The Turning (Book 2): Whisper Lake

by Micky Neilson

  "Serrano and Szymczyk… Fitz…" Jason said.

  Staff Sergeant Clay's eyes never left Jason's as he shook his head. "They're gone."

  Jason felt numb. Numb in body, numb in spirit. "That's not— it can't— it doesn't feel real. What happened… couldn't have been real. I keep thinking I'm gonna wake up."

  "I understand," Clay said. "A Staff Sergeant—" he opened his notebook, "Gonzalez, will be escorting the fallen back home. There'll be a memorial ceremony in a few days, probably in Dammam."

  Jason nodded.

  Agent Clay clicked his pen. "I know you've been through one hell of an ordeal, but if you're feeling up to it I'd like to ask you some questions. Hua?"

  "Hua," Jason responded, using the military term that basically meant everything except "no."

  "Alright. I want you to take your time, think back and tell me everything you remember about last night."

  ***

  Celine Armistead sat in the trailer home she shared with her mother in Whisper Lake, Oregon, watching Silk Stalkings and desperately trying to forget the last month of her life. A bottle of Boone's Farm Wild Cherry (her second) was helping her in that mission.

  Her mother Lucie waddled out of the bathroom, accompanied by the sound of the running toilet. She winced with every step. "Damn gout's actin' up," she said. If it wasn't the gout it was the kidney stones, or the urinary tract infection, or the hyperactive thyroid, or the irritable bowels. Sometimes Celine wondered how her mother was still breathing. Not that she breathed all that well either; she had asthma and sleep apnea to boot.

  Lucie fell onto the couch and lit a cigarette. During the next commercial break Celine surreptitiously watched her. The woman had been pretty once; energetic, outgoing… hell, from the stories she told there was a time when her mom was downright wild. Then somewhere along the way her life took a series of wrong turns. Lately, more and more, Celine wondered if she was getting lost on those same roads. Yeah she worked at the restaurant, paid her share of the rent, watched her shows, and read her true crime books, but was this it? Was this really a life worth getting out of bed every morning for? Wasn't there something more?

  Jason had once told her about a friend he had during high school, Dirk. Celine had known of Dirk—even during its heyday Whisper Lake was a small town, only eighty kids in their graduating class—but she had never spoken to him because, well, she never really spoke to anyone in high school. Dirk had supposedly told Jason once "if you're ever into a girl, like really into her and you wanna marry her, and you wanna know what she'll be like in twenty or thirty years, just look at her mother." Dirk died two years after graduating, in a logging accident.

  But those words, words she had never even heard him speak, haunted Celine. She looked at her mother now, appraisingly, as she had more and more over the last several years: overweight, stringy black hair, dark circles under the eyes, bad hygiene, yellow teeth… she thought again about Dirk's theory.

  And she hoped like hell that he wasn't right.

  Enough depressing thoughts about the future; back to forgetting… most especially about CJ. What a grade-A piece of shit he turned out to be. Celine had been introduced to CJ shortly after she got together with Jason during their last year of high school. How many times had the three of them hung out? A lot. But there was always something about that guy… something out of control. He was a live wire, and Jason either found that endearing or had simply come to accept it over the years, but that same instability put Celine's nerves on edge. Plus, to her he always seemed like a hanger-on, a third wheel (or fifth wheel— whatever the fuck it was called).

  CJ had ignored her during the early years of Jason's military enlistment. He had started running with a whole new group of friends; mostly drug addicts and thugs. He got in bar fights, slept his way through dozens of skanks and generally wasted oxygen on a daily basis. A year ago, he got a job with H.G. Boil Trucking. Boil had been new to town, a transplant from Washington, where—rumor had it—he had been investigated for everything from armed assault to distribution and trafficking of narcotics, but nothing stuck. Nevertheless, "Hard Boiled" as some idiot had decided to call him (or maybe he came up with the name himself) had pulled up stakes and set his sights on revitalizing Whisper Lake.

  At any rate, having a job just meant that CJ had more money to spend on booze, drugs and whores, and could run with a higher class of thugs. Of course everything she had known about him at that time had come to Celine "through the grapevine." She wasn't even a blip on CJ's radar until a couple weeks ago, when he spotted her during a party at a mutual friend's house. He had been drunk, wasted on God-knew-what, and determined to have a "meaningful conversation," supposedly about Jason.

  The "conversation," held privately in their friend's bedroom, quickly turned into a grope-fest. Despite her telling him to knock it the fuck off, CJ grabbed her wrists and forced her down, climbing on top of her and shoving his tongue in her mouth. Then he had reared up and began fumbling at his belt. Two seconds later after several "NO"s had failed to get his attention and he bobbled his fat, half-hard dick out of his pants, Celine decided a well-placed knee to the nutbag would be more convincing. Which it had been. He had doubled over and rolled off, and she threatened to kill him if he ever tried that shit again on her way out.

  Several days following the incident, CJ told multiple people that Celine had tried to seduce him and that when he said no she had attacked him.

  Celine hadn't wanted to screw up Jason's head by telling him any of this—not while he was off fighting a war for Christ's sake—but she also felt that if anyone else had a right to know, it was him, and he'd probably be pissed as hell to find out about it too long after the fact. So she had written the letter— she had been meaning to write him anyway.

  After she had sent the letter things had died down and her boring-ass life had returned to normal. Whatever. For now, she was just hopeful that the whole CJ shitstorm was over.

  As she took another swig of Boone's Farm she heard the unmistakable sound of CJ's 4x4 skidding to a halt just outside the trailer.

  Well shit, speak of the asshole.

  There was the muffled music of Alice in Chains' "Man in the Box", the noise of the truck door slamming shut, and a hard pounding on the trailer door.

  "What in the Hell…" Mom began. Celine got up and crossed to the kitchen.

  "Celine! Open up!" CJ wailed outside. Lucie tossed her hands in the air and with some difficulty extricated herself from the couch. Celine returned from the kitchen, waving her mother off. "Sit, Momma, I got this."

  Celine opened the door. "What the fuck?"

  CJ was wearing a dirty plain white t-shirt, and hadn't shaved. Celine had always thought his facial features seemed haphazardly assembled. His cheekbones and nose bone jutted out, and his eyes didn't quite line up right. His hair was short but constantly fighting with itself to choose a direction.

  How the man was able to bed any woman, ever, was a mystery to her. He was fairly big, just under six feet, so she supposed that worked in his favor. He also had tattoos, two of them: a grim reaper on his right shoulder and bicep, and four eagle feathers on his left arm which he supposedly got because he was part Indian. Celine wasn't alone in thinking CJ probably had about as much Native American in him as Julio Iglesias.

  "I just wanna talk," he said. She could tell he was on something because his eyes drifted and he wavered unsteadily.

  "You need to fuck off," she said, holding the door only slightly open.

  "I wanted to… I just wanted to say I'm sorry." Layne Staley continued warbling from the truck.

  CJ kept on, chewing the nails on his right hand between words, "I fucked up, and I'm sorry, and I want you to, you know, let me make it up to you. Let me take you some place and we can just talk, that's all. Let me—"

  "You need to leave. Now."

  "Look, I was drunk and high and… this job, it ain't easy bein' a trucker…"

  "You drive a box truck, for fuck's sake!" />
  First CJ shook his head, lips squeezed shut, then pointed a shaky finger at Celine. "See, now that's fucked up. Right there, that's fucked up. I'm like, I'm extending a, a fucking branch to you and you spit on me."

  Celine, who was never good at holding back her emotions, didn't even try. "You tried to fuck me while your best friend's off fighting a war, you stupid asshole! Now get lost!"

  In the truck, Alice and Chains had moved on from "Man in the Box" to "Sea of Sorrow."

  Still shaking his head, CJ clenched both fists. For a second, Celine wondered if he was going to rush the door. "For as long as I've known you, you never gave me a chance. You always hated me but you never even tried to get to know me."

  Celine leaned out from the door. "That's because I saw exactly what you were from day one: a complete shit-bag."

  CJ slammed one fist into the other, then turned and spotted a tomato plant just off the narrow walkway. Celine knew what was coming before it even happened. CJ cocked his foot and kicked the plant as hard as he could, exploding one large tomato in a shower of red gore and nearly toppling over in the process. "Trailer trash bitch!" he screamed.

  Righting himself, CJ stumbled to the truck and yanked open the door. He climbed in and slammed the door shut. Predictably, he couldn't resist kicking up a gravel rooster tail on his way out.

  Celine watched him go, then closed the door and returned to the kitchen.

  Mom was still glued to the television. "Anything to worry about, honey?"

  "No," Celine said, replacing an item next to the sink, something she had been hiding behind her back throughout the conversation without her mother noticing. "Nothing at all."

  The item she had been hiding was a steak knife.

  ***

  Jason had spent ten minutes explaining in detail what he knew he saw the previous night, as well as what he thought he saw. Aside from writing notes, Agent Clay hadn't moved. There was no discernible reaction from him when Jason described the POW leaning over Serrano and lapping up the blood out of his throat.

  At the end of his recount, Jason asked Clay if they knew anything about the prisoner. The agent's eyes lifted from the notepad to Jason, gauging something, but Jason couldn't be sure what.

  "Not much." He answered finally. "We did speak to someone who knew him. Confirmed he was an anthropology student at the University of Baghdad. He'd been out studying the hill tribes for quite a while."

  Clay continued watching him closely. Pain was returning to Jason's left arm. He wanted nothing more than to take his meds and hopefully fall into a dreamless sleep, but he still had questions.

  "What do you think… I mean, what's this going to be documented as?"

  "For right now? Animal attack. You've already been started on a rabies treatment."

  Jason frowned. Clay continued: "A lot of animals that were pinned up have been set loose as a result of the conflict. We'll know more about your fellow soldiers' wounds once the fallen reach Dover."

  Those dark eyes continued studying him.

  Animals don't behead people, do they?

  "But what I saw, I mean…"

  "Sometimes… in a highly charged situation such as what you went through, the mind can play tricks. Your brain might be swapping out an animal for the POW. It's most likely the prisoner simply escaped and you were attacked by some kind of hungry, rogue dog."

  He thinks I'm crazy. No way I've gone through all this shit to get slapped with a section eight.

  "Yeah. Yeah I'm sure you're right."

  Jason hoped he didn't sound as completely unconvincing to Agent Clay as he did to himself. There was no way to tell by looking at Clay, who ripped out a paper from his notebook and handed it to Jason. There was a number on it. "If you remember anything else." The agent closed his notebook and stood, then went to retrieve his cap. With his cover once again under his left arm, and pad and pen in his right hand Clay strode to the doorway, and stopped. "By the way," he said, "I have to ask…" he turned around to face Jason.

  "Have you had any thoughts of harming yourself or others?"

  Jason shook his head. "No."

  "Do you have nightmares?"

  Death Highway. All the time. And now… now this. I may never sleep right again.

  "No," Jason lied.

  Agent Clay inclined his chin slightly, spun on his heel and strode out of sight.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jason awoke in a combat support hospital. It was nighttime, and the moon was casting ambient light throughout the large tent. There was just enough light for Jason to see the empty hospital bed to his right, and the mobile privacy screen to his left. It had three sections, each consisting of a square steel frame with white cloth hanging from the top bar. The fabric was stirring in a soft breeze that Jason couldn't feel.

  He knew that there was another bed just on the other side of the curtains, even though he couldn't see it. Then, he heard a whisper from beyond the screens:

  "Emblock."

  Jason sat up. The fabric rippled in the phantom wind. The voice, a kind of zephyr in itself, continued:

  "They found something. Out there in the desert."

  "Who is it?" Jason asked.

  "A long time ago," the voice sighed. "They found it."

  Jason lowered the rail on the side of his bed, pulled the covers aside, and dropped his legs off the edge.

  "Something old. From a time before history," it said. "Come here..."

  The cloth continued to stir as Jason slid down, took two steps and reached out for the edge of the metal frame…

  "I'll show you."

  Jason jerked the entire screen aside, only to see another hospital bed, like his, but empty. He exhaled in relief. Then, the hairs across his neck and arms stood up. His skin tingled. He could sense…

  There was something just behind him.

  He turned slowly to see Serrano, barely visible in the dim light. His brown eyes were glassy and staring, not at Jason, but through him.

  A scream rose up and died in Jason's throat. He wanted to run but his legs wouldn't respond.

  This is a dream, tell me this is a dream…

  The deep void where Serrano's throat used to be was black and wet. Thick, dried blood like old spaghetti sauce coated the front of his camo NBC vest. And in his hands…

  In his hands, Serrano was holding a giant chunk of what looked like dark glass the color of red wine. It was about the size of a bowling ball and had rough, irregular facets, as if it had been excavated from rocky earth using crude tools.

  It radiated a field of malevolence. As Jason watched, a spark appeared within the core and glowed bright red. Serrano spoke once more, his face under-lit by the crimson stone. His eyes were still blank, but the corners of his mouth stabbed upward in a smile as he said:

  "Don't you wonder what their blood will taste like?"

  Jason's eyes snapped open. It was early morning. He looked around and took in the sights of the field hospital, not unlike the one from his dream, except there was no mobile privacy screen to his left, just a hospital bed and in it a soldier with a bandage on his head. To Jason's right and across from him were more beds, some empty, some occupied by wounded service members.

  He had been flown here by helicopter early the day before. So far, everyone had been impressed with his progress. Jason wiggled the fingers of his left hand slightly. The doctors said he lacerated the tendons in his arm but that they expected him to recover full use of the limb. The doctors thought everything would be fine…

  But the doctors couldn't see inside his head.

  His nightmares were getting progressively worse. He felt okay, yes… except for the fact that he was scared to death to go to sleep. He was still desperately trying to come to terms with what he saw on that stretch of two-lane blacktop.

  The way he saw the situation, there were two possibilities: one, he actually saw what he thought he saw. Two, he hallucinated it, and what really happened was he was attacked by some wild dog.

  If
the second choice was correct, then what did it mean? Was he losing his mind? Were the nightmares just a part of his declining mental health? Would he hallucinate again? Hear voices? Was there any chance of him living a normal life if he was losing control of his sanity?

  Or… what if the first option was correct? What if the Iraqi man had become something that was only supposed to exist in comic books or horror movies. If what he had seen was real… it had looked like a man who was becoming a dog.

  Or a wolf.

  The only kind of movie Jason loved as much as action was horror. Vampire, zombie and especially werewolf movies like The Howling, American Werewolf in London and Silver Bullet.

  Let's assume, just for a second, that I'm not crazy. Let's assume that what I saw was real. Let's assume that what bit me was… just say it, a werewolf. Let's chase that for a second…

  If you went by the movies, then whoever was bitten by a werewolf would become a werewolf at the next full moon. Wasn't that the way it worked? But that was ridiculous. He felt fine, aside from the wound. He felt completely normal.

  "Good morning, specialist."

  Jason was so deep in thought he hadn't noticed the nurse, whose patch read "Chapel," approaching. She was carrying a phlebotomy tray. "Just need to draw some blood."

  They had taken blood already, when he first arrived. Why were they taking it again? If he truly had been bitten by a werewolf, would they know just by looking at his blood? Did they know already? What would they do to him if they knew?

  You're being stupid. That shit isn't real. On top of that you're being paranoid.

  Maybe. Maybe not. "You took blood yesterday," Jason said. "Why do you need more? Is something wrong?"

  The nurse looked at him evenly as she swabbed the inside of his right arm. "Nothing at all. Just routine tests."

  Nurse Chapel tied a tourniquet on his upper arm and prepared to insert the needle.

  "Tests for what?" Jason asked.

  "Infection. You're going to feel a little prick."

  The needle went in. Infection. Maybe that's what they called it. They're gonna lock me away. I'll never see my mom or my sis again, or Celine… they're gonna stick me in some lab and conduct experiments and—