A Cold Day In Hell

“It’s Chuzah’s friend Locum,” Angel whispered. “Sonny told me.” He had a wicked temptation to laugh.

“Locum?” Eileen said. “Do you think Chuzah’s a ghost, too?”

A few steps behind Sonny, they left the overgrown road and set off onto ground that soon became soggy beneath damp brush. Trees loomed, their pale trunks hung with strips of peeling bark.

“It’s a shape-shifter,” Eileen said. “Sonny! You come here at once. Don’t you go anywhere near that thing.”

“He’s not twelve,” Angel whispered.

Her face turned to his. “Sometimes they behave as if they are. Do you know what that thing is?”

“Looks like an animal.”

“Exactly,” she hissed. “Aaron’s been taken by a shape-shifter.”

“No such thing.”

“Oh, yes there are. I’ve read about them.”

Angel kept a tight hold on her. “That’s called fiction.”

“It is not.”

“Will you two keep it down?” Sonny said.

The trees had closed around them. Each time Angel lifted a foot, it broke from a seal of sticky mud. When he set his foot down again, water splashed. The overpowering scent was of mold and dank, wet things. “You should have a coat on,” he told Eileen.

“So should you.” Her voice got higher and suspiciously squeaky.

“You’re crying,” he said.

“You ought to be crying, too. We shouldn’t be here like this. We should have called the police.”

“To report that Aaron’s been taken by shape-shifters?”

“Sonny said Chuzah was a root doctor.”

“That gray thing up there is an animal and—”

“A wolf! Angel, make Sonny come here.”

“Relax. Some joker’s playing a number on Sonny. They set him up for this.”

Eileen sniffed now. “You do think Aaron’s okay?”

“Yes.” He didn’t damn well know. “Sonny—I see more lights. They’re different.”

“They’re colored,” Eileen said. “Like Christmas lights. Oh, they’re way up high. This is all horrible. I’m getting out my gun and I don’t want any arguments from you.”

“You won’t get ’em unless you start firing,” Angel said.

Sonny came back to them. His eyes resembled blank, black circles and Angel could see him shivering.

“We’ve got to do what Chuzah said, but I feel like I’m going to be sick,” Sonny said. Angel only recalled one other time when the boy admitted to fear. That had been on the night his father—a gutsy guy who went against the family—died.

“That Locum is a shape-shifter, isn’t he?” Eileen asked, and jumped. A rattling noise reached her, growing louder.

“What’s a shape-shifter?”

“Never mind,” Angel said. He listened to the eerie sounds.

“Don’t worry about that,” Sonny said. “It’s just Chuzah sending a signal to Locum—I think.”

“That’s it,” Eileen said, shaking away from Angel. She ran, as best she could, toward the lights strung somewhere high in the trees ahead.

Angel took off after her and said, “She’s got a gun,” over his shoulder.

Eileen couldn’t stop crying. She sniffed, swiped at her face. “I’ve got to hold myself together,” she muttered, and skidded to a halt, her mouth open.

She had broken into a clearing, a clearing just big enough for a large wooden cabin built on stilts about six feet tall. No, the clearing was bigger than it had seemed at first. Around the structure, there was enough space for a shed, on shorter stilts, what looked like a carport, and a row of lockers. Sure enough, the roof on the cabin was strung with unevenly looped, multicolored lights. Four small windows in the front were covered with patterned curtains and a faint glow showed from inside.

A hand on her shoulder all but sent her to her knees. “It’s just us,” Angel said into her ear. “Put the gun out of sight. Quickly.”

She sighed, but put the Glock in her purse. “Where’s the wolf?” she said.

He stroked her back. “There’s no wolf.”

“Don’t you try to tell me I was imaging things,” she told him. “You saw it, too.”

Sonny moaned.

“I’m going up there,” Eileen said and went to the bottom of a sturdy-enough flight of stairs. She stopped and covered her face. Through her fingers she saw a big gray animal, a dog with silver eyes, standing halfway up the flight. He had huge teeth and she could see every one of them. “Help.” She mouthed the word but didn’t hear a sound. “Help!” Still she couldn’t hear her own voice.

The shack door flow open. “Aha,” a great voice, a very deep, right from the boots voice, called. “You would be Eileen, perhaps?”

She nodded. “Where’s my son?”

“Are you, Chuzah?” Angel asked. “Sonny’s told us about you. Sounds like we owe you.”

The keeper of the major voice appeared in the doorway and spread his arms. A rope of bones and bells clanged and clacked around his neck.

“Welcome, welcome. My humble home is your humble home. If you see what I mean. You come in. We been waitin’ for you. They here, Aaron, and they look like they been seeing ghosts. There’s that quiet boy, too. You come on up, quiet boy. Chuzah, he don’t bite.” He threw back his head and laughed, showing two rows of gleaming teeth.

Eileen pursed her lips and started to climb. The dog didn’t move.

“Locum,” Chuzah said, “you get your sorry ass up these steps and get in the house. You ain’t nothin’ but a poser. Fierce? You don’t know about fierce. You embarrass me. Excuse him, please.”

The dog’s mouth took on what looked like a smile and he tootled up and inside, looking back once with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and, Eileen was almost certain, giving her a wink.