ADAM

 

Sunday January 12 - 1624 CST

Three days until Turbocharger activates

 

The creepy old guy across the street was still looking at me. No one else seemed to notice so it might have just been my paranoia. But ever since we showed up at the dilapidated old house this particular neighbor took a special interest in me and it was bordering on sinister. Sterling and Johnson didn't even seem to notice him though, so maybe it was just me.

We'd left Gunny Lively behind at the motel to watch our gear and then ventured out to a local residence that Sterling only referred to as "our first event site". It was something I'd heard mentioned in the past and mostly in whispers. There was some ugly history associated with it and people treated it like an unwanted memory that was best left forgotten. All I saw though was a broken down old house with its windows boarded up and yellow police tape over the door. There was a notice on the door that trespassers and squatters were prohibited by law. Needless to say I didn't expect anyone to still be living there. Nor was I surprised to find that the neighbors were a little weird.

"Adam, can you go find out what that man wants?" Sterling nodded towards the creepy neighbor that had been eyeing me the whole time. I'd gotten so focused on the rat motel of a home in front of us I didn't even notice the neighbor waving me over.

I sighed. "Sure."

"Good. Ask him if he's seen any unusual activity around here recently. He might have seen something to explain the recent flare up."

The old guy was wearing denim overalls which wasn't really that odd considering where we were. What got me though was that he wasn't wearing a shirt underneath, just his weathered old hide sprouting tufts of cottony white chest and arm hair just like the unkempt beard dangling off his jaw.

He tapped the end of his ironwood cane on the only other chair sitting out on the veranda. The cane and the chair both looked older than me. "Why don't you have a seat on that there chair?"

Or at least that's how I translated his words. The words "Why don't you" came out in some new language the guy seemingly invented and sounded more like a single word: "Waioncha".

While the cane seemed sturdy enough the chair would best be described as rickety and retired from the holding-people-up business. Thankfully it didn't collapse under my weight. "Uh, hi, sir. My name is Adam. What did you want to talk about?"

"You fellers are from the government, aren't you?" He stuck his chin out towards Sterling and Johnson.

I nodded. "We just want to find out what happened in that house across the street. Do you know anything about it?"

His gray eyes lost focus as he looked out at the dilapidated old ruin. "Yes…yes. I might know a thing or two about that old place. Strange things went on in there. Dark things."

"What sort of things?"

He squinted at my two partners who were now walking around behind the ruined home. "I know you might not believe the stories of some old hick. You come from a place where everything is all about computers and telephones and what men in white coats say is and isn't. But I'm tellin' you, son, there are things lurking in the dark that aren't of this world. And the people in that house are the ones bringing them here."

There had been a chill in the air that I couldn't explain earlier but now it made sense. Lousiana was a hot and humid place, but ever since we arrived at this house it sure didn't feel that way. Now I understood why. That place was still hot with transient energy. Which if you think about it is probably the worst way to describe a phenomenon that gives you the chills. "Sir, I believe you. I've personally seen those things lurking in the dark."

He smiled with teeth that were surprisingly straight and white. So much for stereotypes. "My gut told me you were a good boy. I knew it wasn't a coincidence neither. You ain't the first to come here lookin' for dark magic."

In any other situation I would immediately write off anyone who talked about dark magic. But not only could I feel it in the air, but I'd witnessed it first hand. It tells you a lot about how strange my life had become. "What do you mean? Who were the others?"

His eyes lost focus again as his thoughts wandered off to some distant time. "It was about two, three years ago that the army came by…"

I raised an eyebrow. "The army?"

"Yessir. They brought a buncha trucks and soldiers all decked out in green camouflage and with machine guns. Surrounded the place and told 'em come out with yer hands up. Them practitioners of the dark arts refused and sent out a monster instead. Big thing that was all arms and no body or head, like an octopus. There was a lot of hollerin' and a lot more shootin'. I couldn't tell you what happened next though because I ran inside and hid in the bathtub 'til the shootin' stopped. Before that night I was a hard drinkin', foul mouthed, blaspheming non-believer. But in that bathtub I became a believer. Quit drinking and been to church every Sunday since then."

That was when I noticed the crosses. There was one above the door and every window to the man's house. They were made of wrought iron and looked to be hastily nailed in place like protective wards. "Were there any others?"

He nodded slowly. "There was Professor Charles Guillame de Moreau back in the eighteen hundreds. Now I am a few years older than you, but I wasn't here back then." He chuckled at his own joke. "This was indian country back then, and the particular tribe that lived here didn't much care for outsiders. They'd carry off settlers and sacrifice them in dark rituals. But these weren't no ordinary indians. They weren't Natchez or Choctaw like you find in these parts. These were outsiders, their names lost to time. But story has it they weren't from around these parts, exiles from the Aztecs that set up here because it was a place sacred to their gods. Then one day Professor Moreau has enough of their murderin' ways and gets together a posse to clear 'em out. But they did a big ritual and summoned a monster to fight him and his men…"

That was when the puzzle pieces all clicked in my head. "The black crayfish…ah I mean crawdad."

His hands were practically strangling his cane now, he was that into his story. "Yessir. Legend says these Aztec exiles sacrificed a hundred men, women, and children. French settlers, Natchez, Choctaw, they didn't care. They just needed bodies. When Professor Moreau won that battle he was declared a hero. Not just by his people but the Natchez and Choctaw tribes too. They made a deal, let him build a town here and promised to never make war with them. Or so the story goes."

It was a wild story for sure. But if there is one thing I learned during my time at the CTTC it was that sometimes the legends were true.

A car pulled up to the house across the street. It had markings for the local sheriff department and as expected the guy climbing out had a uniform (that included a cowboy hat) and a gun. That gun was drawn and he was moving around the house towards Sterling and Johnson.

I was up and running before I remembered I was in the middle of talking to the old man. "Sorry, sir. I have to go."

It occurred to me then that I never even got his name.