she came at us, there was nothing we could do. And she had Aryan tats on her chest so…she was probably one of ‘em,” Kearny explained.

  Max moved his finger from the trigger and nodded. Paul seemed to calm and stepped away.

  “Which one was it?” Max asked. He was answered by a pair of confused looks. “The guy, what was his name?”

  Paul shook his head. “I didn’t ask his name.” He chuckled. “It didn’t come up.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  Kearny answered, “Long black hair—”

  “Earl,” Max said with a nod. “So we’ve taken out Leroy, Ollie, and Earl… probably the three least dangerous jackasses in this operation.”

  “Got to start somewhere,” said Dwayne. He kicked Tritter’s side. “Get out of that, you nasty bastard!” Tritter lifted his head from the corpse. The lower half of his face was coated with blood. “That good?”

  Tritter nodded. “I like the fat ones… they have kind of a donut taste—”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” Max put his hand over his face. “Just don’t talk. For the rest of the night, you don’t get to talk. You’re like if someone made Larry from Newhart into a vampire.”

  Dwayne and Kearny chuckled while Paul looked on. Tritter gave him a confused look. Max turned and faced the Nazi Swastika hung on the wall. It was splattered with blood and chunks of brain. Max pulled it down and used it to wipe blood off his arms and neck.

  “Racist idiots,” he muttered before tossing the bloodied flag on the ground. The white patch stuck to the blood on the floor and soaked through until the lines of the flag disappeared in the stain.

  Paul slapped his shotgun against his shoulder and looked at Dwayne. “What now?”

  “Now?” He glanced at Max. “Ask the man with the plan.” He gave a little nod and pressed his shotgun against his chest.

  Max pulled the night vision goggles over his eyes. He’d turn them on once they were outside. “Now, we go into the woods.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Being in the woods reminded Max of The Blair Witch Project, or rather of how pathetic the woods were in that movie. People from less forested regions of the country were reportedly terrified of the forest in that film. Having lived in the Ozarks most of his life, Max found the film’s woods amusing and decidedly unfrightening. If one could see the sky and the ground while in a Southwest Missouri forest, one wasn’t lost in the woods.

  Max and his new friends had gone twenty feet into the woods behind Hagshead, and all they could see were trees. Even after the loss of their leaves to autumn, with a few notable evergreens, the skeletal branches crisscrossed in obscene angles over the sky. The underbrush was tangled and laced with stickers and thorns. Luckily it was too cold for bugs, or Max would have been eaten alive by diseased mosquitoes, chiggers, and ticks.

  The skinheads had worn a path from the trailers to their compound, but Max thought better of taking it. If they’d set any traps, that’s where they would be. So they stuck
to the brush, which made the going slow and a little loud. With their natural agility and stealth, the vamps managed to slide through the woods like ghosts. Max had a little more trouble, tripping more than once and slicing open his hand on a briar patch. Fortunately, the scent-masking potion covered the smell of his blood.

  The night vision goggles were a little disappointing. They made everything green, which didn’t help much in the woods. It did keep him from walking smack into tree trunks and branches.

  They reached the compound a few minutes later. Max turned off the night vision and raised the goggles to his forehead. There were lights in the buildings, and a couple hung from one of the buildings outside. A fenced-in generator hummed along like a motorcycle. It spewed fumes that mixed with the stench of meth processing from the largest building.

  Dwayne looked at Paul and gestured to his eyes with two fingers, then pointed at the generator. Paul nodded and stepped away into the darkness. He looked at Tritter and Kearny and did the eye pointing thing before gesturing to a smaller building detached from the rest around the corner of the compound. Max heard faint classical music coming from that one. Kearny and Tritter disappeared into the darkness.

  Dwayne looked at Max and pointed to the goggles. Max nodded and pulled them back down over his eyes but kept them off until the generator shut down. He clicked the night vision on just in time to see Tritter and Kearny slip up to the detached building and take up positions on both sides of the door.

  “What the hell?” shouted a skinhead as he emerged from the smaller attached building. Max couldn’t make out his details very well, but he saw the bushy moustache and remembered the photo of Steven Stodder from James’ file. He was on his way to the generator, though instead of a toolbox he had a double barrel shotgun.

  Were they were expecting us? It didn’t matter now.

  Dwayne brought up his shotgun and squeezed off a round. A plate sized cone of shot slapped Stodder in the chest. He trembled and grunted before taking a second blast to the chest from the darkness. Paul emerged from the shadows and pumped out an empty shell. Stodder gushed blood like a cracked dam but didn’t fall. Paul put another burst of shot into him as he advanced. Stodder shrieked and brought the double barrel up just in time to get a face full of shot from Dwayne as he emerged from the brush.

  That finished it. Stodder collapsed to his knees and slumped into a bloody mess. Paul gave Dwayne a smile, but was interrupted by a gunshot blast to the chest. He’d put himself right out in the open, expecting the darkness to keep him hidden. Of course the darkness wouldn’t hide him from vampires.

  Three holes exploded in Paul’s back as the rounds exited his body. From the dull popping, Max estimated it might have been a .45 like the ones Moonshadow’s crew carried, minus the suppressors. Paul jerked back and fired a shot into the building before rolling back into the trees. He left a trail of blood in the dirt as he went. Dwayne fired a shot into the building, peppering the wall with holes.

  Max stayed in the bushes and fired a carefully aimed burst of shot into the fuzzy green figure in the doorway. Dwayne rolled out of the way and the fuzzy figure took a hit, though not a very good one. Max heard wood crack inside the building. The fuzzy bald figure swore in French and vanished.

  Max looked for his scattered allies. Dwayne was pressed against the compound wall and Paul was nowhere to be seen. Tritter and Kearny looked like a couple of lost children hiding behind the detached building. They were so confused, they didn’t notice the metal door swing open. Max brought up his shotgun just as a clawed hand at the end of a long, twisted arm burst from the darkness and grabbed Tritter by the throat.

  He’ll heal, Max thought. Aiming the shotgun, Max fired a shot into the hulking figure holding Tritter. A good share of the blast went into the vampire’s body, but the target took some of it as well. Unlike Tritter, he didn’t scream.

  Kearny tried to rescue his friend but got swatted away by a backhand slap. Tritter disappeared into the building. Max pumped out an empty shell but by then the two fuzzy green figures vanished, followed by screams and roars. Kearny flipped around the corner and brought his shotgun to bear, only to be knocked off his feet by a flying corpse. He landed under Tritter’s headless body. A second later, the head followed.

  Max emerged from the bushes as Dwayne came around the building. He nodded to Max and fired a burst into the open door where Luc had stood. That got Max across the yard without getting shot at. He unloaded another burst of shot into the detached building. Kearny rolled out from under the headless corpse and scrambled to his feet. Max got to him and helped pull him to his feet.

  “T-Thanks.”

  “Shut up.”

  A low rumbling emanated from the darkness beyond the door. A fuzzy green figure lurched forward, throwing off a dark shroud and emerging claws first into the dim moonlight. Max and Kearny shuddered in tandem at the sight. He was huge, with long bony arms and exposed ribs. His pasty skin was pulled taut over deformed cheeks, and the ridges of his skull had become sharp, like a row of tiny horns. When he opened his mouth, his jaw seemed to dislocate from his face and gape into a cavern.

  Grendel!

  Max brought the shotgun up, but the massive beast swatted it away as he pulled the trigger. It sent a cone of shot into the wall. Kearny rolled out of the way and fired into Grendel’s side, blasting strips of pasty flesh away like papier-mâché. It knocked Grendel off-kilter just enough that his open clawed swipe at Max’s face went short and low. Instead of tearing Max’s jaw off, he slashed through his coat and cut three bloody lines in his chest.

  Max grunted and backed away. Another shotgun blast came from behind. Max didn’t dare take his eyes off Grendel as he advanced, but he knew it had to be Dwayne. A pump and a click later, and another blast peppered Grendel’s chest. He kept his wide, wolf like eyes on Max and brought both hands down towards him. Max deflected with the flat of the shotgun, barely escaping being ripped to shreds.

  The force of the blow knocked Max to the ground. Another blast hit Grendel in the back, this one from Kearny. He pumped his shotgun to fire another, but was cut down by a blast of automatic weapon fire from deeper in the yard. Dwayne had moved into the open area and took some of the shots as well, but was able to wrench his bloodied body around and draw his pistol as he fell. He squeezed four shots into the darkness. Max saw a fuzzy green figure take three hits to the torso before running away.

  Grendel’s laugh threw blood and spit all over Max. He jerked the shotgun to the side, but Max twisted it in his hand until he had the barrel pressed against the vampire’s bony elbow. Without thinking, he pumped the action, kicked out another empty shell and pulled the trigger. In an explosion of blood and waxy flesh, Grendel’s elbow shattered as his arm fell to the ground.

  Max crawled away from the dumbstruck vampire-thing as he rose up and looked at the severed appendage. “My, my, my…” He shook his bald head and chuckled. It sounded like an old man’s death rattle. “Will wonders never cease?” He reached down to grab the shaking limb, but took a shotgun blast to the side of the head from Dwayne.

  Grendel roared and grabbed his ear. “Rwaaar!” he screamed, “that- that actually hurt.” He was about to turn to face his attacker when Max pumped the shotgun and hit him with another burst of shot. This time it splattered against his hip, shattering bone and ripping skin.

  Two more blasts, one from each side, pelted Grendel’s back. He turned right with the first one from Kearny using the detached building as a brace, then left to face the second one. That was Paul. He held the shotgun with one hand and a red plastic jug with the other. Max rolled away as far as he could as Paul tossed the open container at Grendel, pumped out an empty shell and fired.

  Max barely had time to turn off his night vision before the explosion lit up the clearing. Grendel screamed and flailed about as flames licked his body. Even under the shroud of fire, he barely seemed slowed. He turned to Paul and advanced with his single claw up and ready. Paul backed away and fired aga
in—pump—fire—pump—click. Shotgun jammed. That can happen when you pump too fast. Max drew his pistol and squeezed three rounds into the shuddering vampire’s body. That didn’t seem to slow him either.

  Paul dropped to his knees under Grendel and grabbed the barrel of his shotgun like a club. When Grendel got close enough he slammed the pistol grip into the flaming monster’s leg. Under normal circumstances that probably wouldn’t have phased the Grendel, but he was on fire. His leg snapped with the blow and he tumbled to the ground, almost taking Paul with him but for the latter’s quick reflexes.

  Max advanced with his pistol in a two-hand grip. He got close enough to the Grendel that he felt the flames. The monstrous vampire turned its oversized head, now little more than a flaming skull, at Max. Max fired a shot into the thing’s face, cracking the dome of his skull and throwing the immolated body to the ground. It trembled and moaned, but was filled with another shotgun blast from Kearny and a pair of .45 rounds from Paul.

  Max was glad they’d stopped that thing before he got to the trees. He could have started a pretty good fire running through the dry foliage. Then their covert operation would have gone to shit. In fact, it probably already had now that the skinheads had started using non-suppressed firearms. Max didn’t have the chance to enjoy his victory long when a suppressed shotgun blast pulled him back into the fight.

  Dwayne was exchanging fire with someone inside the main building. They were shooting through a window. Dwayne didn’t have any cover, so he had to just take the shots. Kearny rolled into the darkness and popped off a cone of shot into the window. He didn’t hit the target, but he kept him from shooting long enough for Max to run to the opening of the main building.