by Mark Deloy
Doctor Phillips looked at us for a few seconds.
“It looks like some kind of animal attack, but I don’t know anything around here which could cause that much damage except maybe a black bear.”
“I’ve seen bobcats on my property,” I stated, trying to sound both smart and stupid.
“Possibly, but it would have to be pretty big to do the kind of damage he’s sustained. I’m sure he’ll tell us exactly what happened when he wakes up after surgery. I’ll keep you both posted.”
We got some coffee and sat back down to wait. Lisa tried to call her sister to check on Connor, but there was no answer.
“They’re probably playing a game,” she said. “Becky likes to set up obstacle courses for Connor to run through, like a mini-gauntlet in the living room. He loves it.”
Ten minutes later, Lisa’s phone rang. She said hello and then listened for a minute, in silence. Then her face changed into a mask of terror and she got up quickly and headed for the door. I followed.
“Oh God no! When did it happen?” she cried into her phone.
“What is it?” I tried to ask, but she started running for the parking lot.
“Lisa, what is it?!” I called after her.
“Where’s my car?” She was turning in circles, obviously in shock. “I have to go!” She had forgotten we’d taken Jensen’s car. Then it finally hit her.
“What is it?” I repeated. “What’s wrong?”
“Becky…Connor! That was my neighbor. She heard screaming and…”
“Come on, I’ll drive you.”
We ran for Jensen’s car and jumped in. It looked like someone had exploded inside. The seats and dash were covered with sticky blood except for where we were sitting, but we had no choice but to just get in and go. Now Lisa was sobbing again—then she punched the dashboard, hard, several times.
“That bastard! I’ll kill him!”
I reached out and put an arm on her shoulder, but she shrugged me off and kept sobbing. I wanted to ask if Becky and Connor were ok, but I was scared what she would say, so I just concentrated on the road and drove as fast as I could without wrecking us. I was glad when Lisa started talking again.
“The neighbor said she heard screaming next door. She called the police, and then called me. She said the police have just arrived and I’d better come home.”
I just nodded and pressed my foot a little harder on the accelerator.
We skidded in behind one of the four patrol cars that were parked in front of Lisa’s house. Their blue lights were all left on and a few uniformed cops were standing out front. Lisa jumped out of the car and ran toward the house. One of the officers stopped her before she could get inside. She batted at him, screaming her son’s name over and over.
I ran up and pulled her to me, both restraining her and hugging her.
“He’s not here,” the officer responded. “But we found your sister… I’m sorry.”
“Becky...Becky…no.” Lisa’s voice hitched and then she started sobbing and hyperventilating. “How… no… no… Becky!
She collapsed and sat down on the porch. I sat down with her and wrapped my arms around her. Then I looked over her shoulder into the house. I could see a streak of blood on one of the walls in the kitchen. The small table was overturned and a bowl of sugar was spilled in the blood, soaking it up. Then I looked past that into the living room. There was a lump of flesh, much too small to be her sister’s body lying by the sofa and at first I thought the cop lied about Connor not being there, but then I saw Becky’s red hair entangled in the mess of blood and bone and realized that’s all that was left of her.
“Where’s Connor?” Lisa screamed at no one in particular. “Where’s my son?! I want my son!”
The cop knelt down so he was on our level.
“We’ve searched the whole house. Your son isn’t here. We’re hoping he ran when this happened.”
“No,” Lisa said, standing back up. “He has him. He did this because we took something of his.”
“Who?” the officer asked, perplexed. “You know who did this?”
Lisa burst past the cop and ran into her house. I followed her in. She stopped when she got to the doorway to the living room and saw her sister. The forensics team looked up at her and one of them, a young woman stopped her.
“Lisa,” she said softly. “Let us figure out what happened here.”
Lisa looked like she was about to protest, but then nodded, composed herself and backed away.
I saw there were two words written in blood on the wall and they chilled me to the bone.
‘MINE NOW’, it read.
Lisa ran outside and threw up over the porch railing. I put a hand on her back. When she finished, she wiped her mouth and looked at me.
“We have to go get him,” she said. “That bastard has my son, and we have to go get him back!”
“I know.”
39
I wasn’t even sure if we could find the house again. Even if we could, we weren’t police. We had no training, and what we were fighting wasn’t even human. I didn’t know if it was possible to kill him. Two of our companions had been killed as a result of crossing Shift, and another had been maimed. I didn’t relate any of my fears to Lisa; one: because I thought she probably already knew everything I’d say, and two: because I knew it wouldn’t do any good. The most dangerous animal on earth is a mother when she feels her children are threatened. I knew there was no way I could talk Lisa out of her present course of action. I realized the only thing I could do to keep us alive in the next few hours would be to calm her enough, to slow her down enough for us to think and come up with some kind of plan. We were going into his house, on his terms, and he knew we were coming. It was the worst scenario I could think of.
I called the hospital to check on Jensen. The doctor said he’d come through surgery fine and he was in stable condition, but not yet awake. I related this to Lisa and she nodded, but I wasn’t sure she even really heard me. I reached out and grasped her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back, but continued staring out the window.
When we pulled up in my driveway she reached in the glove compartment and popped the trunk.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“Getting Jensen’s H&Ks.”
Lisa went to the back of the car and opened the trunk. There were several items in it that looked useful, road flares, a shovel, a first aid kit, but Lisa was after something else. She lifted the bottom of the trunk, exposing what should have been where the spare tire was located. Instead, Jensen had built a wooden box. Lisa opened it, revealing a padded case with two guns and several curved magazines in it. I recognized them from several movies I’d seen, but I didn’t know what they were called.
“Heckler and Koch MP5K, 9 millimeter” she said. “They have a selector switch. Single shot, three shot burst, and fully auto. Jensen said he kept them here for an emergency.”
“I think this qualifies.”
Lisa nodded and slammed one of the loaded magazines home, racked the bolt, chambering a round, then put the safety on. Then she handed the other one to me. She put three of the magazines in the bag then handed me the other three. I put them in my cargo pants pockets.
“What if we can’t find the house?” I wondered aloud.
“We’ll find it,” she stated grimly. “He wants us to find him. He’s waiting for us.”
“That sounds like a good reason to think about this for a minute,” I stated grimly.
“I’m going to get Connor,” she responded, looking into my eyes. “Will you help me?” Her face was determined and serene.
“Yes,” I said. “Of course.” I put the belt and holster for the Ruger back on. I’d taken it off when we went into the hospital. I pulled the revolver out, checked it to make sure it was fully loaded and the re-holstered it. I felt more alive than I had in years. Part of me was loving this. “Let’s drive down to the edge of the woods.”
We got in the car and I w
as about to start it, then had a thought.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, getting out.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m getting Girl. She might be able to help us track. I found her in those woods. She might be able to lead us to the house. It just feels right.”
I went inside and Girl greeted me at the door. She was panting—excited, as if she knew I was coming to get her for a reason.
I put her collar on and then her leash. She pulled me out the door and acted like she couldn’t wait to get in the car. When I opened the door, she hopped into the back seat.
“Are we ready?” Lisa asked, cradling her machine gun as if it was a replacement for her child.
“Absolutely.”
We drove across the fields. Everything seemed normal and we were almost to the end of the last field when Girl started barking.
“What is it,” Girl?” I asked, looking back at her.
“Look out!” Lisa screamed.
I turned back around and slammed on the brakes. We skidded a few feet and I felt the front of the patrol car fall. The under carriage thumped as the front wheels fell off the cliff in front of us.
“The field was there, and then it wasn’t. It’s gone,” Lisa gasped.
I leaned forward and looked down the hood. In front of us, where the last field used to be, was a crevice about thirty feet wide. It had to be a hundred feet deep. If I’d been driving a few miles per hour faster, we’d be dead.
“Can you back out?” Lisa asked.
“No, it’s front wheel drive. There’s nothing for the wheels to grab onto. We’re on foot here on out.”
Lisa nodded and got out. I did, too, and opened the door for Girl. She jumped out and went right to the edge of the pit and looked down, curiously, then barked twice.
“Can we walk around it?” Lisa asked.
“I think so.” We started walking along the edge of the huge crevice that wasn’t there a few hours ago. It was as if the earth had just opened up because Shift willed it. To stop us, or just slow us down, so he could set a trap? I had no idea.
The crack in the earth finally narrowed to about a foot across near the edge of the woods. We were able to jump across it without much trouble. The forest spread out in front of us like a great green beast. It looked ominous and it seemed to grow very dark as I looked deep into its heart. The air felt as thick and humid as a steamy South American jungle.
I had ahold of Girl’s leash, but she wasn’t pulling on it anymore. She was staying very close to us, almost leaning against my hip. I reached down and scratched her behind on ear. She gave me a troubled look and whined.
“I know, Girl,” I said, patting her.
The forest was very quiet. Normally there were birds, squirrels, and other animals moving about, but today there was nothing. It felt dead out here. Even the wind had ceased blowing.
We moved through the trees slowly, with our weapons raised and constantly looking around. I didn’t really expect to find the house. I don’t know why I felt like that. I guess part of me probably didn’t want to find the house. I was scared. I had felt exhilaration earlier, but now that we were in the woods, moving toward what was probably our certain deaths, I was terrified. What I felt even more than the fear, was anger. This son of a bitch had taken children with no regard for them or anyone else, then returned them as monsters. I wasn’t going to let that happen to Connor. That’s what kept me moving forward.
Leaves crackled under our feet and I could hear the waterfall ahead of us. I smelled dead leaves and deep, rich, black soil and the greenery all around us. The sun filtered through the treetops, sending shards of light onto the forest floor like spotlights on a stage. I recognized this area…. it was where I’d seen the house the first time. Maybe there were a limited number of places the house could appear.
As we moved past the falls, I looked to the right, where the house was the second time I’d seen it. It wasn’t there, either. So that left the deep valley, where it was the last time we’d found it, and the area half way up the last field where it ended up after it shifted.
The valley was empty and the wolf carcasses were gone as well. A line from some horror novel came to me. The dead eat their own. I had a vision of Shift tearing the wolves apart with his shark-like maw and swallowing huge chunks of hairy, gore-covered flesh. I shivered.
“You okay?” Lisa asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s keep walking.”
We didn’t climb back up out of the valley and I had a feeling the house wasn’t where it transported us to earlier either, so we just kept walking. Girl was starting to pull on the leash now, and she didn’t seem as fearful as she was before. Her ears were perked up and her nose was high in the air now, sniffing excitedly.
“I think she’s got the scent,” I observed.
I let a little more line out of the retractable leash; Girl took it and wanted more. She seemed like she had locked onto something. Maybe it was Connor, maybe she instinctively knew what we wanted her to find?
Then, all of a sudden, Girl stopped. The hackles went up on her neck and back and she began to growl way down deep in her throat. Her eyes… no, her whole body was locked onto something over to our left.
There was a slight rise through some trees and the whole area was blanketed in shadow. The air grew cold, as if someone had opened up a giant freezer on our left side. The wind picked up as well, and I could smell the crisp bite of winter on the air, even though it was only late July.
Our eyes were locked on the rise where Girl was so focused. I saw a light wisp of what looked like snow blow on the wind up and over the rise, and then it was gone, as if it had melted when it hit the warmer air.
I could smell them before I saw them, and I was sure Girl had, too. It was the dead flesh and fresh blood smell of a predator.
They came over the rise like white gods, their bodies massive and bulked with thick muscle and I saw their dinner-plate- sized, claw- filled paws sink deep into the soft earth as they topped the hill and looked right at us.
“Are those...”
I know what she meant to say, but she hadn’t finished, because they weren’t polar bears, but they looked very similar to them. The shape of the head was wrong: was blockier and they had curled horns on their heads like those antelope in Africa.
“No,” I whispered.
Girl began barking and I reached down to stop her, but the two horned bears had already seen us and were moving our way, slowly, as if they knew they’d enjoy the hunt more than the meat. I was very glad I’d brought the leash and hadn’t just let Girl walk on her own.
Lisa raised her weapon, but I reached out and lowered her muzzle.
“A nine-millimeter isn’t going to do shit against them. Run!”
We turned and ran along the top of an embankment that led deeper into the forest… deeper than I’d ever gone.
I was having flashbacks of a Discovery Channel show that said a mature polar bear could run up to thirty-five miles per hour. I prayed that either I was misremembering, or the horned variety from whatever world these two had come from were decidedly slower.
I looked back over my shoulder and the bears were indeed in pursuit, but they were fifty or sixty yards behind us. I could hear them huffing and growling, but they seemed as if they weren’t so much chasing us, as herding us.
The land dropped slightly and we did our best to get down the leaf-strewn hillside without falling. But then, near the bottom, my foot slipped on a moss- covered rock and I went down and rolled the rest of the way to the bottom. I was glad I’d put the safety on my gun, as it had tumbled down the hill after me, hitting me in the side at the bottom. Girl and Lisa reached me a moment later. I’d dropped Girl’s leash, but either she hadn’t realized it, or was smart enough to have no desire to get mauled by the beasts in pursuit.
“Are you okay?” Lisa asked, pulling me back to my feet, but not waiting for an answer before pushing me ahead.
“Yeah,
” I huffed out. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to run much farther.
“Look!” Lisa screamed and pointed straight ahead.
The house was perched on the edge of the hillside, a hundred feet above us. Dirt and rocks tumbled down as if the house had just arrived and wasn’t even sitting on solid ground above. It looked as if one good push would send it down on top of us. I was glad the wind had all but stopped completely.
We were so focused on the house we hadn’t realized the ‘bearalopes’ had narrowed the gap between us. They were running straight for us now, about fifty yards away and closing fast. The impression of being herded and not chased was evaporating as I saw the beasts now running straight for us, their huge, teeth-filled mouths foaming in anticipation of our flesh and blood. The one in front lowered its head, as if he meant to gore us with his huge horns.
“Climb!” I screamed.
40
We wasted no time in scrambling up the rocky hillside. There were narrow paths running between large rocks, and I was happy to see that Girl was able to climb without any help and she was at the top in a matter of minutes. I paused halfway up to see if the bears had pursued us, but they were at the bottom of the cliff looking up at us. I had a horrible vision of falling backwards onto the spiraled horns of a creature that was not from this world. That thought spurred me to climb faster, but more carefully.
Girl was barking down at us from the top as if to tell us to hurry up. I reached the top and then helped Lisa up. The bears were both on their hind legs scraping at the cliff, pulling rocks and dirt down, but they made no real effort to climb up after us. I was tempted to fire a few bursts of ammo down on them from my gun, but I didn’t want to piss them off and also knew I should conserve ammo.
We turned around and, directly behind us, stood the house. There were no more than ten feet between us and the front door, which stood partially open. I could smell the old wood and moldering carpets from here. It smelled like death in a way—like a rotted house, instead of decaying flesh—but dead was dead, and I didn’t think this house had ever held life the way most do. There had never been any children running through hallways, Sunday morning breakfasts in the kitchen, or anyone coming downstairs on Christmas mornings. This place had always been dead. It was built for a purpose, not for pleasure, and as we climbed the stairs, opened the door and took a step in, I could definitely feel that. There was a heaviness in the air that stuck to me and weighed me down, making me tired and sad all of a sudden.
