Sound travels farther in cold weather. It’s called refraction. Essentially, the sound waves that are in the higher, warmer air that is farther from cold ground move faster through the more excited air molecules and get pushed back downward. So sound gets amplified closer to the ground. I knew that at the time, though I didn’t learn the science behind it until later. That night I was just wondering how far away the screams of the little boy were coming from.
It had been five weeks since I’d returned from Olathe, and in that time I had found out little new beyond some information about the last girl who had been killed. A pretty blond girl in her sophomore year of college, she had two parents and a brother that the newspapers bled for grief and drama for a couple of weeks before moving on to the next tragedy. But it wasn’t over for them. It would never be over for any of us.
It would have been an easy thing to add their imagined pain to my own and use it as all the justification I needed to end this now, to end him now. But for all my circumstantial evidence, I had nothing definitive. Even the DNA from your grandmother’s nails, while compelling, didn’t eliminate any other explanation, and given what I intended on doing to him, I needed to be sure.
I had stayed busy in the intervening weeks, both in surveilling Salk
and my work, as well as in more fully preparing for when I finally took
him, if it came to that. I purchased—again, slowly and with great
discretion—a variety of medical supplies and tools. I found an old
moving truck from a defunct company that I got cheap with cash. The
container body of that truck is where I set up Salk’s room.
I bolted a table to the floor and attached straps and chains to it.
I attached lights to the interior corners of the container and added a
row of shelves and a chair to one side. I even welded an IV stand to
the wall so I could keep him fed with whatever cocktail of saline and
drugs I needed to keep him alive. I planned on torturing him for a long
time, and I didn’t want him dying from shock or infection.
I told myself I was going to do all these things to him to get information. To get answers to the hows and whys of what all he had done. But that was only partially true. In my heart of hearts, I knew was going to do it whether he gave me answers or not. I hated that part of myself, but if I was going to control it I had to accept it. So I prepared the room Salk would slowly die in while salving my conscience with the knowledge that I was being thorough and fair before I took him.
Of course, that’s not how things played out. One night, the night of the screams and so much more, I was watching Salk’s house with the dull-eyed enthusiasm of a sentry who always guards the same post. I had been there for close to eight hours and was close to packing it up to go get some rest when Salk suddenly came out of his house and got in his car.
This was strange for him. It was nearly eight in the evening, and he never left the house after six except for the time I had been in the closet. The night the girl was taken. Feeling my pulse pounding in my head, I waited until he was almost out of sight and then I pulled out and began to follow him.
We drove for well over an hour, and despite the darkness of the hour and the other cars on the road, I couldn’t help but feel conspicuous. I hung back as much as I dared, but I couldn’t risk losing him again. After going through town and traveling up the interstate over eighty miles, he got off at an exit full of rundown shopping centers and closed restaurants. At first I thought he had a particular place he was headed, but he just turned into the first large parking lot and began cruising through it at a low speed, even circling around the back side of what looked to be a defunct electronics store and a couple of clothing outlets. After he had made a complete circuit he moved on to the next one, and then the next.
Once I understood what he was doing, it made it easier for me to hang back and observe. I would stay up near the street and park, waiting for him to finish looking for whatever or whoever he was looking for before easing back behind him and into the next lot. It was nearly ten now and many of the places were closed, but there were enough cars still around that I should have been hard to notice at such a distance.
That distance was a mistake. We were in the fourth parking lot, and as I waited for him to come back around from driving the backside of the grocery store and smaller stores that made up this latest decaying shopping center, I realized it was taking too long. I put the car back in drive and eased around to the back, mimicking the direction he had gone. As I turned the corner, in the distance I saw him shoving a boy of around ten into the car. I began to speed up, but he was fast and far away. By the time I reached where the boy had been taken, Salk was already pulling out onto some back road that led away from the lot.
I followed, abandoning any pretense of stealth now. I worried that
me chasing him could cause him to hurt the boy sooner rather than later,
but I had to take the chance. If Salk got away, the boy was going to
die.
The road we were taking was small and winding, leading through a neighborhood and then further away from buildings and lights. My little spy car, while reliable, was not equipped with the best headlights or any great speed, and it took all my concentration to keep to the road while not losing ground as I pursued them. We were ten miles out of town now, fields of lightly frosted farmland reflecting the ghost glow of winter moonlight as we threaded our way through the darkness. We passed a home that was brightly lit with twinkling colored lights and molded plastic reindeer and it occurred to me that Christmas had been the week before and I hadn’t noticed.
Farmland began to give way to woods, and I noticed with rising panic that I was running low on gas. Enough to get back to town, to get the boy help, but just barely. This needed to end now.
I stomped the pedal as far down as it would go, and the car jumped
forward with a protesting whine. I wasn’t sure how long I could
maintain this speed without wrecking or the engine blowing up, but I
didn’t need long. Gripping the wheel tightly, I readied myself as the
nose of my car reached within a foot of Salk’s back bumper. At the next
curve, I moved into the left lane long enough to gain half a length
more, then swung the front fender of my car into his back tire.
The effect was immediate. He began to spin out, but then so did I. I tried to regain control of the car, but it was too late. I jumped the shallow ditch on the right side of the road and then everything went dark.
When I woke up, my car was somehow still running, its hood crumpled from going head-on into a medium sized maple tree. Judging by the car clock only a few minutes had passed, but that was more than enough time for Salk to get away. I tried to look out my window but it was fogged up beyond any visibility, so I just opened the door and slowly got out.
My head was swimmy and I had a small gash where I had hit my head on the steering wheel, but otherwise I seemed okay. Steadying myself against the car, I looked around and saw Salk’s car wrecked in the far deeper left ditch fifty feet down the road. The front doors to the car were open and there was no sign of anyone. I started making my way up the road to the car, and it didn’t take long before I saw the drag marks leading away into the woods.
I patted my pockets. I had my gun and a folding knife on me, and that would have to do. Following the path wasn’t hard at first, with the moonlight throwing the thick ravines of ice, snow and dirt into sharp relief. As I got deeper into the trees, however, the shadows and undergrowth began to slow my progress. That’s when the boy began screaming.
I picked up my pace again, moving at a loping, unsteady run as I tried to gauge direction through a combination of sight and sound. The boy’s cries were becoming louder, but they were also become more shrill and frantic as they moved from fear into terror. I pushed through a last thick stand of pines and then I saw why the boy was screaming so.
This is where I have to ask for your patience more than anything that’s come before. I understand I am giving you a great deal of detail to explain everything fully, but despite the strangeness of much of it, I don’t know that anything so far has fallen entirely outside of what you understand as possible. This next part…I will do my best to describe it, but you need to understand that I will fail to really do it justice and it will sound unbelievable. Just try to bear with me as best you can.
I pushed through those trees and stumbled into a small clearing, the cold white moonlight shining down like a spotlight over the scene. The boy—he looked closer to eight now that I was closer—was down on his back trying to scrabble away from the thing towering over him. Salk was nowhere to be seen. As for the thing itself…
It stood on two legs and was half again as big as a man. From behind, I could see its legs were digitigrade—like the legs of a dog or cat, though they reminded me more of rat legs. It had no tail I could see, but just relatively small hips that swiftly expanded into a large, muscular torso. The back of the torso was largely covered with matted grey hair, though it became patchy and seemed to transition into some kind of black chitin as it moved towards the head. I took all of this in quickly and while still moving forward slowly. Then it turned to face me.
Its head was a strange mix of reptile and insect, reminding me of a cross between a large beetle and a snake. A hard, black shell hooded a long face set with burning yellow eyes and a mouth full of long, curved teeth. The strangest thing about it was its arms. They were different from each other. One was heavy and thick, made out of that same black material and shaped like some kind of savage club that tapered to a spiky lump at the end. The other was a slender, furry hand with fingers that were long and almost graceful looking, each tip punctuated by a hooked claw.
As it regarded me, I involuntarily took a step back. My mind was
having trouble reconciling what it was seeing. How was I supposed to
deal with something like this? Still, I had to try. I fumbled and
pulled the gun from my coat pocket, leveled it at the creature and
fired.
I saw the round strike just before hearing the wet thudding sound it made. The creature seemed unfazed. I fired again. And again. I emptied thirteen rounds into that thing, and it didn’t stagger, didn’t bleed. It just took it without complaint. Then I realized it was making a sound after all. It was low at first, and I couldn’t identify it. When I did, I felt my bowels loosen.
It was laughing. The sound was terrible, like wet meat and rocks
being tumbled in an old dryer, but I could tell that’s what it was.
Whatever this thing was, it was laughing at me.
Looking back to the child, who had been transfixed by all of this, and I yelled for him to run. I still don’t know if that is what killed him, and I try to tell myself he was going to die regardless, but as I yelled, the creature turned back to him and brought its massive club arm down on his stomach.
The boy…well, he burst open. The arm was brought down a second and a third time, but he was well dead before then, the force from the blows shattering his bones and sending jets of blood and ruined flesh shooting off in streams from the point of impact. The thing turned back to me, still laughing its awful laugh, and I swear I could see that mouth of knives smiling at me.
So I ran.
My mind was half gone at this point, and I can’t say that I was even heading back toward the road. Over the sound of blood in my ears I could hear the terrible thudding crash of the monster pursuing me. I tried to go faster, but my vision was beginning to swim and I found myself struggling to keep my feet. I felt more than heard its hot, ragged breath on my back, and I was turning to try to fight it off, but suddenly I was flying through the air. Pain flared through my neck and shoulders as I struck something hard, and then I was out again.
When I came to, I was in a room of some kind. It looked like a basement, with cinderblock walls and the musty air of disuse. The room was fairly large, stretching out into a darkness that was not illuminated by the single pool of light the overhead bulb afforded. I was tied in a chair, ropes at my wrists and ankles, bungie cord around my chest. I tried to rock the chair, but it was either very heavy or secured somehow, because it didn’t budge.
Next I tried to listen for any sign of noise, any clue as to where I was or who might be around. Nothing. Finally I went back to studying my surroundings, peering into the dark for any further information I could find. That’s when I saw his eyes.
Salk’s eyes were reflecting the light from the overhead bulb, and as I stared into the blackness, I could slowly make out his still form. He said nothing, but after another few seconds of studying me he stepped forward into the light, his eyes still fixed upon me. He was smiling. And it looked very genuine.
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Credits
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