Stray Fears Read online

  A practical part of my brain told me that Mason had wanted me to miss them; he’d been careful to cut the grass in front before it got too bad, careful to keep the front rooms relatively clean in case I stepped inside. He’d perfected this mask of looking normal and talking normal and seeming normal, while the reality was that his life was spiraling out of control. That’s what happened with some people suffering from depression. Sometimes, nobody had a clue because they were just so good at hiding things.

  That same part of my brain told me that all the pieces were there: Mason had been struggling with severe mental illness, and in spite of seeing a therapist and attending a support group, he clearly hadn’t received the help he needed. People died all the time from mental illness. In my line of work, I was the first one to find a lot of them.

  But I had seen those weird blue lights. I knew, in my gut, that there was something else going on here.

  From what I could tell, that something else had to do with Elien Martel, or whatever his real name was.

  Dark had fallen outside. I packed up the file, grabbed my keys and then, after a moment, my Sig. I headed out through the kitchen. Mom was searing a chicken breast, and the smell of garlic was a powerful lure.

  “Dinner’s in five,” she said.

  “Save some?”

  “Dagobert.”

  “I’ll be back later, Mom.”

  I was out of the house before she could stop me. I drove to the DuPage Parish Sheriff’s Department offices, which consisted of four buildings of brown brick in a neat cluster on the north side of Bragg. Paid leave meant a lot of things, but fortunately, it hadn’t meant surrendering my keys. I let myself in through the side door, passed the locker rooms, and grabbed an empty workstation. DuPage was a quiet parish, and most of the deputies were either off duty now or out on patrol. For the moment, I had the room to myself.

  Logging on, I was relieved to see my username and password still worked. I navigated to the incident reports, found the one that I’d filled out for the wellness check on Ray Fields, and copied Elien Martel’s name and address into my phone. It was entirely possible Elien had lied about where he lived. It was more than possible, actually; if he were involved in this, as I thought he was, then the odds were high that he had lied. But it was my only starting place. If I hit a dead end, I’d go to the support group Tuesday and try to find him that way.

  I had just logged out of the workstation when a hand came down on my shoulder.

  Amrey Kimmons, chief deputy, smiled down at me, but his hand was tight. He was an older black man, with neatly clipped gray hair, and he never shouted and never blustered. He didn’t need to.

  “Deputy LeBlanc,” Kimmons said. “What’s got you in here so late?”

  “Just needed to use the computer, sir.”

  “You remember that you’re on paid leave, correct?”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry. I was trying to check something with my bank, and I couldn’t do it on my phone.”

  Kimmons studied me. “Well,” he said, “in case it wasn’t clear, paid leave means you aren’t to be in the office for any reason.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “No need to be sorry, Deputy.” Kimmons’s grip eased. “How are you handling things?”

  “Well enough, I guess.”

  “Are you seeing someone?”

  “Just my, uh, psych eval, sir. You know.”

  Kimmons’s smile broadened. “I meant personally, Deputy. I’m not trying to pry into your personal life, but I want to know if you have someone helping you through this.”

  “Oh. No, not seeing anyone. But I’m with my parents still, so I’m not home alone, if that’s what you mean.”

  “They’re lucky to have you,” Kimmons said. He released me, patted my shoulder, and said, “I’ll see you when it’s time for you to come back, Deputy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let me walk you out.”

  He followed me to the front door. Mize, a deputy who’d only been with us for a year, was on the desk, and I knew from the look on her face that she wanted to kick my ass for sneaking past her.

  Outside, I breathed in the cool October air, jogged back to the Ford, and followed my phone’s directions to Elien Martel’s address.

  I was surprised when the phone took me outside of Bragg; Elien didn’t look like the country type. I was more surprised when the GPS sent me cutting east on a tiny state road that tunneled through the old growth of trees on this side of the parish. Branches grew so close together that they formed a web overhead, and the air from the Ford’s passage made them shiver. When I rolled down the window, the sound of bark clicking against bark reached me over the engine’s grumbling. The air smelled wet, like leaf mold, and the headlights carved a bubble out of the darkness.

  When I turned onto a gravel drive, the trees seemed even thicker. Where the hell was my phone taking me? I pictured barns on the verge of falling over, saltbox houses with tarpaper roofs, guys who wouldn’t think twice about opening up with a shotgun if a stranger drove onto their property.

  I followed the gravel around the next corner, and a wall of light met me. The house in front of me was spectacular. Multi-million-dollar spectacular. It was a modern take on a farmhouse style, updated with elegant lighting and bright white paint and walls of glass. I killed the headlights, pulled off the drive, and examined the scene in front of me. Perfectly tended lawn. Artful landscaping around the house itself. Behind the house, at the edge of the ring of light, I could see where the wilderness began again. With the engine quiet now, the ripple of flowing water filled the stillness. This was very much the kind of place I could imagine Elien living.

  Rolling up the window, I grabbed my flashlight. Then I let myself out of the car and moved toward the house. I wanted to talk to Elien, but not yet. First, I wanted to take a look around. I knew what Mason would tell me, if Mason were there: he’d tell me I was being a major fucking dumbass, he’d tell me I was cutting corners and threatening the integrity of the investigation. He’d be right. But the fact was that nobody would believe me if I told a story about blue lights and a dead man who grabbed Elien’s arm. Nobody thought Mason’s death was anything besides a tragedy. There wasn’t an investigation to jeopardize, and at this rate, there never would be.

  My first stop was the garage. The roll up door was down and didn’t open when I messed with it. I went around to the side and saw a half-lite door. This one was locked too. When I flashed a light through the glass, I saw a nice three-bay with a Lexus sedan in the bay closest to the house. The garage was finished and, I judged by the weather stripping, climate controlled. Lots of money to burn, it seemed.

  Following a cement walk to the back of the house, I caught a whiff of jessamine and sweet olive and shit. The mixture brought me to a stop. Exterior lights on the house flooded the backyard all the way to a rocky bank and running water, the currents throwing back crescents of light. Maybe a big stream. Maybe a small river. Hard to tell in the dark. On the far bank, a branch snapped, and then several more in succession. Something big was moving over there. Something big moving fast. A black bear, maybe. Still a good number of black bears in DuPage Parish. I was trying to remember how many calls we got a year on black bears, but all I could think about was those branches snapping like firecrackers.

  A soft noise came from my left, slick and vaguely metallic. And then again. And again. Rhythmic. On my next breath, I could smell something rotting.

  I took a step off the cement walk. My hand rested on the Sig as I moved toward the sound. Shick. Shick. I eased the Sig loose. The sound was coming from somewhere ahead of me. A magnolia tree marked the edge of the lawn; the thick, glossy leaves curtained off everything beyond it. I ducked under the lowest branches, picking a path over the roots, concentrating on slow, even breaths. The soft shick-shick continued. I could see something now, a faint white spot between the oaks and pines. A pinecone crunched under foot, and I froze, but the shick-s
hick continued. I was more careful after that, watching the ground with every step, picking clear patches where the fallen needles were green and thick.

  Then I realized the noise had stopped.

  Someone screamed, and the white spot shot out of the darkness toward me.

  I brought up the flashlight and the Sig, recognized Elien, and stumbled to one side. The shovel whistled through the air, barely missing my head.

  “On the ground, on the ground,” I shouted.

  “Get on the ground your fucking self,” he shouted back. “I’ll take your fucking head off!”

  I shone the light in his face; he was holding the shovel like a baseball bat.

  “Drop it,” I shouted. “Police! Drop the weapon!”

  The shovel came down a few inches; he shielded his eyes with one hand.

  “Officer LeBlanc?” he asked. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Jesus,” I said, lowering the Sig. “What were you—are you ok?”

  “Am I ok? I almost smashed your face in. Are you ok?”

  “Will you put the shovel down, please?”

  “Will you stop shining the light in my face?”

  I lowered the beam, and I heard the shovel’s blade bite into the soil. “What are you doing out here?” I asked.

  “I live here. Why are you sneaking around on my property?”

  “I . . .”

  Elien stared at me. Shadows hid his expression, but my face heated anyway.

  “I wanted to make sure you were ok.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m great. Or, I was, until this asshole sneaked up behind me and tried to shoot me in the back.”

  Holstering the Sig, I said, “I’m sorry. I was going to knock, but I heard a strange sound. I wanted to see what it was.”

  “You didn’t hear me from the front door,” Elien said, “which means you’d already come around the side of the house, which means you were sneaking. Why were you sneaking around?”

  “I was worried,” I said; I could hear how lame it was as soon as it was out of my mouth.

  After a moment, Elien sighed. “Since you’re here, I guess I owe you something for saving my life. Let me finish up and we can go inside.”

  I followed him farther into the trees; Elien was carrying a flashlight too, and he turned it on now, shining it across the ground until he found what he was looking for. I saw a hole about three feet deep. Next to it was a pile of something that looked like rope.

  “Are those intestines?”

  “Yes,” Elien said.

  “Do you want to explain that?”

  “Not really.” He used the shovel to slide the pile of viscera into the hole, and then he began filling in the dirt. With every shovelful, he grunted and swore, and after a minute, he paused and turned the flashlight on, inspecting his hand. Blisters had already split across Elien’s palm and fingers.

  “Give me that,” I said, and I swapped the flashlight for the shovel before Elien could object.

  “I can do it.”

  “I know.”

  “I do not need you to do that.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t ask you to do it.”

  “Consider this a mission of mercy. You’ve got nice hands; no point ruining them.”

  For a while, I just worked. After days of moping around the house, it felt good to do something. The burn in my muscles. The prickle of sweat across my chest and back. And, of course, the knowledge that Elien was looking at me.

  When I finished, I looked at Elien: the perfectly windswept hair; a long, loose white tee that the night breeze pulled tight, translucent where sweat dampened it; the lean musculature underneath.

  “Let’s take care of your hands,” I said.

  “I have enough people taking care of me,” Elien said. “If I have any more men in my life taking care of me, I’m going to put a bullet through the roof of my mouth.”

  “That sounds nice,” I said.

  Elien looked like he was about to say something nasty, but then his face froze. His gaze was fixed on something over my shoulder.

  “What?” I said.

  Elien’s mouth moved, but no sound came out.

  I thought back to the snapping branches like a string of firecrackers. A black bear. But bears didn’t move like that, not that I’d ever heard. Shifting my grip on the shovel, I turned around slowly.

  For a moment, I thought it was some strange fruit: pale and white and long, hanging in the trees. Then the parts came together into a face that was too long to be human

  It rushed towards us.

  ELIEN (7)

  Branches and dead pine needles crackled as the pale thing—the monster—shot toward us. Grabbing Dag, I stumbled between a pair of sugar maples. The monster streaked past us in blur of white, and Dag swore. He slipped, his back connecting with my chest, and we both stumbled. As he caught his footing, he thrust the shovel into my hands and pulled out his pistol. He turned slowly.

  I set my back to his and brought up the shovel. We rotated in place, both of us scanning for any sign of the creature. The hashok. The thing in the grass. The thick growth of the forest made it hard to see anything beyond a few yards. Veils of Spanish moss fluttered when the night breeze picked up; the broken limb of a pine sagged in the wind, bending, exposing a white tongue. Dag’s back was hot and solid against my own; he was about my height, and for some reason that was ridiculously comforting at the moment.

  Something scuffed to my right. I jerked to face it.

  “Slow,” Dag whispered, setting himself against me again. “It’s going to try to trick us.”

  I took short, shallow breaths, sliding my hand along the composite handle of the shovel. The blisters stung, but the sensation was so real and grounded that it was almost pleasant compared to the panic crawling up my throat.

  “Just call out its position,” Dag said, still whispering. “Don’t stumble around, or it’ll separate us.”

  My breathing sounded like a steam whistle.

  “Elien?”

  “Yes. Ok. Call it out.”

  More of that scuffing came from my left, like something being dragged through the fallen pine needles.

  “My left,” I said.

  “I hear it.”

  Twigs snapped.

  “Right,” I said.

  “I hear it.”

  Dag released a slow, controlled breath. “It’s going to come from your right.”

  “What? How do you—”

  “When I tell you, I want you to run for the house.”

  “No way, I’m not—”

  “One,” he whispered.

  An owl cried off in the darkness, and my hand jumped along the shovel.

  “Two,” he whispered. “You can do this.”

  The breeze picked up again. For a moment, the canopy parted overhead, and I saw stars, and the October air was cool on my superheated skin.

  “Three,” Dag shouted, and he spun, grabbed my shoulder, and shoved me toward the house.

  The creature shot out of the woods from the right, like Dag had predicted. It was just a blur of white at the corner of my vision, moving faster than any animal I’d ever seen. Maybe a cheetah ran that fast. Maybe a grizzly at full speed. Then it was past my field of vision, and I lost track of it.

  Dag fired. In the forest’s stillness, the sound was so loud that I felt it hit me physically, like it would bowl me over. I stumbled, caught myself on the bole of a pine, kept going. The next shot came. Then two more came.

  Dag was fighting this fucking monster for me. By himself.

  “Oh fuck,” I screamed, and I veered around the broad trunk of a magnolia and sprinted back toward Dag.

  He was running toward me; there was something funny about how he moved, and I realized he was cradling one arm against his chest.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he roared. “Go, go, go!”

  The hashok appeared on the other s
ide of a line of brambles, just a ghostly flicker of movement that ran parallel with Dag, keeping up.

  “The bushes,” I shouted.

  Dag kept running and fired wildly into the brambles: one, two, three. He screamed through each shot. It was a wild noise, a berserker cry. I started screaming too.

  And then Dag’s foot caught on a root, and he went down.

  The noise of pain when he hit the ground was terrible, but even worse was the dull shape of the pistol flying from his hand. I grabbed the flashlight I’d been carrying, turned it on, and ran it back and forth across ground. Nothing. Nothing. Dirt and pinecones and more fucking dirt. Roots. Dag was groaning, rolling onto his back, and then he clutched at his arm and started swearing. I swept the beam of my light faster.

  Something white moved at the edge of my vision.

  I didn’t let myself focus on it. If I focused on it, I’d be lost. Frozen. I stumbled a few yards one way. Then the other. I kept that white spot right at the edge of my sight. It was coming closer, but slowly now. It knew we were helpless. The hashok was enjoying this game.

  It feeds on human lives, Suzette had told me, and it’s always hungry.

  The flashlight’s beam hit the compact frame of the pistol, and I threw myself at it. I landed on a root, and I felt the breath knocked out of my lungs, but my fingers closed around the gun’s butt. I came up on my knees, gasping, the world blurry as tears filled my eyes. Something white. And now that it was close enough, I saw the blue flames of its eyes.

  I fired. Once, twice, a third time. Then the trigger clicked, and the slide locked back. Dropping the gun, I scrambled to my feet. I was still trying to pull air into my lungs as I fumbled for the shovel.

  My ears rang from the shots, and when I got my first lungful of air, I coughed on the gun smoke. But the hashok was gone. I spun in a circle, the shovel over my shoulder.