Chapter 1

Plans with an Old Friend

Outskirts of Edgefield, South Carolina

October 14, 2005

The kettle on the stove began to scream as Lucas Hartley exited his bathroom and ran across the house towards the kitchen where the kettle was convulsing angrily with a thick cloud of steam hanging over it. “I’m coming! Calm down!” He yelled through the high-pitched noise, his strong voice nearly being silenced by the small white pot holding the boiling water.

He took it off the burner and poured the steaming water into his coffee mug allowing the strong scent of the French Vanilla coffee to wash over and alert all his senses. He inhaled deeply and returned the kettle to the stove, which rested against the wall opposite the counter where his small mug of coffee awaited him.

His dark brown eyes—eyes that resembled mud puddles more then anything else—moved towards the long red, knotted dog leash snaked out across the white counter that he currently leaned against with his mug of coffee in hand. He ran a tanned hand through his short black hair that was still wet from his recent shower and took another sip from the hot coffee.

Lucas suddenly wasn’t in the mood for coffee, which was extremely rare for him because the black liquid was his savior in the morning. He poured it out in the sink (it sat next to the stove) and wiped his mouth before returning to the counter and taking the dog leash in hand.

“Max!”

Silence. Neither paws echoing across the hardwood floor nor any barking answered him. “Max, where are you? It’s time to go.” The door to the small den was open and from the hallway that it led into, Lucas heard a soft panting. The old dog had just given himself away, which brought a smile to Lucas’s face as he slowly moved towards the opened door knowing that his dog would run upon seeing the leash in his hands. It was time for the old dog to get his shots and they had to be on their way sooner rather then later. “Max, come on out you old dog. You can’t hide from me. We have to go to the vet now and you know it.”

He quickened his pace forward, moving towards the opened doorway with the small hallway beyond where his dog awaited him just as the telephone rang. Lucas sighed, spun, and retrieved the receiver from the wall between the counter (the same one he had just left behind) and the brown cabinets above it.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” answered a cheerful, upbeat voice from the other end of the line. “Lucas, how you doing?”

A smile involuntarily touched Lucas’s lips without his knowledge. “Hey there,” he replied in a friendly voice, glad to hear the sound of the voice on the opposite end of the line. “I’m doing just fine Claire. How about you?”

Lucas was glad to hear his friend’s voice. Claire Easler lived an hour and a half away in Greenville, South Carolina and the two of them had met five years earlier over the summer at a camp and had become good friends since. It was always good to hear from someone outside of Edgefield.

“I’m good, Lucas,” Claire replied. Her soft voice was sweet and caring from the opposite end of the phone line. “I just got back from college for the weekend. And…” She suddenly fell silent with only the sounds of her breathing coming through the line.

Lucas was cautious, uncertain. “Yes, Claire?”

“Well, I was wandering if…” she started uncertainly herself, still trying to piece her words together properly. “…If you’d like to get together this weekend and spend some time together?” Her voice slowly, embarrassingly fell away, quieting down before she quickly added, even more embarrassed, “If you don’t have too much work to do that is?”

Lucas laughed happily. He knew it was an hour and a half drive from Edgefield to Greenville, South Carolina but he didn’t mind taking it. “No, I don’t have much to do. And I’d love to get together this weekend…”

“…Today?” She asked, hopeful.

Lucas turned and leaned against the counter to get a better view of the small hallway in front of him. Max, Lucas’s nine-year-old black German Shepherd, appeared in the kitchen doorway with his tail wagging happily. The man pointed first at the leash in his hands and then at the dog, whose tail immediately stopped and stooped towards the floor.

“I’ll try my friend,” Lucas said, speaking joyfully. “It’s always good to see you but I have to bring Max to the vet now.” He sighed and smiled despite the fact that Claire couldn’t see him. “I tell you what my friend. I’ll leave as soon as I get back from the vet and I’ll see you tonight. How’s that?”

“That’s absolutely fine with me Lucas. I always love seeing you.”

“Likewise, my friend.” He paused and turned back around to face the wall with the phone base on it. “I have to go Claire. I need to get this dog to the doctor for his shots but I’ll see you tonight, all right?”

“All right,” she said, “then I’ll see you tonight. Bye.”

“Good bye.”

“Bye, bye, bye,” she muttered as she pulled the phone away from her ear and hung it up. He hung up the receiver with a smile across his long, narrow face and turned towards the old German Shepherd again, letting the leash swing limply in his hand.

“Time to go Max. No more stalling.”

The dog slowly neared him and didn’t struggle or complain as Lucas tied the leash to his collar. He turned and started towards his back door, which was attached to the laundry room that was adjacent the kitchen. He moved through the laundry room, grabbed his black leather coat and began pulling it on as he opened the back door and stepped outside onto the small back porch. Sunlight poured over him—it was almost noon after all—and a cold fall breeze suddenly fell upon him as he straightened his coat and pulled the black door closed behind both himself and the dog.

A deep growl left the dog’s throat as Lucas adjusted the collar of both his long-sleeved maroon collared shirt and black leather coat. The closing screen door behind them squeaked and tangled with the dog’s growl—a high-pitched squeak mingling with a deeper growl was in no way harmonious—as Lucas looked down at Max, whose hair and tail were standing straight up and he was leaning forward with his muzzle pressed into the air with teeth showing. His growl turned into a deep roaring bark as he tugged at the leash; as he tugged to sprint forward at the unknown foe in his vision.

“Calm down boy,” Lucas told the dog, leaning forward and rubbing Max’s head as the dog barked again paying no heed to his master’s words or touch. “What is it Max?”

“He’s a damned fine dog,” a deep voice, filled with a thick southern accent said. It was soft, sad, pitiful. “A fine watch dog but old.” His southern speech spoke loudly for him.

Lucas looked up and saw Mendel Jackson sitting on the den porch steps that led to the sliding glass door, which in turn led to the opposite end of the house. He wore a blue jean jacket over a slightly bloodied white shirt. A shotgun was cradled in his right arm.

“Morning Mr. Jackson,” Lucas said, moving forward and leaning against the support beam of his roofed porch. “Been hunting?”

The man was silent a moment as if he hadn’t heard and then slowly shook his head. He simply muttered, “No,” in that same voice as before. Lucas’s neighbor seemed less talkative and upbeat as usual. His gray hair was a distorted, jumbled mess and his coat was unbuttoned allowing the wind to pick up the sides of it. His gray eyes were focused on the grass between his feet; he didn’t look up and he didn’t move his head as he spoke.

“Mr. Jackson, are you feeling all right?” Lucas asked, slowly moving forward with Max following on his leash, sniffing cautiously as he went. “You don’t look so good. Perhaps you should get some rest. I have to bring Max to the vet and I’d gladly give you a ride home if you want. I don’t mind one bit.”

The man shook his head and lifted his face for Lucas to see. Tears stained his face and his eyes were blood-shot red from sleep loss and crying. He still silently wept as he stared into Lucas’s dark brown eyes with his own red-ringed older gray ones. Mendel Jackson was a man of seasoned years, nearly seventy-five years old, and it was rare to see real emotion across the older man’s face, let alone see the man crying his eyes out.

“No, I don’t want a ride home, Lucas!” He screamed angrily as he struggled painfully to his feet with the single-barreled shotgun still cradled under his right arm. “And I ain’t gonna get a fucking ride from you Lucas! I ain’t gonna get anything from ya, am I?”

Lucas Hartley was confused beyond reason. “What?”

“You knows what I speak of youngster!”

“Mr. Jackson, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Hartley tried to tell the older man but Mendel wouldn’t have it. He wouldn’t listen but instead he simply kept weeping and wiping the fresh tears from his face. He started shouting more incoherent things with spittle flying from his mouth as he spoke probably uncertain himself of the words that left his lips.

“Shut your damned mouth, Lucas! You ain’t gotta clue of what’s happening.”

Lucas Hartley was dumbstruck. “Mr. Jackson, what’s wrong? What happened?”

More tears began to stream down the man’s face. “They killed her Lucas. They murdered her cold. It ain’t right; it just ain’t fucking right!” He looked around the back yard of Lucas’s house, a large field with forest beyond it and then back at Lucas. His face was slick with tears, his eyes were red-rimmed and wide, and his voice was beginning to crack and break. “I’m cold inside kid. I’m cold and ain’t gonna get better.”

Lucas slowly stepped forward, cautious of the man standing before him. “Who Mr. Jackson? Who is dead?” He paused and tried to study the man’s face but nothing but anger, fear, and sadness were present. “Who did this?”

“They killed Margaret,” Mendel Jackson sobbed sadly. “They killed my wife, Lucas. They murdered her in cold blood. She done nothing to them those bastards!”

“Who?”

“My neighbors Lucas,” the older man continued with his gray eyes searching the younger man’s face. “The brothers Hunter and Bobby.” Lucas revolted in stunned disbelief. “They done broke into my house and killed her with lust and joy in those blue eyes o’ theirs. They done gone crazy, Lucas, with wrong eyes on ‘em. I ain’t done nothing to’em and they done killed her. I can still hear her scream.”

Lucas’s eyes were wide in bewilderment. “But the Montgomery brothers are barely fifteen and fourteen and they did that?” He looked past Mendel and rubbed his forehead uncertainly. “Are you sure, Mr. Jackson?”

“I was there kid!” The man screamed angrily. “Of course I’m sure. I ain’t making this shit up! I saw them rip her apart and claw their way towards me!”

“Where are they now?”

Mendel Jackson lowered his old gray eyes towards the ground and patted the barrel of his single-shot shotgun still cradled in his right arm. “Dead.”

A stunned silence fell over them. “You killed them, Mr. Jackson?”

“You’re damned sure I done killed those bastards,” Mendel replied, bringing furious eyes back up to meet Lucas Hartley’s dark brown ones. “And they ain’t right, Lucas. There’s was something wrong with ‘em. We ain’t gonna make it if there are others like ‘em. I sure there is. We can’t survive what’s happenin Lucas. We gotta get out while we’s can.”

Max was still barking furiously. Lucas pulled him back and patted the old dog’s head again. “Quiet Max.” He looked back up at the old man before him and sighed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Jackson. What’s happening? Get out of where?” He laughed nervously and nodded. “I have to get Max to the doctor but I’ll stop by the police station in town and tell them what happened all right? They have to know.”

Lucas started forward with Max, who was still barking, behind him. Mendel got in their way with burning eyes. “They ain’t gonna know nothing, kid. They probably one of ‘em too.” He frowned and sighed. “It ain’t gonna stop and this place ain’t safe no more.”

“One of who, Mr. Jackson?”

The man looked horrified. “One of ‘em creatures. You can’t trust ‘em, Lucas. You can’t trust nobody no more.”

“Please get out of my way, Mr. Jackson,” the twenty-one year old man told the older man standing before him with the weapon cradled tightly in his arm. Lucas’s voice was strong, firm, and unyielding. “I won’t ask again. I have places to be today, Mr. Jackson and I have to get moving.” A firm expression was set across the younger man’s face as Mendel’s face went blank.

“You can’t tell them cops, kid,” Mendel warned him. “They can’t know of what happened out here. You can’t trust them cops, kid. You’re making a mistake.”

Lucas didn’t know what to say. He lowered his voice and said sympathetically, “I’m sorry but they have to know.” He lightly tugged at Max’s leash and the dog hesitantly started forward, still barking and growling deep in his throat at the old man before them as if the dog didn’t trust the man at all. “Come on Max. We have to go.”

They moved around Mendel Jackson, who had lost their little argument once Lucas had threatened him. Lucas’s firm voice had finally quieted the man and as he started towards his car, with Max still growling but following, Lucas wondered how he’d go about telling the Edgefield police about what the man had told him.

“Shut that fucking beast up!” Mendel Jackson screamed furiously, non-humanly from behind them. “It ain’t quiet and it’s annoying!” He suddenly laughed at Lucas stopped and turned. “You can’t even trust the fucking creature either, kid!”

Lucas Hartley watched, amazed and terrified, as Mendel Jackson shouldered the shotgun and pumped it with a grin across his old face; his front couple teeth were missing to show through to the black hole beyond that was his throat. He chuckled insanely and pulled the trigger.

A thunderous blast echoed throughout the forty acres of land that surrounded them—echoed through the woods and fields, over the pond beyond the house and even out across the two-lane highway that led into Edgefield—as Mendel recoiled from the shotgun pressure against his shoulder. He rocked backwards as the bullet spun through the air and disappeared into Max’s thigh. The dog howled in agony and collapsed onto the ground in a bloody, broken mess, his back legs misshapen and useless. He howled and screamed, yelping into the air as he tried to stand but couldn’t.

Lucas jumped and dropped the leash, falling to his knees beside the old German Shepherd as the dog squeezed its eyes closed and breathed heavily through its muzzle. It yelped again and fell to the ground, unable to move its lower body.

He looked up at Mendel Jackson with a hurt look across his face. “You bastard! You shot my dog!”

Mendel shook his head uncertainly. “It ain’t your dog, kid. It’s something else. It’s something evil. It ain’t trustable no more; it ain’t what you think.” He pumped the shotgun again and stepped forward, taking aim at the dog once more. “Move aside kid. I ain’t gonna let it live. I gotta finish it before it heals and takes us like those damned kids took my wife away from me. She was sweet. She done nothing to ‘em.” He wiped tears from his eyes and sobbed. “Move aside, kid.”

“No!” Lucas told the old man with the shotgun. “I’m not moving aside you bastard. I don’t know what you’re talking about you crazy old man but something’s wrong in your head! Get the hell away from my house and me! Go home and wait for the cops.” He stood up and moved towards the older man, that firm expression once again set across his face.

A sudden wave of fear fell across the old man’s face. “You’re one of ‘em, ain’t you? You are, ain’t you?” He moved the muzzle of the shotgun to Lucas’s chest. “I ain’t gonna let none of ya bastards live! Very well, kid!”

Lucas nearly screamed as Mendel pulled the trigger of the shotgun. He moved backwards and tripped, falling over. A click answered but no bullet left the barrel. Lucas’s breath caught in his throat as he noticed the shotgun was empty. He sighed in relief and stared at Mendel in unquestionable disbelief and fear. Max lay beside him in pain, his eyes nearly closed. A bloody hole was in his thigh where the shotgun bullet had taken him.

“No!” Mendel yelled angrily, digging into his pocket and producing two more shotgun shells. “Dear God, he’s gonna take me too! I ain’t gonna let him live, I swear!” He shoved the first shell into the weapon and began muttering under his breath again. “I ain’t gonna let none of ‘em bastards live for what they’s done to Margaret. I swear I ain’t!” He thumbed the second shell into the shotgun and grinned brightly again. “I doing your work now and they’s gonna pay! All them fuckers gonna pay, ain’t that right?” He nodded in answer to his own question and pumped the shotgun once more, looking down at Lucas who was still sitting on the ground in exposed terror knowing that his time was up.

“Mr. Jackson, don’t do this,” Lucas urged the man who was holding the shotgun pointed directly at his chest. He urged the man who was his neighbor and about to kill him. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I know perfectly well what I’m doing kid,” Mendel Jackson replied, lowering the shotgun a bit. “I done know well. I know it ain’t right here no more and I know it ain’t nothing left for me here.” He sighed and turned his tear-stricken face away from Lucas. “I know it ain’t right to see your wife murdered before you by hellions and I know it ain’t right to see this damned world fall apart around ya. There’s done nothing left for me here, kid. It’s over.”

He moved the barrel of the shotgun upward and Lucas’s breath caught once more in his throat. His heart stopped beating and his entire body tensed. His voice was far away as he screamed, “No!” but the barrel of the shotgun was already positioned against Mendel Jackson’s temple as the man’s finger pulled down on the trigger. The man’s head recoiled violently as the blast shot through it and his lifeless body collapsed before the younger man; the shotgun was still held firmly in his hands.

Lucas sat in unthinkable horror as he looked at Mendel Jackson’s lifeless body. The old man had been crazy, speaking nonsense, and lunacy. The man had spoken in riddles with no point but something had terrified him enough to commit suicide and that possibly terrified Lucas Hartley even more then anything else.

Lucas scrambled to his feet in horror and ran a hand through his short brown hair. “Holy shit,” he muttered, unsure of what to do or where to even begin. He knew he had to contact the police but he didn’t know how to go about it. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before; it felt as if the world was closing in around him and ending.

Max yelped in pain again. Lucas looked down at the dog and sighed. “Right.” He leaned down and picked up his dog, carefully cradling the large animal in his arms conscious of the wound and sure not to touch the dog’s shattered thighbone. He turned towards his driveway as the wind began to pick up again. The early fall breeze was cold against his exposed skin but he ignored it.

He jogged to his twenty-five year old dark yellow Mercedes station wagon, opened the trunk, and slowly lowered the bleeding and crying dog down onto the brown-carpeted floor. Max’s head loped over in pain as he looked around the car and then back up at Lucas.

“Yeah, Max, we’re going to the vet,” Lucas Hartley told his German Shepherd with a smile. “Hang in there, boy. We’ll be back home soon enough.” He slammed the trunk closed and moved around the car. He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car, glancing in the rearview mirror to see if Max was still all right. The dog couldn’t move the lower half of his body but he seemed to be doing just as well as before.

I can’t believe he shot my dog, Lucas thought as he turned the car onto the back two-lane highway and started towards Johnston, South Carolina, Edgefield’s neighbor town. That was where the doctor was located so that was where they were going to go. He shot my dog! What the hell had gotten into him? He shook his head and focused on the road but as an afterthought, He shot himself. Mendel Jackson was a sweet old man that would never think of such a thing. What the hell scared him so much? What happened at his house?

And the strange thing was that Lucas actually considered turning the car around and going to see. He was curious; he wanted to see what had happened at the Jackson place. He wanted to see what had happened to Margaret; he wanted to see what Mendel had been talking about. Had the Hunter brothers actually killed her? Had something happened to them?

He didn’t know and probably wouldn’t find out until the police had been informed. Lucas knew he was doing the wrong thing as he sped the car down the two-lane highway. He knew he had made a mistake. He should have turned around and ran back into that house to call the Edgefield Police Station but he was afraid. He didn’t know what to believe or what to tell the cops once he saw them. He knew he had to inform them but he didn’t exactly know how to go about it.

As all this jogged about in his mind he neared Edgar Lamb’s place a good five miles from his own house on the same two-lane highway. It was a large spot of land with plowed fields and forests to rival Lucas’s own plain fields and forests though Edgar’s land had much more then forty acres.

He neared the older man’s farm at sixty miles per hour and turned to see a vacant dark green tractor resting in the field closest the road. The field had been only halfway plowed and it wasn’t like Edgar Lamb to leave a job unfinished once he had started. But this was the farthest thing from Lucas’s mind at the moment.

With his attention divided between Edgar’s farm and his own troubled thoughts, Lucas Hartley vaguely noticed the two cars—one was maroon, the other black—entangled and embedded into one another directly across the road from Edgar Lamb’s driveway. He never heard the crushed, shattered glass of the windows of the two cars crunch under the weight of his own car’s mass. He barely noticed the crushed, torn driver-side door of the black car open and empty; he never saw the body of the man crushed between his seat and steering wheel of the maroon car with his blood decorating and darkening the already red interior.

Lucas Hartley sped past the cars and past Edgar Lamb’s farm without another thought in the world; without a backwards glance. He never heard Edgar Lamb’s screen door open and slam shut, nor did he hear the third shotgun blast that echoed from within the man’s house. It was identical to the two from Mendel Jackson’s shotgun but Lucas didn’t hear it over the roar of the old car’s engine.

The inhuman scream from within Edgar’s house, which followed the shotgun blast, was lost to the known world. His farm was set far from the community and from any known living soul.

Lucas Hartley continued towards Johnston with only one goal in mind beside the other troubled thoughts that coursed their way throughout his mind. He didn’t know what to do or what to think. He needed to develop a plan for dealing with this but he still had a fifteen-minute drive ahead of him. He focused on one thought at a time unsure of how to reach the next.