“Have a seat, Mr Costner. What brings you into the clinic today?”
William Costner didn’t appear to be a man who was used to looking so unsure of himself. He was a burly man in his late forties, and Dr. Winter could see the scars on his hands from a life spent working. As he sat there in his plaid work shirt and wrangler jeans, she thought he looked a little like Burt Reynolds, though definitely less handsome and more plain faced. She had done her research, she knew that Mr. Costner owned a large ranch between Cashmere and Gainesville. She also knew that he supplied a lot of beef to the area, meaning his was not some small-scale operation. His bill had been paid with a check, and he hadn’t put down an insurance company, though she knew he had one. He had chosen to come to her instead of going to a therapist in his hometown. Mr. Costner was afraid that people would talk if they knew he had seen a “head shrinker” or whatever he called her in his head.
Despite this, he had still come to see her, so it must have been important.
“I dunno,” he said, “Maybe nothin. I saw somethin and it kinda stuck with me. I need it gone, and they say you’re good at that.”
Dr. Pamela Winter nodded, rising to get him some tea, “I am very good at what I do. Won't you have some tea? I find it helps people relax and come to the heart of the problem.”
She held the cup out for him, but he hesitated before he took it.
“It doesn’t have nothin weird in it, does it?”
Dr. Winter smiled, “It's ginseng, winter cherry, and all natural ingredients.”
He took it, and as the steam hit his nose, she saw him waggle his mustache a little. He took a sip, and closed his eyes as the mmmm wafted out from between his pursed lips. This was a man who clearly took his tea sweet and in a glass. Something like this would be exotic, a treat for his less refined pallet. It would also be the in that Winter needed.
“So,” she said, returning to her seat, “tell me about what you’d like to forget.”
He looked into the tea, seeming unsure how to start.
“I think, no, I KNOW that something attacked me in the barn, and I’m afraid it might come back again.”
* * * * * *
I’ve been a rancher my whole life. My father was a rancher, my Grandfather was a rancher, and his grandfather had been a stock lineman who was extremely knowledgeable when it came to breeding cows and horses. Much like my forebears, I’m a simple man who doesn’t put a lot of stock in strange things. I ride the fence line everyday to make sure that my grazing land is clear of breaks. I take my cows in when it’s cold and let them stay in the field when it’s warm. I know when to start looking for new calves and could pretty well tell you exactly when one is going to drop one. I’m a God fearing man, a patriot who gladly served in The Gulf War, and my neighbors will tell you I’m as reliable and sturdy as the fence posts around my graze land.
So when one of my cows came up dead one morning, her neck oozing blood, I was a little perplexed.
“Whatcha reckon did it?” Randy asked as he and Jake stood on either side of the dead creature.
Jake and Randy have been my farm hands for the last five years, and they’ve helped me with a lot of things in that time.
This was definitely one of the stranger tasks I had asked them for help with.
By her marking, I thought this might be Clementine. She was a good breeding cow, a good producer when it came to milk, and just as dead regardless. I had seen dead cows before, of course. It wasn’t uncommon for animals to come and harry the herd, but they usually didn’t do it like this. Hell, it had been years since a cow had been killed by some varment at all. The last time had been a coyote pack that had gotten a little bigger than expected, and the game warden had finally had to put together a posey to smoke them out before they started killing people.
The puncture wounds on her neck, though, made me think this was no coyote pack.
“Not sure,” I responded, bending down to look at the wound.
It was nothing more than a pair of pinpricks, but they happened to be straight into the jugular vein.
“Maybe it was one of those chupacabras,” Jake joked, Randy snorting as he shook his head.
“Yeah, sure. Little bugger came all the way from Mexico just to taste our fine Georgia beef.”
I turned as the hazard sirens beeped, seeing George backing up the flatbed towards the body. The noise drowned out the farm hands as they joked about different boogins that might have come out of the woods to eat poor ole Clementine and I was glad. I didn’t believe in any of that nonsense, the truth likely being worse. The truth was that it was probably some weirdo, or a group of weirdos, who liked to mutilate livestock and I would have to be on guard for the next few nights to see if they came back.
“Quit flapping your gums, boys, and let's get Clem out of the pasture.”
Both hopped too and with the help of a chain and the winch in the back of the truck, we soon had her laying on the black metal bed.
She almost looked like she was sleeping, and it was easy to forget she was dead until you looked for the rise and fall of her chest.
“Bring her into the barn,” I told George, drawing some looks from the other two.
“You’re not gonna butcher her,” Jake said skeptically, “She’s been in the sun all morning and that meat is likely,”
“No, I wanna have a look at her wounds. If some animal did this, then there should be a sign. If someone did this, as I suspect, then there will be a very different sign. You and Randy go see to the cows while I have a look at poor Clem.” I said, and the young man snapped a salute as he went off to handle the livestock.
I shook my head as the pair swaggered off.
Had I ever been that full of himself? That drunk off my own existence? I suspected that I had once, but who could remember that far back?
I climbed into the passenger seat of the flatbed and rode with George as we headed for the biggest of the three barns.
“So what do you reckon happened, boss?” George asked, wheeling out of the cow pasture with practiced ease.
I liked my regular hands just fine, despite Jake and Randy being young enough to be my kids. Jake was a good stockman, having an eye for cow flesh despite his age, and Randy was my go to man for breaking horses. George, however, was the most sensible of the three and usually handled the numbers and the equipment for the farm. I had started letting the kid keep the books for the place too, and it was amazing to see what he could do with that degree in accounting.
“I reckon people happened.” I answered solemnly.
George looked at me uncertainly, “You think someone around here did that?”
“I hope so,” I said as we pulled into the cool enclosure of the barn, “cause otherwise something bit her and sucked her dry while she just stood there.”
I climbed out of the truck and went to look at the poor dead Clementine. She had a pair of perfect punctures on her neck and the skin around the wound was stained a deep red. Whatever had done this had drained her blood, and the lack of any on the ground made me think they had taken it with them. Why would they do that? Because they were crazy, I thought. They were Satanists or Witches or something else I didn’t know and they had taken the cows blood to do something unnatural with it.
I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to know why they had needed it, but I needed to know why there hadn’t been more than a few spatters on the grass under her.
“I don’t understand how they could drain a whole cow with just two little holes.” George said, looking over my shoulder.
“How do you know they got the whole cow?” I asked, having come to the same conclusion but wanting to know why he thought so.
“Look at the skin, the discoloration. She’s been drained out, but I just don’t understand how. Draining a cow like this would have taken days. How did they accomplish it so quickly?”
I nodded at his assessment, taking a knife from a nearby bench and returning to the corpse to confirm my suspicions. I ran it along the cow's stomach, the abdomen opening slowly as the guts slid out. Not a drop of blood came with them. The organs looked oddly shriveled, oddly drawn up, but still no blood came. I shook my head, making a few other cuts but getting the same results.
“I don’t know,” I responded as George shook his head, “but they were very thorough. Take her off the east field, George. Put her as close to the woods as you can get her. The sooner she’s off the property, the better.”
I watched as the flatbed rolled away, not sure what to make of all of this.
The sight of the bloodless cow would haunt me for the rest of the day, and that was why I was awake that night as my wife snored beside me.
It had been a long day with no answers and I doubted I would ever discover what had done this to Clementine. The ceiling certainly offered none as I lay staring at the popcorn ridges that hung up there. I yawned as my tired eyes begged for reprieve. Someone had killed one of my cows, drained her dry while I lay asleep, and I knew that it might very well happen again. How could people have done that? I knew what it looked like, I wasn’t blind to the punctures that had gone right into the jugular vein, but it was impossible to imagine something like that existing.
Stuff like that was for horror movies, not for real life.
I yawned again, just starting to let my eyes shut as the soft noises of my wife’s snores lulled me to sleep, when I heard the harsh sound of a cow in distress.
It cut across my sleep like a razor, and my eyes popped open as I slid quickly out of bed.
I considered getting dressed, but decided against it pretty quickly. I needed to be quick if I was going to catch them. I grabbed my shotgun and headed out into the night, my pajama pants clinging to me as my bare chest prickled in the slight chill of early morning. I was heading for the milk shed, but when I heard the sound again, I turned my attention to the third and smallest of the sheds, the birthing shed. When I catch the cows in time, I like to put them in there to calf so that I don’t lose one to varements or the cold by accident. At the moment I had three cows in there ready to calf, and whatever was killing them had decided that this was the best spot to find a weak target.
I came into the shed, gun barrels leading the way, and nearly dropped it on the chaff.
What I saw haunts me even now.
It was a woman!
She was dressed in a sheer black thing, her raven hair billowing behind her, and her pale skin nearly glistened in the moonlight coming through the nearby window. It wasn’t her skin that filled me with dread, however. Her jaw was open and unhinged like a snake. Her face was strangely elongated by this action, and she had four fangs the size of pencils jutting from her jaw. Her red eyes had turned to look at me, and I saw the blood falling to the floor as Gertrude bawwed pitifully. She turned back to the cow and wrapped her mouth around the wound, drinking the blood as it oozed out. There was a shivering new calf on the ground beneath her, and Gertrude seemed to be trying to protect it even as her blood dribbled into the mouth of this haunting creature.
I lifted the gun, pointing it at the woman, and told her to get the hell away from my cow.
She hissed at me, sending more blood to the hay, and when she bent towards me, I’m not ashamed to say that I cowered away from her. I lifted the gun, preparing to fire, but as she loomed over me with her strange mouth opened wide, she suddenly seemed unsure of herself. She pulled back, closing her eyes as she tried to stop herself before she struck me, and then bent like a shadow on the side of a house as she folded out the open door.
I sat for a count of five, trying to get myself under control, before I could get enough strength in my legs to go help Gertrude.
I got some pressure on the wound, and as it started to clot, I heard the cow baww quietly again. I sat there in the shed and held pressure on her neck until I was sure she wouldn't bleed to death, and then I rushed to the big barn and got the first aid kit so I could clean and cover the wound. Gertrude didn’t like that much, but she allowed it, and as I watched her care for her new calf, I finally breathed a sigh of relief.
That was a few weeks ago, and the strange woman hasn’t been back since.
Not in the flesh, anyway.
When I sleep, I dream of her terrible face and frightening presence. I awake screaming some nights, but I cannot tell my wife why. Better to keep the burden with me forever then let it infect her too, though it threatened to haunt me forever.
* * * * *
He leaned forward then, making a glooping sound as he pushed the black lump out of his throat.
As he sat quietly, Doctor Winter took the cup and poured the lump into a jar as she always did. She set it with the others in there, and as she washed the cup, she thought about what the farmer had told her. Black hair, pale skin, red eyes.
Curious, very curious.
Mr. Costner shook his head like a dog as he came out of it, looking around as if he wasn’t sure where he was.
“Did it work?” he asked, though by the sound of it, he wasn’t sure what it was.
“Yes, sir. I don’t think those pesky nightmares will bother you anymore. I’d like to ask, Mr. Costner, could you use a good dog for your farm?”
The man cocked his head, “Well, yes actually. I recently had one of my younger ones die when a cow kicked him and I was hoping to replace him with something a little bigger.”
Doctor Winter wrote down an address and the name of a client she knew would appreciate the business, “Talk to this man and tell him I sent you. I think your nighttime worries will be a thing of the past with one of his dogs watching over your property.”
Mr. Costner nodded, thanking her as he left.
Pamela waved as he headed for the reception desk, letting the door close behind him as she reached for her cellphone.
Marguerite picked up on the third ring.
“ ‘ello my dear. Eis everything okay?”
Pamela smiled, she loved the way Maggy talked.
“I heard through the grapevine that you paid a visit to the Costner Ranch a few weeks ago.”
Marguerite laughed and it sounded merry, “You must ‘ave been talking to that farmer I nearly ate.”
“I managed to make him forget, but he’s going to talk to Sinclair about getting one of his hybrid beasts.”
Maggy scoffed like a moody teen, “I was not planning to return after being caught.”
“I don’t understand why you can’t just eat deer like the vampires in those novels you love so much do.” Winter said, taking a seat on the still warm couch.
“Ugh, this may work for the Cullens, but the deer is so gamey. His cows were raised with love, and they tasted delicious.”
She sounded like she was salivating as she remembered it.
“It’s the third one this year, Maggy. I appreciate the business, but you have to be more careful. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”
“Fear not, mon cher, I am harder to kill than that.”
Winter smiled, “I should hope so. Will I see you for dinner tonight?”
“I wouldn’t miss our date night for the world. See you then, love.”
Winter hung up and got herself in order before her next client came in.
God forbid they see the slight color in her cheeks and think she was human after all.
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