Rebirth Read online

  Henry came back shaking his head, “Fucker was sleeping. Can’t really hold it against him, this is shit duty, good chance to catch up on lost sleep.” He led the way and I followed, watching for snakes and briars. Easily visible from the road, it was obvious where whatever it was happened. Small trees the size of my wrist lay here and there, thrown out of the way to create a small clearing. The uprooted trees or bushes were turning brown – the leaves were, at any rate. Big gobs of dirt still attached said they were snatched up whole, not cut.

  In the middle of the clear space the pine needles and leaves were gummed up with a black substance in an area the size of a double bed. The dirt and leaves and pine straw were disturbed like something had been rooting around in it. It all stank, ruining a great smelling morning. Sunlight came in on everything at a slant broken by the taller trees surrounding the clearing. The ever present pollen of springtime coated everything with a dusty yellow layer. It was quiet and peaceful. We’d not seen any traffic for the last ten minutes; I couldn’t hear any cars or shouting or doors slamming, none of the background that I was used to. I looked at the ground to see if there were tracks. I could have smacked myself. I wasn’t a tracker. The cops would have already found anything here if it were obvious. I made sure I wasn’t standing in anything prickly or nasty and kicked off my shoes to get a feel of the place.

  “What happened here.” I called on Dirt, I wanted to see the action as it took place. Not like a camera would do it, but like a memory

  Typically it was screwed up. I was getting a memory from like the last sixty million years. I saw the construction of the road. That stood out. I knew all about the cars plowing through the underbrush over the years creating a flattened space where trees and bushes eventually gave it up, then a dump truck deposited a load of red dirt…a lot of information and it kept coming.

  “No, I mean the part where these trees were pulled up and the ground torn and the blood. Can we just do that? Don’t fill my head up with the other stuff, please. Anything over forty or fifty years probably ain’t much good to me.”

  I received a hint of smugness and pride, I guess Dirt was lording it over me with all it retained. Then the memory changed.

  A pickup truck came down the road and slowed down when it approached the car pulled to the side of the road, it was dark and I was seeing all this by a combination of sight, sound and feeling. There were two people in the car making out, her shirt was unbuttoned and she wore nothing under it. He was kissing and licking. Happy to go along, she was doing her own groping.

  They stopped what they were doing when the headlights hit them, they were young and white.

  The pickup pulled off in front of the car and stopped ten feet or so away and cut its lights off. Both doors on the truck popped open and two young men got out quickly. The one on the passenger side reached back in and pulled a three foot long stick out and smacked it into his palm. I saw the end of the stick, it was shaped to fit into a tool, an axe or sledgehammer. I couldn’t see much detail on the men; they were pretty average, this obviously wasn’t something Dirt paid a lot of attention to.

  The male in the car spoke with the female then slid away from her and got out. She was rushing to get buttoned back up.

  So far I felt I had a handle on it all, some kids were necking in the woods, somebody had come up on them and decided to mess with them. From the mess on the ground it got out of hand.

  The guy with the axe handle spoke with the boy from the car. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, it was indistinct. I wondered if Dirt could improve on the sound quality, this was probably important; Dirt gave me a sense of puzzlement; it never paid any mind to noises, they were just vibrations in the air. But I knew the guys from the truck were closely related to the girl in the car. Maybe they were her brothers or her dad and brother.

  Action heated up a little, axe handle guy shouted at car guy while holding his axe handle across his chest in both hands, clearly threatening.

  Henry patted me on the shoulder, again. I remembered him doing that, he was trying to get my attention. “Rose, dammit, are you in there somewhere? Hey!”

  “Yeah, umm, gimme a second Henry.” It was like waking up from a deep sleep, it took me a few seconds to get back in sync with the real world. “Hey, what do you need?” It was just getting interesting. I really hoped he had a good reason for breaking my train of thought.

  “You kinda spaced out. What you doin’ back out here, did that make you sick?”

  “No, I was looking at what happened here, what you asked me to do. It takes some concentration. I’m kinda tracking what happened.”

  “Rose, you ain’t looked at the ground but once since we got here. I reckon this was a waste of time. It’s all right if you can’t do it, I was just hopin’, ah, never mind.” He turned away from me and started walking back to the car.

  “Henry, there was a girl and a boy, young, in a car parked right here.” I walked to where the car had parked and pointed. They were making out. Then the pickup truck came from that way,” I pointed “and pulled up to right here.” I stepped over where the front of the truck had been and pointed.

  Two guys got out, the passenger got an axe handle, I believe it was, out of the truck, and came to here” I walked and pointed as I talked “ And argued with the guy out of the car. That much I got. Then you patted my shoulder.” I looked at him. “Is that what you were wanting from me?”

  Henry walked to the areas I pointed out, looking at the ground closely “The car was here?” he continued on, examining the ground and the edge of the road. “How did you come up with all that you said?”

  “You wanted me to look and see what I could find. This is what I found so far. If you want more, you let me do what I do, then I’ll tell you about it. Deal? Just keep me from wandering in front of a car and we’ll call it even.”

  Henry crossed his arms and leaned his body back looking at me “You go ahead and see what else you can get. I’ll watch out for you. Hurry if you can, I could get a call any second.”

  I asked Dirt for the rest of the story, and…I already had it. I just had to look.

  The guy with the club used the end of it to poke the guy from the car, car guy slapped it away hard enough it caused the club guy to turn with the club outstretched.

  Car guy stepped in and punched club guy in the kidney and knocked him down. Club guy lost the club, fell on his back and curled in a ball kind of writhing. Damn, nice punch, one shot!

  Truck driver saw what happened and dove for the truck, he leaned in a moment and came back out with a gun, I got no details other than it was a long gun rather than a handgun. I just remembered a gun shaped thing and the way he held it.

  Car guy held both hands up and talked, truck guy walked around the front of the car and got close to car guy. He backed car guy around the back of the car into the woods to where the mess was. Of course there was no mess there at that point.

  Car guy walked backward into the bushes feeling his way, he didn’t stumble or hesitate, he still had his hands up.

  Car girl got out of the car and talked, she kept moving and stood close to truck guy, shouting at him and getting between him and car guy.

  Truck guy points the gun up in his right hand and shoves the girl hard. She falls when her feet tangle in the weeds. She makes a pained noise and sits up holding her left arm, she bleeds, a stick gouged a hole just above her elbow in the back of her arm. She screams at the guy who shoved her, he backs up so he can see her and the boyfriend. The boyfriend ignores the guy with the gun and rushes to the downed girl, saying something, cursing I think at the shover.

  Boyfriend kneels down and reaches for the girl, shotgun guy holds the gun by the stock and swings it like a bat. He hits boyfriend in the back of the neck. Boyfriend goes down, falling loosely, head lolling to the side, neck broken?

  Girlfriend bounces off the ground like an explosion lifted her, grabs the barrel of the gun and snatches it away from the guy. It fires and hits her i
n the stomach on one side. She folds around where she is shot and tosses the shotgun to the side, then straightens up and leans at the shotgun user as she uses both hands to straight arm him into the woods. He flies backwards through the air, I hear something, ribs breaking? He lands in the woods on his back. She is on him as he lands almost, hitting him with wide armed swings so fast it looks like a machine, a blender, as she hits him chunks and pieces of clothing and body fly and blood sprays everywhere. She is growling and muttering and her face has morphed, she has a muzzle and fangs and she is ripping the guts and organs from the body on the ground and strewing them all around them.

  Boyfriend slams into her and knocks her off the corpse, that’s all it can be now, he is looking wolfy too, hands more like paws with hellacious claws, muzzle extended, and his legs bend backwards. I only know its boyfriend because I saw him moving and changing, because he damn sure doesn’t look like boyfriend anymore.

  Unconscious guy is up, he runs to the action and falls to his knees by corpse.

  Girlfriend is on her back. Boyfriend has her throat in his mouth and holds her there. She is still, head back, all four legs up and spread, totally defenseless.

  She changes back to girlfriend. Boyfriend releases her throat and sits back as he changes, smoothly, everything shifting and hair disappearing till he is revealed as a young man again. They sit a moment looking at each other, something alerts them to the corpse and axe handle guy, they scramble over to the scene and kneel by the body, the girl uselessly trying to gather stuff from the ground and put it back.

  Axe handle guy is talking and puts his hand on the girl; boyfriend is angry and talking loud and puts his arm around girlfriend defending her from axe handle guy.

  Blue lights flash through the trees, all three jump up, ready to run, a spotlight flashes distantly. It’s slowly easing down the dirt road a couple bends away, looking off into the woods.

  They’re all covered with gore. They come to some sort of agreement or understanding and start grabbing trees and bushes, snatching them up and tossing them to hide the area from view. They run to the road and get in their vehicles and leave, the one in the pickup turns out his headlights before he backs out of sight, unwilling to take the time to turn around. The car follows tightly. They are out of sight before the lights get there. It’s a pickup truck, maybe a game warden. I came back to myself thinking, damn what a tragedy. What should I share with Henry? He didn’t have any way to deal with werewolves. They must have some way to deal with people finding out what they were or even that they existed. I suspected it was not pretty and I didn’t want Henry and some cops getting killed to no good cause. This was a family spat and it seemed to me they were already paying a horrible price.

  Henry kneeled down on one knee in front of me. With a little shock I realized I was sitting on the ground hunched over. Fortunately not in the blood spatter.

  “Rose, are you all right? What’s wrong?”

  “This is a shit deal. I don’t want to share this with you. I think it would get you killed, and some more cops killed, and it wouldn’t do a speck of good.”

  “Damn, what?” He leaned back and looked away from me” I wasn’t sure about getting’ you involved in this, I think I screwed up. You havin’ trouble with it and that’s ok, it’s pretty bad.” He looked down at the ground “I got to ask you, just between us, you takin’ something? You get a pass right now, I take you home and we forget today. Otherwise I got an issue here.” He looked me straight in the eyes, a solid, hard, grim stare, the cop look.

  It took a second to understand what he was saying. I laughed, “Henry, I ain’t takin’ anything! Shit, it might be better if I was.” Thinking as I spoke, I didn’t have a clear direction, but the world wasn’t just me, I didn’t need to handle everything alone. “Ok, this is nuts. Here goes.”

  I told him what I had seen. The changes, the woman, the relationships and what had happened.

  We got in his car during the telling, he wanted his notepad after the first couple minutes. Then he sat up a recorder for me to speak into, and we drove back to my house. It took a lot longer to tell than it had to witness, we were almost back by the end of the telling.

  “That’s about it. I think if you dig too much, something is gonna happen, it will all be forgotten somehow. Otherwise, people would know about this shit.”

  Henry pulled up in front of the house “Rose, people already know. Not many people and we don’t know much, but we got contacts and we have to deal with things that happen.”

  That was a lot to take in. It made sense, this couldn’t be the first time something supernatural had been caught.

  “Who knows? How…” I had way more questions, the more I thought the more questions I had.

  “Let’s not rush into anything. I ain’t quite sure how much you need to be pulled in on this. I got some things I got to do. I’ll get back in touch with you if I need anything else from you. It ain’t like you could testify, none of this is admissible. None of this can come out. If you tell anybody, you’ll get treated like an idiot or worse.” He pulled out a receipt book, “I’m going to pay you for information. If it comes to light, it was information on a drug dealer, specifically one Earl Tanken.” He scribbled something down and pulled out some folded bills, “Here, you’re an informer. Now, I got to go, I’ll see you later.” He handed me the money and waited for me to get out.

  I couldn’t get my head around it all. I checked, he had handed me a hundred and fifty dollars. That wasn’t bad for a couple hours, I guess. Were they after Earl? I needed to talk with Henry about that, they needed to leave Earl alone, he was cleaned up now. What would happen with those people and the dead guy? Guess it didn’t matter to me, I didn’t know who they were, where they were, anything about them.

  I let myself into the house, thinking, things were pretty strange, busy. Andy the vampire spider thing ought to be out tonight sucking on a pig or whatever he/it could find to get better. I guess it was better, well, yeah, anything was better than those little legs and the stuff hanging. Harry the crow was around somewhere. The ghouls were out of the picture for now. They’d be back when Andy was ready to take them home. Carl and I had sword training and hand to hand to practice. Mags wanted to learn more, and I needed a lot more experience if I was going to survive the odd life I had now.

  Twenty One

  I had milk, no bread. No cereal. Eating whatever I grabbed on the fly wasn’t the way I was raised. I needed to get groceries. I sat at the table with a pen and paper to write a list, penned the word ‘Groceries’ at the top and ran into a wall.

  I didn’t need more pig blood for Andy. He was out sucking animals on his own now that he was a big spider vampire thing. Insane laughter bubbled up, I giggled a little. What did the crow eat? Was he picky or would just any old dead shit off the road satisfy him? Then there was Mags. I had to be careful what I left in her reach. She ate a handful of sugar-added cereal with sugar in it and spent the next hour stalking the neighborhood naked as a jaybird, beating up random thugs and kissing some of them. Then she hid in the back yard crying for another hour before she passed out.

  I only ate healthy stuff now. Not because I decided to though. Processed food, too much salt or sugar or strange preservatives gagged me.

  Ok, meat, from the slaughterhouse, fresh with no additives. Flour, had to go to Monroeville and get some fresh ground. We made our bread. Vegetables came from one of the farms. That reminded me, we need jars for canning. I continued with the list, adding the odds and ends that kept the house working.

  Harry spoke from where he stood at my right shoulder. “You have company.” I knocked the table over when I sprang up, he ducked my elbow. That damn thing was fast.

  “Fuck, man, well, crow, shit! Don’t do that! Jesus Christ, I bout shit myself. What do you mean I got company?” I caught hold of the table and stood it back up, Harry picked up the chair and sat it in place.

  “The woman who watches is at the front door.”

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p; “What… you got any idea what she wants? Never mind, go invite her in. Unless she’s a Jehovah’s Witness. Argh, I’ll go, too many ways for this to go bad.” I gritted my teeth. The people and things that filled my life were not mainstream. The simplest things bit me on the ass.

  I opened the door as she tapped gently, “Hi.” I intended to continue ‘what can I do for you’ or ‘can I help you’ but those phrases offered too much. So I stood there and looked at her.

  She appeared to be a slim elderly black woman with gray hair. Her face was smooth. No age wrinkles. She wore a shapeless old lady muumuu and flip flops. Huh. I used to wear that same stuff.

  “Hi. I’m Maybell Perkins? From down the street? I know you busy, I hate to bother you, but I need some help.”

  Harry appeared beside me in the door soundlessly, I flinched, “Whup! Fuck, Harry, you need a bell, you scared the hell out of me!” I looked away from Harry back to the woman on the porch “Sorry, god, I don’t talk… ” The woman on the porch stood in the yard by the steps.

  “Damn lady, you got moves, aintcha?”

  She settled back in the the innocent old lady shit. “I’m sorry, I know you got things, ah, to do. I need some help, can you come with me?”

  “We got to do this in order. First. Come back up on this porch. I ain’t shouting across the yard at you.” It pissed me off. Another super fuckin’ unnatural, I must be an artist, I drew them like flies. She nodded and come back up to the door normal.

  “Thank you. Now, what sort of weird fucker are you? A spider? Aint had a big spider yet, not countin’ Andy. Or do you think you a god, or you some sort of vampire?”

  She leaned at me a little with her eyes real wide. “Nooo…I ain’t any of that stuff. Is it my hair?” She patted at it, her face wrinkled “I checked before I came out, I’m sorry. I don’t look like a spider do I?” Lips stretched down, chin quivered, oh my god, she was gonna cry.