Monster Mash

by Gail Z Martin

  “Keys?” The idea of being able to change shape intrigued me, although with my luck, I’d have been a were-wombat or something equally unimpressive. Maybe a were-badger? At least they had attitude. I forced myself back to the conversation.

  “Corey had a collar made with my phone number on his name tag, and a little pouch for a key. That way if he got hurt or accidentally captured, someone would know he belonged to someone and I’d come get him, and if not, he could get back in the car.” Joel’s sad, fond tone broke my heart.

  “You guys were close?”

  Joel didn’t look at me, but he nodded and swallowed. “Yeah. Mom worked long hours after our dad skipped out. The clowder—that’s what bobcats call their pack—helped out a lot, but still, it was hard. I picked up odd jobs to help out, trying to be the man of the family,” he added with a snort. “Corey decided to take over the house stuff to lend a hand, which meant making dinner, packing lunches, and fussing at Mom and me like an old hen, when he was still really a kid himself.” He managed a wistful smile.

  “Then when Mom got sick, Corey and I juggled our hours so someone could be with her, but she had more patience with him, so he got stuck with the bulk of the work. He never complained. I tried to help, but I guess Mom was trying to free me up to work and didn’t realize it took both of us working to cover the costs.” He gave a self-conscious shrug. “Then she died, and it’s just been the two of us. The house was paid for, plenty big for just him and me, so we stayed put.”

  It sounded like the boys had gotten the shitty end of the stick. I could see where some people in town might think Corey had seen his chance to escape and taken it. But Joel knew him better than anyone, and I trusted Joel’s instincts. It also seemed out of character that a guy who had been so responsible would suddenly chuck it all to run away.

  “Did Corey have any enemies?” Normally, I’d leave questions like that to the cops, but having seen Officer Plummer in action, I figured I’d better check off all the boxes.

  “Corey? Nah. Both of us keep a pretty low profile. We go to work, come home and fix dinner, watch movies, or play video games.”

  “Do you spend much time with the rest of the clowder? Has there been any talk about where Corey might have gone?”

  Joel looked lost and disappointed. “They didn’t really take his disappearance seriously at first.”

  “At first?” I turned in a slow circle, looking at the forest all around us. It wouldn’t take much for a regular human to get dangerously lost out here. That happened to dozens of hapless hikers every year. But a bobcat shifter wasn’t likely to have trouble finding his way back or to turn an ankle and be stranded in the wilds.

  “They all told me that Corey had taken off to stretch his wings, like that would make me feel better about being worried sick and abandoned,” Joel replied. “But when I mentioned what I found when I went looking for him in my fur, some of the older people started acting really weird.”

  That got my attention. We had plenty of daylight, and no one else was around, so I pressed for more information. “Tell me.”

  “When I found the car, I let my cat loose on the trails,” Joel replied. “I could follow Corey’s trail for a little bit, and then it just disappeared. I picked up another person’s scent at that point, and it was…not normal.”

  “Not normal, how?”

  Joel frowned like he was trying to figure out how to put his cat-senses into words. “Unnatural. Abnormal. Wrong. My cat just knew something was very strange, in a bad way.”

  “Like another creature took him?” I couldn’t help wondering if the Mothman or the snallygaster could make off with an adult male bobcat.

  He shook his head. “It didn’t have a smell like a regular person or an animal—or even a shifter. It smelled…dead-ish. Or at least, not alive in the normal way.”

  My eyebrows rose. “A vampire, or maybe a ghoul?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. But when I told the older members of the clowder—the ones who are over one hundred human years—they acted like I’d seen the boogeyman. Started whispering that the ‘bad doctors’ were back.”

  That got my attention. “Bad doctors?”

  Joel grimaced. “Their term, not mine. Apparently, about a century ago, during the Depression, this area had a poor farm—where people could go when they didn’t have anywhere else. Times were hard, and while most of the shifters managed to avoid the place, some weren’t so lucky. The older people had heard stories about bad doctors who found out about shifters and tried to ‘study’ them or use them for ‘research.’ The ones they took to their lab didn’t come back.”

  “Do you remember the names of the doctors?”

  “I wish I did, but they were both unusual.”

  “Brunrichter and Tumblety?” I prompted.

  His eyes went wide. “How did you know?” Then he made the connection, and his expression crumpled. “You think they took Corey. They’re the men you said you’re hunting.”

  “I’m sorry. I hope for both your sakes that I’m wrong. But whoever or whatever these mad docs are, at least one of them is back, and hurting cryptids. My money is on Brunrichter. Kidnapping shifters—if he’s behind this—means he’s ramping up.”

  He looked at me, confused and worried. “But what are these bad docs if they’re that old? Shifters? Werewolves? Vampires? Witches?”

  All I could do was shrug. “For all I know, they made a deal with the Devil or worked dark magic. But I don’t think they’re fully human anymore—if they ever were.”

  He looked a little freaked out, and I didn’t blame him. After a moment or so, he took a deep breath. “How about if I take you on the loop Corey usually ran, and then if you have time, I can drive you over to where the old poor farm used to be.”

  Every county in Pennsylvania had a poor farm, thanks to the Victorians. Like the mental asylums and tuberculosis sanitariums of the same era, the compound usually was self-supporting, with livestock and a working farm. And like those other institutions, the high-minded ideals that created the facilities were too often lost in translation, leading to abuse and abysmal conditions. What was supposed to be a safe haven too frequently became a way to force those who had nowhere else to go into unpaid labor.

  “It’s gone now?” I asked as we headed into the forest.

  “It sat empty for a really long time, and they finally tore it down last year. Some of us ran through it when we were kids, on a dare. Spooky as fuck.”

  Considering the nightmarish treatment, the high death toll, and the unmarked, unlamented graves common in such places, that didn’t surprise me at all. But if the building was gone, it wasn’t currently the mad doc’s secret lair.

  I followed Joel onto the trail, a well-marked path covered with bark mulch. Given the conversation we’d had, I figured he needed some time to collect himself, and I didn’t have more to say, so we walked in silence, just taking in the scenery. It’s not a virgin forest like some places out West. All this area was clear-cut, once upon a time, and then abandoned as the timber companies moved on. The government took the unwanted properties, made them into a national forest, and managed it back to health. I’d heard that this section of PA was one of the least populated places east of the Mississippi. Out here in the woods, I could totally believe that.

  “It’s not a big circuit,” Joel said after a long time. “We’ve gone up over a ridge, down the other side, and doubled back. But it’s a pretty trail, not very busy, with plenty of bunnies and squirrels if he wanted a snack.”

  Since I’d eaten both at some point in my life, I really couldn’t say much, although I much preferred a chocolate caramel protein bar, myself.

  I didn’t expect to find any clues to Corey’s disappearance on the trail. Joel had been over it in human and cat form, and in the days since Corey went missing it had rained, and there could have been other hikers. But being out here and seeing the area for myself strengthened my gut feeling that someone had managed to get the drop on
him and carry him off.

  “In shifter form, would Corey have been as vulnerable to a tranq dart as a regular bobcat?”

  Joel’s eyes widened in alarm before he realized why I was asking. “We’re somewhat more resilient than non-shifter bobcats, but yeah, if the dose was right. You think someone drugged him?”

  I nodded. “I can’t prove it. But it makes sense if someone wanted him because they knew he was a shifter. It’s isolated out here, and the odds are low that anyone would notice even if whoever did this dragged an unconscious big cat out to the parking lot in broad daylight.” An adult male bobcat was the size of a medium-sized dog, about thirty to forty pounds heavy, two feet tall and three feet long, not counting the tail. Not exactly a lion, but too big to tuck into a pocket by far.

  “Why? If that mad doctor is somehow still alive, what is he going to do with Corey? Is he going to, oh God, experiment on him?” Joel looked like he was going to puke, and I didn’t blame him. I wished I could offer a good answer, but I didn’t want to lie.

  “I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.”

  Anger burned in Joel’s eyes, and for a few seconds, I swore I saw his eyes change from brown to dark yellow, like his inner cat. “Count me in. If you need help, I want a piece of that guy. And if there’s any chance Corey might still be alive.” His voice broke. “Then hell, yes. Sign me up.”

  “I might just take you up on that.” Joel seemed like a decent guy and having a shifter predator on our side wouldn’t hurt. I normally didn’t like to involve civilians, but Joel had skin in the game. I knew what it felt like to lose my brother to a monster—and want revenge. And if we could rescue Corey, that would be wonderful, but I didn’t want to hold out false hope.

  “There’s something else one of the old folks mentioned when they were talking about the mad doctors,” Joel said, as we headed back to the parking lot. “She said that when the docs got run off from the poor house here, they went to other counties, and then someone else said they’d heard tell the docs went to some secret government facility down South.”

  Lovely. Probably coming up with shifter super soldiers. I squeezed my eyes shut against the headache I felt building. Father Leo was going to love my report. Maybe I should just drop off some whiskey with it, to ease the stress.

  This time, Joel and I exchanged contact information, so I could call him in if we needed the cat cavalry. I told him I’d be in touch if I found anything out about Corey and headed out to the preserve.

  My mind rehashed everything I’d learned from Joel and the information Chiara had found. I knew she and Simon and Travis hadn’t had time to thoroughly research, but I worried that if Corey was still alive, he had to be running out of time. I thought about calling Father Leo, but I didn’t know how long his meetings went, and figured I’d wait until I got home. Instead, I gave Tristan a call to let him know I was on my way to the cryptid preserve. I figured he needed to hear what I’d learned from Joel, in case Brunrichter or Tumblety were dumb enough to go after any of the wolf shifters.

  The day had grown cloudy, and the temperature dropped. Between the woods, the elevation, and the fact that we were just a few miles from the New York border, it was always damn cold up here, even in summer. The wind picked up, and clouds cast strange shadows across the road as they moved.

  I’d driven most of the way to the preserve before I realized that one of the shadows kept repeating.

  Even though there wasn’t another car in sight on this road, I couldn’t spare a lot of attention for my rear view, since deer could be as lethal as any crazy cryptid. I swear some of those bucks have had all they’re going to take of hunting season and decide to go Rambo on our asses by hurling themselves in front of our cars just for spite.

  Suicidal anarchist deer didn’t really seem that outlandish, after everything I’d discussed today.

  But in the glimpses I could spare, the shadow that showed up over and over was long and pointed on each end like two diamond figures laid end to end.

  Or like wings.

  Pointy fucking dragon wings.

  The snallygaster broke through the clouds, coming in hot behind me. It was just as fugly as the legends promised—with yard-long Cthulhu-style tentacles wriggling from inside a black, sharp beak and a single eye in the middle of its “face.” The creature itself was an off-white, which probably made it easy to hide in the clouds. Taloned feet looked like they could rip off the roof of my truck cab as easy as opening a pull-tab can.

  This stretch of road had solid forest on both sides, with no pullover space, so beyond weaving a slalom course, my evasive maneuvers were limited. The snallygaster opened its beak, the tentacles writhed, and an unholy screech like the sound of a train whistle nearly deafened me.

  The creature dove at me, I swerved, and it shot past with the sound of flapping, leathery wings. It pulled up, came around, and tried again. I veered at the last minute and heard the shriek of metal tearing as talons tore at my tailgate.

  That just made me mad, because no one messes with Elvira.

  I barely glimpsed movement on the road ahead before the Mothman lunged in front of the truck. Tires screamed against asphalt as I left rubber on the road, cutting the wheel so sharply I felt the truck drift.

  Silverados aren’t meant to drift.

  I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road or my hand off the wheel, but with my right hand, I fished around under my seat and brought out my latest new “toy.” I’d been wondering when I’d get a chance to use it, and damned if right the fuck now didn’t seem like a great idea.

  The snallygaster dove once more, but this time, I realized it was after the Mothman and not me. Maybe he looked like an easier snack, or perhaps their species just didn’t like each other. But Snally came at the Mothman, whose wings weren’t any match for the pale tentacle dragon’s. Snally caught the Mothman in her claws, tossed him into the air and caught him again, this time by the legs, and started to rise.

  I opened the Silverado’s sunroof, stuck my Bolo Blaster out, and fired in the general direction of the two feuding cryptids.

  That sweet little piece of new weapons tech fires a bolo with a nine-foot Kevlar tether hella fast, and hooked ends catch in clothing, fur—or in this case, leathery skin—to keep the bolo fastened.

  The bolo hit where Snally’s talons held the Mothman’s legs, wrapping around both. The force of the hit or maybe the tightness of the unbreakable tether threw Snally off her game, and the next thing I knew, she was careening toward my truck.

  All I could do was duck.

  Several hundred pounds of snarled up dragon and Mothman slammed into the bed of my truck, hard enough to make it bounce, and shattering the back window of the cab. Once I realized I was still alive, I unfolded my arms from over my head and sat up.

  “Holy freaking sainted mother of God!” I yelped when I saw the wolf-man standing beside my door.

  Snally stopped whistling and started bleating like a terrified sheep. And in case I’d ever wondered what noise a Mothman made, it’s a high-pitched squeal.

  The wolf-man gave me a look that warned me to stay put, and held up one hand palm out, in case I didn’t get the message. Then his body wavered, bones realigned, and instead of a furry person, I saw a large wolf with dark brown hair who sat down and barked once, then let his tongue loll.

  We were too far from home for it to be Donny. “Tristan?” I asked.

  Two barks, apparently, means “yes.”

  Snally bleated again, sounding frightened out of her monstrous wits.

  “I’m going to tranq them,” I told Tristan. Then I got the tranq gun out of my gear bag in the back seat and came out cautiously, leaving a safe amount of room between me and my unexpected payload.

  I had no idea how much it would take to knock out a dragon and a Mothman, so I estimated their weights and hoped for the best. After a few minutes, Snally finally relaxed and quit bleating, while the Mothman drifted off right away. I shook my head as I surveyed the dama
ge to my truck. Snally’s talons had gouged into the bed, the back window was blown out, and I was sure the shocks were trashed.

  On the bright side, the dragon had stopped its godawful bleating.

  When I came back around to the front, Tristan had shifted back to his human form and gotten dressed.

  “New residents for the preserve?” he asked.

  “What was up with the way Snally freaked out?” I looked back at the peacefully sleeping cryptids and hoped they didn’t snore.

  “Snallygasters fear the Dwayyo,” Tristan replied as if everyone knew that.

  “The what?”

  “It’s a natural predator of the snallygaster; basically, a variety of wolf-man. The Pennsylvania Dutch call us Hexenwolves. Same thing, different names.”

  “Huh. Learn something new every day. So you’re saying that Snally is scared of you?”

  Tristan grimaced. “Sort of. She’s scared of a ‘wolf-man’—meaning a man-like wolf creature. In other words, half-shifted. We really don’t encourage walking around like that, for obvious reasons. Plus, it’s uncomfortable, and it plays holy havoc with manscaping. I’m not sure she’d be nearly as intimidated by my actual wolf.”

  I decided to just forget I heard anything about manscaping. TMI.

  “Well, they’re in the truck. Let’s get them to the preserve and have the vet look them over. Maybe they’re running from the mad doctor, too,” I said.

  Tristan hopped into the passenger seat, and I filled him in on everything that happened in Tidioute as we drove.

  “I’m worried to hear that someone’s targeting shifters,” he said. “That’s a threat to all of us, regardless of what our animal is. Do you think Joel will be safe where he is?”

  I shrugged. “Dunno. He’s with his clowder. I don’t think he’ll be going on long runs by himself any time soon.”

  Tristan shook his head. “See, that right there is already losing something so important. When we’re in our fur, at least for the larger predators, we’re free. Being able to run through the woods and know that there’s nothing that can hurt you—except for a hunter with a gun.”