Nightcrawlers

5

Out on the back forty, a tall deputy named Snow, just as lanky as a sapling, was going through it again while the fog crawled up from numerous hollows, played around his legs like the family cat: “We… we were just, you know, keeping an eye on the area… policing it… making sure no reporters or curiosity seekers slipped through…”

Kenney walked up, surrounded by what seemed a battery of bobbing flashlight beams. The rain had subsided, but a wet, heavy mist hung in the air. He listened to Snow, though he had been pretty much briefed on what came down already. But he listened, and twenty years’ worth of police work, of gut-sense, told him one thing and one thing only: this kid was scared. Terrified, maybe, like a little boy who’d just come face-to-face with the thing that lurked in his closet. Kenney recognized that and something black spread out in the pit of his belly, something evil and wasting.

He found a cigarette between his lips, had no memory of putting it there. One of the state cops gave him a light. “What’s your name, son?” he said to the deputy.

“Snow, sir. Deputy Snow.”

“That’s not what your mother calls you.”

There were a few forced giggles from the crowd of cops.

“Richard… Rich,” he admitted, relaxing a bit.

Kenney led him away from the others, put an arm around him. “Okay, Rich. Tell me what happened. Just take it slow and tell me everything, best you remember. All right?”

Snow nodded. His eyes were glazed and fixed as if he were looking into some distant room. “Me and Dave… that’s Deputy Riegan, sir… we were out here patrolling the road, making sure no one slipped through. You know how people are, sir… and this farm, Jesus, it’s so big. Goes on forever.”

Kenney dragged off his cigarette. “Sure. What happened then?”

Snow swallowed, letting the memory fill him up like poison. His face in the glow of the flashlight beams was yellow and rubbery, a stiff thing like a mask that was incapable of emotion. “We parked the cruiser on the road up there,” he said, indicating the dirt road above them that cut through a crowded, dark thicket of autumn-stripped oaks.

“Why did you decide to do that?”

“Well, sir, it’s just…”

“It’s okay, son. Just tell me the way it was.”

Snow sighed. “Well, Dave pulled us to a stop because, you know, nature calls and all that. I joined him. About the time we were done, Dave said he saw something move down there… down here, I mean… and he went after it. He told me to wait with the car…”

Kenney listened. He was seeing it all in his mind. Riegan going down the hillside and out into the field, the fog moving in from all sides. Then he called Snow down to join him. He heard something or someone. Kenney knew that Snow was telling him the truth, yet he had that gnawing feeling that it wasn’t all the truth. Something was unsaid here. Something was being carefully avoided.

“I started hearing it, too.”

“What?”

Snow just shook his head. “I don’t know… a splashing, mucky sound like someone was sneaking through the field, through the water. Dave went out there and tried to flush them out. I waited like he said. Then I heard him shouting for them to stop and I heard… I heard him say something, call out to me—”

“What did he say?”

Snow was trembling now, his fingers writhing at the sides of his uniform pants like snakes. His lips were pulled into a pencil-thin line. “He said, he said something like, Rich, Christ, there’s three or four of ’em out here. Do you see ’em? I can’t be sure. I couldn’t see a thing, just hear something moving and then Dave screamed. I mean, he screamed!”

Kenney patted his shoulder. “Okay, take it easy.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“He didn’t say what he saw, did he?”

“No.”

“So you don’t know if it was people or animals?”

“Not really. But if it was animals… well, if it was deer or something, he would have said. I’m sure he would have said so. With that damn fog, you just couldn’t see anything.”

“Just relax. We’re gonna find him.”

But Snow was shaking his head with such urgency it looked like it might fly off. “He screamed, sir… I heard him scream. Guys like Dave… like Deputy Riegan, they don’t scream. He doesn’t… didn’t… he’s not the kind that screams. Dave is brave, sir. Jesus Christ, he’s my best friend.”

“He panicked in the fog. It could happen to anyone.”

“Bullshit,” Snow said. “Guys like Dave Riegan do not scream, sir. Not unless… unless they run into something pretty goddamn bad.”

Kenney talked him down, chilled him out. He’d been doing it for so many years to so many cops it was reflexive. The other men started mumbling to each other about what Snow was saying and Kenney told them to can it. Snow was starting to open up, really open up. Those unsaid things were about to be said. He was fighting back the sobs that bubbled in his throat, wanting out. The other cops stood around, feeling uneasy and awkward. They suddenly found the swampy ground and misting fields incredibly interesting. The silence was broken only by their boots in the mud, raindrops falling from tree limbs into the grass.

“What happened then?” Kenney said, his tone fatherly, almost a whisper. “Take your time.”

Snow was breathing hard now. “I guess… I guess I freaked out. I went running around, shouting his name, but I couldn’t find him. I don’t know where he went or what he saw. I mean, I thought… I don’t know, for a second I thought…”

“Tell me.”

“It’s crazy.”

“Son, this whole business is crazy.”

Snow drew in a lungful of air and then exhaled it like he didn’t care for it much. “I thought I saw a… I don’t know… a shape. Just for second.”

“A shape? What sort of shape? A man?”

Snow kept licking his lips. “Kind of… kind of like a man… but sort of hunched over, you know? His arms looked real long kind of… kind of like…”

“Like what?”

“Like an ape… real long and swinging.”

“Oh, come on,” someone said.

“Shut up,” Kenney said. He pulled Snow still farther away from the others. He wanted to hear what he saw regardless of how crazy it sounded. It took some coaxing, but Snow told him again: it walked on two legs like a man, but hunched over, weird, ape-like. Which was crazy, of course. Kenney was not sure what to read into that. Imagination? Hallucination? There were no goddamn apes in Wisconsin and he didn’t believe in Bigfoot or any of that shit. Maybe it was a bear standing up. Hard to say. Fog had a way of distorting things, especially when you panicked like Snow.

“I’m not sure what I saw, sir, I just don’t know. Like I said, I freaked out. I lost my nerve. I guess then I got on the radio and called it in.”

“You did right. We’ll find him.”

But Snow was still shaking his head. “You don’t know this place, sir. You’re not from around here. You don’t know the things that happen out here.”

Kenney motioned for one of the senior deputies to take him away. He needed some rest, maybe a stiff drink. As he was led away and up the hill to the cruiser on the road, Kenney just stood there, thinking about what he’d said. Thinking about it and not liking it one bit.

He looked over at Chipney. “Get everyone moving in a search pattern. Stay in visual contact. We don’t need to lose anyone else in this goddamn soup.” When the searchers were in motion, he turned to Hyder. “What’s the kid talking about with that business? What’s he mean, I don’t know the things that happen around here?”

Hyder just grinned foolishly like a drumming monkey, couldn’t seem to stop. He licked his lips. “He’s worked up, Lou. He don’t know what he’s saying.”

“I think he does,” Kenney maintained. “So let’s have it.”

Hyder managed to stop grinning. “Well, you know this is old farming country and all. But most of the farms, they’re abandoned for years. It’s a pretty desolate area. People make up stories, you know how they are.”

Kenney watched the man’s face, took it all in—the little tic in the corner of his lips, the darting, nervous eyes. The way he seemed filled with a sudden need to get away like a little kid with a full bladder.

Kenney lit another cigarette off the butt of the last. “No, I don’t know how they are. Maybe you should tell me.”

“Well, all these woods and empty fields, Lou. They play on the imagination. And those farmhouses, falling down with rot and neglect—”

“Are you saying this place is haunted?”

Hyder laughed uneasily. “No, not exactly. Not haunted exactly. Bellac Road, you know, people wouldn’t live out here. Said they heard things, saw things. Weird things. Just a bunch of bullshit, Lou. You give these backwoods types some empty land and soon enough they’re talking spooks.”

Kenney was going to push it a little further, get to the root of it all—because there had to be one, and, who could say, maybe in some offhand way it would contribute to the investigation—but Chipney came splashing through the mud, leaves festooned to his pants and boots.

“Lieutenant, come and take a look at this.”

Kenney tossed his cigarette and followed him out deeper into the field. All the rain had turned the land into a sluicing river of slush. The fog parted at his approach. The search party was paused before a wide, smooth stone about the size of an ottoman. On it there was a muddy footprint.

Kenney got in real close so he could see it under the wash of the flashlights.

It was a human footprint… or nearly. The print of a bare foot, but very wide, splayed out. But maybe it was just the splattered mud that gave it such an abnormal appearance.

He looked up at Hyder. “Who in the Christ would be running around out here barefoot?”

But Hyder just shook his head, pressing his lips tight as if maybe he was afraid he might accidentally say something. Something he just did not want to admit to.