Man Eater (Part 5)

 

"She's gone to the Shelby Place."

George looked at Dakota like he didn't understand what he was saying.

"Crystal went to the Shelby Place!" he said again, and this time it seemed to sink in.

"With that thing there? Why the hell would she do that?"

"I don't know," Dakota said, his writhing guts at odds with what he knew he had to do, "I don't know, but someone needs to go after her. I need you to stay here with Nikki,"

"Like heck," George said, "I'm not going to leave you alone to face that thing."

"With any luck, I won't have to. I'm hoping she hasn't made it inside yet. If I can stop her, talk some sense into her, then I can,"

"What the hell are you kids doing in my garage?"

George and Dakota turned to find an angry man in a bathrobe leaning out the inner door to the garage. The thick old pine instrument seemed ready to do mayhem, and the front of his robe had come open displaying his jockey shorts and a chest that was still tanned from the California sun. He wore glasses, his hair short but blonde like his daughters, and Dakota realized that this was the first time he had met Crystal's father.

He hoped it wouldn't be the last.

"I'm sorry, sir, I know this must be a terrible shock right now, but my friend needs help. We were looking for something with your daughter, but now she's in trouble. I need to go stop her before she hurts herself, but my friend here needs an ambulance. His foot is really hurt and he,"

The sound of the bat clattering to the concrete stopped Dakota and when the man sighed it took him by surprise.

"Does this have anything to do with the Snatcher Case?"

Dakota started to nod but shook his head instead.

He honestly wasn't sure anymore.

"Has my daughter been abducted?"

He shook his head with a little more certainty this time.

"Good. Go bring her back and I'll call an ambulance for your friend. It's honestly not the first time she'd done something like this, and it's usually one of her friends who gets her to come home."

Dakota nodded, still not sure what to say to that, but as the man went back inside, presumably to call someone, Dakota took off for the Shelby Place. He didn't have anything except his flashlight, but he hoped he wouldn't need anything else. If luck was with him, she wouldn't have been able to make it through the front door. If there was a God above who watched over kids like him then she would be crying on the porch or fruitlessly trying to pull the boards off when he arrived.

He pulled out his flashlight as he got to the edge of the weed-choked yard and began searching.

Beneath the pale weeds, Dakota was surprised to see more of the tracks they had found in the field. More than one, actually. Some of them criss crossed each other, and they seemed to be heading in all directions. Most of them ended under the porch but many more wound around the back. He couldn't believe they had never seen or questioned these, but he supposed they had never really been looking.
The beam of his flashlight wound up the porch steps and when he saw the wood cross-crossing the door, he felt a rush of relief rising in him.

When the wind pushed against the door and it banged against the far wall, that relief fizzled like a spark in a rainstorm.

He was going to have to go into this place whether he wanted to or not, and he very much did not.

"I wouldn’t if I were you," he whispered, his skin crawling as he heard himself whispering the lyrics like an incantation, “I know what she can do.”

“She’s deadly, man, she could really rip your world apart,”

He ducked between two of the boards, again not sure who he was singing about as he let his flashlight illuminate the entryway of the sagging old relic that had haunted his dreams.

In his nightmares, they explored for hours, the halls stretching on and on as they went through rooms that had never existed on their way to the inevitable climax.

In reality, the trip was much less grand.

Dakota went left and passed into a living room with a sagging leather couch and a dusty coffee table. There was a tv across from the couch, and in his dreams, it always lit the room with hazy static. It was dark now, the glass eye covered in thick dust. There were tanks in the room, the kind for fish or reptiles, and the fronts were crashed out like something had escaped. The floor crunched beneath his feet, and he was glad he had worn his sneakers instead of his hightops. He looked down at the broken glass that still covered the dusty boards, and wondered why Harold Shelby had never bothered to clean it up after the kids broke them. He had thought enough to put the wood up, but the glass had been something he never cared to clean. He figured maybe that late in life Harold Shelby had other priorities or just didn't care.

Dakota had no clue either way.

As he turned his light towards the servant's hallway, the dust motes danced around him like the first magical snow of the season.

It was a short stretch between the living room and the kitchen. The hallway had four doors along it, two on either side, and George had been afraid that something would pop out of them like a funhouse attraction. Dakota remembered the smaller boy clinging to him as they went, and he almost felt he could hear someone crying the closer he got. The four of them had been so afraid, other than Chris, but they had gone regardless.

Regardless of the squirming dread that now lived within him, Dakota went as well and was unsurprised to find that the crying was not his imagination.

Crystal stood with her hand against the closed door, sobbing and shaking as the green of that horrid space glared around her. It was just the same as it had always been in his nightmares, and time had done nothing to change the fear it instilled in him. The walls were still that odd forest green, the tiles white and black, and both contrasted as they threw an almost alien glow over the space. The knife was still sitting in the block, the sink still dripping eternally, but the table now lay on its side. One of the legs had given way, and it had taken the chair with it when it fell.

He took it all in with a single glance before going to Crystal and trying to comfort her.

"Thank God, we need to get out of here," he whispered, "It's not safe. Something,"

"It's in the basement," she whispered, snorting in something soupy that was making her sound congested.

"What?" Dakota asked, not fully understanding.

"I followed it. It was injured when Nikki hit it. That's why it threatened us. It slid away once it figured out we weren't going to attack it, and I followed it here. It went right down the stairs, but when I got to the door and looked down into the depths of the basement, I couldn't bring myself to go down. I was frozen, couldn't move, and I just kept thinking how useless I was. The answers I need are down there, and I can't go get them. The last piece I need before going home is within reach and I'm too scared to go find it."

"What are you talking about?" Dakota asked, not understanding any of this, "What piece? What answered?"

She turned from the door and he could see she had been crying hard. Her eyes were swollen and there was snot dripping from her nose. She didn't seem as confident as she had all these weeks, and when he reached for her, she let him pull her close.

"I lied to you," she whispered into his shoulder, "I lied to all of you. I needed to find the Snatcher so I could help my Dad. I needed him to get done so we could get out of here and I could go back to California."

Dakota let her lean on him, her sniffling coming in spurts, and he kept his eye on that door as she told him her dark secret.

"Dad's a writer, but he's been going through some bad luck. His last two books flopped, and he told me we couldn't afford to live in California anymore. Mom didn't want to come with us when he came here to write a book about the Snatcher, so we left her there to stay with some friends. He's renting the house until he gets the royalties from the book, but it needs an ending. It needs a conclusion. If I can find the snatcher, if he can write about him being apprehended, then we can go back and mom will come live with us again and we can be a family. All that's down in the basement, I just know it, but I'm too much of a coward to go down there."

They stood in silence, the wicked old golem creaking around them, as Dakota tried to make it all make sense.

"So this whole time, you've been trying to leave again?"

"I know, I know. At first, I just didn't think I could do it by myself, but after a while, I really began to think of you all as friends. It hurt me to use you, but I had no choice. You guys know the area, you know the victims, and I knew that if I had any hope of finding whoever was doing this, I needed your help."

Dakota looked back at the basement door.

"And you think they're down there?"

"Well, I saw something go down there, and it is where the first victim disappeared from."

"The first victim," Dakota breathed out, "You mean," but he couldn't say it.

He wouldn't say it.

He would not say his name in this place.

"Is there another way out of there?" he asked.

Crystal shook her head, "I went around the whole house. There's no outside access. This is the only way in or out."

"Then we need to call the police," he said.

"What if it leaves while we're gone?" she asked.

Dakota hadn't thought of that. They would look pretty stupid if the police got here and there was nothing down there. They were probably going to be in a lot of trouble either way, but if they called the police to come on a wild goose chase, the trouble would be even worse.

"Go outside and see if the ambulance is here yet."

"Ambulance?" she said, not understanding.

"Nikki got hurt in the fall, and he's definitely going to the hospital. Go see if they're here, and if they are then see if they will call the police. If they won't, have your dad do it. Tell him to come back after he does. I'll make sure they don't leave."

"They could kill you," she hissed.

"Maybe, but if they wanted to kill someone and get away, why wouldn't they have just killed us while we were standing on the street? Why not killed you while you were just standing here?"

Crystal couldn't refute that.

"I'll come back," she promised, "I'll come back as quick as I can."

She turned to go but turned around again and leaned in close.

Her lips were warm on his mouth, and she pushed away after only a few seconds.

It was a few seconds that felt like an eternity and like no time at all.

"Don't die," she hissed, but she smiled while she did it.

Then she was gone and Dakota was left in one of his nightmares.

He stood staring at the basement door, dreading the thought of it popping open to reveal some slobbering monster or hooded killer. If it did, he would run for his life and hope the police or the paramedics were somewhere close. The guy wouldn't kill him with witnesses, no way he would, and the adults would catch him and it would all be over. Maybe his stepdad would see the lights or hear the commotion and come out to see what was going on. He was a cop, he could get the guy. He could get the guy and be a hero and get a promotion at work and,

When the door creaked slowly open, it took all Dakota's fortitude not to piss his pants.

He shone his light on the hollow place, but there was nothing there.

What had opened the door if there was nothing there?

Slowly, his curiosity getting the better of him, he took a step forward. The light shook a little as he peeked down the stairs and into the heart of his terror. They were normal enough, just like the basement stairs in his house, and the space at the bottom was nothing but bare concrete and dust. No, not just concrete. There was something there too. It was a strange shadowed mass that stretched back into the darkness and as he took a step in to see it, he cursed his folly the second he heard the ruinous groan of old wood.

The stairs splintered, the step giving out beneath him, and Dakota plunged into the darkness like a stone into a well.

He expected to fall forever, but he grunted as he landed on something wet and squishy.

The spot beneath him felt like paper or maybe blankets, and when he rolled over, he felt something poking into him. He winced as it poked at him, and when he rolled to the floor he shone his light on his landing pad and wished he hadn't.

For a moment he didn't understand what he was seeing, and when it started to come together, he wished for ignorance.

He had landed on a pile of desiccated bodies. Husks, mummies, the remains of people who had been squeezed of their nutrients as they passed through some massive digestive system. Not just people, they were kids! It wasn't just kids either, though the smaller ones were harder to tell. The bigger bodies, the human remains, still wore clothes and many were frozen with expressions of fear and exquisite terror.

As he backed away, he heard something thick sliding over the concrete of the basement and moved his flashlight in time to see a massive, spade-shaped head.

The light was in danger of falling from his hand.

It was a huge snake.

It may have once been a python of some kind, one of its parents certainly, but as it hissed, he saw long teeth dripping clear liquid. Its body was like a tree, thick and writhing, and as it came toward him, he thought his earlier estimate of nine feet might have been stupidly low. Its body spooled out behind it, ten, eleven, twelve, fifteen feet long, and its piss-yellow eyes boring into him like searchlights.
It hissed again, its throat full of hate, and the hood unfurled as it rose to menace him.

His thoughts raced as he backed away slowly. A snake? A God Damn Snake? He had dismissed Nikki’s idea of ghosts, thinking the kids were being taken by your average garden variety pervert, but this was beyond comprehension. This wasn’t just a snake, it was an anaconda, a creature from dinosaur times, something from a Conan or a Tarzan comic, and it would have no trouble gobbling him up whole. Had this really been the thing taking the kids? Was it really what they had been looking for? It had been on their street the whole time, it could have easily picked any one of them off, but had never found the time.

He remembered Nikki saying that some of the snakes the people had taken after Henry Shelby had died were nasty.

Looked as if they had missed the worst of them.

He grunted as he came up short, his back against a shelf, and the pain as small objects fell on his head was second to the writhing, hissing monster before him.

It was five feet away, easy striking distance, and Dakota felt his hands looking for something on the shelf to save him.

It was tensing, preparing to lunge, and he closed his eyes as his hands found something round and rough.

"Jesus Christ!" Someone shouted, and the exclamation was followed by the bellow of a shotgun.
The snake twisted back towards the stairs, hissing in anger. Dakota saw jagged skin near its tail, and as it moved, he held up the thing in his hand and realized what it was.

When he pulled the end, the flare coming to life, the snake turned back towards him, and the shotgun barked again.

"Get away from me!" Dakota yelled, lobbing the flare at the snake as he reached back to see if there were any more.

The snake hissed as the flare hit it, slithering back against the far wall as it tried to get away from the boy with the burning fire and whoever was up the stairs shooting at it. Dakota found two more flares within easy reach and popped the end of the other as he waved it in front of him. Whatever it was, the snake wasn't stupid. It knew that fire would burn it, and as Dakota tossed this one at it too, he lit the last one and made for the stairs.

His stepdad was at the top, his shotgun pointed down into the basement, and he pulled the barrel up as Dakota yelled not to shoot.

"Cody? Thank God, boy. Are you okay? It didn't bite you, did it?"

Dakota didn't answer. He started coming up the creaky stairs, tossing the last flair behind him and in the general direction of the snake.

As he climbed, he heard it moving after him, the hated fire now out of his hand.

Dakota's foot snapped through a board, but he jumped it as Crystal and his Dad cheered him on.
He could feel the hateful eyes behind him and almost shivered under the pressure of the serpent's gaze. When it lunged, however, it crashed into the stairs as its jaws came down on the splintery wood. Dakota wasted no time, and as he came even with the step he had gone through at the top, he felt something rumble in the depths of the house.

His dad pulled him into a hug, and the three had just enough time to turn and slam the door before the floor shook and the house groaned.

They came out of the kitchen just as the door blew outward and kept running as flames sprang to life behind them.

His stepdad kicked the boards aside as they came through the front door, and as they made the lawn the flames were already devouring the dry wood of the Shelby Place.

The three of them sat on the front lawn as the cops arrived, watching it burn, and hoping the serpent burned with it.

* * * * *

The burning of the Shelby Place and the mystery of the giant snake were all the news could talk about for the next month.

The snake, some kind of hybrid species as far they could tell from the bones, had been something Harold Shelby had been working on before his death. It had likely hatched after he died and been missed by the people who came to take his other subjects. It was assumed that it had eaten rats and bugs until it had grown large enough for bigger prey. Once it got big enough to get out of the house, it began eating pets, and, once it outgrew those, it moved on to children.

"It had likely been denning in the house for the last decade," a zoologist had said, "and its leavings could have been of great scientific study."

Having seen those leaving, Dakota disagreed.

Crystal and her father had a long talk about what had happened, and it didn't appear they would be returning to California anytime soon.

It turned out that her father hadn't left her mother behind. Crystal's Mom had run off after his last book had flopped and he had taken the last of his savings and took a chance on the book he was writing now. "I didn't want you to feel like it was your fault," he had told her, "but I guess I failed at that too." His book, as it turned out, was going to have a very different ending than he had expected, and was likely so sensational that he would have to brand it as fiction to get anyone to pick it up.

"I'm thinking of calling it Man Eater," he told Dakota when they asked him about it a few weeks later,

"Don't worry, though. I'll be sure to give you all a writing credit in it."

"Given the circumstances, I think I'd rather have some of the royalties," Nikki said with a chuckle.
Nikki had broken his ankle, had broken it pretty badly, actually. He was in a cast for the rest of the summer but came back to school as something of a local legend. They all did, all things considered, and Crystal started school the next year without having to put up with the stigma of being the New Girl. She was pretty popular, making friends easily, but she still made time for her best friends.
Especially for her boyfriend.

The Shelby Place burned to the ground that very night and the neighborhood let loose a sigh of relief at its passing.

Turned out that one of the flares Dakota had thrown rolled under some kind of tank and it had gone off in spectacular fashion.

There was very little left of the Man Eater or her victims, but there had been enough teeth to identify nearly all of the missing kids.

Culver too gave a sigh of relief, and the dark shadow that had hung over it for years disipiated.
The curfew was lifted, and summer was officially back on.

"Not bad for some fast and loose detective work," Nikki said as they sat in Crystal's garage and drank pop, the sounds of Nikki's SNES pinging away in the background.

Dakota smiled.

He had to agree.

It was summer that no one would forget for a long, long time. 

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Credits