NorthWest (John Hazard - Book II)

by Glaze, JH

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of this author’s imagination and have no rational connection to real persons living or dead. Any resemblance to locations, persons, anyone or anything in the real or spiritual world is purely coincidental and unintended.Copyright 2011 by Jeffery H. Glaze. All Rights Reserved. This book may not be reproduced, transmitted or distributed in any format without written authorization of the author as permitted under U.S. Copyright laws in accordance with title 17 United States Code.

  Cover Concept, Artwork and Design: JH Glaze

  Text Editing: Susan Grimm

  Published by MostCool Media Inc.

  Kindle Edition December 2011

  Dedicated to my wife Susan, who continues to run down this crazy path with me and helps me keep focused on my work. Your tireless support and editing assistance enables me to keep moving forward. You will forever be my favorite cheerleader.

  To all of my readers and reviewers, thank you for the awesome comments and encouragement. Without you, my stories are just words on paper.

  Finally, thank you to Zack Parris - my first pass editor, April Holt - my copy proofer, and my story review team: James Swearengin (ISSO Productions), Catherine Barson, and all of the others who have to listen to me drone on about my latest story, day after day. Y’all are the best.

  NorthWest

  The Paranormal Adventures of John Hazard Book II

  “With lies you may get ahead in the world - but you can never go back.”

  ~Russian proverb

  One

  Spring was late in coming to the northwestern forests this year. The animals were undoubtedly eager for the arrival of warmer weather and the abundance of food that would ultimately come. For now, they must settle for the early shoots of plants that had just begun to poke their heads out of the ground before the first big thaw of the season.

  The chilled morning air seemed to amplify the sound of a healthy eight-point buck working his way through the striking shadows that littered the path in front of him as he found sustenance in the young plants. He stepped over a moss-covered log and continued moving through the clearing making tracks in the newly fallen snow with his hooves and his snout as he pushed the snow about looking for the next tender morsel.

  He lifted his head often, alert to his surroundings. This being his seventh year of the mating season, he was more than aware of the smells and sounds around him lest he be surprised by another younger, more motivated buck, or worse a pack of wolves scouring the forest for breakfast.

  As he gracefully bent his head downward to sniff the forest floor, he took a step forward and found his progress halted as he encountered a very solid object with his antlers. He was startled by the sudden collision since mere seconds ago he had scanned the forest around him and had noticed nothing to be alarmed about.

  How could it be that he would find himself standing so close to another eight-point buck looking back at him? For a moment he was unsure how to react since he had not even a whiff of warning of another of his kind in this part of the forest. Surely there were no sounds to alert him. How could he have missed another male in his territory?

  He took a cautious step back, lowering his rack into a defensive position and the intruder did the same. He brought his hoof up and slammed it to the ground, again as a challenge, and again the animal in front of him mirrored his actions. Now he was angry. His nostrils flared and he snorted his frustrations at the brazen trespasser who dared to confront him in his feeding grounds.

  At this time of the year, contests were common among the bucks in the forest, usually for mating rights with a healthy young doe. However, it seemed this challenger wanted to fight for no apparent reason, and never one to resist the challenge, this strong male steadied himself for the charge. The moment had to be just right and he eyed his opponent who appeared to be waiting to make his move.

  He was growing increasingly impatient, locked in a standoff with a worthy adversary, so he decided it was time to make the first move. Summoning all of his strength he surged forward, shaking his head side to side in an attempt to inflict the most damage to this stranger when he struck. With full force he hit with a loud ‘Krrrack’ as he made contact – but with what?

  His right antler broke off at the crook of the first two points and tumbled to the ground as the force of his body caught up with him, pushing his neck into his shoulders with great energy. Stunned, he stumbled and went down on his front knees, struggling not to fall completely to the ground. He blew shafts of steam from his nostrils as he looked and saw that his opponent had suffered the same fate.

  The injured buck rose again to his feet, preparing to charge. All at once there was a whirring sound above him and a blur of motion as something struck his shoulder, slicing it wide open. The hit created a foot long gash.

  He bawled in pain as he was knocked off balance by the momentum of the strike, and blood shot straight out from the wound. His opponent disappeared as the blood struck some invisible object between them and cascaded down to the ground. He managed to turn his head a bit when he noticed the shadow from a moving object above him.

  Just then another swift blow struck his neck and his half severed head dropped toward his chest as his legs gave out and he slumped to the ground. The world went dark around him as he wondered where he was, and what had just happened.

  The creature dropped from its position in the tree to stand over its victim and began hacking off large chunks with a jagged appendage, greedily devouring the raw flesh. This was not a meal to be savored. It was only food – fuel – nothing more.

  Six Hours Earlier

  The panels of the radar screen lit up as the airman working in the Joint Tactical Ground Station was taking the second bite of the best turkey sandwich he had ever tasted. Warning alerts were blaring. Something was happening. An emergency appeared to be unfolding. “Shit!” he blurted out, blowing morsels of food from his overstuffed mouth.

  A red flashing blip appeared to be shooting across the sky at an unheard of velocity. He was so startled that he dropped his sandwich to the floor as he jumped to grab the mouse at his computer. With a click, he brought up the Eagle View tracking detail screen.

  He punched in a two digit speed dial number as he picked up the phone. The phone rang twice before the person on the other end answered. “I have a bogie over California travelling at about twelve hundred miles an hour and…” He stopped talking as the unknown object disappeared from the screen. A voice replied, “Did you say twelve hundred?”

  “Ah, well sir, it’s gone now. Should I do anything?”

  The man on the other end sounded tired and frustrated, “Listen, it was probably some kind of meteor. I don’t want to wake anyone at command at three in the morning to report a meteor! Was the recorder running?”

  “Yes sir. The system checks out. It’s been documented.”

  “If you see it again, we’ll scramble some fighters to check it out, but for now just stand down. We can review the recording in the morning.”

  “Yes sir.” He heard the officer grumbling as he disconnected from the comm. He looked down at the remains of half his sandwich lying face open on the floor. “Damn, sometimes I hate this shit,” he grumbled. He decided to clean up the mess just as soon as he finished the other half.

  He rolled his chair forward over a slice of tomato, grabbed the rest of the sandwich and took a big bite. “Man, this is good!” he mumbled through a mouth full of bread and lettuce.

  Meanwhile:

  Somewhere in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a strange ship landed hard, smashing trees and embedding itself partway in the damp, snow covered, s
till frozen ground. It was steaming from the heat of entry into our atmosphere. It had crashed more than fifty miles from the nearest populated area. Light snow was swirling and falling around it and there was no one there to see it, let alone hear it happen.

  Two

  The woman on the streetcar droned on and on, talking with a heavy accent, to her friend. Now and then, a word or two would merge into Spanglish, and then the pitch would go from dull to shrill and end in raucous laughter. Occasionally a baby would cry, breaking the rhythm of her rant, and she would glare at the baby and sigh loudly before continuing.

  Most of the animated conversation went completely unnoticed. John Hazard sat staring out the window, lost in thoughts of the day ahead of him, and particularly of the days behind. It’s strange where fate can lead. One day he was an up and coming detective in a small town police department with a promising career. The next he was living in the city taking classes at a community college and working on an entirely new career path for himself.

  John was still amazed at the situation he had encountered on a case eight months earlier. It was an experience that changed the way he saw the world, the way he perceived things to be, not in the natural world, but in a supernatural sense.

  He had moved with everything he owned to San Francisco to try to hide himself in the big city. He figured that this was a place where strange was the norm, a place where a freaked out detective might get his shit together after such a traumatic experience.

  The incident had begun with a murder investigation, a double homicide to be exact. It quickly developed into a strange and complex case involving missing people and some maniac who was possessed by a box that stole people’s spirits.

  The whole thing was really insane, and he tried to get over it in the weeks that followed the conclusion of the investigation. Nightmares, panic attacks, and night sweats drove him to request a leave of absence. Rather than stay in that small Idaho town, he packed everything into an old, rusted out pickup truck and drove non-stop to San Francisco, stopping only when the Pacific Ocean got in the way of going further. At the time, it just made sense to make a change.

  It took a week of searching to find a furnished efficiency apartment. After he moved in with his few boxes of belongings, he spent his days, maybe weeks, sitting on a sleeper sofa in his underwear. He frequently drank himself into a slow easy coma.

  By sometime in the sixth week or so, as he was finishing off a bottle of Jack, he had a revelation. What if he just quit the police force and got himself a new career, something that he could work at from his new found perspective. Not the standard detective work dealing with the day to day horrors of criminal investigation, but taking on the unknown terrors of the supernatural world. A world that, only some months before, he would not have even realized existed.

  John had always considered himself to be a logical person, a realist. It was a one of the requirements of the job in law enforcement. There was good and bad, right and wrong, black and white and sometimes a few shades of gray. Whatever he felt about it, he’d always trusted in the physical evidence that was before him. However, now he had been thrown a curve. Confronted with the supernatural, it scared the shit out of him to discover that the realm of the bizarre and paranormal actually existed. It really sucked to be so wrong about something so terrible, and often so inherently evil.

  Sure, he had watched all of those late night movies with ghosts, witches, demons, vampires, werewolves, and such. There were zombies, hairy beasts with big teeth and other things that bumped in the night, but those were supposed to be figments of imagination, of superstition, right? Wrong. Really wrong it seemed. If the evil, antique spirit-sucking box he had encountered on that case could exist, how many of these other things existed as well?

  His fate was sealed. He could not return to the days of innocence - those happy, carefree days (carefree? yeah right, maybe when he was three years old), days of believing there’s no such thing as monsters because now he knew unequivocally that there really were monsters.

  It was this one fact, this one little piece of information he had never really wanted to know, that overwhelmed him. It possessed him. It became the source of the only clear vision he had of where his life could go from here.

  He would not return to small town America to work as a detective investigating robberies, assaults and old fashioned homicides. That was evil on a petty scale. Even murder between humans, mostly crimes of passion, couldn’t compete with the heinous activity that came out of the supernatural realm.

  Now his destiny stretched out before him along a much darker path than he ever would have followed before. He would still perform the duties of a detective, but officially his new title would be John Hazard P.I., Paranormal Investigator. That was exactly as it was to appear on the business cards he had ordered, if the fucking things would ever come in the mail.

  Three

  Emily thought it seemed a little cool for this time of year as she pulled her sweater around her shoulders. She was sitting out on the deck of the coffee shop checking for jobs online with her laptop. Her latest bout of unemployment had gone on too long although she had gotten a few contracting and temporary jobs over the past three months.

  The problem was that temporary jobs caused interruptions in her unemployment checks, and there was not enough money to pay the bills. She had no choice. She scanned all of the major job sites in hopes that the right one would be hiding there, that perfect job that would both pay well and allow her some free time to continue to pursue her career goals. Maybe two jobs if that is what it took to get her finances straightened out.

  After finishing her scan of the regular sites, Emily went to the free site where most people posted things for sale. She clicked on Oakland, then the link for jobs. It seemed like it was going to take a long time for the site to load, so she glanced around at the clientele who had wandered in while she had been occupied.

  The guy behind the counter must be new because she had never seen him before and he had put more chocolate in her mocha than she liked. There was an old man at the counter who was trying to decide what he would order and grumbling about the prices and fancy coffee and something else she couldn’t quite hear.

  At one of the tables was a girl with cobalt blue hair and multiple piercings. She faced away from Emily, which allowed a view of the tattoos of dragons and snakes that extended from beneath the tank top she was wearing up her neck, to just below her earlobes where they would forever seem poised to strike. She chuckled silently, imagining thirty years in the future, as a grandmother explained to her granddaughter why she got the tattoos, and warning her never to do that to herself.

  Aside from the two diverse customers and the jerk-wad behind the counter, she was alone, and she liked it that way. She returned to her screen, allowing her eyes to readjust and scanned the listings. More of the usual crap. They wanted insurance agents, financial advisors, work from home, envelope stuffers, all of the things she had already considered and been warned about, and then something new jumped out at her.

  Videographer needed for documentary project. Minimum requirement: Bachelor’s Degree in communications and experience operating Steadicam and Final Cut video editing suite. Two week commitment required. Email resume to adventure@bay-uni.edu.

  That sounded good except for the two week timeframe. It was going to take something more permanent to really get her bills straightened out. Still it would be nice to finally use her Communications degree for something other than a framed document on her bedroom wall. She hadn’t worked with a Steadicam before, but she had friends who did, and she had been told it is ‘just a heavier camera’. No big deal. She could fake it.

  She bookmarked the website page and continued looking, but after a few minutes she found she was still thinking about the documentary project. She clicked on the bookmark and re-read the ad, then hovered the cursor over the link and clicked on it. Her email opened with a new message ready to send. She typed:

  To whom it may
concern,

  My name is Emily Sparks. I live just outside of Oakland. I found your ad on the Internet and would like more information about the videographer position. I have a B.A. in Communication, with a minor in Film Editing. I am very interested in your project and would like to learn more of the details. Please contact me by replying to this email.

  Thank you very much,

  Emily Sparks

  She clicked the ‘send’ button, waited until the message had cleared, closed her laptop and shoved it into her leather carry case.

  She gathered her empty cup, stir stick, and used napkins and stood to walk to the trash can. She noticed the old man had left the counter and when she stepped into the aisle, she found herself face to face with a strange man.

  “Excuse me, Miss.” He muttered as he hobbled past her, the smell of stale alcohol and body odor almost overwhelming her. She held her breath and smiled, politely nodding, and quickly headed out the door and back toward her apartment to print out some résumés.

  Walking briskly down the busy street, Emily looked up at the clear blue sky and smiled. As bad as things were for her right now, she was not even close to approaching the circumstances of that obviously destitute old man, and if things turned out as she expected, it might be a good day after all.

  Four

  It was a beautiful, quiet day at the community college. Many of the students were attending a rally at the stadium and most of the people left on campus were professors and students who were just not that involved in political issues. The atmosphere on campus had been charged for months now, and it was beginning to wear on the nerves of even the passive and uninvolved.

  Professor Macy Renner was sitting in her cluttered office filling out a spreadsheet of expenses that had so far accumulated for her documentary field trip project, and her face revealed her frustration. Rays of afternoon sun spiked into the room illuminating specks of dust that floated through the air like snowflakes every time she lifted a sheet of paper.