Suddenly he had something.
Something… not right.
He’d located a spongy potato-size mass deep in his guts and pulled it out of the wound amid a river of gore.
The moment he did, the Skinwalker fell apart. The individual components of its morbid construction spilled to the ground in a horrible avalanche, splattering across the floor with a sound Jimmy knew he’d never forget.
He stood quivering in the aftermath, too fearful to move. The pain in his stomach seemed to have dulled from the shock of thwarting an unnatural death, but he knew he desperately needed to haul ass to a hospital.
He staggered forward.
A frightening numbness had crept into his body, reminding him that he didn’t have time to waste being squeamish, and despite the fact he was still barefoot, he quickly waded through the mound off spilled viscera blocking the doorway.
Tissue squished between his toes.
Harder items poked into his heels.
He slipped twice but managed to keep his balance, emerging from the pile only to collapse to his knees as the last of his strength fled from his body.
Clear of the mess, he dropped to the floor and lay there for what seemed like eternity, one hand clamped over his gut, until he saw Sheriff Pickett push to a stand not far away. Riverwind’s trio of bullets dotted the man’s bulletproof vest like medals of Honor.
“You alive, Cooley?” he asked.
Jimmy tried for a “Yes, Sir, I am,” but only uttered a grunt.
The man stepped forward, eyes widening when he beheld the full extent of Jimmy’s condition. “My, God, son… What the hell happened to you?”
Jimmy shakily removed his hand from the wound for the Sheriff to see, only then realizing that he still clutched the thing he’d ripped out of his body.
He looked down and uncurled his blood-splattered hand.
And almost screamed at what he saw.
He stared at the thing, shaking his head as he tried to tell himself that it couldn’t be what it looked like.
“Holy Jesus,” Pickett gasped. “Is that one of your kidneys?”
Jimmy dropped the organ on the floor and swung toward the mass of dismembered animal parts.
“Easy!” the Sheriff said, quickly restraining him. “We have to get you to the doc!”
“It’s not dead!” he cried as Pickett lifted him to his feet. “The finger’s still in me! It’s playing possum, Sheriff! It’s gonna try and get me again!”
He tried to break away, his mind racing to think of a way to burn the remains or blow up the building before it was too late, but he didn’t have the strength to resist and before he knew it Sheriff Pickett had ushered him out the front door and into a patrol car.
“Keep pressure on the wound,” Pickett told him. “We’ll get you patched up in no time.”
Jimmy wanted to tell him that was exactly what the witch wanted, why it had played dead and allowed them to escape, but the words came out as little more than mumbling that even he couldn’t decipher.
The Sheriff started the car.
Switched on the lights and siren.
And as they pulled away, Jimmy thought he saw Detective Riverwind’s corpse standing in the entryway of the building, the Skinwalker’s four-fingered hand jutting from the hole in the man’s throat, waving to him, like an old friend promising to come visit again.
Once Jimmy was healed.
About the Author
MATT HULTS ~ lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife and two children. Books of the Dead Press released his first novel ‘Husk’ in 2011.
Preview of:
MATT HULTS ~ HUSK
STILLWATER, MINNESOTA
Five Years Ago…
Black.
The suspect had painted every inch of his house black.
Obscured by snowfall, it looked like nothing more than an apparition in the storm, but through the binoculars its sinister presence loomed as large and solid as a monolithic tombstone.
Homicide detective Frank Atkins lowered the binoculars and handed them to his squad partner as the remaining S.W.A.T. officers took up positions to their left and right.
“This is it,” Frank said. He unslung the HK sub-machinegun from his shoulder and flicked off the safety. “We’re going to need to move fast to cross that field without being spotted. This psycho is a slippery son of a bitch. We can’t give him the slightest opportunity to get past us.”
Martin DeAngelo peered into the binoculars. “You do your thing, Detective. We’ll do ours.”
“I mean it,” Frank replied. “I want this bastard taken down once and for all.”
The officer smirked. “Just because you’re qualified for this shit doesn’t make you my commander. Follow my lead and leave the noble quest for vengeance up to the prosecutors, okay?”
Frank looked to the house with the word on the forefront of his mind. Vengeance. That’s exactly what it came to. Vengeance for Christine Mitchell. For Katie Hart. For Sean Edwards. Vengeance for the adolescent boy they still couldn’t identify. Vengeance for all of them.
“Jesus,” DeAngelo commented, still gazing through the binoculars. “I can already hear the insanity plea.”
Frank racked the first round into the breach of his weapon. “If I find him first, he won’t be going to court.”
Maybe it was the hiss of contempt on Frank’s tongue, or the soft squeak of rubber as his hands wrung the handle grip of is weapon, but DeAngelo’s stare broke from the house and regarded him with a creased look of uncertainty.
“You don’t really mean that, do you?”
Frank held his gaze. “Like you said, lieutenant: You do your job, I’ll do mine.”
The man opened his mouth to reply when the voice of the taskforce commander came to life on their radio headsets.
“Move in! Everyone, move in!”
The tactical team plunged out of their cover of evergreens and charged toward the farmhouse, plowing through snowdrifts to the war-drum beat of the twin air-units approaching fast from the south.
The black house loomed ahead. No lights, no sign of movement.
They’d closed within yards of the target when a cataclysmic blast of thunder exploded overhead, shaking the air with the concussive force of a bomb. Three serpents of lightning slithered earthward through the flurries, striking a canted weathervane atop the killer’s rooftop. Sparks showered in every direction.
Several of the men stopped in mid-stride, dropping into defensive postures.
“Jesus!” someone yelled over the radio.
“What the hell was that?”
“Everyone in formation,” Frank roared.
Praying they hadn’t lost the element of surprise, he crouched behind DeAngelo, staying close when the man hefted his riot-shield and rushed up the front steps to the porch. Another officer, Sergeant Rice, heaved a battering ram against the front door, pulverizing it in a hail of splinters and paint chips.
“Police! Search warrant,” Rice shouted as a second officer tossed a stun grenade into the farmhouse’s foyer.
Inside, the decoy device exploded, sending out a mild concussion to disorient anyone in the immediate area. The tac team rushed through the smoke in a stacked, two-by-two formation, spurred on by Rice shouting, “Go, go, go, go!”
Frank followed in line behind DeAngelo, moving fast and low. He kept one hand on the S.W.A.T. officer’s shoulder and held his breath when they crossed over the threshold.
Smoke swirled in the air.
Combat boots hammered the floor.
Three groups of officers, all entering the house from separate locations at once, began calling off cleared areas of the home. Frank and his squad entered a brightly lit foyer flanked by open doorways. Ahead lay a staircase and a long hall that extended toward the back of the house.