Shards

by F. J. R. Titchenell

  “You scared me for a second, kiddo. Thought I was gonna have to spill your guts just so I could see if they felt like running away!” he said, laughing. He patted my chest and back, dusting me off, and then retrieved my hat from the bushes. “You can never be too careful when it comes to meeting new people. Or old people for that matter, not around here at least. But at least you got sense enough to wear a hat on a day like this, unlike Robin here.”

  “I don’t like hats,” she said simply.

  “You should like sunburns even less,” he said.

  He forced the cap back onto my head. Reflexively, and with a fair amount of disgust making me act, I tried to dodge away from the man as he drew close. Before I knew what hit me, he had punched me in the chest. Hard.

  “Sorry!” he said, sounding truly apologetic. “You really shouldn’t have done that! He really shouldn’t have! Didn’t you tell him?”

  “I did,” Mina said.

  Going home really sounded good at this point.

  “You shoulda listened to her, Benji,” he said. “Unless she’s a Splinter or she’s clearly up her own ass, always listen to your woman. And if you got a good one like Robin here, you can trust she knows what she’s talking about, most of the time at least.”

  “We’re not together,” I choked out.

  The Old Man looked at her questioningly. She nodded.

  “Huh,” he said. “I see you’ve learned a thing or two after all, Robin. So, how’d you like my birthday card?”

  “That was very sweet of you. Thanks,” Mina said.

  This one hit me out of nowhere. “Wait, your birthday’s coming up?”

  Mina shook her head. “Already passed, actually. It was this Friday.”

  Homecoming. The hits just kept on coming with Mina Todd.

  I think I did pretty well holding my frustration at bay. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It didn’t come up,” Mina said. This was becoming an annoying catchphrase with her.

  The Old Man laughed. “Take it from an old-timer, son, never give a woman a hard time about her birthdays. Reminds her she’s not young forever.”

  I wanted to tell him to shut the hell up so I could ask Mina why she wouldn’t tell me about her birthday. I also wanted to ask what this whole “Robin” thing was about. Before I could, he reached to the bag behind his back, pulled out a double-barreled shotgun, and tossed it to Mina.

  Though she looked at the weapon with a fair amount of distaste, she smiled up at The Old Man as if the gun had meant something deeper.

  “Is it really—” she began.

  He nodded, smiling far too enthusiastically for my liking. “You got that right, Little Girl. It’s Bigfoot Hunting Season.”

  As much as my mind wandered between the physical pain that currently enveloped me and the pain I knew I would feel as soon as I checked my computer back home, the phrase “Bigfoot Hunting Season” hit me so unexpectedly that I couldn’t help being drawn back to earth.

  “Bigfoot Hunting Season?” I asked. “Like, real Bigfoot?”

  The Old Man laughed, rubbing his hook through his moustache. “Real Bigfoot? F-, I mean, heck no! There’s no such thing. Bigfeet are just good old Creature Splinters with dreams of being something better than they are. They wanna be human, but all they can grab is a possum or a ‘coon or a deer and then try and make it look human. What they usually get themselves is a furry giant that don’t look quite right, is dumber than a sack of hammers, and will disappear and dissolve into a puddle of Splinter-goo within a few weeks. In that time, they’re a menace, and we gotta deal with them.”

  Mina tossed her shotgun back. “You know I don’t like these.”

  The Old Man smirked at me knowingly and punched Mina on the shoulder. “Recoil.”

  He tossed the shotgun to me. “You know how to handle one of these, Benji?”

  I didn’t, but I remembered what Mina said about not showing any weakness.

  “I’ll manage,” I said.

  He smiled. “Good boy. You can take a hit, so it probably won’t knock you on your ass like it did to Robin here. Just be sure to only ever aim it at something you mean to hit. You got a flamethrower in that magic sack of yours, Little Girl?”

  “Of course,” she said without the faintest hint of irony.

  “Good. Take the northern path, you’ll work on covering its retreat. Benji and me here will work on driving it down to Hunter’s Lake. If you hear shootin’ or screamin’, of course come running,” he said.

  She didn’t even question him, pulling a flamethrower from her bag and running up the poorly-marked path. The Old Man pulled a hunting rifle from his quiver and held it in his good hand.

  “You worried I’m gonna kill you?” he asked.

  Lying didn’t seem a good idea. “Yes.”

  He smiled. “Good boy. Come on.”

  He was crazy, twitchy, and paranoid, and was covered in guns, knives, and a giant metal hook. Even scarier was how little even Mina knew about him. She’d known him for years, but didn’t know his name. Then there was the fact that many of the hunters he’d allegedly trained seemed a lot older than he was. There were scars on the back of his head that he desperately tried to cover with his fedora. And that hook, that gleaming iron hook, so casually holding the rifle up as he stalked through the forest.

  “You looking at my hook, Benji?” he asked me without even turning around.

  Again, lying didn’t seem smart. “Yes.”

  “You want to know about the hook?” he asked.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Just say ‘yes,’ boy. It’s my one claim to fame. Just ask about it so we can both get it over with,” he said humorlessly.

  I gave in. “What’s with the hook?”

  “Anzio, ’44. Found a Kraut nice enough to give me a haircut. Unfortunately, he wanted to do it with a potato masher. He was nice enough to leave enough of me intact to have fun in Vegas and pitch southpaw, at least, and to die quick when I cleaved his head with my shovel,” he said.

  That didn’t make any sense. He’d have to be ninety, at least, for any of this story to be true. He had to be lying.

  “They didn’t make good hooks back in the day. Coupla Splinter kids ripped my old one right offa me driving off when I tried to get ‘em in their car. Got it right in their door handle and zoom, they’re off, stealin’ my hook. From that day on, I knew if I wanted somethin’ done right I was gonna have to do it myself, that’s when I started makin’ beauties like these.”

  This was too much. I couldn’t help it. Not after everything I’d seen, everything he’d said.

  I laughed.

  “What’s that for?” he asked, his voice icy.

  “I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it. Maybe your father was old enough to have fought in World War II, but you barely look old enough to have fought in Vietnam,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I age well.”

  “Nobody ages that well,” I said.

  The Old Man stopped in his tracks and turned slightly toward me. “In Prospero, they do.”

  “And you also expect me to believe that you’re The Hook? The urban legend?” I asked.

  “I don’t expect you to believe anything, Benji, but you should. Just know, if you keep talkin’ to me like that, I will bleed you,” he said.

  “I can hold my own,” I said. “I’ve helped kill a Splinter-deer. I broke into the Warehouse. I killed a Splinter with a chainsaw.”

  He smirked at me. He actually smirked. “Join the club.”

  That was it. There was no way, no way in hell I was going to let this arrogant old bastard talk to me like I didn’t even deserve to be in the same state as his precious Robin. I could fight, I could probably do everything he could and then some.

  An inhuman growl in the forest in front of us cut off my train of thought. The Old Man held his hook up to silence me. I followed his lead, crouching low with my gun held high, slowly making our way through the trees.

  We found t
hem in a clearing about a hundred feet ahead. Two of them, each about seven feet tall. They looked like bad parodies of people, too long and hunched over, with flat animalistic faces and covered in long, stringy hair. One had silvery white hair and a rat-like tail that curled around one of its legs, the other had shorter brown fur and a stubby, bushy tail that twitched nervously. True to form, their feet were enormous.

  The silvery one ran its fingers through the other’s fur, trying to force it to stand upright. The brown Splinter seemed barely able to stand up, let alone stand up straight.

  The Old Man chuckled. “A squirrel and a possum. You’re in for a treat, Benji.”

  He whistled like one of the many birds that filled this forest. The Splinters paid it no mind. A returning whistle came from the other side of the clearing. Mina.

  The Old Man calmly raised his rifle, aimed, and took a shot. The top half of the Possum-Bigfoot’s head exploded; bright red and green matter splattering against a nearby tree. Its eyes looked confused, hurt, as it reached up to feel the spot where its brain used to be, let out a howl of grief and fell over. I knew it wouldn’t be dead for long, but it was still a jarring sight.

  The Squirrel-Bigfoot knelt down beside its (not friend) partner and let out a chittering howl of all-too-human pain. The Old Man took another shot. This one caught the Squirrel-Splinter in the shoulder. It started to run away. Before I knew what I was doing, I took a shot at it, blowing a chunk the size of a dinner-plate from a nearby tree. The recoil felt like it would rip my shoulder off.

  The Old Man was laughing.

  “We got him on the run now!” he cheered, running after the fleeing Squirrel-Bigfoot. “Come on, Robin, clean up here so we can take the last one down!”

  Mina darted out of the forest toward the downed Possum-Bigfoot. Its head slowly reformed with crackling, slurping sounds as the splattered chunks crawled back to its ruined skull like a swarm of slugs. It had pushed itself onto all fours and was trying to regain its footing. Mina was on it before this could happen, transforming the howling, screaming creature into a fireball before it could find its feet.

  I had no time to take this in. I followed The Old Man as he chased after the Squirrel-Bigfoot. Every so often, he would take a running shot with his rifle, not at the creature, but guiding it with every missed bullet.

  It looked despondently at the massive lake we’d led it to. The Old Man had chased it into a position where it could run no longer. The guy may have been completely insane, but I had to admit he knew what he was doing in this situation.

  I ran up behind it. The Splinter turned to face me. Its face looked so pitiful, almost human, with beady black eyes, a twitchy, whiskered nose and buck teeth that didn’t belong in that face. It looked at me almost pleadingly, just asking for a chance to live.

  The crack of a rifle filled the air, a bloody hole ripped through the creature’s chest. Another caught it in the neck. It howled and hissed. It started to transform with that snapping wood sound, tentacles and extra arms bursting from its back and face as it ran for The Old Man.

  I fired a shotgun blast at it. I missed again, but distracted it enough for The Old Man to shoot it three times in the chest, knocking it to the ground.

  It looked utterly defeated, lying on its back, breathing heavily and feebly trying to pull itself back together. It moaned, almost sounding human.

  “Well done, son, well done. There’s hope for you yet!” he said. He sheathed his rifle, and made his way to a nearby tree.

  “You’ve got some work to do,” he said, removing his quiver and setting it down at the tree’s base. “You still have mercy, and you need some time at a firing range, but you could be a hunter yet!”

  “I don’t want to be a hunter,” I said, tossing the empty shotgun at his feet. He smiled, clearing dry bush from the base of the tree to reveal a vintage, military-grade flamethrower.

  “Not yet. Give it time,” he said, hefting the heavy weapon onto his back.

  Finally, Mina joined us. She looked first at The Old Man, then at me with something that might have been gratitude. When I realized she was glad The Old Man hadn’t killed me, I felt only irritation.

  This is not the life I wanted to live.

  This is not a life that should be lived.

  This is not a life.

  Without saying anything, the three of us walked down to the dying Splinter. Like its (friend) partner, it was trying to get back to its feet. Trying to run away from us, trying to run anywhere it wouldn’t be hurt.

  Laughing like a loon, The Old Man set the Splinter ablaze. We watched it collapse to the ground, its flesh dissolving into a river of gray ooze and its bones crumbling to ash. With a faint smile, Mina gently took The Old Man’s hook in her hand. He smiled down at her gesture of tenderness, then looked at me like a proud father.

  “So, who wants some chili?”

  13.

  Splinters, Slivers, Shards, and the Other Things Under Our Skin

  Mina

  No two things The Old Man cooked ever tasted exactly the same. His “chili” was rarely spicy enough to warrant the name, for which I was glad, and there were too many variables between what he could catch, gather, and loot from his different hideouts at different times of the year. There was enough commonality, though, that the taste of the mountain sage and what I was almost sure was rabbit made me uncomfortably homesick for a string of other shacks much like this one, but not uncomfortable enough to stop eating.

  I’d spent as much as I could of the years between nine and fourteen in these hills with him. He burned and rebuilt his shelters at new locations every few months at most, but the basic style of them hadn’t changed. This one was made from a fallen metal trail sign, camouflaged with mud and wedged against the top of a small hollow in the rock face as a lean-to, doubling the floor space of what could just barely be called a cave.

  The inside contained the usual essentials, a small fire pit with the chili bubbling over it, an old sleeping bag, basic clothes and weapons, cooking utensils, the remnants of earlier non-Splinter hunting trips. Small as the space was, it made me feel smaller, nine years old again, both terrified and bursting with excitement to be there. I hoped it didn’t show.

  For too many reasons, I couldn’t be that anymore.

  Ben declined the chili, kept eyeing a couple of the bear traps hanging from the sheet metal ceiling, and, when The Old Man turned to scoop himself another bowl, he leaned over to my ear and whispered, “This is exactly how I always pictured a serial killer’s hideout.”

  He could have been making a better first impression. Then again, I suppose they both could have.

  “Close enough, Benji,” The Old Man answered as if the comment had been part of open conversation. “Would be, if I were killing humans.”

  I didn’t speak, but The Old Man shot me a look anyway.

  “Ah yes, but we still disagree on that point, don’t we? This girl was quite the tenacious little exterminator,” he reached across to pat me on the head while still watching Ben, “before she went all noble on me. We could have wiped this town clean by now, her and me, if she’d stuck around.”

  “We would have burned it to the ground by now if I’d stuck around,” I said.

  “It wouldn’t have Splinters anymore, though, would it?” he barked a short laugh. “You know she killed a humanoid all by herself a couple years back?”

  “Speaking of killing,” I interrupted. It seemed as good a time as any to dispense with the reunion festivities and get to the point. “I didn’t actually contact you for a reconciliation. You’re in trouble. Someone’s been picking off hunters and sending me the proof. Unless you’ve got more apprentices you never told me about, we’re the only two left from the old days.”

  Ben looked at me sharply after the last detail, but he didn’t complain out loud.

  “Sweet of you to worry, Robin. I’ve got it covered,” The Old Man waved the old news away, and I could feel the wasted effort of the climb settling in my limb
s.

  I’d assumed he’d know. This meeting had only been to make sure; now that I had, I could think of lots of more productive ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.

  “It’s too bad about the others, of course, but I’ve still got eyes in the back of my head. It’s been too long since I got to take down Shards.”

  “Shards?” I asked him at the same time Ben asked me.

  “A Shard is what’s been causing all this trouble for the rustier hunters,” The Old Man explained. “They’re like plain old Splinters, only sharper.”

  I waited for him to finish laughing at his own joke, and thankfully, Ben did too.

  “It’s what I like to call the ones that come with a little extra kick.”

  “Extra kick?” Ben asked. “You mean more than the whole ‘changing shape and consistency at will, not depending on vital organs’ kick?”

  “Yep, more than that.” He clearly enjoyed the unnerved look on Ben’s face.

  I didn’t ask why he’d never told me about Shards. I didn’t think Ben would let me live it down if I did. The Old Man answered anyway.

  “Haven’t seen one in a good thirty years. Mercenaries. Problem solvers. Vicious sons of bitches. The Splinters only bring them out when they’re really riled up about something. Glad it took them this long to bring out another. If I’d had you worrying about those when you were still learning to hold that thing,” he nodded at the nearest rifle, resting against the wall at my side, “you’d never have learned to keep it steady.”

  “I think I would have,” I said simply and tried to sound sure.

  “I knew one that could move things by looking at them and fly without growing itself wings. There was one that could turn things, not living things, but anything else, to liquid. You could be standing on a nice slab of concrete near this one and suddenly splash through it like quicksand, just like that.” He illustrated his point quite vividly with his bowl of chili and makeshift wooden spoon and laughed again. Ben visibly disapproved, which was fine. This wasn’t the sort of joke we were supposed to laugh along with. Watching them disapprove of each other made something occur to me that struck my feverish brain as disproportionately funny.