by Kelex
After Jeph climbed in, he turned to the camera. “We’re heading out into the middle of the swamp, where we’ll start tonight’s investigation.”
The engines came alive behind Jeph.
“Strap in,” the boat driver said, a half insane looking smile crossing his face. Several missing and black teeth showed in that grin, making Reese rethink this whole investigation.
He climbed into one of the seats and put on his seatbelt as Jeph did the same. Another production assistant climbed aboard and helped steady their cameraman. The boat took off, knocking both of them to their feet.
The driver chuckled loud enough that Reese could hear it over the roar of the propellers behind them. Wind blasted his face, it felt good, even if it was sticky and hot. Wind was wind at that stage, and beggars couldn’t be choosy.
It didn’t take long for them to stop in the middle of nowhere. There was a clearing of water, outside the reeds and tall grasses. Once the second boat stopped beside them and the cameraman got into position, all was silent—except for the sounds of nature.
They hung there for what felt like twenty minutes, but was likely only half that—waiting for god only knew what.
“You hear that?” Jeph asked, spinning his head to the right.
If Reese knew their camera guy, he was panning in to Jeph’s surprised face before turning the camera to Reese. Reese cast a glance out over the water, listening for any faint sound out of the ordinary.
Something sounded off to the distance.
“Oh, dat’s just a gator catchin’ some supper,” the boat driver said. “Or maybe checkin’ out da boo-fey we jus’ brought ‘em.”
Boo-fey? What the hell? And then it hit him. Buffet. “Yeah, funny,” Reese muttered.
The cackle that came from that toothless grin brought a shiver up Reese’s spine.
“Quiet,” he spat to the man. “Or you’ll let them know we’re out here.”
“Oh, ‘dem gator men too smart da let da likes o’you find dem,” the driver said.
“Hmpfh,” the other driver said. “Dat’s about right.”
Reese glared at the driver. “You’ve seen the gator men yourself?”
“I ‘ave,” he said before turning his head Reese’s way. “Twice, I did.”
“Where?” Jeph asked.
“Not out ‘ere in the middle o’nowhere. Was at da bar,” the driver said. “Minnie’s Place. Dey all hang up dare.”
“And just how drunk were you the night you saw them?” Reese asked the man.
The driver chuckled loudly. “Can drink you lot under da table, doan you worry.”
Reese shook his head. “We’ve spoken to several locals who were out here at night when they came face to face with shifters.”
“Bullshit,” the other driver said. “No one dumb enough to come out ‘ere at night. “Cept you.”
Reese eyed the other driver before his gaze fell to where Nick and Griffin sat. It had been Griffin’s idea to be out there in the first place.
“I can feel you glaring from over there, Reese,” Griffin murmured. “We’ll hang out for an hour, get some footage, and then go back.”
“Whatever,” Reese said.
And then he heard the sound again…
A gator lept onto the edge of their boat, all teeth and claws. Reese screamed and jumped back, knocking into Jeph. They both fell to the floor as the gator continued to attempt to get into the boat.
A shotgun blast sounded before the gator began to slide back into the water. Scrappy had killed the creature. He stood proudly, gun in hand.
The big bearded driver raced over, jumping onto their boat. Both men began to heft the dead gator into the boat.
“What the hell are you doing?” Reese asked.
“Ain’t wastin’ good meat,” the grizzled driver said before they were able to haul the whole thing onboard.
“That’s a wrap,” Griffin called. “Time to go back.”
“Thank god,” Reese spat before jumping into the other boat.
And missing.
He landed in the water between, his hip waders flooding with who knew what before the others were able to drag him back up to the other boat.
Reese peeled off the waders quickly, no idea what might be in them. A snake slithered out and on over the edge of the boat.
“Get me the hell out of here,” Reese spat.
The engines roared again before they all headed back.
Chapter Three
Once Reese had used every ounce of water in the trailer to shower, he finally walked out. The gentle sway of the moving vehicle allowed him some solace—they were putting distance between them and that swamp. He tied a towel around his waist and came out to find Jeph patiently waiting for him. Hart was navigating the trailer out of no man’s land.
“We need to talk.”
Reese sat down at the booth across from the bench seat Jeph rested on. “I have an idea what this is about.”
“I’m quitting.”
“I won’t let—” Reese paused. “Wait. What?”
“This season is my last. This investigation… is my last.”
“Why?”
Jeph rubbed the stubble on his chin with one hand. “I know the network wants me gone.”
Reese sat silently for a moment. “Fuck them.”
“I know you fought for me. While I appreciate you going to bat for me… I don’t want to be somewhere I’m not wanted.”
“I want you here,” Reese spat. “We want you here. Fuck the network.” He leaned back in the booth, resting his head on the wall. “I can’t do this without you, man.”
“You’re the host. You’re the one the viewers respond to. You’re the one getting fan mail by the bushel, not me. The fans love you. I’m in the way… so I’ll bow out.”
“You’re the straight and steady counterpoint to my overinflated ego. Without you, I’ll become a douchebag. The world already has one douchebag paranormal hunter… they don’t need another Baggins.”
“Did he just admit to being on his way to being a douchebag?” Hart called from the captain’s chair.
“I think so,” Jeph said. “Now that’s something we should’ve gotten on camera.”
Reese sighed. “It’s my television persona.”
“Yeah, sure,” Hart called over a shoulder.
“You know I’m right. Paranormal Prowlers won’t be the same… the network doesn’t understand the dynamic we have. The fans watch both of us, whether they realize it or not.”
Jeph stared at him solemnly. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear… but ultimately, I was getting tired of the constant travel. The invasion of my privacy. I have no life. We’re not frat boys anymore. We’re getting older, and it’s time to start having a real life.”
“This is real. We all started this together—all five of us. Five best friends who wanted to prove something existed on the other side. Don’t walk away because of some network phony who can’t see past the end of his own nose.”
“Our search for the paranormal has become a joke. We’re not taken seriously…”
“And there’s enough money in your bank account not to worry what other people think of us.”
Jeph paused. “Is that why you’re worried? You think you’ll make less money if I leave? I can assure you that’s not the case.”
Reese sighed. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. If you can make a living doing what you love, with your five best friends, why stop?”
“That’s the problem, Reese. I don’t love it. Not anymore.”
Reese felt as if he’d just been stabbed in the chest. He stared at Jeph as if the man had just grown a second head.
“It was fun when we were in college. It was fun when it was a web series—just the five of us going into haunted houses on a lark. Once it became a business, it changed.”
Reese understood where Jeph was coming from. It had changed. And slowly, it had driven the five friends apart. The only one he still seemed to
have a relationship with was Hart. “Man—I hate this. I hate the thought of you not being there at my side. You’re more brother than friend.”
“I haven’t felt that in a year. Maybe once I’m off the show, we can get back to being friends. Brothers. Like we used to be.”
Reese blew out a deep breath. “Just gut me, why don’tcha?”
Jeph half-smiled. “We finish up this last investigation and then we tell the network they get what they want. I don’t mind continuing to help behind the scenes with post-production, once filming is done, if they’re okay with that. But I’m ready to settle down and start a new life.”
Reese offered Jeph a hand. “If that’s what you truly want. I can’t hold you from it.”
Jeph took Reese’s hand and leaned in for a quick bro hug.
As Reese leaned back, he glanced out the front window of the trailer. Something caught his eye. A shack off in the distance with a neon light above it. “Hold on,” he said to Jeph before rising and walking to the front. “What’s that sign say?”
Hart narrowed his lids. “Minnows?”
“Minnie’s?” Jeph asked from behind them.
“That’s it,” Reese said. “Minnie’s Bar. That’s the place Captain Deliverance was talking about seeing shifters.”
“Captain Deliverance? He wasn’t that bad,” Jeph said.
Reese pegged Jeph with a glance over his shoulder.
“Okay. Maybe he was almost that bad,” Jeph conceded.
Reese started walking toward the bedroom at the back of the trailer. “I’m going to get dressed. Signal the others to stop for a drink. We can check the place out.”
“The whole crew?”
“Nah,” Reese yelled as he pulled some clean clothes from the small dresser. “Just us. Send the rest of the crew on to the hotel on Marco Island.”
Twenty minutes later, Reese was dressed and they were all standing outside the shack, the huge glowing neon sign and the moon the only illumination around. The two RVs were cluttering the small lot, the shack even smaller. Music leeched from the joint, a twangy country song from the sounds of it. The clinking of glass and laughter could also be heard behind the threadbare walls.
If Reese wasn’t wrong, the place teetered slightly to one side before his very eyes.
Hart clicked a picture with his iPhone before shoving it into his pocket.
“You sure about this?” Nick asked.
“Yeah,” Reese answered. “Even if the driver’s story was crap—which it likely is—we owe Jeph a toast or two.”
“You tell him?” Griffin asked Jeph.
“You all knew?” Reese asked before spinning to face Jeph. “Was I the last to know?”
“I ran it past them first,” Jeph admitted.
Reese cursed under his breath. “You’re all assholes.” Reese turned and headed for the door.
He pushed the door. Big springs squeaked as the heavy wood opened wide. All eyes felt like they landed on him. The clinking and the laughter stopped, the only sound coming from the bright jukebox in one corner.
Neon beer signs covered the wall to his left—above the row of booths—and the bar was along the one opposite wall. At the back of the joint were two doors flanked with lighted dartboards. A pack of men holding darts in their hands, glaring at them.
Almost every stool and booth was taken—all but one.
“Howdy, gentlemen,” Reese said before beelining it to the empty booth. He slid in and looked around when no one joined him.
His friends still crowded at the door.
A big man behind the bar cried. “In or out! I ain’t air-conditioning the parking lot!”
Jeph and Griffin soon slid in opposite him while Hart and Nick smooshed him into the corner.
“What’ll you boys have?” an older woman in cut-off jeans and a halter top asked as she sidled up to the table.
“You have any local microbrews? A nice Chianti?” Griffin asked sarcastically.
“I got Bud, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz, or hard liquor,” the waitress said, one hand landing on a hip.
“Five Pabst are fine,” Reese said as Griffin’s mouth opened to likely add more of his sarcastic wit.
“Good choice,” she said with a fake smile before turning and stalking off.
After she left, Reese could still feel all the eyes on them. Reese could sense their stares burning into him, even when not all gazes were turned in their direction. It was as if the whole place was holding its breath, waiting for impact. He was sure they didn’t get a whole lot of outsiders in their little dump of a bar, but the sensation was beyond odd.
“Great idea,” Nick said, garnering Reese another eyeroll. “Stopping… was such a great idea, Reese.”
“Hey, at least I wasn’t the one who wanted to go out into the middle of a swamp searching for gator shifters,” he cried out.
The last two words resonated even louder as the song on the jukebox stopped after he’d said searching for…
Heads turned their way, the glare obvious.
“Sorry,” he said, lifting his hands up until some turned away.
Nick glanced around the joint before leaning across the table. “Yeah, but it was you who wanted to check out the myth in the first place. We stick to haunted houses and stop with this creature hunting.”
“The diversity in our investigations is what sets our show apart,” Reese said. “I agree going out into the swamps at night wasn’t smart. I disagreed with it from the get-go. We could’ve come at this one with a different angle. Now we need to find it and fast so we have something of a show to put together.”
“This was going to be our season finale,” Nick said. “Instead, it’s falling apart minute by minute.”
“That haunted house up in Connecticut was pretty hairy,” Griffin said. “There was a ton of good, usable footage. We could rotate the episodes out and make that our finale.”
“Unless we find a new angle on this by tomorrow, I think we need to revisit the drawing board,” Nick said. “I don’t know if we can stretch this one into an hour or not.”
“Well, there’s Midnight,” Hart said.
“You just started investigating that,” Reese said to him.
“Yeah, but in just a couple of hours, I’ve already come up with a laundry list of odd sightings, weird news, questionable police reports, and a gut feeling that tells me this one might be a whopper.”
“It’ll take hours of behind the scenes work to get a new location ready for a shoot,” Reese said. “We don’t have the time before wrapping up filming.”
“I thought you were interested?” Hart asked. “No, I know you are.”
“I’m incredibly interested… but we need time to dig deep into Midnight,” Reese said. “My gut’s telling me the same thing as yours… so I want it right. Not half-assed at the last minute. And if it’s as big as you think, this one could run more than one episode.”
“Five Budweisers,” the waitress announced as she sat the first one on the scarred table.
“We ordered Pabst,” Griffin said with a grin.
“You get what I give you,” the waitress said. “By the way, you’ve got an admirer. He paid for your drinks.” She nodded to the bar and a huge, muscled guy nodded in their direction.
“Thank you,” Reese said as he lifted the bottle sent his way in salute.
The guy slid off his barstool and meandered over, taking up the waitress’ spot at the end once she was done handing out the bottles.
“We appreciate the drinks,” Jeph said.
“You’re very welcome,” he said before his face grew harder looking. “I advise you finish those beers and get the hell out,” he said firmly.
“Why?” Reese asked. “We have every right to sit in a public place and have a few drinks.”
The guy leaned over the table, his eyes lighting with an inhuman orangey glow. “I said… drink your god-damned beers and get out. If you know what’s good for ya.”
Several other huge men surro
unded the booth, their eyes glowing with the same light. Reese was sure he saw a hint of scales appear over the arm of one man.
He swallowed, his mouth growing dry. “One beer and consider us gone.”
“That’s more like it,” the man said before leaning back, the glow fading. “The quicker, the better.”
Nick attempted to shimmy out. “We can go… right now.”
The man shoved Nick back. “It’s rude not to drink the beer I bought. I paid good money for that. Drink up.”
Nick lifted the beer to his lips and began to gulp it down. The rest of them followed suit. Reese couldn’t remember the last time he’d chugged a beer, but this time was faster than any frat party in his life. Once all five bottles were empty, they carefully slid from the booth and hightailed it outside to the parking lot.
“Please tell me I didn’t just imagine that?” Reese asked them before they climbed into their trailers.
“I saw,” Nick sputtered before looking back over his shoulder. A slow, liquid smile began to spread across his face as he turned to look at Reese. “That was the coolest shit ever.”
“I think I pissed my pants a little,” Griffin said, his eyes wide.
“Now you know how I felt when I was eight,” Reese said. His sighting of a werewolf in the woods behind his house as a boy was what had led him to start the paranormal group. Most people thought he was nuts… but he’d found four other believers willing to search for things that go bump in the night.
“We’ve found our hook,” Griffin said. “We stay. We finish this one.”
The door to the bar squeaked open, and one of the orange-eyed goons stepped out. “After we get the hell outta here,” Reese said, pushing Hart and Jeph onboard.
They all soon pulled out onto the road.
“You sure you still want to leave?” Reese asked Jeph.
Jeph chuckled. “You got me second guessing, that’s for sure.” He paused a moment. “But yeah… this is the end of the road for me.”
Reese nodded, sad to know he’d soon lose his compatriot. “Well… seems you’ll go out with a bang if that little encounter said anything.”
Chapter Four
“What do you mean he left you at the station?” Eilam asked, his eyes lighting with anger.
