by Byron Starr
The only decoration was a small potted cactus Emilio had put in James’ cell earlier in the day as a joke. The more James got to know Emilio Rodriguez, the more he reminded James of Greg O’Brien. Emilio was not quite as rowdy as Greg, but they both had the same brand of humor; the rare kind that allowed them to laugh at themselves just as easily as they could laugh at someone else, and enabled them to tell a knock-knock joke to a seven-year old with the same enthusiasm they would tell a dirty joke to a barroom full of drunks. Right now, James’ new friendship with Emilio was painful. James realized that what Emilio and Greg had in common was they both loved life. And now Greg was dead.
These thoughts floated through James’ head as he tried to get some sleep. He tossed and turned for hours. Twice he would almost drift off and then he would see his wife’s arm, hand and her ring, bloodied and in the doorway of their home. James would wake up and have to fight back tears and an incredible urge to pound his pillow with his fists.
It’s my fault! All my fault!
Normally when one falls asleep they distance themselves from the cares of the real world, but when James finally fell asleep about three hours after bedding down, he drifted right into the savage mind of the creature that had killed those most dear to him. James didn’t get any rest when he slept at night — not while he was having those dreams. Still, he would bed down, hoping that he would see something that would help them kill the damned beast.
As James drifted off, this time for real, his sense of smell and his hearing increased as they began to merge with the beast.
His sense of taste also merged. This was something that had bothered James tremendously and had a lot to do with his loss of appetite over the last couple of weeks. He had tasted everything the beast had eaten while he was ‘riding along’ in its warped mind.
Another change that had gradually taken place in these dreams was that James now seemed more conscious of what was going on. The difference between his visions had always been that the visions felt more solid and less abstract than normal dreams, but these dreams of the beast took this reality to an entirely new level. It was almost nothing like a dream, it was more like watching a 3D movie that had smell, touch, and taste, as well as sight and hearing.
The beast was inside the city limits. Tonight it seemed to be moving with more caution than before. It would wait briefly in a shadow, then dart across a small area that was lit by the streetlights. At one point the beast sat in the shadows, watching a Newton City Police cruiser pass by.
James tried to wake himself in time, but couldn’t.
The beast pressed on, and James relaxed and ceased his attempts to wake up. He was curious as to where the beast was heading. Finally the beast came to the corner of Kaufman Street and Main Street. It peered over at the Newton County Courthouse; then its gaze fell on the Newton County Jail. Bill’s cruiser, James’ pickup, Sam’s Mercedes, and Clara’s little hatchback were parked in a parking lot that was otherwise empty. Despite the fact that the beast was currently in a well-lit area, it stood up and sniffed the air.
Part of James wanted to wake up, but another part of him was curious. Curiosity prevailed.
As if realizing he was exposed, the beast suddenly dropped to all fours and loped back into the shadows. From there the beast continued to look the area over. It watched as Darren’s cruiser pulled up beside Bill’s car. Darren and his partner, Tom Weatherford, a former police officer who had retired to the area, stepped out of the car and started toward the Sheriff’s Office. James again debated trying to wake up, but the beast was making no attempt to enter their mind, and Darren and Tom were too far away for the beast to rush them before they could draw their guns, so James assumed it wasn’t going to attack.
He was right. The beast sat there and watched for another ten minutes or so, then turned and left, just as stealthily as it came.
As the beast began to slowly make its way out of town, James began to feel as though he had let a golden opportunity slip by. If he had awakened while the beast was right in the middle of town — within view of the Sheriff’s Department — there was the possibility that every unit in town could have converged on the spot in only a few minutes.
The beast traveled through the woods for about an hour before it came to a small clearing, if you could call an area covered with brush and three foot tall pine saplings a clearing.
James recognized this clearing. It was in this weed choked vale that the beast’s new lair was located — the old white building that James had, as yet, been unable to identify. James began paying close attention to the beast’s peripheral vision in hope that he could see something that would tell him where the lair was as the beast approached the building.
No such luck.
Then something attracted the beast’s attention. Although James shared the beast’s senses while he was tagging along in its mind, he was not as accustomed to using its finely tuned perceptions: he missed whatever it was the beast heard or smelled.
One thing he didn’t miss was a sign that came into the beast’s vision when it turned to look in the direction of the sound or smell. The sign was old, its paint cracked and peeling from the years, but the words could still be made out. It read:
Beulah
Church of God
Sunday Services: 11:00 a.m.
The rest was hidden by the brush and saplings, but James was sure he had found what he’d been looking for.
* * *
Despite being excited about his discovery, James was also exhausted from lack of real sleep. When the beast curled up in a corner under the “Beulah Church of God,” and went to sleep, releasing James from the depths of its mind, James also fell into a deep sleep.
He dreamed. This time it was a real dream.
James was in his front yard looking at his house, only it was different. The grass and all the trees were dead. Not grey winter-dead, but the deep brown and black of real death.
He started walking across the yard toward his house. The walk was farther than it had ever been. It was as if every step he took only brought him an inch or so closer.
Halfway there he looked down and saw the skeleton of a dog. There was a faded blue collar around its neck, with a little metal tag shaped like a fire hydrant dangling from it. He knew without looking that the tag would have his name and address on one side and Answers to: LADY on the other.
He began to feel a panic creep in. He started running toward the house.
Angie! Jimmy!
It seemed as if James was running in place; he was running as fast as he could, but he only approached the house inch by inch. Maybe not even that much; it almost seemed as if he was standing still.
Then he was suddenly at the door. It wasn’t as if he had run a few inches at a time until he had made it to the door; it was more like he just disappeared from the middle of his yard and reappeared at his front doorstep.
James reached for the door, but before his hand touched the knob, the door slowly began creaking open on its own.
God, don’t look at the floor, please don’t let me look at the floor.
Standing inside the door was a strange combination of James and the beast. It looked like a variation of the villain Two-Face in the Batman comics. The thing in the door was split down the middle with one half looking like a mirror image of James, and the other half looking like the beast-thing that he seen in Bob McCoy’s video.
The James-beast-thing pointed toward the floor.
Don’t look at the floor.
The James-beast-thing began to laugh in a horrible gurgling voice that echoed strangely through the house. It seemed the echoes grew louder the more they repeated themselves until the sound was deafening and James was forced to cover his ears.
James looked at the floor.
Angie’s arm and hand were visible from behind the James-beast-thing’s legs, as was the blood splotched wedding band on her finger.
* * *
James awoke with a jerk, clutching his feather pi
llow with both fists. Before, when he’d awake from one of the dreams of his wife’s death, which now haunted his precious few hours of real sleep, he would be crying. But no tears were in his eyes now. His mind was set on the vision he had before his dream. His mind was set on revenge.
He dressed quickly. He glanced at a small battery-powered alarm clock sitting by his bed: 8:15 a.m. He’d slept late. Bill and Sam would already be up.
James walked down the hall and past both security doors that hadn’t been locked since the inmates had been transferred to Jasper. He trudged on, not even exchanging pleasantries with Debra when she wished him a good morning.
He opened the door to Bill’s office without knocking.
Bill and Emilio were in the office going over some of the final details of the game wardens’ schedules when James burst through the door.
From the perturbed look on Bill’s face, he was probably about to remind James about the knock-on-the-sheriff’s-office-door-before-entering-by-God policy, but he only managed to get out, “Ja ... ”
“Have you ever heard of the Beulah Church of God?”
Bill and Emilio seemed confused. They were only silent for about two and a half seconds, but it was too long for James.
“I saw that damn thing’s den,” James snapped. “It’s under an abandoned church called the Beulah Church of God.”
Bill spoke up, “There used to be a black church down an old dirt road just past Old Phelps Road. I think it was called Beulah Land or something.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Emilio said coming out of his seat.
As they started out the door to the Sheriff’s Office Bill called out down the hall to the dispatch office, “Debra, tell Banks to meet us at the city limits on North 87.”
“Is he at home?” Debra called back.
“No, he’s got the daytime shift in the city limits today.”
“Do we need to contact anyone else?” Emilio asked. “What about Sam?”
“Sam’s out at his dad’s place. It’ll take him too long to get here,” Bill said as he stepped out of the building and started across the parking lot at a trot, “And there’s only one road leading to that church and too many cars will make too much noise.”
Bill went to his cruiser and James and Emilio ran across the parking lot toward Emilio’s SUV.
“You drive,” Emilio told James.
At first James didn’t know why Emilio wanted him to drive, but as soon as they got in the Blazer, Emilio took the AR-15 down from where it was attached to the roll-cage behind the seats and laid it across his lap. James recalled that he had seen several marksmanship awards and trophies on Emilio’s mantle, including a second place trophy from a statewide NRA meet in San Antonio. Emilio checked the rifle’s magazine, then checked its chamber. Satisfied that the rifle was ready for action, he set it in the seat beside him, the barrel pointing toward the floorboard.
Bill led James and Emilio out of town. At the city limits sign they were joined by John Banks' city patrol car. The three patrol cars sped out of town at around ninety miles an hour without their lights or sirens. Only three miles out of Newton, at the familiar intersection of Highway 87 and Farm to Market Road 1414, they turned right, the opposite direction of James’ house. From there they continued about five more miles, when Bill put on his right blinker. Instead of turning right, he moved off the shoulderless road and got out and started walking to the Emilio’s SUV, which had pulled off the road behind him.
“What’s he doing?” James asked, as they pulled off the road.
Emilio pointed at what was less of a road and more of a break in the trees to the left of Farm Road 1414. Although Emilio was fairly new to the county, as a game warden he had made it his business to know every hiking trail and old logging road in his area. “That old road hasn’t been used for anything but logging and illegal hunting since the seventies. His car’ll never make it. Hell, I’m not sure we can.”
James rolled down his window to talk to Bill, but the sheriff passed up his door, opened the door, and behind him and got in. At almost the same time the right rear door opened and John got in the other side.
Emilio reached down in the floorboard and pushed the four-wheel drive lever to: 4W LOW. He sat back up and said, “Okay, let’s go.”
The SUV, now set in low-geared four-wheel drive, crossed the road then the ditch, and proceeded on down a barely visible road. Wheel ruts weren’t visible except where they had turned to mud holes. There were even chest high pine saplings growing in the middle of the road. These saplings were bent almost flat to the ground as the SUV passed over them and as they came out the other side they snapped back up, though they were not quite as straight up and down as before the four-wheel-drive ran over them.
Everyone sat in silence as the truck made its way down the path.
James looked in the rear view mirror at John Banks. He could see the confusion on the man’s face. The police chief was the only one present who didn’t know what was going on, but from what James knew about him, he wasn’t the type that liked to admit he didn’t understand a situation. He sat in silence nervously fidgeting with his seatbelt strap. Finally his curiosity got the better of him.
John shifted nervously in his seat. “What’s this all about, Bill?” John asked, his round head bobbing on his shoulders as the truck plunged through yet another mud hole.
Bill didn’t answer immediately. James knew Bill had informed Chief Deputy Carl Price about James’ visions, since he was Bill’s second-in-command at the Sheriff’s Department, but they had decided against telling Police Chief Banks. Telling John would be like placing an ad in the Newton County Reporter, or putting up a billboard downtown. John told his wife, Lula, just about everything, and Lula Banks was good friends with Alice Pender, the town gossip. It would only be a matter of hours, if not minutes, before their little secret became common knowledge in Newton.
John was about to repeat the question when Emilio helped Bill out with a simple, yet effective, fib. “A local kid was down this road last night with his girlfriend and thought he saw some sort of bear-like animal at the old Beulah Church.”
Only a four-wheel-drive could make it down this dirt road, and very few kids had access to one of these. And if this kid had a four-wheel-drive it was very doubtful he would pull all the way down the road to the Beulah Church just to do a little groping when ducking behind the first row of trees would do just as good. Nonetheless, John fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
Emilio continued, “He thought he saw the thing take off under the church. If it’s there, maybe we can catch it sleeping.”
You don’t live with someone for twenty-two years without having some of their bad habits rub off on you, and John’s wife’s love of gossip had certainly rubbed off on him. With a sly grin, John leaned forward in his seat and asked, “Who was down here parking? Was it Sherry Tice’s daughter?”
This time it was Bill’s turn to be thinking on his feet. “They didn’t leave their name.”
“Oh,” John replied somewhat sullenly. Satisfied but not happy with the answer, he leaned back in his seat and became silent.
They continued slowly down the muddy dirt road for about a half a mile further before Emilio put his rifle across his lap and said, “It’s right around this curve.”
As they started around the next curve, James could make out a steeple piercing through the tops of the trees. The steeple had been white at one time, but years without a fresh coat of paint had left it an ugly color that was somewhere between light grey and tan. For some reason this steeple looked foreboding; it looked like it was peering through the trees, watching them. Sort of a scout for the hellish beast that had taken up residence there.
A chill raced up and down James’ spine.
* * *
The beast awoke. It could hear something in the distance.
It made its way to the opening in the skirt around the church, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. However, the sound o
f something approaching was unmistakable.
It sniffed the air. The scent was familiar. It smelled like one of the vehicles the beast’s favorite prey transported themselves in.
Though its vision was poor in the daylight, the beast could make out something slowly making its way through the underbrush. The beast saw a metallic reflection coming from the same direction as the sound. The reflection came again. It seemed to be heading this way. Then the large object became even clearer and something large and green could definitely be seen between the trees.
The beast crawled out from under the house and ran for the woods.
* * *
As the SUV came around the corner, the small, white, one-roomed church came into view.
James saw something dart from the side of the building. “Look!” he said, pointing at the dark shape.
But Emilio was a step ahead of him. He had already opened the door and was stepping out of the slow moving truck. He brought the AR-15 to his shoulder. The beast was well over one hundred yards away and moving quickly toward the trees. Emilio had only about one second to aim and fire before the beast disappeared from sight. This single shot was followed by a series of seven more shots fired blindly into the area where the beast had entered the woods.
Emilio raced ahead with the rifle still to his shoulder and pointing in the direction where the beast had entered the woods.
