Blood Creek Beast Read online

  Jack had seen his share of dead animals over the years, but a human corpse still shocked him. By his best guess, the body hadn’t been dead long in the July heat—a day or two at most. Bloated, stinking, and swarming with flies, it was difficult to see who the man had been in life. His mouth was open with his arms drawn up over his head, curled in something like a fetal position.

  Jack held the sword in front of him, scanning the forest for any sign of an attacker. In the back of his mind, he knew whatever had done this was likely long gone, but that didn’t stop his heart from racing, or his animal instinct from telling him to flee.

  Jenny regained her composure first. “I’m sorry. It surprised me.” She bent down to peer at the body. She kept her mouth covered by her hand, and Jack saw that she was pinching her nose between her thumb and the base of her index finger.

  “Careful!” Jack said. “I ain’t seeing no injury. He might have been bit by a snake or something!”

  Jenny shook her head. “There’s magic on him.”

  “What?”

  “It’s very faint. I had to look close. He was probably hurt by magic.” She pointed to one of his hands. His clenched fist gripped a wad of cloth. “What’s that?”

  Keeping his distance, Jack reached forward with his sword. After several tries, he pulled the bundle loose and dragged it along the dirt with the sword tip. He stifled a shudder as he picked up the dead man’s cloth and opened the knotted wad. Inside, he found three coins, and a small glass bottle containing a white material. Two of the coins gleamed silver in the daylight, their inscriptions nearly rubbed flat with handling. The third was a darker-hued gold coin like the three Annabelle had given them to pay for supplies.

  “Money. And this.” He held up the bottle. “Is it magic? Like a potion?”

  Jenny took it from him and looked the bottle over. Turning slightly, she held it up to a spot of sunlight in the green canopy and shook it. Satisfied, she lowered the bottle, removed the top, dipped a finger into the substance, and then licked her finger.

  “What are you doing?” Jack cried. “Maybe that’s the poison that killed him!”

  She looked up at him with a surprised expression and then laughed. Shaking her head, she replaced the top of the bottle. “It’s salt, silly.”

  “Salt?”

  “Yeah.” She handed the bottle back to Jack. “I saw bottles like this at Annie’s house. I asked her if they’d be useful to make witch-bottles, and she said no, but they are good for holding spices.”

  Jack shook the bottle, confirming Jenny’s explanation by feel. “Okay. Do you think he was coming up to see Annie? Maybe we should split up. You could take it back to Annie, and I’ll head down to Hobbfield. I’ll get the supplies ordered and ask about him. Someone should be told, at least.”

  Jenny stared at the corpse as if expecting the dead man to register his opinion. Shaking her head slowly, she answered, “No. We stick together and head to Hobbfield. Still, I don’t feel right leaving the body here like this.”

  Jack scratched at his shaggy, uneven beard and glanced around the site. “If we can find rocks to cover him with, that might help make sure he don’t get et up by critters. Maybe there’s something smaller than these great big stones around here.”

  They spent two hours hunting rocks and using them to cover the body. It was nasty work. Jack glanced over his shoulder and under around every stone before pulling it up, expecting to find a venomous attacker. They ran out of rocks before they ran out of body, but convinced themselves it was good enough. “That ought to keep it safe enough until someone comes back to get it,” Jack said.

  Jenny nodded, her red hair now filled with bits of leaves and dirt, parts of it matted to her face with sweat. She glanced at her watch. “Uh-oh. How long until we get to Hobbfield?”

  “From here? As the crow flies, ain’t all that far, but we don’t got a road. We probably ain’t a third of the way there yet.”

  “It’ll get dark in about four hours.”

  “I don’t reckon we’ll get there in four hours. Maybe if we push it.”

  “I’m not sure I can hike for four more hours straight. Burying him took a lot out of me.”

  Jack shrugged. “We can push on a little farther until we find a good place to camp for the night. I know a place that might work if it’s still there.”

  “Okay. I can do that.” She inhaled deeply and straightened her posture. “How much more dangerous can it get out here after dark, anyway?”

  Jack took half a step forward before her words registered. He turned to respond, but nothing came out of his mouth. So he just stared at her. She maintained a straight face for five seconds and then snorted. Rolling his eyes, Jack couldn’t help but grin.

  They retrieved their equipment and headed back toward the creek. As they walked, Jenny said, “Grandma has been teaching me a spell to frighten creatures away. We can be the scariest things in the woods tonight.”

  Jack raised his eyebrows. “That sounds like a great spell if we run into any more giants.”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t work on giants. Or at least, I’m not strong enough to use it against them.”

  “How about people?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Bears?”

  “Eventually, I might be able to make it work on predators. If they aren’t already attacking.”

  Waving his free hand, Jack asked, “So what does it work against?”

  “Um... animals that are easily spooked?” She shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve frightened away a whole tree full of birds.”

  Jack laughed. “Okay. So if we encounter any birds that are giving us the hairy eyeball...?”

  She stuck her jaw out and placed one fist on her hip. “Then you won’t have to worry about them, Jack Parsons. I will save you.”

  He didn’t want to admit it, but within an hour Jack had almost reached the end of his endurance. Jenny wasn’t showing fatigue nearly as badly as he felt. He told himself there was no shame in being tired. He’d pulled up and carried more rocks to cover the corpse, and she could probably knock him on his butt in an unarmed fight from martial arts training. Still, as he’d spent most of his youth hiking up and down anything resembling a trail around Maple Bend, he should be able to make this kind of hike without breaking a sweat.

  They found the spot he’d had in mind. It didn’t exactly match his memory’s picture, but it would work. Steep slopes protected the wide, flat ledge along the side of a ravine on three sides. The creek was only a short scramble away to refill their canteens. They did little to set up a camp. They pulled out the blankets and food Annabelle had provided and moved around on the ledge trying to find a comfortable place to rest. Jack finally settled on a spot where he couldn’t feel too many rocks. He was too tired to keep experimenting.

  The sun wasn’t yet below the peaks. Jack’s body was exhausted, but his brain wasn’t quite ready for sleep. In spite of the dangers, the exhaustion, and a bit of boredom, he felt good. Even if it resembled his home, going somewhere new was what he’d dreamed about for years. He watched the bits of sky through the trees turn from blue to yellow to red. Sleep could wait until dark.

  Jenny whispered, “Jack, are you awake?”

  He rolled over to face her. She was turned toward him, using a flat section of her bag as a pillow. Dirt smudged the bottom of her right cheek. She reached out with one hand to touch his blanket. “Don’t worry, Jack. Whether we find a new crossroads, or finally stop Thadeus, we’ll get you home. I promise.”

  You? Not us? “Oh, I know. I ain’t worried about that,” he said, flashing her a quick grin.

  “I know you aren’t too happy at Grandma’s.”

  “Oh, I’m alright. I just ain’t much use around there, ‘cept for chores and such. I want to make sure you and Annie are safe. I wish we could close that thing forever and not have to worry about it.”

  She sat up and tilted her head to one side. “Don’t you want to go home?”

&n
bsp; “Of course I do. I want to make sure my mama is okay. And there are folks I’d like to see again.”

  “But...” Jenny prompted him.

  “But.” He propped himself up on one arm and motioned at the thick forest around them. “I reckon this is the greatest adventure I ever hoped to have. A whole ‘nother world. New people. Creatures nobody believed could exist. Not that anybody back home would believe it, but I’m used to that.”

  “People might believe you now, you know. Everyone saw the ogre, and what was left of the snallygaster.”

  Jack shrugged. “That was really important to me when I was twelve. I wanted folks to believe me. I decided I wouldn’t ever tell a lie. That way when I told them I saw that giant, they’d believe me. It didn’t matter to them. And now, it don’t matter to me none, either. People can think what they want to think.”

  She stared at him for several seconds, her face softening again. “My parents were always trying to explain to me when and how it was good to lie. It never made much sense. You are a pretty smart guy, Jack.”

  “Me? No. I’m just a hillbilly. I ain’t smart.”

  “There. I knew you could lie,” she said, and then she rolled over to face the other direction.

  Jack rolled onto his back and stared at the darkening sky through the leaves. He fumed. He wasn’t lying. He wasn’t smart. Over the course of several minutes he came up with some clever retorts, but it was too late and Jenny was asleep. Somewhere along the way, he fell asleep, too.

  Homes that had once sat practically abandoned, but for occasional maintenance from the King family, now hosted multiple cars along the sides of their overgrown driveways. Just outside the cluster of homes that made Jessabelle’s ‘neighborhood’ a lone white utility van with the telltale folded dish antenna of a News vehicle sat at the side of the road with the windows fogged up. The crew, or at least the driver, must have slept in the van to keep out of the rain. Clearly, Maple Bend as Jessabelle always knew it was changed forever.

  Good riddance.

  Only the lightest sprinkling of rain remained although the trees would continue to drip for at least another half-hour. A faint glow penetrated the overcast sky from the hidden dawn, a hint at the end of night in the mountains. It was more than enough for Jessabelle’s cat eyes. She prowled around the neighborhood, trying to find any clue from the dozens of strange cars in town which belonged to a servant of the man in the white suit. She didn’t know what she was looking for, and nobody had the courtesy to have a vanity plate labeled “EVLWTCH” or a bumper sticker proclaiming themselves to be part of his coven. The cars were wet and slippery, so she didn’t leap on the hoods to get a closer look at their contents.

  Maybe it would be enough to monitor the comings and goings of people from her secret identity as a cat. Nobody paid stray cats much attention, and over time she could narrow her focus down to those people who stayed after the initial wave of thrill-seekers lost interest. That sounded safe. She could avoid confrontation and pass her discoveries on to Hattie and Sean.

  Her plans to keep things safe and quiet fell apart when she heard the horrible cry. It was not quite human, but close enough to the sound of a girl’s scream to give Jessabelle a shiver. She’d heard the sound, of course, but never from this side of it. It was the howl of a panther.

  Deep inside her, Jessabelle-the-panther was certain that she was the only one of her kind anywhere near Maple Bend... panther-girl or panther-cat. That part of her knew at an instinctive level that there were neither invaders nor mates—the latter freaking Jessabelle-the-girl out more than the former—in the area. It wasn’t something that came from any sort of logical deduction, just the lack of signs and smells that the panther’s brain clued in on.

  This cry meant this had all changed. Somewhere out there was another panther, whether natural or an enchanted person like Jessabelle. Either way, she wanted to find them. But she’d do so incognito, staying in the form of a housecat, for as long as possible.

  The cry came once again, and Jessabelle followed it. Both the cat-brain and her human mind told her to flee and hide from the sound of this predator. Curiosity killed the cat, she warned herself, but the curiosity still prevailed. Could the new witch be like her, a witch who could take the form of a panther? Could someone be both? Could it be a panther that came here from Around the Bend through the crossroads? Maybe some endangered, long-lost creature from deep in the backwoods of West Virginia had found its way here?

  She crept toward the noise, alert and ready to shift in a heartbeat to defend herself. The droplets falling from the trees camouflaged all other sounds, but it worked both ways. Even as a housecat, her animal mind was that of a predator, and the human part of her used that to see the world through the predator’s senses.

  The scents were wrong. The air filled with the smell of spoiled meat, but it smelled wrong. Stale. And there was something else in the odor she couldn’t figure out. It didn’t smell like a predator, exactly, but it was wrong. She couldn’t detect where it came from. She sniffed again, comparing it to the smells of monsters she’d encountered weeks ago. Nothing matched. The cat in her did not register it as a threat.

  The stale, spoiled meat smell was another matter. She followed it farther, and then saw the form lying on the ground, surrounded by grass. The cat was baffled by the figure, but the girl noticed that the motionless form wore clothes.

  In her mind’s eye, she saw the snallygaster strike from nowhere, and envisioned the ogre charging out of the woods to reclaim its kill. Even her feline senses, not yet triggered by a sense of impending threat, warned her that something was not right. As her anxiety grew, Jessabelle shifted into panther form in the next heartbeat, watching for a predator. The beast in her was intrigued by the smell, especially due to the increased hunger caused by shifting form. But it was also spooked. Nothing felt right. Why would a predator attack and leave the meat to spoil? Why did it smell stale? She crept closer, carefully placing each paw in the wet grass, her tail low and flicking at the tip.

  Something made a popping sound near the trees, and her senses registered a sting in her back. She leaped, snapping at an invisible attacker. She saw nothing. It was not the right weather or time of day for wasps to be out. She thought of the giant mosquitoes that had attacked them near the crossroads, but those were dead, and a long hike away.

  Not perceiving a threat or whatever insect had bitten her, Jessabelle took several careful steps toward the victim. She needed to learn if it was anyone she knew. Then she’d run. That was the safe approach. Switch form, go home, and take a nap. Her lack of sleep was catching up to her.

  The figure’s hand seemed waxy, not like something alive. Of course not, as the victim was dead. She, or maybe he, had been dead for hours. But even so, whoever it was didn’t smell right.

  A sound came from somewhere in the trees, near where she’d heard the popping noise. Jessabelle froze in her tracks, staring up at the branches. She couldn’t see anything, but she’d distinctly heard something. A voice. She found the source—a man in camouflage on some kind of platform lashed into the tree. She tried to back away. For some reason, her hind legs didn’t move right. She stumbled.

  The man in the tree spoke again, into a radio also camouflaged with greens and browns. “Send the truck. We’ve got her.”

  She ran. As the great cat, she could outrun the wind. Now, it felt like she was running through several inches of mud, in slow motion, and it was exhausting. She slowed to a walk. Her world spun. She fell over, and couldn’t find the energy to get back up. Something was terribly wrong. Jessabelle had one last conscious thought that she should change back to Jessabelle-the-girl, but by then it was too late. The world went black.

  Jessabelle awoke to the sound of a metal door opening. She fought lethargy to open one eye, peering through steel strips and wires at the dim gray daylight entering what seemed to be an office. A figure stepped through a doorway into the room, and the floor shifted slightly toward them. Her brain proces
sed this phenomenon, shaking off the cobwebs, and figured she was in the back of a large truck. Electronic equipment and video monitors loomed over a narrow desktop with mounted folding chairs.

  Her cage dominated the back of the truck, made of steel wires reinforced by thick bars. Jessabelle was still in the form of a great cat. She opened both eyes and struggled against the remainder of the poison from the tranquilizer dart. The urge to shift into human form was tempting, but until she knew it would do her good, she resisted. Unless her life was in danger, she didn’t want to reveal herself to these people, assuming they didn’t know already. Besides, she was already hungry. Another shift or two would leave her famished, and she had no idea when or if she’d get her next meal.

  Another figure stepped in through the open doorway, but she couldn’t see past the array of video displays over the desk to view anyone clearly. A man’s voice said, “While you can’t see the colors with the infrared cameras, you can plainly see the transition on your own porch this morning.”

  Jessabelle’s mama answered. “Number one: why would y’all watch my house with hidden cameras, and number two: why would y’all expect me to believe this crazy story? I’ve done seen better special effects in old made-for-TV movies.”

  Even her own mama didn’t know what she could do. Jessabelle was pretty sure her mama knew something was unusual about her daughter. But now a stranger was telling her mama the truth about her. This was not the way she wanted her mama to learn.

  The man continued. “We were investigating reports of a wild animal attacking and killing humans in the area. This is our job. And while this is an unusual case, we’ve dealt with similar situations before. I know it’s hard to believe, but this is your daughter.”

  A stranger and her mother stepped around the desk into Jessabelle’s view. The man was in his early fifties, clean-shaven with a full head of mostly silver hair. He had an electronic tablet in one hand. Her mother stood behind him with her arms crossed, shaking her head. He touched the screen and showed something to Jessabelle’s mother. “Here’s a video of the smaller cat changing into this creature. We can’t prove the creature was responsible for what happened next, but the evidence is compelling.”