Germany, December 5, 1871

Leighton looked at the mid-afternoon sky.

A pall of grayish light crept between the clouds. The snow had stopped falling that morning.  It had been a poor day for hunting, but he’d managed to kill one rabbit, which would make enough stew for him to eat for the next two nights.

Taking a sip of liquor from his flask, he paused.

From his stance at the bottom of a hill, he could see his house in the distance.

Someone was waiting for him - standing in the shadow of his doorway.

As he drew closer, he kept a hand on his gun.

He lived in solitude.  His house, far back from the main road, hardly attracted the attention of passerby.

The figure seemed to shiver in the watery sunlight, and then reassemble into another shape.

Leighton blinked.

Surely, that was a trick of the light, the alcohol he’d consumed through the afternoon, or both.

The visitor was an elderly man. A gray overcoat hung from his bones like that of a scarecrow. A sodden wool hat concealed most of his face, except his dark eyes and the protruding hump of his chin.

“Can I help you sir?” Leighton asked.

“I hope so… I hate to say, but….” his voice trailed off. “I got lost. And I saw the sign on the road. I remembered that my cousin and her family used to live up this way, and your house looked familiar . My cousin’s name was Penelope Braden, and her husband was named Jonathan Ryder. Do you know of them?”

“Yes. They were my parents.”

*****

Leighton could not remember any talk of a cousin named Korbin. The man did have enough stories to convince him that he had known Penelope, or Pen, as he called her, as a child.

Sitting together in front of the fireplace, Korbin told stories about how Penelope liked to climb trees, run through the forest, and follow him and his brothers when they played outside.

Korbin paused as twilight pressed outside the windows.

“There’s no need in you leaving now,” Leighton said. “Night’s coming and there will be more snow.”

“Thank you,” he said. “So tell me. You live in this place all alone? Why haven’t you married?”

“I will. But when I take a wife, I won’t stay here. It’s difficult territory, this place. The weather. The solitude. Not a good place for a family.”

“But you like it, yes?”

“I like it enough,” Leighton replied.

“Well, that means no children….” Korbin said, so softly that it seemed he was talking to himself.

*****

They shared stew and bread for dinner, and soon enough Korbin leaned back in his chair and fell asleep. Leighton put a blanket around the man’s frail form, and went off to his own room to get some rest.

The wind, which howled for most of the night became eerily still. Leighton could only guess that the snow had stopped as well.

He stoked the fire, and then settled beneath the covers. The shadows of the fire took shape against the wall. His imagination made them into vivid images. A woman’s form, dancing, with her hands in the air. A tree swaying in a warm breeze. He closed his eyes, and smiled. He dreamed of warmth. Sunshine on his back, and a pretty girl in his arms.

*****

Korbin opened his eyes.

Silence.

He could hear his own breathing. The lick of fire as it consumed the last of the wood.

His senses told him it was well past midnight. Leighton slept.

Korbin stood, and the blanket fell away from him.

Casting off his coat, he also unbuttoned his shirt.

He was warm now.

Stretching his arms and legs, his limbs began to change.

Muscles moved, his face transforming. Hands to claws. Cheekbones to snout.

He waited until the transformation was complete, before he went to his host’s door.

*****

The sound of uneven, harsh breathing woke him.

Leighton sat up in bed.

The shadow crept across the wall, and that was what he saw first.

It took a moment for his mind to register that he was awake. Animal fear ran from the base of his spine and crept up his neck.

He did not want to turn to look. But he was compelled.

The beast stood so tall that his back crouched against the ceiling of the house. His eyes, like silver magnets, held Leighton transfixed.

The jaws opened, and the voice, though changed, was that of his guest.

The gray man with his poor hat and moth eaten overcoat had transformed into this thing…..

‘”I want you to know, just who came for you. I am no kinsmen , but I am named Korbin.”

“What……?”

“I have been waiting, to kill the last of your kind. That bear your name. Ryder. And how convenient, that you’re still here. You’ve made it so easy for me.”

The powerful claws of the beast tore at his flesh, and then, the teeth.

Leighton screamed.

No one heard him.

___________________

©2010 Lori Titus

From the outside of the house, everything was neat and tidy: a small front yard, a freshly painted picket fence, rows of marigolds planted along the edge of the walkway.

Sheriff Drake took a deep breath before walking in.

The smell of death was pervasive, from the moment he opened the door. The coroner’s people were still taking pictures of the living room.

And another smell, like smoke, that only he could smell.

The child was sitting in the kitchen.

Her shirt and sweat pants were spotted with blood.

“Hi Sheriff,” the girl said.

Shauna Brown was with her. Shauna was a local social worker, but had experience working in New York before she settled in Lazarus. She nodded at him, but didn’t speak. Her bottom lip trembled. Shauna had seen many things, and he’d known her for years.

She looked as upset as he’d ever seen her before.

“Drake,” she said “Have you seen the … room?”

“No, I will go back when they’re done. I came to be formally introduced to this young lady,” he said. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Hailey.” She rolled her big brown eyes at him. When he looked at her he felt the presence, something that did not belong to this child.

When she’s older, he realized, she’ll be completely gone.

This child was barely seven. It was hard to understand how Hailey could be so relaxed and comfortable, with her Mother laying dead and bloody in the next room.

Stephen sat down, watching the child carefully. He thought of his own niece, and how he’d spoken to her when she was that age.

“Can you tell me what happened today?”

She shrugged.

“Has she spoken to you about it?” Drake asked Shauna.

“Why don’t you tell the Sheriff what you told me,” She encouraged.

Hailey made a dismissive little toss of her braid. “I have to?”

“Yes,” Shauna was firm.

The child sighed. She told him, saying all that happened in a breathless rush.

“My Mom told me we were going to leave town today. She wanted us to live at Grandma’s.”

“Where’s Grandma’s?” he asked.

“Seattle,” Shauna answered. “Tell him the rest, Hailey.”

“I can’t be in that place. It rains too much. And I don’t like Grandma.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t,” she hissed.

“Okay. So what happened?”

“We got into a fight. I told Momma I was not going to do what she wanted. And she screamed at me. I got so mad. I got so mad I could feel it all stuffy down in my chest. And when it’s like that, it has to come out.”

“What has to come out?”

“Dark things. You know about the dark things, don’t you Sheriff?”

Drake and Shauna exchanged a look, but neither of them replied. Hailey continued with her story.

“So, I felt it. Everything came out of me. Momma’s eyes were bleeding. And then she was on the floor, and she was bleeding everywhere. She cried for a long time. And then she just stopped.”

Hailey took a long breath, relived to have said it.

For a moment, she had eased the pain, the feeling of something rising up in her chest.

“I miss Momma,” she said sadly. “She always said. ‘Everything’s okay. I’m still gonna love you.’”

And as she said that, her eyes drifted off. Her mind was someplace where they could not reach her.

Outside, Drake and Shauna argued in hushed tones. The police were still working the scene, and an officer had been left with the child.

“She’s psychotic,” Shauna said. “A textbook case.”

He shook his head. “Maybe. But a child couldn’t have done all that by herself. Listen, Shauna. She needs to be taken as far from this place as possible. She needs help, but not only the kind you’re thinking of.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever considered,” he whispered, “that something may be controlling her?”

Shauna’s eyes widened. “Demon possession?”

He nodded gravely. “Yes.”

_____________
 

©2008 Lori Titus