C.H.A.R.O.N., page 10
CHAPTER SIX
“I brought you coffee,” Brent told Tammy when she met him in the lobby of the library. “Tried the place across the street, figured I’d bring you some since I was picking up a cup for myself.”
Tammy received the takeout cup with a smile. “I will never say no to coffee.” She took a sip and closed her eyes, savoring the taste. “Good stuff.”
“Travis had an errand this morning, but he’ll join us afterward,” Brent said. They sat on a bench to drink the coffee since they couldn’t carry the drinks into the main library. “We managed to come up with some interesting leads last night.”
Tammy listened as Brent told her what they had discovered about the way history and tragedy—and supernatural murder—appeared to be intertwined.
“Lots of places have had terrible pasts,” she said when Brent finished his story. “But they don’t have the number of ongoing accidents, and they don’t have spirits trying to recreate the deaths from long ago. What’s different about South Fork?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Brent admitted. “We’ve got a couple of theories. There could be a natural spirit in the area—a genius loci—that somehow became twisted and malicious. Something could be attracting dangerous energies that feed on death and negative emotions. Or maybe there’s a creature we haven’t encountered before.”
“This is what the two of you do? Hunt things?”
Brent shrugged. “We have day jobs. But, yeah. Because somebody has to do it.”
Tammy gave a sad smile. “You know, that’s what Tony says about being sheriff. Someone has to.”
They walked into the library together. Tammy nodded in acknowledgment to the staff as they headed for the conference room she had reserved for Brent and Travis.
“What’s going on over there?” Brent saw a crowd lining up to enter the community room.
Tammy grinned. “Tony’s grandmother has the Sight. I asked if she would do a ‘craft project’ to help people make ‘Dreamcatchers.’ Not the Native American sort—an Italian sigil against the Evil Eye. I figure it can’t hurt.”
Brent chuckled. “I like the way you think.”
“We’ve been trying to help people deal with the uncertainty. All those stories about shadow creatures snatching people have everyone on edge. We’ve been holding yoga and meditation classes and doing art projects to help people let go of their fears,” Tammy added.
“You there! Stop where you are.”
Brent reacted with alarm, hands moving toward his concealed weapon.
Tammy huffed. “Nonna—this isn’t the time—”
A plump, gray-haired woman in a dark purple pantsuit barreled out of the activities room. She held a small knife and what appeared to be a half-carved lump of coal. “You.” She raked her gaze top to bottom as she gave Brent the once-over. “You came. I foresaw it,” she added, dropping her voice.
“Nonna Sophia—” Tammy protested.
“Hush, child,” Nonna said, not unkindly. “Hmm…your partner is not quite a witch. A medium. His gift is very strong. You also have something about you that attracts the other side. Darkness has touched you, taken a toll. Death haunts you.”
Her dark eyes regained their focus, and she gave a nod of approval. “Yes, I believe you will do. The old power brings what is needed.” She leaned forward, stretched on tiptoe, and tapped him on the forehead. “Tell your partner to listen with his magic, see with his gift. Much is hidden here.” With that, Nonna turned abruptly and headed back into the activities room, leaving Tammy and Brent staring after her.
Tammy shook her head as the doors closed behind Nonna. “Don’t let her spook you. She’s an amazing lady—and she really does have ability. She just approaches the world a little differently from the rest of us.”
“She seems rather…intimidating,” Brent admitted. “Reminds me of my grandma—who would take a ruler to your behind if she thought it would ‘build character.’”
They walked on, and Tammy stopped when they reached the conference room. “I found the records you asked for—there’s a lot to wade through. Gotta admit that I’m intrigued. I’ve been here my whole life and heard a lot of theories about why things are the way they are, but I don’t ever recall seeing someone take a research-based approach to figuring out how the curse came to happen.”
Brent looked into the glass-walled room, and his eyes widened at the stack of file boxes beside the large table. He reminded himself that Travis would be there soon to lend a hand and that they had narrowed down at least a few instances so they could go directly to specific dates instead of combing through everything. Still, the amount of data felt overwhelming.
“It might not be a true curse,” he told her when they entered the room. “As in, whatever’s going on doesn’t have to be a spell cast by a witch.” Brent frowned, trying to figure out a good way to explain the idea that had been knocking around in his mind.
“Have you ever been in a place with a strong echo?” he asked. “When something bad happens, it sends out an energy that can create a resonance—sort of like an echo. And when that resonance reverberates again and again, it gets stronger. That might be what’s happened over the years here in South Fork—but we won’t know until we do more research.”
Tammy laid a hand on his arm. “Thank you. South Fork isn’t your home, but you’re working hard to fix it.”
“Thank us if everything goes well.” Brent was uncomfortable with the praise. He settled in at the table with his laptop, a pad of paper, sticky notes, and a pen. Brent set his phone nearby in case Travis called and to take photos of any useful files. Then he pulled up the addresses of the most recent attacks and studied the file boxes to figure out how the contents were organized.
Brent put a sticky note to mark where he removed a file so he could return it to the proper place. I don’t want to get my library card revoked for messing up the archives, he thought.
His phone vibrated, and Brent recognized Chuck Pettis’s number. “Hey, thanks for calling me back. I think we’re running into CHARON shit, and I wanted to know if anything rings a bell.”
Chuck loosed a string of creatively obscene curses before agreeing. “Sure. Hit me.”
In the background, Brent could hear the tick-tock of clocks, an eccentric obsession of Pettis’s. Pettis was in his fifties, formidable in a fight, and he had escaped CHARON’s hold on him years ago. While Chuck hated the secretive organization even more than Brent did, he maintained a network of ties to people who kept tabs on all kinds of things that hid from the light.
“You ever hear of a Dr. Wyrick or a town called South Fork? Or a company named TMQV?”
“Ah, fuck. Fill me in. This can’t be good,” Pettis growled.
Brent caught him up on what they knew and provided more context to explain their questions. “Can you shed any light?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Pettis replied. The older man was gruff in his best moods, and talking about his hated former employer clearly did not make him happy. “TMQV is one of the many shell companies CHARON uses when it wants to hide its involvement. If they’re around, things are already going to hell in a handbasket.”
“And Wyrick?”
Pettis cleared his throat. “I don’t remember that name in particular or the town you mentioned, but there was always some kind of bio-experimentation going on under the banner of ‘science.’” His scathing tone left no question about his feelings.
“Every government organization tries to build a super soldier—stronger, faster, better. CHARON focused on psychic abilities and cryptids, trying to make them more powerful, easier to control, harder to kill. Whatever they say their research project is about, figure out how it could be used to get the upper hand in battle—that’s what they’re really doing,” Pettis warned.
“Thanks.” Brent rubbed his tired eyes, unsure whether confirmation from Pettis made him feel better or worse. “If you hear anything more, call me. There’s something really dark going on here, and we haven’t seen the worst of it yet.”
Pettis promised he’d keep his ears open, and Brent took a few deep breaths before going back to his research.
Whatever Wyrick was doing, the goal was weaponization. We’ve just got to figure out how to defuse the bomb he left ticking.
Digging into the police records, Brent became engrossed in the town’s history. He jotted notes about ideas for follow-up and added dates, names, addresses, and details to his spreadsheet whenever he found something that might be related.
“How’s it going?” Travis asked from the doorway.
Brent jumped, so deep into his research that he hadn’t heard the door open. “Pretty well. Wow, has it been two hours?”
Travis nodded. “I’ll fill you in about my chat with Father Prochazka later—but the short version is that he believes us, although the supernatural terrifies him. I don’t think we can count on him to have our backs, but I doubt that he’ll work against us.”
“Well, that’s something at least,” Brent agreed.
“What did you find?”
Brent pulled a chair over for Travis so he could easily see his screen. “It would help a lot if the records were digitized, but they aren’t. I started with the newest ones and worked backward, looking for weird stuff and especially for other disturbances or deaths at the locations where the recent attacks happened.”
He paused to take a drink from the water bottle in his pack. “It’s slow going—I’ve gone back five years, but it’s going to take more to see the whole picture. Still—this is what I’ve come up with.”
Brent pointed to the spreadsheet. “I was hoping to find a pattern to the recurrences, maybe a cycle so we could predict other attacks. So far, that isn’t the case, so I don’t know what triggers the incidents. But some places are definitely ‘unlucky.’ And for a tiny town, the cops here must be run ragged, showing up to all the odd accidents, gas leaks, and wrecks. Not to mention the times people just went bonkers on themselves or others.”
Travis studied the spreadsheet for a moment and caught his breath. “Yeah—that’s a lot. What are the notes on the pad?”
“Ideas of other things to check at the morgue or in the newspaper files,” Brent replied. “I don’t think we’ll be able to document every instance of the stuff that’s happened here. But with both of us going through files, building enough examples to show a pattern of injuries that match historic accidents shouldn’t be hard.”
“From what the sheriff and Chris said, there are probably too many old injuries and deaths to predict where the next strike might be,” Travis warned.
Brent shook his head. “I know. But now that I’ve proven that incidents repeat, we need to figure out why—and what or who is making it happen.”
At noon, Tammy stuck her head in. “Come to the staff break room. There’s fresh coffee, and I ordered hoagies for you. It’s raining cats and dogs, so I figured you wouldn’t want to go out.”
Brent stood and stretched, grateful for the break as well as the food. Tammy passed two foot-long sub sandwiches to them when they got to the kitchenette. “I guessed at what you might like—hope that Italian Club is okay. It’s my favorite. There are chips too.” She waved a hand toward plastic containers on a table. “Jenny brought in homemade cookies. You’re welcome to help yourselves.”
“I ate, so I’ll leave you to it. Don’t be shy on the cookies, or I’ll end up eating them,” she warned them with a laugh before leaving them to their lunch.
Brent was surprised at how hungry he was and made short work of the sub and chips, washing it down with unusually good coffee. Travis finished first and returned to the table with two cookies for each of them.
“Best meal I’ve ever eaten in a library.” Brent wiped his mouth when he finished. “Too bad we can’t take it out of the break room.”
“A few of the libraries I used to spend time in warned that if we smudged the documents, we could end up setting off a minor apocalypse,” Travis said, and Brent got the feeling he was only partly joking.
They spent the rest of the afternoon going through records, and by the time the library was ready to close, they had fleshed out the spreadsheet and added to Brent’s list of notes and questions.
“I’m not sure whether we’ve got more questions or answers, but we’ve definitely got more,” Brent said as they packed up.
“It’s like dumping out the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,” Travis reassured. “At first, the pile looks impossible, but every piece you put in place makes it easy to find others, and soon the picture takes shape.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Brent joked. “I like word puzzles more than jigsaws.”
Streetlights barely made a difference in the rain. No one was on foot—unsurprising given the miserable weather. Brent couldn’t help shifting restlessly in his seat, waiting for…something.
A black form shot across the street in front of them, and in the dim glow of the lights, it looked like a person-sized, wild cat. It hissed at them and bounded off down a side street.
“Follow it!” Brent yelled.
Travis took the turn so sharply Brent held on to the armrest, but he sent the Crown Vic flying down the street after the shadow-cat. He expected it to vanish as soon as it realized they were pursuing it, but perhaps the were-cat enjoyed leading them on a chase, or hoped to turn the tables and attack because it kept going, in sight but well ahead of them.
At the end of the street, the spectral cat disappeared. Ahead lay an abandoned lumber yard.
“That’s not creepy at all,” Brent muttered. His head turned sharply, and then he threw open the car door. “I see it!” Armed with his heavy-duty flashlight and his shotgun, Brent ran after the creature.
“Brent! Get your ass back here!” Travis hollered. He snatched the big flashlight, turned off the car, and grabbed the flamethrower and an iron bar. “We are going to have a fucking Come-to-Jesus talk about your enthusiasm,” he muttered as he sloshed through shallow puddles and ruts in the muddy lot.
Travis spotted the reflective lettering on the back of Brent’s borrowed rain slicker. The night had turned colder, and Travis’s breath clouded. The old lumberyard still had stacks of rotting wood in some places and piles of uncut logs in others.
Perfect place for an ambush.
He rounded a corner and found Brent standing in front of a slanted shelter open on three sides that still held some stacks of rough-hewn boards.
“Lost it, but I think there’s something behind the wood.” Brent cocked the shotgun. “Cover me.”
Like there was a chance I wasn’t going to. Travis edged closer, sizing up the situation. The wood was wet enough from the constant rain that the blowtorch probably wouldn’t set the whole place on fire.
“Watch out!” Travis saw the were-cat out of his peripheral vision. Whether it had just appeared or had lurked in the shadows, now it perched on top of a stack of logs, ready to pounce.
The big cat lunged. Brent fired and missed.
The cat dropped to the ground and skittered behind another log pile, moving silently, toying with them. Brent caught a glimpse and fired again, getting an angry howl in response.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” Travis muttered, moving to the right while Brent went left.
The were-cat jumped atop another pile of logs, and its weight sent the logs rolling. Travis and Brent jumped out of the way to avoid being flattened, and Travis loosed a fiery blast that made the creature back off, hissing and baring its fangs.
Brent sent a blast of salt to one side, forcing the were-cat to shift into the range of Travis’s blowtorch.
A burst of fire caught the creature in its midsection. It yowled and twisted, glaring at Travis with golden eyes, then bucking when the rock salt from Brent’s next shot hit it. The creature vanished, leaving both men glancing anxiously around.
“Where’d it go?” Brent remained ready to fire again.
“I don’t think we can kill it like this, but we might have drained it,” Travis guessed. He noticed that the creature’s claws had dug into the woodpile where it had leapt. At least it wasn’t my car this time.
“Shit. There are bodies. We’re going to have to call the sheriff. It can definitely be solid when it wants to be,” Brent replied and pointed to something on the other side of the stack. The wind shifted, and Travis caught the smell of rot.
When he turned his light, he saw two bloodied bodies that looked like they had been mauled by a wild creature. Travis swore under his breath while Brent called Calabrese.
“He’s heading over,” Brent reported when he ended the call. “Asked us to sit tight until he got here.”
The sheriff’s car showed up sooner than Travis expected, without siren or flashers. Calabrese got out and stomped across the lot.
“How the fuck did you end up here?” he asked.
Brent explained the sighting and their chase. Calabrese looked torn between admiring their courage and wanting to arrest them for stupidity.
“You fired on it and torched it, and the thing just disappeared?” Calabrese questioned. Travis took heart that the sheriff hadn’t dismissed their testimony out of hand.
“These things aren’t normal ghosts, but they aren’t regular cryptids, either,” Travis explained. “It’s like they move in and out of reality.”
“If I hadn’t been sheriff here as long as I have, I’d think you were nuts—but unfortunately, what you’re saying explains a lot. It’ll be back—and it’s likely not the only one,” Calabrese replied.
“There are a couple of bodies behind the woodpile, in case anyone has gone missing,” Brent said and beckoned for the sheriff to follow him to where the bodies lay.
“Goddamn,” Calabrese muttered. “Pretty sure that’s Carl Rogers and Maddie Jackson. They’ve been missing for a couple of days. This sucks.”
“Did you find the old man who got taken by the werewolf?” Travis asked.
Calabrese shook his head. “No. We’re still trying to figure out who he was.” He glanced over at the damaged Crown Vic. “What happened to your car?”
