by E A Comiskey
"So that's it? You dragged me to this greasy spoon in the middle of the night to tell me the first half of some crazy story?"
"It was you who suggested this restaurant, Dick. I merely saved you from certain death. I would like, very much, to tell you the rest of the story, but can't. I physically can't."
Richard scowled. He no more trusted the man than he trusted his own digestive system to cooperate on a consistent basis. "Why's that?"
"Because knowledge is meant to be sought out."
"Eh?"
"I can't tell one who isn't seeking."
"You won't tell me unless I beg?"
"I am literally unable to offer any further information on the subject unless you ask for it."
"If you want me to beg you to feed me some cockamamy tale about—"
"I promised you the truth, Dick. Surely, you'd like to know the truth about what you saw tonight."
What had he seen? Enough to scare the binky from a baby's mouth, that's for sure. A pretty girl had turned into some sort of a monster and dissolved into ash. A monster the size of a large man had fallen to the ground in pain when sprayed with a bit of water from a toy gun. Beasts with wings and red eyes had flown through the night at him.
Then his memory carried him to another time and place.
His beautiful Barbara, lying on a clean white sheet, tears rolling down her pale cheeks. At thirty-two, she'd appeared to be ancient—her skin, dry parchment, her eyes, watery and gray.
He'd brushed her hair away from her face, trying not to wince when several strands came off in his hand. The doctors had no answers, only a grim prognosis.
The boy she cared for so deeply sat in a chair by the bed. How sad he looked. He’d finally found a mother figure to care for him and a mere moment later she was at death’s door. In a way, it seemed a worse pain to endure than what their infant daughter would experience. She would never miss what she had never known.
Suddenly, for some reason he could not name, he was certain that the bizarre, wasting illness he'd watched his wife suffer through half a century earlier was related to the nightmare he'd lived through tonight.
"Tell me what you know, then," he said. "I'd like to understand what in tarnation is going on, and you better not be yanking my chain."
Was that relief that washed over Stanley's face?
"The man called out to me. He asked if I'd like to know what it was I had found. I told him I would like that very much.
"He said he was a hunter of beasts that had no place in the natural order. Just such a beast had possessed a man who lived long before anyone kept track of the years, and influenced the creation of the totem."
The waiter dropped a little plastic basket on the table between them. "Here's yer cheese sticks. Want somethin' else?"
"Not now," Richard barked.
The kid slumped off to a corner and pulled his phone out of his pocket.
Stanley waited for the kid’s thumbs to start tapping the screen before he went on. "The totem gave its holder power over life and death, but such power was never meant to be held by humans. It would destroy me, he said, and I could feel that it was true. It was like holding a live electric wire."
"So, you threw it into the sea?" Richard guessed.
"I tried, but I couldn't let go. It had fused itself to me. I panicked, and the more upset I got, the more agitated the life around me became. They were murmuring, thrashing, falling to the sand and, of course, that only served to fuel my fear.
"Then the man pushed forward again. 'Reach out to me, child,' he said, and so I did. He took a crystal knife from a sheath on his belt. He held my wrist in one hand and stabbed the center of the thing with the other.
"It was as though an explosive had been detonated. The force threw me into the water. Sand blew into the air all around us. When I got my feet under me once again, I saw him kicking sand over a puddle of blood. 'Return to the earth,’ he said and then he looked at me.
"He told me I would need a teacher, and for many, many years he fulfilled that role in my life. That I am alive at this ripe age is a testament to the fine job he did."
"Who was he?" Richard asked.
"I told you. He was a hunter," Stanley said. "And now, so am I."
Richard realized that he'd been leaning forward over the table, listening anxiously to the other man's story, and he forced himself to lean back against the bench and cross his arms. He'd be no man's fool. "A hunter, eh?"
"Yes. Like my mentor, Busar, I hunt those creatures who have no place in the natural order."
"Like what we saw tonight."
"Precisely." He took a cheese stick and nibbled off the end. "The strigoi feed on memories. They devour them until a person has nothing left. Then, with no will to go on, the person dies."
An image of the halls at Everest came to mind—mindless shells of humans sitting in wheelchairs, staring into space. He'd noticed how many of them came in fairly lucid but, weeks later, were lost. A shiver crawled along his spine at the thought that he could have been next.
"Are you going back to get the rest?"
Stanley finished his cheese stick and dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin. "The rest?"
"Well, yeah. You said you're a hunter. You can't just leave them there."
"First of all, I didn't come to Everest to kill strigoi. I came to find you, Dick. Second, I'm fairly certain we eliminated the entire nest."
Richard looked around to make sure no one listened. Surely, this conversation, overheard, would be enough to have them both committed to a mental institution. "I saw 'em. Chasin' us."
"Are you certain?"
"Red lights in the sky," he said.
“Following us?” Stanley asked.
“Well, not exactly. They were more, like, hovering behind the building.”
Stanley smirked. "Those were radio towers, old boy," he said.
"What?"
"Radio towers. Not strigoi."
Richard threw up his hands. "What in tarnation were we running for?"
"We were running toward a fine cup of coffee and some excellent fried cheese."
Every arthritic ache Richard had ever experienced, and at least three new ones, flared up at once. He mumbled a name under his breath that his sweet Barbara would have admonished him for.
"What was that, Dick?"
"I despise you," Richard said.
Stanley chuckled. "Would you like to know more?"
Again, the memory of Barbara came to him. Undeniably, he hated Stan Kapcheck more than flies in his oatmeal, but, in all these years, who else had he ever been able to voice his belief to? The belief that her death was tied to this bizarre night grew like a cancer in his mind. Hesitantly, he said, "You say those things feed on memories."
"Yes."
"Well, is it possible… I mean, is there such a thing…a different thing maybe…" He sighed.
"What is it, my friend?"
"This is stupid. I know it’s stupid, so you don’t need to tell me it is, but…well…soon as you started talking, I started thinking ‘bout it.
“My Barbara, she was as pretty a girl as you ever saw, and so full of life, I swear I thought she'd outlive me by fifty years. She was the best mama a baby ever had. Spoiled that child rotten, carrying her around all day long. She even took in some homeless boy. Musta been about fifteen years old. She adopted him like he was a puppy left on her doorstep. Kid followed her around like a puppy, too. Barely let her out of his sight. Hung on every word she said.
“Then one day, I noticed she was a little tired, and not a month later, I put her to rest, a wrinkled old woman too frail to draw her next breath."
"But it wasn't cancer," Stanley said in a matter-of-fact way that Richard was grateful for. He might have been tempted to hit him if he'd gone over the top with sympathy or, worse, pity.
"No. Not cancer. Not a virus. It was nothing at all, so far as a bunch of worthless, overpaid doctors could tell. She just wasted away overnight."
; Stanley hesitated a moment before saying, "Fate plays strange games with us."
"Don't talk to me about fate, you old coot. It wasn't her fate to—"
"I'm not speaking of your wife's fate. I'm speaking of yours." He produced a small leather-bound journal from his pocket and placed it on the table, laying his hands upon it with an air of reverence. "I didn't come to Everest to be cared for in my old age, Richard. And I didn’t come to battle the strigoi. I came to find you." He opened the book and turned the thin, crinkling pages until he seemed satisfied and then pushed it across the table.
Richard stared at the ink drawing of a vaguely humanoid form with long, skinny arms and legs and a head too big for its slender body. Wrinkled skin hung from the thing and long wisps of hair hung lank around its head.
Skinwalker, he read. Twelve cycles of twelve new moons will wake this beast that dwells primarily in the American southwest. Skinwalkers are thought to be the earthbound souls of ancient witches; able to take on any form, they will almost always choose to appear as a beautiful human. They feed on the life force of humans.
Cross reference incubus/succubus: related, not equivocal.
He closed the book and pushed it back toward Stanley. "In English?"
"My mentor's greatest motivation was to find and destroy the skinwalker who killed his father when he was a boy. The creature only appears once every twelfth, twelfth moon cycle—about ten years—for a single month. If it finds a human of fantastic vitality, it will feed on that human's life force and that will be enough to carry it through its period of hibernation. While it’s awake and murdering its victim, it’ll cause as much trouble as it can, just for the fun of it. Twelve moon cycles later it will wake and feed again. The trick is to figure out where it is, get to it, trap it, and destroy it all within a single month. Not even a month, really. A moon cycle. Twenty-eight days."
"You think one of these skinwalkers killed my Barbara?" A leaden weight settled in his stomach. The words had the taste of truth.
"That is precisely what I think. Richard, I found you when I came across some old records on another case. It’s another long story, best told some other time, but if I’ve done my calculations correctly, it’s been a little over forty years."
Richard swallowed around the lump in his throat. "Forty years last winter."
Stanley’s blue eyes twinkled with excitement in the bright light of the diner. "Where were you then?"
"Tombstone, Arizona." He could still smell the sweet alkaline scent of the desert, feel the warm, dry air blowing his hair away from his face, hear the country music spilling out of the saloons. The very name of the town carried the weight of magic in his memory. The best years of his life had been lived in Tombstone.
"Tombstone?"
"That's right."
Stanley shook his head and chuckled. "We got as close as Phoenix. We reasoned that there are more people there. It would be easier to blend in."
"You ever been to Tombstone?" Richard asked.
"Not once," Stanley admitted.
"It's the most alive place I've ever been. There's an energy there…different from anywhere else. Overwhelming sometimes. Drives people mad. Can't tell you how many handsome, hardworking young men come to that town and can't ever bring themselves to leave. A year later, they're hooked on drugs and alcohol. There's something wonderful there, but there's evil, too. Barbara and I both thought so. We spoke of leaving, moving east. We worried about raising a kid in that environment."
"All this time," Stanley marveled. "And now here you are, telling me what Busar and I couldn't figure out in two lifetimes."
A devil of skepticism nipped at Richard's mind. "You're not pullin’ my leg?"
"I have never been more serious," Stanley promised. "I was on a hunt in Ann Arbor and I came across some personal records from a certain Dr. Aldrich. He'd been treating my client for a malaise that had no physical cure, so far as he could find. He was doomed to lose her. Her disease was caused by a minor demon who'd latched on to her and only a powerful exorcist could have saved her. But in his record, he made a note that, though the two cases were different, it reminded him very much of a particular case when he'd been a fresh graduate from the University of Tucson College of Medicine."
"He was Barbara's doctor. I don't think the man slept the whole time she was ill. He tried everything."
Stanley nodded. "He's a good man, but blind to that which he cannot label scientifically."
Richard pushed the book farther away. "This is nonsense. Rational people don't chase monsters."
Stanley leaned forward. "If Barbara was killed forty years ago, at least three more people have died since then, and a fourth is in danger. You have the chance to help me stop this thing. You have the chance to do something with the time left to you. Something that matters." He sat back again and sipped his coffee. "Of course, you also have the right to go back across the street and settle into your armchair and live out whatever time is left. I won't stop you. The strigoi are dead. You should be perfectly safe and well cared for there."
Richard sat with his arms folded, watching the other man's face, trying to read his expression. He’d attended the First Presbyterian Church and paid his tithe every week for the whole first half of his life. He’d prayed the Sinner's Prayer and kept the faith in the promise attached to that until Barbara died. After that, he'd never held out for mumbo jumbo spiritual stuff. Truth was, he wasn’t sure he’d believed it back when he attended, either. There were no monsters in the closet. There didn't need to be a devil. Humans were monstrous enough without help. Life was horrific, even without demons chasing you in the night. Still, he couldn't ignore the ring of truth. Hadn't he, after all, made a tenuous connection between what he'd witnessed tonight and what had happened to Barbara, even before the Brit told his fantastic tale?
He rubbed a hand on his rough, stubbled cheek. "All right then. What do we do now?"
"Well, if you're right, and I have no doubt at all that you are, my friend, then we need to get to Tombstone. By my calculations, our monster is awake and on the move. We have twenty-seven days to put an end to his terror."
Reality crashed down upon Richard. "We're too old to go traipsing all over the country. I have a doctor's appointment on Tuesday. And we got no car and no cash. Heck! We don't even have a change of underwear! How the devil do you expect us to get all the way to Tombstone, Arizona?"
Stanley cocked his head. "You're a pessimist."
"I'm a realist, and you're a darn fool."
Stanley picked up his book and slipped it back into the inner pocket of his jacket before leaning both arms on the table and looking directly into Richard's eyes. "Tell me you haven't felt more alive in the past hour than you have since you were a boy. Tell me there wasn't a joy you've never known before when you witnessed the destruction of evil. Tell me you don't think the skinwalker murdered your wife, and that you have no desire to get revenge on that beast. Tell me, and you'll never hear from me again."
Richard swallowed the lump in his throat. "We're too old."
"We're not dead yet, Richard. We can do this. Our resources are not as limited as you imagine. I have found that the Universe always provides for those who are on the side of good."
Skepticism raised its head once more. "Give me one example of the universe providing anything."
Stanley grinned. "That's easy, my friend. Just when I thought I'd reached a place where I was lost and without direction, the universe sent me you, Dick. I've been reminded that I still have life and I still have purpose."
"Hmph," Richard grumbled. "You still ain't told me how the heck we're gonna get from here to Tombstone, Arizona."
"We'll drive, of course."
Richard mumbled about crazy men with ridiculous notions, but at the same time, he couldn't help but notice those pains had lessened up a little and he felt something deep inside he hadn't felt in a very long time.
Richard Bell was excited to participate in life's next great adventure.
Chapter Six
Finn
"So, what do you want to do first?" Sara asked. She walked with a peculiar bounciness that was difficult to keep up with, despite the fact that his legs were nearly twice the length of hers.
Finn held his hands out. "I thought this was your show."
"You said you know how to have fun." She stuck a pouty lip out at him and that urge to take it between his teeth came to him again.
"Well, I was having fun at Joe's." He paused to let a horse-drawn stagecoach rumble through the intersection before crossing the street and stepping up onto the boardwalk that ran the length of the historic district or, as he thought of it, Tourist Hell.
"That wasn't fun. That was self-pity."
"I have fun pitying myself."
She turned abruptly and dashed into a store that sold Victorian era costumes. A floor-length purple dress with an elaborate bustle hung on a display just inside the door. Holding it in front of her, she gushed, "Oh my goodness! Look how pretty this is. We should dress up like Wyatt Earp and Big Nose Kate."
“Adults shouldn’t play dress up.”
“I adore role playing. I live for it!”
He slid his hands into his pockets and grinned at her. "Big Nose Kate was a whore who spent time with Doc Holiday, and there's not a chance in Hell I'm dressing like Wyatt Earp. Besides, they'd have to cut half that skirt off to make it the right length for your tiny little legs."
The hanger made a loud click when she dropped it back over the bar. "I'm insulted. I'm not that short."
"Nah. Not short. Just fun sized."
Her smile lit her whole face. "You made a joke, Finn!"
"I told you I'm a fun guy."
"Uh huh." She rolled her eyes. "Come on then, party pooper. This isn't the right place for us if you're not gonna play dress up with me."
"Definitely not the right place for us." He let her lead him back onto the boardwalk. The town was still quiet, the streets not yet busy with the tourists that would show up in time for a night of dinner and dancing. A warm breeze carried the scent of the little rosewood blocks sold in the gift stores and, somewhere beneath that, drifted the crisp alkaline smell of the desert. Finn inhaled deeply, letting the fresh air fill his smoke-tortured lungs. How long had it been since he'd taken a walk?
