Dead Leaves, Dark Corners

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  Dead Leaves,

  Dark Corners

  By

  Nicki Huntsman Smith

  Copyright © 2017 by Nicki Smith

  http://www.NickiHuntsmanSmith.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, use the contact form at http://NickiHuntsmanSmith.com and use the subject “Attention: Permissions Coordinator”.

  ISBN-13: 978-154464

  ISBN-10: 1544640455

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the following:

  Lori, my editor, proofreader, and grammar consultant extraordinaire. Comma placement doesn’t vex her as profoundly as it does me.

  My beta readers, Al and Lisa, who provided advice and top-notch cheerleading

  My friends and family, who have always accepted my eccentric interests and overt nerdinesswith indulgent affection. If any of my children ever read my books, they will be mentioned by name in the acknowledgments. That’s the deal.

  Lastly and most importantly, my husband Ray, without whose constant encouragement, gentle nudging, infinite patience, and support on a million different levels, my books would never have been written.

  Table of Contents

  Monsters

  Road Kill

  Feral

  Burdens

  Dudes

  Toil and Trouble

  Predators

  A Good Host

  Pomp and Circumstance

  Ancestry

  The Bunker

  Wyvern

  Decisions, Decisions

  Introduction for “The Lighthouse: A Novelette”

  The Lighthouse

  Preface

  Autumn is my favorite season. October is my favorite month within that season for many small reasons and one colossal one: Halloween. I love everything about the holiday, from its ancient Celtic origins to its contemporary candy-extorting practices. I celebrate all things Halloween beginning on the first day of the month and ending, sadly, when the clock strikes midnight on October 31st.

  The subsequent stories and novelette are an homage. Within each story, you will find references – some subtle, some overt – to the month, the season, or the holiday. One story’s entire narrative is a secret tribute to the most iconic symbol of Halloween itself.

  Will you recognize it? We shall see.

  So what are you waiting for? Start reading! But first, lock the doors and check under the bed. You won’t want to venture outside of those warm, cozy covers once you begin...

  -- NHS

  Monsters

  Sloan Darkblade darted between the decaying automobiles of a decaying city. He crouched behind a Chevy Malibu, paused to surveille the area, and then scurried over to squat next to the front tire of an Escalade. Miraculously, the twenty-two inch chrome rim was still intact. These cars provided excellent cover, but you didn’t want to stay in one place for too long. The glass in many of the streetlamps was missing, the bulbs either stolen or smashed, but some ambient light pervaded the gloom of the inner city. It was just enough to reveal the monsters.

  They were everywhere.

  Sloan had come prepared, though. He carried a Glock .45 in a leather shoulder holster, hidden by the bulk of his canvas vest. His trademark fixed-blade knife was nestled in its nylon sheath attached to his tactical belt. ‘Trademark’ because the black coating on the blade was how he had earned his name...the name by which he was known to friend and foe alike. There were benefits to using a knife that didn’t reflect moonlight, and the five-inch blade was perfect for killing monsters.

  Was it wise to navigate the city at night? Not really. But what choice did he have? A few hours earlier, he had been plotting his escape from within the interrogation room of the enemy’s stronghold. At midnight, an opportunity had presented itself during the shift change. Once he had gained his freedom (two of the enemy guards lost their lives in the process), he made his way to one of several hidden caches in which were stored food and water, a change of clothes, some basic first aid supplies, and most importantly: weapons. From any point in the city, he could reach one of these caches within a half hour, and he felt grateful now for his foresight. He had shed the lightweight cotton prisoner’s uniform – inadequate for the chilly October night – and donned paramilitary garb. It felt like a second skin.

  The timing of his escape was unfortunate. For a reason he had not yet discerned, there were certain times during which the sheer volume of monsters increased dramatically, and tonight was one of those times. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, skulked around him.

  He was good, but he wouldn’t try to take them all on at once. The sensible option was to stay out of sight, avoiding as many as possible on his way out of the city. If he had to dispose of a few, it must be done quickly and quietly, because if one of them started screeching (the monsters’ vocalizations were ear-splitting), they would all be on him in a heartbeat. They would kill him, or worse, take him prisoner. He would never allow that to happen again. They had done things to him in that awful place during these past months of captivity. They experimented on him with medical gadgets, injected him with alien drugs, and talked to him in their hideous monster language until he thought he would go insane. He had escaped while he still retained a shred of himself, that piece which made him who he was: Sloan Darkblade, humanity’s last hope.

  “Come on...just a little farther...” he whispered to the creature that was lurking near an alleyway on the other side of the street from where he crouched. He needed to get through that dark tunnel-like avenue on his way to the next block, then to the next, and soon after he would reach the dilapidated highway leading out of the city and to his refuge in the country. It was the base from which the Resistance would grow in numbers and strength. It might take years, but humans would reclaim their world, snatching it back from these abominations that had stolen it.

  He watched the monstrosity slouching along the cracked sidewalk; its torso was enormous, and it continually shuffled between a door in the building and the alleyway. What served as arms were bulbous and mutated, and its thin legs were disproportionate to the rest of its bulk. At one point Sloan thought it had spotted him. It paused, staring directly at his location. Sloan was fairly certain it couldn’t see him in the gloom next to the Cadillac’s tire. He would appear as just a shadowy blob to this creature; the monsters’ night vision was notoriously bad.

  His, however, had been honed from years of working underground in the selfless, tireless role of Rebel Resistance Leader. He had made many sacrifices for the greater good, yet he didn’t see himself as a hero. Saving humanity from the monstrous scourge that had invaded Earth was reward enough. Someday, maybe, he would be able to look back on his life and be proud. Perhaps with a grandchild on his knee, he would gaze out from his front porch at a world without monsters.

  But today was not that day.

  He waited as the creature pivoted at the entrance of the alleyway, then began shambling back toward the door in the building. This was his chance.

  Sloan darted across the street, careful to stay low to the ground. He made it to the alley and past the brick corner just as the monster was turning around again. Next, to traverse the alley itself. It was an obstacle course of ancient dumpsters and zigzagging fire escapes, and one of those devils could be lurking anywhere amongst the detritus.

  Speed was called for. Running fast was another of his talent
s, one that had saved his life on numerous occasions. He used it now, managing to evade anything that might be huddled beneath garbage or skulking under cardboard boxes. The creatures that preferred these types of hiding places were some of the most despicable – fiends so revolting they were shunned by their own kind.

  He reached the opposite end of the alley, which opened onto the next street; it was more heavily populated with monsters than the one he had just escaped. His heart raced with adrenaline from the sprint, as well as from the first stirrings of fear. He had never seen so many of them congregating in one place before.

  He glanced behind him down the dark alley, wondering if he should backtrack and find another route, but things were beginning to stir in there now...he could see shadows rising up, casting off the debris under which they had been hiding.

  He had made a rookie mistake and was now sandwiched between adversaries and ten-story brick walls.

  “Stupid, stupid Sloan,” he muttered.

  The self-chastisement was another blunder. A monster prowling not five feet away heard it, but had not yet raised the alarm. It was trying to speak to him using its horrible vocalizations. It was a small creature, thankfully. He would dispose of it before it could let all the others know a human was in their midst.

  He slid his knife out of its nylon sheath in a fluid motion. The monster’s eyes flew wide, and its mouth was beginning to open in anticipation of one of those dreadful screeches, but it never came. He had already slit its throat. For such a small monster, it spewed a prodigious amount of blood onto the sidewalk. The blood looked human, but Sloan knew better. There was something in it that allowed them to shapeshift. He had seen it happen. Had seen them change back into their original form when enough of that alien blood leaked from their bodies.

  Sloan heard a noise behind him and spun to face the new threat. A large monster ten yards away had witnessed the killing of its small brethren. Even now it was opening its mouth, bellowing something in that appalling monster tongue. This one would be a problem – it carried a Glock .45 just like Sloan’s.

  His world slowed down to half speed. He thought of a dozen different old movies that ended just like this: two gunslingers stand facing each other in a suddenly deserted street. Both raise their guns, pointing the barrels at their opponents. Both pull their triggers and get off one shot. Both fall to the ground. In the movies, the two men wear cowboy hats and leather chaps. This time...in reality...it’s the human leader of the Resistance and a shapeshifting monster that lie on the ground.

  Sloan’s world went black.

  ***

  “You’re absolutely sure about this, Mister...” the detective glanced down at a piece of paper on his desk, “...Campbell?”

  The witness nodded. Even that minimal act made the muscles in his bulging biceps flinch; the man was a walking steroid commercial from the waist up. From the waist down, his stick legs – squeezed into a pair of those awful ‘skinny jeans’ – looked ridiculous in comparison.

  Friends don’t let friends skip leg day at the gym.

  Detective Sanford didn’t doubt the man’s account of the night’s events, and the evidence corroborated his story. But it was just so damn depressing. Another pointless, unnecessary tragedy.

  “Let’s go over it one more time, if you don’t mind.”

  “Uh, Detective, I gotta get back to work. My shift at The Roxy ain’t over until four.” The doorman’s high-pitched voice, just as his legs, were incongruous with the massive bulk of his arms and torso.

  “I’ll be quick. So you spotted the kid squatting next to the Caddy. Correct?”

  Campbell nodded.

  “Then you watched him dart across the street. That’s when you noticed the gun?”

  Another nod.

  “So you followed him down the alley, right? Weren’t you concerned about the transients? That’s some scary real estate down there.”

  The bouncer gave him a level-eyed stare in response.

  “Okay, I get it. You’re a big guy. All right, so you followed him and just as you got to 9th Street, you saw him pull out a knife and attack Mrs. Wong, the grocer?”

  “Yeah. She was trying to ask him something, but I don’t know what she said. Those Asians are hard as shit to understand.”

  “You heard the off-duty police officer yell to drop his weapon?”

  Campbell nodded.

  “Then the kid pulled a handgun from a shoulder holster? Aimed it at the officer?”

  “Yeah. A Glock, I think. Don’t care for them myself. I prefer Brother Smith and Father Wesson, if ya get my drift.”

  The comment had an oft-used feel to it...probably passed for clever repartee in the bouncer’s cerebrally-challenged social circle.

  “Right. So who fired first?”

  “Told ya. The kid did. No doubt-about-it. Look, officer...”

  “Detective. Detective Sanford.”

  “Right,” Campbell said, pulling back thin lips to reveal unnaturally white, even teeth. Probably implants. Brawlers like this guy rarely possessed their own choppers after a certain age. “The cop was in his dead rights to shoot the guy. I’ll say the same thing in court. He’d already killed the Oriental broad. Mighta killed a lot more if the cop hadn’t been there. It’s the weekend...lots of people out tonight. Can I go now?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Thanks for your statement, Mr. Campbell. I’ll be in touch.”

  The next minute Sanford found himself alone in the squad room, except for a couple of temps tapping away on their keyboards. It was two o’clock in the morning, he was dog tired, and there was still the worst part of his job left to do. He sighed, stood, and headed out into the corridor.

  Down the hall, behind the third door on the right, sat the perp’s mother. She didn’t yet know that her son was dead. All she knew was that he had escaped from the Austin State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. That her nineteen-year-old son, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, had been involved in some kind of altercation around midnight. She had done the right thing when she turned him over to the state several months ago. His behavior had become alarming, the report said. He had been leaving his basement apartment in their home at all hours, dressed up in military fatigues. She said it was only a matter of time before he hurt someone...perhaps had already done so. Committing her only child to Austin State would allow the professionals – psychologists and doctors who specialized in this kind of mental illness – to help him get better, and in the process, would keep the world safe from him.

  And now Sanford would have to explain that the system had failed. It had failed two orderlies, a seventy-year-old woman, and a police officer with a wife and two small children. It had failed Mrs. Fink down the hall behind that door. And most of all, it had failed her son, Melvin, a normal child by all accounts, until puberty and the onset of his mental illness.

  Sloan Darkblade hadn’t lived long enough to experience a world without monsters.

  Road Kill

  I pulled into the service station on fumes. The gas pumps had been standing sentinel for at least a couple of decades. No newfangled pay-at-the-pump option on these bad boys. My selection was limited to low-octane regular or diesel, which caused some angst when I pictured the sludge churning through my pristine German-engineered fuel system.

  I slid out of the driver’s seat, stretched, and then walked toward a man seated in front of the building. Both the old structure and the old codger were in identical states of weathered dishevelment.

  “We all got secrets,” he said in a gravelly voice.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Some folks will say they don’t, but they’re lying,” he continued. “There ain’t nothing worse than a goddam liar, if ya ask me.”

  I hadn’t asked.

  “And besides, if you don’t got no secrets, you ain’t living. You’re just sucking air.” For emphasis, he spat an amber stream of liquid into a Folgers coffee can placed beside him on the cracked, weed-choked concrete slab. I watched in
appalled fascination as the viscous rivulet arrived at its destination. His accuracy was impressive. The can, filled nearly to the brim with saliva and tobacco, made me think of a primordial tar pit. I half expected to see the elongated neck of a tiny diplodocus break the surface.

  I glanced up at the old man and saw that he was grinning from his perch on a rickety chair. He had noticed the revulsion on my face and seemed to enjoy it. His brown teeth looked like a cob of dried Indian corn missing the occasional kernel. I doubted the gray-stubbled jowls had seen a razor in weeks, nor his clothes the inside of a Maytag. His body odor was prodigious.

  Until recently, my rather sheltered upbringing had precluded interaction with colorful, smelly characters such as this. I would relish this opportunity to broaden my horizons and rub elbows – figuratively – with the unwashed masses. What better place to start than this pungent, homespun philosopher, whose company I was now enjoying as a result of the meager offerings of modern rest stops on that stretch of Highway 70 which ran between Clovis and Roswell. A more desolate, achingly lonely setting surely did not exist on the North American continent.

  He didn’t seem to be interested in the crisp twenties in my hand. Gas and its subsequent payment could wait, it seemed.

  “You think I have secrets, Mister, uh, Harrigan?” I hazarded, after a quick glance at the weathered sign above the door.

  “Good guess,” he said, “but you got it wrong. Harrigan built this place in 1973. Then old man Shelton bought it from the bank in ’85 when Harrigan defaulted on the loan. I bought it off Shelton in ’92 when he divorced that Holstein he called a wife and ran off with a titty dancer from Vegas. Stupid whore must’ve thought the old bastard had money,” he chuckled. Apparently the questionable cognitive ability of exotic dancers was a source of amusement.