The Beast of Barcroft

by Bill Schweigart

  She thought about Faith and her mother then. “What about Sissy?”

  “She was ineffectual. Useless. And she didn’t really care. Even this witch could see that. No. Me, Jim, Stuart, Hazel…we’re the ones who kept the pressure on Madeleine through the county. And our county man was Manny. Think about it. After this…thing killed Jim, it had its pick of dozens of fleeing people. It singled out Stuart. The cops themselves said it was darting through the crowd instead of running away straight. Like it was looking for him. Hunting him.”

  Lindsay looked from Ben to Richard. “You two are perfect for each other,” she said.

  “You have any better ideas?” asked Richard.

  “I’m not denying I saw what I saw. I can’t explain it and I don’t even know where to begin, but if you’re putting forth a hypothesis, you have to defend it.”

  Richard offered a broad smile. “Bring it.”

  “First, Ben, you said this woman told you, ‘Maybe it will save you for last.’ I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if she’s a skinwalker—the skinwalker—why would she refer to herself as it?”

  “A woman with a knife, in ceremonial dress, knocks me down the stairs into a rat- and roach-infested basement where she has a fire pit and you think the weird part is that she refers to herself in the third person?”

  Richard held up his hand. “No, it’s a valid point. It’s possible she disassociates, sees the animal as an ‘other.’ She could compartmentalize the experience for any number of reasons. On top of everything else, she could be a paranoid schizophrenic. Or,” he added, looking at Ben, “her grammar is terrible.”

  “Second,” continued Lindsay, “you told me Madeleine was from Seattle. Navajos are from the Southwest.”

  “What, Native Americans can’t move?” said Ben.

  “It’s not solely a Navajo legend, just the most popular version,” said Richard. “A lot of myths overlap. Again, not an exact science here.”

  “But,” she said, turning to Ben, “that’s two occasions the alleged skinwalker didn’t take you when it could have.”

  “Again, because she, it, whatever, was saving me for last.”

  “That doesn’t make sense though,” said Lindsay. “It wasn’t always saving you for last, only after you saved the cat. And you didn’t rescue the cat and speak with this woman until after your dog was killed. It could have taken you right in your own backyard that first night, but it didn’t.”

  “There’s my scientist.” Richard beamed. “Welcome back.”

  “So now that you two ghostbusters have classified it, how do you kill it?” asked Lindsay.

  “Legend has it skinwalkers can be killed with weapons made of silver or from a bullet dipped in white ash.”

  “Naturally,” said Lindsay, rolling her eyes. “Do you have any of that stuff?”

  Ben shook his head.

  Richard said, “But I do. And you’re welcome to it, and to all of my resources, on one condition. I’m running the operation now.”

  “I’m running for my life,” said Ben. “There is no ‘operation.’ ”

  “There is now.” Richard removed his phone from his breast pocket. “Excuse me,” he said. He slid from the booth and stepped outside. Ben and Lindsay looked at each other without a word, then out the tavern’s windows at Richard. After a minute, he returned.

  “My guy is on it. He’ll meet us at your house tomorrow night. Until then, you’re both bunking at my place.”

  Lindsay laughed. “Oh no, I’m going home.”

  “It’s attacked you twice now,” said Richard. “Even if you’re not on the hit list, you’re in its orbit now.”

  Lindsay sat back in the booth and exhaled.

  “Who’s your guy?”

  Richard finished his drink and smiled. “A specialist.”

  Chapter 18

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21

  Severance had insisted they spend the night at his house, though house was not the word Ben would have used. The impressive stone mansion stood off Foxhall Road, a tree-lined lane that rose north out of Georgetown. It was nestled behind a massive iron gate, and from its elevated vantage, the residence offered a view of Arlington across the Potomac River to the south, and in every other direction the wooded area surrounding a stream called Maddox Branch, which did little to calm Ben. Too similar to Four Mile Run.

  The circular driveway in front of the mansion was larger than the foundation of Ben’s entire house. Their host showed them to their rooms then retired for the night. Ben barricaded himself in his bedroom with an armoire against the door.

  He surveyed the room. The furnishings surprised him. The first floor was very sleek and modern, but this room was dominated by a massive four-poster bed in the center of the room and a dresser equally as imposing and of the same dark wood. The room was sparse and old-fashioned, and it invoked an earlier century, a time when it wasn’t so difficult to believe in what was chasing him. There was an adjoining bathroom, and he showered, scrubbing the remaining blood from his fingernails. The heat and water loosened his muscles and he began to feel drowsy. Another minute under the steamy jet of water and he imagined they would find him there in the morning passed out. Satisfied he had washed away the dried black and red flecks of his friend’s blood, he turned off the water, dried himself, and dressed in his clothes again while he still had the energy for it. He climbed onto the bed and collapsed. He rolled over onto his back, looking up into the lacy canopy, and replayed the events of the evening in his head. He waited for the panic attack.

  None came.

  Instead, he relived everything. Watching Jim get his throat torn out. The thing returning to his house—dressed as Jim was the only way he could put it—and attacking them. Chasing them. Relentless.

  This time, he purposely and consciously invaded the dark closet of his mind and began pulling out insecurities. Women, finances, everything. His heart remained steady, his breathing even. He realized he had not had a panic attack since the drainpipe, the evening he had the revelation about the thing’s eyes.

  He held his hand in front of his face. Steady. In fact, he felt great.

  He laughed.

  When he heard the sound of his own laughter, he laughed even harder. He imagined all of that laughter rising out of him, filling the bed’s canopy and lifting him into the air like a hot air balloon, and he laughed harder still. He laughed until he heard a knock on his door.

  Before he could say “Come in,” the door opened and bumped into the chest of drawers.

  “The hell?” asked Richard Severance.

  Ben leapt out of bed and heaved the armoire back to its original space. Severance held a rocks glass filled to the brim with a brown liquid but managed not to spill a drop as he squeezed into the room.

  “Protection,” said Ben, wiping tears from his eyes.

  “You’ll need protection from me if you scratch my floors.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Besides, skinwalkers can climb walls, get onto roofs, and into windows. And if they can become rats, probably through the toilet too.”

  Ben looked toward the window and sighed. “I’m never going to sleep again.”

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I feel…great, actually.”

  “I apologize because it’s late and I can’t think of a better word for it, but you’re a crazy person.”

  “That’s just it. I’m not. I’ve had all this…dread. And I could never put my finger on it. And now I can. My body wasn’t sabotaging me, it was warning me. There really is something out there trying to kill me.”

  Severance still looked at him as if he was crazy, which Ben conceded was fair.

  “Don’t you see?” continued Ben. “All the cards are on the table now. There is a perfectly legitimate reason to be terrified. I don’t have to manufacture my own reasons anymore. I’m off the hook!”

  “There’s just one problem with that. There really is something out there trying to kill you.”

  �
��Well, thank you, Mr. Glass Half-Empty.”

  Severance hoisted his rocks glass and drained it precisely to the halfway mark. He smiled. “I really should top that off. Good night.”

  He turned to leave.

  “So you chase monsters,” said Ben. It was not a question.

  “I’m a conservationist.”

  “Me too, in that I’d like to conserve my own ass.” Ben spread his arms in a gesture that encompassed the large room. “I appreciate the hospitality, but considering I am being stalked by some goddamned monster and will be lucky to see the next sunset, how about you level with me. Have you dealt with this before?”

  Severance took another drink, but Ben sensed that now it was to buy himself time. “No,” he said finally. “Not this.”

  “Anything similar?”

  “Maybe.”

  “ ‘Maybe,’ he says.”

  “Not coy maybe, maybe as in I don’t really know.”

  “Do I stand a chance here?”

  “How about I fix you a drink?”

  “That bad?”

  “A skinwalker…if we can get a jump on it, we might be able to stop it. Anything is possible.”

  “Why risk your neck? Why help me?”

  “I’m helping Lindsay. You’re along for the ride.”

  Ben rolled his eyes. “Come on.”

  “Because I believe you. And if you two are right, then there is a nasty piece of work out there killing people. And we have a chance to kill it before it kills more.”

  “Kill? Not capture? Wouldn’t a live specimen put you on the map? Fame, fortune, the respect of your peers and all that?”

  Severance neither smiled nor raised his glass. The two men regarded each other evenly, and for a moment, Ben saw behind his devil-may-care mask. He recognized a similar anger, hidden better but just as immense, and maybe beneath that, a similar ache as well.

  “I recommend you get some sleep while you can. It’d be better if you’re well-rested tomorrow.”

  “What happens tomorrow?”

  Severance just raised his glass in salute, drained the rest of his drink, and spun on his heel.

  “Nighty-night, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he said, leaving the door open behind him as he left.

  Ben shut the door.

  He switched off the light, then moved toward the colossal bed. Just because another panic attack was not seemingly imminent did not mean he was not terrified. He reconsidered, walked back to the light switch, and illuminated the room once more, then climbed back onto the bed.

  How on earth am I supposed to sleep? he wondered to himself. He remembered his previous panic attacks, how his own mind sabotaged him and exhumed every terrible memory, anxiety, and fear to drive him into a downward spiral that bottomed out in a full panic. Maybe an upward spiral might have the opposite effect, he hoped. Instead of sheep, count your blessings. Gather your angels. Fortify yourself.

  There was Lindsay. They did not always see eye to eye—actually he was certain that he drove her crazy at times—but she was here. He had gotten her into a horrific mess but she had not bolted at the first chance. Hell, his fiancée had left him before there were any murders or monsters. Go figure, he thought. Turns out the zoologist whom he had known for all of two weeks and who liked girls was more of a “for better or worse” person than the woman he had been set to marry. Somewhere else in this mansion was Lindsay, probably wide awake and as terrified and alone as he was. He wanted to find her room, thank her, talk to her. Not even that, he thought, if he was being honest with himself. He just wanted to be in the presence of someone he trusted, and she had certainly earned his trust. To feel the comfort and camaraderie of the campfire, the shared warmth and solidarity against the predators waiting beyond the firelight.

  But he remembered the kiss—the miscalculation, as he had come to call it to himself—and he thought better of it. And it just did not seem fair to burden her one iota more.

  Beyond Lindsay, his present circumstances looked pretty grim, so he raided his past, looking for happy memories. Safe and reassuring recollections. Instead of exploring the darkest closets of his mind, he envisioned the good times housed in a treasure chest. Instead of rooting around and flinging the terrible memories every which way, he sifted with care and excavated them as he would a rare coin or a precious jewel. Just the exercise of it calmed him. Perhaps it was simply the flood of adrenaline finally receding and revealing his deep exhaustion, but whatever the reason, he felt his breathing deepen and slow and become even.

  Somewhere in his treasures, he rediscovered a forgotten gem buried inside a larger store of anxiety and dread. It was the summer after high school graduation, Ben had enlisted in the navy, and he and his father had driven to Great Lakes Naval Station, in Illinois. Big Ben took a week off and they decided to make a vacation out of it. It was the first time they had traveled together more than a couple of hours outside of New Jersey and they took their time exploring. The wet summer heat of inland New Jersey and the East Coast relented somewhat to cooler temperatures the farther west they drove. Eventually, they checked into a motel on Lake Michigan the day before Ben was to report. The two men were quiet all day. After dinner, they took a walk around the grounds that overlooked the lake. Ben had always known the lake was large, but to actually see it…it was so much bigger than he imagined. He could not see to the other side. It may as well have been an ocean.

  Big Ben began telling him that all the men in the family had served in one branch of the military or another. The family had hundreds of years of history in the service, and now he was going to join them. Even if he just did the smallest possible stint, just one day, he would be a part of that fraternity, that greater whole. Big Ben tried to instill in him as much confidence as he could during the walk; Ben just listened. They both knew he was scared to death.

  Big Ben then tried to tell him in the gruff manner of fathers to sons that no one should ever truly scare him because no one could ever truly hurt him. No son of his had anything to fear from anybody. I am the only one you should ever be afraid of and there’s nothing to fear because I love you. It was a speech he had given plenty of times before when Ben was younger, when he had faced bullies or the cruel indifference of girls, or whenever life required bravery or, at the very least, bravado. Only this time, Big Ben could only mutter, “Son, they can’t hurt you,” before his voice cracked and he broke down and swept his son into his arms.

  He was turning this gem over in his mind’s eye when there was a soft knock at the door.

  Ben answered the door to find Lindsay in the hall. “Hey,” he said.

  “Just checking on you,” she said.

  Ben held his hands up, looked down at his feet, then all the way up his body. “Still in one piece. So far, anyway. How about you?”

  She spun around in a slow circle with her arms raised. “No bites or scratches. New ones, anyway.”

  They both laughed, then their laughter trailed off, leaving a nervous silence between them.

  “Okay,” she said. “Just seeing how you’re holding up. Good night.”

  “Thanks.”

  She pivoted and began walking down the hall.

  Ben called after her. “Look, if you promise not to try to kiss me, you can sleep in here if you’d like. Strength in numbers…”

  She smirked at him. “I’ll try to restrain myself,” she said as she entered the room and walked straight for the bed. Still, as she passed him in the doorway, Ben noticed her shoulders relax and her brow smooth in relief.

  She pulled the covers back and climbed into the bed.

  “That’s my side,” he said, smiling.

  “Don’t push it.”

  He lay down next to her and thought he might actually be able to sleep.

  “To be clear,” she added dreamily, “not if you were the last person on earth.”

  On his last night on earth, he added to himself. He was about to say it, but she was already asleep. Instead, he whispered, “Don�
�t worry, I won’t tell Faith.”

  Chapter 19

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21

  Severance followed them into Arlington near sundown in a sports car Ben could not even identify. Lindsay sat beside Ben but said nothing. He pulled off of Route 50 onto George Mason Drive, then into Barcroft. The neighborhood’s low, leafless trees seemed to flinch from the reddening sky. For the first time ever, the grade down to Four Mile Run gave him the sensation that the entire neighborhood was sliding into it.

  Ben drove onto 3rd Street South slowly, peering behind every car, tree, and bush. Suddenly, he pulled the car over and put it in park. “I’ll be right back.”

  “What are you doing?” Lindsay asked.

  “I’ll just be a minute. Keep the car running,” he said, leaping out of the vehicle and darting up the walkway of the house at the top of the street.

  Ben did not bother to knock and barged inside. An older man and woman were seated in the front room. Ben assumed they were relatives, maybe parents, but he was not sure if they were Jim’s or Lisa’s. From red, swollen eyes, they stared at him dumbfounded.

  “Where’s Lisa?” asked Ben. A younger couple came around from the kitchen, concern on their faces. They looked at him with suspicion.

  “Who are you?” asked the younger man.

  “I’m sorry. I’m a friend, one of the neighbors. Here to…pay my respects. Is Lisa here? I really need to talk to her.”

  “She’s resting, friend,” the man said, taking a step toward him. His voice was calm, but his raised hand, palm facing Ben, said Hold it right there. He was a few inches taller than Ben. “Now is really not a good time. Maybe come back some other time.”

  “And knock,” said the older woman from the couch.

  The layout of the house was just like his own, just like Madeleine’s, like everyone else’s in the neighborhood. Ben bolted for the stairs and was halfway up them before anyone could give chase. He was opening her bedroom door when the man from the kitchen finally reached him. The man grabbed Ben from behind, pinning his arms to his body and lifting him off his feet, before Lisa’s voice, quiet but firmer than Ben expected, said, “It’s all right.”