by J. Thorn
“Jerry, with a J.”
“No it ain’t,” said one of the boys from the backseat. “It’s Gerald.” He drew the syllables out with a mocking tone.
“Fuck you, Mike. Shut up or I’ll beat your ass again.”
“I don’t really care, Jerry,” said Frank, interrupting the boys. “What I care about is finding this thing. I need you and your friends to focus and get serious about this, or our deal is off.”
Jerry looked at his friends and shrugged. The old man had them by the balls and he knew it. “Fine, Chief.”
“I’m not the chief anymore. Don’t you call me fucking Chief.”
“Whoa. Relax, Gramps. Don’t need to be so touchy about it.”
Frank turned away and strode through the group of boys to take the lead on the trail. He passed the fork and walked toward the ridge. The boys followed, as he had the only flashlight and they were not about to become turned around and lost in the woods. They had grown up with the legend of Caroling County, had been told all the tales as little children. The howling echoes of wolves ricocheted off the mountains as the boys clumped closer together on the path.
He came to the clearing and noticed that the trees had been stripped of their decorations, the bodies and scraps of clothing removed, but the fire pit in the middle remained. Frank shook his head, unable to recall whether he had been the one to do that or if it had been Jasper. Jasper. The name dropped into his head, and he stopped walking. He had known the young man, a strange loner who ran this service station; the folks of Pine Valley knew more about each other than they cared to admit. Jasper had died in the fire, one of the fatalities they hadn’t been able to get to the hospital in time. All of this information filled his head instantly as if the demon was providing him what he needed to carry out his task.
“Y’all know Jasper?”
“Nope,” replied Jerry.
“So you live in Pine Valley, you’re a few years younger than he was, and you ain’t never heard of him?”
“We near the cave yet, Gramps?”
Wasted energy. Keep moving and get them into the cave.
Frank smiled, no longer concerned about Jasper or the boys. He could almost smell Kelly Swift.
***
Frank walked the boys through the clearing and past the fire pit, which carried an odor of barbecue mixing with fabric. He led them to the entrance of the cave, stopping to turn and face them. “This is the cave. What I’ve lost is in here, and we got to find it.”
Jerry stepped forward, toe to toe with Frank. “What the fuck are you up to, old man? I swear to God, I will not hesitate to beat the shit out of you. Let’s get your fucking whatever so we can get back to the car. I’m tired of this bullshit.”
“Follow me,” replied Frank. A knot formed in the pit of his stomach, and he too was unsure of what lay beyond. “Stay together.”
Weak, oily torches jutted out from cracks in the rock, spitting loose flames at odd angles. Frank detected a moist scent overpowered by the rot of decay. He glanced at the wall, where hundreds of shapes covered the wet rock. Dark lines rose and fell, some intersecting at places in writing that looked more alien than ancient. He looked up and saw nothing but tendrils of smoke coalescing into the open darkness. The cave felt like a profane temple, and its high priest had his back turned and sat on a stone bench.
“Come,” said Gaki, the voice slithering from between his thin lips. “Bring them forth, Frank.”
Frank stood, the voice rolling through his stomach in waves of nausea. He clenched his midsection while his eyes adjusted to the low light of the cavern. He began to see shapes taking form, faces carved within the stone. The faces appeared humanoid, all of them frozen in eternal screams. Frank felt the urge to reach up and touch the tortured carvings, until his hand came close and he felt a repulsion like that of high-powered magnets. He could not discern whether those frozen in the rock were male or female, young or old. Several heads hung in solitude, while other carvings were attached to stone bodies. Chains surrounded them, again obscuring the gender and age of the prisoners. He turned to look at the boys, Jerry standing to his direct left. They all gazed upon the morbid spectacle with the same wide eyes.
He looked down as he heard a squishing sound. Frank stood in a dark puddle that appeared black in the light of the cave. He winced, knowing its true color and nature. Tattered strips of fabric dangled above the seated creature as if torn in anger from a cursed altar. Frank saw the creature’s arms resting on a stone slab raised several feet higher than the dirt floor of the cave. The being remained seated and facing away from Frank.
“I have brought them as you commanded,” Frank said. “What should I do with them?”
Gaki hissed, exhaling a long, slow breath. “It is time to feast,” he replied.
Frank shook his head, the stench becoming more than he could handle. Twice he turned and gagged, the contents of his stomach threatening to eject.
“Come closer,” Gaki said.
Frank took three more steps toward the altar and then lost the ability to keep his stomach sedated. He turned his head and spewed vomit onto the nearest stone sculpture. Strands of saliva and stomach acid dripped from the statue’s fangs as if produced from within the stone. Two of the boys became sick while the other two stood like pure-white ghosts inside the cave.
Gaki sat at the stone altar, facing a pile of glistening body parts. His thin arms and long, slender fingers shoved the organs into a tiny mouth, blood and tissue squirting between his fingers and covering his face in the viscous liquid. Flies buzzed about the altar while Gaki ignored their incessant attacks. Frank believed the creature to be chewing human remains, but as he tried to swallow, Gaki’s distended stomach reversed the muscles, pushing the mangled flesh back out of his mouth and onto the pile. The more forcefully Gaki shoved with his hands, the more found its way back out of his mouth and onto the stone altar.
“What the fuck, Gramps?”
“All of you, come to me,” Gaki said before Frank could reply. Frank stood before the altar with the four teenagers shoulder to shoulder behind him. “Now is the time. We must gather to fight those who will seek to banish us from existence.”
“Who?” asked Jerry.
“Quiet, young one, and all will be revealed.”
Frank felt himself slipping away, the essence of who he had been and what he had become. Whatever had started at that fire, on the scene with Doug, was coming to an apex right now. He realized that he would not leave this cave in the same spirit in which he had entered it. Some spark would remain, some distant glow deep inside, but the creature’s infestation was already too deep. Gaki was a case of terminal cancer that would eat his soul from the inside out.
“Fuck off, bitch,” Jerry said to Gaki.
“Your etiquette leaves something to be desired.” The creature held a wet tube of intestine in one hand, the end of it wrapping around his neck like a pet boa constrictor. Gaki’s entire lower face remained covered in the coagulating blood of those who had been his feast at the altar.
“What the fuck are you?” Frank asked, ignoring the boys.
Gaki shook his head. He raised his right arm and wagged a bony index finger at Frank. “I am you, Frank. I am all of you. I am your desires, your lust, your greed. I am human.”
“This isn’t right,” Frank said, verbalizing the last shred of resistance left inside him. “This isn’t natural.”
“It is. It’s as natural as you sticking your dick inside of Kelly or lusting after your neighbor’s wife. It’s as natural as one man willing to exploit another for his own gain. I did not create these behaviors, you did. Don’t pretend to be above them.”
“What now?” Jerry asked while the other boys remained speechless. “You recruiting us or something? I ain’t eating no dead people, or blood, or shit, or nothing like that.”
Gaki grinned, his filthy face turning up toward the heavens. “Now, you get to do whatever you want. No law, no rules, no consequences. You can fulfi
ll all of your desires.”
“For what?” said one of the other boys, speaking for the first time since they had left the car in the parking lot.
“For your allegiance, your soul, that’s all.”
Frank shook his head and ran a hand through his mustache. Jerry seemed to lean in closer to Gaki, the odor keeping him at a safe distance. The other boys stood as if hypnotized.
“Remember, Frank, for you I have something very special. If you kill Doug, I shall give you Kelly. Not a sleight of hand or visual slip, but the real woman in the flesh. And you can do whatever you want with her.” Gaki saw the fire in his eyes and pointed at the boys. “They will be your assistants.”
Frank looked and stumbled backwards. Their clothes had already disappeared, and Frank watched as the hair fell from their heads. Jerry opened his mouth to scream, but it shrank to a tiny slit in a wordless moan. His skin turned white, and then blue, and then gray, and it became slick and translucent. Jerry’s arms stretched into thin tubes, and within a minute he was no longer recognizable as the human who had followed Frank into the cave. Jerry was now a hungry ghost, as were his three friends.
Frank looked down, turning his hands back and forth, expecting a conversion as well. He looked at Gaki and then at the boys now standing dutifully in a row, their mouths opening and closing in mindless patterns.
“Not you, Frank. Your service will be of a clandestine nature, and your human appearance will be necessary for that.”
Frank nodded, both relieved and terrified.
“Doug for Kelly. That is still the offer,” Gaki said.
“It better be,” replied Frank.
***
Peter remained in Jasper’s chair as the Dodge Dakota tore through the parking lot and came to a stop on the side of the garage. He knew it was Frank and that the four teenagers were in the back without even seeing them.
If you prohibit this in any way, well, let’s just say it would not be wise for you to return to the station or to Pine Valley.
“Yes, I fucking know,” Peter said to himself.
Frank led the boys down the trail and disappeared into the night. Peter sat still for a moment, looking at the phone. He thought about picking it up, thinking Gaki would probably be on the line.
“No. I’m going to sit here and see what shakes.”
Officer Jones waited as time passed at the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His logical mind wandered, trying to figure out how Jasper had made any money with so little traffic. Occasionally, Peter would hear an air brake of a truck on Skyline Drive, but he thought very few motorists would ever make it to this little service station tucked away from the scenic highway.
After an hour of waiting, Peter detected movement by the truck. He saw Frank emerge alone. “No, Frank. Please don’t leave me a mess to clean up,” he said.
Several seconds passed, and that was when Jones saw them. The creatures looked humanoid, almost alien. Their long, spindly arms almost reached the ground, and their heads appeared too large for their thin necks to sustain. All four creatures had the same face, a tight slit for a mouth and eyes so dark that they appeared to hold an absence of light. The moonlight gave the creatures an iridescent glow, and Peter thought of a vacation with the wife to Puget Sound, where they had seen jellyfish with the same look.
Jones sat forward on the chair and watched as Frank settled into the truck, put it in reverse, and waited. The four creatures stood in the dust and exhaust, their mouths opening and closing like fish out of water. Peter waited to see what they would do. One of the monsters turned, its head coming around slowly and those eyes locking with Peter’s. He jumped back off the chair, knowing it was impossible for them to see him inside the dark office, yet he could feel the gaze grip his heart. The creature turned and climbed into the back of Frank’s truck with the other three behind him. Frank climbed out of the truck and pulled the vinyl cover over the bed.
Peter sighed and rubbed his head before the phone rang.
“Obedient and dutiful. You shall be rewarded for that. Take the trail and the left fork across the ridge and to the cave,” Gaki said.
The line went dead. Peter dropped the phone into the cradle, pushed the chair in, and walked to the trailhead.
***
The early morning sun broke over the highway as Sage continued south on Interstate 81 toward Winchester, Virginia. The daylight and brilliant blue sky made the previous night feel more like a nightmare than reality. She tapped her phone and decided against a playlist. She was going old school, going to listen to an album from start to finish, as the artist intended. Her fingers flicked through the alphabetized lists of artists in her music player until she came to the Ns. Sage needed Trent Reznor to substitute for her morning espresso. She loved Pretty Hate Machine but thought that it had been a long time since she listened to Broken, and somehow that title felt more apropos. As “Pinion” swelled into “Wish,” Sage turned the volume up on the car’s shitty speakers. She would need to eat soon, but not until she had gorged on Nails.
The green highway sign rushed to greet her, only three more miles until Highway 340 in Front Royal, Virginia, which would put her at the northern entrance of Skyline Drive. Sage squinted, lowering her head below the rearview mirror to make sure she saw the number correctly. Ravna and Karen had come this way. She could feel their residual energy as if they had been in the car with her a few moments earlier. She remembered reading one of Mashoka’s talks, one transcribed by another Hunter, and in it he had spoken of something called Portals and how multiple worlds existed within the current reality. He had said that time was an illusion and that it did not exist. In essence, Sage was with Ravna and Karen in that moment. As a Hunter, those were the kinds of energies she would need in order to defeat Gaki. Mere earthly weapons would not be enough.
Sage let the black ribbon of Interstate 66 tease her to the east until the exit for the scenic bypass appeared. The early September sun radiated over her while a tenacious, blue sky held the clouds captive, pushing them beyond the horizon. Sage turned off the air conditioning inside the car and dropped the windows, pulling in all of the fall fragrances the Blue Ridge Mountains had to offer.
It was the siren piercing the air and overpowering Broken that surprised her. The sun was becoming warm, but the morning traffic had not yet appeared on the highway. Sage had seen a few tractor trailers pass by, but not much more. Shortly after hearing the siren, she looked into the rearview mirror to see a Virginia State Police vehicle on her rear bumper with its lights flashing.
“Fuck,” she said. Sage looked down to see the needle at 63, nowhere near the speed limit of 70.
Acquiesce. Do not confront.
Before she could respond to Mashoka’s voice inside her head, the officer was at her window, standing closer to the rear of the car and leaning forward with one hand on his holstered weapon according to protocol.
“License and registration, ma’am.”
Sage smiled and nodded, grabbing her purse off the front seat and feeling for the sharp plastic of her driver’s license. That was when a pang of panic hit her midsection. “Here you are, sir,” she said, handing her license to him with nothing else to say.
“Registration?”
“You know, I can’t seem to find it. My boyfriend spent the past few days detailing the car, and he must not have put it back in the glove box.”
The officer looked at the dirt clinging to the car, the tires caked with road grease and grime, and the trash littering the interior. “Wait here.” He turned and went back to his car.
“He’s running my license, and then he’s going to run the plate. If they’ve opened yet and discovered this car is missing, I’m fucked.”
Sage sat there for what felt like hours. She had paused Broken at "Help Me I Am in Hell," which made her giggle a bit. The universe had a funny way of fucking with her at the most inopportune times. The officer got out of the car holding her license, his door left open. Another semi passed them both, barreli
ng southbound.
“Where’re you headed, ma’am?”
“Skyline Drive. Got a friend in Virginia and wanted to take the scenic route.”
The officer looked at her and then back at his vehicle as if trying to decide what to do. “When’s it due?”
“Excuse me?” Sage asked in reply.
“The rental. The plates are registered to EconoRide Rentals. When’s it due?”
Sage smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Next week.”
“Got the contract?”
“What contract?”
The officer shifted his weight to the other leg and looked over top of the car. He sighed, his clean-shaven face stoic and all business. “The contract for the rental vehicle, ma’am. The one you have to keep in the car in case you’re in an accident or get pulled over,” he said, putting an emphasis on the last two words.
“I don’t know.”
“By my time, I reckon the office is getting ready to open. What branch did you rent from?”
“South Euclid,” Sage responded. She had spent countless hours staring at the front of the car rental place from her coffeehouse. That was one answer that didn’t require a second thought.
“I’m going to call it and verify, and then I’ll have you on your way.”
“Excuse me, sir?” Sage asked, feeling the urge to delay that call.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Why did you pull me over?”
The officer let a slight smile slide across his face before quickly consuming it. “Gaki said I oughtta.”
“What?” Sage asked, leaning her head out of the window, hoping she had heard him wrong.
“Gotta do my job.”
Sage sighed and leaned back in the seat.
“I’ll be back,” he said.
As the officer got into his vehicle a second time, Sage looked at her phone. It was displaying 6:50 a.m. She knew the agents who worked at EconoRide always ordered their coffee from her around 7:00 so that they’d have time to open the rental counter for 7:30. The call could go either way.
The officer appeared to be having a conversation before walking back to her car. “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to get out of the car, turn around, and place your hands on the back of your head.”
