SATANiPEDES

SATANiPEDES

by Robert W. Walker, author of the Instinct Series

ONE

“Creepy feeling, eh?” asked Dr. Lucius Freemantle of his patient.

“Yeah, real creepy,” replied Dr. Abraham Stroud into his iPhone. The two spoke on facegram, and Freemantle’s wide, bearded face filled the screen on Abe’s iPhone..

“Go on. How did it make you feel, Abe?” Stroud’s ‘Clutch Cargo’ chin alone filled Dr. Freemantle’s iPhone, but he’d know Abe’s chin anywhere. “Don’t be shy, Abe. This is me you’re talking to.”

“Well, Doc, it felt kinda like something or someone was or is trying to communicate to me from the other side.”

“If you’re getting these whispers and can’t even make out the words, Abe, you know it could be something physiological. When’s last time you had your ear wax cleaned out.”

“It’s not ear wax!”

“But if you’re getting this happening a lot, Abraham, then you should get your HVAC and electrical systems checked out and fast.”

“Say what?”

Dr. Freemantle repeated himself word for word.

“That’s nonsense. I am in a—”

“No, no! This sensation is commonly created by subsonics.”

“Sub-what? Sonics?”

“Such as those caused by a faulty fan going wup,waWump, wup, waWump.”

“It’s not a fan.”

“Or a strong electromagnetic field.”

“Really?”

“It’s likely having an effect on your nervous system.”

“I’m living out of a tent, Lucius. Got no four walls, no HVAC, no electric system here.”

“Oh, in the field again? Then maybe it’s the sound of a nearby generator.”

“Guess again.”

“Where exactly are you, Abe?”

Abe did a 360 with his iPhone, demonstrating the wilderness area called The Devil’s Backbone. “I’m in northwest Texas on a dig.”

“Oh, oh, I see. I thought at home in Andover, The Abraham H. Stroud Institute. Love saying that. You’ve done so much with your life and your gifts, Abe.”

Lucius had been on the Chicago Police Department’s payroll at a time when Abe was a cop there. It’d been the only work Abe could find at the time, when as a returning Vietnam vet, his injuries to his head were no longer apparent. He and Lucius had met only after Abe was ordered to speak to the police shrink after a fatal shooting. The sessions were at first strange as Lucius too had been a Vietnam grunt, the same as Abe. Red haired, proud red-bearded descendant of Vikings, Dr. Lucius Freemantle had his own demons to contend with, but he went 110 percent after those of his clients as well.

“So what do you make of these constant, annoying little hallucinatory, peripheral sightings and feelings I’m having? It’s gotten intolerable.”

“Have you had an ear-nose-n-throat exam lately, Abe? You know, we’re all getting up in years.”

“This isn’t anything I can grab hold of, Lucius.”

“And you think I can from this distance?”

“It’s like trying to catch fog. I see a skittering out the side of my eye, and it’s not there, nothing but a bit of smoke and echo, like a re-verb.”

“Mind you, I’m not saying it couldn’t have a supernatural cause, given your history with the unnatural world.”

“Poltergeist maybe?”

“Perhaps. May I assume you have a number of young, nubile ladies with you on your ahhh dig?”

“First, it’s not my dig, and secondly, I’m married with a kid now.”

“How is it not your dig?” Dr. Freemantle ignored the other half of his remark.

“I’m riding shotgun on this one. It’s been organized by one of my former students.”

“Wow, that’s gotta make you proud.”

“It does, and yes, Dr. Bookbinder has plenty of students of his own here.”

“Plenty of rattling of the cots, I’m sure.” Lucius laughed at his own joke.

“Plenty enough.”

“That alone could explain the strange sounds you’re hearing, Abe.” Lucius laughed harder still. Then he abruptly became serious again, saying, “You know, old friend, ghost sightings are frequently connected to subsonics.”

“OK, Lucius, what the hell is subsonics? Sounds like a sandwich to me.”

“No, no. Subsonics is a strong electromagnetic field of sorts. I tell all my patients they must get their living space checked out first, you know, just in case your body is trying to warn you about a natural danger in your living space. If all is good in the home, or in your case—tent—well then the worry is about feng shui not the need for an exorcist.”

“Lucius, I don’t read Feng Shui Outdoors.”

Freemantle laughed at this, and Abe began to wonder if the doctor hadn’t had one too many Manhattans. How do I extricate myself from this phone call, Abe asked himself when Dr. Freemantle said he must go. He suddenly sounded as harried as the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. “My lunch hour’s over, and I have another appointment to attend to. I wouldn’t worry too much about this worry of yours, but I would see that ear, nose and throat man.”

Lucius abruptly hung up as was his fashion. He hated diagnosing over the phone, and Abe hated visiting his office, wherein during sessions, Lucius would plop down on a leather easier chair, put his feet in the air, lying prostrate. His patients could have the couch, but no one other than Lucius could have the easy chair.

“Thanks, Lucius,” Abe said to the dead phone. “No damn help whatsoever.” Stroud paced the tent. Still, what the shrink had said about electromagnetic fields, that sub thing, could perhaps be at work here in his sleeping quarters, given his steel-plated cranium. After all, electromagnetic fields of great power abounded on the earth’s surface and even in the oceans. They created the myriad problems and infamous disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, otherwise known as the Devil’s Own Triangle. Another such place existed in the Sea of Japan, and what of this place where Abe found himself this night? A place called the Diablo Spinata by the natives for generations, the Devil’s Backbone?

And him with that Vietnam era steel plate in his head.

Maybe it is all in my head. Maybe it does mean I need a good and thorough examination by a top-notch Mayo Clinic ear, nose, and throat man. Maybe an eye doctor too. It was stranger than strange, however, that the usual pathway to gain his attention was bypassed: the steel plate in his head. That thing was a receiver, and it picked up on the supernatural quite often and quite literally, so if it was some supernatural element at work here at the Devil’s Backbone, why hadn’t his head gotten the message? Why just flirt with his eyes, whisper incoherently in his ear, slip a strange taste into his mouth, and to fill his nostrils with an even stranger, earthy, metallic odor?

This warning or threat, or whatever it was, was coming through his physical being rather than the usual mental pathways. Not via the ‘dish’ in his cranium. Perhaps this place was a highly charged area, magnetically speaking. After all, it was known by many as the hottest hot-bed of ghostly activity and ghost sightings on the planet. Perhaps to acquire that reputation, a place had to be electromagnetically charged. He’d have to find this out, but again, a magnetic field ought to be setting off the plate in his head, placed there be army surgeons during meatball surgery so many years ago.

But no. This had a different feel altogether.

Was it possible that this time around that the supernatural would contact him in a fresh new way? It was the creepy feeling that some ghostly goblin beings were not simply watching him but counting coup.

Sneaking up on me to touch what they fear, yet must be brave enough to touch all at the same time. Like a damn band of roving spectral Indians swooping in to steal a single swipe at him, a single touch of the enemy, but in this case, to take my sense of peace, sanity, and comfort.

Peace and comfort was something that Abe was much into these days. He’d destroyed and annihilated countless creatures of the dark underworld, and his last adventure along those lines had seen the complete and utter destruction of the Skitters, eight-legged, toxic spider monsters filled with venom and an evil plan. Beings that had dropped in from outer space, landing in, of all places, North Georgia.

Stroud had earned time off, time away, time for peace and comfort. He had earned a chance to work with his comrades on a normal archeological dig, and up until now, he’d believed it was a normal dig, happily uneventful dig, right up until the weirdness had begun. The whirring in his ear, the smell of charred flesh in his nostrils co-mingling with a metallic taste in his mouth, and the strange near-sightings of imperceptible movement about his head and eyes. Signs of aging or something scarier still?

His eyes were weary now. Lucius had not only been of no help, but he’d made a weary Abe wearier still, and so off to bed he went. Straight to his tent cot. A fanciful hammock without the element of swing, perchance to dream. To dream of home, to dream of the warmth of his wife, Jessie, and to dream of the joy that was his son, Gideon, only a year old now.

Dreams were a thing of the past. Nowadays, Abraham H. Stroud only entertained nightmares. Most borne of memories of the horrid events and creatures he’d not only seen but had combated, hacked to pieces, trapped, and studied.

Stroud’s tenure as the guardian against evil in the world had come about through blood, through his heritage, which he had once disavowed. He might have lived the quiet life of a career military man had he not been so severely wounded that he’d been left for dead beneath a pile of bodies in a Vietnamese ditch. He’d come back from that with a steel plate in his head, but after this life, he’d joined the Chicago Police Department, and once again, he could have lived the quiet life of a police officer with dreams of becoming a gold shield detective married to a nice Polish girl from the neighborhood, had children by her, a life in suburbia. But all such possible lives died when he grandfather passed away, and in doing so, revealing who Abe Stroud really was—Stroud the Vampire Hunter, Stroud the Monster Slayer.

To date, Abe had taken on and had vanquished a decidedly dug in coven of Andover, Illinois vampires, a colony of werewolves in Michigan, a strange underworld creature below Manhattan, New York that turned ordinary men, women, and children into its zombie horde, as well as giant cemetery worms that had attacked New York City. Abe had swooped in on a Louisiana horde of evolved werewolves that called themselves Werewulves. After that came those pesky Subterraneans, followed by the even more deadly Skitters—giant spiders that threatened all life on Earth. Abe had seen many a colleague and many of his own students of archeology die due to the battles he had fought with the supernatural and the supra-natural beings that his archeological digs seemed always to bring to the forefront. By now, the faces of the dead who had fought alongside Stroud filled his nightmares as much, if not more, than the monsters he had gone to war against.

With such disturbed sleep, Abe had taken to drugs to stop the bombardment, but they were not always effective, and that was the case this predawn morning where he stood on the plateau overlooking the Texas escarpments that cascaded from his feet where he stood on the Devil’s Spine, Diablo Spinata. He’d come to join an associate here who had made a fantastic discovery inside an Indian burial site, a former student who was teaching Professor Stroud a thing or two. The other reason for making the trek from Stroud Manse and Stroud Enterprises in southern Illinois was to see first hand if the many, many tales of the Devil’s Backbone might live up to its reputation as the center of the most spirit world activity on the planet. He was curious. Another reason to be on hand here alone in the twilight—ghost hunting.

Its name alone hinted that something was just not right about this place. Locals said it was the most haunted hills in Texas, and there were many reports of apparitions. Reports that ranged from 16th Century Spanish monks to naytive American Indian spirits. Some reports spoke of an entire company of soldiers traveling on horseback, the sound of their shod hooves like thunder, shaking the walls at local farms for miles in every direction. Campers had reported smelling camp fires in places where fires were outlawed, and being followed by unseen people while they hiked. Hunters spoke in whispers of having heard footsteps at the bottom of their deer stands when no one, not even an animal, was there. The strangest reports came from a few individuals who said they were possessed by the spirit of a ghost wolf.

At Winberly, Texas, the hills ran east to west, rising to an elevation of 1,274 feet at a roadside park on State Highway 32. It lay in an area of the Balcones Escarpment characterized by flat to rolling terrain with locally deep and dense dissection and generally shallow to deep loamy soil with rock outcrops. The ridge of hills in northeastern Comal County, stood right on the Hays county line thirteen miles north of New Braunfels, Texas. This area was aptly called the Devil’s Backbone.

For now, however, alone on the spine, Abe simply took in the majesty of this place. How the burgeoning sun bathed the horizon and was creeping toward him, light chasing away darkness but also painting the land as it went. A beautiful twilight sunrise, Abe alone with his thoughts and his emotions, alone with himself. He saw no ghosts, only the faces of dead students, dead colleauges, dead friends who had followed him into battle over the years.

Now the others in camp at the dig site were rousing from sleep and slipping from their tents, some also wanting to catch the sunrise, but they’d already missed the most beautiful part of that movement. Abe took in a deep breath, disappointed he’d seen none of the reported sightings of ghostly Indians, cavalry riders, spirits of animals from cavalry horses and Indian ponies to buffalo and wolves long dead but supposedly caught in a loop between two worlds.

Others from camp joined him now on the spot for viewing the low-lying area below them. They exchanged pleasantries and in doing so the moment of magic was dispelled for Abe. He turned and went back toward camp and his tent. He understood why many in the camp thought him aloof and even smug, but at the moment, he did not care what others thought of him.

Abraham Stroud saw the envoy coming. It was made up of ramble-shack cars, pickup trucks, and a mini-van or two. It was longer and louder than most trains he’d seen. It had to be every citizen of the nearest town, Larue, Texas. “They’re coming for us, Dan,” he said to his former student and young partner in crime—Dr. Daniel Bookbinder.

“You might very well be sorry you took me up on my invitation to the Spine.”

Using a relentless barrage of photos sent to Abe in his Andover home, Bookbinder had enticed his former mentor into coming down to Southeast Texas to examine what they’d found here. Aside from the Indian burial site, they’d also found fossil evidence of something no one, certainly not Bookbinder, had words for. They thought it must be an underwater creature from the ancient earth. Bookbinder had called it a giant centipede with gills

“How bad ya think this little problem with the locals might get, Abe?”

“You tell me, Dan.”

“Come on. I know you’ve had situations like this before, but quite frankly, I haven’t.”

“Part of the war on science, Dan, but I got a feeling this has to do with more than just our digging out here, maybe.”

“Feel like I ought to get my gun.”

“Not now, not yet.”

“You don’t suppose they’re just curious, do you?”

“Would like to think their intentions are benign, sure.”

“Doesn’t sound so from all those honking horns.”

Abe shrugged and shook his head. “Who knows, Dan, maybe you’re right. Maybe they’re after us not in a bad way.”

“Not to harm us or ban us?”

“Possibly.” Abe knew his tone and words were not reassuring. The two archeologists continued to watch the convoy snake its way toward them.

“They’re here to ask us to abandon the dig.” Dan threw a rock at nothing in particular. It sent up a little dirt cloud where it landed. Dan had been squeezing the stone in his hand.

“They’re likely thinking that coming out here is their last chance to protect themselves from us, Dan.”

“But we’re no threat to them, Abe!”

“Two opposing forces and each concerned about that which each holds dear, or dearly fear.”

“Fear makes people do crazy shit, Abe.”

“Don’t I know it, and none of us are immune to fear, not entirely, not ever.”

The sun had come on full force on an already hot morning, spreading brilliant light all across the graves they had uncovered here at Diablo Spinata—the Devil’s backbone, a prominent ridge of young mountain tips aligned against the sky, escarpments and mounds recently arisen from the deep recesses of the Earth, young by archeological standards, baby protrusions compared to the Great Tetons or the Rockies.

In back of Abe Stroud’s mind, he sensed that the townspeople wanted help, specifically, Stroud’s help. They were coming for his expertise and reputation in combating the incontestable, the supernatural, and the supra-natural. How he knew this was part of the reason he’d been unable to sleep. There simply were things that occurred in nature that shouldn’t occur in nature. Deadly things, dangerous things; things like the Skitters he and his team had defeated in the Appalachian mountains along the Georgia and Tennessee border only a year before. News of that triumph was supposed to remain in-house at the Stroud Institute, nestled in the confines of Stroud Enterprises. At the institute, Stroud’s scientists continued to study Skitter anatomy and biochemistry. After all, the damnable things had originated as extraterrestrial ‘bugs’ or rather arachnids—spiders. Six and eight-foot tall spiders that somehow mimicked the mannerisms of men when they stood tall and wrapped their legs together as one unit. Amazingly enough, they got away with it in sufficient darkness. The unsuspecting wouldn’t know what was coming at them until it was too late.

Now it was something else—something even more wicked than Skitters this way comes. Something the locals were calling the Satanipede, a Satan Centipede or a monster scorpion, he could not be sure from the grainy images that played out in his head. Images picked up by his own unnatural antennae in his head since his Vietnam days—that damnable steel plate that held his skull intact.

Hard to tell if the creature was a scorpion or a gargantuan centipede. Either way it made no sense as a centipede, as unlike the scorpion, the centipede in nature was not carnivorous. Whatever this thing was, it had been busy in the area feeding on livestock.

The locals had spoken to some of Dan’s students whenever they dared go into town for a meal or to gather supplies. Word had it that its sting was paralyzingly deadly, and that it was over twelve feet long and three feet wide, something from the Pleistocene period perhaps. Of late, many a species considered extinct were finding their way back to life—that is, they’d been ‘witnessed’ by humankind and the sightings verified by a bona fide scientist. These creatures proved typically to be creatures that preferred darkness to light.

These things were typically subterranean and often without eyes, and so they live by their wits, their other senses—feelers, for example. They lived by boring through their underground world, chasing after the slightest of vibration coming off a potential source of sustenance, and they were hardly picky eaters. This behavior fit the notion of an underworld scorpion but an underworld centipede that fed on the crusty flesh of other creatures? Abe had a hard time squaring the centipede with having attacked and killed full grown horses and cattle. As might anyone, including his fore bearers, all of whom had been vampire slayers and slayers of dragons, Abe’s term for anything that could be called monstrous, otherworldly or fantastical from the harmless unicorn to the hound of Hades with its six heads.

Sightings of this so-called Satanipede thing had become, if not routine around here, common long before Dan Bookbinder and his team of students had arrived and ‘disturbed’ the Indian burial site. Disturbed was the nicest word the locals used for the dig that Abe had joind late. Still, most of the townspeople had not actually seen the creature itself; they had seen instead the results of its having passed through their land and pastures, their fields and backyards as it—whatever the hell it was—left eviscerated livestock in its wake while not so much as a single bark from a dog was roused by the thing.

How can that be, Abe had asked himself for days now. What had always been attributed to aliens dropping down from the black skies of night was now being attributed to the so-called blind feeding machines the locals had coined as Satanipedes. How many there were, their exact number, no one knew, but wild speculation had recently put them at the size of the North Korean army. In other words, limitless.

Stroud told Dan to handle it, and he turned, swiftly walked back to his tent, and dove inside. He was unsure if he could face these people here and now. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, but not now. From inside, however, he could hear the shouting and as things appeared to be getting hotter and escalating, Abe realized he must face these people, and that Daniel simply was not going to be able to placate them as they kept chanting Stroud, Stroud, Stroud to the sky. This brought out all of Professor Dan’s students to create a crowd of their own, and they began jeering the townies, which is what they called them.

This did not dissuade the locals in the least, and they continued to call for Stroud to come out and face them. As Abe again stepped from his tent here at the dig sight, he saw the pain and anguish of the farmers and ranchers who looked to him for help. Abe silently asked himself: Where the hell’re the pitchforks, hoes, rakes, and torches? He felt like Dr. Frankenstein standing tall before the assembled, concerned citizenry. Did the , and the crowd blame him for their losses? Did they really think he had anything whatever to do with the creation of the monster? Did they think he alone could put an end to the monster or at least placate it? Offer a sacrifice to it that would end the mutilation of sheep, goats, cows?

In the past, he’d only decimated monsters that attacked and killed humans. He was not about to go into some sort of Animal Husbandry Protection business. And were there some so superstitious among these people to believe that he could command the demonic and turn it over to human justice? How they wished to build a bonfire on the spot and burn the monster alive. For now, however, they only had Abraham Stroud to point the finger at, the known monster slayer. How the word got out on his being here, Abe did not know, but he suspected Dan’s students talking it up at some bar or eatery in town.

Now the townies wanted something tangible from him, or at very least, some sort of assurances from him. So here he stood before them and what were they doing? For now, however, they merely stared, sizing Stroud up, and Abe gave it back at them tenfold.

“I’ve told your leaders that I have no desire to get involved in your local folklore or problems,” Abe flatly said to the crowd, lying, as he had spoken to no one on the matter. “Why can’t you people take no for an answer?”

“We never seen nothing like this infestation ’round here til you people come in here and start to digging up dead Indians!” shouted one man out front of the others, the obvious ringleader.

“That’s right!” shouted another in the crowd, which emboldened the others into a cheerily rhythmic chant of anger. “Get thee gone,” formed out of the cheers.

“This is not something we stirred up!” shouted Stroud.

Dan joined in, adding, “Not one of my students has seen a single normal-sized centipede, much less a giant one that can devour a pig or a cow.”

“I tell you,” countered Ringleader, “you people have stirred up something evil that’s come out of the Devil’s Spine!”

Abe groaned and thought, Damn superstitious people think the devil’s for real. “Look here, these students are working an archeological find of great significance to the history of the Native Americans who’d populated the area as far back as the 13th Century.” Even as he tried reasoning with the locals, Abe saw no change in their faces. All he did see was the continued pain and anguish in their expressions when, out of the crowd, a woman pushed forward, and in her arms was the carcass of a gutted dog. The dog’s remains lay over her arms like a shredded balloon.

“You want evidence? You wanna see what they did to my Percy?”

Another woman rushed from the crowd and placed an arm around the farmer’s wife, but this woman looked out of place. She didn’t dress the same as the others, and over her professional attire, she wore a white lab coat. She was tall and thin, her features fine, and her skin a silky smooth coffee and cream color. “Dr. Stroud,” she began, stepping away from the farmer’s wife, who was now consoled by a third woman.

“And who are you?” Stroud asked of the lady in the lab coat.

“I am Dr. Genna Pace, USDA. I want you to know that there does appear a correlation—at least time wise—to these animal mutilations and your disturbing the Indian burial grounds uncovered here.”

“No, that’s hogwash, doctor, since the first reports date well before we arrived.”

“No, that’s hogwash, doctor,” Pace countered, her dark brown eyes set on him. “These awful attacks began last year when Dr. Bookbinder here first arrived in the spring, when you all first disturbed the burial site.”

Stroud turned to Daniel and asked, “Is that right, Dan?”

“Well...we didn’t do much last year,” he replied, shrugging. “We ran out of funds and time.”Time and money, Abe thought, the two most precious commodities in the life of an archeologist. “So then, you did originally disturb the site at the time of the first incidence of livestock mutilations, Dan?” Stroud said. “First I’m hearing of this, Dr. Pace.”

“We had to cover up the earlier site, get the proper paperwork done along with the grant,” continued Daniel Bookbinder, gritting his teeth and exaggeratedly shrugging.

“So, you’ve only now returned,” Abe said as if to himself.

Pace added, “Yes, to further disturb the psychical environment of the Diablo Spinata.”

“Dr. Pace, precisely what are you a doctor of? Goats and sheep?”

“I am a doctor, sir, of agriculture. The A in USDA.”

This last bit of information worried Abe. The last thing he wanted in life was to have to deal again with the Feds in any capacity. They had proven an enormous thorn in his side on many an occasion. If this Dr. Pace got it into her head to call down the full force of the federal government on Bookbinder or Abe or them both, circumstances could get ugly fast. Inside his brain, his steel plate seemingly palpitated with the word placate. He had to placate this woman as much as it was in his power to do so. To that end, amid the continuing cat-calls between the locals and the archeology students, Abe invited the lady to return to his tent with him and Bookbinder to discuss some sort of resolution to everyone’s satisfaction. “Call your friends and neighbors off, Dr. Pace, and we can all work toward a peaceful end.”

She appeared dubious, bit her lower lip, which Abe found alluring, and then she slowly nodded. She turned to ‘her people’ and shouted them down. “We’re going into talks, everyone! Dr. Stroud and Dr. Bookbinder have asked for a list of grievances, and I know them all. Give us some time.”

This had the hoped for result of calming those seemed bent on shutting the dig down. Dan, Genna Pace, and Abe moved off and into a clearing where fallen trees had been set up as benches around a campfire over which a spit hung, and on the metal rod, a pot of freshly brewed coffee. Abe offered Dr. Pace a cup even as he poured, the steam rising up and briefly creating a smoke cowl across his features that Pace took as a strange symbolic sign of the man.

“You know, Dr. Stroud, I’ve read so much about you, and I’ve heard so many fantastical stories about him that finally meeting you.”

“Oh, hell, Dan here’s far more deserving of your attention. He’s won awards, accolades,” Abe countered, to which Dr. Bookbinder raised his hands and signaled with the universal gesture of dismissal.

“Seriously,” she continued, “I get the overall dominant takeaway of you both as men of deep, abiding intellect and curiosity.”

“Add pain and sorrow to that,” said Abe with a laugh.

She smiled at this and watched Stroud, wondering about what he’d added about pain and sorrow. She had no doubt it was true. These thoughts came to her as Stroud poured a second cup to hand to Bookbinder, and finally, he poured one for himself. With each pouring, Dr. Pace again saw that opaque smoke distort his features almost as powerfully as a fun house mirror. It must be in part the intensity of light and shadow in the wooded area they found themselves in. At least she told herself this. The other possibilities, seeing more than one man in Stroud’s face, seeing a revolving door of images there, proved too frightening.

Noticing how thoroughly Dr. Pace was staring at him, Abe scratched his head and tousled his hair. “Just how do you see all this then, Dr. Pace? I mean psychically and environmentally speaking?” Abe threw her own words back into her face.

She hesitated answering, and he took advantage of this, parrying with, “I should think you’d be as skeptical as I am, at very least.” While Abe was not at all skeptical, having seen some of the most bizarre supernatural creatures ever to roam the earth, he did not want this lady to think him a push over.

“Well...frankly, I have my doubts as to the kind of problem we’re facing here. It may well be a hoax being perpetuated by some high school boys bored with their Nintendo games. Or it could well be a rabid animal, but in this case, it would have to be a family of rabid animals.”

“Or rabid boys—high school kids taking the Cow Tipping night games farther than thought possible?” suggested Bookbinder.

“That much destruction of livestock would require a family of rabid wolves,” Abe thoughtfully added.

“Yes, that’d be my second guess—wolves,” said Dan, nodding repeatedly like a man drawing at straws.

“Tracks?” asked Abe.

“No, at least not the kind a wolf would leave. That’d be four normal paw prints.”

“Then what have you found?” he badgered.

“Countless prints that look like a Sherman tank might’ve made, and-and what can only be called a-a slime trail. Here, see for yourself.”

Dr. Pace shoved an iPhone at Abe, the photo of the prints clear and disturbing. A three-foot wide girth displayed the slime trail from the top to the bottom of the photo, and on each side of the trail were clear, visible prints the size of palm frond leaves and at the tip end of which there appeared clear talon-like spikes into the earth. It was like nothing Stroud had ever seen before, but it did give the appearance of a gargantuan centipede.

“So that’s your evidence of the existence of this thing you’re all calling a Satanipede?” he scoffed. “Your photo only leads me back to the hoax theory since there are no slugs of that size and girth in North America—or the g’damn world for that matter.”

“Aha, so it must be pimply-faced high school boys,” said Dan.

“Couldn’t possibly be pimply-face high school girls, Dr. Bookbinder?” Dr. Pace jokingly asked. “Isn’t that a bit sexist, Dr. Bookbinder?”

“I confess to being politically incorrect,” Dan replied unconvincingly.

“I too confess,” began Abe, apologetically dropping his eyes. “My brain’s getting a bit spongy since the last creature war I fought, but I can’t find this convincing, Dr. Pace.”

“Can’t or simply won’t? Are you burned out on supernatural elements, Dr. Stroud?” She did not mince words, and this was becoming clearer to Abe. “The war you fought against that alien race of eight-legged, eight-foot high spiders?” She asked, knowing the answer.

“I was so hoping I’d have some time before going into another bug war.”

“And before the alien spiders, I know you’ve slayed vampires, werewolves, zombies, gigantic cemetery worms. I am well aware of your reputation, Dr. Stroud, and so are the people of this community. If you’d only kept a lower profile, then perhaps they would not be storming down your door...ahhh tent flap.”

Abe took another look at Dr. Pace, finding her soft, fine features alluring along with her quick mind and keen, sharp-edged tongue, and what a pair of mesmerizing brown eyes set against bountiful raven hair that was unfortunately and severely pulled into a matron’s bun. He momentarily wondered what that crop of black silk must look like when she was alone, relaxed, preparing for bed. Then he pictured himself in bed beside her. Then he quickly erased the thought. I’m a married man now, he reminded himself, giving a thought to Jessie and his newborn son back home in Andover, Illinois.

Abe had had an opportunity to go overseas to accompany a number of other archeologists on a find near the Red Sea, but he’d declined for fear of being too far from home. There had been complications with his son’s heart, a valve sticking thing that Abe did not fully understand, but the boy required surgery, and so Abe had not gone to the Red Sea, but once the infant’s heart condition was corrected, and the boy was cleared of any further problems, Abe set out for Texas and the Devil’s Spine, the escarpment in Northwest Texas known for ghostly sightings, when a former student of his, Daniel Bookbinder hounded and goaded and pleaded he join his party at the Devil’s Spinata.

Dan Bookbinder had miraculously gotten approval to dig there—on government property—when he and a small band of rouge students of his from the University of Texas at Austin had located an underground find using a ground scanner in the very area designated as a National Monument. Cavalry of the US Army had done battle with Victorio and other Chircahua Apache warriors in this area, the Indians using the escarpments as their natural fortress.

As a result, many men and some women, died here. Both sides had losses, but the Indian losses were three and four times larger than those of the Whites. Ever since those late 1800 days of the final Indian Wars, sightings of the disembodied souls of both Cavalry grunts, Buffalo soldiers in particular, and Victorio’s warriors along with whole herds of cattle and horses—ghost animals—had reportedly been seen by hikers, campers, and others who spent time in darkness in this region.

So far, however, even with the steel plate in his head that often acted as an antennae for the supernatural, even with Stroud’s penchant for finding the supernatural, or more to the point, the supernatural finding him, he’d seen no such apparitions of dead animals or the spirits of dead soldiers or Indians since he had arrived several nights before now. However, he had been witness to Dan Bookbinder’s extraordinary find—a complete Indian cemetery, a burial site that Bookbinder and his young team had set out in a perfectly rectangular grid that stretched for half a football field so far with the promise of growing still larger.

Stroud had also been astounded at the perfectly preserved artifacts and items unearthed along with the bones of those buried here. He knew if word got out about this ‘disturbance’ of the dead in the name of science, they’d all be surrounded by protesters with signs and cameras in their faces, all shouting for an end to the dig and to return the burial grounds to peace. There was, after all, a Coushatta Indian Reservation not far from their site. It was a miracle thus far that no one had come on the warpath against them, but the escarpment area was a region few people came to visit for its remoteness. Some enterprising fellow years back had built a small lodge-styled hotel for visitors in an attempt to make it pay off as a tourist attraction, but the lodge was abandoned now, its owners having to ‘give up the ghosts’ as it were. Still, for some Native Americans, the area was a draw as a place to find peace and meaning in life, Abe supposed. At least that must be the case for some. For others, it might rather be a place of discovery in other ways, in the way of the archeologists like Dan and himself.

Abe, Dan and Dr. Pace finally stepped from his tent, and she asked the crowd to remain calm while she powwowed with Dr. Stroud. “We are making headway, my friends,” she consoled them, but some grumbled and muttered, inconsolable.

“Tell me again how these animal mutilations are our problem, Dr. Pace,” Abe raised the conversation before the crowd.

“Look, so far as the townies are concerned, the mutilations began when your people came here the first time, and they’ve only increased, nearly doubling. That is with the animal killings. But there’s something even more disturbing than the increased attacks.”

“What might that be?”

She took in a deep breath of air. “Something that disturbs us to the core.”

“Which is?”

“These things, whatever they are, have dug up dead people—corpses in their graves, for God’s sake.”

“What do they do with the corpses?” asked a shaken Dan.

“What you might expect! They gut them, same as the animals. The internal organs are consumed—bone in as they say at Fat Patty’s eatery.

Bookbinder spat his coffee over the fire, causing a cloud of smoke among them. “My god,” he gasped.

“Are you saying this thing, whatever it is, that it’s burrowing into cemeteries, desecrating graves?”

“Exactly what you people are doing with the ancient Indian graves, isn’t it?” she attacked Bookbinder with the razor-like words.

“That’s a false equivalency if ever there was one,” defended Bookbinder.

“How so? Really?” she countered.

“We’re not gutting or eating anyone’s blood entrails!” Dan grimaced.

“She’s got a point, though, Dan,” Abe put in. “We dig up burial sites. It’s what we do.”

“Sure, Abe, but theyre ancient, even forgotten by the culture that put them there.”

“I taught you that.” Abe turned to Dr. Pace, adding, “Most often the culture itself is dead, no one to defend it any longer. Kind of sad, of course, but there you have it.”

“I tell you there’s some kind of odd link between your dig here, gentlemen, and what’s going on in the valley below.” She remained adamant.

“Dan, I suspect Dr. Pace may be right.”

“Come on, Abe!” Dan snapped.

“There does seem to be a strange ahhh correlation between the two events, given the timing.”

“No way!”

“I mean it seems so on the surface worth our con—”

“You’re not falling for this, are you, Abe?”

“It’s not a matter of falling or not falling for it, Dan. If there is in any way a direct cause-effect between our grave digging and the grave digging monster she has photo evidence of, I believe we may well have a duty to at least look into it.”

“A duty, what duty?”

“Alright, responsibility.”

“So what are you proposing, Abe? That we halt the dig until you and Dr. Pace are satisfied?”

“I didn’t say that. When did I say that?”

“Because that I can live with. I trust you, but Dr. Pace here and the townspeople of Larue, Texas?” asked Dan, biting his lip before adding, “Sorry, but I have no trust in that the superstitious townies will ever be satisfied, not until we pack up and leave.”

“Dr. Bookbinder, I can assure you that this is real, and that everything I’ve shared with you gentlemen has happened.”

“Be that as it may, I have work to do and students to attend to, Abe, Dr. Pace.” Dan stood and rushed off, obviously feeling betrayed by Stroud who’d made a decision he disagreed with. Abe also got the distinct impression that Dan had made an enormous assumption, one which Abe could not completely blame him for. No doubt, Dan thought Abe was going along with the lovely Dr. Pace in order to find a romantic interlude. No doubt, Dan thought Abe was looking his age these days and no longer attractive to young college co-eds. No doubt, Dan had no idea of how strong the bond between him and his wife, Jessie was. No doubt, Dan thought the distance between Abe and Jessie back home in Andover was enough to allow Abe to stray. No doubt, Dan had a hard time accepting change in a man.

“Take me to see the disturbed graves, will you?” Abe asked Dr. Pace.

“Here you go.” Again she passed her iPhone to him. He studied the photos, one after another of disturbed graves in what appeared an old potter’s field as it was overgrown and what few headstones populated the place looked to be from another era. The headstone look like cardboard, he thought. Definitely from another century.

Finally, as if reading his mind, she said, “It’s a historic site, an old black soldiers graveyard, buried where they fell, same as Little Big Horn, but obviously not remembered like Custer’s Last Stand, of course. These Buffalo Soldiers died chasing and fighting Vicotorio’s warriors many years after Custer’s greatest blunder.”

“The Apache?”

“Chircahua Apaches, yes.”

“Take me there, and I’ll have a look-see. Nothing like a first hand assessment.”

“Thank you, Dr. Stroud.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I make no promises.”

“All I ask is that you keep an open mind.”

“Eyes wide open.”

“Together they boarded Abe’s Rover, and with Dan Bookbinder looking on, disgust in his expression, they disappeared below the plateau for the valley below. The glint of the now hot sun reflecting off the back windshield of Abe’s vehicle. Bookbinder thought he saw the face of an American Indian somehow in the back seat of the Rover, but he instantly chalked it up to a trick of light.

Start writing here…