The Beast of Barcroft

by Bill Schweigart

  Ben squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Something is wrong.” He looked exhausted and desperate. Haunted, thought Lindsay.

  “You’re going to feel a lot better once you take a shower and get a good night’s sleep.”

  “I’ll feel better after another drink.” He pointed at her glass. She shook her head. He put the badge back in his pocket and left the room. As she waited for him to return, the backyard’s floodlights activated. She walked to the window to see what had set off the motion sensor. Outside, a man stood naked in the middle of the yard, staring up at the house. His front was drenched in blood, smeared on his chin and mouth.

  Ben came into the room then and saw the lights. “What is it?” When he joined her by the window and saw what she was looking at, he dropped his glass. It shattered at their feet.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  The man lurched forward a step, lifting his chin and testing the air with his nose. As he moved his head, his eyes glowed.

  Lindsay looked at Ben. She saw the horror on his face, but for a second, she thought she noticed a slight smile too.

  “Jim,” he said.

  He grabbed her by the wrist and ran toward the front of the house, snatching his car keys from the kitchen counter as they went. They burst through the front door and sprinted across the short yard to the driveway. He flung her into the passenger seat and she did not protest. Rather than run around to the driver’s side, he climbed in beside her, punched his key chain, and all the doors locked. She saw why. A shape charged toward them from the backyard. Ben clambered over her into the driver’s seat and fumbled his key into the ignition as it cleared the chain-link fence between the front and back yards in an easy bound. In another, it was up onto the hood of the car. A large gray wolf, its jowls and massive chest stained black and crimson. It emitted a low growl, punctuated by the high-pitched screeching of its claws peeling away paint from the hood of the car, which Lindsay thought sounded a thousand times worse than nails on a chalkboard. Pink foam sputtered from its muzzle and splattered the windshield, which the wolf tried in vain to slash. Lindsay recoiled in her seat, trying to catch her breath.

  “Drive!” she screamed.

  Ben threw the car in reverse and stomped on the gas. The car shot out of the driveway and the wolf slid from the hood with a final screech. As Ben cut the wheel to get into the street, he clipped Lindsay’s car, parked on the street.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Insurance. Go!”

  She looked out the passenger-side window in time to see the wolf rocketing toward her and slamming its body into the side of the car as if it were a rhino. Ben put the car into drive and punched the gas again. They roared down the street. Lindsay turned around and looked through the rear window and watched the wolf chasing them, but losing ground as they sped away. Ben took the corner hard and the car went on two wheels briefly before righting itself again. It wasn’t until they were speeding east on Route 50 toward the District that she felt she could speak. She looked at his gauges.

  “You’re going eighty. It was a wolf. I think you outran it.” She had not meant to sound bitchy; she just wanted to exert a measure of control in what was now a world spinning way too fast.

  “That wasn’t a wolf.”

  “I know.”

  She looked at him. He met her gaze wearing a slight smile.

  “That means I’m not crazy,” he said.

  “If you were right about that, then you’re right about it wanting to kill you.”

  “I guess I’m batting a thousand tonight.”

  She directed him to her apartment. As Lindsay fit the key in the lock, the door swung open. They both jumped back and yelled.

  “Where the hell have you been and who the fuck is this?” asked Faith.

  “I thought you were sleeping.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “This is the guy I told you about. The one with the dog? From your mother’s meetings?”

  “Who’s her mother?” asked Ben.

  “Sissy Chapman.”

  “Get the fuck out.”

  “What?” yelled Faith.

  “You may want to call her,” said Ben. “She’s had a rough night.”

  Faith took a long look at him, her first, and saw the blood. Faith’s hands went to her mouth. “Is she…?”

  “She’s fine,” said Lindsay, casting a glance at Ben. “Right?”

  He nodded. “But two people were killed at her meeting tonight.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  Ben and Lindsay looked at each other for a moment. Lindsay said, “Wolf attack.”

  Faith looked at them in dismay, then rushed for her phone.

  “Why is your roommate giving you such a hard time?”

  “She’s not my roommate.”

  It took Ben a moment. “Oh,” he said. After another moment, Lindsay’s words must have sunk in. “Oh. I mean, that’s cool.”

  “I wouldn’t have kissed you anyway.”

  Faith called her mother, hysterical. Five minutes later, she was changing her clothes and heading out the door. Lindsay tried to protest, but Ben said, “Let her go. She’ll be fine.”

  “There’s a killer…wolf loose in Arlington, Ben.”

  “Does your mother live in Barcroft?” Ben asked Faith.

  “We live in North Arlington.”

  “I think she’ll be fine.” Ben shot Lindsay a look, and Lindsay interpreted it to mean that if Sissy was a target, an attack on her would have occurred by now.

  “Whatever, I’m out,” said Faith and she stormed from the apartment. Lindsay followed her, but Faith brushed her off and ran down the hallway to the elevator. She jabbed the call button viciously with her painted fingernail—click click click.

  “Please don’t go,” said Lindsay.

  “She needs me,” spat Faith.

  The doors slid open, Faith stepped inside, and the elevator swallowed her without another word, leaving Lindsay standing alone in the corridor.

  “I need you,” she said.

  Lindsay returned to the apartment, crestfallen.

  Suddenly, she spun on Ben. “Wait, how do you know who it will or won’t kill?”

  “I don’t know anything for sure. But I’ve thought a lot about it. All of the attacks have happened in Barcroft.”

  “This thing can travel outside of a neighborhood, Ben.”

  “I know, but it doesn’t need to. Not only have the attacks been happening in a single neighborhood, but the victims all live in a one-block radius.”

  “You think it has targets.”

  “She said it’ll save me for last.”

  “Your neighbor’s mother? The squatter?”

  Ben ran his fingers through his hair. “I thought she was just crazy. I hoped anyway.”

  “Stay here. I need to make a call.”

  Lindsay went into her bedroom and pulled her new phone from her pocket. Luckily, she had programmed all of her numbers in it two days ago, but she looked at the bedside alarm clock and doubted that he would pick up at this hour. She stared at the phone for a long time. Finally, she took a deep breath and found the contact. She was surprised when he answered on the third ring, sounding wide awake.

  “I need your help,” she said. “I’m dealing with something…weird.”

  “Lindsay Clark and weird,” said Richard Severance. “Two of my very favorite things.”

  Chapter 17

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21

  Lindsay was so shaken up that when Richard told her to meet him at Martin’s Tavern on Wisconsin Avenue, she thought nothing of it. When she walked into the dim and dark-wooded landmark, wearing old jeans and whatever she had thrown on when she received Ben’s call, she felt even more stupid than when she made the call to Richard in the first place. Worse, in the wee hours of Friday morning, the place was packed with Georgetown’s nightlife, a mix of locals, attractive partygoers, and power brokers. Installed in a corner booth, Richard Severance could easily pass as
any of the three.

  He wore a dark suit and jacket over a crisp white shirt with no tie and his ever-present impish grin, seemingly amused by the crowd around him. He chatted with a table of four in the next booth. Watching him, Lindsay had to concede the man was handsome for his age, whatever it may be. For any age, for that matter. She slid into his booth. Ben slid in after her, scrubbed clean of blood and sporting a fresh T-shirt and an oversize National Zoo sweatshirt.

  “Thanks for meeting us,” she said.

  “Don’t thank me yet.” Richard signaled a waitress, who hurried over and addressed him as Mr. Severance. He ordered another martini and pointed to his two new guests. They declined. When the waitress left, he said, “You have exactly until I finish this drink to convince me this isn’t more otter hair.”

  “Richard, I told you I would never—”

  Richard raised his hand. He called over to the next table, “Charlotte, dear, what’s that delightful euphemism you just taught me?”

  “Haters gonna hate,” said Charlotte.

  “Indeed they will,” he said.

  Lindsay looked at Ben. “Lean forward,” she said. She spun around in the booth, turning her back on Richard. She lifted her shirt, exposing her back and the gash, healing now, below her left shoulder. The rest of her back was covered in bruises. She lowered her shirt and faced Richard again. “That was from last week. I was investigating the mountain lion sightings and we found…a body…in a drainpipe. While I was in there getting a closer look, it attacked me. The cat was in a drainpipe, which I thought was odd at the time…”

  Ben, who had been scrolling through his new phone, said, “Here,” and slid it across the tabletop. Richard scanned it and passed it to Lindsay. A blurb with little detail had been posted to the Arlington Patch about the Community House attack. Ben continued: “It’s late now, but there’ll be plenty about it online tomorrow. Two dead with a hundred witnesses, including the police and a local politician. And me.”

  “You couldn’t have found that before I took my top off in public?”

  Richard steepled his fingers and pressed them to his mouth. Finally, he waved the waitress over. “You have me for another drink.”

  Lindsay started from the first community meeting, recounting how she met Ben. At first, she felt ridiculous relating the story. She knew Richard professionally, and cryptozoologist or not, she realized what came out of her mouth sounded like madness. Ben remained quiet until he picked up the story with the attack on Bucky, and by the time he finished, both of them were stumbling over each other’s words describing the night’s attack at Ben’s house.

  “You’re telling me you saw a dead man?” asked Richard. “If we’re talking a zombie apocalypse, I think I’ll need drinks by the pitcher.”

  Ben stood up. “This is your guy? I have enough problems without listening to this.”

  “I know her, which is why she has a sliver of my time and attention this late. Who are you?”

  “Come on, Ben,” pleaded Lindsay. “It wasn’t a man, Richard.”

  “Smug asshole,” said Ben.

  Richard grinned, but said nothing.

  Ben left the booth. He was up the aisle, marching toward the exit when Richard called out after him.

  “Shapeshifter.”

  Ben turned around and the two men stared at each other for a moment. “What kind?”

  Richard’s grin grew wider. “Since I have a few more years of experience with not being taken seriously than you, why don’t you sit down and learn something.”

  Ben slid back into the booth. “All right, a shapeshifter,” he said. “Now you have my attention.”

  “If one is after you, you’re going to need thicker skin than that to stay alive.”

  Lindsay put her head in her hands and groaned.

  Ben looked at her impatiently. Richard seemed amused.

  “You were there. You saw what I saw. It came as my friend,” Ben said, then, realizing his voice was growing too loud, quietly added, “and then it wasn’t.”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “I just need a minute to wrap my head around this.”

  “Proper scientists for you,” said Richard, pointing at her. “Join us when you can, love.” He held up the same finger and said, “So, one cougar attack, one confirmed dead. The city worker.”

  “Two. No one counts my dog.”

  “Which you say you were present for,” said Richard. “But the creature didn’t attack you?”

  Ben shook his head.

  “We’ll put a pin in that. Two weeks later though, a wolf attack. Tonight.”

  “Back up. There’s my neighbor Hazel. Rats.” Ben quickly related his conversation with Officer Cushing at the fence, but reiterated that no one had actually seen anything.

  “So they were all your neighbors?”

  “All but Manny. He was just unlucky enough to respond to a lot of calls in Arlington.”

  “The most logical explanation is ‘When Animals Attack: Arlington edition.’ Ecosystem thrown out of whack. Out of the ordinary, but not out of this world. Until tonight. Tell me again.”

  Ben started, but Richard said, “Not you. Her.”

  Lindsay described the thing in the backyard again, in the shape of a man but clearly not a man. It moved like a foal, as if learning to use its legs for the first time, and was covered in blood. Its dead eyes stared blankly, yet shone with an eerie light that was all wrong. And that smile…

  “So,” Richard said, wiggling all four of his fingers. “A cougar. A horde of rats. A wolf. And a…Jim. One of these things does not look like the others. And yet, it’s too much of a coincidence that all of these different types of animals, none of which belong here save maybe the rats, decide to go on a rampage in a circumscribed area of a single town. Of a single neighborhood? To say nothing of the glowing eyes.” It was Richard’s turn to lower his voice. To Lindsay, he said, quietly yet insistently, “Even you have to see it.”

  To Ben, he continued: “If you can figure out the who, then maybe you can figure out the why, and then I can figure out the what. And if we figure out the what, and we get proof of it, it stops becoming folklore and starts becoming real.” He turned his gaze to Lindsay. “Science, that is.”

  Finally, she met his eyes and nodded.

  “So what’s the thread?” he asked.

  “Madeleine,” said Ben.

  He told Richard the story of his former neighbor and her house, and how her neighbors had banded together against her. He told him about the cat and getting ambushed by the woman in Madeleine’s house, the bizarre shrine in her dungeon of a basement, and how she said that maybe “it” would save him for last. Richard remained relaxed, but he looked at Ben now with a hint of suspicion.

  “Why didn’t you mention that before?”

  “I had to know you believed me before I told you everything.”

  “You said she was dressed strangely. Describe it again.”

  “She wore a sort of helmet. The silhouette made her look like a witch or a pilgrim, but I think it was carved out of wood. And her poncho or wrap…beads, fringe. Embroidered images of birds.”

  “Native American?”

  “That was my impression, yes.”

  Richard rubbed his hands together. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Instead of a general shapeshifter, it could be—”

  “A skinwalker,” said Ben.

  Richard sat back in the booth with a grin. He looked at Lindsay and nodded. Lindsay eyed Ben with suspicion.

  “I poked around the Internet,” he said, then quieter, “It was the eyes.”

  “So you think this old hag, the mother, is a skinwalker?” asked Richard.

  Ben looked at Lindsay, then at Richard. “I think so.”

  Richard’s eyes twinkled.

  “What the hell is a skinwalker?” asked Lindsay.

  Richard leaned in. “A Native American witch with the power to ‘borrow’ the skin of any animal it needs for the job at hand. Even other people. Pr
edominantly Navajo lore, but not exclusively. In all cultures, they are considered ‘pure evil.’ Legend has it, the witch has to have committed a pretty heinous crime—like murdering a member of its own family—to achieve the level of magic necessary to become a skinwalker. They can use actual hides or an amulet or some other sort of totem. Whatever they use, they have one thing in common: They’re a pretty nasty piece of business. They’re fast, they’re fierce, and they can become anything. Navajos tell stories of them lingering outside of houses, peering inside windows. They can imitate any cry they want, a relative’s or an infant’s, to lure people outside. Then again, they’re also known to just break in and attack. And then there are the eyes.”

  Ben added, “They glow, but not in the same way normal animal eyes glow. They just…shine. You saw it, same as me.”

  Richard nodded. “The lore really gets out there. If you make eye contact, it can take over your body.”

  “They also say skinwalkers can read your thoughts,” said Ben.

  “Who’s they?” asked Lindsay.

  Ben cleared his throat, then muttered, “Wikipedia.”

  “Lindsay,” said Richard, “I’m not saying it’s all true. But let’s examine what we know as fact. Something is killing people in Arlington. We have a hypothesis. Certain elements are fantastical. My whole raison d’être is to separate fact from fiction. Don’t dismiss everything out of hand as fiction just because scientists have never encountered this before.”

  Ben jumped in, excited now. “There are the different animals. The frequency of the attacks, the constrained area, the deliberate nature of them. I’m telling you, if you looked up witch in the dictionary—”

  “Or Wikipedia,” mumbled Lindsay.

  “She had everything down in that basement but a giant black cauldron and a winged monkey on her shoulder. And she definitely has an ax to grind. I saw her before at the community meetings where we talked about Madeleine, and all of the victims—Hazel, Jim, Stuart—had given Madeleine grief and were very vocal about it. Even me.”