Haven hollow 00 21 to.., p.144
haven hollow 00 - 21 to 30,
p.144
Some folk thought the Rapture was upon us—the two churches on either side of town were full to the brim. But when the first people began to change, those thoughts got stamped out right quick.
The changes started slow, with neighbors screaming in their homes, apparently losing their dang minds, then running out into the woods, never to be seen again. Those that were seen again didn’t fare much better—some of them started sprouting horns, others tails, some now had claws, and others, fur. We even found some with gills but, unfortunately, we couldn’t get them to water in time.
I still have nightmares about that.
Overall, there was sheer and utter panic, people yelling and praying as they slowly began to shift into unthinkable things, but no one knew what was happening. The only thing we did know, the only thing we could attribute the horror to, was the burnt, blood-colored clouds that had floated into our town and then floated right back on out again. That danged fog had changed everyone and everything in Windy Ridge. And it had only taken a week to do it.
It’s hard to believe that those fairy tale monsters you hear about as kids are actually real—well, that is until you wake up and see dryads frolicking through the trailers and swamp creatures soaking in kiddie pools as they wave to you with newly webbed hands.
Yep, that red fog had affected every one of us, but not in the same way. The only person in town that hadn’t changed into a full-bodied creature was Boone, and that was only ‘cause the fog had cured the lung cancer that was slowly and mercilessly killing him. Not only that, but the fog also left him with a keen invulnerability to any kind of harm.
Like I said, everyone had changed, and I wasn’t immune. One day I woke up to a ray of sunshine peeking on through my trailer window and let me tell you, that ray of light felt like the devil’s own poison once it hit my skin. Next thing I knew? My mouth was full of blood.
Naturally, I panicked and rushed to the restroom, only to find I’d grown fangs which had gone and left two holes in my bottom lip. Only once I caught my breath and forcibly told myself to calm down did I realize my blood tasted like the gods’ very own nectar. Thankfully, everything else about my appearance stayed pretty much the same, except for the fact that the years stopped hitting me and I had two pinprick scars underneath my lower lip. When normies came around (which wasn’t often), I said the scars were from old piercings.
Technically, I wasn’t fibbing.
I was never one for old folks’ tales, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t guess what I’d turned into. I could run like hell and any injury I had was healed within a minute. I had superhuman strength, couldn’t stand the sun, and I’d stopped aging. And I had a hankering for blood that was one hundred times as strong as the worst craving you ever had during shark week.
Yep, I’d gone vampy.
And that was when I realized that everything I thought I knew about bloodsuckers was wrong. Well, almost everything. For one thing—that whole bit about vampires fearing crosses? A bucket of horse manure. I can still pop by the local Baptist church and not even flinch. My reflection still looks back at me in the mirror whenever I’m in a visiting sort of mood and I have to admit, I look better than I have in years. My hair’s as red as it was when I was a girl, and those heavy baby diapers that used to hang under my eyes? Now a thing of the past. In fact, all my age lines disappeared the day I grew fangs and the chicken pox scars Ma (rest her soul) described as giving me ‘character’ now are nowhere to be found.
I could still handle garlic, both in salt and bulb form, and, thank God, there was no fear of running water that kept me from showering. The oddest thing, though, was that I wasn’t actually dead. My heart still beat, chugging on like a determined engine in a worn-out, old Ford. And I definitely hadn’t passed away to awaken as a walking corpse Nosferatu style with an oversized head, ridiculously long fingernails and bucked-teeth fangs. In fact, near as I could tell, I never actually died.
My daughter, Sicily (the smartest of us), believes there’s some kind of scientific explanation for everything that happened. She chalked up my blood hunger to a severe vitamin deficiency and who knows? Maybe that’s it. That girl is smarter than I could ever be, so I usually leave the theories to her. I don’t know if we’ll ever find out exactly what happened the day that fog rolled in, but the good thing about Windy Ridge is that its people are resilient. We adapted, and now, life almost feels like normal again.
I grabbed a fresh batch of chicken tenders (uncooked and minus the breading) from the kitchen and shouldered my way out through the double doors, striding over to a table that usually fit four but was now encompassed entirely by one man. I’m comfortable saying ‘man’ because he did still have some human features, like the large feet that spread out beneath the table (even if they were covered in course, brown hair) and the nose that sniffed the food as I put it down. But that nose wasn’t quite human, elongated as it was.
Bud reminded me of Barf, John Candy’s dog character from Space Balls. He had that sorta look and was overlarge, probably the largest creature in town (I’d guess him to be over six-foot-five), with long, shaggy brown hair, and eyes that betrayed his kindness. His arms matched the color of his hair and were patched with the same fur that covered the rest of him. When he grinned at me, he revealed a set of powerful canine teeth. Reaching for the chicken with his paws, he curled his claws around one of them and gave me a great big grin.
“Summa bitch, Twila, I’m gonna need me three more orders!” he said as he glanced down at the chicken tenders which were piled high on the plate in front of him.
“I’m gonna have to charge you for more, Bud,” I informed him.
He nodded, before looking up at me. “What aboutta trade?”
I cocked my head to the side. “Whattdya got for me?”
“I caught me something that used to be a deer out in my traps early this morning.”
I nodded. We were getting low on meat. “Sure—that should do.” Then I tapped him on his big, furry shoulder. “You enjoy your breakfast now, Bud.”
“Thank you, Twila, m’dear.”
I smiled, watching him tear into the chicken with gusto. He snorted, wiping food out from his beard (and a wolf with a beard is a definite sight to see) and rested his elbows on the table, just like he had before he’d turned into a wolfman.
“You gonna show up to the meetin’ today?” Bud called out to me when I was about to walk away. “Ol’ Ned’s been workin’ on his trap sketches. You oughta see what he’s gotten up to.”
I pursed my lips and sighed—the ‘meeting’ Bud was talking about was a get-together of the local monster hunters in town, and I wasn’t excited to be included among them. “I guess.”
Bud looked up at me. “It’s right important you show up, Twila. You’re a valuable member o’ our team, you are.”
I nodded, because I’d missed their last three meetings and I did feel a certain level of guilt. “After I make sure Sicily’s settled.”
“Feel free to bring ‘er,” Bud said, and I caught the excited glint in his eye before he could hide it. “Maybe she’ll find somethin’ interestin’.”
“Quit tryin’ to squeeze the smart outta my daughter.” I grinned, shaking my head as I patted him on the shoulder again. I’d known Bud all my life, which wasn’t that unusual since I’d been born in Windy Ridge, but he was still like an older brother to me. “I’ll let you know after my shift. Promise.”
Bud nodded, mouth full of poultry, and I continued on to the rest of my patrons. I passed by a stony-looking man who was sitting in a booth three down from Bud and slid him his coffee. ‘Stony’ was a good description, seeing as how his skin was fine granite and gray wings sprouted from his back (he kept them folded while inside the diner). Stony didn’t sip the coffee, instead, he brought it to his nose for a long sniff. Probably still aching for the caffeine even if his intestines were now made out of rock.
The plate I was holding—one full of dirt, leaves, and twigs—I handed to a pretty faun woman who was sitting beside the potted plants at the back of the joint. She gave me a relieved smile as she took it, eyeing the large fronds of the fern with definite hunger. Something wet dropped on my shoulder, and I looked up to see the man-bat hanging from one of the diner’s fluorescent lights. He flashed me an apologetic smile as he licked the juice which was still falling from his lips.
“You gotta get you some real OJ, Twila,” he said as he looked at me and shook his head.
“It ain’t the season for oranges, Cletus,” I answered. “You know that.”
“This Sunny D shit’s gonna ‘cause the death of me.”
“It’s the closest thing to orange juice we got.”
I walked on by as my attention caught on the figure hunched in the corner booth, her head hidden by a mountain of thick textbooks. Now she was probably the most unconventional creature in Windy Ridge.
A brown-haired human I knew as my daughter.
I grinned at Sicily and finished up the rest of my orders before sliding into the booth opposite her with a plate of food. She didn’t look up, and that special frown of hers was fully in place—one that only appeared when she was deeply entrenched in a new book. The girl read more than everyone in Windy Ridge combined—which might have not been saying much ‘cause I was fairly sure a good portion of the population couldn’t read at all.
She jumped when I shoved the toasted ravioli under her nose, followed swiftly by a large glass of water. “Y’know you still have to eat, right?” I asked in my best Ma tone. “If you don’t keep your strength up, something else is gonna end up eatin’ you.”
Sicily laughed and made a face at me in reply. “Nah. I can just call for you and you’ll take care of them before they get to me.”
“I’m not able to pop outta thin air, Sicily,” I said, tapping the plate with my finger. “Eat.”
She rolled her eyes, but then did as I’d ordered. I, meanwhile, took a glance at the cover of her book, frowning at the title: Real Accounts of Fake Monsters. “I thought we agreed to save the research until after your homework was done.”
“Homework is done,” Sicily said with a mouthful of I’m not telling the truth. I raised my eyebrow.
“Sicily.”
“Okay, okay, I didn’t do it yet.” She folded her arms, gesturing to the book. “But c’mon, Mama, this is way more important than calculus. What we’re dealing with could change evolution as we know it.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll be sure to tell that to Darwin next time he’s in town.”
“I’m serious, Mama. What if that fog comes back?”
It was the question everyone in town had been asking since the fog came and went. Since it had been over a year, I didn’t think it was a worry we needed to have any longer. “You know as well as I do that that darned fog isn’t coming back.”
It was almost funny that the only human left in this town was more interested in the fog’s origins than anyone else. Sicily had been at her father’s when the fog rolled into town (and then rolled back out just as fast), so she wasn’t affected. I’ve still never been more thankful for anything in my life.
“We don’t know for sure,” she argued.
“While that might be true,” I began, taking a math textbook from the pile and plopping it beside her plate. “My hand is gonna have a lot more impact on your backside if you don’t hop to it.”
That got her to smile again (mostly because I’d never laid a hand on her and never would), and she nodded sarcastically, scooping up more ravioli and prying the book’s pages open. I sat back, watching her reluctantly glance at her math homework, and somewhere in my chest, I felt my heart ache just a bit.
Sicily took after her father, with his brown hair and eyes instead of the messy red nest that sat atop my head, and for good and for bad, she reminded me of him whenever I really got a good look at her.
Her father was someone I’d met in Branson, the largest city from Windy Ridge and over two hundred miles away. His name was Alton Reid, a man who’d come from old money but acted as kind as the poorest of us. But that was then and this was now and as my mama used to say—there weren’t no point in dwelling on the past.
I heard someone calling my name from another table and so I stood up, kissing Sicily on the head before rushing back onto the floor.
When Sicily was born, I’d made a promise to myself to make sure she could leave this place. She could leave and never come back to Windy Ridge if she wanted to—she could make a name and a life for herself somewhere in the big world, maybe Branson or maybe somewhere even bigger. And I would do my damnedest to give her every possibility of freedom and release from this tiny, backwoods town the two of us had grown up in.
But God must have a bad sense of humor, because all Sicily wanted to do was stay. Stay and find out what in tarnation was going on in Windy Ridge. She wanted to find out why everyone had changed when the fog rolled in, why I’d changed.
But the last thing I wanted was for her to stay here, trapped in this town because of me.
Shotguns and Shifters
is available at:
Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK
Return to the Table of Contents
About J.R. Rain:
J.R. Rain is the international bestselling author of over seventy novels, including his popular Samantha Moon and Jim Knighthorse series. His books are published in five languages in twelve countries, and he has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide.
Please visit him at www.jrrain.com.
Join his newsletter here.
Follow him on Amazon.
Follow him on Goodreads.
Follow him on BookBub.
Follow him on Facebook.
Join his Facebook Group.
~~~~~
Also available:
Mother, wife, private instigator...vampire!
The first book in Amazon’s #1 bestselling vampire series:
New Moon Rising
Vampire for Hire #1
by J.R. Rain
Available now!
Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK
~~~~~
Return to the Table of Contents
About H.P. Mallory:
H.P. Mallory is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. She writes paranormal fiction, heavy on the romance! H.P. lives in Southern California with her son and a cranky cat.
DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOKS FROM HP MALLORY NOW!
Getting your FREE e-books is as easy as visiting:
www.hpmallory.com
Enter your email in the link at the top of the home page
Check your email!
~~~~~
Also available:
Who would you choose: a noble warlock (who also happens to be your boss) or a rogue of a vampire with his own agenda?
The first book in the New York Times bestselling Witch and Warlock series:
Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble
Witch and Warlock #1
by H.P. Mallory
Available now!
Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK
~~~~~
Return to the Table of Contents
J R Rain, haven hollow 00 - 21 to 30
