TEN
***
It was dark and getting darker. White tendrils of thick mist curled down from the mountains, licking hungrily at the edges of town as they made their way steadily inward, ever closer to the center of town.
Jason stood in front of the general store. It was quaint: children’s' ads for lemonade and puppies for sale in the storefront windows; another poster board that loudly proclaimed an upcoming children's rodeo.
Ox stood beside Jason, the large man gulping as he stared at the ladder that stood below the eaves of his store.
"Sorry, Sheriff," said Ox. "Whatever's there, I think it may be knocking into my antenna. I tried to call the Fire Department, but Randy's busy."
Jason sighed, and saw that Ox had noticed the movement. He saw embarrassment surge almost visibly through the huge man. "Sorry, Sheriff," said Ox again.
"No, it's not you, Ox," Jason hastened to reassure him. "Just the fact that we have a one-man 'Fire Department' and he's always hiding from his 'fire dog' who I'm pretty sure hates him at best and has rabies at worst."
Ox shrugged, half-smiling at the ridiculousness of it. Jason sighed again, and began to climb. He left Ox behind him as he clambered up to the roof. "You be careful, Sheriff," shouted Ox, looking terror stricken as though it were he and not the sheriff who was up on the rooftop.
Jason waved at Ox to show he would take appropriate care, then cast about for the antenna. He saw it almost instantly: the old-fashioned kind of antenna that looked like a metal skeleton against the fog-ridden backdrop of the dark sky. The tips of the antenna waved back and forth gently, though Jason could feel no breeze, and he concluded that something must be hitting it at the base. What that might be, however, he could not tell: his view of the antenna cut off at the apex of the roof, which was between him and the point at which the antenna entered the building.
Jason sighed again, then climbed further up the roof. Might as well do it right, he thought.
"You okay, Sheriff?" came Ox's voice.
Jason didn't answer, just kept climbing. He looked over the peak of the roof...and almost fell off as he felt himself go suddenly woozy and nauseous at the sight of what was moving the antenna.
Jason blinked quickly. It couldn't be. Not this. What he was seeing was impossible. Frightening, disquieting...impossible.
Sean Rand was holding onto the antenna, shaking it gently. The boy's eyes were the milky white cataracts of the dead, his skin was mostly white, though it shone with a deep, ugly purple around the bloodless red wounds that scarred him from toe to crown, as though he had died at the claws of a cougar or some other vicious cat.
Or something worse.
The little boy smiled, and Jason's vision grew even darker as he saw that most of the boy's teeth were splintered or missing: torn apart by the hideous violence that had been the source of his demise.
Jason shouted in terror at the impossible sight that he was faced with. He stumbled on a loose shingle, and felt the thing peel off under his feet. He pitched forward, toward the heinous vision that was Sean Rand, the little boy's arms now open wide as though for a welcoming embrace. Then he pushed backward, trying desperately to overcome his own inertia and avoid that hideous grasp. The result was an awkward pitch to the side that almost had him falling headfirst over the side of the roof before he finally managed to arrest his momentum and stop the headlong flight into nothing. He stopped at the last second, coming to rest on his belly, his head hanging over the eaves and staring face to face at Ox below him.
The big man looked like he was about to pass out with sympathetic fear. "Watch out," said Ox. "Heights."
Jason didn't answer, but instead scrambled back up over the roof, over the top, back to the antenna.
And saw a dead badger. It was huge, curled around the base of the antenna, pushing it askew with its dead weight.
But no sign of little Sean Rand.
Jason looked around, as though he could possibly find something that would make any sense out of what had just happened.
The mountains stared down at him. The mist was coming toward him.
And answers were nowhere to be found.
***
A moment later Jason heard Ox's shout as he pitched the dead badger down, narrowly missing the big man. Jason followed the carcass down, crawling back onto the ladder and then reaching ground only a moment later. Both he and Ox looked at the dead badger for a long moment before Ox finally managed, "You okay, Sheriff?"
Sure, thought Jason. I think I just found little Sean, and it turns out he's a ghost who looks like he's been the main cut at the butcher's shop, but other than that I'm hunky-dory.
"I'm fine," was all he said aloud.
Ox prodded at the dead badger with a size nineteen foot. "Thanks, Sheriff. I owe you."
"No problem, Ox, just don't-"
Jason was interrupted by a truck that screeched to a stop in front of the store. It was an old truck, worn and torn with use, but well cared for beneath its surface appearance. Out of the truck stepped Harold "Jonesy" Jones, one of the town's most prolific hunters when in season and one of the town's only plumbers the rest of the year 'round.
The man was toting a shotgun.
Jason nodded at the man, who was dressed in a flannel shirt, thick denim jacket, and heavy-duty camouflage pants. "Hey, Jonesy. Night hunting?"
Jonesy nodded. "Hey, Sheriff; Ox. Yeah, I thought I'd skip town for a little while." Turning to Ox, he said, "Can I grab some shot?"
Ox nodded and started to take down the ladder that Jason had used to scale the store's roof. "You know where I keep it."
On a whim, Jason followed Jonesy into the general store. The place was as quaint on the inside as it was outside. One corner of the store was dominated by a real soda fountain with bar seating, the rest of the place held everything from animal seed to sugar to cereal to a few dresses: Rising's answer to Wal-Mart.
Jonesy went behind the front counter to an ammo display and started looking through the boxes for his caliber. "How was your hunt?" Jonesy asked Jason. "Bag anything?"
Jason hesitated, thinking of the deer he had shot, and then thinking of the empty truck bed with its bloody coiled ropes that held nothing. "Not sure," he said. Then, before the hunter could ask about his cryptic answer, Jason said, "What did you mean out there, Jonesy?"
"Huh?" said the other man, still looking for the right kind of shot.
"About skipping town...what did you mean by that?"
"Just wanted to get out for a while," answered Jonesy.
"Why?"
Something in Jason's voice must have signaled to the hunter that this was more than just passing conversation, for he stopped his ammunition search and looked the sheriff in the eye. "You've seen it, Sheriff Meeks," said Jonesy. "Everyone's afraid. The whole town. More afraid than-"
"- than they usually are," finished Jason, remembering Hatty's words back at his office.
Jonesy nodded sagely and murmured a quick, "Just so," before going back to his search. "I figured I'd get out of town. Go up to the mountains where the only thing I have to worry about is a rogue dear impaling me or something." The hunter laughed as he said that last, but the laugh was dry of humor, the kind of laugh a child might utter on a dark night when it is trying desperately to stave off fear.
Jonesy found the right box of shot then, and pocketed it after dropping several bills and a handful of change on the front counter. Jason followed the hunter back outside, then watched Jonesy drive off in his heavy pickup truck.
"Did he leave exact change?" asked Ox. Jason nodded. "Jonesy's like clockwork," said the huge man.
"He's a pro all right," agreed Jason. "No one better than-" then he cut off suddenly.
"What is it?" asked Ox.
Jason pointed at the storefront. "What's that?" he asked in a hushed voice.
Ox glanced to where the sheriff was pointing. "Oh, you know as well as me," he said, then opened the front door to take the ladder back inside. "Kids come here, they put up their little ads for dogs for sale or lawnmowing or little jobs they'll do or-"
"No," said Jason. He stopped Ox, pointing him directly at one of the signs. "That one," he reiterated.
Ox squinted at the sign, which was tucked next to a child's poster announcing free bunnies. The sign was small, wrinkled...and Jason was quite sure that it hadn't been there just a moment ago.
"Don't know," said Ox. "Wasn't there last time I checked."
Jason touched the paper, half-expecting not to be able to feel anything. But he could. It was real; he could feel the crinkle of the white paper and the waxy feel of the crayon writing that was the only decoration on the paper. Dark, childish writing. A single, short message:
cRak IN tHe DAm.
***