by Greg Curtis
ALIEN CALLER
GREG CURTIS
SMASHWORDS EDITION
COPYRIGHT: MARCH 2013
Dedication.
This book is dedicated to my mother Ruth Curtis and my sister Lucille Curtis, my biggest supporters, harshest critics and all round cheer team, and without whom this book would not have been written. It’s also dedicated to my father Allen Curtis, gone too soon but not forgotten.
Chapter One.
It was the silence that woke him. The nervous silence that usually meant a predator was in the area. A wild cat or a dog. But this was no ordinary predator. He felt it in his bones. He couldn’t really have said exactly what was different about this silence from any other, except for its scale. He knew it extended for miles, which was wrong in itself. Even in the furthest distance he couldn’t hear a bird call, a bush rustle or a cricket chirp. But it was more than that. Much more. Somewhere, deep in his very marrow he knew the silence just wasn’t natural. Nor was whatever was causing it.
He also knew it was heading his way. That was why the silence had grown.
Naturally his first thought was that Dimock had finally escaped from whatever high tech prison he’d been locked up in for the last six years. That was always his first thought, even though it had never been the case. So far. Still it could be. His blood chilled accordingly as he thought of what that monster would do to him and so many others. And how lucky he’d be to survive even with all the precautions he’d taken. But he quickly rejected it. Dimock was never silent, and he didn’t creep. If it had been him, his opening move would have been a rocket attack if not a nuclear missile strike. He wouldn’t lower himself to skulk around David’s yard like a wary thief in the dark. But that didn’t mean he was safe either. There were plenty of others out there who would wish him harm if they knew who he was or where he lived.
That was the problem with having been an agent for so many years. The work sucked, the pay was lousy and then if you were lucky enough to make it to retirement you had to spend the rest of your life in hiding.
David crawled out from under the thick duvet, padded across the floor as silently as he could in bare feet on bare wooden boards, and reached for the shotgun he always kept behind the door. It was best to be ready. You never knew when one of the local so called mountain men would turn up drunk and start shooting up the place. There were still a few of them around in these northern climes, and they lived up to their alcohol soaked reputations. It wasn’t that they couldn’t handle the booze. It was that on those few days each year when they did make it in to town for a drink, they didn’t want to.
But even as he grabbed it, he knew it wasn’t the silence caused by a local. The local wildlife knew them all and they would seldom be silent for more than a few seconds. Besides, a drunk usually made a heap of noise. This was something different. It was the absolute silence of the wildlife as something new and strange passed them by; like a hunter. Something they didn’t recognize. No more did he and the shotgun felt strangely inadequate in his hands.
Still barefoot he padded his way to the lounge in the dark. Despite his best efforts his feet made slapping noises on the wooden floor and he cursed them, hoping they couldn’t be heard outside the house. Not that any animal would care. Once again he thought about getting some carpet soon. Carpet muffled noise and besides, while polished wooden floors were pretty they weren’t that warm in winter.
He reached the front veranda and checked the sliding door, making sure it was securely locked. Too often he’d enjoyed the peace so much out here that he’d left it unlocked and even open at night, an invitation to trouble even here in this wilderness paradise, though the enemy was more likely to be raccoons then assassins. It was a serious lapse in judgement for someone from his world, but one he hadn’t been too hard on himself about these last few years. Maybe he should have been. But for once the bolt was safely home. The windows were locked and the back door was latched. He tapped the bolt softly with relief. No one at least was inside the house and thanks to his years of paranoia, no one was getting in either. Not without a tank. Or super strength.
Through the armour plated reinforced glass doors he could see the surrounding bush and lake, and he carefully studied it, looking for any sign of something unusual. There was nothing. But then he wasn’t sure that there should have been. Not if whatever was coming was a true predator. And deep down in the marrow of his bones he felt that it was.
Everything looked calm. Too calm. Years of undercover work in the army, more in the various government agencies, and still further years spent living in the wilderness told him it was all wrong. Very wrong. There was someone out there. Someone or something. Worse it was someone or something he didn’t know. It was not one of his long list of enemies who was finally coming to kill him. Nor was it any animal he knew of. It was something else. He felt the bristles standing up on the back of his neck.
Someone or something was out there, and the lord only knew what it was doing while he hunkered down in his cottage bunker waiting for it to make the first move, and that was wrong. He should have gone out and faced it, taken it head on, even if he didn’t stand a chance if it truly was Dimock. Still that was just his nature, and he couldn’t give in to it. Now was the time to be smart. He waited, knowing it was the clever thing to do. He waited and he watched, and then he waited some more.
Ten minutes, a half an hour passed and he saw nothing. There was nothing to see, but he still knew it was out there. And he understood that it was watching him even as he looked for it. He knew it even if he had no way of explaining how he could know. He trusted his feelings. After so many years of relying on them and of having them save his skin repeatedly, he knew that he could.
The moon was high but cloud covered its remaining light so that there was not enough to see much more than the outline of the bush, especially from inside his cabin. Regardless, he scanned the darkened forest looking for the slightest indication of who or what might be out there. Nothing could be seen. But even as he cursed the darkness he realized it protected him as well. If he couldn’t see out, then whoever was out there couldn’t see in either. Or at least in theory not very well. But the theory was little comfort.
The back of his neck said otherwise. He was being watched, intently.
Should he activate the defences, he wondered? He asked himself the question a thousand times with every heartbeat, torn between fear of an imminent attack and the need to always stay hidden. But he stayed his hand. His defences were for major threats. They weren’t for whoever or whatever this was. He could handle this with his walls and his guns. And besides, it was always possible he could end up killing a local. That he didn’t want. So he kept his peace and waited for whoever or whatever it was to make the first move.
For the longest time he just stood there keeping perfectly still behind the glass slider, trying to find his watcher, and failing. But he had infinite patience and he wasn’t about to give up. And so it was that an hour and then surely two hours passed without him moving a single muscle. Until of course cramp started setting in. First his arms holding the shotgun, then his neck and so on. He’d been trained to deal with cramp in the army. He knew how to control his breathing and keep his muscles limber even when he couldn’t move, but that training could only help him for so long.
Still he persevered as long as he could. He was determined not to give away his hand. But in time even he had to yield or be unable to move in the morning. He decided to make for the armchair, a more comfortable place to stand watch from. And he knew it was going to be a long night.
His decision must have been some sort of signal, since it was just as he was finally turning away that he saw it. The reflection of yellow, glowing slightly in the weak moonlight. He froze anew, the cramp
suddenly forgotten.
David could see yellow eyes glowing in the weak moonlight down by the boat shed not more than fifty meters away. Cougar was his immediate thought. While there hadn’t been one seen in at least thirty years it was still the logical explanation. But even as he accepted that simple truth he changed his mind. There was something wrong with the eyes. It was their shape. They were too round, too small and they faced him directly. The head, a shadowy mass in which the eyes glowed, was too round. And it was nowhere near the bush where it should be. Instead it was out in the open near the water, watching him.
He shuddered knowing that somehow, even inside a darkened building, the creature saw him. More than that, it studied him. It was examining him like a soldier watching his enemies, or a scientist studying his subjects. There was some terrible intelligence in its eyes. Predatory. This was more than an animal. He grasped the gun more tightly and returned the stare.
Abruptly the eyes lifted, as the creature stood up. Going from a four footed prowl to a two legged stance as it searched the area, and sending his thoughts into a sudden tailspin.
It couldn’t do that.
That simple fact just kept running around and around in his brain. No animal could do that, not even a bear. But it had. There was nothing for it to put its front feet on, the ground between them was perfectly flat, and even if there had been something out there it hadn’t climbed up on anything. It had just stood up. It couldn’t possibly have done what he had just seen. But it had.
The creature had stood up, like a man. And like a man, those eyes were rock steady at their new height. The creature was bipedal. He almost squeezed the trigger in shock. It was a man, crawling around on the ground like an animal. And yet those eyes weren’t human. They weren’t animal but they most definitely weren’t human either. He held his ground and steadied his nerves.
The light began to improve as the moon finally emerged from behind whatever clouds had hidden it, and he saw the creature more clearly. He almost wished he hadn’t. It was like a man - almost, but its shape was wrong. Its legs were bent strangely, as though they were double jointed. It had body hair everywhere, glistening in the moonlight, and it had a tail that could move by itself as it swished back and forwards, angrily, maybe hungrily. So it wasn’t truly a man. Not even one in costume. Neither was it a cougar. Not even one trained in a circus. That little he could be certain of.
He was given little more chance to observe as it suddenly decided to move on. The creature started to search the surrounds, still on two legs. It moved in fits and starts, but always smoothly, silently and very fast. It was almost too fast for him to follow. He told himself he was dreaming but he didn’t dare rub his eyes. It was so quick it could cover the fifty meters between them in the few seconds before he opened them again. And while the glass between them was toughened and bullet proof, it had never been designed to stop whatever this was.
Fortunately, it didn’t approach. Instead it moved around the lake front, stopping occasionally to smell the air or scan the horizon, but at least moving away.
In under a minute it had disappeared from sight even though it had been out in the open under the pale moonlight. The distance had concealed it too easily. He didn’t dare assume it had gone. Instead he held the gun to him and waited. It was a crazy thing to do. The house was secure, and no normal animal would willingly come near a human anyway. But logic didn’t answer his fears. This was no normal animal. There was nothing normal about it at all.
Fully an hour passed before he moved, and then it was only to sit down in the ancient rocker chair with the gun across his knees. It wasn’t a comfortable position. He’d bought the chair because it seemed in keeping with his home and then never used it once he discovered how poorly it fit his oversized frame. Then again, he didn’t really want to be put at ease. He knew he would get no more sleep that night. He couldn’t afford to sleep with the creature out there.
Instead he sat there in his wooden rocking chair in the middle of the lounge, the gun cradled in his lap, both hands firmly on it, and kept watch for the rest of the night.
Chapter Two.
The following morning when David uncoiled himself from the rocker, he discovered two things. First he was as stiff as a board from having slept upright in the chair all night, and second, he was still alert for the creature. He could feel it. Like the sudden deafening quiet, just before a big explosion.
The hairs on the back of his neck, the unaccustomed tension in his guts, the way his fingers still clung instinctively to the gun. They all told him the same story. It might have gone, but he knew it hadn’t gone far. Whatever it was, wherever it was, it was close; watching, waiting, biding its time. Yet he also understood he was safe for the moment. It wouldn’t attack. Not by day. Night was its hunting time. Daytime was his time.
Dawn had just cracked the sky when he decided to investigate. Knowledge was always the key to survival, and he surely needed it.
The early morning light revealed another perfect day to come in the mountains, with the deep blue of the alpine lake reflecting the sun’s glorious brilliance directly into his living room. The sun itself was just ascending above the mountain range to the east, a hint of redness from the previous night’s rain shrouding it like a gown. The air even inside his house was crystal fresh and cool with the remnants of winter snow still on it. While all around animal and bird life were beginning their morning rituals with song.
Normally he would have simply prepared his breakfast and eaten it on the veranda, wondering as always how any place could be so beautiful, and how he could be so fortunate as to live here. Even to have been able to afford a cabin by such a beautiful lake. Anywhere else in the country, even in the relatively quiet state of Nebraska, and his house would have been out of his fiscal reach. But this was still an unspoiled paradise that was too far from any major cities to have been hit by the real estate market. And with only metal roads leading to it, no yuppies in Mercedes would be making it their home any time soon. Here he could not only afford a cabin, he could have another eighteen acres of prime forest to go with it. But then Helena was more than five hours drive away on a good day. On a bad one it was simply unreachable as the unsealed roads were closed. And even when they were open it was only to serious four wheel drives. That kept the property speculators away. Another advantage to life among the Rockies.
Sadly this particular morning even the serene majesty that was his home couldn’t draw his thoughts away from his nocturnal visitor. Coffee, breakfast and tranquil contemplation of the wonders of the Earth could wait until he knew what had been out there.
Clutching an MP5 machine pistol he grabbed from the wardrobe he eased the front slider open, grateful that he kept it oiled so that it didn’t squeak, and made his way down to the boat house, studying the earth intently as he went. The creature might not be around at the moment, but he knew that unless it was a ghost it would have left its prints in the soft earth.
Sure enough he found them. There were prints all around the boat house where he had seen it and he was grateful for that. At least it proved that it was real and not his imagination running wild. But no sooner had he found them then he wondered anew just what he’d seen. For the tracks were like nothing he’d ever imagined.
They were in two halves. The front half of the print looked like an animal’s clawed paw except that it had five toes with five claws on it. In that at least it was almost like a man’s feet, with claws instead of toenails. But it was the back half that really bothered him. The creature had a heal. While it stood and walked on the front balls of its feet, four inches behind it was the heel which suggested it occasionally stood straight back on them. No animal and no human in creation had that foot print. He might not be a native woodsman but he knew that much. Sadly he still didn’t have a clue what it actually was, or rather, he didn’t want to.
The ever wary soldier in him kept him from examining the scene any more closely. The night was still too recent and the creature c
ould still be close. Safety first. Later, much later after coffee and breakfast, he’d make his way back and maybe take a plaster cast of some of the prints. For the moment he only really needed to know that the creature was at least some distance away.
He followed the trail from the boat house to the rest of the lake front, and saw tracks heading away for at least a couple of hundred meters. Beyond that the lake was surrounded by marsh and swamp grass. It had to have gone back towards the woods there and he shuddered at the thought of following it into the darkened woods. Good enough to know that it had left.
