Small Town Monsters. Craig Nybo

The old man walked hunched over, his body brooding, once powerful. Gray hair covered Artemus’s head and face in copious amounts. Artemus didn’t merely wear a beard; tendrils of salt and pepper whisker covered his entire face, only thinning around the eyes and temples.

      “Danny was a good boy to begin with. I raised him like a pup. He ran wild and I let nature train him, the way a boy ought to be brung up,” Artemus said, folding his ancient hands on the table top. “But like so many other things in this God-forsaken world, he went bad. There was an evil in him; something that has existed in my family for generation upon generation; my boy had the curse.”

      “What curse?” Kurt asked.

      “A curse that steals the soul with the first tats of innocent

      Concerning:

      Artemus Slade

      Kurt McCammus

      Danny Slade

      Small Town Monsters

      5

      flesh.”

      Artemus’s voice had a chilling effect on Kurt. “I’m not following you.”

      “There are things in the periphery—abominations. We shun them with logic. With cold hard facts and what we call science. But you can’t look something in the face and tell it that it doesn’t exist.”

      “What are you saying?” Kurt asked.

      “My boy, Danny, was a werewolf.”

      Kurt smiled; he couldn’t help himself. He leant back in his chair and put a hand up to his mouth to try and cover his mistake, but the damage was already done. El chupicabra, Sasquatch, werewolves; what was next, the Creature from the Black Lagoon?

      “You smile,” Artemus said. “A fool’s gesture under matters of such weight. I have no use for smiles, scowls, or any other part of what people offer. I’m … content. I’m … prepared, and I am content.”

      The smile fell away from Kurt’s lips. “I’m sorry; I don’t believe in werewolves.”

      “You should.”

      “What about Danny’s mother?” Kurt asked.

      “Long dead. Crushed she was, under the tires of a coalman’s truck. I was left alone to care for the boy. He was a good boy to begin with.”

      “You said he went bad.”

      “That he did. It was in his sixteenth year. There is an ancient part of the soul that we all share as human beings; it’s the part of us that is lascivious and violent; the part that craves death; not the death of ourselves; that would countermine the purpose of our existence. This part of the soul craves the death of others. And in that death, this part of the soul craves the flesh and blood of the freshly killed.”

      Kurt winced. He was starting to understand why Artemus lived on his own.

      “And if we ever give succor to this dark part of the soul,” Artemus went on. “It gains power and craves more. And that

      Craig Nybo

      6

      is how the boy went bad.”

      “He was a cannibal?” Kurt asked.

      “Not a cannibal; an animal. That part of the soul, the dark part, is taken from the most animalistic of instincts. When the boy killed and fed, he was not human. He was the creature—the wolf.”

      “He was tried for multiple counts of murder,” Kurt said.

      “He was above the law of civilized men. When he gave in to the dark spot on his soul, he stood trial for crimes against nature; and so he was convicted by the court of nature.”

      “Wasn’t he executed by the state?” Kurt asked.

      “He sat in the chair, that much is true. But man can’t kill that which is made alive by nature.”

      “So how was he killed?”

      Artemus stood from the table and walked to a dilapidated shelf of dog-eared books. He searched for something specific among the titles printed on the aged spines. “Some time after his first kill, he took a job logging. One dark afternoon just a month after he stared work, his foreman came knocking with his hat in his hands to inform me that my boy was crushed under the weight of a felled ponderosa pine. Foreman told me it was a quick death.”

      Artemus ran his finger along the dusty book spines. After a moment, he found what he was looking for. “Ah, here it is.” He drew an aged, leather-bound tome from the shelf and carried it back to the table. “They delivered his body here to this house. I purchased a casket and laid him in state in this room just to offer my final salutations.”

      He placed the old book on the table and sat down. “I noticed changes in the body; Danny seemed to recover from his pallor, probably rejecting the poisons pumped into his system by the undertaker. I postponed the burial services and kept an eye on him. It wasn’t long before I found the casket empty.”

      “He just got up and walked away?” Kurt asked.

      “That he did. He lived mostly in the woods after that, but he came to visit often enough. I kept his comings and goings a secret and I advised him to do the same. But secrets can be

      Small Town Monsters

      7

      slippery. Before long, they found him. They came and they took him. They dug up the whole place and found his dinner scraps all over my property.”

      Kurt grimaced.

      “They tried him and they attempted to kill him. But they didn’t succeed. The only way to kill a werewolf, Mr. McCammus, is to separate the head from the heart.”

      Kurt felt the urge to get up and walk away. This was going nowhere. He would give the crazy old coot another minute then he would leave.

      Artemus pointed at the book with a gnarled finger. Engraved in gold on the cover was the title, Canis Humanus Lupus: The Cycle And Science Of The Werewolf. “This book will tell you everything you need to know,” Artemus said with deadly calm.

      “Why do I need to know anything at all about werewolves?” Kurt asked, not moving to pick up the book.

      “Because the cycle has returned—I can feel it. The people of this place are of no consequence to me. But if you have chosen to protect them, then you need to learn your enemy.” Artemus slid the book across the table, closer to Kurt.

      Kurt stared down at the leather volume for a moment then up at Artemus. He picked up the book. It felt old and brittle. “So this is good against evil then?” Kurt asked almost sarcastically.

      “There is no good nor is there evil. There is only nature. And there is the cycle.”

      Kurt had to get out. The air felt heavier by the second—almost unbreathable. “Thank you, Mr. Slade. I will return the book.”

      Artemus nodded.

      •••

      Kurt threw Artemus’s book on the passenger’s seat of his Blazer and began the slow, klunky drive back to DePalma Beach. Law enforcement was a whole different game in the rural world. As a detective in Los Angeles, Kurt had fought crime with pure logic and deduction.

      Craig Nybo

      8

      This case was of a different breed. The complexity didn’t come from clues, facts, and deduction. The complexity came from bystanders, with their superstitions and outlandish theories. It felt as if the people of DePalma Beach were all coiled up waiting for something to happen. No crime had been committed, yet the town seemed to be wrought with impossible notions—lunatic hysteria. Perhaps even after 50 years, the people of DePalma Beach still licked the wounds inflicted by Danny Slade. Perhaps they hadn’t forgotten. Just as a child learns not to put his hand on a burning stove a second