old up close, he decided, either one of them. One was a towhead boy with freckles, the other a black youth with green eyes. Like so many other children in Jefferson, he may not have had their names, but he’d seen these two often enough, playing together in the park near Fellowship Hall.
“Worried about what?” Jacobs pressed, crossing his arms and releasing the boys. He still kept a close eye to be sure that they wouldn’t bolt on him. No, he supposed, these two would be loyal to one another. They knew as well as he did that if the slower of the two was caught again, it wouldn’t do the one that got away any good, no matter how far he ran. That boy would still have to go home, and his folks would be waiting.
“You two saw something back there in the grass, didn’t you?”
Silence. They looked from one to the other as if they’d made a solemn vow not to talk about it.
They weren’t going anywhere and neither was this tall deputy until he had some answers.
Finally, the black kid spoke. “I’m Tyrone Davis. This here’s Able Jenkins.”
Able looked up and squinted at Roth, said hello and returned his nervous gaze to his friend.
“Yeah, we saw a big lizard, but that ain’t what scared us so bad. We had plenty of rocks and it hopped up and ran away from us, making a terrible squall and stinking to high heaven. We chased it until it got to the highway and Jenkins hit the thing in the leg. It limped out and got hit by Jessica’s mom in the station wagon. They could’ve died and it would have been our fault. You ain’t gonna lock us up, are you?”
Finally, Jacobs understood why the boys had run. They were afraid they would be arrested.
“You did good by calling in what you saw.” Roth looked around, suddenly puzzled, assuming they had placed the call, if not the mother. How did you call the station?”
“I had ten cent and Tyrone had twenty.” Able explained. We went to the gas station a quarter mile that way and told the sheriff's office what happened, about the lizard and the accident. We know the Sommers, but we didn’t want them to know it was us that nearly killed them.”
“They’re going to be fine, boys,” Jacobs explained as he rested hands on his aching knees to reach their eye level. “That was a dangerous thing you did out here. That animal you came upon is dangerous. Maybe not to humans, but it's still vicious. What were you doing out here, anyway?”
The pair now reached to their full heights and looked him straight in the eye.
“Me and Tyrone here are cryptozlgists. You know, monster hunters. We saw the paper this morning about the cow mutations and figured that the big bird tracks we’ve been seeing the last week or so had to belong to the critter. We found a nest last Saturday and didn’t think nothing of it. We figured it was probably a buzzard that got old man Syke’s bull, but that ain’t what we found. Was it, Tyrone?”
Davis shook his head. “It looked like a big iguana, but stunk like it was dead. So, just to be sure, me and Able went back down to the stream at the edge of Sutter’s Crossing and got some big shiny river rocks. We’d have got him, too, if they’d been just a little bigger. Anyways, we’re real sorry for causing Miz Sommers to come close to dying and all. So if you ain’t gonna lock us up, are you goin’ to tell our parents?”
Roth stood tall again and looked at them as if contemplating his next move.
“Where do your folks think you are?”
“I’m at his house all day,” Able confided.
“And I’m over at his,” Tyrone confessed.
Jacobs sighed heavily, adjusted his hat and shifted his heavy belt laden with bullets, nightstick and service revolver. “I’ll make you a deal. Help me to figure out what it is you threw at and I’ll give you a lift to the corner of your streets. A couple of professional monster hunters like you ought to know if you saw a picture of this thing again, right?”
“Sure!”
“Absolutely!”
“Jacobs!” Borjon’s voice echoed over the vacant field at the forest beyond to where Roth stood with the two boys. A car horn blared in staccato succession to get the deputy’s attention, but the half-Cajun was lost. He’d gotten himself tangled up as to which of the three paths led to the highway.
“This way!” Tyrone Davis yelled as he struggled to keep up with the taller Jenkins boy. They took the middle course away from the trunk and within two minutes Roth came huffing and puffing up behind them on the far side of the ditch at the shoulder of the asphalt two-lane at 17.
Naomi knelt beside her daughter, who shook uncontrollably as they stared after Jeremy on the far side of the road. He was standing just beyond the narrow draw on the far side of the road, jabbing at the front page above the fold article of his morning edition.
“Stay here!” Jacobs ordered the four bystanders and headed across the otherwise deserted highway. Borjon had one leg turned back as if he felt that he would have to make a quick getaway should the object lying not ten feet from him suddenly leap up and try to escape or worse. Roth caught himself up before he overran the creature the boys pelted with rocks and the mother and daughter struck with their wood-paneled station wagon.
It was the Chupacabra lying there in the tall grass, just as Ramirez had described it to Borjon. To Jacobs, it did look like the devil himself. It was muscular through the thighs and lower legs, but almost frail by comparison throughout the torso. The arms were spindly and drawn close to the body. Both ended in three clawed appendages serving as hands and feet.
The eyes were open, unblinking and black as the abyss. They saw themselves reflected in them with a ruddy curve that did not appear to be perceived by the creature. Naomi Sommers was right as well. The mouth was a slit, the ears and nose only bumps with small indentations and openings. Its body was covered with coarse hairs that failed to cover its grayish green skin, mottled with patches of purple where it showed through clumps of furry quills. A row of what could only be described as spikes ran down the back of its oversized head to its spine and ended at its tailbone.
For all the fear associated with this beast, the Goatsucker was no more than three feet in height. Its stomach was bloated, distended no doubt by its recent feeding. Both men covered their mouths and noses with handkerchiefs, overwhelmed at the sulfurous smell rising off the creature like rotten eggs. At no time did they see it stir or hear it moan in any way. If it was not dead, it was close.
Jacobs left the publisher to watch the creature while he crossed the street ahead of a tow truck from the garage up the highway where the boys made their call. Good. At least Borjon already took care of the Sommers. Now, he just had to manage to keep the two - what had they called themselves, cryptozlgists - from getting too close to the animal they roused from its nest.
Having no other recourse, Jacobs contacted the pair of Scandinavian coroners and told them of his remarkable find. They were on their way with the county morgue hearse before he could get out the explanation as to why he needed it. Less than fifteen minutes later, with still no movement or sign of life from the creature, Oscarson and Klein pulled onto the scrub grass along the left-hand side of the road.
They were dressed against biohazard in suits with latex gloves reaching up to their elbows, surgical garb, safety goggles and close fitting caps. They looked as bizarre as the animal they maneuvered the gurney across the ditch to retrieve.
They argued momentarily in Swedish as to who was to take the beast by the shoulders to get it up on the stretcher. Neither one relished the idea of coming in proximity with the head, which showed within the jagged teeth, at the crease of its mouth, to have a potentially nasty bite. Then, there was that tongue-like proboscis. They had all three read the autopsy report, and knew what the Chupacabra could do to a human, if properly motivated.
Klein cried out and let go of his end when the head lolled back and the tongue unrolled nearly two feet over his arm with at least another foot still in the lipless mouth lined with fangs. The canines were particularly large, but the proboscis that draped between them was the most astounding. It was a barb
ed muscle within an interlocking exoskeleton, unlike anything found among mammals or reptiles on earth.
When there was no further reaction to having dropped the Goatsucker, David Klein hesitantly picked up the animal by the forearms and laid it on the stretcher, where they zipped it in a black nylon body bag and lashed down the limbs with cinched restraining straps. The rest of the procedure to extricate the Chupacabra went smoothly enough. The coroners were soon on their way back to the morgue and the deputy filed an accident report for Naomi’s husband to claim against. Then, the truck towed the Ford away for repairs.
As far as anyone was to be told, they’d simply hit an unknown animal.
Jacobs made good on his promise to give the two young boys a lift, but made them keep their promise about not telling anyone where they’d been that morning. If they acted in any manner unbefitting a pair of professional monster hunters, they’d be locked up for causing the accident with lying to their parents thrown in for good measure. It was a lie, but a pretty darn convincing one.
It had to be to quell the natural curiosity of a pair of young boys.
The day ended routinely enough. The coroners locked the animal in an empty autopsy room for quarantine to keep the body cool until they decided that there was no risk of contamination. Borjon was made to promise that he would not incite