Supernatural Fresh Meat

FIFTY-NINE




Huddled around the tiny fire, Bobby finally felt his bones thawing out. He watched the snow curl upward into the grey sky. He’d never been in a winter storm this bad. Their progress was too slow. They would have reached the resort by now if the snow weren’t so deep.

Sam shivered across from him, sitting with his arms crossed. He stared into the fire, eyes troubled, brow creased. Bobby could guess what terrible visions Sam conjured in that blaze. Hell.

“Sam.” He looked up at Bobby, his gaze haunted. “You’re not there anymore.”

Sam exhaled. “I know. I think I know, anyway.” He pressed his thumb into the palm of his scarred hand.

Bobby worried about him. The more time they spent out here, the more consumed and withdrawn Sam had become. Maybe it was all the quiet that did it to him, but his thoughts seemed to take him over.

After a couple of hours of warmth, the crackling died down. Bobby felt thoroughly thawed out and crawled into his sleeping bag in his tent.

Sam did the same, and a few minutes later, as Bobby zipped up his tent-fly, he asked, “Do you think it’s weird that we haven’t run across Dean’s trail, or that that thing hasn’t attacked us?”

Bobby stared at him over the dying fire. “This storm’s the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s all but wiped out any trail of Dean. Could be the aswang’s trapped in it, too. It may be tougher than hell, but that don’t make it immune to the weather.”

Sam frowned, obviously not satisfied. “I guess so,” he said. “Goodnight.”

Bobby heard Sam close his tent-fly.

Bobby had wondered why the aswang hadn’t attacked, too. Though he wouldn’t admit as much to Sam. They were exposed prime meat and exhausted in the storm, after all. It was possible the aswang didn’t even know they were out there.

Bobby couldn’t sleep. His wrist was giving him fits. He held it outside the tent for a few minutes, letting it cool in the snow, but ultimately he preferred the warmth of the bag. Eventually, he hunkered down inside his sleeping bag’s fleecy depths and pulled out the folder Marta had given him. He’d been carrying it around since they set off, but this was the first moment he’d had to look at it.

Switching on his headlamp, he opened the manila file. Dozens of articles spilled out. Marta had certainly done a lot of ground work. Some pages were photocopies of the diary of the eighteenth-century Spanish missionary, others were copies of old newspaper articles going back to the 1800s.

He flipped through the pages of the old diary, reading account after account of aswangs creeping into villages at night and sucking fetuses out of pregnant women, and kidneys and livers out of men and children. One family’s son had gone missing while out fishing one day. For ten days they searched for him with no luck. Then one day he just wandered back into the village and lay down on his bed. They couldn’t get him to eat or drink anything, and he just thrashed around restlessly, unable to lie still. As the family watched in desperation, he slowly stopped moving altogether. When the village doctor examined him, he found him filled with the organs of other people and had no idea how he could have walked back to the village.

At night, villagers could hear the aswang flying overhead. Wing beats that sounded far off actually meant the creature was close by, ready to strike. Bobby filed that information away in case it came in useful. An old man had rushed out of his house to shout at what he thought was a retreating aswang, and it descended on him, sucking his full stomach right out of his body.

Bobby turned over more pages in the folder. Marta had even managed to dig up an article from the Point Reyes National Seashore bulletin published by the National Park Service. An historical piece, it covered an early shipwreck by Chimney Rock near Drake’s Bay. A Spanish three-masted ship carrying colonists and a few missionaries had crashed up on the rocks in 1863. Only a handful of survivors lived to relate the tale of bad weather. Some talked of a ghost living aboard the ship who would suck the life out of the mariners on stormy nights. The article included a grainy black and white photograph of the survivors, huddled in blankets on the beach. In the near-background, rowboats recovered more passengers and some of the cargo. In the distance, dashed against the rocks, stood the remains of the ship, its skeletal masts reaching up toward the bluffs of Chimney Rock.

Bobby aimed his headlamp at the photograph, scanning the faces of the sailors and passengers. A nun shivered inside a blanket. A tough-looking sailor stared to the left of the cameraman, a haunted look on his face. Another man peered out from a wide-brimmed hat that was pushed low over his forehead. His face was darker than the others, with deep-set eyes and a square jaw. Bobby peered closer. Something was familiar about him. The photo didn’t have very good resolution. He pulled out the magnifying glass on his lensatic compass and held it over the face.

It was Jason.

Gathering up the folder, Bobby rolled over on his side in the sleeping bag. The wind howled at the tent door, flapping the material. The storm showed no signs of slowing down, and already the snow had drifted around his tent. He’d read through the rest of the clippings. Most described grisly murders of people found without organs, or with extra organs sealed up inside them. They happened in small towns along the coast in the 1860s, eventually moving into San Francisco. He’d only found the one photo of Jason, but it was enough.

“Sam!”

He heard him stir in the neighboring tent.

“Yeah?”

“Dean’s really in the drink this time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know who the aswang is. It’s not Grace.”

“Then who?”

“Jason.”

“What?”

“Check this out.”

Bobby unzipped his tent and handed the article over to Sam. He heard an answering zip and felt Sam take the photo. In another moment, light from Sam’s headlamp flooded the dark.

“Oh, my god. It’s him. And look at the date! 1863.”

Sam read over the article.

“What I want to know,” Bobby said, propping himself up on one elbow, “is how the hell he infiltrated a hunter’s bar?”

“He did a damn fine job. I believed him.”

“Me, too.”

“He knew dad. Or said he did.”

“And Bill Harvelle, and Ellen and Jo.”

“Even Ash and his mullet,” Sam added. “He was good.” Sam went quiet for a minute. “Dean has no idea.”

“Maybe he knows by now. We haven’t talked to him for a long time.”

“How long did you say it would take us to get to the resort?”

“Maybe we’ll reach it tomorrow, if the weather stays this good.”

“We’ve got to pick up the pace, Bobby.”

Bobby knew Sam was right, but unfortunately, they were already pushing themselves as much as they could. The weather held them at its mercy. Showing up a little late was better than not showing up at all because they were buried under ten feet of snow. But that didn’t make him any less impatient at how long it was taking to get up there.