Colony of the Lost

by Derik Cavignano

  Sarah held her breath and hid behind a giant oak.

  Come back, Samuel. I need you!

  But if Samuel heard, he didn’t answer.

  She pictured Daddy all alone in the house, lying on the floor. Bleeding.

  Don’t die, Daddy. Please don’t die.

  She stared into the woods where the trees grew thick enough to shut out the moonlight. What if there was a monster in there? Waiting for her? A monster with glowing red eyes and razor sharp teeth.

  Got to be brave. Got to be a big girl now. Daddy needs me.

  She drew a deep breath, said a silent prayer, and tiptoed into the woods.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Chaos reigned over the Glenwood police station. Distraught parents paced through the cramped waiting area, some sobbing, some wringing their hands, all of them talking at once, pleading with officers to get out on the streets and find their children.

  Plainclothes detectives sat hunched over metal desks piled with paperwork, sleeves rolled to the elbows, ties loosened. They clacked away at keyboards, documenting case after case, detail after detail in hopes of finding some similarities, some clues that might have escaped them before, small shreds of evidence that might serve to profile a killer or killers. The phones rang incessantly, crying out in a dozen different tones, the calls fielded by volunteers and by officers on loan from neighboring communities.

  Murdock watched it all through the blinds in his office, an office that had once belonged to a police captain in the long ago days before the Devil came to Glenwood. Nineteen children—vanished. A twenty man search party—gone. And now he had three bodies lying in the morgue, mauled beyond recognition.

  It couldn’t be one man. One man couldn’t take out a twenty person search party without at least one of the victims radioing for help.

  Maybe it’s not human.

  The thought conjured up an image of Frank Patterson’s mangled corpse, his eyeball hanging out of its socket like a bloody yo-yo.

  He brushed the thought aside. Whatever animal tore Frank’s legs off couldn’t possibly have ... have what? Swallowed three dozen people whole? No, it wasn’t possible.

  Maybe it didn’t swallow his legs. Maybe it chewed them off and the thing’s owner put them in a plastic bag. Or maybe there wasn’t an animal at all. Maybe somebody sawed Patterson’s legs off and then dropped them in a bag.

  Both scenarios would explain the lack of blood beyond the immediate vicinity of Patterson’s body. But even assuming one of these theories was correct, it still didn’t explain everything. In fact, it only muddied the waters further.

  All the evidence pointed to Patterson. The kid in the library had described a man who looked exactly like Patterson. A print lifted from the knife in Gallagher’s house matched Patterson’s. And Wayne Gillespi confirmed that Patterson had called in sick every day for nearly three weeks, beginning shortly after the disappearance of Ryan Brakowski.

  But Patterson was dead now, murdered under mysterious circumstances, and yet just hours after his death an entire search party vanished. It certainly couldn’t have been Patterson—not unless you were willing to believe that dead people could commit crimes—so he must have had an accomplice.

  But who? Gallagher? It didn’t quite add up.

  If you asked him yesterday, he would’ve said Gallagher did it. Hell, he had a motive—he just got canned from his job, his fiancée split on him, and he had a drinking problem. Too much strain on a guy like that and he’s bound to snap. And maybe Patterson snapped with him—the guy had been a loner ever since his wife died. Maybe they teamed up and went on a rampage, each of them trying to get even with the world in his own way. Then maybe Gallagher came to his senses, sobered up a bit, and threatened to turn them both in. Patterson tried to stop him, broke into his house when Gallagher was on a bender, tried to stab him, but Gallagher was more alert than he let on. Gallagher shot him—grazed him on the shoulder—but Patterson managed to get away. Then, after Gallagher got out of jail, he headed over to Patterson’s house to finish the job. Killed him by sawing his legs off or sicking some sort of animal on him. The murder made Gallagher realize that he really did enjoy killing, so then he continued on the rampage alone.

  The theory made a little sense until you added the latest catch—the voice on the search radio didn’t belong to Gallagher. In fact, while the voice taunted Calhoun in the woods, baiting him and his partner into killing a Glenwood cop, Gallagher was snoozing on the couch in his living room.

  The voice on the radio had sounded like pure evil. It was clear they were dealing with a real psychopath. And then there was Calhoun’s scream. Listening to it was like having a sliver of glass jabbed into your brain. You would have thought he’d seen the Devil himself instead of the bear he mentioned in his report.

  Maybe it wasn’t a bear. Maybe it was ... something worse.

  Murdock dismissed the thought. While some folks in town were whispering of vampires, zombies, and demons, he wouldn’t allow himself to be lured in by that kind of hokum. Better to stick to the facts, no matter how senseless or inconsistent they seemed. The truth was out there somewhere, and he damn well was going to find it.

  The phone rang. It was Martinez from the CSI lab with the results from Patterson’s house. “What’ve you got? And don’t tell me you’ve got nothing.”

  “We’re lucky to have anything. The perp wiped away his prints before he left. But there were a couple he missed, pretty good ones too—a thumb on the cellar door and an index finger on the desk in the basement.”

  “You get a match?”

  “It was Gallagher.”

  Murdock clapped his hands. “I knew it! Any traces of blood in the prints?”

  “Negative.”

  Murdock sighed. That would’ve been too easy. Now Gallagher could argue he was a guest in Patterson’s house days before the murder. “What about the blood itself? All of it Patterson’s?”

  “We won’t know until the DNA tests come back.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not from my end. But the M.E. wants to see you. Said he found something strange.”

  Murdock grabbed his sports coat from the back of the chair. “Tell him I’m on my way.”

  ***

  Dr. Weisman was a wiry man in his late fifties with bushy gray eyebrows and thick glasses. He greeted Murdock and Calhoun with a firm handshake and motioned to a pair of chairs opposite his desk. “Please. Have a seat.”

  Murdock leaned forward and rested his elbows on the edge of the desk. “What did you find?”

  “Well, first off, Mr. Patterson died from blood loss related to the injuries sustained to his legs. Based on the characteristic messiness of the wounds—the uneven and variable punctures and tears—it appears that the severing of Mr. Patterson’s legs was accomplished by chewing and tearing, rather than by sawing.”

  “You’re saying an animal did this?”

  Dr. Weisman nodded. “And judging by the splintered bones, whatever animal did this had phenomenally strong jaws.”

  “But you don’t know what kind of animal did it?”

  “Not for certain. I’ve made a number of comparisons to documented cases of animal attacks, but none even comes close to what I would consider a match.”

  “What came closest?”

  “The profile was nearest to a grizzly, but, as I said before, it certainly wasn’t a match. However, it appeared to be the most consistent in terms of bite width and jaw length, but some of the puncture wounds near the top suggest that the teeth of this particular animal were barbed.”

  Murdock stole a glance at Calhoun, who was sitting uncharacteristically straight in his chair, an almost vacant look in his eyes. “You mean it had teeth growing out of the side of other teeth?”

  The doctor nodded. “It appears that way. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “So it’s definitely not a bear?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “What about traces of saliva? Would
DNA testing identify it?”

  “It should, yes. But it’s going to take some time.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Mr. Patterson had bruises and chafing on his back, shoulders, and sides. You said he was found in the basement?”

  Murdock nodded.

  “Well, then I’d venture to guess that either Mr. Patterson fell backward down the stairs before his death ...”

  “Or he was pushed.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Did you establish the time of death?”

  “Between eleven fifteen and eleven thirty P.M. on the night before last.”

  Murdock sighed. He had hoped the doctor would clear things up for him, but that last bit of information made things even hairier. The phone records proved that Patterson had called Gallagher the night he was killed—at 10:52 to be precise. Patterson must have said something to piss Gallagher off, so Gallagher headed over to his house and killed him in the basement. The time of death meshed with the theory, but the problem was that Gallagher never left his house that night. The local staking out the place swore Gallagher had passed out piss drunk around 10:00.

  Maybe the local fell asleep. Maybe he’s just trying to cover his own ass.

  He drew a deep breath. Christ, he had such a headache. “That it?”

  Dr. Weisman shook his head. “There is one more thing. When I sectioned Mr. Patterson’s brain, I discovered a rather peculiar growth.”

  “A growth? You mean like a tumor?”

  “No. Not like a tumor. I don’t quite know how to explain it. This was a substance unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It appeared to be some kind of black protoplasm concentrated in the frontal lobe. Did Mr. Patterson exhibit any problems with his fine motor skills?”

  Murdock shrugged. “Not that I know of, why?”

  “Whatever this stuff was, it was attached to the motor control centers of Mr. Patterson’s brain. I can’t be sure at this point, but I believe it may have been some kind of parasite.” His eyes narrowed. “Now for the strangest part. Whatever it was—parasite, tumor, what have you—it was still alive when I performed the autopsy.”

  “I take it that’s not normal?”

  “No. Tumors, parasites—they feed off the afflicted tissue. When that tissue dies, so do they. And yet this thing was alive even after Mr. Patterson had been dead for over twelve hours. It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever encountered.”

  “Is it alive now?”

  “No. It died shortly after I finished the autopsy. But I plan on performing a whole series of tests on it.”

  Murdock nodded. “Good. Let me know what you find.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Tim sat on the living room sofa and listened to the sounds of the old house settling around him. Every creaking joint, every knocking pipe, got his pulse pounding, and he wondered, when the time came, would he be able to distinguish those sounds from Trell’s stealthy approach?

  He’d managed to slip away from Trell at the compost dump, but could he really expect to get away with that twice? Sooner or later, it would come for him, and when it did, there was nothing he could do to stop it. That was the cold, hard truth. And since he was being honest, he might as well prepare himself for a slow and horrible death. Because that seemed to be the way Trell rolled.

  For all he knew, Trell might already be inside the house. Or maybe it lurked in the backyard, watching him through the living room window. Studying him. Like an insect in a jar.

  He glanced at the window, but all he could see was a reflection of himself slouched on the sofa like a scared little boy.

  From somewhere behind him came a sudden Click! Click! Click!

  He whirled around.

  Nothing.

  Probably just the radiator.

  It did that sometimes when the heat kicked on. And it was a chilly night, so that made sense. Right?

  His eyes shifted back to the window. He didn’t like the idea that Trell might be lurking right outside, watching him. So he switched off the light and sat in the dark. But was that really such a good idea? What monster didn’t love sneaking into a house when it thought everyone was asleep?

  Speaking of which, why had his parents gone to bed so early? And what was with them, anyway? Dragging him from place to place like an old suitcase. What good was it to ask his opinion if they never listened to his response? It was just a formality to them, just another box to check. Like forwarding the mail.

  As the people of Glenwood vanished one by one, his parents just sat around waiting their turn because they’d made a decision and, by God, they were going to stick to it. Talk about being stubborn. And of all the places they could have gone, his Dad had to choose Glenwood.

  There’s nothing out there, Tim had said. It’ll be so boring.

  God, he’d give anything now for it to be boring.

  A scream rang out from the street. Tim jumped off the couch and raced to the door, his heart thumping like ghetto bass. A little girl was running toward his house, her arms flailing, her nightgown flapping in the breeze.

  “Sarah!” Tim cried, and rushed outside to meet her. He lifted her up, and she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest, hot tears streaming from her eyes.

  “What is it? What happened?”

  She could barely speak, but Tim deciphered the only three words that he needed to hear.

  Monster … Got Daddy …

  A glare of headlights washed over them. Tim shielded his eyes as a police cruiser turned the corner and pulled up beside them. The window rolled down and a cop with thinning gray hair leaned toward them. “She the girl I just heard screaming?”

  Tim nodded. “She said someone hurt her father.”

  “Where?”

  “On Pennybrook Road. Number ...”

  “102,” Sarah said.

  The cop studied Tim for a long moment before shifting his gaze to Sarah. “You know this kid?”

  “He’s my friend,” Sarah said.

  The cop squinted at Tim. “What’s your name?”

  “Tim Hanson.”

  “You live in that house?”

  Tim nodded.

  “Okay, Tim. Take the girl into your house and lock the door. Don’t open for anyone except the police. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  The cop flicked on his flashers and sped off down the street.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Jay surfed through the channels, clicking up and down and back again. Not a thing worth watching, which was just as well since he wasn’t in the mood anyway. It was just something to keep his mind occupied, something to make him forget that he hadn’t had a drink in over twenty-four hours, hadn’t had a drink since he missed the call that could’ve saved Frank’s life, the call that could’ve saved all their lives.

  He licked his lips. God, he could use a beer right now. A nice, cold one to take the edge off.

  Give it a rest, would you? Learn some self-control.

  A few days ago that voice would have pissed him off. But not tonight. Tonight, he recognized it as the voice of his younger self—back in the days before the bottle became an addiction, back when his will was still his own.

  He had liked himself then, respected himself. Too bad he could barely remember what that felt like.

  Eight years of my life. Stolen because of my father. If he hadn’t been such a drunk, hadn’t passed a gene along to me ...

  But no. He wouldn’t pursue it. It was time to stop blaming others for his problems, time to own up, take responsibility for his own faults, his own actions. That was the only way to beat this thing, the only way to reclaim his life. If somehow he could do that, if somehow he could resist the temptation, keep himself sober, then maybe he could protect the kids. Maybe he could find a way to defeat Trell.

  It would take a lot of smarts, a lot of guts—things he feared he didn’t have anymore—but he had to try … because he didn’t want to end up like his father, didn’t want to die a worthless drunk. This wa
s his chance to make up for his mistakes, to right his wrongs. And if he had to die, then he would go out fighting and die sober.

  Great pep talk. But how do you plan to kill Trell?

  Fair question. Randy had shot it with a .357 Magnum. Maria had run it down with a car. But Trell had just shrugged it off and lumbered back into the woods.

  Jay unfolded Frank’s note and angled it into the lamplight. What was Trell Arrow Wol supposed to mean? And what about those runes and the obelisk with the key at its center? Was it the beginning of a sentence that explained how to kill Trell? Was it some kind of secret weapon or phrase that would send Trell back to where it came from if uttered three times?

  The sudden stomp of footfalls on the porch startled the paper from his hand. He jumped to his feet and stared at the door just as someone began pounding on it

  He snatched the gun from the coffee table and stalked to the door.

  “Open up, Jay. It’s Tim.”

  Jay reached for the doorknob … and hesitated. What if it wasn’t really Tim? What if Trell was controlling him?

  He cocked the gun and cracked open the door.

  Tim pushed his way inside, leading Sarah by the hand. “Trell seized control of her mom. Tried to kill her, but her dad got in the way.”

  “Oh my God. Is he okay?”

  “Don’t know. Cops are there right now.”

  Christ, Jay thought. Thank God I passed on that drink. “Sarah? Are you okay?”

  She glanced up at him and burst into tears.

  He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tight. “It’ll be all right. Everything will be okay.” He bit his lip, feeling like he might start crying himself. How could anyone hurt such a sweet little kid? What kind of monster could do this to her?

  But, of course, he knew the answer to that. They all did.

  ***

  Tim studied Jay as he comforted Sarah. If he was drunk, it didn’t show. Not in his voice or his movements. And there didn’t seem to be any beer cans lying around, no bottles of liquor in sight.