SSS 07: Creature Feature, page 1
Creature Feature
Spells, Salt, & Steel Vol.7
Gail Z. Martin
Larry N. Martin
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
About the Authors
Falstaff Books
Friends of Falstaff
1
I’ve learned a lot about creepy cryptids and things that go bump in the night since I started this job. Before the wendigo attack that changed my life, I would have considered all those creatures to be Fate Magazine fodder or the wild imaginings of hack journalists. Now, I know better. The truth about what lurks in the shadows really is stranger than fiction.
I’m Mark Wojcik, and when I’m not fixing cars, I’m hunting things that go bump in the night. No one gets into this business for funsies. I lost my father, brother, uncle, and cousin on a deer hunt that went sideways when a wendigo decided to hunt us. I survived, but it cost me my marriage, my family, and most of my sanity.
I hung on to what was left of that sanity by trying to keep monsters from hurting anyone else. Today, I was after a hoop snake.
There’d been reports that hikers had been chased by a strange creature that bit its own tail. Under other circumstances, that might sound funny, but two of the hikers had collapsed from exhaustion, one had a bad allergic reaction to the bite, and another had fallen to his death from a cliff. The snake had to be stopped.
All of which put a damper on appreciating what a fine day it was as I drove to the last place the hoop snake had been spotted. The bright sun warmed the air, but a nip in the breeze reminded me that autumn would be here soon. To be honest, hunt or no hunt, I needed a walk in the woods by myself to clear my head. The auto shop I own had been busy and that had been good for the bottom line but stretched me kinda thin between running the shop and hunting monsters.
I parked the truck at the empty trailhead parking lot and dug through my locked box of weapons, selecting the ones that would be most effective against a weird snake that thought it was a hula-hoop. The thing was, I didn’t really need to kill the snake. It wasn’t hunting the people it chased for food; it ran them off to protect its territory. I doubted I could rehab a snake, but I could take it to the preserve and make sure it didn’t hurt anyone again.
We discovered that hoop snakes like fruit scents, so I made sure I used some lemon hand sanitizer and lotion that smelled like oranges. I’d counted on the area being deserted, and I hoped it stayed that way, at least until I could trap me a snake.
This would have been easier with help, but I ended up coming alone, so I’d just have to improvise.
Which was a fancy way to say I needed to pull an answer out of my ass, pretty much the story of my life.
I made a couple of temporary modifications to the trail that could be easily undone when the excitement was over—assuming I wasn’t snake bit. The reports had all come in around this area, and I hoped the snake would stick to his pattern, because they didn’t call this the Big Woods for nothing.
After I had everything set up, all I had to do was play bait. I walked up the trail a bit, past my modifications, and pulled out a container of that fruity sanitizer from the pocket of my jeans and sloshed a goodly amount on my hands. I wondered who the hell went into the woods smelling like fruit salad and whether or not the snake would show.
I heard rustling and froze, waiting. Most snakes move silently, happy to let you completely ignore them. Even the venomous ones don’t go looking for people to bite. They react when someone steps on them or disturbs their lair.
That’s what makes the hoop snake such an oddity—it wants to bite people. It’s probably at the root of the ouroboros legend, because while it doesn’t actually eat its own tail, it certainly looks like it to the uninitiated.
I looked up, and there it was—a snake about as thick as my thumb clasping its tail in its mouth. The snake lifted itself into a circle like a tire inflating, growing to the size of an SUV tire, and then the damned thing started to roll toward me with a shoop-shoop sound that grew louder as the snake picked up speed.
Holy hell. I’d better run.
I never set any records in track and field, but when fight or flight instinct takes over, I can put on a burst of speed. I’m fast enough that I probably won’t be the first one eaten in a zombie apocalypse. I can’t outrun most monsters, but if I can stay ahead of them long enough to lead them into a trap, that’s all I need.
At least, that was the plan.
I took off running like my ass was on fire, and the hoop snake was hot on my heels. The sounds echoed my heartbeat—shoop-shoop, shoop-shoop. It was getting closer, and I couldn’t keep up the pace forever.
Not much farther.
Up ahead, I saw the ramp I’d built, and I headed straight for it—hoping the snake wouldn’t notice.
I sped up, sidestepped the ramp, and then fell to my knees and slid under the net I had strung across the trail.
The hoop snake went airborne, lofting off the ramp, and then landed in the loosely woven net. I was ready and came up on the other side, jabbing a sturdy pole through the center of the hoop before the snake had a chance to get its bearings.
No skill is ever wasted, even a childhood proficiency in ring toss.
The trick was to keep the snake spinning fast enough around the pole that it didn’t dare let go of its tail without flying into orbit—or a nearby tree.
Snake handlers had nothing on me. I had a pole-dancing hoop snake.
I made my way toward the truck, keeping the snake in motion at all times. My arm started to cramp, but I had no desire to get bitten, so I kept it going. I gritted my teeth and hummed a John Phillips Sousa march like I was leading a band in the Rose Parade.
The truck was just ahead, and I beeped the locks since I was going to have to deal with the snake one-handed.
Another muscle memory kicked in, this time of my summer job making pizzas, as I pulled open the fine-mesh cage in the back of the truck. I worked the snake up the stick, controlling the speed of the circles until he flew off the tip and sailed right into the cage.
Score one for me.
I slammed the cage door shut and threw a blanket over it, just as I heard a car pull into the lot.
Fuck my life; it was Sheriff J. Kramer, or as I thought of him, Sheriff Sumbitch.
I knew this had gone too smoothly.
That’s when I realized I was still holding a four-foot wooden pole for no good reason.
“Oh, it’s you again.” Sheriff Sumbitch swaggered over, and although I couldn’t see his eyes for his aviator sunglasses, I imagined he raked an appraising look over me from head to toe. We’d had the misfortune of crossing each other’s paths a few times in the past, always when I was in the middle of a hunt and couldn’t explain what I was really doing. He knew I was guilty of something; he just wasn’t sure what, and that irked him mightily.
“Hello, Sheriff. Fancy meeting you here.”
Sumbitch’s lip curled. “What’s the stick for, Wojcik?”
Once again, muscle memory saved my ass. “Baton practice,” I replied, thanking my lucky stars for the summer my niece made me twirl with her because she wanted to join color guard.
I held the stick in front of me, loudly hummed a Sousa march, and sent that stick into motion. It had been years, but there are some things you never forget. I twirled in front of me, overhead, changed hands and then for the finale, tossed it into the air, and caught it.
Damn. Sometimes I almost impress myself.
“I’m practicing for the Thanksgiving parade,” I replied, rising to my feet. “Needed space. And,” I dropped my voice, “I didn’t want anyone to steal my moves.”
Sumbitch actually looked a little poleaxed. Geez, it’s like he’d never seen a twirl routine before.
“Not gonna blow up any outhouses, are you?”
I only did that once, but some people never let you forget.
“Nope.”
I could tell he was wracking his brain for some reason to give me a citation, but he had nothing.
I saw him glance at my license plate, hoping he’d find an expired tag, and then at the taillights, but neither one was broken. I could tell from the look on his face that he had a bad case of acid reflux, and was probably grinding his molars too.
“Watch your speed,” he snapped. “I take public safety real seriously, you hear?” Then he turned on his heel and walked back to his car. I watched him leave the lot before I got in the truck, and I kept under the limit, just in case, all the way back to Kane.
I picked up my two psychics-in-training from our meeting point in Kane, and they drove with me out to the area Father Leo and I had created as a cryptid preserve. I had a call in to my friend Tristan to give me a hand with the hoop snake, and to kill time until he arrived, I got Phoebe and Carl started on the chores they’d agreed to help with.
“Did you ever think you’d grow up to be a park ranger?” Phoebe asked as she and Carl hauled a big bin of slightly fermented apples over to the section of the fence nearest the Albatwitch.
“I’m not a park ranger,” I replied, feeling oddly insulted. “I’m a mechanic and a monster hunter.”
Phoebe and Carl dumped the apples over the fence and then hung back, scanning the tree line for the guest of honor, a hobbit-sized creature that stood about four feet tall on its hind legs, with a body covered in brown hair.
“You rescued this guy, right?” Carl asked as we watched Twitchy, as I’d nicknamed the creature, move warily out of his hiding place, drawn by the fragrance of apples that were closer to moonshine than fruit.
“Yeah, but—” We’d saved Twitchy and brought him to a place way out in the Big Woods near Kane where he would be safe and wouldn’t bother anyone.
“And you got Father Leo and that secret Catholic ninja badass group to buy the land to make this crazy cryptid preserve,” Carl continued.
“You make it sound—”
Phoebe gave me a slit-eyed look that called me on my bullshit. “You are totally a park ranger.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Park rangers are cool.”
They weren’t totally wrong. It seemed like lately I’d been saving the monsters from the evil clutches of humans that were much more monstrous. Funny how things work out like that.
Father Leo works with the Occulatum when he’s not doing his parish priest gig. As secret Vatican organizations go, they’re less crazy than the alternatives, some of which are hard to tell apart from the monsters they claim to hunt. We try to be the good guys—keeping people safe, hunting the forces of darkness with extreme prejudice, and lately, saving the monsters that don’t pose a threat. It’s my way of atoning for not saving my family or for surviving the wendigo attack—or both.
“I think it’s cool,” Phoebe went on. She had her blond hair tied back with a bandana and was dressed to get messy since I’d told them to expect hard work. Carl’s dark blond hair was shorter, so it stayed mostly out of his eyes, and a scraggly, reddish beard hid most of his acne. They both wore old flannel shirts, jeans, and boots since they were curious about the creatures I dealt with, and I told them they could come with me if they were willing to help with some of the work. Like the others with untrained psychic abilities whom I’d ended up taking under my wing, Phoebe and Carl were in their early twenties.
“I wanted to get a look at that sheepsquatch you hauled in,” Carl admitted.
“I was kinda hoping for the snallygaster,” Phoebe added.
“Sheepy is largely nocturnal, so probably not on this trip,” I replied. “And Snally has her own wire net ‘aviary’ to keep her from flying away. It’s too far to hike today, but maybe we can do it another time.” I was grateful for their help, and I wanted to keep them engaged.
“Bummer,” Carl said. “But hey—does that mean we might get to come back?”
I grinned. “Play your cards right, and that can be arranged.”
“Do we at least get to meet the vampire?” Phoebe asked, pushing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes with her forearm.
I pointed upward. “Not during daylight.”
Carl snickered, and Phoebe rolled her eyes, but I knew they were good with each other. Just then, a dark-haired man sauntered up to greet us, carrying himself like he owned the woods. Typical shifter.
“Hiya, Mark. Are these a couple of your ‘meddling kids’?”
I grinned at his greeting. “Yep. They wanted to see some of our guests up close.” I turned to Phoebe and Carl. “This is Tristan Ross. He and Otto run this place. I just drop in to tell them how fantastic they are,” I added.
Phoebe gave him a wary glance. “Are you really a wolf shifter?”
That shouldn’t have been too hard for her to believe, since our mutual friend Donny is a dog shifter. But no one takes Donny as seriously as they should, while Tristan definitely gave off bad boy vibes.
“I really am,” Tristan replied, sounding amused instead of annoyed. “My pack has a town not far from here. We stay pretty low-key for obvious reasons, but Mark’s helped us out more times than I can count, and so we like to return the favor.”
Phoebe and Carl—and their friends Jon, Kayla, and Scott—had come together out of necessity to protect each other and keep the secret of their abilities. Phoebe saw visions, while Carl’s dreams came true. Jon could talk to the dead. Kayla was a budding telepath, and Scott still struggled to control his ability to move objects with his mind. So getting the point across that shifters and others with paranormal traits could create safe communities was a big deal. They needed to be smart about it, but they didn’t have to be alone.
“What about Otto?” Carl asked. “Do vampires have packs?”
“Not really, but he’s found some friends who spend time here when they’re in the area,” I said.
“Nests, packs—whatever you call them—they can be anything that works,” Tristan said with a shrug. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“Phoebe and Carl are going to be helping me with the cataloging project,” I told Tristan. “Father Leo thought it would be a good idea to document the existence of the creatures—not their locations, for obvious reasons—and then I’ll check in when I’m out and about, make sure no one’s messing with them.”
We’d had some recent trouble with bad guys snatching cryptids for medical experiments and definitely didn’t want that to happen again. I hunted the creatures that posed a threat. The others just wanted to be left alone. If they were injured or had behavior problems, I brought them to the preserve. Otherwise, I just tried to keep an eye out to make sure no one took advantage of them.
“You came all the way out here for a hoop snake and a field trip?” Tristan asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Nah, I wanted to check in on some of the creatures, and I’ve got a date with Sara tonight. Plus, we had supplies to deliver. Phoebe and Carl drove as far as her B&B, and we took Elvira from there because you know what these back roads are like.” No one batted an eye at my nickname for my black Silverado.
Tristan nodded in sympathy. “I do. And we keep them that way to keep out thrill-seekers. Better for everyone.” He gave me a look. “So where’s the hoop snake?”
“In the truck. I’ve got a containment idea.”
Tristan looked skeptical. “Worth a shot, but I’m going to reserve judgment.”
“I’m wounded,” I joked. “When have I had a bad idea?”
Suddenly, all three of my companions looked elsewhere and started whistling. “Okay, okay. Maybe things go off the rails from time to time,” I admitted. “But it all works out in the end.”
Most of the time. My friends were polite enough to allow my fiction.
“Anyhow, Father Leo said to tell you and Otto how pleased he is with the way things are going,” I said. “I can’t speak for his superiors, but Leo’s just as happy when we don’t have to kill a creature that isn’t malicious. There’s no choice sometimes. But when there is…”
Tristan nodded. “I’m all about live and let live—unless there’s a threat to the pack.”
“Totally with you there,” I agreed.
“Why don’t you go get the snake now?” Tristan suggested. “Then we can give your friends the tour, and you can get an early start on your date. When’s the last time you took a weekend off?”
Busted. “I do relaxing stuff.”
Tristan snorted. “Yeah? Like what?”
“I watch movies with Demon—when I don’t get called out in the middle of them.” Demon, my pet Doberman, had to put up with my crazy schedule.
“Uh-huh,” he replied, unconvinced.
“I’m taking Sara out to dinner and staying over.”
“Okay. That counts. And?”
“Sara wants to go hiking. She says she found a couple of trails she’s never been on before,” I added with a shrug like it was no big deal. In fact, it was a huge deal to me. I might be able to bust Bigfoot or snatch a Sasquatch, but when it came to romance, my confidence sucked.
My ex-wife had a good bit to do with that since she’d blamed me for the deaths in the wendigo attack, and then kicked me to the curb because I didn’t grieve the loss of my family fast enough. Sara not only shared my love of geeky movies, but she also knew about the monster hunting gig and fully approved. She’d even had my back on a few hunts.
Still, the course of true love never ran smoothly, as the saying goes. Bell’s Retreat, Sara’s B&B, was booked solid for the season, which was great on one hand, but made it even more difficult for us to find time to get together. I’d never been in a long-distance relationship, and it was harder than it sounded.
