Black Frost Read online

I took a moment to study my girl. At thirteen, she stands five feet, two inches tall, just a couple inches shorter than her mother had been. She would likely grow to be five –five or so, according to her doctor. Ashley takes after her mother in looks almost completely, a favor from God perhaps. Blue-black hair, and the Asian features of her mother’s native China. Her eyes are almond shaped, but green like mine, rather than her mother’s dark brown. Ashley is beautiful. That’s not just a proud Father’s opinion, but one shared by anyone who sees her and by every boy in school. It’s the kind of effortless beauty that lowers other girls’ self-esteem on sight.

  “Got a lot of homework?” I asked as we trudged to my SUV.

  “Yeah, I got slammed!” she admitted.

  We loaded her book and sports bags into the back of the FJ Cruiser and climbed in. She was instantly greeted by a frantic Charm, who had had to wait in the car. The school doesn’t allow dogs on its fields. Ashley took charge of the music, plugging in her iPod and picking a Lady Gaga song to blast on the stereo for our five minute drive home.

  “What’s for dinner?” she asked when we pulled onto our long driveway.

  “I was thinking a grilled steak, potatoes and onions in aluminum foil and…corn?” I said. We grill year round, even in the arctic cold of January and February.

  “Italian dressing on the potatoes…and bacon, before you roll up the foil?” she clarified.

  “That was my plan,” I said.

  “Works!” she agreed.

  I took care of dinner while she took a few minutes to unwind and play with her dog. Charm is very enthusiastic about the game of fetch, so while I started the grill and prepared the steak and potatoes, Ash threw her a tennis ball. The steak was searing nicely when I heard Ashley’s yell and Charm’s yelp.

  I have no conscious memory of leaving the grill, I was just suddenly running full out with my heart in my throat. I skidded around the back corner of the barn to find Ashley holding Charm, frantically checking her over.

  “Ash? What’s wrong?” I demanded.

  “Charm got into a hive of some kind,” she said, her hands ruffling the fur under the powerful little dog’s steel link collar. “I don’t think she got stung, it must have just surprised her is all.”

  “Where is the hive?” I asked.

  “In the crack of the old shed foundation,” she said, pointing at the concrete remains of the old tool building. Under my GrandFather’s close supervision, dad and I had torn down the rotten wooden part of the old shed a year ago, but the cinderblock and mortar footprint still stood.

  Approaching cautiously, I struggled to make out anything in the thick shadows. The daylight was fast waning as it does in November. I might have seen a brief flicker of motion deep in the crevice, but it was too dark for details. After observing for a moment or two, I headed back.

  “I can’t see anything without a light. I’ll take a look after dinner,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I threw the ball and it bounced into the crack. Charm raced over and stuck her nose in, but I knew I would have to get it. But before I got there, she jumped back, shaking her head and yelping. I saw a couple of …bugs, I guess, swarming around her and then they were gone,” she explained.

  “You guess they were bugs?” I asked, puzzled at her choice of words.

  “Well they were awfully big, but they buzzed like bugs, so they must have been.”

  “How big? Like this?” I held up my thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

  She shook her head. “No, much bigger! Like this,” she said, her palms held three or four inches apart.”

  “What color were they?”

  “Dark, maybe a greenish color.”

  “Green?” I asked.

  “Yeah, maybe, but with lighter legs. I don’t know, it happened fast,” she said, frustrated with trying to remember the details.

  Charm didn’t appear any worse for wear, so we trudged back to the house, just in time to flip the steak before it could char. Ashley went inside to start her homework, her furry pal right beside her, while I finished making dinner.

  As I pulled the aluminum foil packet of potatoes and onions off the hot grill and onto the same platter as the t-bone, I couldn’t stop thinking about the description Ashley had given and the entry in my GrandFather’s journal. Another thought occurred to me as I entered the house, taking a last look around the gloomy yard…..it was way too late in the season and too cold for bees or hornets of any kind to be active.

  After dinner, while Ashley tackled her math, I took a close look at Charm’s neck, struggling to keep the wiggly dog still. I found a particularly good scratching spot on her back and she stilled long enough for a careful inspection of the heavy choke chain collar. Link by link, I looked, checking the thick furry neck underneath as well. Just near the part of the collar that held her tags, I spotted something foreign. At first I thought it was a twig, stuck to the aluminum rabies tag, but then I noticed it was sharp and greenish in color. Grabbing the tick tweezers that we keep handy, I pulled it off and then rummaged in the junk drawer, at last finding my GrandFather’s old magnifying glass.

  It resembled a bee’s stinger, blown up about a hundred times. Over an inch long, the black tip glistened wetly, the other thicker end seemingly burned off. I moved to the kitchen sink to catch the better illumination from the overhead light, but fumbled the plastic tweezers, dropping the stinger into a dirty steel colander. It hit the metal, sputtered like a drop of water on a hot skillet and was gone – evaporated into smoke.

  “Whatcha’ doing dad?” Ashley asked.

  “Er, thought I found a tick on the fur bag over there, but just dirt,” I lied, not wanting to sound crazy to my thirteen-year old. Teenagers always think their parents are nuts, they don’t need any additional proof.

  “Oh..well, can you help me with this problem?” she asked, her attention back on her math book.

  “Sure, honey,” I replied, looking in vain for any remnant of the stinger.

  After getting through her math work, I grabbed a flashlight and a can of Raid Hornet spray. Thinking of my GrandFather’s journal, I cautiously made my way back to the old foundation, approaching slow and stealthy. There was nothing to see, either in or around the crevice that Ashley had pointed to, although the sand at the bottom of the hole was disturbed. Nothing clear enough to call a track or sign, but disturbed, nonetheless.

  Shivering for a moment in the frosty night air, I glanced back at our little Bear Mountain. At that moment a greenish light flashed, like lightening, but close to the hilltop, lighting the trees around the crown. Puzzled, I watched for a moment to see if it repeated, but nothing happened. I shuddered one of those full body shivers you get from time to time, the kind that have nothing to do with temperature. My grandmother used to say they were the result of someone walking on your ancestors’ graves. She’d say it in a spooky voice, then laugh and ruffle my hair. Still thinking of my grandparents, strange lights and cold weather bugs, I headed back into the warmth and light of the little farmhouse.

  Chapter 3

  Friday dawned wet and cold, typical for November in upstate New York. A front had moved through in the night, replacing the frost with rain that wanted to be snow or sleet. Watching Ashley through the shop window, I was struck by how grown up she was looking, despite the hoodie pulled over her shiny black hair and the iPod earbuds. She glanced back my way, probably unable to see me in the dark window, and my heart leapt into my throat. She could have been her mother’s twin, except for the green eyes.

  Swallowing the loss I felt every time I thought of my wife, I poked the forge fire a bit, then looked back in time to see the yellow bus swallow my daughter into its steel and glass embrace.

  I stepped out the door, took a quick glance at the muddy ground and reached back into the shop for my walking stick. About five feet of straight Ash, smoothed, sanded and oiled, tipped on the business end with a steel spike for traction and wound with baling wire to keep the end from splitt
ing.

  “Come on Charm! Let’s make the rounds,” I said.

  We walked out to the driveway, turned left and walked the road till we got to the property line. A well worn trail led along a row of posted signs, taking us back down the side of our land. About two thirds of the way along that leg of the property, the trail split left, leading up Bear Mountain, or continuing straight into the pine forest at the back of the property. I had intended to head back to the top of the mountain to look at the possum remains, but for some reason my feet headed straight. Charm didn’t care either way, running just ahead to sniff interesting spots on the trail. A chill drizzle kept a steady mist hanging in the air, forming larger drops of water on the tree limbs overhead. Those fat drips found my head and neck with steady precision, finally forcing me to pull up the hood of my raincoat.

  The maple and oak that forest the front of our land gave way to a stand of white pine, whose moisture laden boughs darkened the surrounding forest into a strangely forbidding place. I shuddered, maybe from the cold water on the back of my neck, maybe from a sense of foreboding that suddenly stole over me. The familiar woods seemed hostile and bleak this morning. We trudged on, but I noticed Charm hanging nearer to me than usual.

  On the back corner of the property, the trail hooks left in a sharp curve around an ancient pine whose thick trunk was scarred on one side by a decades past lightening strike. Charm was now at my side, her ears pricked forward, eyes focused ahead. I became aware of thudding sounds, dull and erratic. This part of our land was thickly covered in moss and sounds are deadened both on the ground and in the canopy. The hair on my neck went up and I tried to think what could be making those thuds. The possibility of a bear headed to hibernation occurred to me and I gripped my staff tightly as we edged around the giant pine.

  What I saw was crazy, so crazy that I paused in shock to try and comprehend.

  A tall man, dressed in black, was fighting with three squat shapes that looked like nothing I had ever seen before. Odd details struck me as I struggled with what I was seeing. The man had long white hair bound in ponytail and he was swinging a black stick or maybe a blade, in fast blurring arcs as he moved in a continuous graceful dance. The things he fought with were green, slick looking, with long muscular arms, corded squat torsos and short thick legs. They moved faster than anything had a right to, but their attacks always seemed to be where the man had just been, off by mere inches. The whole fight was only twenty feet away, the thuds being the occasional landing of a beefy body just missing its target. A single green head swiveled our way and I froze at the slitted snake-like eye that glared from a nightmare skull composed mostly of jaws and teeth. The creature turned back to the fight, dismissing us, but the man had noticed its distraction and glanced toward us. His momentary lapse of attention almost cost him his life. The instant his back turned, one of the sinewy monsters leapt at it, one long arm tipped with glittering claws swiping at his neck. He spun and thrust, scoring a hit with his odd weapon that I couldn’t seem to identify.

  But that change in the rhythm of the battle put him in a seriously bad place. The one that had glanced at us, leapt forward, its timing perfect to finish the fight…except for the sudden stab of my steel tipped walking stick into its grotesquely muscled back. I don’t recall deciding to move, I just did, my arm going numb from the shock of hitting what felt like a rubber-covered rock. My stick’s point dug in an inch, hardly a telling blow, but the effect was spectacular. The wound sizzled and sputtered like bacon fat on a hot griddle. The four-foot tall thing reacted like I had branded it with a red-hot iron, its back arching in a sudden spasm of agony, its head throwing back and screaming the most God-awful screech I’d ever heard. Like the pterodactyl sound from an old dinosaur movie.

  It spun, knocking my stick from my hand, its baleful yellow reptile eyes burning with insane rage. I stumbled backward in an involuntary attempt to put distance between myself and it, my hand fumbling at the hilt of my utility knife.

  I make my sheaths from kydex, a thermoplastic that holds the blade by tension rather than snaps or straps. That’s what saved me. That and my dog.

  The squatty monster leapt at me, covering the eight feet between us in a blur. The claw tipped arm that was headed for my throat suddenly sprouted sixty pounds of pitbull and then the meaty body slammed into me, but more importantly, into the blade of my knife. Four inches of tempered tool steel was buried in its sternum, sizzling like a welding torch. It jerked its entire body like a defibrillator had just hit it, the spasm throwing it ten feet away, taking my knife with it and throwing Charm to one side like a doll. There it shook and shuddered, the wound around the knife smoking as it shredded the moss in its death throes.

  Remembering the man and the other two demon creatures I turned in time to see him split one from stumpy neck to opposite hip, his strange black blade sliding through it like it was made of smoke.

  The remaining creature bounded backward, covering twenty feet in an eyeblink. It spun and ran, a green blur. The man in black spared me a glance, nodded when he saw I was alive and then raced after the creature, moving just about as fast.

  Shocked, I sat on my ass, staring at the creature that had finally stopped jerking and thrashing. The soggy moss soaked into the seat of my pants, the ice cold water snapping me back to the here and now.

  Standing up, I retrieved my staff and checked Charm over, all while keeping an eye on the two bodies on the ground.

  Up close details became clearer. The green hued skin was slightly scaled, like reptile skin, but the build was more like a malformed chimpanzee. The head was overlarge, fitted as it was with extra wide jaws. Big open nostrils, large eyes and bat-like ears took up the rest of its face.

  The flesh around my knife was still smoking and started to spark little green motes of light that drifted up like tiny fireflies. Charm barked once, startled by the body’s change. I glanced at the one that had been cut in half by the man’s blade, it too was smoking and spitting green lights.

  Belatedly, I remembered my camera and fumbled it out of the parka pocket. I set it to video rather than still photos, trying to capture the changes the bodies were rapidly going through. By now, I could see the one with my blade in its chest was deflating, like an air mattress with a rapid leak. Bluish fluid (blood?) oozed around the wound as the little dots of green light whisked up into the air, faster and faster. Both bodies were burbling and melting into the moss. The bisected body was liberally covered with the blue goo that I believed the things used for blood, and that body was disintegrating faster than the thing I’d killed.

  My head swiveled around, watching first one body, then the next, then scanning the surrounding woods for more of the creatures. Charm was still extremely agitated, but she was paying attention to the melting corpses rather than the woods, a behavior that lent me some comfort. I was sure my little dog would sense the presence of anything hostile.

  The green flesh was mostly gone now, and the dark gray skeletons underneath were starting to erode as well. The camera shook in my hands as I tried to document the bizarre scene in front of me.

  When nothing was left but wet, gooey moss, we headed back up the trail as fast as we could, both nervously watching the hostile feeling forest around us.

  Back at the house, I headed first for the forge, as it was closest. Charm didn’t seem to feel that anything was inside the smithy, so I opened the door, and failing to get attacked, dropped my walking stick on the floor. I then reach above the door frame, grasped the oak shaft and yanked Shaka from the clamps that hold it in place.

  Shaka resulted from a high school paper on the Zulu people of Africa. Four feet of oak handle with thirteen inches of assegai spear head mounted on top. For those of you whose history is fuzzy, Shaka was the greatest leader of the Zulu kingdom, living during the late seventeen-hundreds and early eighteen-hundreds. At the height of his power he commanded over 50,000 warriors, each armed with the devastating assegai spear. The spear head is extremely long and heav
y, giving it great shocking power. The long cutting edges can chop as well as spear and with the relatively short handle, a warrior could have both reach and close combat capabilities.

  I made my example from a huge old mill file, the finished blade weighing over a pound and a half.

  Overall, much more satisfying in my hand than the walking stick.

  Charm led the way into the house, her actions giving the all clear. I popped the coat rack front and grabbed Grandpa’s shotgun, locked the doors and sat down to think.

  I’ve told you about my training and background, but I had never experienced real combat before and certainly never expected to walk around a trail corner and right into a nightmare. Charm trotted between me and various windows, pausing to listen or sniff, still on high alert. I watched her absently, while replaying the forest scene in my head. The blond man had fought with ridiculous skill and grace, his black weapon still an enigma. It had seemed to be a stick at one point, then a knife, but had chopped the lizard-ape like a sword. Those monsters were right out of a bad sci-fi movie, but their strength and speed had been a shock. Probably weighed between 110 to 120 pounds and maybe four feet tall, but wide and grotesquely muscled.

  Remembering my camera, I carried both weapons and camera into the study. Setting the shotgun on the desk top, I then leaned Shaka near to hand and, finally, slipped the memory stick from the camera into my laptop. The footage was there, giving me the comfort of knowing I wasn’t crazy, but the discomfort that real monsters were out there on my land.

  I watched the bodies evaporate and melt twice, then saved a copy to the hard drive and to a thumbdrive, then I picked up the phone.

  “Ian?”

  “Hi Dad. Listen, I really need to see you…it’s about Grandpa’s journal and the stuff we were talking about yesterday.”