Older and Fouler Things (Jed Horn Supernatural Thrillers Book 4)

by Peter Nealen

  Trudeau looked like she was going to object, but hard stares from Miller and Garvey both shut her up before she could speak. She still glared daggers at me, as if I was trying to pull a fast one.

  Oh, boy, I thought. This is gonna be fun.

  The conference room looked like just about every other such place I’ve ever had the misfortune of sitting in. White walls, cheap gray carpet, a veneered particle board conference table stained with hundreds of meetings’ worth of coffee rings, and cheap, vinyl-upholstered armchairs that felt like they were going to break and dump you over backward as soon as you leaned back more than three inches. I leaned my elbows on the table, instead.

  The four of us were sitting on one side of the table, with the two Special Agents on the other, and Garvey standing at the end, leaning on the back of another chair. He’d simply said that he’d like to learn as much about this sort of stuff as possible, given what had just happened, but I sensed that he also wanted to keep an eye on Trudeau and Miller. Our newest stray, whose name was Paul, was waiting out in the receiving area, nervously.

  “So,” I said to Miller, “do you want the easy to digest version, or the real version?”

  Trudeau glared at me. Granted, she hadn’t done much but glare since the crime scene, though she’d managed to look even more peeved than ever when Garvey had shown us to the conference room instead of an interrogation room. Garvey wasn’t playing her game. Neither was Miller, if I was reading him right.

  Trudeau would actually have been quite attractive, if not for her permanent venomous look and attitude. She was nowhere near Eryn’s league, of course, but my wife is a rarely beautiful woman.

  “The real version, of course,” Miller said, his hands folded in front of him on the table.

  I glanced over at Father Ignacio. He was sitting back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest. He’d always looked like some kind of grizzled cartel hitman to me, and I imagined that he wasn’t exactly fitting in with the Special Agents’ idea of what a priest was supposed to look like, either.

  “First of all, you’re going to need some basic understanding of the world as it is,” he growled. He was actually speaking quite calmly, in his “teaching” voice. Which still came across as a gravelly growl coming from a very scary-looking man incongruously wearing a Roman collar. “Forget what you think science has ruled out. The demonic is very real. What happened in that Bed and Breakfast down the road only a little over an hour ago was a manifestation of the demonic. And if you think I’m just blowing smoke, I suggest you get acquainted with the local officers who got beaten and thrown to the ground by forces they couldn’t see.”

  Trudeau was looking angry and skeptical. Miller was carefully composed. Father Ignacio was blithely unconcerned with whether or not either of them believed him or not, and continued on with his lecture. “There are other creatures, not quite wholly grounded in this world, but not quite demonic, either. We call this category the Otherworld. There are innumerable entities of varying levels of hostility to human life crawling around the Otherworld, slipping through the shadows just out of sight. Many of them can do things impossible to man or beast. Many are allied with the demons, in one way or another.

  “Some of these creatures are so powerful that they may as well be weapons of mass destruction. Some are sleeping. Some are imprisoned. Every once in a great while, one of the imprisoned ones gets loose.”

  For a moment, the room was quiet. Eryn, Kolya, and I were reliving some of the horror that we’d witnessed while pursuing the Walker. The Special Agents were taking in what Father Ignacio had just said, Trudeau with a look of scornful disbelief on her face, Miller with studied thoughtfulness. Garvey’s face was blank, though there was a look deep in his eyes that suggested he was mulling over the possibility that the weirdness and horror he had just witnessed down the street was really only the tip of the iceberg.

  “And you’re saying that that’s what happened?” Miller asked quietly. “One of these things…got loose?”

  “That’s exactly what happened,” I said. He didn’t need to know all the details. We didn’t know enough about the mysterious figure who had deliberately engineered the freeing of the Walker to get into that. And until we knew more, we definitely didn’t want the FBI blundering after him and getting more people caught in the crossfire. Whoever he was, we knew that he was cunning, he was powerful, and he was very, very dangerous. The FBI would be completely out of their league going after him. “The thing in particular is called The Walker on the Hills. It’s something of an avatar of chaos and madness.”

  Miller half glanced over at Trudeau, as if slightly embarrassed about something, then caught himself and turned back to me. He still hesitated for a moment, before asking, “Like, say, Nyarlathotep?”

  Ah, a Lovecraft reader, I thought. That would actually make this conversation slightly easier, though not by much. Lovecraft’s fiction might provide some common reference by way of analogy, but he’d had some pretty weird ideas that didn’t quite fit into reality.

  “Pretty close,” I answered.

  “What happened?” he asked. He still wasn’t buying it, not entirely, but he wasn’t as dismissive as his partner, who barely managed to disguise her snort of derision as she sat further back in her chair and crossed her arms, rolling her eyes.

  “We locked it back up,” Kolya answered, his voice low and flat. “At considerable cost.”

  Miller shot him a look at that, his eyes narrowing slightly as he took in Kolya’s tone and body language. I had to give it to Miller; he was sharp. He’d read a lot into that simple statement. He looked at each of us in turn. “How many of the dead were yours?” he asked quietly.

  “Too many,” Eryn said. Blake. Tyrese. The Ramirez brothers. Two of the Brothers of St. Macharius of the Mountain. Too many of the Sisters of St. Peter the Exorcist. And of those who had survived, many were deeply wounded.

  “Okay, this is ridiculous,” Trudeau burst out, sitting up in her chair. She looked at Miller. “Are we really going to listen to this…this fairy tale?”

  “Do you have another explanation?” Miller asked flatly, turning to her with hooded eyes.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” she replied. “This looks like some kind of religious militia to me, and what better way to win converts to whatever whackjob version of religion they’re following than to stage some kind of terrorist attack in a backwater part of the country, where there’s not that much education, and then present themselves as some kind of saviors?”

  “That doesn’t fit with any of the other accounts of what happened,” Miller pointed out reasonably.

  “So they’re good at psychological manipulation,” she sneered. “You know as well as I do that what they’re describing is impossible. And I’m surprised you’re not as insulted as I am that they’re trying to pass such an obvious fantasy off to us as fact.”

  Miller wasn’t looking at her, but studying us pensively. “That still wouldn’t explain the observed damage or the consistent stories collected from witnesses. Those that were still sane.”

  “Psychotropic drugs,” she countered. “It’s been done by cults before.”

  “Not on this scale, and not coupled with this kind of death toll,” Miller said. “Look, I’m not necessarily buying their story. Yeah, it sounds pretty far-fetched to me, too. But nothing about this case makes any more sense, and neither does what just happened down the road.” He looked at us. “And, frankly, there’s no more evidence to back up your theory than there is to back up their story. It’s just as much of a fairy tale as anything they’ve told us.”

  She actually looked shocked at that, almost as if he’d just slapped her in the face. Maybe she’d been expecting him to back her up just because he was her partner. Or maybe she’d simply thought that her theory was so self-evidently, obviously true, that no one in their right mind could have offered a different one. Honestly, it felt a bit awkward, sitting there across the table from them and watching this litt
le byplay.

  It also made me wonder just how effective a law enforcement officer she could be, if she went into every case with as much prejudice as she’d apparently gone into this one.

  Miller turned back to me. “Can you give me the rundown of what happened, as you witnessed it?” he asked. “Just the facts.”

  So, I gave him the story, as starkly and dispassionately as I could. From the first message from Blake that had led us to Coldwell, all the way through nightmares of horror, death, and twisted reality to the final showdown at Storr’s Hole. Kolya, Eryn, and Father Ignacio all occasionally inserted details that I’d missed.

  Trudeau was looking more and more disgusted as we went on. Garvey was looking thoughtful, and a little pale. He’d recently had an up-close look at the other side of reality, and now he was learning even more about it, in the form of a horror story that had taken hundreds of real lives. Miller just listened, taking notes from time to time.

  When we were finished, Trudeau looked like she wanted to spit on the floor, Miller was utterly impassive, and Garvey looked like he’d seen a ghost.

  “If we’re just going to let them go, then this has been a complete waste of time,” Trudeau said. “Whatever they’re up to, they aren’t going to tell us. We’re going to need a warrant.”

  “And how are you going to get one?” Miller asked flatly. “Like I said, you’ve got no evidence that they committed any crime, and plenty of evidence and testimony that they helped out a great deal.”

  “I don’t know,” she snapped bitterly. “But you know I’m right.” She glared at us.

  Miller sighed. “Unless you’ve got more to tell us,” he said, “you’re free to go. Unless the Chief has more for you?” He looked at Garvey.

  The police chief shook his head. “I’ve got nothing for you guys but thanks,” he said, his voice hoarse. “That was a hell of a situation, and while I’m still not sure how you took care of it, we sure owe you one.”

  I stood up, still feeling Trudeau’s venomous stare even as I ignored her. “No thanks needed, Chief,” I said. “It’s kind of our job.” We all shook his hand, and headed out of the station.

  “She’s going to be a problem,” Eryn said as we walked out into the parking lot. “Like you said, she’s got an ax to grind, and now she’s got a vendetta to go with it. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of her.”

  “I’m sure we haven’t,” I sighed. “But she’s off our backs, at least for now. And we’ve got to figure out what to do with him.” I jerked my chin at Paul, who was getting into Kolya’s old truck.

  “He’s not the first lost soul the Order’s taken in,” she pointed out. “After all, that’s kind of how we ended up married.”

  I looked over at her. She was smiling a little. “You were hardly in the same shape as that guy,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe not,” she answered, as she slid into the passenger’s seat. “But we’ll take care of him. He could turn out to be a great Hunter.”

  “Maybe,” I answered, as we pulled out of the parking lot. “I’m just hoping he comes out of this whole.”

  Chapter 3

  It was a long drive back to Ray’s place, and we were tired. Fighting a demonic manifestation in a Bed and Breakfast can really take it out of you. We stopped several times to rest along the way. Eryn and I could switch off driving, but Kolya and Father Ignacio didn’t have that luxury. At least Father Ignacio could go a lot farther on a single tank of gas, riding that Harley of his.

  Paul wasn’t helping much; according to Kolya, he was spending most of the drive sleeping, when he wasn’t staring blankly out the window. None of us necessarily blamed him; the first brush with the powers of the Abyss can be pretty traumatic. He’d need time.

  It was well after dark by the time we pulled in. Ray’s house, a long, one-story, hewn-log building that he’d built himself, was dark, at least at first. As the gravel crunched under our wheels, a light flickered to life in the window. Either Magnus had heard us coming and woken Ray up, or he’d somehow known we’d be pulling in right at that moment.

  I’d seen enough odd stuff around Ray’s place that either one could have been possible.

  We parked our vehicles next to the pole barn that Kolya and I had helped Ray erect. He’d had it in mind for a long time, but with this many of us hanging around for a while, he’d had the hands to make it happen. Ray’s place had long been something of a halfway house for Witch Hunters, a place to stay for men who largely lived on the road. But having more than one or two visitors at a time was rare. There just weren’t that many of us.

  I could smell woodsmoke by the time we got unloaded. Ray had the fire going. It was getting close to midnight, but Ray wouldn’t stand for us just sneaking in and going to bed. It might be different if the cabin Ray and I were building for Eryn and me was finished, but it wasn’t. Ray was going to want to feed us, and he’d want the rundown of what had happened.

  Ray was crouched over the fire when we walked in the front door. I could smell roasting venison and potatoes; Ray preferred to cook on the hearth when possible. He waved vaguely over his shoulder as we came in. He was busy.

  Ray was a big man, and looked even bigger thanks to his shaggy hair and long, thick beard. If he’d been asleep, he’d dressed quick; he was wearing his ever-present overalls and a long-sleeved, collared shirt. He had a bottle of his dark, home-brewed beer on the mantle above him, and four more bottles were sitting on the big timber table in the center of the common room, next to a pair of hurricane lanterns. Ray preferred fire or candlelight to electric lights.

  The mountain of fur lying on the stone floor next to Ray stirred, and Magnus stood up and shook himself. The gigantic dog stretched, and then his golden eyes fastened themselves to Paul, as the young man came in the door behind Kolya, and he growled.

  Now, most people might imagine that they know what Magnus’ growl sounds like, and they might think of other big dogs they’ve been around. Sometimes he did sound like that. But at various other times, usually when something is very wrong, he sounds different. He makes a sound that I’ve never heard from any other dog I’ve ever seen.

  That was what this growl was like; a deep, subterranean snarl that seemed to shake the whole house. And given how solid that house was, that was saying something.

  Everyone just kind of froze for a moment. “Magnus…” Ray said quietly, as he turned away from the fire. I turned to our guest with a frown. With any other dog, I might tell them to calm down. But of all the oddities around Ray’s place, Magnus was not the least strange, and I trusted the big dog. I particularly trusted his warnings.

  Paul was standing frozen in the doorway, a “deer-in-the-headlights” look of stark fear on his face. Of course, I don’t know too many people who wouldn’t be more than a little scared at hearing that growl come from a dog that big. Magnus’ staring, lambent golden eyes and bared fangs weren’t exactly comforting, either.

  “Who’s our guest?” Ray asked as he stood up. Magnus was still bristling and rumbling next to him.

  When Paul didn’t say anything, I spoke up. “Paul made it out of the house in Spokane just before things went pear-shaped,” I said. “He asked to come with us; said he figured that he’d be safer with us than on his own. Can’t say I disagree.”

  Ray nodded. He knew how I’d come to the Order in the first place; Dan Weatherby had tracked me down after I’d gotten tangled up in some pretty dangerous stuff. That’s what comes from poking around in dark places you don’t understand, without a map or a guide. It wasn’t unprecedented, and we hadn’t really had a reason to refuse Paul’s request.

  But Magnus hadn’t growled at me like that. And now I was eyeing our stray with a new set of suspicions.

  Whatever Magnus really was—and I didn’t think any of us believed he was just a mastiff-mountain dog mix anymore—he had an uncanny ability to sense the Otherworldly, usually long before any of the rest of us even got our hackles up. If Magnus didn’t like Paul, then there
was probably a good reason.

  Perhaps unconsciously, everyone had moved away from Paul, hands perhaps getting a little bit closer to sidearms. Paul was now looking from Magnus to each of us, and back to Magnus. The big dog was still bristling, though his growling had quieted.

  “What?” the young man asked. “What did I do?”

  “Well, I don’t know, son,” Ray replied. “But for some reason my dog doesn’t like you. And I tend to pay very close attention to who my dog likes and dislikes. So that lends the question. Why doesn’t my dog like you?”

  Paul was shaking and pale now. “I don’t know,” he quavered. “I’ve always gotten along with dogs. Please, I don’t have anywhere else to go! You…you don’t know what it was like!” He started to cry. “The screaming, the noises…and that girl that tried to stab me…and then whatever tried to drag me back inside…it’s still out there!” He was almost screaming in terror. “I can’t go back out in the dark alone! Please, you have to let me stay!”

  Magnus growled again, and I could almost swear the windows rattled. Something was definitely very, very wrong.

  But unless he suddenly started weeping blood or sprouting horns, we couldn’t just toss Paul out on his ear. We’d told him that we’d protect him. And a Witch Hunter’s word is inviolable, short of out-and-out betrayal.

  “Whatever Magnus is picking up on might not be Paul’s fault,” Father Ignacio said suddenly. He was studying the young man carefully. The squint-eyed scrutiny of the craggy, mustached priest probably wasn’t making Paul feel much more comfortable than Magnus’ growling. “We’ve seen it before. He may have been marked by something, being in that house when the summoning started.”

  Ray was nodding. “Rather like young Jed here, when he got started?”

  Part of why Dan Weatherby had come looking for me was because I’d picked up a tail in my forays into the paranormal. It had killed a lot of people in my wake, as I’d wandered across the country in search of answers to dark questions about what had happened to me in the Iraqi desert. But Magnus hadn’t reacted this way to me.