A Brady Paranormal Investigations Box Set

by Harper Crowley

  “I know. Just give me a minute. I’ll think of something.” Yeah, because we have a lot of options. “Let’s finish checking out the clearing, first.” There might be other clues or evidence we can find. “Then, we’ll figure out what to do with that.” I drag my eyes off of it. I don’t know how cops and crime scene techs do it. I’d never want to be surrounded by dead bodies all of the time.

  “How about I stay here and make sure it doesn’t disappear,” Russ says. If it hadn’t happened before, I’d laugh at the thought of Russ keeping watch over a skull. But it did, so I decide to take him up on his offer.

  With Bear leading the way, Jess and I make our way to the shack. Several cardboard boxes are stacked up next to the rickety porch. Jess opens one. Battery acid, more bleach, and several boxes of cold medicine. A strong chemical scent wafts from under the door. Well, I guess we can cross one mystery off of the list. Unless Bigfoot started cooking meth to make some extra cash, this bad guy is most definitely human. Not exactly what I thought we’d find, but better than an enraged seven-foot-tall, hairy monster.

  Behind us, Russ calls out my name and the blast of a gun shatters the tentative silence that had cocooned us. We spin around, and I jump in front of my sister. In the moonlight, Russ stands silhouetted, holding his hands in the air. Dark human shapes bracket him on both sides, one of them holding a gun pointed at Russ’s head.

  Chapter 25

  My blood turns cold, and I blink, and I’m in another house with another gun pointed at me. Only this time, it’s worse. It’s Russ, and I’m too far away to save him.

  “Mer.” His voice is strangled, and the person behind him raises their gun and brings it down on the back of his head. With a muffled cry, Russ collapses. My own safety forgotten, I rush over to them, dropping Bear’s leash. As I reach the first of the two attackers, Bear leaps at the other one. The gun goes off again, and my blood freezes, but there’s no answering yelp, only a shriek as my dog latches on to the guy’s arm.

  I jump on the other guy, the one without the gun, and we drop to the ground. My fists fly at his face, but I miss just as often as I hit, and he swears, loudly, for me to get the hell off of him. Wait. I pause a second in my onslaught. I know that voice.

  The guy I’m on top of uses my momentary lapse in judgment to shove me off of him and scramble to his feet. In the moonlight and out of the shadows, I recognize him all too well. Buck Henry’s dirt-streaked and bleeding face glares back at me.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” Buck says, blood dripping down his face from his bloody lip. Nausea roils through me. I did that. I gave him a split lip.

  Coming to my senses, I almost call out Jess’s name, but I don’t want these guys to know she’s out there, if they don’t already.

  “Saving my friend. You pointed a gun at him”—thank you, Captain Obvious—“and then you knocked him out, so of course I’m going to do something.”

  We eye each other warily, until his younger brother Trapper grabs Bear by the scruff of his neck and points the gun at his head. “Can I shoot it? Stupid thing was growling at me.”

  “Seriously?” Buck storms over and rips the gun from his brother’s hand. “You’ll shoot yourself in the foot first, you idiot. Now drop the damn dog.” His gaze shifts from me to Russ before he runs his free hand through his hair. “I gotta think here.” He clicks the safety on the gun and stares at it.

  Trapper flings Bear to the ground, and I scoop my dog up before he can lunge again. Vibrating with barely contained rage, my little mutt snarls, hatred in his eyes. I stuff him in my jacket to keep him safe and my hands free. He’s not happy about it, and his little wiry-haired head pokes out, teeth bared, ready to take on the world.

  “What in the hell are you doing out here?” Buck asks, his eyes trained on me.

  Trapper nudges Russ with his shoe, but my friend doesn’t move. Trapper snickers. My hands ball into fists. The little twerp is lucky his brother has got a gun.

  Buck whistles to get my attention. Oh yeah, guy with a gun. Focus, Mer. “We were searching for the dead body, the one I’m assuming you moved after we found it.” Another piece of the puzzle falls into place. How could I be so stupid? “That wasn’t some strange, illiterate symbol scratched into the trail cam. That was your initials,” I say to Trapper. “You just combined the letters to make one symbol.”

  Buck swears. “You carved your initials on the trail cam? Goddamnit, it’s a wonder you’re still alive you’re so stupid. You’re lucky the cops didn’t find it.”

  Trapper juts his chin out. “I didn’t want no one to steal it. Of course I put my name on it. T.H., for Trapper Henry.”

  Buck scrubs his free hand over his forehead, and for a second, I feel sorry for him. Just a little bit. I’d buy Jess a one-way ticket back to Michigan myself if she acted even half as stupid as Buck’s brother.

  “It’s fine,” Trapper says. “You know the cops ain’t going to come after us.”

  “But they could,” Buck says. “The sheriff—”

  “Knows well enough to keep his nose out of where it don’t belong,” a deeper, eerier voice calls out from the darkness. The patriarch of the mullet clan, Buck’s father, swaggers into the ambient beam of the flashlight, the elongated shadows giving him an evil, monstrous look. Oh shit. We’re screwed.

  Chapter 26

  Buck’s dad snatches the gun from his hand. “Gimme that,” he snarls, “before you shoot somebody.”

  Buck cowers away from his father. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “They was poking around. We had to do something,” Trapper says, pointing at us.

  “Jesus Christ.” Gunner runs his free hand through his hair. Then he picks up one of the flashlights and shines it on me. “Fuck,” he says. In three long steps, he reaches me, and before I can react, he rips the camera from the harness on my chest. “And none of you dimwits thought to check to see if they were recording anything? Don’t you realize they got you on tape for whatever asinine things you said? That could put us all in jail for life.”

  Trapper reaches down and wrenches the camera from Russ’s harness. “They can’t. There ain’t no cell phone service out here, remember?”

  Gunner pauses, and a slow smile spreads across his face. “Oh yeah, I forgot.” He turns the camera over in his hands. “So you didn’t get the chance to put any of this online.”

  My blood turns to ice, and my mind frantically tries to think of something to say, anything that could get us out of this alive. A wind picks up, and I rub my arms to keep the chill away.

  “People know we’re out here,” I say. “Lots of people. We did an intro and said exactly where we are. If we don’t check in, they’ll send the police to find us.” It worked in Oak Cliff, so I can only hope the false bravado will work here, too. It may be our only hope, judging by the shrewd look in Buck’s father’s eyes.

  Gunner lifts one shoulder and drops it. “It’ll take ‘em a long time to figure that out. Days maybe. By then, well, it’ll be too late. Lots of things can happen to a city kids who go wandering around in the woods.”

  Crap. Crapity, crap, crap, crap.

  “We didn’t see anything,” I say, hoping the lie sounds at least halfway believable. “I swear. You could let us go and keep our cameras, and you’ll never see us again.”

  Gunner shakes his head. “I wish I believed that, but y’all have proven to be pretty damn stubborn. We tried warning you before, but you stuck around. You just wouldn’t stop.”

  His words ring with a finality that sounds almost practiced, almost as if he’s said them before. Goosebumps rise up on my arms, but they don’t have anything to do with the wind. A cold certainty spreads through me. I’m going to die out here. I run my fingers through Bear’s wiry hair, hoping that he can get away before they shoot me. He and Jess have to find their way out of here.

  You know, if he’s going to kill you, you might as well ask him some questions, first. “Is that what happened to the missing people? Did they get lo
st, too?”

  Gunner turns on Buck. “Dammit, son, what’d you tell her? Just because a nice piece of ass shows up, you have to tell her everything? So help me God, I’m going to kill you.” He raises his free hand as if to make good on his threat.

  Dude. He did not just call me that. He’s lucky I’m not the one with the gun, or I’d... well, I’m not sure, but I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here and stewing over his comment.

  Buck shakes his head quickly. “I didn’t tell her nothing, I swear.” He gestures at me. “I let her camp on our land, and that’s it.”

  Gunner narrows his eyes at his son. “Then how come they’re out here now?”

  Buck doesn’t have a response to that. He merely looks away, embarrassed.

  “Christ almighty. How my sons ended up being such idiots is beyond me.”

  Russ stirs, but Trapper has his back to him and doesn’t see it. I pray him to keep still, not that he can hear me, and that Jess does the same. Maybe I can stall him and draw his attention so Russ can wake up fully. I don’t really have a lot to lose.

  “So let me guess.” I tilt my head, regarding the older man. “You’re cooking meth, right?” The older man’s eyes narrow. “And whenever someone gets too close or asks too many questions, they conveniently disappear.”

  A muscle pulses in his jaw. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s bears in these woods. Wolves and coyotes, too. My pap saw a mountain lion once. Anything coulda got ‘em.” What I wouldn’t give for my camera right now. “We’re just doin’ what we can to survive, same as everybody else. If you kids woulda just kept out of it, none of this woulda had to happen.” He waves the gun between Russ, me, and the burn pile where the skull is.

  Ah, there it is. The confession that no one will ever hear but me, the soon-to-be dead witness. Something doesn’t sit right with his revelation, though. “What about Jason McCauley, Ceri’s boyfriend? How did he get caught up in this?”

  Gunner swears gruffly. “I guess it don’t matter anymore. You’re not going to tell anyone. That damn McCauley kid thought he could get one over on us. So what if he did a couple jobs, that don’t give him the right to demand money in order to keep his mouth shut. He said if we paid up, he’d leave town with the sheriff’s girl and we’d never see him again. Idiot thought he could blackmail me. He was wrong.”

  My stomach sinks. I guess that answers that question. I hope Ceri finds out the truth someday. Russ moves his arm.

  “So you killed him and all of the others,” I say, my words spilling out in a rush to make sure his attention is focused on me so Russ has a fighting chance. I slip my hand into my pocket, feeling the reassuring weight of the pepper spray. My breath hitches in my throat. Holy crap. I’d forgotten about the pepper spray and the pocket knife. Yeah, they won’t beat a gun, but they’re better than nothing.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you doing?” Gunner snaps, waving the gun at my hand.

  I whip my hand out of my pocket. “Nothing, I swear. My, uh, my hand was cold.” Lame, Meredith. Super lame.

  He storms over to me and I shrink back, but not before he shoves his hand in first one pocket and then the other. He swears as he pulls out the pepper spray and pocket knife and chucks them both into the woods. “Didn’t neither of you idiots think to search them?”

  Buck shakes his head. “I...I didn’t think to. I never thought they’d have anything on ‘em.”

  “Jesus,” he mutters. “When we get back home, I’ll—”

  A long, drawn-out howl slightly more high-pitched than the ones we’d heard earlier cuts him off. It’s long and drawn out, wavering slightly at the end. Jess.

  “Shit.” He whirls toward the sound. “What the hell was that?”

  “Haven’t you ever heard a Bigfoot call?” I taunt. I know it’s my sister, but he doesn’t, and that gives me a slight advantage. I edge toward Russ. Bear whines and I clutch him closer to me so Gunner doesn’t notice I’m moving.

  Buck and Trapper huddle behind their dad, supposedly the lesser of two evils. A second later, my sister howls again, almost perfectly mimicking the Bigfoot’s sound. I use their distraction to fall to Russ’s side, pretending to be concerned and checking his pulse. Which I totally am, of course, but I’m also digging into his pocket for his can of pepper spray.

  A rock flies through the air, landing at Gunner’s feet. All three of the guys stumble back and then forward as another wail deafens us in the clearing. I huddle over Russ and Bear, protecting them as best I can.

  “Don’t move,” I murmur, my forehead pressed next to his. Sandwiched between us, Bear struggles for a second to break free, but then even he seems to sense the danger we’re in, because he stops and licks my cheek. “Jess used the Bigfoot call George taught you guys, and it’s freaking the Mullet Boys out.”

  “What?” he answers, groggily.

  “Everything’s okay.” Everything’s not okay, but he’ll forgive me for lying, right “Just keep still.”

  “Okay.” His voice slurs before his head lolls to the side and he fades back out. Crap. I bet he has a concussion. If it wasn’t for the steady beat pulsing in his neck, I’d be terrified for him, but right now, I think he might be the lucky one since he doesn’t know the danger we’re in.

  Jess lets out another shriek, and the Mullet Boys spin toward the sound. Gunner has his gun out, pointing it into the trees. “Stay back,” he yells. “Get out of here.” He fires the gun wildly at the sound. My heart leaps. Jess. But when I don’t hear any accompanying scream of pain, I force my heart to start beating again. He must have missed. She’s okay.

  Russ jerks his eyes open. “Meredith? What happened?”

  “Shhh. Don’t move.”

  Across the clearing, branches snap and a tall, humanoid shape separates itself from the shadows. The glowing light of the moon emphasizes the creature’s long, scraggly brown hair. What the—? Holy crap. No, that’s impossible.

  But I can’t deny what’s in front of me. The beast steps farther into the clearing, and one of our fallen flashlights shines a beam of bright, yellow light on its hairy leg. That doesn’t look like fake fur, but it has to be. Bigfoot isn’t real. An earthy, pungent odor wafts toward me. I wrinkle my nose. This must be the skunky smell Sheryl was talking about. Whoever’s faking this is really good.

  The creature growls and one of the Mullet Boys shouts. Gunner whips the gun around and pulls the trigger, but I don’t think he hit it because the creature doesn’t flinch. I tuck my head over Russ’s and pray that wherever Jess is, she’s safe and going for help as fast as she can.

  The smell grows stronger and the ground shakes as whoever’s in the Bigfoot costume stomps past me. Another shot rings out, and the fake Bigfoot grunts. That costume’s probably pretty thick, I bet it’s hard to get any sound out. Someone yells, and then there’s another shot, followed by a scream, long and piercing, and a crunch. Something heavy thumps to the ground a few feet away, but I’m too terrified to look. And then, silence.

  I count to ten before I peek through the curtain of my hair. Three prone bodies lay crumpled on the ground around me. Against the backdrop of Russ’s fallen flashlight, the hairy humanoid creature with matted brown hair stares at me, its deep, fathomless black eyes piercing mine. It flares its nostrils, as if tasting the air for my scent, and bares its teeth in a feral snarl. It sure doesn’t look like a man with a mask. I can’t look away. The creature’s eyes pin me to the spot and somewhere, deep in the back of my head, echoes a voice, “It’s real.”

  Russ groans, breaking the connection between the creature and me. In a flash, it turns and lumbers off, and the void it leaves sucks the air out of my lungs. Oh my God. What just happened?

  Russ struggles to sit up and I scramble off of him, my body running on auto-pilot. “What’s going on?”

  Oh, nothing much, I just saw a Bigfoot, and I think it saved our lives. Just, you know, another day in the neighborhood. “I... I don’t know.” Wow, what a way with words. Bear le
aps out of my arms and sniffs the air. He whines and backs up until he’s touching me again. He knows what that was.

  One of the bodies on the ground grunts and struggles to his knees. Buck clutches his arm to his side, and his wild eyes scan the clearing before meeting mine. He’s bleeding like a stuck pig from some injury under his hairline, and his hand is turned around backwards, his palm facing the forest. I wince. That had to hurt.

  A smaller shape darts out of the trees on the other side of the clearing. Jess. She flies past me and scoops Gunner’s gun off of the ground and trains it on Buck. “Don’t move,” she says. Her chest heaves, but her hand is steady.

  “I...I didn’t do anything, I swear. It wasn’t my fault.” He raises his one good hand into the air.

  “Yeah, right. I don’t believe that for a second.”

  “It’s okay. I’m all right.” I squeeze Russ’s shoulder and hurry over to my sister, taking the gun from her hands. Its heavy, warm grip feels alien, unnatural. Unfortunately, it’s all I’ve got until we can go for help.

  Her shoulders sag and she throws her arms around me. “Oh my God. Oh my God. I thought they were going to shoot you.” She swallows past the hitch in her throat.

  “I’m okay.” I rub her back with my free hand, while still keeping my eyes, and the gun, on Buck. “Are your dad and brother okay?” As much as I dislike Trapper, he’s still just a stupid kid trying to live up to his dad’s standards, whatever those may be. As for Buck’s dad, well, I’m not about to get close enough to feel for a pulse.

  Luckily, I don’t have to. Buck limps over to his dad, clutching his injured arm to his side. He drops to his dad’s side and sucks in a deep breath. Eyes wide, he scrambles away from him. “Dad,” he croaks.

  I leave Jess next to Russ and join Buck as he stares at his dad. Gunner Henry lies crumpled on the ground, his face frozen in a grotesque scream, his empty eyes dark and vacant, his head twisted 180 degrees. Bile rises in my throat. I think I’m going to be sick. A few feet away, Trapper groans, and Buck immediately hurries to his brother’s side.