Shades of Night (Sparrow Falls Book 1)

by Justine Sebastian

  Hylas Dunwalton was in big trouble with the local PD for leaking those facts in the article he had written about it, but his editorial in the following day’s paper suggested he didn’t give a rat’s ass. His father was the sheriff, but Wes wasn’t sure if that mattered a whole lot in cases like that one. Even if Hylas didn’t get spanked too terribly hard, Christmas was probably going to be a little strained at the Dunwalton house this year.

  Wes was glad for the extra bit of information and Hylas was next on his to-meet list for sure. The bodies being drained of blood, their mouths stuffed with flowers, was not new information, but the wax sealed eyes were a revelation and Wes had been having a blast with the newest piece of the old puzzle. He braked when a light blue mailbox seemed to grow out of the darkness in front of his headlights. Beside it was the pale curve of a gravel driveway, just as Dawn Marie had told him. Wes smiled as he turned and began his slow, bumpy way down the washed-out and rutted drive. He wouldn’t stay long, but he wanted to get a peek at the house. He hadn’t even seen it yet and was already certain that it was going to be a great find and that he would like it. Things were really starting to look up, he could feel it.

  The driveway ended abruptly on a lawn, only the palest remainder of driveway curved away to the left to where a standing garage stood beside a cute little Acadian-style cottage. The yard was big, but the house was small though it didn’t give a feeling of being cramped or claustrophobic; it was cozy and seemed inviting. It had a high, pitched roof that would keep the house cooler in the summer months and whitewashed siding. Wes smiled to see it sitting there because yes, definitely, he was nearly certain he had found his new home.

  He drove closer to the house before parking off to the side a bit. He got out, leaving his headlights on and the engine running, using his cell phone to illuminate his path to the house itself. The high grass brushed against the thighs of his jeans and tickled his fingertips. It smelled sweet like fresh hay as the brittle stalks broke and bent beneath his feet. The smell filled the air and Wes breathed in deeply; he loved that smell though he knew he was going to need an allergy pill as soon as he got back to the inn.

  The cottage was well kept and the porch boards were solid beneath his feet when he stepped onto them to peer in the dusty windows. He didn’t know how long the house had been empty, but it was sturdily built and the previous inhabitants had taken care of it. Wes was already picturing how nice his couch would look in the small living room when a noise off to his left pulled his attention away. It was the swish and sway of the grass stalks rubbing together, a low rustle of noise almost like the distant sound of moving water. He looked out over the yard, squinting in the weak glow cast from his headlights, but it was the wrong direction and the sun was almost totally gone, only sullen orange-red streaks touched the high, fluffy clouds. The air was still around him, the wind the only sound as it ruffled the grass and needles of the pines.

  Wes looked away and shone his light back into the house, once again conjuring up images of his couch and where he would hang his favorite painting. There was a small fireplace against the far wall, barely within his line of sight and he thought the tall, narrow painting would work nicely there. He was starting to smile when he heard the sound again, though it was quicker now; sounding like the agitated whisperings of madmen. He turned again, shining his light out toward the grass. He jumped and took four quick steps backward, only stopping when the heel of his shoe went off the edge of the porch.

  The grass was in a frenzy, something moving beneath the tall stalks at a quick pace toward the house. It left a wide wake in its path, the grass sleepy with winter stillness slow to spring back up behind it. A small sound of fear rose in Wes’s throat and fell over the rim of his lips in an embarrassing squeak-puff of sound.

  What answered back was a low, dangerous growl.

  Wes took another involuntary step backward and loosed a sharp yell as he lost his balance completely and fell off the side of the high porch. Before the world went topsy-turvy, he thought he saw something rising from the grass, but the beam of the light on his phone was aimed at the ceiling. Then it was flying out of his hand and through the air to disappear in the tall grass. Wes landed on his back with a bone-jarring thud that knocked the breath out of him and sent pain shrieking through his bruised back and new, different pain sailed from his shoulder blade and down his right arm to twang and jostle in the tips of his fingers.

  He blinked, dazed, mind momentarily blank. Then something heavy hit the porch with a sound like thunder and he remembered—there was something in the grass, something that growled. He thought bear. He thought bobcat. He thought panther. Then he thought the shape he had seen rising up from the sea of over-long, dead grass was none of those things and now it was on the porch. No, it had leapt onto the porch. That was at least a six or maybe six and a half feet jump from the ground straight up. He didn’t think even a panther could do that, but he didn’t know and he didn’t want to find out. He could hear it breathing; deep, rumbling breaths that sounded like every dangerous thing that had ever haunted his nightmares.

  Wes told himself to get up. To run to his car. It wasn’t that far. He could make it. The door was open and it was right there. He could see the faint gleam of the hubcaps if he rolled his eyes up. He had to get up. Had to.

  The horror of it was that he could not. He had frozen the moment the thing landed on the porch with such a heavy thud. Anything that heavy had to be strong, had to be capable of ripping his arms off and beating him to death with them. He shuddered all over and his bladder gave a warning twinge that he clamped down on as hard as he could.

  Tick-tick.

  It had taken a step. It had Wes down and now it was going to play with him a little bit. The idea was an awful one, but it felt true. Wes was the lame animal to be culled from the herd, there was no rush, no worry. This was where the real fun began.

  No, he mouthed to himself as he braced his hands against the ground. No, no, no.

  Wes had been a dork all his life, odd and a little difficult for most people to take very seriously because his interests leaned toward the bizarre. He was used to it, used to people not really knowing what to think of him and used to all the guys he’d met who had told him, You’re really cute and very nice, but… Life was not always good to Wes, hell, it wasn’t even always very nice to him and he knew all too well that money didn’t buy friends or people that would even pretend to like you. No, they would still snicker behind their hands at parties and say, He believes in Bigfoot, you know. Wes didn’t fit in and he was lonely and sometimes unhappy because of it.

  None of that meant he was willing to lie down and die, to allow himself to become some hateful thing’s early evening snack. He read the paper, he knew about the murders lately; the vandalism, the dead animals and terrorized people. He would be damned if he’d allow himself to become part of the body count because maybe he was a weirdo and a dork and sometimes too nice for his own damn good, but Wes wasn’t a coward and he didn’t want to die.

  Inside his head, he counted to three and had to clamp down hard on his bladder again when he heard tick-tick, closer now. It was edging toward the side of the porch, testing, teasing Wes to see what he would do. Maybe to see if he was still conscious. It was showing patience and a kind of horrific restraint that made Wes’s blood shiver to a standstill in his veins.

  “Three,” he whispered even as he shoved himself up from the ground, turning the moment he had his feet under him again. It hurt, every muscle in his body protesting, but the adrenaline singing through his veins made that easy to ignore.

  Behind him something screamed and for a split second the sound was almost human. But then Wes was running and he wasn’t listening anymore, he only had eyes for his car. It was so close, he was almost there. Pain ripped through his back, the feeling like a huge fork with sharpened tines shredding him from his shoulder to his waist on the right side.

  “No!” Wes screamed, his voice splitting the night as his legs
tried to buckle, as his feet tried to tangle in the grass and throw him to the ground. He might die anyway, but if he fell down it was a guarantee that he was a dead man.

  He reached his car and instead of going around, he dove over the hood, the thick wetness of his own blood making it even easier for him to slide. As he hit the painted fiberglass, he heard the distinctly audible click of powerful jaws snapping closed behind him. Something hit the side of his car so hard it rocked into him as he scrambled back to his feet. The forward momentum of his pursuer had sent it sailing into the car before it could stop. Wes going over the hood had been unexpected and it had been unable to correct its course on such short notice. It had bought Wes a second or two of extra time.

  He fell into the driver’s seat and yanked the door closed, never so glad for automatic locks in all his life. Then the passenger side window busted inward, spraying him with a violent explosion of sticky safety glass. Wes screamed, strangled and wordless, as something shoved its broad head into the hole, snapping a mouthful of wicked, gleaming teeth. Glass was caught in its thick fur and it glittered like diamonds as it tried to push closer to Wes who had crammed himself hard against the door. The width of the thing’s huge shoulders wouldn’t allow it to reach Wes though it was so close he could smell its breath, feel each hot gust against his skin as it snapped its teeth. The sound of its snarl was the sound of the world coming apart at the seams. It filled up everything, so loud that Wes couldn’t hear himself screaming anymore, only feel the pull and painful strain of the sounds tearing at his throat.

  The beast pulled its head back through the hole and Wes took the opportunity to put the car in reverse. Any second he expected it to reach through the window and grab at him, but even as he stepped on the gas and began to accelerate backward, nothing happened. He was shaking, hands slipping on the wheel as he turned the car in a sloppy arc to get it pointed in the right direction. He dropped the gearshift down into drive and screamed again as the driver’s side window burst open. A strange, deformed looking hand darted through with the rain of glass and latched onto Wes’s shoulder with long, alien fingers and claws that felt like tenterhooks when they sank deep into the meat. He screamed again and began to cry then, a hot rush spreading between his legs as his bladder let go.

  Wes hung onto the steering wheel as it yanked at him, only jerking away when it reached through the window with its other impossible hand to grab his forearm where it stretched toward the steering wheel. Claws scored deep valleys into his arm there, ripping through skin and muscle tissue like Wes was made of paper. He struggled to free himself from the vicious grip. He could feel the tips of its claws scraping against his shoulder blade, a new kind of pain to add to the symphony that played through him.

  “Let go, let go, let go!” Wes screamed. The car leapt forward when one of his kicking, madly pedaling feet found the gas. The sudden surge of forward motion ripped the beast’s claws free, taking hunks of meat with them and tearing open Wes’s shoulder like a tin can.

  He heard the thing bellow, enraged as it gave chase, a black silhouette against the red glow of the taillights. Wes held tight to the steering wheel, holding his foot all the way down on the gas. The tires hit the gravel and the car slewed back and forth in a drunken weave before the tires found traction. Something hit the rear driver’s side of the car and a moment later the back windshield exploded, flying pieces of glass hitting Wes’s neck with little wasp-like stings. He sobbed and screamed again, only able to manage a hoarse rasp of a cry.

  Behind him, the monster screamed back and hit his car, though the blow was weaker that time as Wes really began to accelerate and leave it behind. It was fast, but his car was faster and all he could do was say, “Thank God, thank God, thank God,” because he knew what it was he had seen and he knew what it would have done to him if it had managed to catch him or pull him out of the car. The damage it had done was bad enough, but he wasn’t dead yet and that meant he still had a chance.

  He barely slowed when he reached the end of the driveway and turned back onto the road that would lead him far away from the little Acadian-style cottage where monsters roamed the lawn. Gravel sprayed from beneath his tires and there was a sickening moment where he thought the car was going to flip over onto its side. The tires held onto the pavement though and Wes hit the main road at high speed, shaking and bawling like a baby, eyes so full of tears he could barely see the road in front of him.

  He felt dizzy, sick and lightheaded and he was wet from his shoulders to about mid-thigh. Only then did he realize he had pissed himself, that he could smell the sour tang of his urine—but just barely. It was nearly lost beneath the stronger, heavier odor of his blood. He didn’t know if he would make it to the hospital and he’d lost his phone in the tall grass; he couldn’t even call 9-1-1 for help.

  A few miles up the road was Gallagher House and he prayed that he could make it that far. Dawn Marie would help him if she was home and she had to be home because Wes had not escaped that monstrosity only to die in someone’s driveway. That just could not happen. He wiped his streaming eyes and smeared his face with blood. His right hand felt like it was full of burning pins and needles and his pinky hung limp and useless. Nerve damage. It had to be. His back had been flayed wide open and every bit of his body’s wiring twisted through there to meet the spine.

  It made Wes cry harder to even think about it; in so much pain he couldn’t really feel it anymore. His system was swimming in endorphins and adrenaline by that point, his brain pumping him full of feel good and feel nothing chemicals so he could keep running until he was safe.

  God, Wes really wanted to be safe more than anything and he knew—knew—that if he stopped, if he passed out and ran off the road that the thing would come back and drag him from his car, dead or alive, just so it could have its say. Just so it could claim victory.

  “I don’t want to be eaten,” Wes sobbed. “No, no. No!”

  A small voice inside his head said he was not thinking clearly or rationally, but Wes barely heard it. Up ahead was the blue-white glow of Gallagher House’s upside down sconces. He peed a little bit more then with relief then sobbed about it. Even then Wes had enough sense about himself to feel ashamed for pissing his pants like a scared little boy. But he was a little boy that had every right to be scared because he had seen what it was that had been going bump in the night around Sparrow Falls. Even more to the point, it had seen him and there was intelligence in its eyes—awareness. Wes knew it would remember him.

  He laid on the horn outside the gate, terrified at even being still for that long with nothing to protect him from the thing if it came up from the deep ditch on either side of the drive or from the woods across the road.

  “Please!” Wes yelled as he laid on the horn. “Please help me!” His vision was beginning to blur and the shaking was intensifying, becoming so bad it made the wavering scenery in front of him almost vibrate. His teeth were chattering and he was cold all over. “Help me!” he screamed again, but his voice was a sandpapered husk of sound, no one could hear him over the horn even if they were listening.

  He hunched over the steering wheel, forehead almost touching it when he heard the creak of the gate opening and looked up. A tall, dark figure was coming down the driveway toward him, a battery operated lantern raised above its head, leaving it in shadows. Wes took one look at it, at the wings (it’s a coat, not wings, a coat, Wes, the small voice in his head tried to tell him) billowing out behind it against the deep blue of the night and screamed again. He tried to punch the gas, but the engine only revved and the car jerked on its wheels. He had put it in park, the action as automatic breathing.

  A second later, another shadow whipped around that one, running and calling his name in a lovely, husky voice.

  “Wes, holy shit, fuck,” Dawn Marie said as she skidded to a halt beside his door. “Wes, what the goddamn hell is going on? Hey, hello? Jesus, Toby, he’s all fucked up.” She smoothed Wes’s hair back from his cold, clammy foreh
ead. “Honey, what happened?”

  Wes licked his lips and forced his eyes open to look at her concerned face. He wanted to answer, but he wanted to fall back into the pit of unconsciousness that yawned around him even worse.

  “Wes? Hey, come on, stay with me,” Dawn Marie said. She turned her head some. “Toby, call an ambulance. Oh, God, there’s so much blood. Wes, what happened? Wes?”

  Wes tried to grate it out, tried to tell her, but the world flipped itself over like a snow globe full of deepest midnight and sucked him into its consoling undertow.

  15

  Nick was cleaning up a puddle of vomit with bits of undigested mandarin orange slices floating around in it. He wasn’t even halfway through his shift and he already wanted to go home. He just wasn’t feeling the vomit-shit-blood cleaning detail. Before going to work at the hospital, Nick would not have believed so many residents of Sparrow Falls messily spewed their bodily fluids on a day-to-day basis.

  He leaned against his mop handle and looked down at the shiny floor where the vomit had so recently been. Down the hall, the thin wail of a sickly infant traveled to him as he gave the floor one last swipe of his mop before he put it in the bucket and sprayed the area with disinfectant. That vomit might have had bits of orange in it, but it was also a watery pea soup green in color. He didn’t think it would be wise to have any Exorcist-type germs ransacking the hospital corridors.