Keep in a Cold, Dark Place by Michael Stewart

Author:Michael Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indie Author Project
Published: 2017-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Chupacabra. Even though she didn’t know what the word meant, it elicited shudders. Limpy copied it into the search engine, squeezed her eyes shut, and hit enter.

She skimmed images first. Whatever had hatched from the eggs was nothing known to humans. Not scientifically at least. The chupacabra was a legend. A mythical nightmare.

Images of the monster ranged from a skinny piglike creature with more teeth than could possibly fit in a mouth, to a bear-sized demon with bat wings and spines running down its back. Nothing came close to her big-eyed, fuzzy Chup. She might have dismissed the whole thing if not for the memory of Ghost’s jaw.

On she searched, but Limpy didn’t have time to be thorough, only to scan headlines about sightings. Most of the images were drawings or paintings; the only actual photographs of the beast either appeared fake or of what might as well have been mangy old coyotes whose fur had been rubbed away.

Articles and websites said they were fast. Faster than the human eye. Evidently the legend originated in Puerto Rico.

She opened the mouth of her backpack and peered inside. Cute, black round eyes stared up at her. “Are you chupacabra?” she asked to more blinking. She shook her head.

What if they were? What had she unleashed? Was she like Pandora, opening the box to the world’s evils? Still, excitement built in her, too. A legendary creature? On her farm? A thrill washed over her skin, leaving gooseflesh in its wake.

She didn’t think that the creatures could be truly evil. Like Limpy herself, Ghost was misunderstood—and Dylan was going to shoot at it like he would a coyote or fox. He would be hunting tonight, hunting the fuzzy pet she’d sworn to protect. But only if Limpy gave him the ammunition. Pets who had called to her. Pets she had freed and who were her responsibility.

The clock ticked on the wall.

She had a few more minutes before the start of classes. She hurried into the periodicals area to search through back issues of the paper, searching for any headline that talked about curses, or creatures—anything strange.

The earliest papers were now stored on microfiche with the originals kept in safe storage. This made for easy scanning. Articles flickered past on a large white screen. Flesherton hadn’t always had the Herald, so the first headlines of the paper were the last ones covering the town’s founding father. Aside from that the pages were filled with business openings, wedding, birth, and death announcements, and sometimes news from overseas like the sinking of the Titanic.

Turned out that one of the residents had been aboard the ship and drowned. The last wire home had been a mad rant about “goblins in third class.” A warning that had been dismissed as meaning rats.

Mr. Flesh seemed to have lost his marbles at his end, too. He’d become a recluse. “Mr. Flesh’s home to be sheathed in copper. Fears alien mind rays.” Decades of slow changes to the town followed his death until another headline caught her eye.

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