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

by Peter Nealen

  Chapter 6

  For a moment, we all just kind of looked at each other, ignoring Miller’s question about a chainsaw. After all, the road obviously hadn’t been blocked when Miller had come through, with Frank and Charlie behind him. And they evidently hadn’t seen anyone on the way in, either. Which meant that someone had been waiting in hiding, and then worked fast to drop those trees.

  There was sheer, unadulterated dread on Charlie’s face. It was a new expression for him, and one that I didn’t like. The old Charlie had been irrepressible, loud, and apparently fearless. Whatever the Walker had done to him, he was now quiet and scared.

  And the fact that those downed trees reminded me of the Captain’s warning that there was more than the demon coming after us only made Charlie’s evident terror ratchet my own sense of unease up a few more notches.

  Miller was starting to look impatient, and I saw Trudeau cross her arms in the passenger seat of the car. I realized that Miller hadn’t picked up the implications.

  “Miller,” I began, but I was interrupted by a sudden cacophony of noise from the woods.

  Weird, hooting howls and gibbering croaks came out of the shadows under the trees, even as Magnus started barking, an even deeper, echoing noise than he’d made when he’d cornered Trudeau. It was a sound that I’d heard before, when a homunculus had come after me, the first night I’d ever stayed at Ray’s place. And it sent a chill straight up my spine, even more than the other noises had. Because when Magnus barked like that, it meant we were in trouble.

  “Everybody needs to get inside, right now,” I said, somehow managing to keep my voice low and calm, even as the adrenaline dump made every joint seem slightly shaky and restless. I drew my .45 as I spoke, and the rest were doing the same.

  Miller, for his part, had started at the sudden chorus of evil noises coming out of the woods, whipping his head around to stare out into the dimness under the boughs.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked. I realized that Miller might not be much of an outdoorsman. He might just be ascribing those noises to animals, which I knew they weren’t.

  “I’m not sure,” I told him honestly. “But it’s nothing good. And it sounds like there are a lot of them, which means we need to get inside. Right now.”

  I thought I saw movement back in the woods, near the road. That was when Magnus, still barking, nearly shaking the trees with the sound of each bark, bounded down off the porch and bolted into the woods.

  Miller looked up at us, searching our faces. For our part, we were watching the woods instead of either him or Trudeau. However much trouble they could cause us, whatever was out there was a far more immediate concern.

  The hooting and howling was continuing, now joined by high-pitched, juddering laughter. There was more movement out in the woods, though whatever was making it wasn’t showing themselves long enough to identify. That was small comfort.

  Miller hesitated, then ran back to the car, yanked the passenger side door open, pulled a protesting Trudeau out, grabbed what I suspected was a go bag from the back seat, and came back toward the house, propelling a clearly unwilling Trudeau ahead of him. She was livid, spitting that it was all a trick, that we were trying to brainwash them with fancy theatrics. She was glaring at us the entire time, which was why she didn’t see the short, long-limbed, cadaverous figure come capering out of the trees behind them.

  Pale as death, the black-eyed thing danced like a lunatic, throwing its hairless skull back to gibber with laughter as it waved its claw-like hands in the air. Miller was glancing back as it came out, and he stumbled to a halt, staring in shock at the apparition.

  Of course, it wasn’t really an apparition, as Kolya, Ray, and I promptly demonstrated. We leveled two .45s and a .44 and blasted the thing off its feet. It fell backward against the tree it had been hiding behind with a splash of black blood.

  “Get inside!” Ray bellowed. Ray has a voice as big as he is, and it galvanized Miller out of his paralysis. He grabbed Trudeau by the arm and frog-marched her at just short of a run up onto the porch and in the open door, just as five more of the bone-white things hopped out of the woods.

  The noises were getting worse. Howling, screeching, and inhuman screaming was set against Magnus’ deep, powerful barking, which still sounded just as loud as if he’d been right there on the porch with us. And there was something else, faint, in the background, almost as if it were an echo of Magnus’ barks. I almost thought it sounded like horns.

  But then we were crowding through the door, shutting and barring it behind us. Ray was slamming the heavy shutters over the windows, while Kolya, Eryn, and I ran to our rooms for our heavier weaponry. Paul was huddled in the living room, his hands over his ears, while Father Ignacio stood over him, his crucifix in his hand. Frank and Charlie helped Ray.

  “What the hell was that thing?” Miller gulped. He sounded out of breath, though it hadn’t been that far a sprint. He was struggling to process what he’d just seen. Trudeau, for once, was silent, though her crossed arms and thunderous expression suggested that she was as convinced as ever that we were faking everything.

  “I call ‘em Skinnies,” I replied, as I went to one of the windows, my Winchester in my hand, and peered through the slot that Ray had cut through each of the shutters. “Not really what they’re called; they’ve got about a dozen different names among the various Western tribes. They’re sort of a small goblin, I guess. I generally refer to them as the ‘white trash of monsters,’ though some of our Order don’t tend to find that description fitting or amusing.”

  “And by ‘some of our Order,’ you mean Thornton,” Kolya interjected. “No one else I know cares.”

  “Really?” Trudeau said crossly. “Ghosts and demons wasn’t enough for you? Now you have to add ‘goblins’ to your list of fairy-tales we’re supposed to take seriously?”

  I stepped back from the window and waved to the slot. “By all means, Miss Trudeau,” I said. “Take a look for yourself.”

  She snorted. “Halloween costumes don’t impress me,” she replied, leaning against the sofa.

  “If that was a Halloween costume,” Miller said hoarsely, stepping away from her, “then I’m going to have to redefine Halloween.” He ran a hand over his face. “Either that, or the costumes are getting way more sophisticated than they were when I was a kid.”

  “Look, lady,” I said, starting to get mad. The noise outside wasn’t slackening. “I don’t know what your problem is, but if you’re going to deny the testimony of your own eyes, I don’t know what to tell you. Except that you should probably resign from the FBI, because your biases are obviously interfering with your work.”

  “This is stupid,” was her answer. “I don’t know what your game is, but there is no use in trying to convince me that any of this is supernatural. The supernatural doesn’t exist. Now, I suppose it is possible that you aren’t the ones putting this show on, that someone else is, and you’re just gullible enough to play along.” Her tone of voice suggested just how likely she considered that possibility. “But to treat any of this like we just stepped into a ghost story is absurd.” She glared at Miller. “We are, as you pointed out, Miller, Special Agents of the FBI. We deal in rationality and evidence. Not campfire spook stories.”

  The door suddenly rattled under the impact of a body. Then came a sound like something with claws was trying to tear at it, trying to get in. “Does that sound like nothing but a campfire spook story to you?” Frank demanded.

  She looked him over, apparently for the first time. Frank Tall Bear is a towering Nez Perce, and used to be a sheriff’s deputy. He’d seen a lot with us on the hunt for the Walker, and now wore a silver crucifix of his own around his neck. “And who are you?” she asked.

  “I used to be Deputy Frank Tall Bear,” he replied. “I was law enforcement, just like you.”

  She sniffed, as if to express what she thought of any of us being “just like her.”

  Frank was no dummy, either. H
e’d put Charlie in his place once over that, asking if the other Hunter, who had been giving him a hard time, thought that, “Injun can’t read?” He knew just what Trudeau was insinuating. “I’m guessing you never worked a beat or a patrol route,” he said, as he looked out another of the shutter slots. “Started at a desk, and got put on a case while still green—probably something suitably white-collar. Am I close?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, but said nothing.

  “Thought so,” Frank said, utterly unfazed by her look. Then there came a series of thumps on the roof above us, followed by pattering footsteps heading toward the chimney, and suddenly there was no more time for conversation.

  A shower of soot came down the chimney, accompanied by a scuttling sound and a clicking, hissing muttering. One of the skinnies was trying to climb down. Three rifle barrels and a shotgun were leveled on the hearth. Next to me, Miller had drawn his Glock. I spared him a glance; he had gone sickly pale. He was nowhere near as convinced as Trudeau that this was nothing but mummery.

  There was a heavier thud on the roof, and then a screech from the chimney, along with a new shower of soot. The scrabbling noises suddenly stopped, along with the weird muttering.

  At the same moment, the clawing at the door ceased. I thought I heard a few more strident shrieks outside, and, once again, I could have sworn I’d heard horns. Then things went quiet. Even Magnus wasn’t barking anymore.

  Miller was shaking. Trudeau was looking a little pale, but was steadfastly keeping up her mask of contempt and disbelief. But there was no denying that something had been trying to crawl down the chimney. And it most certainly had not been Santa Claus.

  After just enough time had passed that we could begin to hope that the worst was over, Frank lowered his rifle and turned back to Trudeau. “Like I was saying, the fact that you never worked a beat or a patrol route is a disadvantage when you first discover this stuff. It’s easy to be skeptical when you live in that high-rise, white-collar crime bubble. And I’m not saying it’s your fault. That’s the way the FBI works. But ask just about any beat cop, and he’ll eventually tell you about some of the weird stuff he’s seen, in the dark hours of the night. It doesn’t necessarily make it easy to deal with this stuff when it happens, but it helps you accept it, accept that the world doesn’t necessarily always work by the lawyers’ rules.”

  Trudeau just stared at him, with a look on her face as if she could hardly believe that he was daring to talk to her. Then she turned away.

  Frank’s eyes narrowed. Frank Tall Bear was a big-hearted guy, and by no means overly sensitive. But she’d just made the big man angry.

  Of course, to be honest, she was making us all angry, between her lack of manners and her self-righteous indignation at our temerity to suggest that she didn’t know everything.

  I turned my back on the little soap opera inside, to take another look out on the yard. It was presently empty, and I thought I saw Magnus pacing the treeline. There was no sign of the skinnies.

  Had Magnus chased them away all by himself? And had that thud on the roof been him? I knew that Magnus was no ordinary dog, but for almost two hundred pounds of whatever-he-was to simply leap a story into the air seemed a bit extreme, even for him.

  “What do we do now?” Miller asked. The other Special Agent seemed to have accepted that, whatever was happening, we were apparently the most knowledgeable people on the subject present. And we knew the ground. How much of what we’d already told him he was accepting, now that he’d laid eyes on an actual monster, I didn’t know, but his attitude was downright refreshing, compared to his partner’s.

  “That kind of depends on you,” Ray said, now standing in the middle of the room, his own .45-70 carbine over his shoulder. “We’re going to stay here and defend the house. There’s something more going on here, and we’ve got to deal with it. If you’re determined to head back, though, I think we might be able to get that road cleared for you and get you on back to town.”

  Miller hesitated, as if processing just what Ray had said. Then he nodded, jerkily. “Yes,” he said, “I think that would be best.” He wanted out of there. It was a not-unanticipated reaction. While Trudeau was in pride-fueled denial, Miller knew that something was happening that he didn’t understand, didn’t like it, and wanted to get away, to where he didn’t have to face it anymore.

  “Jed, Kolya,” Ray said, “There are a couple of chainsaws in the barn, along with an old tractor. You should be able to get that road cleared, pronto.”

  I just nodded, turning toward the door. Eryn grabbed me by the arm before I got more than two steps.

  “Be careful,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure this is over. And I am not ready to be a widow.”

  I looked down at her, meeting her vibrant green eyes. “We will be,” I assured her. I bent to kiss her, not failing to notice Trudeau rolling her eyes at what she doubtless considered “dramatics.”

  Kolya and I stepped out onto the porch, our rifles held ready, scanning the yard and the trees. The wind was picking up, making the pine boughs wave, but everything seemed to be moving naturally. There was still no sign of the skinnies. Aside from some scratches on the door, there was no sign that any of them had ever been there at all. Even the body of the one we’d shot was gone, though I thought I could still see dark liquid glistening in the crevices of the tree’s bark. Or so it seemed.

  I led out, moving toward the pole barn. I paused by the door and Kolya stood offset, his Remington pointed at the opening as I opened it. Kolya might not have been in the US military, but he’d picked up a lot of the tactics that many of us had brought along when we’d joined the Order. A large proportion of Witch Hunters are veterans.

  The darkness of the shed was still, except for the whistle of the wind. The far window was broken, one pane only half there. I was sure that Ray knew about it, and just hadn’t gotten around to fixing it.

  Or it was recent, and we had company. Skinnies might be on the low end of the Otherworldly totem pole, but they were still things of the Otherworld, which meant they weren’t quite as constrained by physicality as us mere mortals. They could get in through tiny openings that would be impassible for a human their size.

  Neither of us had brought a flashlight; it was still daylight, though some clouds were beginning to gather, casting their shadows over the woods and the mountain above. So I carefully stepped in, keeping my Winchester up, and watched for any movement, while I whispered to Kolya, “Get the rollup.”

  He came in right behind me, his own rifle ready for action until he stepped behind me and grabbed the chain hanging from the roller up the wall. With a creaking rattle, he started to haul the rollup door open.

  Sunlight streamed into the barn, illuminating the workbenches, tool racks, and the ancient tractor that had been sitting in an old retired farmer’s barn down the road since about 1948. Ray had painstakingly gotten it working, though it would probably never work well again.

  The barn was otherwise empty. Unless something was hiding in the deep shadows, or under the tractor, we were alone.

  Neither option was entirely outside the realm of possibility.

  There were two chainsaws sitting on a bench against the wall. Kolya started to inspect them, but I interrupted him. “They’re ready to go,” I assured him. Considering that I’d used them last, and could see that they hadn’t been moved or touched since, I could be fairly certain of that. Even if a skinny had gotten in there, they are not known for subtle sabotage.

  There was a small trailer on the back of the tractor. It was for hauling stuff around the grounds, including lumber to the build site where Ray and I were building our cabin, at the far end of the meadow. Kolya picked up the chainsaws and loaded them on the trailer, while I moved to the tractor, slung my rifle, and started it up.

  True to form, the ancient machine took a couple of wheezing tries before it finally turned over and caught. Kolya had been on watch, his dark eyes searching the shadows and glancing out the
open door and windows, until the tractor had rattled to life and was ready to roll. Then he hopped onto the trailer, and we trundled out of the barn and down the road toward where Miller had said the trees were down.

  After the little display earlier, we were both nervous about going into the woods, even staying on the road. There could be all sorts of monstrosities back in there, pacing us from just out of sight.

  I didn’t know what we’d gotten ourselves into, but I knew that it wasn’t going to be pleasant, any way we looked at it. And I didn’t think that those things were necessarily going to just let us clear the fallen trees away and send Miller and Trudeau on their way, either.

  We didn’t have far to go. Just around the bend, three large, downed firs were blocking the road. Two had been felled from one side of the road, one from the other. They were close enough together that their boughs were intertwined, making an impenetrable hedge across the road, leaving the weight of the trunks aside.

  That was definitely no accident. And I didn’t think the skinnies had done it, either. They weren’t that smart.

  Stopping the tractor a few yards away, I got off and went back to retrieve a chainsaw. When Kolya reached for the other one, I shook my head.

  “This is giving me the heebie-jeebies,” I told him. “I’ll be more comfortable if you’re back here with a gun ready, in case something nasty comes out of the trees while I’m doing this.”

  “It will take less time with two,” Kolya pointed out.

  “I know. But you can engage faster, if something goes south, if it’s just me,” I replied.

  He just nodded, though he didn’t look particularly happy. Not that Kolya ever looked particularly happy. He was Russian.

  The saw took two yanks to start, and then I was attacking the roadblock, the saw buzzing and chips of bark and wood flying. I wasn’t trying to use finesse; I knew that most of Kolya’s unhappiness about not working had more to do with not wanting to be out here any longer than necessary than with being left out, and I wholeheartedly agreed with him. I could feel unnatural eyes watching us.