Crimson Shore

Mother of God, he was looking forward to his retirement, his pension, his sofa, and a cold six-pack in front of the ball game.

But the more he thought of it, the more he realized that, whether or not Gavin was killed, it would look bad — him, sitting out here in his locked patrol car, away from the town that he had been hired to protect. It wouldn’t go unnoticed by the first responders…

Suddenly he had an idea. He could turn around, take Dune Road toward the ocean, avoiding downtown and its chaos. There was a turnout south of town, not far from the lighthouse, where he could wait. If he turned off his headlights, nobody would see him, nobody would know. Then, when he heard the sirens and saw the lights of the approaching cavalry, he could rush back into town as if he’d been on the scene the whole time.

The vise of fear that had clamped around his chest eased ever so slightly. Cowardly? No — just looking after number one. After all, he’d put in his twenty… almost. And there was that sofa and that cold six-pack to protect.

Throwing the vehicle into gear, he did a three-point turn, drove off the bridge, then took a right off Main onto Dune Road. To his left, he could just make out the faint glow of the burning house. Then came the lighthouse beam, winking through the storm.

Past the lighthouse, he reached the turnout, maneuvered the patrol car around in readiness to scoot back into town, killed the lights but left the engine running. He glanced at his watch. Five minutes for the convoy. Just five more minutes and his ordeal would be over…

A sudden blow rocked his car. He gave a shout, staring wildly out into the darkness.

Something had slammed into the rear door on the driver’s side — a branch blown on the wind, maybe. As he fumbled to turn on the exterior searchlight, another massive blow hit the door, turning the window into a dense spiderweb of cracks.

Abandoning the searchlight, his breath coming hot and fast, Mourdock extracted his flashlight and turned it on. Something was prodding at the fractured, rubbery window, pushing it in. A hand broke through — a bloody hand with horrible, blunt brown nails that were an inch too long.

Mourdock screamed, dropping the flashlight and scrabbling for his weapon.

A second hand — sinewy, pale — punched through the window and ripped out the loose glass. Then a hideous bald head, encrusted with blood and gore, pushed in while one arm simultaneously reached around, fumbling at the door with a curiously infantile gesture.

“Noooo!”

The chief finally got his Glock out and pointed it, firing wildly, but now the door flew open and the maniac lunged into the backseat. Oh, God, it was a monster: a hideous, naked, emaciated monster with a pit bull’s face and projecting snout, a huge rack of blunt teeth, a pink tongue, and brown eyes that glittered with homicidal malice.

Still firing wildly, Mourdock fumbled with the gearshift, trying to maneuver it into drive… but just then a hand snaked out, plastering itself onto his face, those blunt nails curling around his cheekbones and spastically tightening.

“Ahhmmmmmm!” Mourdock, feeling the foul-smelling palm pressed against his nose and mouth, the nails sinking deep into his flesh, tried to scream and pull away; there was an agonizing wet jerk and his voice was released in a spray of blood as his flesh parted from his skull, and then he heard a hoarse gasping sound so close he wondered where it could have come from, until he realized it had come from himself.

* * *

Agent Pendergast had lost the trail of the killer just south of town, but he sensed, from the purposeful beeline, that it was headed for Crow Island. And now, as he crossed the road that traversed the marshes and led to the beach, he saw a police car — the chief’s squad car. The headlights were off, but the engine was running. Through the gusting rain he detected movement.

Suddenly, a figure leapt up onto the hood, then scurried crab-like down the front grille just as a flash of lightning brilliantly illuminated the vehicle. In a moment, it was dark again. But in that moment, Pendergast saw something freakish and bizarre, something so far out of his experience as to be inexplicable: a tall, bony, emaciated man, completely naked, covered with countless cuts and scars, with a bald head, a dog’s face, and a long, forked tail with a hairy knob at the end.

And then it was gone.

Pulling out his Les Baer, Pendergast raced toward the patrol car. He saw the creature moving away at the speed of a running dog, then loping off the road — heading toward the wildlife refuge and Crow Island.

He turned his attention to the squad car. The windshield was opaque, coated with blood from the inside. The back door, however, was open, its window broken and missing. Grasping the frame, he leaned in. His flashlight beam revealed Chief Mourdock. The man was sprawled across the front seat. He was all too obviously dead.