by Sara Clancy
“Thanks, dad.”
“The Dullahan,” Dorothy continued, adding before her husband could ask, “A ghostly horseman. Invisible but capable of murder. And the Slaughs almost did more damage than the storm they flew in. The Baykoks. The Pontianak. They were all capable of doing a hell of a lot of damage.”
“And we’re still here,” Nicole countered.
“Don’t be so cocky,” Dorothy said. “A lot of that was luck.”
Danny whimpered, mumbling under her breath about the ghosts they had spotted in the woods. The monstrous beasts that looked as if the forest itself was swallowing them, deforming them into some hybrid of human and tree.
“Could those things touch us?” Danny looked to her twin and cringed. “Well, I won’t be sleeping again for a while.”
“You’re just guessing that we’ll be able to contain this thing,” Dorothy said.
“And even if we could trap it, what would we do with it?” Logan asked.
“Put it in one of the basements at the ghost town,” Nicole said. “It worked for the Leanan Sidhe. She stored all of her victims there.”
Benton didn’t mention the flinch that rattled Nicole’s body, or the cold air that seemed to settle down upon the room. They had lost a life-long friend to the creature. Benton could sympathize with their grief but couldn’t fully share in it.
“We can’t just do nothing,” Nicole said. “And we do have the upper hand. At the very least, we know that there are three people that it can’t affect. Also, Benton, when he’s awake. And we know it’s wary of direct confrontation, for whatever reason. There has to be something to that. Let’s use all of that to our advantage. Set a trap. Meet it on our terms.”
Logan practically beamed at his daughter’s suggestion but didn’t say anything as Dorothy placed a hand on his shoulder.
“And if it doesn’t work?” Dorothy pressed.
“Then at least I’ll get a good look at it. I’ll be able to tell what it is.”
“You don’t know that.”
“There’s a reason why it’s hiding,” Nicole insisted.
Dorothy released a long-suffering sigh. “Nicole.”
“Okay, what about this. If we’re right and it’s getting stronger, how much longer will we be able to keep it out?”
“She’s right, hon,” Logan said softly. “Granted, it’s not a great option, but at least it’s one we can make on our own terms. So, let’s do this before it takes the option away from us.”
Dorothy absently rubbed a thumb across her bottom lip as she weighed their options. The room was left in a tense silence as they all waited to see what her decision would be.
“For argument’s sake−” She paused, eyeing her husband and daughter as if waiting for confirmation that they agreed to this term. “What exactly are you two thinking? Whatever this thing is, it’s smart. It’s constantly following us and already knows our routine. Anything obvious will tip it off. It’s not going to believe we just happened to let our guard down right after an attack.”
“All good points, love. But I’ll have you know that our plan is fantastic,” Logan said.
“Which is?”
Logan met her challenging gaze. “I’m going to let Nicole explain it to you.”
“Thanks, dad.” Nicole stammered for a moment. “We could make it look like we’re transporting Benton elsewhere. That’s a logical reaction to its actions. Oh, we could take him to the hospital and lure the Buffalo Monster down to the morgue. That place worked well enough with the Dullahan. If we get the time right, no one will be hanging around. And, if we can’t kill it, we might be able to lock it in one of the body drawers.”
Logan raised both hands to display his child with pride. “See.”
Dorothy cocked an eyebrow. “So that I’m clear, you two want to lure a creature that has proven it has mind-control abilities to a place full of people and sharp objects?”
“Right.” Logan clicked his tongue. “Collateral damage. We need somewhere with no meat puppets.” Logan clucked his tongue a few times. “Somewhere that will let us control the variables.”
“The ghost town,” Nicole suggested.
“Nah, too much tall grass. I want more visibility.”
“Here,” Benton croaked.
“And what? We just forgot to lock the door? We’ve been over this. It’ll be pretty hard to make it believable.” Logan put on a sweet voice one would use with a child to add, “But it’s great that you’re trying to help.”
Benton stared at the man, deeply resentful that his throat hurt too much to put any of his annoyance into his voice. “Let Nicole sleep through the bells.”
“Let it possess you?” Nicole clarified. “No. No way! That’s crazy − hold on, that could work.”
Benton rolled his eyes as Nicole’s words picked up their pace.
“It wants Benton alive and is obviously trying to take him somewhere. And there’s a decent chance that it watched me rig the door.”
“You think that it needs to keep Benton in sight to control him,” Logan took over. “To bypass a booby trap is a lot harder than opening a door. It might need a better line of sight. It could force it forward. If we close all the curtains, ‘unfortunately’ leaving a small gap, we’ll be able to control where it goes.”
“A camera and a flare and I’ll at least have a chance to properly identify it,” Nicole added with growing excitement.
Logan twisted around to eye the door in question. “I can rig that to be non-fatal. You know, in case it’s not that great at manipulating finer motor functions.”
Dorothy squeezed her husband’s shoulder, silencing him for a moment to ask, “Benton, are you okay with this? The biggest risk will be on you.”
“He suggested it,” Logan declared.
Still, Dorothy waited until Benton nodded to agree.
“This isn’t the best idea,” she mulled. “But I suppose it’s better than nothing.”
“Aw, that’s what you said at our wedding!” Logan clapped his hands with childish delight. “Now, let’s go wrangle us a demonic spirit from beyond the grave!”
“We don’t know that’s what it is,” Nicole said, barely getting the words out before her father demanded that she just let him have a moment.
Chapter 9
The night had crept up slowly, only to fall upon them all at once – bitterly cold and impenetrably dark. The neighborhood had long since fallen silent, stirred only by the random chatter of a few owls.
Nicole was used to quiet nights. Fort Wayward wasn’t known for its nightlife. But this one felt different; somehow empty. Before the sun had set, Dorothy had made sure to check in on the neighbors once more, softly suggesting that they might want to visit family or friends for the night, whoever was on the other side of town. Most of them had already had a bag packed before the Constable had even arrived. While the people of Fort Wayward weren’t exactly superstitious, they knew better than to risk it. They had known that something was different about Benton for a while now. They didn’t know what, but, after the last week, they knew to head for the hills. Nicole could almost feel their absence now.
A shiver went down her spine as she eyed the heavy curtains. There was only one thin slip that offered her a glimpse outside. It was a strip of pure onyx. Too deep for her to see anything lurking within it. Fighting to keep her growing anxiety under control, she curled up on her side, pushing a little closer to Benton. Every so often, she would hear the faintest trace of sound. A small crunch of snow, as if something were prowling around the edges of the building. There was every chance that it was the birds. Perhaps a rabbit. Her gut told her that it wasn’t.
The idea had been to make it look like they were trying to avoid the Buffalo Monster’s gaze; moving from her bedroom down to the living room to sleep. It was essentially a nest of blankets and pillows that was surprisingly comfortable. Nicole had made sure to stock the fire well before they settled down for ‘sleep’. Perhaps too well.
Hours
later, the room was still filled with an orange glow. Heat pulsated from the dancing flames. It was growing unbearably hot under the blankets, but she didn’t make any attempt to remove them. The longer she waited, the more she wished that Zack and the twins had been able to stay. Too risky, she reminded herself. The situation was bad enough without Zack being taken over again. And there was no way to tell how the twins would react.
Anxiety simmered along her veins, making her heartbeat pick up. She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as she pushed closer to Benton. He stirred slightly but didn’t wake up, the slight motion marked by a tinkle of bells. Apparently, the looming threat of attack wasn’t enough to overcome prolonged sleep deprivation. Which was a good thing. The plan only worked if he could sleep. Warm, comfortable, and exhausted, it hadn’t taken long from him to nod off. Nicole watched him for a moment, hoping that he’d get a few decent hours before everything went down.
A part of her whispered that she should try and get some sleep too. There was no guarantee that she’d get another chance any time soon. It was a small, selfish voice that she quickly squashed. Focus, she told herself sharply. Unfortunately, to keep up appearances, she had to close her eyes. It took far less effort than she thought it would. What little adrenaline her body was still able to produce after days of being on edge wasn’t enough to stand against the natural, unstoppable need for sleep. It was a fight she would have lost if she hadn’t grown so used to sleeping with her headphones on.
Every little sound snapped her back to wakefulness. The push of the breeze, the crackle and pop of the fire, even the sharp little intakes of breath Benton made as his dreams started to take hold. Time stretched out as she waited. The little crunch of snow became more common. It pressed on her then, that all that separated them from the monster was a thin sheet of glass. This will work. This has to work.
The soft tinkle of a bell shattered her thoughts. She flinched, instantly hating herself for doing so. Clenching each muscle, she fought to keep herself still, to hold onto the illusion of sleep. Soft bells sounded again. A flinch of Benton’s foot. A slight movement before he froze entirely. Nicole held her breath and waited. She counted her heartbeats because she needed something she could do. The blankets slipped from her torso as Benton sat upright. With her back to the doors, she felt secure enough to sneak a peek through her lashes.
There was something wrong about the way he sat. Some undefinable change that made him look as if he were held up rather than sitting with his own power. Like there was a string at the top of his head and some unseen hand was pulling it. His arms hung loose and limp. For the longest time, he hung like that; suspended within the moment. Still as stone. Then, in a sudden burst of movement, he was on his feet. A hailstorm of bells slowly tinkled into silence as he stood there. He wavered slightly. The firelight danced across his suddenly pale skin and glistened off his wide eyes.
Nicole tried not to move, clenched her hands until she ached to keep from reaching out and grabbing him. Every instinct she had screamed at her to end this. The sensation only got worse as he slowly began to stagger across the room. Unable to take the dread boiling inside her ribcage, Nicole squirmed. She wasn’t much of an actor. All she could do was hope that it looked like the sound had simply stirred her in her sleep but failed to rouse her. Her stomach dropped more with every jingle. Soon enough, he was out of her line of sight, leaving her only the sound of the bells to track his progress across the room. He didn’t go far. With a final, soft tinkle, the room fell silent.
Nicole’s stomach churned restlessly. The longer she was forced to lie there, the quicker hear heartbeat became, until her blood roared in her ears with the ferocity of crashing waves. Energy crackled under her skin, making her tremble as she fought to keep herself still. Time passed. Biting the inside of her cheek, she strained to catch the slightest trace of bells. The only noise within the room was the soft crackle of the fireplace.
A sudden, sharp intake of breath made her stomach plummet. Instinct made her roll. The blankets tightened around her as she scrambled for the noise-canceling headphones hidden under the pillows.
Benton’s scream shattered the tension of the night, driving into her ears like needles, causing her vision to blur. She strained against the blankets to shove the headphones over her head, succeeding at the same instant the windows exploded. Shrapnel rained down upon her back, the duvet sparing her from the jagged edges. Cool night air rushed through the broken windows; a cold rush that caught the fire and made it flare out with a guttural roar. Blistering heat rolled over her back, seeping through the slashes and heading the glass shards. It barely lasted a second but came with an intensity that made her gasp in pain.
She could only pray that the flames didn’t catch hold of the material cocooning her. Benton’s scream slowly tapered off into silence. Nicole took it as her sign to tear her way through the blankets, losing her headphones in her haste.
Frigid air struck her sweat-damp face. Each movement shook the glass fragments from her back. They tinkled as they toppled to the floorboards, clanking against each of the shards already scattered there. It was that sound that made her look to the window instead of trying to find Benton. Shock seized her. The core of her soul was consumed by an arctic wasteland. A rush of adrenaline left her dizzy and trembling.
The creature was already halfway through the gaping hole of the shattered window frame.
It walked on all fours. Slick skin rippled over its twisted bones, twitching each time its joints popped. It moved like a tarantula; working each appendage independently, drawing the elongated limbs high above its low hanging humanoid torso. Blood and spit dripped from the curved fangs that pierced the flesh of its cheeks. The thrashing firelight glistened off of the polished onyx of its rounded, unblinking eyes. Bile seared the back of Nicole’s throat as she looked at the mangled features of the otherwise human face.
Bulbous obsidian captured the room like a mirror, perfectly reflecting her horrified face back to her. Thick lips peeled back from rotted teeth as it invaded her home. It clung to the patch of wall below the window. It smiled at her and scuttled up the wall. Its body twisted around while its head remained riveted in place. A sickening snap made her jump and a lump of shattered bone bulged against the side of its neck. Still, it continued to move, smiling all the while. The monstrous sight made her ill. But it was the sensations it provoked that kept her rooted in place.
It wasn’t like the others that had come before it. There wasn’t hatred or hunger in its eyes. Nothing that made her survival instincts scream that she was in the presence of a predator. It wasn’t driven by a primal, innate need to track down its prey. There was nothing natural about it. The being before her was removed from such things. It wasn’t a living thing. Simply a sentient embodiment of sadistic glee. Pure, unbridled, malice given form.
The floodgates of her mind opened, unleashing a thousand campfire stories to crash down upon her. A lifetime of warnings from distant tribal elders. Tales her aunt once used to scare her into being good. The creature wasn’t simply a monster. It was the boogieman that had hunted her people for centuries. Pure evil. A Skinwalker.
“You’re a Yee Naaldiooshii.” The words left her mouth in a whisper, crackling with unshed tears of terror.
Its smile widened, tearing the flesh around its fangs. A breath of wind flurried into the room and whipped the fire into a frenzy once more. The orange glow turned the Yee Naaldiooshii’s flesh into molten lava. Nicole gasped, the sudden jerk shaking scorching tears of terror from her eyes. Desperate for air, her lungs strained against her ribs, the spike of pain the only tether she had left to her body. She longed to call her parents, to bring them out of their hiding places to force the monster back into the fevered nightmares of her childhood. Yet nothing but a broken sob worked its way through her frozen body. The Yee Naaldiooshii noticed. It delighted in it.
Benton’s scream caught them both off guard. Nicole snapped toward the tormented, mournful sound. He’s dr
eaming, she realized. It didn’t stop him from dreaming. She had only taken her eyes off the Yee Naaldiooshii for a second. But when she looked back, it was gone. A flash of movement drew Nicole’s attention to the shadows clustered around the front door’s foyer. It clung to the ceiling, still staring at her as it sunk backward, shrouding itself into the darkness until only its eyes remained visible. Her father burst into her peripheral vision. She barely caught a glimpse of him but knew that he felt the same terror that she did.
“Angel?” he stammered, barely heard over the Banshee’s wail.
She pointed a trembling finger to the glowing eyes. “There! There!”
Benton’s scream cut off as abruptly as it had started, replaced by a tinkling of bells and the gasping hiss of an emergency flare catching light. Logan hurled the burning stick into the foyer, instantly destroying the shadows and exposing the Yee Naaldiooshii once more. Nicole choked, breaking her horrified scream into pitiful sputtering. Logan stood frozen in place, one trembling hand clutching his gun, his arm tensed by his side.
“Is that?” His question hovered between them, his tone clearly pleading for someone to tell him he was wrong.
Dorothy would be at the top of the stairs. She’d have a clear shot. And yet the booming sound didn’t ring out. Somewhere under the storming sea of chaos her mind had become, Nicole knew it was because her mother had been caught off guard just as badly as the rest of them. A soft grunt echoed from beside her. It was barely more than a whisper, but she jumped, a startled scream finally escaping her lips. Benton flinched away, pushing himself up onto all fours as he cast quick glances around the room, trying to regain his bearings. Finally, his eyes fell upon the gruesome creature hanging from the ceiling.
“What the hell is that?” he asked. Before anyone could find their voice, his raw voice rose to a scream. “Shoot it!”
