Max Helsing and the Beast of Bone Creek Read online

  “So it could be bigfoot?” asked Wing. His voice carried that unusual cadence that was somewhere between excitement and total pant-soiling fear. Jed never tired of hearing it from norms.

  “Could be.” He patted the boy’s shoulder reassuringly. “Good find, Wing.”

  The old man opened his leather haversack and reached inside, pulling out a glass bottle that was corked and sealed with wax.

  “What’s that?” asked Wing as Jed picked the seal away and bit the cork. It came away with a pop!

  “Wood musk. I bought it from Odious Crumb a few years back, when I was heading into the wilds on some monstrous goose chase. It’s a fairy concoction, used to mask their scent from predators. We have to douse ourselves with it to kill our scent. Only one drawback.” He shook the bottle. “It smells absolutely foul.”

  He tipped a hearty glug of it over the boy’s head, which made him splutter and retch. Eightball got a shower too; the stinking potion hissed as it hit his boiling skin. Lastly, Jed poured it over his own head.

  “Smells bad, don’t it?”

  “And stings the eyes,” added Wing. “Burns the flesh, too. Any other side effects?”

  “Give it a moment,” said Jed. “How’s that?”

  “It doesn’t sting anymore. And the smell’s vanished!” said Wing with surprise.

  “You’re effectively scent-free now. The only way you’ll leave an odor is if you make one.”

  The three of them walked on, Eightball leading the way, nose to the ground. “So we’re following whatever beast dropped its breakfast back there?”

  “I figure, chances are Max and Syd could already be on its scent and have successfully tracked it. That’s the best-case scenario.”

  “What’s the worst?” asked Wing.

  “The beast is already tracking them. And it’s still hungry.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE DEAD HOUSE

  If Max and Syd hadn’t known about the hermit’s shack, they would have walked straight past it. Hidden away on a promontory of land where two mountain streams converged, it was surrounded by scrub, obscured from sight. Pushing their way through the tangle of undergrowth, the two kids found themselves standing before the solitary building dwarfed by the forest and mountains. It was a single-story structure, its timber walls warped and weatherworn, covered in veils of moss and cobwebs that fluttered in the cool night breeze. The window frames were broken, the shattered glass reflecting the moonlight. The shingle roof looked like it might fall in at any moment, while a crooked stone chimney rose like a stubby gray finger. If the horror movie industry had a location guide magazine, Max and Syd were surely looking at the cover photo for the latest edition.

  “There’s no way this place is lived-in,” said Syd, breath steaming before her face.

  “Gideon said Barnum lived up here. We’ve come this far.”

  “Max, do you not . . . feel it?”

  He knew exactly what Syd was talking about, for he felt it often. He and fear were old acquaintances, and he knew exactly how to deal with that old devil: face it head on. He squeezed his friend’s forearm and gave her a warm smile.

  “Syd, if you want to hang back, that’s cool. I’ve done this kind of thing before. It’s perfectly normal to be scared.”

  “Would you listen to yourself?” she said. “I’m not some damsel in distress, Helsing. How many times have I saved your butt?”

  “Who’s counting?”

  “I’ll stay out here on watch. If Barnum shows up, I’ll holler. Likewise, if you get into any trouble, shout and I’ll come running.”

  “You sure?”

  She shrugged. “Someone has to haul your ass out of the fire. It’s usually me.”

  Max nodded and set off across the bleached grass toward the ramshackle building. As he approached, he allowed his own light beam to pass across the shack. It looked abandoned, a ruin from a bygone age. Nobody could live here. Then his flashlight picked out the big jar of pickles beyond a broken window, glowing like unearthly green eggs in a specimen jar.

  “Mr. Barnum?” he called, suddenly remembering it was probably best to announce one’s arrival when trespassing on the land of a crazy old mountain man. “It’s Max Helsing. We met in Bone Creek the other day, at the general store. I know it’s late, but I was hoping I could ask you a few questions?”

  He kept walking, stepping up to the door.

  “Mr. Barnum?”

  He knocked on the rotten timber, and the door creaked open. Max looked back at Syd, who stood thirty feet away in the moonlight. She ushered him onward, nodding enthusiastically. Max smiled and turned back to the shack, his smile instantly slipping.

  “Nope,” he whispered. “As vibes go, this isn’t a good one.”

  He stepped over the threshold, swinging the flashlight in broad sweeping arcs so they took in as much of the room as possible. A rusty tin basin sat on a table by the window, a stack of pots towering within it, housing a mob of fat flies. A rustic rocking chair was positioned in front of a stone fireplace that was covered in thick layers of black soot. Beside the chair was a chest doubling as a table, a tumbler and an empty bottle on its lid. The decor was decidedly grim, with a macabre collection of animal skulls adorning every bit of wall space. A big bear skull took pride of place above the hearth, while the majority of bleached, bony heads had belonged to stags. Antlers twisted and fought with one another, cluttering the timber panels. The chill reminded Max of a morgue.

  “Mr. Barnum?” said Max hopefully. He stepped through the room, stumbling over detritus. Empty tins of chewing tobacco, glass bottles, and tin plates littered a stained circular rug. There was a smell, all too familiar to Max. In his thirteen years he’d seen a fair few dead bodies—some of them even walked and talked. Unless he was very much mistaken, he was catching that distinct whiff in the air right now. He tried to find the source of it, but the stench was fighting with many others that occupied the shack.

  At the back of the hut, a bed occupied the corner of the room. The wall above the bed had yellowed scraps of parchment and notes pinned to it. Max edged nearer, letting his flashlight run up and down it. There was a shape beneath the stained gray sheet, distinct and lumpy. Max gulped as he walked closer, gripping his flashlight in his right hand while drying the palm of his left on the leg of his jeans. He held the light like a club, ready to strike should anything happen. Should anything happen? Max shook his head. Something always happened. He was Max Helsing, for goodness sake.

  He grabbed the sheet and whipped it back. There was no body. Clothes littered the mattress, jumbled together, stinking and soiled.

  “They don’t need washing,” said Max. “They need incinerating.”

  His flashlight drifted over the notes. They were ramblings, scrawled in the most illegible hand. One appeared to be a map scribbled onto an aged scroll with curling edges, held in place by a single rusty tack. Max leaned close, inspecting it. Without a doubt, this was the surrounding countryside, with the hermit’s shack, Battle Falls, Bone Creek, and the camp all marked out. What made the hairs tingle on the back of his arms were the red circles. The river below the falls was marked; could that have been the water nymphs? The cliffs had a mark too, where he’d encountered the rock drake. So what was the additional red circle, with a cross scratched through it, not far from the hermit’s shack? It appeared to be farther upstream, toward one of the mountain’s rockier regions. And what did the cross mean? Max grabbed the scroll, the tack pinging off, and stuffed it into his pocket.

  He wandered back to the center of the shack, collapsing into the rocker. He let it tip back, creaking on its runners, and considered the situation. Barnum had been Max’s best hope of finding Boyle. If it weren’t for the giant pickle jar by the sink window, Max would’ve been convinced the old hermit no longer lived here.

  His eyes passed over the chest beside the chair, and the tumbler
and bottle. He picked up the bottle and placed it on the floor. Taking the grubby tumbler in his hand, he shone his flashlight on the drinking vessel. It was empty, but whatever the last contents had been had left a dark residue in the bottom of the glass. Max sniffed it, dabbed it with a fingertip. It came away sticky, red. Blood? He placed the tumbler on the floor and lifted the lid of the chest.

  There was poor old Barnum. The hermit’s corpse was folded up inside the heavy valise. He had been drained of blood, his parchment-thin skin clinging to his bones, lips peeled back in a terrified death mask. Max was rising, up out of the chair, suddenly springing to life, but he wasn’t alone.

  A cloud of black soot exploded from the chimney as a scrawny shape crawled out of the stone chute, landing on the ground beside Max. Between him and the door, the floor suddenly erupted, the circular rug taking off into the air, sending the rubbish that had littered it flying. A trapdoor had crashed open in the floor, allowing the second hidden vampire to pick its moment to reveal itself.

  “Oh boy!” shouted Max, trying to maneuver himself into a better position between the two monsters who circled him, keen to keep him between them. “I do love a surprise party!”

  The first vampire was clearly an adolescent, the flaps of skin connecting its arms to its torso still only wafer-thin. Dead black eyes, like those of a shark, fixed on Max as the creature dipped its pale white head up and down, gauging its enemy. It hung back, awaiting the command of its master.

  Max kept the big one in his sight line. It was probably the maker of the adolescent. While the smaller creature was skin and bone, the mature one was solid, its broad chest revealing the unmistakable pronounced rib cage of an adult. The wings were more substantial too, powerful enough to grant it flight, not that there was room in Barnum’s shack. Its flesh had a pale blue hue that seemed to glow in the flashlight’s beam. It hissed, showing Max those trademark canines, its jaw yawning open to reveal more rows of smaller razor-sharp teeth lining its throat. A sinuous black tongue snaked out of its throat, undulating and glistening as it ran across those terrible fangs.

  “Have to say, this was the last thing I was expecting tonight. You guys are too kind. . . . Did you bake a cake?”

  Max stepped around the rocker. “Are we going to play games?” He grabbed the arm of the chair. “What are we drinking?”

  “You, Van Helsing!”

  The words sounded in Max’s head, the psychic attack almost stunning him, as the pair of vampires surged forward.

  Max’s first volley was at the adult sucker, the flashlight flying from his hand and striking it square in the face. He heard the glass lens crack along with the vampire’s nose as the creature crashed wide of him in a screeching, half-blind fury. The adolescent was leaping, though. And Max was falling, deliberately. He dragged the rocking chair with him as the fledgling vampire landed in its spokes. Max twisted and turned, keeping its mouth from his face. Its hands and forearms reached through the bars in the back of the rocker, long taloned fingers clawing at Max’s chest. The boy from Gallows Hill twisted the chair around counterclockwise, and the vampire’s arms were both trapped between the struts of timber. Max roared as he forced it around, the monster screaming. Another yell from Max as he forced it home. Snap! One vampire arm went like a stalk of celery; then the other followed it. Max pushed the chair and wailing monster aside.

  He didn’t have time to catch his breath. He rolled forward, and not a moment too soon, as the adult vampire’s clawed toes struck the floorboards where his head had been a heartbeat before. Max could see its face was torn, the blue skin running dark with black blood where the flashlight had struck it dead center.

  “Yikes,” said Max. “Looks like I’ve ruined your good looks.”

  “The King in Yellow comes for you, Van Helsing.”

  Max was running for the door, hurdling the maimed adolescent on the floor. He stamped on the chair as he passed over it, crushing its frame and sending daggers of wood into the young sucker’s flesh. The adult was faster though, diving across the room like a bolt of pale blue lightning and blocking his path. Max leaped clear of it as it lashed out with one of those long disjointed legs again, narrowly missing him with its clawed toes. He ended up in the kitchen, the adult close behind. Max jumped onto the wobbling table, reaching for the windowsill and knocking over the tin washtub, which landed with a clang. He grabbed at the window frame, trying to force it open, but it was hopeless. Instead, Max caught the palm of his left hand on the broken glass. It came away bloody. The sucker made a gurgling sound of anticipation, its mouth stretching as the black tongue pulsed and quivered with excitement.

  “A drink!”

  “Bottoms up,” called Max, tossing the jar of pickles at the monster. The glass shattered as it struck its head, shards peppering the blue flesh, vinegar dousing it, surging down its throat and across its torn, bloody skin. The vampire screeched and staggered as Max leaped off the wobbling kitchen table and hit it like a linebacker, or the best impression of one he could muster. Boy and vampire raced across the room, the sucker temporarily blinded. Max drove it into the wall across the shack, skewering the fiend on a multitude of antlers. The fight slowly drained from the vampire, along with rivulets of foul black blood, as Max wheeled away from the twitching terror. He took a breath and turned around.

  The adolescent was there, towering over him, throwing its broken arms around the boy’s shoulders to overlap in a lover’s embrace and pulling him close. Max felt it draw him in, heard the splintered bones protruding from those fractured limbs grating together against his back. He tried to knee it in the groin, or what groin the monster had, but its clawed toes dug into Max’s Chuck Taylors. The jaws snapped, the hideous tongue licking Max’s cheek as it closed in.

  The creature stopped suddenly, the dead shark eyes swelling as if they might pop. Max looked down and spied a crooked spindle from the rocking chair protruding from the adolescent’s chest. The broken limbs went loose as the monster toppled lifelessly to one side. Syd stood in its place, her hands trembling, coated in its black blood.

  “Holy smoke, Max!” she said, clearly shaken. “Are you okay? It looks like a bomb went off in here.”

  “Trust me,” whispered Max, hugging his friend. “It was like this when I got here.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  A FOREST PAINTED RED

  The game had changed and the chatter had ceased. Eightball was hunkered down, his tiny legs carrying his spherical body over roots and rocks. His head remained dipped, nostrils flaring as he stuck to the scent of their quarry. Wing followed the hellhound, remaining exactly where Jed could see him. He’d told the kid he had to keep him safe from harm, and that meant keeping him close at all times. They traveled in darkness now, their passage dependent on the moon and starlight that found its way through the tall pines.

  They’d been tracking the beast for almost an hour now, the trail leading them west, ever higher. Jed had buttoned Wing’s jacket up and lent him his flat cap; the old man could feel the cold in his bones, so chances were that the boy was suffering too, though he wasn’t complaining now. Wing had proven himself invaluable in recent months, helping Jed to catalog Helsing House’s tumbledown library. He often came to help when his homework—of which there was a great deal—was done, and nothing ever seemed too much trouble for him. If ever a monster hunter was destined to remain a base controller and not a field agent, Wing was that monster hunter.

  As they walked, Jed lifted up his flashlight and gave it a quick inspection. It was older than him. A lot older. To the uninitiated, and at a glance, it probably did look like a regular flashlight. Jed kept his arthritic hand tightly clasped around it.

  Soon their walk became a scramble, as the path became more rugged. They were traversing an incline of near forty-five degrees, Jed and Wing pushing and pulling each other uphill. Now it was Jed’s turn to make too much noise, cursing as his bad leg slowed his progress. And i
t was Wing’s turn to be there for him, helping him climb. Eightball would stop on occasion, waiting for the humans to catch up before continuing on his way.

  Their route slowly leveled out. As the dog trotted along the forest floor, Wing and Jed pushed through the bushes.

  “I could actually get used to this,” said Wing. “Maybe I should ask my mom and dad if they’ll let me—”

  Jed’s hand was suddenly on Wing’s shoulder, gripping him hard enough to silence him. The boy’s eyes went wide as he looked at his companion, but Jed’s gaze was fixed upon the bushes. He grabbed a handful of branches, pulling their emerald leaves closer and into the starlight. They shone, spattered with speckles of blood. Wing went pale.

  Hush. Jed mouthed the word, and Wing read it loud and clear.

  Jed reached down slowly, his hand settling on Eightball. The dog didn’t make a sound. His flesh, normally so loose and wobbly, was suddenly hard and hot as sheet metal, fresh from the furnace. A paw print lay in the packed earth before Eightball, larger than Jed’s hand. Some kind of bear, perhaps? Jed’s eyesight wasn’t what it had been, especially in the half-light. He ran his fingertips over the imprint, felt them dip into its hollow. It was big and heavy, for sure. He rose back to his full height.

  Jed advanced, slipping between the branches as the hellhound stalked forward slowly. Wing was now behind, his feet going where Jed’s went. Ahead, in the woods, they could see the flickering light of a fire, sending shadows dancing through the gloom. They could also hear a growling sound, the snapping of jaws, and the rending of flesh.

  With luck, they might surprise the beast, catching it unawares as it feasted. It had been too long since Jed had been on the hunt. His battling days had begun on the streets of New York City. Brawling had led to boxing, the boy from Brooklyn making a name for himself as Killer Coolidge. His success had brought him to the attention of Algernon Helsing, and the rest was history. It was coming back to him, the old thrill of the approaching fight, the chance to go toe-to-toe with a worthy opponent. Humans provided a certain challenge, but nothing came close to a battle with a monster.