Shaman

by Chloe Garner

  She shuffled through the box, finding the other box of ammunition, then frowned.

  “She forgot the casting plates. I’ll remind her.”

  Jason stared at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Sam, I think you are the sexiest woman I’ve ever met,” he said.

  <><><>

  “Hi. I’m Jason, this is my brother Sam, and his girlfriend, Sam. We heard there was something weird out here, so we just got in the car to come see it for ourselves,” he said, leaning over the counter. The girl’s eyes widened dramatically as she looked up from her magazine.

  “You mean the sightings,” she said. Samantha leaned over to Sam.

  “How does he do that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. “It’s just… him… and girls. I don’t know.”

  “I don’t get it,” Samantha told him. Sam shrugged.

  “Neither do I.”

  “We’re getting all kinds of people coming to town to see them. There’s a biologist from MIT who thinks they might be a previously undiscovered species.”

  “Ten to one he just lied to her because he thought she was hot,” Samantha whispered.

  “No bet.”

  “That’s so cool,” Jason said. “What do they say they look like?”

  “They don’t have any fur. And big ears. And tails. Someone from Texas was here saying that it might be a family of chupacabra.”

  “Chupacabra,” Jason said. “Cool.”

  “Did he just choke?” Samantha asked.

  “Trying not to laugh,” Sam told her.

  “Have you seen them?”

  “Oh, no. They say chupacabra drink blood and hunt at night. I’m staying close to town.”

  “She thinks: would you like to stay with me?” Samantha said.

  “That’s too bad. We really want to see one. You know where they find them?”

  She looked at him blankly for a moment.

  “Out… there.”

  “Outside of the store?” Sam asked.

  “Outside of city limits, where proper monsters stay,” Samantha answered.

  “Outer space,” Sam replied.

  “Chupacabra in space… Sounds like a Muppets bit,” Samantha said. He grinned.

  “Do you know anyone who has seen one?” Jason asked.

  “Everyone says they’re out there,” she told him.

  “No, we believe,” Jason said, glancing back at Samantha and Sam. “We just want to find them.”

  “They’re…” she said, blinking earnestly, “out there.”

  “Uh huh,” Jason said. “Listen, thanks. You’ve been a huge help.”

  She punched a button on the register a bunch of times and tore off the length of receipt it spat out, writing on it, then sliding it over to Jason.

  “Give me a call, if you find one. I’d love to hear about it.”

  “There has to be some clever way to describe how dumb she is,” Samantha said.

  “Like an unfurnished hotel room: vacant and full of nothing but air?” Sam tried.

  “Can’t make sure her phone number has enough digits in it and write it down at the same time?” Samantha asked.

  “Taller than she is smart?”

  “Just Jason’s type.”

  “Oh, come on, that’s insulting to Kara,” Sam said.

  “Kara being the notable exception.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Jason asked, walking back to the door.

  “Your goldmine of information,” Sam said.

  “I know. It started out so promising, too.”

  “I guess they are here, though. And they’re getting attention from out of the area, so there’s information somewhere,” Samantha said.

  “Am I the only one who thought she was seriously hot?” Jason asked.

  “Yes,” Sam said.

  “I’m offended,” Samantha said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ve called me hot before,” Samantha said.

  “She wasn’t hot, man,” Sam said. Jason sighed and looked back through the window at her. She waved.

  “She’s not hot,” Sam said again.

  “She’s cute,” Jason said.

  “She’s a blond stick that blinks a lot,” Samantha said.

  “I’m not sure I believe she can give legal consent,” Sam said.

  “Ooh, nice,” Samantha said. Sam grinned.

  “You guys are mean,” Jason said.

  “Revenge of the nerds,” Samantha said, “is taken quietly and in private. She would have terrorized me in high school.”

  “Jason dated them,” Sam said. “Even back then. I had to decide between eating by myself and eating with them.”

  “Oooh. Tough call,” Samantha said.

  “She was nice,” Jason said, starting up the car.

  “And somewhere, she has a tiny little dog that rides around in her purse and routinely outsmarts her,” Samantha said. Sam looked back at her, amused, but a little concerned. She sighed. “Sorry. I’ll quit. I just don’t like girls. Especially not pretty ones.”

  “Ha,” Jason said. “She was pretty.”

  “I’ll give you she was pretty,” Sam said. “Don’t call her.”

  “What? That would be rude,” Jason said.

  “What was her name?” Samantha asked. Jason closed his eyes.

  “Brenda? Bianca? Bridgette? She had a badge on…”

  “New rule. No calling anyone whose name you don’t remember,” Samantha said.

  “I like it,” Sam agreed.

  “Like you can stop me,” Jason said.

  “Two to one,” Sam said.

  “Are we seriously doing that again?” Jason asked.

  “Why wouldn’t we?” Sam asked. Jason grunted.

  “Where to?”

  “Well, they’ve got an influx of out-of-towners who are all going to be looking for information, sounds like,” Samantha said. “Where do you go?”

  “We’re going to a bar,” Jason said. Samantha sighed.

  “Yup. We’re going to a bar.”

  <><><>

  The waitress at the bar proved to be more useful.

  “Oh, yeah. My dad saw one,” she had said, eying Jason. “You should come home with me after my shift and talk to him.” And Jason remembered her name. Kimberly. So when Sam and Samantha decided to head back to the little motel they had checked into, he declined to join them.

  “Just come pick me up in the morning,” he said when Sam complained that he didn’t want to stay at the bar any later.

  “Don’t call me at three and tell me she changed her mind,” Sam said. “You’re walking.”

  “Done,” Jason had told him.

  So the next morning, they were parked in front of a strange woman’s house, idly speculating at whether or not the girl’s father had killed Jason in the hours between when he had texted the address and sunrise. Finally, Jason opened the front door of the house and started to walk down the pathway. The woman came running up behind him and grabbed him, kissing him hard. She touched the side of his face and said something as an older man came to stand in the doorway, then went skipping back into the house. Jason turned and accelerated toward the car, where Sam slid out of the driver’s seat.

  “Okay, that was actually really weird,” Jason said.

  “You get anything useful?” Sam asked.

  “North west of town,” Jason said. “Not much more than that. No one has seen more than one of them at a time, and they don’t find carcasses like we’d normally expect for a goblin den.”

  “Why did Simon point us this way?” Samantha asked.

  “No one ever sees goblins,” Sam said. “They hide too well and they’re fast. To have this many sightings in this small a space and time, there have got to be a lot more that they aren’t seeing. Or so we figure.”

  Samantha shrugged.

  “I suppose. How far out of town?”

  “Maybe an hour before you run out of road, then a w
ays from there,” Jason said. “Without bodies, though, I don’t know how we’re going to find them.”

  “Sam and I have an idea,” Sam said.

  “Oh?” Jason asked.

  “Yup.”

  “You going to tell me about it?” Jason asked.

  “Just drive to the end of the road,” Samantha said.

  “You’re punishing me for going home with…” he paused. “With the girl from last night, aren’t you?”

  “Yup.”

  Jason drove for a minute in silence, considering.

  “Why?”

  Sam glanced back at Samantha. Neither one of them had a specific answer. She tossed her head to one side.

  “Why not?”

  <><><>

  The road really did just end. It was kind of amazing. Like, that was the point where cars had just always stopped. Jason opened his door, then closed it again when neither Sam nor Samantha did.

  “You ready?” she asked. He nodded. She half climbed over, half climbed around the back of his seat to sit in his lap facing him.

  “I really don’t want to be here for this,” Jason said.

  “You don’t have a speaking role here,” Samantha said, sticking her thumbs in her mouth and brushing them over his eyes, then settling her fingers along his scalp. She felt him spring clear of himself to stand outside of the Cruiser.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “You know what you’re doing.”

  He zipped away at astonishing speed, then, less than a minute later, doubled back, returning to a point just north of where they sat, overshooting a ways, then turning and going the other way again.

  “This is a little anti-climactic,” Jason said. “I was prepared to be impressed. Like when he went sprinting down the street in Memphis because he found you.”

  Sam’s search screeched to a halt as he fought to maintain focus, and Samantha let him work it out on his own. He was getting stronger.

  “Non-speaking part,” she said after he re-stabilized. He continued on.

  “What do you see?” she asked after another minute. His eyelids flickered a little and she felt the bite of sarcasm.

  “Rocks. Trees. Grass. Oh, look, a deer.”

  “Not a chupacabra?” she asked.

  “Not a chupacabra.”

  “You never can tell. No one is really sure what they look like. They might look like deer,” Samantha said.

  “This isn’t helping.”

  “Sorry.”

  He came to a stop.

  “Goblin,” he said.

  “Where?” Jason asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. Jason sighed.

  “How far?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” Samantha said. “I will kick you. That is your last warning.”

  Sam’s focus built, and he frowned in concentration.

  “I’ve never looked at one up close before. I keep… expecting him to jump at me. He is… Disturbingly ugly.”

  “You don’t seem to be moving.”

  “No.”

  “You want to try to tail him back, or keep moving? Staying out like that is going to start to be tiring.”

  His eyelids flickered as he watched the demon.

  “I’d rather follow him, because I don’t want to lose him and then not be able to find the next.”

  “Bird in the hand,” Samantha said. “I understand. I can get you back close to where you are now, maybe close enough to recognize the landscape and find your spot again, but if he moves, you’re right, he’s gone and you may not find him again.”

  “Can I vote?” Jason asked. Samantha glared at him, and Sam winced.

  “Don’t be angry,” Sam said. “More hurt than help. He can vote. I’m okay.”

  “It took you less than ten minutes to find him. Maybe the woods are crawling with them. We don’t know what they do all day, maybe he just sits there. I say you should keep looking.”

  “Sam?” he asked.

  “I think he’s right. I want to move on them today. No good reason. Just don’t want to have to go back to that motel again, after we know where they are. But if you wear yourself out watching one demon all day, or even for a couple of hours - we don’t know how long you can keep this up - we’re going to have to let you sleep, first.”

  “All right,” he said, his focus expanding and his mind relaxing to take in more range. “I think I know what I’m looking for, better, now. I might have missed some before.”

  He scanned for another thirty minutes, and found another four demons, but none of them showed any more signs of activity than the first. Samantha tried mentally to look down at the spots where Sam had found demons from above, looking for a pattern.

  “You suppose they’re scouts?” she asked.

  “Goblins don’t do scouts,” Jason said.

  “But pit lords do. Who knows what spit-level fire demons will do when a pit lord gets involved.”

  “You used that term before. What is a pit lord?” Jason asked.

  “It’s weird for them to be on this side, though,” Samantha said. “They claim they actually enjoy hell.”

  “Not an answer,” Jason said.

  “If they’re scouts…” Sam said, drawing up high into the sky. “That way.”

  He abandoned his search sweeps and headed almost straight north.

  “Pit lord?” Jason asked.

  “And they shouldn’t have the power for a full crossing,” Samantha said. “No pit lord would waste power on a crossing.”

  “Goblin. Goblin. Goblin. Oh.”

  “What did you find?”

  “The bodies.”

  “What bodies?” Jason asked.

  “The ones that we haven’t been finding,” Sam said.

  “More help,” Samantha said.

  “Animals. The ones they’ve been eating. They’ve been dragging them into a pile, here. Should it stink? Because I think it stinks.”

  “That’s awesome, Sam. Scent is a good development.”

  “Rotting carcass stink, and you’re excited about it. And you make fun of me for going home with girls who don’t do what we do,” Jason said.

  “Yeah, it definitely stinks,” Sam said.

  “Just the dumb ones,” Samantha said. “When you can’t remember their names.”

  “Wow. I’m going to throw up,” Sam said.

  “She wasn’t that dumb,” Jason said.

  “He wasn’t talking to you,” Samantha said.

  “I wasn’t talking to him,” Jason told her.

  “Okay, everyone shut up,” Sam said. His mind pulled away again. Samantha apologized silently, and the corners of his mouth twitched up.

  “They’re around here, somewhere. They wouldn’t drag the carcasses someplace completely random, would they? They’re actually eating the meat, so they’re hungry.”

  “Try places that would be hard to get to on foot,” Samantha said. “Where wings and glitching would make it a lot easier.”

  “So she’s allowed to talk again, and I’m not?” Jason asked.

  “Shut up,” Sam and Samantha said in unison. Jason grunted. Sam was high above the earth, looking down at the region where he had found the animal carcasses, but he was beginning to feel the strain of so much time out of his body and so much focus, looking at the details of the landscape. Samantha did what she could to help, but it was a physical, neurological strain that was beyond her skillset.

  “There,” he said finally. “It’s a cave in a cliffside. I can’t see inside of it, but there are goblins everywhere.”

  “That will be it,” Samantha said. “You should come back, now.”

  “I’m just going to snap back and hope for the best,” he said. “I’m tired.”

  “Yeah.”

  He braced, then pulled his vision back into his body to end it. He sat still with his eyes closed for a moment, breathing, then opened his eyes and looked at Samantha, then turned his head and gagged once.

  “Not bad,” she said. H
e shook his head.

  “No. Not bad.”

  “So you know where you’re going?” Jason asked. Sam frowned.

  “No.”

  Samantha opened the car door and did her best to gracefully climb out of Sam’s lap and down to the ground.

  “So…” Jason said.

  “I know where we’re going,” Samantha said. “Bearing and distance. And it’s a long way. We may not beat the sun, as it is.”

  <><><>

  At first it was just dark. There were noises, scratching in the dark, the screeching chatter of goblins. Then, somewhere, screams. Open-throated, human screams.

  Sam’s vision adjusted to the darkness and he found himself in a tunnel, not actually as tall as he was, where goblins were crawling around, wings folded like desiccated dragons, on all fours. Floor, sides, or ceiling, it didn’t seem to make any difference to them. He slid down the hall, moving toward the source of the screams. They stopped abruptly, but he continued, the warnings of a primal, base-of-the-skull headache forming in his shoulders and neck. Somewhere far away, he could feel Samantha trying to help him, but, like the vision of the demon colony where they were possessing terminally ill humans, he could feel that he was on his own, here.

  The narrow cave branched and he picked them at random, no clue whether he was still heading toward the screams or not, and it struck him that it was like being in an anthill. He looked at the walls, trying to determine whether they had been dug or washed into formation, but there wasn’t anywhere near enough light. He turned his vision up and down the cave, and wondered if there was any light at all, or if his vision simply allowed him to see what was there in the dark.

  He continued on, turning several more times, unafraid of getting lost. Even if he found himself unable to pull away from the vision, he could feel that Samantha had a firm grip on him, and would pull him back herself. The confidence was comforting in the deep darkness and bewildering maze. Goblins were everywhere, their long claws sliding and clicking against the rocks. Once, he came across a fight. A pair of typically scrawny goblins started screaming ahead of him, screeching and hissing at each other, and a group of goblins formed around them, watching as they started to tear each other to pieces.