Black Frost (4 page)

It resembled a bee’s stinger, blown up about
a hundred times. Over an inch long, the black tip glistened wetly,
the other thicker end seemingly burned off. I moved to the kitchen
sink to catch the better illumination from the overhead light, but
fumbled the plastic tweezers, dropping the stinger into a dirty
steel colander. It hit the metal, sputtered like a drop of water on
a hot skillet and was gone – evaporated into smoke.

“Whatcha’ doing dad?” Ashley asked.

“Er, thought I found a tick on the fur bag
over there, but just dirt,” I lied, not wanting to sound crazy to
my thirteen-year old. Teenagers always think their parents are
nuts, they don’t need any additional proof.

“Oh..well, can you help me with this
problem?” she asked, her attention back on her math book.

“Sure, honey,” I replied, looking in vain for
any remnant of the stinger.

After getting through her math work, I
grabbed a flashlight and a can of Raid Hornet spray. Thinking of my
GrandFather’s journal, I cautiously made my way back to the old
foundation, approaching slow and stealthy. There was nothing to
see, either in or around the crevice that Ashley had pointed to,
although the sand at the bottom of the hole was disturbed. Nothing
clear enough to call a track or sign, but disturbed,
nonetheless.

Shivering for a moment in the frosty night
air, I glanced back at our little Bear Mountain. At that moment a
greenish light flashed, like lightening, but close to the hilltop,
lighting the trees around the crown. Puzzled, I watched for a
moment to see if it repeated, but nothing happened. I shuddered one
of those full body shivers you get from time to time, the kind that
have nothing to do with temperature. My grandmother used to say
they were the result of someone walking on your ancestors’ graves.
She’d say it in a spooky voice, then laugh and ruffle my hair.
Still thinking of my grandparents, strange lights and cold weather
bugs, I headed back into the warmth and light of the little
farmhouse.

Chapter 3

Friday dawned wet and cold, typical for
November in upstate New York. A front had moved through in the
night, replacing the frost with rain that wanted to be snow or
sleet. Watching Ashley through the shop window, I was struck by how
grown up she was looking, despite the hoodie pulled over her shiny
black hair and the iPod earbuds. She glanced back my way, probably
unable to see me in the dark window, and my heart leapt into my
throat. She could have been her mother’s twin, except for the green
eyes.

Swallowing the loss I felt every time I
thought of my wife, I poked the forge fire a bit, then looked back
in time to see the yellow bus swallow my daughter into its steel
and glass embrace.

I stepped out the door, took a quick glance
at the muddy ground and reached back into the shop for my walking
stick. About five feet of straight Ash, smoothed, sanded and oiled,
tipped on the business end with a steel spike for traction and
wound with baling wire to keep the end from splitting.

“Come on Charm! Let’s make the rounds,” I
said.

We walked out to the driveway, turned left
and walked the road till we got to the property line. A well worn
trail led along a row of posted signs, taking us back down the side
of our land. About two thirds of the way along that leg of the
property, the trail split left, leading up Bear Mountain, or
continuing straight into the pine forest at the back of the
property. I had intended to head back to the top of the mountain to
look at the possum remains, but for some reason my feet headed
straight. Charm didn’t care either way, running just ahead to sniff
interesting spots on the trail. A chill drizzle kept a steady mist
hanging in the air, forming larger drops of water on the tree limbs
overhead. Those fat drips found my head and neck with steady
precision, finally forcing me to pull up the hood of my
raincoat.

The maple and oak that forest the front of
our land gave way to a stand of white pine, whose moisture laden
boughs darkened the surrounding forest into a strangely forbidding
place. I shuddered, maybe from the cold water on the back of my
neck, maybe from a sense of foreboding that suddenly stole over me.
The familiar woods seemed hostile and bleak this morning. We
trudged on, but I noticed Charm hanging nearer to me than
usual.

On the back corner of the property, the trail
hooks left in a sharp curve around an ancient pine whose thick
trunk was scarred on one side by a decades past lightening strike.
Charm was now at my side, her ears pricked forward, eyes focused
ahead. I became aware of thudding sounds, dull and erratic. This
part of our land was thickly covered in moss and sounds are
deadened both on the ground and in the canopy. The hair on my neck
went up and I tried to think what could be making those thuds. The
possibility of a bear headed to hibernation occurred to me and I
gripped my staff tightly as we edged around the giant pine.

What I saw
was
crazy, so crazy that I
paused in shock to try and comprehend.

A tall man, dressed in black, was fighting
with three squat shapes that looked like nothing I had ever seen
before. Odd details struck me as I struggled with what I was
seeing. The man had long white hair bound in ponytail and he was
swinging a black stick or maybe a blade, in fast blurring arcs as
he moved in a continuous graceful dance. The
things
he
fought with were green, slick looking, with long muscular arms,
corded squat torsos and short thick legs. They moved faster than
anything had a right to, but their attacks always seemed to be
where the man had just been, off by mere inches. The whole fight
was only twenty feet away, the thuds being the occasional landing
of a beefy body just missing its target. A single green head
swiveled our way and I froze at the slitted snake-like eye that
glared from a nightmare skull composed mostly of jaws and teeth.
The creature turned back to the fight, dismissing us, but the man
had noticed its distraction and glanced toward us. His momentary
lapse of attention almost cost him his life. The instant his back
turned, one of the sinewy monsters leapt at it, one long arm tipped
with glittering claws swiping at his neck. He spun and thrust,
scoring a hit with his odd weapon that I couldn’t seem to
identify.

But that change in the rhythm of the battle
put him in a seriously bad place. The one that had glanced at us,
leapt forward, its timing perfect to finish the fight…except for
the sudden stab of my steel tipped walking stick into its
grotesquely muscled back. I don’t recall deciding to move, I just
did, my arm going numb from the shock of hitting what felt like a
rubber-covered rock. My stick’s point dug in an inch, hardly a
telling blow, but the effect was spectacular. The wound sizzled and
sputtered like bacon fat on a hot griddle. The four-foot tall
thing
reacted like I had branded it with a red-hot iron, its
back arching in a sudden spasm of agony, its head throwing back and
screaming the most God-awful screech I’d ever heard. Like the
pterodactyl sound from an old dinosaur movie.

It spun, knocking my stick from my hand, its
baleful yellow reptile eyes burning with insane rage. I stumbled
backward in an involuntary attempt to put distance between myself
and it, my hand fumbling at the hilt of my utility knife.

I make my sheaths from kydex, a thermoplastic
that holds the blade by tension rather than snaps or straps. That’s
what saved me. That and my dog.

The squatty monster leapt at me, covering the
eight feet between us in a blur. The claw tipped arm that was
headed for my throat suddenly sprouted sixty pounds of pitbull and
then the meaty body slammed into me, but more importantly, into the
blade of my knife. Four inches of tempered tool steel was buried in
its sternum, sizzling like a welding torch. It jerked its entire
body like a defibrillator had just hit it, the spasm throwing it
ten feet away, taking my knife with it and throwing Charm to one
side like a doll. There it shook and shuddered, the wound around
the knife smoking as it shredded the moss in its death throes.

Remembering the man and the other two demon
creatures I turned in time to see him split one from stumpy neck to
opposite hip, his strange black blade sliding through it like it
was made of smoke.

The remaining creature bounded backward,
covering twenty feet in an eyeblink. It spun and ran, a green blur.
The man in black spared me a glance, nodded when he saw I was alive
and then raced after the creature, moving just about as fast.

Shocked, I sat on my ass, staring at the
creature that had finally stopped jerking and thrashing. The soggy
moss soaked into the seat of my pants, the ice cold water snapping
me back to the here and now.

Standing up, I retrieved my staff and checked
Charm over, all while keeping an eye on the two bodies on the
ground.

Up close details became clearer. The green
hued skin was slightly scaled, like reptile skin, but the build was
more like a malformed chimpanzee. The head was overlarge, fitted as
it was with extra wide jaws. Big open nostrils, large eyes and
bat-like ears took up the rest of its face.

The flesh around my knife was still smoking
and started to spark little green motes of light that drifted up
like tiny fireflies. Charm barked once, startled by the body’s
change. I glanced at the one that had been cut in half by the man’s
blade, it too was smoking and spitting green lights.

Belatedly, I remembered my camera and fumbled
it out of the parka pocket. I set it to video rather than still
photos, trying to capture the changes the bodies were rapidly going
through. By now, I could see the one with my blade in its chest was
deflating, like an air mattress with a rapid leak. Bluish fluid
(blood?) oozed around the wound as the little dots of green light
whisked up into the air, faster and faster. Both bodies were
burbling and melting into the moss. The bisected body was liberally
covered with the blue goo that I believed the things used for
blood, and that body was disintegrating faster than the thing I’d
killed.

My head swiveled around, watching first one
body, then the next, then scanning the surrounding woods for more
of the creatures. Charm was still extremely agitated, but she was
paying attention to the melting corpses rather than the woods, a
behavior that lent me some comfort. I was sure my little dog would
sense the presence of anything hostile.

The green flesh was mostly gone now, and the
dark gray skeletons underneath were starting to erode as well. The
camera shook in my hands as I tried to document the bizarre scene
in front of me.

When nothing was left but wet, gooey moss, we
headed back up the trail as fast as we could, both nervously
watching the hostile feeling forest around us.

Back at the house, I headed first for the
forge, as it was closest. Charm didn’t seem to feel that anything
was inside the smithy, so I opened the door, and failing to get
attacked, dropped my walking stick on the floor. I then reach above
the door frame, grasped the oak shaft and yanked Shaka from the
clamps that hold it in place.

Shaka resulted from a high school paper on
the Zulu people of Africa. Four feet of oak handle with thirteen
inches of assegai spear head mounted on top. For those of you whose
history is fuzzy, Shaka was the greatest leader of the Zulu
kingdom, living during the late seventeen-hundreds and early
eighteen-hundreds. At the height of his power he commanded over
50,000 warriors, each armed with the devastating assegai spear. The
spear head is extremely long and heavy, giving it great shocking
power. The long cutting edges can chop as well as spear and with
the relatively short handle, a warrior could have both reach and
close combat capabilities.

I made my example from a huge old mill file,
the finished blade weighing over a pound and a half.

Overall, much more satisfying in my hand than
the walking stick.

Charm led the way into the house, her actions
giving the all clear. I popped the coat rack front and grabbed
Grandpa’s shotgun, locked the doors and sat down to think.

I’ve told you about my training and
background, but I had never experienced real combat before and
certainly never expected to walk around a trail corner and right
into a nightmare. Charm trotted between me and various windows,
pausing to listen or sniff, still on high alert. I watched her
absently, while replaying the forest scene in my head. The blond
man had fought with ridiculous skill and grace, his black weapon
still an enigma. It had seemed to be a stick at one point, then a
knife, but had chopped the lizard-ape like a sword. Those monsters
were right out of a bad sci-fi movie, but their strength and speed
had been a shock. Probably weighed between 110 to 120 pounds and
maybe four feet tall, but wide and grotesquely muscled.

Remembering my camera, I carried both weapons
and camera into the study. Setting the shotgun on the desk top, I
then leaned Shaka near to hand and, finally, slipped the memory
stick from the camera into my laptop. The footage was there, giving
me the comfort of knowing I wasn’t crazy, but the discomfort that
real monsters were out there on my land.

I watched the bodies evaporate and melt
twice, then saved a copy to the hard drive and to a thumbdrive,
then I picked up the phone.

“Ian?”

“Hi Dad. Listen, I really need to see
you…it’s about Grandpa’s journal and the stuff we were talking
about yesterday.”

“Everything all right? Is Ashley alright?” he
asked, picking up on the tone of my voice.

“Yeah, she’s fine, but something really weird
happened this morning….I’m either going crazy like grandpa or
…..well, just come over as soon as you can,” I said.