Open Season Read online

  Open Season

  Spells, Salt, & Steel 2

  Gail Z. Martin

  Larry N. Martin

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  About the Authors

  Falstaff Books

  Chapter 1

  The bloodsuckers were winning.

  Not vampires. Vamps I could handle. A nice sharp machete to the neck, and the head goes rolling fast as you can say, “Drac’s a dick.”

  Mosquitoes—now those suckers are evil incarnate.

  Since I found myself in the middle of the Geneva Swamp hunting for a marsh monster, mosquitoes went with the territory. And no matter how much “Fuck Off” I sprayed, they seemed to find the spots I missed. Slapping at them would just end up tossing me out of my canoe, so they sang their high-pitched squeal around my ears, and I tried not to fantasize about eliminating their species.

  Deep inside the Geneva Swamp, I found it hard to remember how close we were to civilization because the scrub plants and cattails blocked my view. If I listened carefully, I could hear the cars on the highway, but they were miles behind me as I paddled into the thick of the swamp.

  Geneva Marsh stretches for about twelve miles in the upper corner of Northwestern Pennsylvania, the biggest marsh in the state. Everyone around here calls it “Geneva Swamp,” regardless of its real name. No one knows for sure how deep it is. When the big bridges for I-79 were built, the pylons went down two hundred feet. Folks say they never hit bottom, just sank deep enough to be held up by the pressure of the muck around them. I’ve heard stories that construction equipment would vanish, sinking into the depths. People say that once, a whole train disappeared into the green waters.

  In other words, a marsh monster couldn’t ask for a better place to hide. And I was the sorry son of a bitch who had to go in after it.

  I’m Mark Wojcik, auto mechanic and monster hunter. I’ve got no illusions about being some kind of hero; I just do the dirty work so other people can sleep at night, peacefully believing that supernatural shit isn’t real. Like any public service, it’s a thankless job with lousy pay. Then again, no one gets into hunting for fun and profit. We lose people we love, and it’s all about vengeance. In my case, I lost my dad, brother, uncle, and cousin to a wendigo on a deer hunt up in the Big Woods. They died. I lived. Most days, I’m convinced they were the lucky ones.

  In other circumstances, I could have enjoyed the beauty of the marsh. Green and lush, far removed from the noise and bustle of people, it sheltered bald eagles, ducks, geese, and herons. Cattails grew thick around the shore, along with pickerelweed and loosestrife. Duckweed gave the water a green cast, and lily pads tangled up the boating channels. Old trees verged on the marsh, some split from a recent lightning storm. In the more solid parts of the wetland, deer and fox and God knows what else thrived. Big-ass frogs harrumphed from the shallows in a bass chorus with a thousand voices.

  And somewhere in the dark waters, hidden beneath the pretty plants, lay a killer.

  Folks around these parts know that swamps are dangerous places. That goes double for bottomless swamps. You get snake-bit out here or half-drown yourself, and you’d better be able to haul your ass back for help, or they’ll find your carcass when the vultures are done with it. Still, losing just one fisherman in a season would be cause for talk at the local watering hole. Losing three? That made people edgy and fueled rumors about snakeheads and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and every other rubber-costume monster ever seen on the silver screen.

  Before the fishermen went missing, no one thought much about the bad catch this season in the swamp. Or how there seemed to be fewer ducks than before.

  My paddle dipped into the water, and the canoe tracked silently across the surface. Skimmer bugs tempted the bowfin and other fish that swam in the marsh’s depths. Ducks and geese honked from their hiding places in the reeds. The swamp smelled like wet mud and rotting vegetation, with a little wild garlic and sulfur thrown in for good measure. I picked up a whiff of decomposition and wondered if a dead fish had floated to the surface.

  Not with my luck. Up ahead, tangled in the spatterdocks, lay what was left of one of the missing fishermen. Just the bones remained, shreds of what might have been a flannel shirt and blue jeans clinging to the skeleton. I didn’t figure he’d gotten there by himself. First off, no boat was in sight, not even an overturned canoe. Second, as I got closer, I could see that many of the bones were cracked as if the corpse had been squeezed.

  Or digested and pooped out of a honkin’ big marsh monster.

  I didn’t have much to go on when it came to hunting the damn creature. The guy I met in a Conneaut Lake bar who claimed to have seen it gave me a description that sounded like he’d watched re-runs of that sand worm movie with Kevin Bacon once too often, mixed with a liberal dose of Jack Daniels. The guy at the bait store said he’d heard the thing looked like a giant salamander with big teeth. I reminded him that we were too far north for either gators or crocs. The best look I got was from a kid who flew a drone with a camera over the swamp at dusk and got a photo of something that looked like a cross between a squid and a pile of wet leaves.

  I watched the grainy footage from the action cam duct-taped to the drone and had to admit that no creature I’d ever seen moved like the thing in the video. On the muddy, not-quite-solid areas of the swamp, the creature schlumped along like a shabby octopus. In the water, it moved with frightening speed, and the shingle-like flaps that covered it blended in among the weeds and lily pads.

  Everyone was talking about the “Geneva Marsh Monster,” but no one knew what the damn thing was, let alone how to kill it.

  So here I was, loaded up with more weapons than Elmer Fudd in duck season, looking for a carnivorous cryptid in a bottomless swamp. What could possibly go wrong?

  Fuck-all, that’s what.

  I’d brought along a fish finder sonar that I’d borrowed from one of the guys at the auto repair shop I own—the job I do when I’m not hunting things that supposedly don’t exist. It took a bit of fiddling to figure it out. Then I practiced for a while on the big goldfish tank at the pet store before they made me leave. It would have been nice to bring out my friend Louie’s bass boat, but the swamp barely had enough clear water to let a canoe through.

  So here I sat, with the fish finder clipped to the front of the canoe, trying to sort out a monster from old logs and whatever swamp junk and critters were down below. Do I know how to have a good time or what?

  I like deer hunting, but I’ve never had the patience for fishing. Hunting just seems more active than floating around in a boat waiting for a fish to bite. Haven’t gone deer hunting since everything went to shit, but I used to enjoy it. Good excuse to go for a walk in the woods on a snowy day and come back to a warm cabin to drink beer with my buddies. The kind of stuff I hunt now definitely makes for an “active” evening, if by “active” you mean “running for your life.”

  Sitting here, getting sucked dry by mosquitoes and watching a screen that looked like a bad hand-held video game from the nineties got on my last nerve. I tried for serenity and contemplation, listening to nature sounds and watching the birds. A duck came in for a landing a few yards from the bow of my canoe and floated, nice and peaceful.

  Until a mat of “leaves” snapped up, something long and pink grabbed the duck, and it disappeared. Seconds later, nothing remained but ripples.

  I pulled out a harpoon gun and held it up to my shoulder, sighting onto the camouflaged monster. Then I pulled the trigger and watched the spear dig into the flap that had lifted to suck in the Mallard. Instead of part
ing the vegetation and disappearing into the water, the point dug into flesh. A strange, warbling shriek filled the air, and something dark and slimy pooled on the surface of the water.

  Then the damn thing took off like it had an Evinrude strapped to its ass. The harpoon had a long coil of rope threaded through a grommet on the front of the boat, and I grabbed the rope with my gloved left hand, holding on to the edge of the canoe with the other.

  I’ve never water skied in a canoe before. I don’t recommend it.

  Without the glove, the rope would have stripped the skin from my palm in seconds. As it was, the damn thing practically wrenched my arm from the socket, and I had to plant my feet wide to remain in the back of the canoe and stay level. My right hand had a death grip on the canoe, so I didn’t end up being pulled out and trying to ski in my Timberlands. I knew I couldn’t hold on much longer, but I was also sure I couldn’t paddle fast enough to keep up, and the little putt-putt engine on the back of the canoe wasn’t going to do the job.

  Worst of all, the harpoon just seemed to annoy the creature. It left a trail of black blood like an oil slick, so I’d hit it but hadn’t done enough damage to slow it down.

  Just as I reached for a new weapon, the slimy son of a bitch changed directions, dragging the canoe across the tops of the duckweed and water lilies, and jolting my ass so hard on the seat I was going to be bruised for a week. I’d have a hell of a time paddling out of the tangle of weeds.

  The fish finder on the bow lost its little electronic mind as we zoomed over plants and swished by lots of things beneath the water that might or might not have had fins. I didn’t have time to find out. My balls were taking a beating against the hard metal seat, and if I hadn’t been pissed off before, that surely didn’t improve my mood.

  A large bird flew over, big enough to cast a shadow like a WWII bomber. It might have been a curious bald eagle, but with my luck, it was a vulture claiming first place in line for the pickings. I’d have flipped it off if I could have spared a hand.

  A flock of frightened birds took wing, flapping away from the disturbance. I had a choice of having my arm pulled off or losing the thing in the weeds. Bad enough to be chasing a monster that looked like a combination octopus/trap spider, but at the speed it was towing me through the vegetation, the canoe kept smacking into the surface and soaking me with greenish goo. It looked like a soaking wet trash heap with eyes, and I decided to call it Marjory.

  Then the creature turned back and headed straight for me.

  I already knew Marjory was a man-eater, and I had no desire to follow the duck into its gullet. I let go of the rope and scrambled for a new weapon as it bore down on me.

  Marjory rose higher in the water, and I could see thick tentacles beneath its bulbous body. The top of the creature had greenish-brown overlapping skin flaps that made it look leafy. Under the surface, the skin looked smooth. I didn’t want to get close enough to find out.

  Then the monster flipped up the top of its “head” and exposed a wide opening that looked more like a sphincter than a mouth; I got a lot more invested in fighting fate and telling destiny to go screw itself.

  Damned if my bones were going to add fiber to Marjory’s diet.

  I grabbed for another weapon, my trusty grenade launcher pistol. In case the harpoon didn’t work, I’d fitted the shell with an explosive charge and a sharp steel barb. I faced down that asshole and fired.

  The barb hit the back of its…throat…and stuck. Marjory shuddered, her lid flopped back down, and she dove.

  Shit. I saw Marjory in all her tentacled glory sinking faster than a politician’s poll numbers, going straight down.

  What went down was likely to come back up, explosively fast.

  The paddles caught in the weeds when I tried to move the canoe away from the blast zone. Damned if I could remember how long the timer was on that charge, but it wasn’t near long enough for me to skedaddle.

  I’d come prepared for disaster this time, since it seems to follow me. I tethered the weapons bag to the canoe and kept it closed except for a Velcro flap I could use to grab stuff quick. If we flipped, my guns and knives stood a chance of not ending up in the depths. Much as I hated life vests, I wore one, cursing when it got in my way.

  I resisted the urge to put my head between my knees and kiss my ass goodbye. Instead, I grabbed the other glove and reached down on both sides of the canoe, grabbing a fistful of spatterdocks in each hand and hung on for dear life.

  A muffled boom sent the rest of the birds into the air, and my own personal tsunami lifted up the canoe as a rush of bubbles created a lump beneath the surface like a zit about to explode. A geyser of foul greenish water fountained up into the air, raining down on me and nearly swamping the canoe. I held on to the lily pads, white-knuckled, hoping they proved their reputation for hella long roots. I might end up with two dislocated shoulders instead of one, but damned if I was going to drown in a place that looked like a giant kale smoothie.

  Dead fish started bobbing to the surface, killed by the concussion below. Columns of bubbles streamed from deep in the swamp, and it was like a herd of cows farting in unison. The air stank of rotten eggs and decaying muck.

  Something big and solid blasted out of the water, tentacles thrashing, as Marjory rode the crest of the explosion. I might have overdone the charge since the top of her “head” was gone and bits of charred and still-burning monster flesh came raining down. It tore the spatterdocks out of my hands and hurled the canoe backward, rocking so hard I threw myself down to steady it and keep from capsizing.

  I heard a hiss and a crackle, and the water caught on fire, a flaming streak that seared across the duckweed and flambéed the dead fish. I’d forgotten that swamp gas is flammable as fuck. The flames rose half a foot into the air and blossomed out from the center, flashing all around my canoe, and I wondered if my life insurance would consider spontaneous combustion to be an act of God.

  The metal skin of the canoe warmed, but before I could react, the flames vanished as quickly as they had come. I sighed in relief and thanked my lucky stars, God, and every ancestor that went before me.

  A sodden, ichor-spattered mass of charred tentacles landed with a wet thump in the bow of the canoe as Marjory crashed down to Earth. One slippery tentacle slapped my face harder than a roadhouse hussy, while another landed a solid hit to my beleaguered balls. The canoe flailed back and forth, and between the smell and the bits of creature-goop that now covered me, I thought I might be boat sick.

  Nature recovers quickly. I still sat in shock with a lap full of monster guts amid blackened lily pads as the swamp came back to life. If the ducks noticed the carnage, they didn’t show it as they flapped to a landing. A hawk circled, probably sizing up a free meal. Fish bobbed to the surface to grab monster gobbets and pulled their treats into the depths. The cow-fart smell was gone, replaced by something akin to the scent of burned spinach. And I still had what was left of Marjory sprawled in my lap like a drunk date.

  Time to break up. I prodded the pale, flaccid meat sack that was left of Marjory with my paddle, flopping the blast-amputated tentacles and the black-streaked bulbous body into the water with an unceremonious plop. Fish churned the water, scrambling for the good bits, and I gave up, heaving my guts over the other side. Surprisingly, the upchuck was an improvement on the rotten egg and cow-fart taste it replaced.

  The fish finder beeped, proudly telling me it found something in the water. “You’re a day late and a dollar short, fucker,” I muttered, turning it off.

  It took me until almost dark to push-pull-paddle my way out, since the exploding swamp creature had sent the canoe into a tangle of weeds. By the time I hauled the boat and my gear bag out of the water, night had fallen, and one sketchy overhead light struggled to illuminate the gravel lot where I’d parked my truck. The bulb kept fritzing, and on TV, that would be the signal for demons or ghosts to ambush me.

  With the mood I was in, I pitied the fool that crossed my path, corpor
eal or not.

  The pullover sat just off the exit, across the street from a gas station and a concrete pad that had once been a shady bar. Two young men sat on the tailgate of a battered white pickup, and I couldn’t tell whether they were having a beer or smoking weed. They paused to watch me, and I imagine my monster-splattered appearance looked like I’d been slaughtering innocents in the depths of the marsh.

  My glare preempted anything they might have said, and whether they were high or drunk, they had enough self-preservation instinct not to piss off the guy covered in blood. I loaded the canoe and grabbed the tarp I kept to cover the driver’s seat, since this kind of thing happened far too often. Still grumbling to myself, I started the truck and peeled out of the lot, taking perverse pride in being enough of a dick to spray gravel in the direction of the potheads.

  The drive from Geneva to Atlantic was quiet, and I cranked up the radio, letting the Classic Vinyl channel occupy my thoughts. When I got back to my place, I hosed off the canoe, then washed out the back of my truck. If the water hadn’t been so damn cold, I would have turned the nozzle on myself as well, but I’d built a little shower off the back to keep me from tracking blood and guts into the house. I might live alone, but I still have standards.

  I left my boots on the porch after a quick rinse and peeled off my sodden but charnel-free clothing on the tile just inside the door. Demon met me at the door—my big, overly friendly Doberman who was way too interested in all the new smells in the gunk stuck to my body. I ruffled his ears, gave him a treat, and headed for the bathroom. A quick sprint got me into a hot shower, and I scrubbed down with Irish Spring until I couldn’t smell the stink anymore.

  All things considered, I’d made it back without injury, which was more than I could usually say. I ganked the ghoulie, didn’t lose my guns in the swamp, and my tetanus shots were up-to-date, so for once, I didn’t need the ER. I had my choice of a bottle of Jack or some cold beer in the fridge. Should have been a good night.