Chapter 1
The old war veteran counted the rounds in his trusty revolver, he had a gut feeling that he might just need it tonight. The moon was bright. Bright enough that he could see right to the banks of the big murky river. Jack Harpens and his boat’s reflection shun off that deep black water as did the one million little twinkles of stars above him. That river reminded him of the Mekong Delta and in a strange way he felt at home there. Jack, like most people in Fortville, was an experienced fisherman, winning the Fortville fishing trophy twice in a row in 1987 and 1988 and he was going for the hat trick. But his game was no normal fish. Jack was going for the big bastard that had been terrorizing the small river town for the last few months now, not only to win but to also put some souls to rest.
The troubles all started when a local teen Tom Harly decided to take a late-night skinny dip with his high school sweetheart, June Riley. Just a couple of innocent kids having a little fun. Tom was the up-and-coming football star ready to make it big as soon as he got to college. Everyone could already see his potential, and that wasn’t hard. The kid’s right arm was almost supernatural.
That arm was never seen again.
As for Miss Riley, she was a sweet girl, with eyes the color of a clear day’s sky, she always finished top of her classes, and she had already been accepted to Yale and Harvard. She just needed to finish off her last few months of school and off she went into the world, only to come back to the small town to visit Ma and Pa once in a blue moon.
When Mrs. Marsh found the soaked and swollen lumps of flesh, she first thought it was a road kill someone had discarded off the bridge. She only realized it wasn’t a rotting animal when she saw just one sky-blue eye looking at her. The other eye along with the eye socket, cheekbone, left lower jaw and all facial skin had been eaten. Sheriff William Larance was called to the sickening scene. Most locals call the sheriff Big Bill for his Rotonde size, he didn’t mind. The only way that Big Bill could identify it was indeed Tom and June was through their dental records, with what teeth they had left.
