Cryptid Frontier (Cryptid Zoo Book 7)

by Gerry Griffiths

  Grainger walked around to the main street and thought that it was unusual that there were no townspeople to be seen. He saw the Sheriff’s Office and ambled over. He opened the door and stepped inside.

  “Can I help you?” the man behind the desk asked. His right shirtsleeve was folded up and pinned to his shoulder.

  “You the sheriff?”

  “In a matter of speaking.”

  The bounty hunter reached under his slicker, pulled out a wanted poster, and flattened it on the desk. “I’m here for these men.”

  “They aren’t men,” the sheriff snarled.

  Grainger motioned to the sheriff’s missing arm. “They do that to you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then I’d say you got off easy.”

  “You think it’s easy for a one-armed man to keep the law without his gun hand?”

  “I’m saying it could have been worse. The Rapacious Gang has a proclivity for human flesh.”

  “Damn cannibals made me watch while they ate my arm.”

  “Why’d they stop there?” asked Grainger.

  “So I’d sit here. Lure strangers like you to them.”

  The bounty hunter gave the sheriff a contemptible look.

  “But I never done it, I swear. You’re the first new face I’ve seen in weeks.”

  “Then I guess you won’t mind if I claim the reward?”

  “Mister, there’re four of them.”

  “I know.” Grainger took a moment to look out the window. “Doesn’t anyone live here?”

  “Most everyone run off,” the sheriff said in a pitiful tone. “The ones that stayed they kidnapped. Took them to their abattoir.”

  “And where would that be?”

  “The boardinghouse.”

  * * *

  “When I come back, you’re getting in next.”

  “But Momma, can’t I just clean up here?” Lizzie protested, pointing at the flowery-designed porcelain washbasin on the bedside table.

  “Quit your fussing and hush,” Selma said, and stepped out of the room and closed the door.

  Wearing only a slip and carrying a towel, Selma walked barefoot down the carpet toward the opened door at the end of the hall where she could see a portion of a lion claw tub. She had never bathed in such elegance before. On the farm, Jonathan had jury-rigged an outdoor shower behind the barn with a swiveling barrel that dowsed ice-cold water whenever the bather tugged on a rope. She looked forward to slipping into that fancy tub and languishing in fragrant bath salts.

  When she was only a few feet from the door, she noticed that there was a hallway to the right with more doors to other rooms. Someone moaned from behind one of those doors.

  “Hello?” Selma turned and stepped down the hallway.

  She heard groaning, and a person sobbing, each from a different room.

  A door had been left ajar.

  Selma peered inside. A naked man was trussed to a bed. He was groaning with his eyes closed. His left wrist was bound to a brass headboard; his right arm and legs had been reduced to cauterized stumps.

  “Oh my God,” Selma gasped and stepped back.

  Another door swung open. A man with a greasy ponytail beard stood in the threshold. His bare chest and arms were caked with dried blood. He wore a baggy pair of grimy trousers and his bare feet were filthy. He took one look at Selma and pulled out a 10-inch pig sticker.

  Selma spun on her heels and ran toward the junction in the hall. She had to get back to the room before they found Lizzie.

  A second man was blocking the hall. He wore a ragged pair of red long johns and a two-holster rig around his waist with the handgrips of his revolvers facing forward.

  “Get out of my way!” Selma glared at the man.

  She looked to her left and saw the other man stepping out of the room, followed by another man carrying a machete. They were spitting images of each other and were surely twins.

  And then she saw a fourth man.

  Opening the door to her and Lizzie’s room.

  A sinewy arm came from behind and clamped around Selma’s throat.

  She was dragged into the bathing room and flung to the floor next to the lion claw tub. She looked up and saw the twin with the machete. He closed the door and locked it with a key and stood there, staring at her, smiling shamelessly with a mouthful of rotted teeth.

  * * *

  “I’m coming Momma,” Lizzie said when she heard the door opening. She was sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to the door, untying her boots. She raised her boot and with the toe of her other shoe, pushed the heel down and pulled out her stocking foot. She looked over her shoulder...

  An ugly man with wily hair and a slobbered beard stood at the door. He was naked except for a codpiece over his groin, covering his man parts. He stared at Lizzie and tittered like a simpleton.

  He raised a cudgel he’d been holding by his side. The bloodstained club looked like a butcher’s mallet.

  The man stepped into the room.

  Lizzie dove to the floor and scrambled under the bed, dragging a saddlebag behind her.

  The man lunged on the bed. His sudden weight pushed the mattress down, bowing the wooden slats.

  Lizzie scooted under to the middle of the bed. She flipped open the flap and frantically rummaged inside the saddlebag.

  The mattress flew up from the bed and was tossed across the room.

  The man gazed down through the wooden slats.

  Lizzie pointed the pocket revolver up through an opening and tugged on the trigger.

  The bullet tore off his right ear. Instead of hollering from the excruciating pain, the strange man cackled like a demented hag. A runnel of blood leaked out the side of his head and ran down his neck and shoulder. He put his hand up to the wound. He looked at the blood on his fingers. Then he licked each digit like he was savoring the taste of a delicious sauce.

  Lizzie fired a second shot.

  A scarlet mist burst from his ruptured heart as the slug punched through his sternum.

  He hung like a dark cloud then came crashing down.

  The bed broke apart and collapsed on top of her.

  Lying there, pinned under the dead man, Lizzie wished she hadn’t been so stubborn about taking a bath and had gone with her mother.

  * * *

  Grainger entered through the front door and stormed into the boardinghouse with his guns drawn. He strode through the sitting room to the first hallway. He could hear murmurs and scuffling behind a door to one of the rooms.

  Tucking the Dragoon in the holster so he would have a free hand, he reached down for the knob, pointed the Navy Colt, and opened the door.

  Two naked men with gags and kerchief blindfolds were hogtied on the floor.

  “Good Lord,” Grainger muttered. He pulled out his bowie knife, went over, and cut the first man free who was lying facedown with his wrists bound to his ankles.

  The man stretched out his legs, turned over, and sat up. He reached up and tore off the blindfold and pulled the cloth out of his mouth. “Much obliged to you,” he said to Grainger.

  The bounty hunter cut the other man loose and removed his blindfold. The man sat up and spat out the rag. Rubbing the rope burns on his wrists, he too thanked his rescuer.

  “I’d suggest you two hightail it out the window.”

  The men got to their feet on wobbly legs. They each grabbed a piece of bedding and wrapped it around their nakedness.

  Grainger opened the window and watched as they scrambled out one at a time, falling over one another as they made the drop.

  Leaving the room, Grainger continued down the corridor until he reached a bend that led to another hallway where he saw what looked like an old prospector wearing a pair of red long johns and a gun belt. He had his forearms crossed in front of his groin. Judging by his bedraggled appearance, Grainger doubted the man was modest. Which meant only one thing. He was wearing his guns backwards.

  The man whipped his revolvers up bu
t before he could get off a single round, Grainger fired his Navy Colt and shot him in the forehead.

  His head jerked back and his body followed, six-shooters scattering as he landed on the floor.

  Grainger heard a rush of footsteps come up from behind, and then a sharp pain in his shoulder blade. He felt the cold steel ripped from his flesh. He turned and saw a man that looked like a trapper with a ponytail beard standing with a long-shank knife, blood dripping off the blade.

  The wild man thrust the knife again, slashing Grainger’s forearm, causing him to drop his gun. Now with the advantage over an unarmed opponent, the man lunged again but this time the bounty hunter sidestepped the attack and plunged his bowie knife between the other man’s ribs, twisting the handle. The man fell against the wall and slid to the floor.

  Grainger stumbled down the hall until he came to an opened doorway. He looked inside and saw a man without clothes sprawled on top of a smashed bed frame.

  “Help.”

  “Lizzie?”

  “I’m under here.”

  Grainger staggered into the room. With his good arm he was able to roll the dead man off. He reached down and pulled Lizzie up out of the rubble.

  “Where’s your ma?”

  “She went to take a bath.”

  “Then we best find her.”

  They went out of the room and hurried down the hallway to the bathing room.

  Grainger tried the doorknob. It was locked so he kicked in the door.

  A man was lying in a lion claw tub with one leg draped over the side. His head was lulled back. The ponytail beard was matted with blood and pasted inside his masticated throat. His chest had been torn open and was raked with deep claw marks.

  Grainger had to do a double take as the man looked exactly like the one he had just killed a few minutes ago.

  He noticed a machete lying on the floor.

  “Selma? Are you in here?”

  As if to reply, a long yellow tail appeared from behind the base of the tub and uncoiled on the floor.

  “Momma!”

  The tail responded with a wag.

  “What say we give her a minute,” Grainger said. He ushered Lizzie out and closed the door.

  * * *

  Grainger sat in another man’s rocker in the cool evening breeze and stared out at the flat, stony plain with outcrops of rocks and scattered cacti. The front door creaked open and Selma stepped out carrying two mugs of coffee. She handed one to Grainger then sat in the porch swing.

  “A man could get used to this,” he told her and sipped his coffee.

  “You know as well as I do as soon as you’re healed you’ll be riding out.”

  Grainger stared down at the top of his mug. “I put the farm in your name.”

  “I hope you didn’t have to spend all your bounty money.”

  “Nope, just enough to change the name on the title, seeing as the Rapacious Gang ate—” Grainger cleared his throat and continued by saying “—killed the man who owned this place.”

  Lizzie came running around the side of the farmhouse and raced up the porch steps. A shaggy dog came charging right behind.

  “Who might this be?” Grainger said as the mongrel came up to him and nuzzled its nose on his lap.

  “I’m calling him Scraps,” Lizzie said and flopped next to her mother on the swing.

  “Well, that’s a...mighty fine name,” Grainger laughed. He looked over at the woman and the young girl and felt something swelling inside his chest that he had never felt before. He raised his mug to Selma and she raised hers.

  His back was sore, so he leaned back gingerly in the rocker, watching the sun setting slowly on the horizon. The purplish sky was minutes away from full darkness, casting shadows across the chaparral basin for miles between the bordering bluffs and twin buttes in the distance.

  17

  TALE’S END

  “And so now you know something about your great-great grandmother,” Camilla said to Sophia. Everyone was silent; the only sound the constant clinking of the night bugs bouncing off the globe of the porch light.

  Miguel and Maria watched their daughter, waiting for Sophia’s reaction as she gazed about the porch and stared out at the desert. “Abuela?”

  “Yes, child,” Camilla answered.

  “Is this the same house as in the story?”

  “It sure is. Been in the family for generations. That rocker you’re sitting in is the same one Grainger sat in that very night.”

  Sophia glanced down at the chair with a new admiration. She looked up at Camilla with a questioning expression on her face. “Was that really true?”

  “Why of course, child.”

  Sophia looked to her father.

  Miguel shrugged and gave her a smile.

  “Really, shapeshifters and snakemen?” Sophia said skeptically.

  Camilla smiled at her granddaughter. “You’d be surprised what’s out there.”

  Sophia still didn’t look convinced. Before she could say more, a lone coyote’s howl pierced the night from somewhere out in the desert.

  “Let’s you and I go inside so your dad can spend some time with Abuela,” Maria said to Sophia, slipping off the porch swing and taking Miguel’s empty glass. She grabbed the empty pitcher off the deck.

  Sophia propelled herself from the rocker. She brought her glass and collected Camilla’s, who smiled appreciatively.

  Maria opened the screen door and the two entered the house.

  After a moment, Miguel looked at his mother who was staring pensively at the whitish clouds in the otherwise star-studded sky. “Why have you waited so long before telling Sophia about Lizzy?”

  “I wasn’t sure if she would believe it,” Camilla replied.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve always been a believer.”

  “Spoken like a true cryptid hunter.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t forget I’m also the son of a great storyteller.”

  PART THREE

  DESERT HEAT

  18

  BRAWL

  After pulling a late shift at the convenience store, Macy was dog-tired. She knew she should go home, check up on her boys, but she wanted to see Ethan and guessed he was probably at the Mesa. She normally didn’t like to go there so late at night as that is when the undesirables frequented the place, but she figured she would be safe as long as Ethan was there.

  It was close to midnight by the time she pulled into the parking lot along with a dozen beat up cars and pickups, and two Harley-Davidson motorcycles parked under a floodlight. A big rig was on the edge of the lot adjacent to the highway.

  She got out of her car and walked across the gravelly tarmac to the bar’s front door.

  As soon as she stepped inside the gloomy establishment she could smell the rank stink of men’s sweat, commingled with cigarette smoke and stale beer. Her eyes watered and she coughed to clear her throat. She was tempted to turn around and leave.

  She felt sorry for the bartender having to breathe in the foul air for an entire shift but it was just another occupational hazard, as she well knew, just like any other job.

  Two men, and an elderly couple that were pretty much permanent fixtures, sat at the bar. Half a dozen were scattered about the tables, with a few more regulars hunkered in the booths.

  Billiard balls clacked on the pool table in the back.

  Macy took a moment to adjust her eyes to the dark, and then spotted Ethan sitting with his head hung down, alone at a table across the room. The tabletop was cluttered with empty beer bottles, a shot glass lying on its side, and a pint of J&B that Ethan must have smuggled in.

  She strolled over, pulled out a chair, and sat across from him. He was either passed-out drunk or he hadn’t heard her, she wasn’t sure. “I see you started without me,” Macy said. She poured herself a shot of scotch whiskey from the pint bottle and downed it in one gulp.

  Ethan raised his head slowly. He looked her in the face and smiled. “Sorry. Sometimes I can’
t stop myself.”

  “I know.” Macy refilled the shot glass.

  “Buy you a drink?”

  “You already did,” Macy replied and threw back the shot.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” boomed a deep baritone voice.

  Macy looked up and saw Ethan’s brother, Kane, walking up to their table.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” he said.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Ethan said. “I’m fine right where I am.”

  “Get up!” Kane grabbed Ethan by the arm.

  “Off me!” Ethan yelled, pulling his arm free.

  “Why don’t you let him be?” Macy said.

  Kane gave her an evil stare. Even in the dim light, she could see his piercing eyes; unpredictable like a wild animal.

  “Mind your own business,” Kane said.

  “No. We’re sitting here having a drink. Now go and leave us alone.”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me.” Kane backhanded the pint bottle with such force that it went flying across the room and knocked the drinks off of a table where two bikers were sitting. They bolted to their feet and kicked back their chairs.

  The men had scraggly beards and wore heavy denim jackets with cutoff sleeves, crusty jeans, and black motorcycle boots. The tall one had greasy black shoulder-length hair; the shorter biker bald as a cue ball. Prison tats covered their muscular arms most likely buffed from prison yard workouts and they looked tough enough to be a World Wrestling Federation tag team.

  “You got a problem?” said the tall biker.

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Kane said.

  “It does when you start throwing shit our way,” the other biker said. He pulled a long blade hunting knife from a sheath on his belt.

  “You boys take it outside,” the bartender said, “or I’m calling the sheriff.”

  “Let’s go, Ethan,” Kane said.

  Ethan looked at the two big men then turned to his brother. “I don’t think so.”

  “See what you’ve done?” Macy said, glaring up at Kane.

  “This asshole bothering you?” the tall biker asked, looking for any excuse to start busting heads.