Terror in the Shadows Page 4

  Several rocks came flying in their direction and Mostyn grunted when one connected with his thigh. And then all was quiet.

  Mostyn turned on his flashlight and panned the light and his pistol in a circle around them. Nothing. There was nothing but trees and darkness beyond the flashlight beam.

  He squatted down and played the beam of light around until he found Kemper’s flashlight. He picked it up and tried the switch.

  “Must’ve broken the bulb.”

  He heard Kemper say, “Let’s go.”

  He stood and they made their way out of the woods. In the middle of the parking lot, Kemper suddenly stopped.

  “What is it, Dot?”

  “You know those sounds they were making?”

  “A lot of grunts.

  “Some were. But most of them…?” She paused, her voice tinged with fear, and turned to face Mostyn.

  “Go on.”

  “They followed the pattern of speech.”

  7

  Mostyn and Kemper decided for the time being they’d keep their adventure to themselves. Although Mostyn did include it in his daily report. So at breakfast they said nothing, although Kemper knew the information would make Mansfield’s heart go pitter-patter.

  And Obed Gillies was indeed drunker than the proverbial skunk. Mostyn anticipated the possibility, and he and his team showed up early in case they needed to wake him. Lulinda Gillies hadn’t yet left for work and was still at home. She wasn’t at all happy to see Mostyn.

  “So you’re the one who gave him all that money so he could get hisself all liquored up.”

  “I gave him money,” Mostyn replied. “But what he did with it was his responsibility. I didn’t make him buy booze.” Mostyn held out five twenties to her. “You’ll probably need this for the children.”

  She gave him an evil look and snatched the money out of his hand.

  “We need to see your husband, Mrs Gillies.” Mostyn said.

  She looked him up and down. Looked out to the black SUV full of people. “You’re not with no newspaper are you?”

  “No, ma’am, we’re not.” He took out his Health and Human Services ID and showed her.

  “What is that? Some kind of police?”

  “You might say that. We’re trying to understand what we’re dealing with here. These animal attacks. If there is a possibility of contagious disease. We need your husband to show us where he saw the creature.”

  “Good luck with that.” Then after a pause, “You believe him?”

  “I believe he saw something and I believe it could be dangerous. Beyond just physically killing people.”

  “I have to go to work and he’s supposed to watch the kids.”

  “Can someone watch them while we’re gone?” Mostyn produced another twenty.

  “Sure. I’ll ask Ellie. He’s in the bedroom. If you can get him up, good luck.”

  Mrs Gillies picked up the phone, dialed a number, talked with someone, and then hung up. While she was doing that, Mostyn looked around the trailer. About the only thing that could be done with it, in his opinion, was to scrap the thing and get a new one.

  “Ellie will be over in a few minutes. She just lives a couple houses down. I gotta go. Will you tell her the money’s on the table?”

  “I will do that Mrs Gillies. I’m sorry your husband doesn’t take better care of you and the children.”

  “He was a good man. Still is. Everything changed when he lost his job. Like he lost a part of hisself. Jobs are hard to find around here and a man with no job is like a lost soul. Don’t like the coal mining, but at least it was work.”

  She left. Driving off in an old Chevy Impala that probably should have been in a junkyard somewhere.

  Mostyn walked back to the government SUV. “Okay, Jones, you’re with me.”

  Kemper, her voice dripping disdain, said, “He’s dead drunk. Isn’t he?”

  “He is,” Mostyn replied.

  “As I mentioned yesterday,” Mansfield said, “I have something that will help him. I take it with me in case any of my colleagues need something stronger than the traditional hair of the old dog.”

  “Get your bag, Doc, and come with us.”

  “What is it?” Kemper asked.

  “An enzyme cocktail. A couple scientists at MIT came upon a drunkenness antidote. With funding from the OUP they refined it and now Bardon has it in his arsenal of toys.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Kemper muttered. “No more hangovers.”

  “Righto,” Mansfield said, a smile on his face. He retrieved his bag and joined Jones and Mostyn.

  The three men entered the trailer just as a small woman approached from down the street.

  “I’m Ellie Fitzhugh. Lulinda said you folks was here to talk to that no good husband of hers.”

  “Yes, we’re here to talk to Mr Gillies,” Mostyn said. “You’re going to babysit?”

  “I am.”

  “Money’s on the table for you,” Mostyn said.

  He let Ellie Fitzhugh enter the trailer and then he, Jones, and Mansfield followed.

  “Bedroom’s over that away. Just follow the snoring,” Ellie said, pointing the way.

  Mostyn nodded his thanks, and walked down the narrow corridor to the room. His companions followed. There, sprawled out on the bed and snoring away, was Obed Gillies.

  “Not a pretty picture, Doc,” Mostyn said. “You using a hypo? Pills?”

  “I have both. Since he’s sleeping, I’ll give him a shot.”

  “Have at it,” Mostyn replied.

  Mansfield squeezed passed Jones and entered the bedroom with Mostyn and Jones behind him.

  The doctor opened his black bag, selected a vial and a syringe, took several milliliters of clear fluid out of the vial, and injected it into the snoring Obed Gillies. He didn’t even flinch when the needle went in.

  “How soon does that stuff work?” Jones asked.

  “Fairly quickly,” Mansfield answered. “It’s like you suddenly have a thousand livers doing detox work on the alcohol.”

  “Really?” Jones said.

  Mansfield nodded.

  The three watched Gillies and when his breathing changed slightly, Mansfield informed them he was probably out of his drunken state.

  Mostyn shook him and called his name. In a moment the man’s eyes flew open.

  “What the hell?” he blurted out.

  “Did you forget our appointment, Mr Gillies?” Mostyn asked.

  “Oh, yeah, right. You’re the fella who wants to see where I saw the monster.”

  “That’s right,” Mostyn replied. “These are my associates. Jones and Doctor Mansfield.”

  “Pleased to meetcha,” and Obed stuck out his grubby hand for them to shake, which they did.

  “Alright, Mr Gillies, time for you to get dressed and show us where you saw your monster,” Mostyn said.

  Gillies got out of bed. Near as Mostyn could tell, he was wearing the same grubby T-shirt and jeans he had on yesterday.

  “I can go now. You people ready?”

  “We’re ready,” Mostyn said.

  Gillies looked the three of them up and down. “You sure ain’t dressed to go traipsin’ in the woods.”

  “We’ll do fine,” Mostyn assured him.

  “Okay, then, let’s go. We’ll have to walk.”

  Mostyn nodded and the four of them filed out of the trailer.

  “Jones, get the others,” Mostyn said.

  Jones walked over to the SUV, spoke to the other team members, and they got out of the vehicle.

  In a minute, seven people were trekking across the hamlet and into the dense forest to the southeast.

  8

  The group trekked through the forest-covered hills. The tree canopy was so thick and interwoven, there was a certain dusky gloom on the forest floor. Due to the lack of light, there was no undergrowth. Just a thick carpet of decaying leaves, which would have made for fairly easy walking if it weren’t for the sometimes steep hills
, jutting rock faces, and over all unevenness of the ground.

  In an hour of walking, all of them except for Gillies, had fallen or stumbled at least once.

  “How much further are we going?” Kemper called out.

  “Not much further, ma’am,” Gillies replied.

  Not much further, however, resulted in another twenty minutes of walking and when they finally arrived at the spot, a GPS reading confirmed Mostyn’s suspicion. Gillies had indeed been having a little fun with them.

  “Well, here we are!” Gillies was all smiles, and spread his arms wide.

  Mostyn looked around.

  “This place doesn’t look any different than anywhere else we’ve been in the last hour and a half,” Cashel said.

  “He’s just been leading us in circles,” Kemper complained.

  “At least I got some really great photos,” Baker said, a smile on his face.

  “Screw you and your pictures,” Kemper shot back.

  Baker laughed in reply.

  Mostyn himself chuckled. His years of working with Kemper and Baker, had taught him Dotty was a habitual complainer and a natural born skeptic. But under her hard shell she was in fact a loving and kind person. Although if her feelings were hurt, she tended to hold a grudge. Which fact Mostyn now knew from personal experience.

  He brought himself back to the task at hand. “To start, Mr Gillies, where were you and where was the creature you saw?”

  Gillies looked around. “I was there, on that rock outcropping.”

  “Why there?” Mostyn asked.

  “It was dark and I needed to get my bearings. If I was up higher, the flashlight would cover more area.”

  Mostyn, thoughtful, nodded, and said, “Go on. Where was the creature?”

  “Well, I shined my light around and that’s when I saw what looked like eyes. I swung the light back and that’s when I seed the whole thing.”

  “Where was the creature?” Mostyn asked.

  Gillies climbed up the rock outcropping, took a look around, and said, “Over there.” He pointed. “By that tree.”

  “Jones, go stand by the tree Mr Gillies is indicating.”

  The special agent walked over to the tree and stood by it.

  “Is that where the creature was standing?” Mostyn asked.

  “Well, let me see. He ain’t as big as the monster. But I think the thing was maybe a little more in the trees.”

  Jones stepped back a bit. “How’s this?” he shouted.

  “Yeah, mebbe about there.”

  “How long was it from when you spotted the creature to when you fired at it?” Mostyn asked.

  “Almost right away.” Gillies replied. “Jess a couple shots. Didn’t want to have to reload, in case it came at me.”

  “Good thinking,” Mostyn said.

  A big smile appeared on Gillies’s face in response to the complement.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said.

  “Alright, Mr Gillies, you can take a break,” Mostyn told him. To the others he said, “The rest of us, we start searching from where Jones is standing.”

  For over an hour, Mostyn and his team searched the area. And in the end, came up pretty much empty-handed. They found three faint partial footprints, a tree that had stopped one of the .22LR bullets, a bit of hair on a tree branch, and a spot of what was possibly blood on a patch of leaf mold.

  When the search was over, Mostyn told everyone to take a break while he talked to Gillies.

  “After you fired the shots at the creature, Mr Gillies, what did it do?”

  “It took off.”

  “In which direction?”

  “That way.” Gillies pointed to the south.

  “After the creature left, what did you do?”

  “Ran like the devil for home.”

  “But not by the route you brought us here, did you?”

  A sheepish look appeared on his face. “Uh, no, sir.”

  “I didn’t think so. Take us back by the route you took going home that night.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mostyn rounded everyone up and, with Gillies in the lead, returned to the village of Heirloom. The return trip took half an hour.

  Back at Gillies’s ramshackle mobile home, Mostyn ordered everyone into the SUV. Then he turned to Gillies.

  “I’ve already given your wife a hundred and twenty dollars.”

  Gillies blinked.

  Mostyn continued, “So I am not giving you any more money.”

  “Now wait one minute, Mister.” Gillies puffed up his chest. “You trying to cheat me?”

  “I’m not cheating you at all. I gave that money to your wife.”

  “Yeah, but I’m the celebrity. The money’s mine.”

  “Look, Mr Gillies, I’m not with a newspaper.”

  “What do you mean? But you said…”

  “I said I was from Washington, D.C. Which is true. I’m just not with a newspaper. I’m with the federal government.”

  “The guvmint?”

  “That’s right.”

  Gillies spat on the ground. “Shit.”

  “You and your wife got two hundred and twenty dollars from the American taxpayer. You aren’t getting any more.”

  “That’s not fair. You lied to me.”

  “Mr Gillies, because of what you saw I could take you to a secret federal facility for further interrogation.”

  Fear registered on Gillies’s face. “But I told you all I knowed.”

  “However, I don’t know that for sure. But I’m willing to let it go, if you keep quiet and accept the money I’ve given you and your wife.”

  “Uh, sure. Okay. I won’t say a word.” Then he muttered, almost under his breath, “Don’t want to go to no goddam secret guvmint facility.”

  “Good. Thank you for your time.” Mostyn turned away and started for the SUV, stopped, and turned back to look at Gillies. “And Mr Gillies?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You have a good wife. Treat her and your children well.”

  “Uh, yes, sir. I shore will, sir.”

  “If you don’t, I have ways of finding out.”

  Gillies didn’t say anything, but even at that distance he could see the fear on the man’s face.

  Mostyn gave him a lazy salute, said, “Goodbye,” and joined his team in the SUV.

  “What’s next, Boss?” Jones asked.

  Mostyn thought a minute before speaking. “We need to talk to the people at Shiloh and take a look at this haunted house people are talking about.”

  “There are hundreds of abandoned houses and buildings, Mostyn,” Kemper said, her voice dripping sarcasm. “Maybe we should call in the Ghostbusters.”

  Mostyn smiled. “No need. That’s why we’re here.”

  9

  The morning sun was bright and hot. The air, clammy and heavy. The hotel clerk told Mostyn, when he walked by, that they were in for a big thunderstorm. Mostyn thanked him for the information.

  Yesterday afternoon, Mostyn and his team went back and talked with the people who’d mentioned the haunted house and the local lore about the family that had disappeared. All were in agreement as to the house’s location, confirming the information on the map Mr Southwood had drawn for Baker, and that the family had last been seen “sometime after the War Between the States”.

  From the directions he’d received on how to get to the place, he put the house a couple miles to the south of Heirloom in an area of dense woods and no access roads.

  “Oh, thar once was a road,” an old-timer had told Mostyn. “But I don’t think it’s been used in over a hunnert years. You might find some trace of it. But I doubt it.” And he’d punctuated his last sentence with a long spit of brown tobacco juice. Cashel had to turn away, afraid she might throw up her lunch.

  The first stop, however, this morning was the little unincorporated hamlet of Shiloh, scene of the recent mass murders. Jones drove the big black SUV south-southwest along the winding country roads to the haml
et, situated on the southwest bank of Middle Island Creek.

  “We’re out in the middle of God-forsaken nowhere,” Kemper said, when she got out of the vehicle.

  Cashel laughed. “This is West Virginia, Dotty. It’s a beautiful little island of natural wonder. Just enjoy it.”

  “She’s a city gal,” Mostyn said. “Get’s the hives when there’s too much greenery.”

  Dotty merely said, “Shut up, Mostyn”, and directed her attention to the houses that made up the place.

  “The forest is right there,” Baker said, pointing to the wall of trees just to the south of the houses.

  Jones added, “Be real easy to sneak up on the place.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Baker said, as he snapped a few pictures of the area.

  “Okay, people, let’s talk to these folks. Shouldn’t take us long,” Mostyn said.

  The team spread out and commenced door knocking.

  ***

  An hour later they were back on the road. They’d talked with the survivors, who unfortunately couldn’t tell them much. The attack had taken place late at night and in the middle of a severe thunderstorm.

  “The thunder was so loud and intense, it was like the artillery barrages we used to lay down on the Taliban. Couldn’t hear a damn thing,” one person told Baker.

  Mostyn found the person who’d seen the creatures coming out of the trees.

  “I’d just found Willy, my dog, when a bolt of lightning lit up everything, just like it was noon. And that’s when I saw them. Coming out of the woods. I hightailed it on home, locked the doors, got out my twelve-gauge, and loaded it with double-aught buck. Those poor families. They never had a chance.”

  “Why’s that?” Mostyn asked.

  “They didn’t believe in guns. Pacifists. Came here from Baltimore, I think, some ten years ago. Back-to-the-land types.” He was quiet for a few moments before he asked, “Do you know what those things are?”

  “No, I don’t, Mr Divers, that’s why I’m here. To find out what they are and to stop them.”

  Divers said nothing. Merely nodded his head. Mostyn bid him a good day and left.