Lighthouses on the Edge of Infinity
Chapter 3: Dry
The worse thing about this whole damn shitcan transfer surprisingly enough wasn’t the heat. Though, it was the kind of hot that cracked rock and dirt apart enough to resemble each other, stone baked air rippling above it from dawn till dusk, it still wasn’t the worst thing about the move.
No, the worse part was how dry it was. Humidity wasn’t anything Emily had ever paid much attention to until she found herself living in the cleft of Satan’s ass. Emily woke up every morning now with cottonmouth so severe it choked her awake. Her skin felt like it was permanently two sizes too small for her, her fingers and toes riddled with little cracks in her own personal earth. Her fingertips and toes bled if she moved too quickly or carelessly, leaving Emily feeling like a meaty version of the Tinman in constant need of oiling. The tiny wounds stung worse than papercuts, and was made worse because it was all moving crevices under near continuous pressure and movement. They took their own sweet time to heal. Emily could handle the pain of it. It was the constant itching that was tap dancing on her last damn nerve.
Lotion helped, but it wasn’t a cure all. Oil was better, but stained her uniform, all while never letting her feeling clean. There didn’t seem to be any happy medium between the two, or at least none offered by the tiny batches of buildings that disrupted the desert, places that dared to call themselves towns out here. Places so small, the only gas station was also the only grocery story/off brand fast food place/café/liquor store.
The constant thirst was in a close second though. Emily was always thirsty now, never able to drink enough water to quench that parch that scraped the back of her throat raw. If she didn’t drink some water on the hour every hour, she would get a migraine that never seemed to really ever go away. It sat permanently in the base of her skull now, like a living thing waiting for its chance to emerge as she skated the edges of dehydration.
God, she hated it here.
“Another fine day in paradise.” Andy grinned, her new partner born and raised in this part of Hell, commonly known as summer in Arizona. In this reality where she didn’t register, Emily didn’t bother with a response. Andy wasn’t expecting one. He was just one of those people who liked to fill silence with noise because any kind of stillness made him uncomfortable. Instead, Emily took a long sip of her coffee, which was badly brewed and already tepid.
“Don’t know what could cause such a fuss. Most folks round here try to keep to themselves.” Andy was still grinned, like they were best buddies, and had been partners for decades instead of a mere few weeks. “Ah hell, they just shoot something if it’s really bothering them.”
“So what? We’re going into this blind? No one told you what we’re looking for, or why this was called in?” Emily’s voice sounded raspy to her, the very air leaching the moisture out of her body. Fucking desert.
“Nah. No one was particularly forthcoming ‘bout it. Just kept hooting and hollering to get someone from the government up there and quick. All the boss man said was to haul ass out here, and get it sorted.” Andy told her to Emily’s complete lack of shock. “It’s probably just some whack job UFO sighting.”
Upon her arrival, the precinct could have might as well had a ‘no girls allowed’ sign taped to its front door. Getting her last partner killed back out East might have had something to do with all the hostility being directed towards her as well. It didn’t help in matters of teamwork and communication either that lime gelatin had a higher IQ than Andy on any given day, but he liked to drive, and unlike her, knew the area like his own backyard. Emily hated to drive, and still got lost so they were making it work. Andy talked his fool head off all day, and got them where they needed to go while Emily ignored him, did all their paperwork, and drank to forget as soon as she was done for the day.
The scenery flew by, not that there was much to look at. Burnt, baked rocks and dirt were introducing new shades of perpetual brown, reds, and orange to the world, the landscaped marred with the occasional defiant green of local cacti here and there. The cacti grew as tall and large as trees, and were about the only thing worth studying for any length of time in Emily’s opinion. So she thought it was a bit odd when she noticed one that was grey, looking more scaly than thorny.
Emily spilled the rest of the coffee down her front when it moved all on its own as the truck sped by, kicking dust up at it.
“Did you see that?!” Emily snapped, ignoring the fresh stain seeping into her uniform.
“Something woke your ass up!” Andy laughed. “Whatcha see? A prairie dog?”
“Stop the truck! Fucking pull over!”
Ignoring Andy who, of course, didn’t notice anything was amiss, Emily rolled the window down, sticking her head out to look back. Whatever it was though was long gone. Whatever it was had darted off in the opposite direction of them, and it sure as shit hadn’t been a prairie dog.
Andy pulled the truck over out so far in the middle of nowhere, Emily hoped he could rub two brain cells together long enough to get them back into town. A bad feeling was creeping in under her skin, the kind the made it hurt not to look over your shoulder as you tried to make yourself believe that nothing was there to begin with. Getting out of the truck, Emily wasn’t given any time to dwell on it much further.
They smelled it on the wind before they saw it.
The rot and turn of flesh hit them as soon as they got out, made all the more sharp by the heat. “What in the hell…” was all Andy could say. Emily echoed the same words quietly back to herself.
Trees could grow anywhere, even here in the most desolate places where water was nature’s currency, and this was skid row. As far as Emily could tell, it was some type of thorn tree. Its trunk was turned and twisted from the effort of sending its roots down deep as it was pelted by winds that leached it dry, polishing its bark until it shown pale and smooth as bone. Its branches were greedy, skeletal hands offering up its newly acquired strange fruit to a cloudless, uncaring sky.
Suspended about thirty feet over their heads was a man, or more accurately what was left of him. Someone had somehow managed to wedge this poor bastard up by his left ankle in the crooks of the thorn tree’s top branches, and had done so upside down. Not satisfied with that, they taken upon themselves to remove the man’s testicles. Emily wasn’t a doctor, but as far as she could tell, the testes hadn’t gone too far as she looked up at what promised to be hours of paperwork. The man’s family jewels were currently residing in the hole that was his face. It looked as if someone had shoved their fingers in through his eyes and mouth, and decided to just snap that part of the skull clean off to have his lower bits shoved into the new orifice. The man’s dick hung out of it like a second tongue.
“Holy shit! No wonder the ranchers were pitching a shit fit.” Andy whistled through his teeth, taking off his hat to try fanning away the smell.
“No, this isn’t why they called. People don’t usually mix up ‘dead body’ for ‘UFO’”
“How the hell are we gonna get him down from there in one piece?”
“I’m not worried about that at the moment.” Emily said, walking slowly around the body. Something wasn’t right. A whole lot of things weren’t right, but she could only focus on so much at one time.
“Why the hell not? It’s gonna tear the shit out of whoever gets him down.” Andy said, grimacing at the curved thorns that grew out of the tree. Most of which were longer than his fingers.
“When something dies out here, how long does it take for scavengers to notice something like this?” Emily asked. She suddenly felt cold despite the sweat evaporating right off of her skin. Studying the dirt around them turned up nothing besides their own footprints.
“Shit, vultures here will follow you around like Death itself if you’re just looking a little pale. I mean, hell, half the time the only reason we find a body out here like this is because the greedy little bastards are already circling overhead. Usually, it’s just some cow that’s wandered off though…” Andy said before trailing off, realization dawning on him as he looked around. There wasn’t a single vulture, or any other carrion bird in sight, above or below. Other than what had been done to him, the corpse was pristine in the sense that it was untouched, having nothing picked off of it. “Is it just me thinking that there should be a hell of a lot more blood? You hang up a body like that, it should be coming out of every hole in his head and hitting the ground.”
“Yeah, you’re right. So where it did it all go?” Emily said quietly, backing away from the hanged man. Something was wrong. Her gut, some base instinct, was telling her that it was long past the point when they should have been running. “I think we need to call this in.”
“Yeah…yeah. I guess so,” Andy muttered, wiping the sweat of his lip. He’d never seen Emily so jumpy before. His partner was usually a stone cold bitch who took no shit from anyone. Andy had to admit to himself that something wasn’t sitting right with him either though. “But we’re supposed to be meeting some folks out here, the ones who called somethingvin. That, and we just can’t leave the body. Something will run off with it...eventually”
Emily was fine with that. She knew she should care about the nameless man who had been brutally murdered. It was her job to give him some peace and justice. Emily knew she should give a damn about her job, and the safety of the people she had been tasked to protect and serve.
Truth be told though, all Emily really cared about in the here and now was getting back in the truck all in one piece. Whatever had happened here had gone awry, and not in the usual ways. Something registering in the corner of her eyes made Emily turn, a dark movement in shades of grey.
“What the-Did you see that!?” Emily asked, her gun already in hand. There was nothing there, expect blinding sunshine bouncing off of sheer rock face and dead brush.
“Whoa there, partner! What’s got you so spooked all the sudden?” Andy asked, looking around to see nothing, but desert, cacti, and their corpse.
“I thought I saw something.” Emily said, holstering her weapon. She swallowed hard, making her throat click from how dry it was. For once, something other than the damn dry heat was bothering her. Fear soured the last bit of the moisture in her mouth, making it feel raw to her.
“Happens to the best of us.” Andy said, so cheerful and oblivious about life it was hateful.
Emily knew she wasn’t crazy. She also knew she wasn’t being paranoid. Something here was making the hairs on the back of her neck and arms stand up on end.
‘Always go with your gut’ was what Red had told her when they were made partners. At the time, Emily had been a new meat, fresh out of the academy, and Red was a jaded, twenty year veteran of the force. That advice had saved Emily more times than she cared to remember. It was also that sort of advice that had gotten Red killed.
“We are going to have to get forensics out here ASAP.” Emily said, side eyeing the dead man.
“That’s gonna them take a couple hours.” Andy sighed, but was open to the idea. He certainly didn’t want to be the one to finagle this body out of its tree. “Nearest town is over an hour away, and the nearest decent city is twice that.”
“Well, we had better call it in then.” Emily said with a little acid on her voice this time. Working with Andy was a test of patience at the best of times, Emily playing ‘state the obvious’ on a daily basis.
“No, I meant one of us is going have to stay with the body.” Andy said. He knew he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know how to do his damn job. He got a little pleasure out of watching all the color leave Emily’s face. “One of us has got to go talk to those ranchers, and the other has got to stay with the body so nothing runs off with it.”
“Why don’t we just cut him down now, and take him along?” Emily said, the stone in her gut dropping even further.
“And destroy any evidence that might bring a sick fuck to justice? Not on my watch.” Andy said to receive a very sour look from Emily. He grinned back at her, despite all the glaring.
“Yeah, and in a couple of hours, we could end up like him.” Emily said, because she sure as shit wasn’t going to stick around here any longer than she had to.
“Okay, lemme ask you this then,” Andy said, “How?”
Emily was about to say something sharp until it registered that Andy was right. The man had not been hung like one would for a hanging, so there was no extra levering rope tied to the base of the tree. On top of that, the tree’s trunk and branches were thickly covered in thorns. Anyone, including their victim, would have gotten torn up for even trying to attempt it. Upon further inspection though, Emily could see no such evidence on the trunk, or torn from their victim.
It was like someone had somehow managed to climb up the thorn tree, somehow avoiding all of its spiny thorns, and all while carrying a mutilated corpse drained of blood up to the branches. After managing to do that, they then jammed victim’s ankle into the sharpest parts of the tree to just let him swing, and all without leaving a trace of evidence on, or around the thorn tree, not even footprints.
“I mean, I got some tools in the truck, but nothing for a job like this.” Andy told her.
“I’m not staying.” Emily said, cutting Andy off at the conversational pass.
“Lemme me ask you a very fair question then,” Andy grinned, “Do you know where you are, or even how to get back to the main road?”
“No.” Emily said, checking her phone which of course told her that it was a useless hunk of plastic without a signal right now.
“Do you know the ranchers, or even where the farm we were heading to is?”
“No.”
“Out of the two of us here, who is the better shot? And in better shape?”
“I am, you fat fuck.” Emily didn’t bother being civil about it. She already knew how this conversation was going to end.
“That’s Officer Fat Fuck to you, thank you very much.” Andy grinning, knowing for once that he had won. “Look, there is nothing out here.”
“There is a killer out here somewhere.”
“And how the hell are they gonna sneak up on you? Dress up as a cactus like Wiley Coyote?” Andy sighed, gesturing around them, at all the wide open space. “It is bright as hell, and you can see for miles all around you.”
When Emily still looked unmoved, Andy added, “Look I’ll leave you the shotgun and all extra ammo you want. I even got a folding chair, and an umbrella in the back of the truck for some shade.”
“I want all the water too.”
“Fair enough. It’s hotter than the Devil’s toenails out here.” Andy shrugged as Emily looted the truck. He could always get more water at the ranch. It was only about a fifteen minute drive from here, ten minutes tops if he really hauled ass.
“Forensics will be here about two hours. I shouldn’t be more than an hour, so just sit tight, and keep our man here company. I bet he’ll talk about as much as you do.” Andy said, waving goodbye. Emily flipped him off, watching as the truck kick up dust taking off. Andy had been right about seeing for miles as she tracked the truck until it was a tiny dust mote in the distance.
When two hours had passed with no word from anyone, Emily began to get a little restless. Bodies didn’t bother her, but the smell was something else. Even without blood to go bad in the heat, the corpse cooked in its remaining juices. That, and there wasn’t much to do except watch the sun’s trek across a too blue sky, unmarred by any cloud cover.
“Still no birds.” Emily observed to no one as she studied the sky overhead. A perfectly good corpse stinking up the place, and there wasn’t one damn vulture overhead, plenty of flies, but still no birds. Sunset was still quite a few hours away, but the coolness of night would only bring out other bigger, more problematic scavengers. All things considered, Emily found she was fine with that. At this point, she would have given up one of her guns for any other sign of life besides herself out here.
The department despised her, not that she had done anything persuaded them to think otherwise. Emily did her job though, and she did it well so that counted for something. Andy tolerated her, and although he was oblivious and somewhat incompetent, Emily had never got a sense from him that he would abandon her out in the middle of nowhere with a corpse and a crime scene.
“Shit.” Emily sighed, assessing her situation after almost another hour had passed, making that three in total now. The sun would be setting in three or four hours, and she was almost out of water. Someone else should have been out here by now. Even if he had shot the shit with the ranchers, Andy should have been back by a long time ago.
Not wanting to end up like their man in a thorn tree, Emily packed up what she could carry, which mostly just meant the shotgun, all the ammo, and water. As much as she wanted to bring it along, the umbrella was for picnics, far too heavy for her to hold onto. Emily didn’t know where she was, but she could follow the truck’s tire tracks to the ranch. Andy had said it was about fifteen minutes from here. Doing some quick math in her head based on how fast Andy drove, Emily reasoned out that the ranch was around fifteen miles or less away, which was a hell of a lot closer to her than the town was. The ranch was only about a three or four hour walk, while town was over thirty miles away.
Leaving a note on the chair held down by a rock in case forensics ever decided to show up, Emily started her journey through the desert using the trail left by the truck’s tires to guide her out. It was all going well so far, except Emily couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched.
Chocking it up to the heat that was strong enough to make the air dance in place around her, Emily tried to blame it on the early onsets of dehydration, chugging her next allotment of water. She was trying to conserve it the best she could, but it wasn’t easy. It felt like it was evaporating right off of her tongue instead of moistening her insides
About two hours into walking, Emily found the truck first. From what she could tell from the tire marks in the dirt road, Andy had swerved hard to avoid something in the road. The result of that was him slamming the vehicle into a pile of rocks and cacti, a particularly large cactus the size of a tree pinning the bed of the truck into place. The front end of the truck was crushed, the cabin caved in, and anything electrical in the dash ruined. Emily tried the radio anyway, but her bad luck ran strong today. Andy was not in the truck, something that annoyed the hell out of Emily, but it did explain why he hadn’t come back. The air bags had been deployed, and there was some blood on the console, but not enough to be worrisome.
The truck had been following this one dirt road though so the odds of her not getting lost seemed pretty good. Looking around the truck for any further signs of Andy, Emily hoped that it led directly to the ranch. She didn’t find him, but she did find her partner’s cache of snacks, soda, and a bottle of terrible whiskey. Making due with the junk food, Emily studied the truck, before walking back to the road. There was nothing in the dirt to suggest that anything had been there to avoid in the first place, Andy seemingly taking it upon himself to crash into one of the few things he could have hit in a desert.
And there was that awful gut feeling again, Emily studying the road before turning her attention back to the truck. Hers were the only footprints around it, going from it to the road and back again.
Which meant Andy should still be in the truck.
Walking around the ruined vehicle, Emily reconfirmed that there was no sign of Andy leaving the truck. There was no sign of a struggle, or even if he’d gotten seriously injured. Reassessing the situation, she realized that the radio was dead, her phone was still no service out here, and her partner had vanished into thin air. The only thing Emily was sure of was that Andy had not called this in, or had gotten around to it before completely disappearing. In a sleepy little town like this, Emily doubted that anyone would even notice that they were gone until real nightfall. Someone would notice when Andy didn’t turn up at the local bar for his beer.
Night had fully settled in by the time Emily found the ranch. It had all the homey qualities of a ghost town with its lights left off, and its front door hanging wide open on its hinges.
“Shit.” Emily swore softly, gun in hand as she neared the house. Two things happened when she stepped into the front yard. First and foremost, the motion sensitive lights flared on, momentarily blinding her. Secondly, as Emily tried to restore her vision from behind the crook of her arm, she could make out something huge and grey standing just a few feet from her, towering over her.
Whatever it was startled for the sudden light as well, letting out a low gurgling sound. Years of training and experience kicking in, Emily turned and fired, already moving to put some distance between her, and whatever the fuck was making those noises. She kept moving, scrambling toward the house while blindly firing behind her. Even if Emily could see, excessive adrenaline rush had robbed her of some finer motor control required for aiming. She sprayed and prayed her way to cover, slamming the front door behind her, locking it.
Bracing herself against the door, Emily waited from the bulk of it running after her at full speed to slam into the wood. The impact never came though, Emily risking the peephole. The lights were out again, revealing nothing but darkness out there. Pressing her ear to the door, Emily listened for any signs of life to be met with silence.
“What the fuck was that?” Emily tried to remember exactly what she had seen and heard, what she had been seeing in glimpses all damn day long. Was she hallucinating from a combination of PTSD, stress, and dehydration? That was the most reasonable explanation.
Slapping her hand insistently against the wall, Emily eventually made the lights come on. What had once been someone’s home was just another crime scene. Furniture was torn up and overturned, broken glass lay everywhere, and what had once been several someone’s uneaten breakfast was thrown across the kitchen, a result probably from the table being flipped. If that wasn’t bad enough, the small pools of tacky blood strongly suggested that whoever had lived here didn’t have to worry about cleaning any of this up.
“Hello? Is anybody here?” Emily tried, sweating sliding down her temple to drip off her chin. It tickled in a gross way, Emily wiping it away. It was annoying. When was the last time she had been drenched in sweat? Since moving here, it just seemed to evaporate right off of her skin. Her gut was telling Emily that she was missing something vital. A spot of color caught her attention, some red that wasn’t hers on the back of her hand now.
Steeling herself, Emily looked up.
Wedged in the rafters, much like the man in the thorn tree, was Andy, though he had gotten to keep his face. The little blood left in his body was dripping into Emily’s hair, down the side of her face. Andy’s eyes were still open, his face frozen in a twisted expression of pain and fear. Emily didn’t get to look at it long, all the lights on the ranch going out at once. If her hallucination was real, whatever it was outside had just cut the power. Emily listened to her own skitterish raspy breathing in the new sort of quiet that only came when all appliances and electronics were suddenly muted.
Out this far, there was no light pollution. Emily’s eyes adjusting to what little was revealed by starlight and not nearly enough moonlight coming in through the windows. As they did, Emily sidled up beside one of the large front windows, risking a look out. What she could make out looked to be a very tall, disconcertingly tall, rail thin man in a suit, standing not too far from the road. She couldn’t make out any details on his face, the low light making it appear featurelessly blank. He was just standing there, staring at the house, staring back at her. Emily stopped breathing as she watched the man shaped thing slowly raise its hand to wave at her.
And then he was gone in the blink of her eye.
Dropping to the ground, Emily focused on stopping herself from making these strange little panicked noises she had never heard herself create before. Easier said than done, but Emily managed it in time to hear footsteps on the roof. Moving as quietly as she could, Emily switched out weapons for the shotgun, leaving the safety off. She froze when footsteps suddenly stopped. All that lay in the spaces between was that dead sort of ancient forgotten quiet, noisy with tension and the thundering of her own heart knocking into her ribs.
Something gurgled behind her, Emily dropping into a roll to spin around, barrels blazing. The tall, disconcertingly tall, thin man loomed over her, taking the bullets to the chest. He howled in rage filled pain, which was impressive. He was somehow managing to do so without a mouth. She needed to get some distance from him, Emily using the rifle like a club to make him give her some room, swinging to make the thing move.
Up and out the door, Emily ran out into the night, struggling to reload the shotgun while staying in motion. Keeping to the road, she tried to reason out that maybe, just maybe, if she was lucky and if God was good, someone might happen upon her. Emily didn’t believe in either of those things as she struggled to discern any other sounds besides the ringing in her own ears.
A flicker in her peripheral on her right hand side made her drop and turn, firing as she swung around. The shot managed to graze its right knee, the man shaped thing howling as it descended upon her, inhumanly long fingers punching into her left shoulder and through it so she was pinned to the ground.
Screaming, Emily ditched the shotgun for her semi-automatic. Emptying the clip into it made the man shaped thing let her go with a deafening shriek, withdrawing its fingers from her with a sickening wet crunchy sound.
Shock was a beautiful thing at the moment, Emily barely feeling her shoulder. She knew it was bad. She’d been shot before, recognized the symptoms of the body experiencing trauma as she lurched to her feet, and stumbled down the road, trying to put some distance between her and whatever the hell that thing was.
Emily had no doubt she was going to die now. No one was ever going to find the man in the thorn tree, the ranchers, Andy’s body, or even her own. They might be remembered on some unsolved mystery crime show, but that would be about it. Turning to make her last stand, Emily told herself not to scream as the thing lunged for her. All she had left on her was a knife, Emily pulling it out with her good hand. She was ready to die.
Despite that promise to herself, Emily ended up screaming anyway, though not for obvious reasons. Missing her by a foot, an 18wheeler with its lights off flew down the road like a bolt of dark lightning, all brute force, movement, and noise. It slammed into the tall, disconcertingly tall, thin man in a suit, the grill making the monster pop like a pimple before it was dropped down under to be torn apart limb from limb by the rig’s wheels.
The 18wheeler came to a stop, all its lights flipping on as it slowly turned back around to pull up close to her. Wiping what she hoped was just foul smelled blood off of her face with the numb back of her hand, Emily stared with wide eyes at the truck as it came to a full stop in front of her, unsure if any of this was really happening anymore. She jumped when the big rig’s door flew open to reveal huge man, He looked like any other trucker to Emily, wearing dirty jeans, a flannel shirt, a stained cap crammed over unwashed hair, and steel toed boots. All that was pretty damn normal except half of his body was heavily covered in burn scars, the ruined flesh twisted something awful over his bones. If that wasn’t unsettling enough, the trucker was carrying what looked to be a modified baseball bat. The wood of it was studded with metal spikes, and the length of it had strange markings carved and burned into it.
The trucker seemed more concerned about what he had hit than about her, which was fair. Emily took this moment to collect herself so she wouldn’t curl up in fetal position right there and then, and stay that way for a good long while. The truck was real, the man was real, and whatever he had hit was now very dead. She could focus on that for now.
“You alive?” A rough voice asked her. Emily stared back at the scarred man. She was still holding her knife. She held it up in answer.
“I ain’t gonna hurt you.” The trucker growled. Her knife didn’t waver though. Too much had happened to her in too little time. “But I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”
Emily kept a safe distance from that man who stop paying attention to her, returning to his truck to rummage through its depths. She went for her gun that wasn’t there anymore when the man got some garbage bags and several rolls of duct tape out of truck’s cab.
“Look, lady, I know this looks real bad, but I’m not here for you. I’m just gonna bag and tag this critter, and be on my way. If you wanna catch a ride back into town, that’s fine by me, or stay out here, which is also fine by me.” The trucker told her, going about his business as he collected up what was left of that thing. “There’s a med kit under the seat if you wanna start patching yourself up. Bottle of whiskey under there too. Drink up. Looks like you’ve earned it.”
As tempting as that sounded, Emily followed after the trucker instead, watching him bag up little wet pieces that dripped grey blood. “What was it?” she asked finally, not recognizing her own voice.
“Far as I can tell, a fucking el Chuppa thingy.” The trucker sighed, eyeballing a piece of stinking meat before chucking into the bag.
“El Chupacabra?” Emily filled in, pulling the information from somewhere within her. Everyone read the trash tabloid papers when in line at the grocery store.
“Yeah, one of those things.”
“B-but they’re not real.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, ma’am, but you’re looking mighty rough from something that ain’t real.” The trucker smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant expression.
“I thought those things were only supposed to kill goats, right?” Emily heard herself ask, unsure about this sudden turn in reality.
“Used to. Now the little pains in the ass have gone rogue. That happens sometimes when something like this pretends to be other shit they ain’t.” The trucker grimaced at the mess still dripping off the front of his truck, “Makes all our jobs a hell of a lot harder.”
“I don’t follow.” Emily found that she could do this if she just kept going.
“What do you know about the Chupacabra?”
“Nothing except for the goat thing, which apparently it doesn’t do anymore. It’s supposed to be an urban legend, like Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster.”
“Sounds about right. What do you know about the Slenderman?”
“That it’s a tall skinny man in a suit that appears, and disappears before he...” Emily trailed off, her mind quickly recounting all the events from today, it all finally clicking in place. “But...they’re not real.”
“Yeah? I got a whole bag of smelly leftovers that says they are, and I bet that shoulder of yours could put in a good argument about its realness. Things like these, some of them anyway, they need us to believe in them. Ain’t no one with a gun and half a brain is scared of something that kills goats. Hell, any coyote can do that,” The trucker said, “But what if that goat sucker got it in its fool head to pretend to be something else? Something meaner?”
“Slenderman is real?”
“Oh, hell no. He’s just some kiddie bullshit made up by the internets, but there’s enough assholes who believe in him, at least now anyway. This little goat fucker right here just tapped into that, but then, he got too big for his own britches.” The trucker said, shaking the bag’s wet contents at her. “He caught all the wrong attention so here I am, and here we are now. Would have been here sooner, but tracking this sonabitch was a right damn hassle.”
“What are you going to do with that...thing?” Emily asked, not really wanting to know, but still morbidly curious.
“You don’t want to know.” The trucker confirmed for her. “Look, I’ll make you a deal. You tell me all about your day while I patch you up. Tell me about everything that happened to you down to the last detail, and I’ll give you one hell of a cover story so people don’t think you’re crazy.”
“There’s a lot of dead people.”
“Just your luck then that I’m real good at what I do.” The trucker said as they walked back to the truck, He wasn’t wrong. Emily knew that she couldn’t exactly just come wandering out of the desert with a missing partner, a ranch full of corpses, a dead man up in a thorn tree, and a ragged hole in her shoulder. They were going to be looking for something real and understandable to blame for all this, and being the last one alive wasn’t always the best thing to be in these kind of scenarios.
“You’re gonna come out of this smelling like a rose despite all the shit you’re about to wade through.” The trucker told her as he fished out an almost full bottle of whiskey and what looked to be a bottle of pain killers from a secret compartment under the seat.
“Our little secret.” he winked at her, the action of it doing unpleasant things to his scarred face as he handed her the brown liquor and some pills. Emily accepted both, the shock beginning to wear off. Her body was making her very aware of just how unhappy it was.
“You’ve done this before.” Emily didn’t bother to make it a question as she swallowed the pills down with an impressive slug of cheap whiskey. She kept the bottle.
“More times than you’ll care to know, and if the damn travelers keep at it, I’ll be doing it again soon enough.”
“What’s your name?”
“Char man, Char for short. Three guesses about how I got it.”
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