Chapter 18
The Shackleford ancestral home was an imposing structure. Once one of the finest of the great antebellum homes of the Old South, it was the crown jewel of a once-massive plantation. Ages ago it had been the center of thousands of acres of timber and farming cut out of the woods of Alabama. The original builder's heirs had sold the home and the property to the first Raymond Shackleford nearly a hundred years before.
"You can see out this window where the slave quarters used to be, the kind of empty spot right there. You can still make out the foundations. They were pretty rickety and busted up by the time I was a kid." Julie pointed out the back windows off of the main corridor. "I burned them down when I was twelve."
"Why? Some sort of protest against the injustice? A young girl trying to right the wrongs of the past?" I asked.
"Nothing so noble. Me and my brothers were learning how to make homemade napalm. Styrofoam packing peanuts dissolved into a bottle of gasoline. They make the best Molotov cocktails. I let one of mine get away from me. I'm just lucky that it didn't spread and burn the house down… Those were the days."
"I can understand. I did something similar once when I was a kid. My brother and I built a pipe bomb. Big thing. We smuggled powder out of my father's reloading room for almost a year so he wouldn't notice. Mixed it with a whole bunch of other ingredients. Detonated it in the backyard when my folks weren't home. It was a little bit bigger boom than expected though, dug a four-foot trench in the yard, cut the gas main and forced the neighborhood to evacuate."
"No wonder the ATF has your name on file," she said. "I wonder if all future Monster Hunters blow stuff up as kids?"
"Probably. The ones that live that long at least." I shrugged. "Hey, I was an upstanding citizen until I met you guys."
"I bet… Anyway, I was sad when the old slave quarters burned down. I was just a little girl. I hadn't really understood what they stood for. I mean, I knew what they were, but not why they were important."
"Lot of history in the South," I stated.
"Don't go getting high and mighty because of slavery. You grew up out West, you have no clue about the South. My family might own this house, but that doesn't mean that we approve of the kinds of things that happened here. I had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, but I would be real surprised if any of them had two nickels to rub together, let alone owned a slave. People think that the South is racist, and it was, and some parts still are, but for the most part, we've dealt with our history. The biggest racists I've ever met aren't here, they're in politics, and they are smug bastards. They're the ones that are quick to play the race card, the ones that pimp poverty. Those are the real bigots."
"Touchy subject."
"I guess. But Bubba Shackleford employed black Hunters in his very first group of Professional Monster Killers. Remember 'Flexible Minds.' He made that little credo up. That's not just about the unnatural, it's about how you look at the world. He only cared if they could fight, and that they kept it together when strange stuff started. They were some pretty tough Hunters too. You don't want to know what happened to the Klan boys that messed with them."
"I can guess." I could only imagine that after dealing with werewolves and vampires, yokels hiding under white sheets were not that big of a deal.
"Rumor has it that a bunch of night riders ended up buried in the back forty. Great-great-grandpa never had much trouble from those folks after that." She changed the subject. "Let me show you the ballroom. This is probably my favorite room in the whole house." She pushed open some double doors and led the way into a huge space. The floor was vast and open, ornate antique chairs lined the walls, and an opulent crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. Most of the walls were mirrored, with old-fashioned and slightly distorted glass. A large stage filled the back corner of the room, complete with carved pillars capped in brass. Staircases spiraled around and upward to the second floor, perfect for the Southern belles of old to descend for their grand entrances.
I walked into the room. My boots echoed on the worn smooth wood, stirring up small clouds of dust. I could imagine the parties of bejeweled women and men in Confederate gray, royalty of a forgotten time and kingdom. "Impressive."
"I haven't done any work in here. I don't really want to. I'm just going to leave this one alone. We never used this room growing up. If this old place has a soul, it would be in this room. So I leave it closed." I watched her reflection in one of the many mirrors. She awkwardly placed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. "I know it sounds silly, but that's how it is."
"I understand," I said, not really, but it seemed like the correct answer. Even though there had not been any music played in this room for generations, I had to resist the urge to ask her to dance.
"Um… Through here is the formal living room. Now this one, we used a little, for guests and that kind of thing." I followed her through another set of double doors into a much less lavish room. This one was under drastic construction. Tarps had been thrown over the furniture, and sawdust covered almost everything. Only one wall was not in the process of being stripped and repainted. It was covered in painted portraits of Julie's ancestors.
"Five generations of Monster Hunters," she proclaimed, "and a few who decided to stay out of the family business, but we still love them too. Even if they are strange." There were dozens of paintings. Most done in a classically formal style, kind of stuffy, and not really befitting the homespun, slightly insane, good nature of the family as I knew them. The first painting was of Raymond "Bubba" Shackleford, followed by a picture of his wife and children, and then each of the succeeding generations after that. There was a single blank spot on the wall where Raymond II was missing, but other than that there were a lot of pictures up there. In totality it created a beast of a family tree. The last of the pictures were of people I recognized. The Ray Shackleford IV that I knew as a wild-eyed lunatic was captured on canvas as a handsome, square-jawed man. His wife, Susan, had looked almost exactly like Julie did today. My tour guide's portrait must have been taken when she was younger. I did not feel that the painting had done her justice. She looked slightly artificial. I felt for the painter, capturing something like Julie's beauty had to be difficult. You could get the technical details correct, but how did you convey the spirit?
"Lot of Raymonds. Must be kind of hard to keep track of them."
"It's a bit of a tradition. Oldest son got the name. I'm the oldest in my family, so it went to my younger brother." She pointed at one of the last of the portraits. He resembled his father.
"Where's he now?"
"Dead," she said sadly. "It's been a few years."
"I'm sorry."
"No. He died well. You can't be sorry for somebody that brave. You can be sad, but not sorry. He earned his plaque at the compound. Even the best of us get it eventually."
"What happened?" I don't know why I asked her, but I did. She hesitated only briefly before speaking.
"1995. At the Christmas party, Monster Hunter International's one-hundredth anniversary. He was one of the ninety-seven Hunters killed that night. He was just a Newbie, but he fought like a champion. You should have seen him. He sure was something."
"I've never heard the whole story."
She gestured at one of the tarp-covered couches. I sat, and she sat next to me, under the watchful painted eyes of her ancestors. We sunk into the deep cushions with a rustle of plastic. I could taste the sawdust in the air.
"It was a great party. Hunters know how to throw a great party-you know, live fast, party hard, die young. That kind of philosophy tends to grow amongst people with such a dangerous job. Everybody who wasn't in the middle of a case was there, so most of us at least. Well anyway, it was at a resort near Gulf Shores, right on the beach. Beautiful spot, Dad had picked it out, reserved it for us. At the time I was just glad that he seemed to be coming out of his mourning, coming out of the archives, and participating with the living again. I had been worried about him for so long. Little did I know that he had picked that spot because it was the right place and the right time for his damned summoning." She brushed aside some dust. "I should have seen it coming."
"You couldn't have known. Nobody could have."
"I know, but that doesn't change the fact that it was my job to know. I'm the historian. I'm the researcher. I'm supposed to be the one with the answers. That's my job, and this one was right under my nose. I knew Dad was sad about Mom's death, but I never expected him to do something like this. The resort was his Place of Power. We didn't know until later that it was built on top of what used to be some tribe's sacred ground. It was his chance to bring her back. While the rest of us were gathering down at the resort, he planted a bomb in the archives. None of us ever learned the real logic behind that. He had the information he needed stored in his head, so he probably wanted to destroy the books that had the information on how to stop him, just in case. That's my guess anyway. Burned a big chunk of it down."
She sighed, apparently studying her father's portrait, trying to discern reason behind the painted mask. She continued, "Every Hunter that could be there, was there. Even the retired ones. Lots of wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, dates, it was a great big party. Even the caterers and the bartenders had been picked from people who knew what was up. People who knew about monsters and who and what we were. We could let our hair down. There weren't any secrets being kept in that room. I don't know why Dad wanted such an audience, but he had it.
"At midnight, Dad went to the center of the dance floor, splashed some blood in a circle, and said a few words. I think most of the folks near him thought that he was just drunk or something. I saw him doing it, I didn't understand, but I knew that it was wrong. I knew that something bad was about to happen. His voice became louder, almost like he was talking with a megaphone. I've heard about every language there is, but not this one. Whatever it was, it wasn't meant to be pronounced with a human tongue. The blood caught on fire and the floor under him disappeared, it just kind of opened right up. I was far enough away that I didn't get to see where it opened to, but some of the others did. They died first."
"What was it?" I asked.
Julie appeared shaken as she recalled the memory. "A rift. To someplace else, we don't really know where. We say hell, but that isn't really right, that's just our way of explaining something that we don't understand, but it was not on Earth, that's for sure. Things came out of that rift, bad things. I can't even begin to describe them. They tore through the party like the Hunters were made out of tissue paper. Dad's plan had gone wrong. Bad wrong."
She unconsciously clenched her fists, the muscles in her jaw contracted, and her eyes narrowed angrily at the memory.
"We fought. We fought hard. But we had been caught unaware, and these things were tough. More and more of them kept pouring through the hole every second, and they weren't going to stop. We held them, we killed them until their husks were piled waist-deep. We couldn't retreat, because they just kept flooding out the rift. If we gave up at the gate then these things would have filled the country, don't ask me how I know that, but somehow we all did. Every inch we gave up was one more inch that would no longer belong to our world, it would belong to them. Everybody stood and fought. No Hunter ran."
I reached over and grasped her hand. She was shaking.
"We didn't have armor-hell, all I had was a cute little black dress. All we had were handguns, of course everybody was packing, I mean, think about the crowd that we're talking about here. Some Hunters made it to their vehicles and grabbed heavier weapons and came back, others had been thoughtful enough to have some already stashed at the resort. After the first few minutes I was out of ammo and down to using a table leg as a club. My brother Ray stood with me, all he had was a broken beer bottle. I watched… watched as something pulled his intestines out and painted the ceiling with them. I killed it, but I was too late. I didn't even have time to see him die. I was too busy fighting."
Silent moments passed as she regained her composure. She lifted her glasses and wiped under her eyes. "Sorry."
"No… no, that's okay," I said.
"Right after my brother was hit, something big bumped against the rift. Unbelievably big. It's hard to explain, but all I saw was its pupil, but that was bigger than this house. The rift was growing. It was coming through into this world. Grenades and rockets just made it blink. If it came through, then this world was gone. We all knew it. Earl saved us. He made his way into the rift. He killed anything that came near him. He came out a second later with my dad slung over his shoulder. When Dad was pulled through, the rift collapsed. We had beaten them. Whatever they were.
"Then we had to run. The resort had caught on fire, the building was coming down. I carried one of my wounded friends out, and by the time I made it outside she had already started to convulse… Poor Piper. Apparently the monsters from the rift were poisonous. She died in my arms. The building burned. It was still burning when the Feds arrived. It burned for three straight days. Nothing could put it out. When it was done there was nothing but ash, and charred bones that weren't human."
She stared off into space, reunited once more with the memories of her fallen family and comrades. I did not speak.
"Three quarters of us were dead. And some who had been too close to that rift just walked away and never came back. Ninety-seven dead Hunters and forty dead guests and resort staff. Within a few days an executive order was issued and we were shut down. The Feds took my dad away. The news reported that an oil tanker had run aground and caught fire. I went to a lot of funerals."
"Julie. I don't know what to say."
She put her head down and cried softly. I put my arm around her and waited for her to stop. She sobbed a few times as she was temporarily overcome with emotion.
"I'm okay." She raised her head, sniffed, but then pushed away and stood proudly. "And now you know about us. You know the whole story. And you know why I don't give a shit if that son of a bitch who claims to be my father lives or dies. It would be better for a whole lot of people if his damned black heart quit beating, but if he lives, I think that Appleton is far too nice a place to hold him. If I had my way I would have left him in that rift. He's caused too much pain. He isn't my father. He's nothing but a monster. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let him be taken to help some other monster unleash that kind of terror on my world again."
"I know."
"Good." She stopped. "I loved my brother. I miss him still. And I lost friends, people I've known since I was a kid. I hold him responsible for this. So that's why I've been acting the way I have. I'm sorry if I've been harsh, but I'll kill him before I let him go free."
"If anything, I think you've shown remarkable restraint. Thanks for telling me the story." She was an interesting woman to say the least. I was still curious. "What did you do next?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"After the company was shut down, until we started back up. What did you do?"
"Well…" She sat back down next to me with a creak of plastic. I don't think that she had expected to continue her story. "I went back to school. Finished up my degrees. I tried to be normal for a while."
"Normal?" I had been struggling with the concept myself, doubting myself, my choices, and my abilities. It was strange to hear Julie, super Monster Hunter Julie Shackleford, say the same thing. Strange, but comforting.