Cunning Devil Read online

  Cunning Devil

  Lost Falls, Book 1

  by Chris Underwood

  Copyright © 2017 Chris Underwood

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, and locales are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons is entirely coincidental.

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  1

  The monster was hiding in the basement, of course.

  It was always the basement, or the wine cellar, or the floor space, or the attic.

  Easy enough to see why, I suppose. The more benign creatures just wanted to settle down somewhere dark and damp, where they were safe from prying eyes. And as for the nastier monsters, well, what better place than a basement to lie in wait for your victims?

  I stood at the top of the stairs and flicked the light switch. Nothing happened.

  Of course.

  I shot my sister a glare. She was hovering behind me, trying to peer over my shoulder into the gloom. When she caught my look, she shrugged.

  “Bulb blew a couple of days ago,” she said. “I was going to replace it sometime.”

  With a grunt, I turned back to the basement. The light from the hallway spilled down the stairs, revealing the shadowed outline of a washing machine. Spider webs shimmered in the corner. Beyond that, the darkness was too thick to penetrate.

  It was down there, though. I could smell it. A Stranger. It smelled of sour milk and moldy carpet, of acidic sweat and damp earth.

  “You know this isn’t my job, right, Alice?” I said. “I’m not Animal Control.”

  “Would you prefer I call them?” she asked, her voice thick with false sweetness.

  She knew the answer. I had enough of a reputation as it was. The last thing I needed was some hapless Unaware officer getting his face bitten off in my own sister’s house. It was hard to cover that kind of thing up.

  Alice wasn’t really a part of my world, but she was one of the few who had some idea what really lurked in the shadows of this town.

  Sure, the legends surrounding Lost Falls had been circulating for years. The town even encouraged them—the rumors brought in the reality TV crews and the paranormal investigators and the tourists who were too stupid to leave well enough alone.

  But those of us who knew the truth wanted those legends to stay legends.

  Alice hadn’t got a good look at whatever had hissed at her from the shadows, but she sure as hell knew it wasn’t just a big rat. My sister wasn’t prone to flights of fancy. She hadn’t known who to call, so she’d called me.

  Lucky me.

  A banging sound came from somewhere behind me. Guess I must’ve been on edge, because I nearly jumped out of my skin before I realized it was someone rapping on the door.

  “Alice?” a voice called. “Ozzy?”

  “Back here,” I shouted over my shoulder. Alice was smirking at me. She’d seen me jump. I let her have her fun.

  The house creaked as footsteps approached. A man appeared at the end of the hall, his thick gray beard parting in a smile when he saw us. He was a thin old bastard, not an ounce of fat on him. He had that kind of old man vitality that keeps some folks smoking and drinking to the age of 102 while all their friends have long since turned to worm food. His name was Early.

  “Heard you’ve got an unwelcome visitor,” Early said to Alice.

  She nodded, then gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He wasn’t a short man, but Alice still had an inch or two on him. She had the Turner family bones, just like me. Maybe there was some ogre DNA somewhere in the line.

  “What took you so long?” I asked when he’d disentangled himself from Alice.

  “Trying to find your things, that’s what. You ever think about tidying up your cabin? Maybe pushing a vacuum cleaner around?”

  “The mess keeps the witches away,” I said.

  He handed me a leather bag and my truncheon. The truncheon had an iron core and a scuffed and dented silver coating on the hitting end. Symbols and words of power had been engraved along its length.

  I’d been out when Alice called, so I’d had Early drop by my place to pick up my equipment. Until we knew what we were dealing with, I didn’t want to waste any time.

  “Where are the boys?” Early said to Alice.

  She gestured. “Upstairs. Valerie’s at work.”

  Valerie—Alice’s wife—was an ER doc at the local hospital. They usually traded off for care of their twin boys—Valerie worked early shifts at the hospital, while in the evenings Alice worked at Lost Falls’ best and only radio station as a late-night announcer.

  “Know what we’re dealing with?” Early asked.

  I shook my head. “Not yet. Light bulb’s blown.”

  “So use a flashlight.”

  “It’s not 1953, granddad. No one uses flashlights anymore. We’ve got cell phones.”

  Truth be told, I’d been a little hesitant about shining lights around until Early arrived with my things. Switching on a light was one thing, but certain Strangers get a little agitated when you point beams of light in their direction. I didn’t want this thing attacking me while I was unprepared.

  I put down my bag for now, gripping my truncheon tightly in my right hand while I took out my phone with my left. Early joined me, muttering something to Alice as he gently pushed her back into the hallway. Creeping down a few steps, I switched on my phone’s light.

  Claws scratched on concrete. I snapped the beam toward the sound.

  A shadow no more than two feet high darted out of sight behind some old storage boxes, hissing as it moved.

  “You see that?” I asked.

  “I saw it,” Early said.

  “The hell is it? A kobold maybe? Some kind of imp?”

  “You ever see an imp move like that?”

  “You have any better ideas?”

  He didn’t. “How did it get here?” he muttered, scratching his beard.

  “Look. That window there.” I pointed the light to the far end of the basement, where a couple of ground floor windows were blocked out by the overgrown garden outside. “It’s broken.”

  “No, I mean, how did it get here? We’re a ways away from the forest. It’s strange.”

  I knew what he meant. This was a nice little house in a nice little suburb. Alice and Valerie weren’t rich, but Valerie’s salary meant they didn’t have to struggle. There were all sorts of places in Lost Falls where weird things happened and Strangers skulked around, but this neighborhood wasn’t one of them.

  Still, that was a question for another time. First order of business was getting the damn thing out of here, before my nephews ran afoul of it. I loved those kids.

  “Let’s get this done.” I glanced at Alice. “Might pay to take the boys and wait outside.”

  “Ozzy—”

  “Just in case.” Something skittered on the other side of the basement. I snapped my light around, but I couldn’t see anything. I exhaled. “This’ll be quicker without you breathing down our necks anyway,” I said to Alice. “This is a complex, occult operation. We need to concentrate.”

  She knew me too well to buy what I was selling her, but after a moment’s hesitation she nodded.

  “All right, fine. Just be safe, both of you.”

  “I’ll look after him,” Early said. “Don’t you worry.”

  The contents of my bag rattled as I hefted it. “Close the basement door behind us,” I said to Alice. “And lock the front door once you’re outside.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Ozzy,” she said. />
  “You know me.”

  She closed the basement door, cutting off the light from the hallway—and our only means of escape. The creature’s smell suddenly seemed a lot thicker. It clung to my skin.

  The only light now came from my phone. As Alice’s footsteps hurried away, I crouched down on the stairs and opened my bag.

  “Make sure it doesn’t creep up on us,” I said. I was whispering now, as if that would make a difference.

  “So what’s this complex, occult operation you’ve got planned out?” Early asked.

  “You see that dog cage over there?” I aimed the light at it.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We grab the creature and shove it in there.”

  “Pure genius,” he said.

  “No point over-thinking it.”

  I rummaged through my bag. It looked like Early had found everything. I’d had him gather all the talismans and fetishes and potions I could think of, but without knowing what the thing was we were limited. A sun flare that would stun a vampireling could send a kobold into a rage. And a fetish designed to weaken a kobold wouldn’t do a damn thing against a fiend.

  So I went for the catch-alls. A handful of old iron nails to lay at the bottom of the stairs to guard our escape. A circle of rope woven from human hair and knotted with animal bone fetishes and silver talismans. And of course, my old trusty standby, the truncheon. I looped the weapon’s strap around my wrist so I wouldn’t drop it.

  “All right,” I said. “I think you should go first.”

  Even in the dim light, I could see Early raising one bushy gray eyebrow. “That so?”

  “It is.”

  “Seems to me this is your family we’re protecting here, not mine.”

  “Guess I’ll have to tell Alice not to invite you around for casserole next weekend.”

  “No need to be scared, Ozzy. You saw how small that thing is.”

  Something hissed in the darkness. A claw scratched against a pipe.

  “Scared?” I said. “No, no, no. I’m just looking at this logically. If this thing really is dangerous, it makes sense that you should be the one to—God forbid—have your throat torn out. Seeing as you’re an old man and all. Whereas I’ve got my whole life ahead of me.”

  “Ozzy?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Get on with it.”

  Grumbling, I thrust the phone into his hands. “Fine. But you’re holding the cage.”

  I pulled on a pair of leather gloves I kept in my bag. Never know when you’re going to need gloves. I was wearing a thin jacket as well, and I could only hope that would be enough to protect me. I’d gotten a glimpse at the creature’s curved claws before it retreated into the darkness.

  We slowly descended the stairs. They creaked with every step. Somewhere in the darkness I could hear the creature hissing.

  “Don’t shine the light directly at it,” I said when he started to turn the beam toward the sound. “We’ll piss it off.”

  “I think it’s already pissed off.”

  I was inclined to agree.

  I scattered the iron nails at the base of the stairs. They weren’t just any old nails. I’d scavenged them from the site of an old mansion on the edge of town that’d been torn down a few years ago. The place hadn’t been inhabited for more than a decade, owing to some rumors that it was haunted. It wasn’t, though after it’d been abandoned a few of Lost Falls’ non-human townsfolk had started holding midnight poker games there.

  But that was beside the point. More than a century of history had soaked into the mansion’s walls: arguments, lovemaking, the sound of children running in the hallways and the smells of countless family dinners.

  That kind of history has a power to it. A power the nails retained. Not every kind of Stranger would be delayed or distracted by the nails, but some would. Worth a try, anyway, if we needed to beat a hasty retreat.

  My shoes scraped against the concrete as I stepped over the line of nails. I held my loop of fetishes and talismans loosely by my side as I moved to the center of the basement.

  The shadows danced as Early followed me down, keeping the light trained on me. He moved to the dog cage, which was tucked beside the washing machine. The half-full laundry hamper was still lying where Alice had abandoned it, a little boy’s T-shirt hanging from the lip. There was a ping pong table folded up and set against the wall, just below the windows. Shards of broken glass glittered in the phone’s light, like starlight reflected off a lake.

  The rest of the basement was largely being used as storage space. Boxes of old clothes, a moth-eaten couch, a small filing cabinet. An awful lot of places for something to hide.

  The hinges of the dog cage door squealed behind me. Without taking my eyes from the darkness, I whispered over my shoulder. “Will it do?”

  “We’ll soon find out.”

  I grunted. Tightening my grip on my truncheon, I slowly edged toward the shadows.

  Maybe you’re thinking I was being overcautious. Cowardly, even. The thing was only a couple of feet high at most. How dangerous could it be, right?

  You’re thinking that because you’ve forgotten. All of us have. There are billions of us humans now, all across the world. We gather in huge cities of concrete and steel, belching exhaust fumes into the sky and filling our nights with so much light that even the stars can’t compete. We’ve forgotten fear.

  Our ancestors knew better. They knew that safety was an illusion. They knew that on the other side of the door, away from the fire and the hearth, true horrors lurked.

  They knew the darkness didn’t belong to them.

  “Hey, Early,” I said. “I’m counting on you to save my ass if this goes bad.”

  “To hell with that,” he said. “I’m running.”

  He wouldn’t run. Early hadn’t run from a thing in his life. God knows I’d done enough dumb shit to give him reason to. He was steady.

  For a senior citizen, I mean.

  A scraping sound, like nails dragging across cardboard. It came from the stack of boxes off to the right. I paused, listened for a moment, then carefully eased forward. I clutched my talisman rope, ready to throw it.

  I darted forward, rope raised as I came around the pile of boxes. My lips pulled back in a snarl.

  There was nothing there. Where the hell had—

  “Right side!” Early roared. “Look out!”

  2

  I spun as the creature leapt screeching from a darkened ceiling corner. It slammed into me with the weight of a small child. I could taste the stink of it in the back of my throat.

  Claws swiped wildly as I crashed into a stack of boxes. Cuts burned across my shoulders. In the bouncing cell phone light I saw bloodshot eyes and long teeth glistening with saliva. The creature went for my throat.

  I slammed the butt of my truncheon into the creature’s head. There was no silver on that part of the club, no fancy charms or arcane symbols.

  Just wood and iron delivered with all the fear-strength I could muster.

  The creature fell to the ground, squealing. That kind of blow would’ve stunned a normal man, if not cracked his skull. But the creature showed no sign of being anything more than annoyed. It skittered about in a circle on all fours, claws clattering on the concrete. Furious eyes glared up at me, slitted nostrils flared. The thing’s muscles tensed to pounce again.

  I threw the talisman rope that I’d somehow kept hold of. A wild throw. I got lucky. As the creature leapt at me, the loop of rope tangled around its neck.

  The creature went rigid, like it’d taken 10,000 volts straight through the skull. One or more of the fetishes on the rope was doing its job. The thing collapsed back to the ground at my feet, sluggishly pawing at the loop around its neck.

  “Early!” I shouted, but he was already beside me with the cage.

  The creature was gasping as if it was having trouble breathing. I knew how it felt. Little bastard had tried to kick in my rib cage when it jumped at me.

>   Before it could recover, I grabbed it and shoved it at the cage. The thing managed to gouge another hole in my jacket and scratch up my arm before I got it inside.

  In one quick movement, I pulled the talisman rope from around its neck. Instantly, it came back to life. I slammed the cage door in its face.

  Early bolted it shut, snatching his hand back as one claw reached through the cage door, trying to snag him. The creature squealed with rage. The whole cage shook.

  I slumped to the ground, panting. The cold concrete beneath me was heavenly.

  “You all right, boy?” Early asked.

  I checked. “Just fine, old man. Just dandy.”

  “Wasn’t so hard after all, was it?”

  I decided to let him laugh it up for the moment. Just until I got my breath back.

  Early and I lugged the screeching, rattling dog cage back upstairs.

  “You’re bleeding on the carpet,” Early said as we shuffled toward the kitchen.

  “Shit.” It was a good thing my sister was still outside with the boys. I once spilled a glass of cask wine on the carpet, and I heard about it for weeks.

  We dropped the cage on the dining table and I slumped down in a chair while Early fetched my bag of tricks. Out the window I could see the boys screaming around the backyard at a hundred miles an hour, while Alice watched with a look of exhaustion on her face. She caught my eye and I gave her a thumbs-up, then gestured for her to keep the boys outside a little while longer.

  I peeled off my gloves and jacket to check myself over. The creature had got me pretty good. My upper chest and left arm were cut up all to hell. Luckily, none of the cuts were too deep. It wasn’t until I grabbed a stainless steel frying pan and examined my reflection in the metal that I realized my face had got a taste of it as well. One cut went nearly all the way from my ear to my nose, and it was still dripping blood into my beard. Maybe it’d leave a nice scar, at least.

  “Next time it’s your turn to wrangle the monster,” I said when Early returned. “Hell, this stings.”