Shadows of Reality (The Catharsis Awakening Book 1)

by Christian Martin Jr.

  “Any lights on? Anyone else in the house?”

  “No, and…I’m not sure. He actually looks fine, but with the fading light it’s hard to tell.” Randy looked over his shoulder—the yellow globe had nearly descended over the horizon. “It’s hard to see if he’s injured or anything.”

  “Okay, well…” Matt paused while tapping the top of his steering wheel, “…let’s do this. We’ll go back to the door and have a chat with him. If he doesn’t come to the door, well, we are here to check on his welfare because someone’s concerned enough to call—we’ll make entry: just to make sure no one’s holding him hostage or he’s not having some medical problem that would affect his mental state. I’ve had calls where diabetics go into a lull, and it really jacks ‘em up. Life-threatening, they don’t even know where they are, and sometimes downright combative till we get them help.”

  “Sounds good, Sarge.”

  “Oh,” Matt continued while getting out of the pickup, “while we’re walking down there, get on the radio and put an ambulance on standby, just in case.”

  “Perfect.” Randy unholstered his pack-set before Matt finished speaking. He radioed into dispatch to get an ambulance staged in the area while he followed his sergeant to the house.

  As they approached the back corner of the home, Matt slowly peered around to the rear side of the house; seeing that no one was around the corner, he walked toward the backdoor, but stopped abruptly a few feet from the deck.

  “Smell that?” Matt asked Randy as he sniffed to his left, all the while keeping his eyes on the back sliding door.

  “Yeah, I do. I didn’t before. Is that gas?”

  “Yep, and it’s real strong.” Matt looked down and pointed at the natural gas regulator and meter that was attached to the side of the house. “Put your nose down there and see if you can tell if it’s coming from that.”

  While Randy was sniffing and inspecting around the gas meter, Matt slowly peeked around the sliding screen door and saw a gaunt man inside the residence standing in a doorway of the bedroom. The man was looking directly at Matt.

  “Hi,” Matt said with a short wave of the hand. “I’m Matt, with the sheriff’s office. How you doing?”

  “I’m fine,” replied the man tartly; his arms folded and leaning slightly to his side. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well,” Matt said while stepping up on the deck after seeing that the man was not holding anything in his hands, “we got a call to make sure you were okay. Apparently you have someone that’s concerned about you and hasn’t heard from you for a bit, and we…just came by to make sure everything’s okay.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Randy shuffled up next to his sergeant when he heard the conversation taking place. “I don’t think it’s coming from the meter, Sarge. It looks okay to me,” Randy whispered.

  “Copy that,” Matt replied through his teeth while looking at the man. “I can’t smell it anymore.”

  “Yeah, me neither.”

  “So, what’s your name?” Matt asked.

  “Joe. And I’m fine.”

  “Joe, nice to meet you. Could you do me a favor, sir?” Matt had already placed his left hand on the screen door, keeping his right hand free in case he needed to draw his weapon in a hurry.

  “What is it? I said I’m fine. You should leave now. I don’t want any more trouble.”

  “Trouble? What trouble?” Matt slowly began to slide the door open. “Look, why don’t you please come here, and speak with us—just so we can make sure everything is cool, and then we’ll leave. How’s that sound?”

  Without waiting for Joe to reply, Matt had already stepped inside and met him halfway in the bedroom as he began to walk toward Matt.

  “Okay,” replied Joe as he came to a halt a few paces from Matt. The fading light from the sun through the westerly windows illuminated the man’s arms that hung languidly at his sides. His eyes wide as they darted from left to right, onto to Matt, then repeated their dance.

  His once white underwear was soiled, and he had bruises on his shins. “Okay, okay…so…now you can leave. Okay?”

  “Yeah,” Matt assured, “in just a few moments. So…Joe…what’s going on here, brother? Things seem a bit, well, a bit not so good right now. You’re underwear is a mess, you look like your legs got beat up a little and there’s…” Matt looked past Joe and pointed to a small glistening pile in the hallway, “broken glass in the hall there.”

  “Oh,” Joe said and then ran his fingers through his bedraggled graying hair. “I…I’d rather not say. I’m fine though, and it’s okay to leave now.”

  “Clear it,” Matt spoke through the side of his mouth to Randy, who was standing next to him. Matt looked at Joe and told him, “Joe, my friend here is going to have a quick look through your house, just to make sure everything is cool. Okay? Thanks.”

  “Well, I don’t know—”

  “I really am sorry, Joe,” Matt interrupted him with a raised index finger. He made an obvious sniff with his nose—completely exaggerating the motion, “Do you smell gas?”

  Joe staggered back a half-step at the question. “No. Do you?”

  “Not anymore, but I did when I walked up and knocked at your door. It was pretty strong.”

  “Nope, no idea.”

  Randy poked his head around the corner of the bedroom, “Hey, Sarge, can you come look at this?”

  “Yeah.” Then Matt told Joe with a smile, “Let’s go have a look together, alright?”

  Joe gave a shrug of his shoulders, and with a gesture of Matt’s hand, he turned and slumped out of the bedroom, following Randy. Matt noticed that he deftly stepped over the pile of glass, which looked like a broken light bulb.

  “Oh, and we’re clear,” Randy said to Matt—indicating that no one else was in the residence—as the trio rounded the hallway and moved into the kitchen. “However…” Randy pointed to the far side of the table at a dark spot in the grains of the hardwood floor.

  With a light touch on Joe’s arm, and empathy in his voice and eyes, Matt asked him how the dark spot—actually, a portion of the floor that had been freshly burned—got there. How was he feeling? And, when was the last time he slept.

  “Oh man,” Joe’s eyes screwed upward to the ceiling, “you wouldn’t believe what’s been going on if I told you.”

  “Well, my friend, give it a try, you’d be surprised,” answered Matt.

  His eyes darted back and forth; he scanned Randy from head to toe as if determining he would understand, or could be trusted. Then Joe exclaimed, “No! You guys need to leave!”

  Matt took a step back toward the stove just behind himself in case Joe decided to start swinging; and then he spun around quickly at the sound of hissing. Matt looked where the sound emanated from: the stovetop. The gas to all four burners were set to full on. The oven door was propped a quarter way open and the heat control for the oven set at 400 degrees. Yet, there were no flames and the oven was cold—only the sound of gas hissing out of the venturis.

  “Get out, now!” Matt barked at both of them. Seeing the slightest hesitation in Joe’s body language, Matt pointed his finger at Joe and told him, “And if you don’t get out voluntarily, this deputy will physically help you out—whether you like it or not. Now go!”

  Randy was already on the move when he grabbed Joe by the arm, spun him around, and without any further argument from the seemingly bewildered and disorientated man, escorted him outside through the back sliding door and continued up the driveway to distance themselves from the gas-saturated residence.

  Before he finished ordering Randy and Joe out of the kitchen, Matt had quickly turned off the stove’s burners and oven. After the controls were turned off, he opened the oven door fully to vent the fumes. With his head tilted slightly downward, listening for any other gas escaping from the stove that he could’ve missed, he saw a print of an unusual outline of mud and dirt left behind on the wooden floor between himself and the oven.

 
A footprint? No, too large and especially not human. What kind of animal is this? Too large for an elk and what would a large animal be doing in here anyway?

  Matt’s radio blared with Randy’s voice searching for his sergeant, checking on his status. Something that dispatch would normally do but when he didn’t see his sergeant emerge from the house, Randy got concerned.

  Matt chuckled at the thought, Better not keyup my radio in here. He quickly walked outside, looked around the corner of the house at Randy and held up four fingers to indicate he was okay: code four.

  From curiosity, Matt looked around the deck. Nothing. He scanned the immediate area, and there, in the white and encrusted snow behind the house, a path created from the same prints he found in the kitchen—the path ran the length of the house from off the deck.

  It then turned and led to a corner of Joe’s property where there was a wooden privacy fence that had been erected long ago, now faded and in disrepair. Adjoining fences that once formed a neat, 90-degree corner, were now leaning outward from each other—making an opening large enough for any sizable animal to pass through to the woods beyond.

  “Hey, Sarge,” Randy called out from the drive, “I got the fire department en route. Oh, and the ambulance should be here any moment.”

  Matt continued to eye the imprints and the path in the snow from the home to the forest beyond for several more moments before walking up to the top of the driveway to speak with Randy.

  “Joe, could you please hang tight here for moment? I need to speak to this deputy for a second.” Matt lightly touched Randy’s arm to lead him a few feet away from Joe.

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “How do you feel?” Matt asked Randy in a hushed voice.

  “I’m fine, Sarge. Why do you suppose we couldn’t smell the gas inside?” Randy asked while keeping a keen eye on Joe.

  “I don’t know, we’ll ask the fire guys when they show up.” Matt’s eyes flicked over to Joe then back to Randy. “Has he said anything else?”

  “No, nothing at all. Complained a little about me hauling him out of his house without any shoes on, so I let him slip on those sandal things he’s wearing now, but he hasn’t said anything else.”

  “Okay, well…” Matt contemplated on what he should or shouldn’t share with Randy, “I think…he could have been in the middle of a suicide attempt.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.” Randy didn’t take his eyes off of Joe. “I was going to write up an M-1, I mean a mental health eval form, just to have it ready to go.”

  “Great idea,” Matt approved. “But wait till the paramedics show up. We might not have to do that, he’s looking pretty rough as it is and they may haul him away just to get a medical clearance based on his current condition.”

  “Ah, copy that, Sarge.”

  “Here they come now,” Matt said, pointing at the ambulance pulling up behind them in the driveway; a volunteer fireman, driving his own pickup, followed suit. “Do me a favor, give them the skinny on everything and have fire go through and make sure we don’t have any more gas issues—a defective meter, regulator, or pipe leak. I saw some tracks, not sure what they are—maybe elk, moose, I don’t know—but they were right next to the house and they run to the north-east into the woods. I’ll be over there for a bit.”

  “Ha, you got it,” Randy said with a smile.

  “It’s work related,” Matt replied with a grin as he turned and began to walk back to the deck. As he passed by Joe, he patted his bare shoulder and said, “Thanks for working with us.”

  Joe started to say something but Matt was already walking down the driveway and quickly rounded the corner of the house. He stopped at the far edge of the deck, prior to stepping down onto the makeshift path in the snow, and saw a dirty print on the deck that appeared to match the one he saw in the kitchen.

  The shape was that of a split hoof, but the two halves appeared to be larger than that of a deer, elk, or moose—all of which he had tracked and hunted before—and the tips had an unusual elongated shape: the inside one being slightly longer than the outer. Matt tilted his head slightly to the side as he squatted down to examine the strange hoof print.

  Matt could tell that the tracks were fresh from the outlying clumps of snow thrown to the sides of the imprints and the crusted snow gouged through lengthways by the hoofs of whatever beast it was.

  He stepped off the deck and only slightly sunk into the snow. Following the snow-laden trail was easy enough, whatever made the track had compressed the snow so walking wasn’t a problem.

  Matt stopped at the inside corner of the fence and slowly peered around the posts that formed a V-shape as they leaned out from each other. A pathway turned sharply to the left and out of sight into a draw that ran parallel with Joe’s northern property boundary fence. The fading light made it hard to distinguish features in the bottom of the draw, which Matt estimated to be about 20 feet straight down from where he was standing.

  No movement and no sounds, not even a slight breeze through the trees. Motionless, Matt stood for a few more moments; scanning the trees and the draw, listening for any movement, and deciding whether to venture downward past the fence.

  “104; 111,” Randy’s voice broke the silence over Matt’s pack-set.

  Remaining stationary, except for his deft hand and arm movements to unholster his radio, Matt answered Randy, “Go ahead, 111.”

  “104, paramedics are going to transport this guy for a physical and psych eval. I filled out the paperwork needed; I’ll tell you about the rest when you get back up here.”

  “Copy that, good job. I won’t be much longer, a few more minutes I think.” While Matt was speaking into his handheld radio, he heard snow crunching that indicated an animal was unhurriedly moving up the trail toward him.

  After he holstered his radio, he turned the volume down and slowly slipped past the fence posts and rounded the corner on the trail. The path abruptly dropped as it wove around several pines, descending into the draw. Matt stopped near a crooked pine that jutted out of a rock outcropping—only a few strides from the fence corner but far enough down that he couldn’t see the leaning posts any longer for the trees.

  All was silent on the trail before him. Squinting into the draw, a few fallen trees cast their long shadows over boulders that dotted the snow-covered bottom, which made it hard to distinguish any other features. A well-worn path in the snow on the other side of the draw, directly across from himself, moved upward and crested the side of the hill and disappeared out of sight.

  Matt turned from the crooked tree, which jutted out from the rocks and at some point in its long life took on a dip in its bough, creating a saddle, and then reached straight up in an attempt to touch the heavens. He took three steps back up the hill; and stopped cold due to the sound of clicking directly behind him—it stopped at the same time he did.

  He immediately spun around. On the other side of the crook in the tree, stood a motionless dark-gray creature looking back at him. Tingling rushed over Matt’s arms, his mouth became instantly dry while he looked at the creature’s charcoal eyes that had a green hint in the center—they had both startled each other. Matt instantly drew his duty weapon. Before he could fire a round off, the creature let out a screech and slipped backward.

  Matt rushed to the tree, braced himself with his free hand, and looked down the trail around the rock outcropping. The creature had fallen backward into the hooves of an even larger creature that stood towering over it. Twice the size of the smaller one, Matt stood astonished, gaping at the sight.

  While the smaller was being hoisted up by its nape, the towering creature peered at Matt with the same charcoal eyes as the smaller creature and growled, “You!” Then it quickly began to drag the smaller one down to the bottom of the draw by way of the path.

  The smaller creature flung its arms about and let out short gurgled squeals while being dragged along the trail at a quick pace. The larger creature kept eye contact with Matt the whole t
ime it hauled its companion down to the bottom and then back up the other side; however, prior to reaching the crest of the draw opposite side of Matt, they vanished into thin air.

  “What the hell—” Matt breathed.

  “Sarge!” Randy yelled from the corner of the fence. “You down there?”

  Dumbfounded, Matt listened intently and scanned the other side without answering Randy.

  “Sarge?”

  “Yeah…headed back now,” he called out, but he didn’t move. “Almost there.”

  The twilight ceded to the cold winter’s nightfall as the sun continued its trek west, and Matt surrendered his visual pursuit of the creatures. He slowly holstered his weapon and turned to face uphill where Randy had already turned on his flashlight—a brilliant white beam that randomly danced through the pines above him to give him enough light to follow the now obscure pathway.

  “Accept? Seriously? Those things are real? And what the hell does ‘you’ mean from the one that was at least twice the size of the other’s I’ve been seeing…” he muttered.

  “What’s that?” Randy called down.

  “Nothing…almost there,” Matt assured him, but it was only then that he began to take a step forward. He slowly hiked back up the short hill, glancing over his shoulder with each step. Randy was standing at the fence posts—flashlight in hand that shone into the darkness.

  20

  THE SIGHTING

  Yeor sauntered along the top of the castle’s wall-walk, making a second circuit, occasionally looking down at the large river rock that formed the passageway which he strode upon. The wall-walk encircled the entire circumference of the fortress, and the same rock that made up the passageway also speckled the outer vertical wall itself that went straight down below the surface of the ground to the bedrock beneath; a foundation that was laid eons ago.

  The parapets were of solid stone with wide embrasures to allow broad angles of defense of the fortress against sorties from an enemy, or a flat-out assault by hordes of the adversary—like the swarm that broke upon the castle three generations ago. Yeor stopped at the thought, peered out of an embrasure nearby, and gazed out over the plain—neatly trimmed grass, manicured all the way around the fortress; with no trees, underbrush, or hillock in sight to prevent any enemy hiding for want of an ambush.