The Chronicles of Beast and Man (12 page)

Daniel Montvale…
a puzzled Rod wondered why he didn’t think of him first.

Everything pointed to him: his strange behavior, his bad attitude, and lack of respect. Rod would have to look into this matter later. It was late, Rod was tired, and he still had more important things to worry about then some scratches on his truck.

Sleep was not an easy thing for Rod to find that night. But somehow after tossing and turning, and the dreadful thoughts that plagued him, he did eventually find slumber. Yet the sleep he did receive was not the most pleasant. His dreams were continuously looped with images of Gabrielle Parker, Duane Ensig, and Ryan Lovett. Despite that, he was still up bright and early and ready to go. When he arrived back to the station he started making phone calls right away. He called Mel Connolly who agreed to come out and help with the search. Rod tried to see if he could recruit Steve Little’s services once again. But Steve was unable to take part this time; he explained that he would have had to give Kemper General Store a little more notice to get the day off. Rod understood and let Steve off the hook. Rod knew better than to expect everyone to just drop everything because he asked them to, no matter what the situation.

Rod sat silently for a moment wondering who else he could try and recruit. It was then that he remembered his friend Dusty Welker. He hadn’t spoken to Dusty in a few days but he assumed that he would probably be able to make time to be part of a search party.

It seemed that as quick as Rod picked up the phone, he was right back off of it again. Dusty agreed to be part of the search party and almost insisted upon it. He was just going to have to notify work first. But he was certain that his work would understand.

Two officers, two civilians, and himself. Rod had a tiny five man search party. For now it was going to have to work.

-

The small search party met on the Lovett property at exactly nine o’clock. It had begun to rain two hours earlier,
which was unfortunate for them. They would have to begin their search dressed in rain boots and rain ponchos. Not only would the rain prove to be a minor inconvenience, but it would also prevent them from going to the scene of the struggle. If anyone were to get too close to the paw prints or any other evidence, it could possibly be ruined. Rod was not sure what he was going to be able to do with this evidence, but he certainly didn’t want to lose it.

The five men began to walk through the Lovett property searching for their friend, or anything that might be considered evidence. None of them seriously thought that they would find Ryan; to them this was just a search for the next clue that might reveal his whereabouts.

Rod stopped looking when suddenly his cell phone rang, taking him by surprise.

It was John Austin calling; it appeared that it hadn’t taken long for the news of Ryan Lovett’s missing person case to get back to the paper boy. Rod thought as he grinned at the idea of calling John
paperboy
.

“Rod here!”

“Hey Rod, it is John. You got five minutes to come on in and chat with me?” John asked calmly.

Rod wanted to tell him no, he wanted to tell him to go to hell and he wouldn’t be doing another bullshit
interview for the rest of his life. Rod of course did not do this; he understood that the people would want answers. What better way to give them their answers then in the form of a newspaper article? It did sound better than having them chasing him down the streets all day.

Rod quickly explained to John that he had his hands full at that very moment, but as soon as he returned to the police station he would give John a call.

The five men continued searching through the mud and the rain. They were determined to find something that might shed some light on the situation. Rod understood that nothing just vanishes without a trace. There is always something left behind that connects a person to a scene. Rod very much hoped that the spot he had marked the day before was not the only connection to Ryan Lovett.

Ten-forty-five
Rod read on his waterproof Timex wrist watch. He felt the need to go back to the station, just to oversee some of the daily processes that were usually done by that time. He told the men to go ahead and take a break at noon and that he would try and be back before then. As Rod came out of the woods he yet again noticed the long,
nasty scratch marks on the side of truck. Each time he looked at them he became plagued for a moment, and the only resolution that made sense to him was to confront Daniel Montvale.

All in due time
Rod said to himself, and did his best to ignore the annoying scratch marks.

-

When Rod got back to the station he was not surprised to find Arnold Omaha acting a bit unusual. He was obviously nervous about the whereabouts of his friend. Rod reminded him that everything was going to be alright. Rod was not the type of person to just randomly give someone a hug, even as comfort. But he did feel the need to support his friend.

After speaking to Arnold for a moment he let him know that he was going to be on the phone for a moment to speak to John Austin, and would need a little privacy.

Rod made the call, and after the two men greeted each other, John was ready to get down to business.

“Rod, I know about Ryan Lovett. The rest of the town is going to know about it before long.” John said to him firmly.

“I realize that John.”

“I just want to know if you are prepared to say that the recent incidents are connected to the one from five years ago?”

“I am not prepared to say anything at all, John!” Rod said back.

“Rod…” he trailed off. “I am afraid that the media is going to be all over this story now, Boss.”

Just as John’s words left his mouth a JRLK news van had pulled up across the street from the police station.

“I know exactly what you mean.” Rod said, and noticed another incoming call. It was Deputy Dolgen, perhaps this would be some good news.

“I have another call John. I will be in touch with you soon.”

Rod quickly escaped the conversation with John Austin and began talking to Deputy Dolgen. Unfortunately,
the call was about the search party having had searched all of the Lovett property. They were prepared to take the investigation over a fence and into Donald Sims property. The only problem was that they did not have permission to cross and needed Rod’s advice. Rod told Dolgen to go right ahead and continue investigating; Rod would have to get in touch with Donald Sims right away.

Without hesitation Rod made the call out to Donald Sims, but he was unable to reach him. Rod assumed Donald was probably busy tending to his farm. Rod would just have to try again later, he could only hope that he would reach Donald soon. Donald probably wouldn’t care that they were on his property, but letting him know was the right thing to do.

The JRLK local news team made their way across the street. The lead news reporter Zoe Gilbert knocked on the door. Rod gestured for them to come inside. Zoe quickly explained why she was there; of course he already knew.
Rod agreed to a short interview, but also explained that he had very little to say at the time. Zoe did not seem concerned with the amount of information Rod was willing to give and the interview soon began. The interview couldn’t have taken longer than ten minutes and Zoe still seemed pleased. Rod had the feeling that she had expected him to have an attitude toward her interview, and was happy with anything she could get.

When the short interview was over, Rod got on the phone and called John Austin. Rod did not want to do another interview, but felt the need to do it for the town since he did one of the local television reporter. No one probably would have cared if he had done an interview for the Medusa Gazette or not, but it felt like the right thing to do.

Rod did not give a very good interview to either news source. He said things like, “I cannot speak for this person. My department is not yet ready to release that information, and that is still part of our ongoing investigation.” John seemed a little less pleased with his interview then Zoe Gilbert, but John had expected a lot more.

After Rod was done dealing with the local media,
he went back to the station house where he had planned to look over some of the details of the old Maxwell Hester murder. Before Rod was able to get very far into the report he received another call from Deputy Dolgen.

Rod was expecting the worst; he had expected Thomas to tell him that they had found Ryan’s body and tell him it was mutilated like the others.

Fortunately, that was not what Thomas had to tell him. He had only called to tell Rod that he and the other men were finally going to take a break for lunch. Rod thanked Thomas and told him to pass it on to the other men. He was very pleased with the amount of effort that were putting out to help, of course they all knew Ryan, and wanted the whole mess resolved.

Once off the phone,
Rod realized that he had not spoken to Donald Sims. He quickly relocated Donald’s number and called him again. There was no answer. It was obvious that he was going to have to go to Donald’s farm and speak to him in person.

Without any more hesitation, Rod went to his truck and began to drive in the direction of Sims’ farm. As he drove he thought about Maxwell Hester, Gabrielle Parker, and Duane Ensig. Those names had consumed his waking hours, and as of recently most of his dreams and his nightmares.

F
reddy Alexander and Tyler Zeal felt stuffed after eating their home style cheeseburgers
from the Main Street Café. Now they were on their way to the city of Webster again. This time they had one main objective: Spend money on soda pop, Snickers bars, and the latest issue of Game Machine (a magazine with information that would make any video gamer salivate).
On their way they discussed several different topics from games, movies, and comic books. But the one thing they both did not discuss was the thing in the back of both of their minds.

They both had given it a great deal of thought and each had their own ideas about it being connected to the murders, but neither one would speak of it. Though they both wanted to talk, neither could bring themselves to do so. It was as if what they saw was so inconceivable, so unbelievable, so horrifying, that there were no words they could use to justify what they thought they saw. Freddy decided randomly to have a little fun with his friend and pressed down hard on the gas pedal. Freddy’s car was by no means a hot rod, or a sports car, but he liked the excitement of driving at a high rate of speed down curvy, country roads. He enjoyed the rush that it gave him. He liked watching Tyler squirm as he did so too. The car moved at a rapid speed through the country side. It was obvious that he was making Tyler very nervous.

"Slow down a little bit man." Tyler protested.

"Slow what down?"

To Freddy it was all just a bit of harmless fun. The car rapidly moved around the wide curve and when they came to the next road, the two young men were taken by surprise when they saw four vehicles parked at the edge of the Lovett property. Two of these vehicles were police cars, Freddy slammed down on his brakes throwing their heads forward in the process.
It was then that they noticed four men walking out of the timber and moving across the field.

"What is going on?" Tyler asked aloud.

"I can take a guess."

"You think it happened again?"

"What do you think?" Freddy asked as they continued to watch the men pace across the field.

None of the men seemed to notice the two boys driving by, they were consumed by something else.

"We need to do something!" Freddy exclaimed

"Like what?" Tyler asked.

"I don’t know, but I am afraid that we are the only ones who know what is really going on here."

"I think you are right, but what do we do, have a composite sketch made of the Wolf-man so the entire town can laugh at us? No one will ever believe us!" Tyler said in a greatly frustrated voice.

"I know, I know. I am just worried that by the time someone else does know what is going on, it will be too late."

"You are probably right. I just don’t know what to do."

In that moment Freddy felt hopeless.
　
 

I
t took a great deal of looking, but Rod finally found Donald in a large barn on the property. Donald had been tending to an old horse, whose glory days were long gone. Rod explained the bizarre situation to Donald, who was sympathetic and permitted him
and his men to search the property. Donald did request that if any remains were found, that he
not see them, and they not tell him where the remains were found. He didn’t want him or any of his family to connect a certain spot to an incident as awful as this. Rod respected Donald’s wishes and told him he would follow them exactly.

"I’ll be keeping my shotgun a little closer to me from now on. It is one thing when animals are coming up slaughtered, but when people start getting killed it is another." Donald said fearfully.

The statement confused Rod, so he asked Donald for an explanation. Donald then told him that every once in a great while an animal would turn up dead. Once he found a deer out in the timber completely torn apart, another time he found a fox ripped in half. On two different occasions he had found his own livestock dead.

Rod’s thoughts went right back to the Welker family dog. Rod was now getting a greater sense of a connection than he had before. Not only did he feel a connection between Zero and the recent murders, he was also feeling a connection between all of this and the murder from fives ago. The idea of the same creature causing all of this violence was starting to make more and more sense. But why would it have been dormant for so long?

Could it have
been just picking away at wild animals, livestock, and household
pets?

If this were so, why would the thing suddenly decide
to start attacking humans again?

Donald had very little more to say, he was obviously busy with his sick horse and needed to tend to it.

Rod was late to go and have lunch at his mom’s, he would just have to go home and make himself something to eat. Rod was not exactly a world class chef, he would have to make a ham sandwich or a bowl of Campbell’s soup.

As he drove down Main Street he couldn’t help but notice Marcy walking out of the Main Street Café.

Must be break time.
Rod thought to himself.

Marcy looked in
Rod’s direction
and gave him a quick little wave. Rod of course returned the gesture. With those gestures Rod felt his heart beat quicken, he felt it weaken as well. Part of him wanted to park the truck, grab her by the hand and tell her he loved her. He wanted to tell her to leave her husband and be with him. He visualized it in a very cinematic fashion, if only…if only.

Rod knew that wasn’t possible and such an act would have been foolish. So
instead, he continued driving. Things had become so strange. Rod had begun to feel like a different person living the life he once knew. It was as if he had seen so many people die around him, that he himself felt as if he were dying inside. While still thinking about how things were changing, he parked his truck, got out, and moved toward the house.

             
This whole mess needs to end. I need to make it end. I can’t keep letting this happen. I want my life back. I want to see Marcy.
Rod thought to himself, and for a moment he felt guilty about thinking only of himself. He quickly moved to feelings of satisfaction when he confirmed with himself that he did care for the people of Medusa. He did not want another innocent life destroyed-it was terrible and unnecessary.

Rod began to slap some mayonnaise on a slice of bread, then
flung on a piece of ham, and then a slice of cheese. Once the sandwich was finished, he hadn’t taken more than a bite when he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket.
 

It was a text message from Marcy.
 

Marcy: I MISS YOU!

Without haste he typed a text back, and sent it: I MISS YOU TOO!
 

He did not want to write this to her, he wanted to write to her about all the things he would like to do to her. He wanted to express how much he wanted to rip her panties off and grab ahold of her tight, bare ass. He was sure that she wanted to have just as much human touch as he did. They had gone from meeting two or three times a week to suddenly not meeting at all. Rod knew that he was to blame. He knew that he had become consumed by the mess around him
and had put her off to the side.

But damn it:
he sought answers, he needed answers. Why had these terrible things happened in Medusa? Why had it happened on his watch and what was he going to have to do to fix it?

Rod sat down and lost himself in a long moment of deep contemplation, when suddenly his phone rang. It was Deputy Dolgen.

"Boss, it would seem that we located Ryan Lovett."

"And?" Rod asked, doubting that they found him alive.

"It isn’t good," said Dolgen. Rod thought for a moment that he could hear one of the men getting sick in the background.

"Where did you find him?"

"He’d been stuffed in a hollowed out tree." Deputy Dolgen said quietly as if someone might hear him.

"Okay, I meant WHERE did you find him?" Rod asked restating his question, yet confused by the information Thomas gave him.

"We found him on Donald Sims’ property, boss."

"I’ll be out there with the coroner right away. Prep the area and keep a man there at all times." Rod said as he took off out the door.

E
van Wilson sat in his office sliding a long, thin tong into a large glass bottle. He slowly positioned another piece of the model wooden ship he was working on. This was the second ship in a bottle he had attempted to construct. This project seemed a bit more complicated than the last. Evan’s cell phone began to ring loudly.

He glanced down from the model to see the screen on his phone light up with the name “Sheriff Truex.” Evan immediately did not want to answer the phone, not only because he knew what the Sheriff’s call would more than likely be about, but because he had been working on this project for so long and didn’t want to stop.

Finally he gave up and let the piece of the boat crumble, and answered the phone.

"I was really hoping I wouldn’t be getting a call from you today." Evan said disappointedly.

"I take it you have heard about our missing person?" Rod then asked.

"Yes, yes I did."

"I’ll need you out at Donald Sims' farm as soon as possible."

"Okay, I’ll see you there." Evan said regrettably.

-

Evan was soon there with the ambulance and EMTs
as well. Shortly after he arrived, Rod asked Donald if he would keep the whole matter quiet
.
Donald agreed to do so.

With that said, it was time to investigate the scene, which was not close by at all. They walked half a mile before they found the hollowed out tree and the search party standing about.
Neither Rod nor Evan had expected to see the look of dread and sadness that was upon the mens’faces. All four of these young men seemed completely traumatized. Both Rod and Evan had an idea of what they would see: it couldn’t be any more hideous then the Parker girl, or Duane Ensig, or the Maxwell Hester murder for that matter.

Rod looked inside the hollowed out tree at the same time as Evan. What they saw was a gruesome, blood-filled display of torn flesh, and missing organs. Rod had been wrong to think that he knew what to expect. This was different, whatever did this had taken its time, it had torn every bit of flesh apart so it could feast away at free-will. It was then that Rod noticed the gnawing and scrapes
upon the bones.

Rod backed away feeling a bit light headed. Lucky for him Deputy Dolgen firmly grabbed him by the arm. Thomas had not done this to catch him; it had just worked out that way. He had grabbed Rod by the arm so he could pull him off to the side to speak to him.

"Rod!" Thomas said when he noticed that the sheriff didn’t look well. "Rod, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I will be fine."

"What did this?"

Rod nodded his head in response.

"No, that is not going to cut it, chief. This wasn’t done by a man or coyote. Some kind of monster did this. Its paw prints are all over the area."

"I don’t know what it is."

"You are serious?"

Rod once again nodded, he was only now beginning to feel better. He realized suddenly that he had to regain control of the situation.

"Listen, I don’t know what it is that is doing these terrible things. We have to pull together and figure it out."

"Maybe we should get assistance from the FBI or at least the state boys." Dolgen said in reference to the State Police.

"No, I am not turning this over to an outside agency. I want you to talk to these men that were here today. Keep them quiet, I don’t need any of them running around flapping their jaws."
Thomas agreed with Rod, and walked back to the group.

Rod walked away and popped a stick of mint flavored gum into his mouth. His stomach was still
rumbling.
He was completely certain that this was the work of something more than human.
Could there be a human element involved as well
? Either way, he was going to have to look at everything and everyone a little differently.

-

After inspecting the scene of the crime, Rod walked back to his truck and called the police station. Arnold quickly answered the phone.

"Arnie, I have some bad news."

"Give it to me, chief." Arnold said boldly.

"I thought it might be better if you hear this from me. Ryan Lovett is dead."

"How?"

"Something got him, whatever it was, tore him up pretty bad. I am really sorry bud." Rod always called men
Bud
when trying to comfort them.

"Like the others?"

"Just like the others." Rod answered.

"Okay Chief, is there anything else that I should know?"

"Not right now."

Arnold hung up the phone. Rod had a feeling that Arnold would have a very hard time grieving. Rod had grown sick of this, he was sick of all the dying that was taking place around him. He was sick of telling people he knew that their loved ones were dead. It was time for it to end.