by James R Tuck
I watched from the couch in the dark as the unjolly fat man-looking thing scrambled to its feet cursing in a low, smooth voice its accent tinged with missing consonants. It looked just like it had earlier today when I watched it from the food court at the mall. Short and round, almost as wide as it was tall, with a long white beard and hair that fell in waves from under the rim of what looked like a red stocking cap with a jingle bell on the tip of it. But the bell never jingled and the hat didn't move. It was stiff. The red and white that was supposed to be a suit hung attached to its body like the skin of a lizard.
Santa Claus?
Yeah right. More like Satan Claws.
I flicked the lamp on beside me, cutting the twinkling darkness with a pool of incandescence.
The thing in front of me froze, sulfur-yellow eyes slitting.
"Merry Christmas, asshole." I stood up off the couch, brushing away the bamboo slivers and cookie crumbs that covered my shirt. My left hand dropped the closed pocketknife into my pocket while my right held the whittled bamboo stake loosely by my side.
The thing by the fireplace gulped, distended Adams Apple bobbing through white beard. It pasted on a grin, trying to be reassuring. It might have worked but its teeth were too long, lips too widely stretched to be human. "Ho, ho, ho. I . . ."
"Cut the crap, jackass. I'm onto your game." I held the sharpened bamboo stake up in front of me.
The thing just blinked, sodium eyes shuttering up and down.
It was an Aswang, a shapeshifting monster from the Philippines. I'd tracked it to a mall on the east side of Atlanta. Two kids had gone missing in the last week. The only things they had in common was they were both Filipino and on the day of their disappearance they had gone to the same mall to have their picture taken with Santa. It hadn't been hard for me to spot this thing posing as Old St. Nick. It had set up at the mall, putting kids on its lap, asking them if they had been naughty or nice, and scent-marking the Filipino kids so it could track them to their home that night.
I had seen it do it to seven year-old Avelino Villanueva. That's why I convinced his mom and dad to let me be here in their house tonight while they stayed with family. They knew the old tales of pedophilic, bloodsucking, witch-hags from their country. It had been pretty easy to convince them to let me handle it.
After all, it's what I do for a living.
Deacon Chalk, Occult Bounty Hunter at your service. You got monster-sized problems? I've got bullet-sized solutions. Or in this case, bamboo stake-sized solutions since the only way to kill an Aswang is to shove bamboo through its heart and then burn it.
The Aswang hissed at me, long thin tongue darting out between whisker-framed lips. It darted to the left with inhuman speed, a blur of red and white skin streaking toward the front door and freedom.
With a jolt it drew up short, feet slipping on faux-hardwood floors to spill him on his ass before he could touch the bundle of garlic bulbs I'd duct-taped to the door.
Welcome to vampire myth made real 101. Class is in session.
I gestured around the room with the pointy end of the bamboo. "I was expecting you dumbass. I'm not here by coincidence. You'll find garlic at every exit."
The thing scrambled to its feet. Claws click-clacked on the Pergo. "You will not stop me!" The accent mangled even more as thick tusks began to curve out of an unhinged lower jaw. "Your blood will do to slake my thirst. It does not have to be the boy's."
Its head lowered, skull shifting into a snouted nightmare with bulging eyes and brackish drool running from tusk and teeth. "But I will not get to have any fun with you beforehand like I would with him."
I took a step closer. "Bring it, you sick son of a bitch."
The Aswang dropped to all fours, transformation complete. The boiled lobster colored skin was gone, covered now in coarse black fur that bristled over bulging muscles. Its head had shifted into a wide and thick pig skull on a trunk of a neck. Four-inch claws curved off its hands and feet matching the twelve-inch tusks that curved out of its jaw. Drool hung in ropes off bloody red lips. Wet snot snuffled out of its snout to spatter on the floor.
It hunkered down, preparing to charge.
I leaned back on my right leg, bracing myself, bamboo stake held low behind me, left hand in my jacket pocket.
Its yellow eyes seeped with fluid, tusks and teeth gnashing together as it growled.
I took a deep breath, in through my nose, out through my mouth. Centering.
The Aswang burst into action, driving forward with inhuman speed. It closed the distance between us in a flash, ripping through the air. Murderous teeth stretched wide. Vicious claws outstretched to rip me to shreds. Hot, stank, carrion breath washed over me, making my eyes water.
I jerked my left hand out of my pocket as its talons brushed the leather of my jacket. A fistful of blessed rosaries punched the monster in the face.
The effect was instantaneous.
The Aswang's feet went out from under it, tumbling the beast over onto its back as it reared away from the holy objects with an ear-ringing squeal. Bristle-furred body twisted away from me, talons skritching across the wood laminate flooring. The skin of its belly stretched tight as its spine jerked to change the direction of its charge.
I struck.
Knife-sharpened bamboo punched through that skin like a butcher knife through a water balloon. Chartreuse blood gushed from the hollow tube of bamboo shooting out the end I held in my hand. It splashed, hot, wet, and foul on the legs of my jeans, soaking through.
Dammit. I should start wearing coveralls for this.
I rode the Aswang to the floor, hand jerking the stake, angling for the heart. You gotta get the heart or else you just have a pissed off monster to deal with. Talons tore at my jacket as the monster thrashed under me.
Almost. . .
I shoved up, felt the resistance.
There!
One last yank on the stake and the Aswang went stiff, muscles locking in death. Its last breath went out with a shudder, washing across my face, making my eyes water.
Standing, I stretched out muscles made tight with adrenaline. The Aswang lay at my feet. Now I would have to burn the body to keep it from coming back. I looked over at the fireplace it had come down. It looked big enough to do the job. Good thing I had my Zippo in my pocket.
First things first though.
My eye fell on the last two oatmeal cookies, beckoning me from the plate on the coffee table.
Now where was that damned milk?
Literary Escapism, one of the biggest blogs out there, asked me to contribute to their Black Friday event. Basically me and a bunch of the biggest names in Urban Fantasy wrote these short stories that just had to have something to do with Black Friday, the nightmare shopping day after Thanksgiving. It took mere minutes for me to come up with how Deacon would handle shopping for Black Friday. He's still carrying the Desert Eagle .357 so this story falls before SPIDER'S LULLABY.
In this one I also got to do my spin on a Southern monster. I had a lot of fun really boomifying (actual word) this innocuous bedtime threat into something legitimately creeptastic.
SHOP TIL YOU DROP
I HATE THE MALL.
I hate the mall because people are monsters.
Scratch that. People aren’t monsters. They’re worse. Trust me, I know monsters, and after this morning I would rather deal with them anytime.
Monsters I can shoot.
I stood at the top of the escalator outside of Bath and Bodyworks watching a mob of people who'd lost their fucking minds. Shoving and scratching, pushing and hitting, yanking and pulling they wrestled over small bottles of lotion designed to smell like a Christmas bakery which could be yours for the low price of one dollar and your sanity, but only for this very special shopping day. I love a nice Lemongrass Sage body spray as much as the next guy, but fuck that.
I've faced down bloodsuckers, the walking dead, voodoo goat-men, and a host of other creepy crawlies. That’s my job. Deacon Chalk,
Occult Bounty Hunter at your service. Have silver bullets, will travel. Point is, if you're dealing with a pack of Werewolves I'll jump in without hesitation but I was not getting in the middle of a pack of crazed shoppers on Black Friday.
No. Way. In. HELL.
This is why I turned to my left and saw what I saw.
A monster stood about fifty feet from me outside the front of Toy Depot holding a red balloon and a cup of coffee.
He didn’t look like a monster. He looked like a short, dull, older man in a cardigan and khakis. Someone’s gentle grandfather who would smell of butterscotch and would softly tousle your hair while he told knock-knock jokes that were funny when he was your age six decades ago.
He didn’t look like a monster to the oh-so-busy shoppers moving in currents of commerce. They walked right by him without a blink, all of them shifting slightly, just enough, to pass around him like a rock in a stream.
That was the tip off.
Standing in the center of the walkway on the busiest shopping day of the year? He should've been knocked down in two seconds flat. Stepped on like a flower in a stampede of humanity on a shopping mission. Instead he stood there nonchalantly while everybody just slipstreamed to the side like he was surrounded by a Teflon forcefield.
Stood there watching children dart through the aisles of Toy Depot.
My hand was under my jacket, fingers touching the grip of the Desert Eagle under my arm. My palm itched with the desire to yank it out.
Someone bumped my elbow, driving my hand into the butt of the gun.
The plump redhead didn’t even slow down, hustling on past with her even plumper boyfriend laden with bags and bundles. He looked back and gave me a sad shrug from under his burden of name brand packages and emasculation. I pulled my hand away and held it by my side, fingers clenched.
Son of a bitch.
There were too many civilians around. I couldn’t start blasting; someone would be caught in the crossfire. I'd have to handle this discreetly.
I hate being discreet.
I needed a closer look to see what exactly I was dealing with so I stepped into the flow of people and began walking toward the monster. People jostled, rubbing on both sides of me. I kept my eyes on the thing. It was easy to do being a head taller than most of the crowd around me. Pushing, I stayed on the edge of the flow so I would pass close to the thing. Each step brought me closer. The thing kept watching the store, taking small sips from the coffee cup. Reaching deep, I grabbed hold of the power that lives inside of me.
Five years ago, while hunting the monster that killed my family I got dead. An Angel I'd rescued resurrected me with her blood. I came back stronger, faster, and tougher than a regular human. I can also sense and read supernatural stuff, like radar for weirdness. This is what I pushed out in the direction of the thing I walked towards.
My power moved out, passing through the humans like they weren’t there. It brushed up against the monster when I was only a few steps away. I felt it connect, searching out his nature.
My mouth filled with the putrid taste of stagnant water.
I fought down my gag reflex, chewing it back, swallowing it down. The flavor was green and brackish, coating my throat and clotting my nostrils. It tasted like that cucumber left in the bottom of the refrigerator and forgotten. You know, the one that liquefied in the bag becoming a sack of stank-ass sludge. It tasted like that smells.
I reeled my power in with a jerk. It snapped back inside me like a bone breaking. The foul taste settled on the back of my throat, not choking anymore, but still there, hanging on like wet paint. I hate my power sometimes. It’s tied in with my other senses. Which is why it manifests as random bits of insight that I have to figure out. My mind tumbled around the information I had.
Tastes like swamp water filtered with ass, stalks children, and can make people ignore its presence.
One step away from it I clicked on what I was dealing with.
Boogeyman.
The Boogeyman is a southern monster. Parents threaten children who won’t go to bed that the Boogeyman will get them. Thing is, boogeymen are real. Inbred third cousins twice removed from the Fey, they’re malevolent puddles of water in skinsacks who eat the lifeforce of children.
My hand clamped down on the Boogeyman’s arm. Squishy, it felt like a water balloon under my fingers. His face jerked toward me. Wet, moss-colored eyes sloshed up, wide and startled. His face was almost blurry, skin slipping left and right, unanchored to any structure underneath. I pulled him close, nose scrunching, nostrils flaring at the smell of soured laundry wafting off him. The balloon slipped from his hand, rising up like a helium-filled dream. The ribbon slipped across my cheek as it passed.
The glamour he projected rolled up and over me like a blanket, flapping to surround both of us. People immediately began stepping around like we weren’t there.
My teeth gnashed. "Don't make a scene. I know what you are, just come along quietly." I jerked his arm for emphasis. Something sloshed under his skin with a liquid roll. For a long second it didn’t move, just stood there blinking at me.
Then it threw the coffee in my face.
Hot liquid gushed across my open eyes, scalding away my vision. I jerked my hand to my face, wiping the boiling cappuccino away. People shouted behind me as some of them caught the few droplets that had somehow missed scorching my eyeballs. My fingers slipped off the Boogeyman's arm as it yanked away.
Blinking furiously gave me blurry vision that cleared a little with each stutter of my eyelids. The slippery bastard was darting across the crowds, people stepping aside from the glamour he threw. My eyes still burned but my vision started clearing. I could see enough. My fingers were sticky with coffee as they curled around the grip of the Desert Eagle .357 under my jacket.
Sonnuvabitch!
There were still too many people around. I couldn't start blasting, not that it would do any good. My gun was loaded with silver hollowpoints. Dealing with a fey, even a white trash version of one, required iron. Good thing one of the knives in my boot was cold iron. I was going to have to get close if I wanted to take this thing out.
You better believe I wanted to take this thing out.
Pushing out into the crowd bustling by, I shoved through the current of humanity. Shoppers cursed me as I elbowed towards the Food Court where the Boogeyman was turning a corner next to the overpriced pizza-by-the-slice eatery.
I had to catch him before he got out of the mall.
Swinging my elbows wide, I bullied my way through the mass of shoppers. I'm a big, scary guy. 6'4, around 300 pounds, with a shaved head, a long goatee, and covered in ink. I look like a thug. It was enough to break the trance of most of the sale-driven consumers who clogged the walkway I was trying to cross. It only took me a few moments to reach the over-priced pizzeria and turn the corner.
The Boogeyman was gone.
Shit. Shit! SHIT!
The Food Court opened up in front of me. The tables in the center were clotted with people, all seated and eating mounds of disposable food. Around both sides were eateries of all kinds. The elegant cuisines of multiple cultures reduced to the equivalent of a culinary Kleenex. Each eatery had a line or people waiting to hand over dollars for sustenance.
I had to catch this Fey bastard. If I let him get away then the blood of his next victim was on my hands.
That I would not have. No way in hell.
Still moving, I pushed through each line, cutting between people, eyes darting left and right, looking for some sign. Shouldering between a gaggle of moms and a tangle of teenagers I damn near tripped over him.
He was kneeling on the floor, counting quickly under his breath. On the ground lay a disposable packet of salt someone had dropped and someone else had stepped on. The cheap paper packet had torn, grains of salt scattered in a small puddle.
Fey are strange creatures, even the inbred third cousins twice removed. They have weird glitches in their nature that run across their entire race.<
br />
They have to keep their word.
They are mortally allergic to iron.
And they have to count every granule of salt that is spilled in their path.
Thank you Jesus, Mother Mary, and all the saints for letting me catch a break.
"Gotcha!" My fingers clamped on the back of his neck, curling into a handful of loose skin. The glamour slapped around me and we were immediately ignored by the other people in the food court, including people I had just shoved past. Hauling him up, I began dragging him toward the restrooms. People stepped aside without looking at us. The Boogeyman didn’t fight to get away, he fought to go back and finish counting the salt on the floor. I muscled him into the Men’s room, kicking the door open.
A hard yank and a harder shove tossed the child-eating fey into the tiled room. He tumbled and rolled across the ceramic floor. A college kid stood at a urinal, fingers still on his freshly zipped fly. His eyes slid past the Fey’s glamour, turning to me in surprise.
My thumb jerked toward the door. “Maintenance. We got a pressure problem with the pipes. This bathroom is closed.” I didn’t have a maintenance uniform, or any tools, but the kid just nodded and hustled out. I slapped the deadbolt on the door with my palm, locking myself inside with the Boogeyman who was pissed.
Turning back I saw the Boogeyman had climbed to his feet. It stood by the handicapped stall, skin taking on a greenish tinge and beginning to swell and bulge. Its slippery face distorted in anger, brackish water running from bulging eyes. Rubbery lips stretched wide to reveal twisted black teeth made of sharpened pieces of swamp cypress. Two lichen colored tentacles slithered out of that maw, waving in the air, round suckers biting, seeking flesh to pull and grip.
I knelt, jerking up my pants leg. My fingers closed on the leather wrapped handle of the cold iron knife clipped inside my boot top. It slid free of its sheathe as the boogeyman charged across the space between us.
Pushing off the door behind me I slammed into the Fey. It felt like hitting a rubber wall. The Boogeyman had no bones, just sticks of swampwood inside its skinsack. With a BOING! it slapped around me, wrapping along my torso and the arm holding the knife. The skin began to squeeze, the liquid inside acting like a hydraulic coil. The two tentacles latched around the back of my head and down my back, suckers biting like tiny, razor-sharp beaks of murderous parakeets. Pain flared in a dozen spots, my skin snipped away in little gobbets where they struck.
