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Jake Rollins had never seen an animal turned inside-out. A lifetime of horror movies had led him to expect a heaping mass of fake, syrupy goo. He swallowed hard, took a deep breath through his mouth to avoid the rotten stench, and knelt by the carcass, surprised at the sadness the lamb’s horror-frozen face provoked in him. A gruesome reminder—not like he needed one—of life’s fragility.
He expected to vomit, but nothing came up. He just stood there, staring with morbid curiosity at the lamb’s two meaty red halves. It didn’t seem possible or natural.
Surely, this was just a terrible prank.
Tall and lean, Steve Witmer stood beside Jake, easily exuding physical strength without the unnecessary bulk of large muscles. He wore Wrangler Jeans, an old t-shirt, and well-loved, scuffed-up cowboy boots. His maroon Texas A&M baseball cap tilted low. The colors and the logos changed sometimes, but Steve looked pretty much the same every day. Keeping up a ranch left no time for fancy fashion.
“You boys do this for publicity, did ya?” Sheriff Cam Donner asked, circling the carcass.
Strangely stocky for a tall man, the sheriff stood six-foot-three and barrel-chested. He wore a mustache in the customary way of small-town law enforcement, with his face shaded by a straw cowboy hat, and his eyes shielded by those large, dark aviator glasses sold exclusively at some secret cop store.
Though all three men were born the same year, Sheriff Donner still called them boys. Twenty years ago, they’d walked the same stage to receive their high school diplomas, and before that they had been an inseparable trio of friends. Somewhere along the way, Cam became a bully and never grew out of it, though Jake had to admit that it had served him well as the town sheriff.
“No, sir,” Steve said. “Ralph just found it this morning. Just making the rounds like always. Seemed odd to find an animal ripped in half like this, so I thought I should call it in.”
The sheriff looked at the remains one more time. “Looks like a coyote got to it to me.”
Utterly preposterous, and everyone knew it— even Jake, who had spent a career in the air-conditioned peace of a cubicle. For all the predators roaming the Rose Valley countryside, none of them could have perpetrated this horror. This was something new and vicious.
Jake wiped his brow. The sun barely peeked across the horizon, but that didn’t stop the heat from permeating his clothes. Dying brown grass carpeted the fields, and even the small hills the locals liked to call “mountains” had long ago given up their greenery, serving as a reminder that this particular Texas summer threatened to break all records.
While Steve and Cam squabbled about the likelihood of a coyote, Jake pulled out his cell phone and re-read the text message he’d sent to Shandi Mason earlier that morning. The message indicator showed Read instead of Sent. Good. If Shandi had gotten his message, then she’d be here soon. A person could get anywhere in Rose Valley in just a matter of minutes.
“Ain’t no reason to get everybody’s panties in a bunch over this,” Cam said. “Maybe it was a coyote. Maybe it wasn’t. But if you make a stink over this, every rancher in town’ll be up my ass about it.”
“Not for nothin’, Sheriff,” Steve retorted. “but if we don’t tell the other ranchers about this, it’s just going to cost us all a lot of money. We need to let people know so they can take proper precautions. Keep an eye out.”
Cam pulled his sunglasses off and moved aggressively towards Steve. “Just clean it up and keep it to yourself, y’hear me?”
Steve didn’t answer. He headed back towards a nearby four-wheeler and fetched a pair of gloves from the bed of the trailer. Though strong and self-assured, Steve tended to avoid fights. Like Jake, Steve knew the politics of Rose Valley. Though Cam didn’t hold the highest seat of power, crossing him promised to be a dangerous proposition, even for the mayor.
The sheriff put his sunglasses back on and headed back towards his brand-new suburban, its frame sitting high off the ground on comically large tires, its windows tinted darker than legally allowed. It must have cost the tax-payers a fortune. Cam stood as near royalty in Rose Valley, though. He could have anything he wanted. The title of Sheriff carried a lot of weight.
For his plan to work, Jake needed the sheriff to be there when Shandi arrived. He needed to make sure that Shandi would see the scene before Steve cleaned it up, that she could confront Cam directly—on record—about why this lamb had become the star of its own horror movie.
“Cam!” Jake hollered after the sheriff.
Cam turned, an irritated scowl on his face. “It’s Sheriff Donner, son.”
Jake fought hard to not roll his eyes. “Sorry, sir. Sheriff Donner, sir. Won’t happen again, sir.”
Jake saluted haphazardly, caring very little about the accuracy of the gesture. Cam had never been in the military. He held an elected position in a town of just over two-thousand people, which he wielded with reckless abandon, but godhood still barely escaped his grasp. Jake and Cam had shared a friendship once. To Jake, they would always be equals, regardless of Cam’s asinine arrogance.
Cam looked at Jake for a few seconds, clearly considering unholstering his gun. “What do you want?”
“How similar is this to the goat over at Serendipity?” Jake popped off.
Cam’s nostrils flared as he stomped back towards Jake. “Ain’t nothin’ the same. Just a dead goat. For pete’s sake, this is a ranching community. Animals die all the damn time. Why do you boys gotta go make a mountain out of a mole hill?”
Technically true. Animals did die all the time. Of heat exhaustion. Of predation. Of old age. Of various veterinary ailments. But not from bifurcation. Such a cause of death wholly defied the natural order of things in Rose Valley—or anywhere else, for that matter.
Jake did his best to meet the sheriff’s gaze. Jake loved Rose Valley. He’d spent his youth frolicking through town, building cherished memories. But even paradise suffered from the tarnish of politics, and Jake had no interest in playing them.
The sound of gravel crunching under tires interrupted the conversation. Jake glanced over and grinned. Success! Yes, he could fumble through a fight with the sheriff, but Shandi Mason practically owed her career to it.
Her green Toyota Camry pulled up behind the sheriff’s Suburban, blocking his exit route. The door of the car flew open and Shandi shot out like a cannonball, a Nikon camera on her hip and her cell phone out in front of her, serving as a voice recorder. Unbridled purpose burdened her every step, displaying her full intent on taking down—or, at the very least, embarrassing—the sheriff.
She walked towards Cam. “Sheriff Donner. There have been reports of livestock mutilations across Rose Valley. Care to comment?”
Shandi was short— certainly compared to Cam—but somehow, she made the sheriff seem small and weak.
Cam bristled. “Dammit, Shandi. How the hell did you find out about this?”
“Anonymous tip,” she shot back.
Cam looked directly at Jake. “Anonymous, my ass.”
Shandi’s bright, piercing green eyes dared the sheriff to press the issue. She’d pulled her fiery red hair back into a pony tail, unveiling in full her striking, determined features. Jake knew she hated exercise, but apparently good genetics, an active job, and the burdens of being a single mother kept her fit and attractive.
While certainly qualified for bigger and better things, she’d remained in Rose Valley, and worked now for the Rose Valley Reporter, writing rote articles about the drudgery of small-town life. A rare story like this excited her inner investigative journalist.
“Come on, Shandi,” the sheriff pleaded. “You’ve got more important things to do. It’s just a dead lamb.”
In high school, Shandi had run in the same circle as these three men, even though her parents tried to keep her away from the older boys. She had been particularly close to Jake, but their friendship had evaporated when Jake left town for nearly two decades. Since his return, they’d begun to reconnect, and Jake hoped this lead would further strengthen their bond.
“A lamb and a goat, Sheriff. Both torn in half. Neither one eaten. You don’t find that strange?”
The sheriff sighed, his broad shoulders slumping down. He marched back to his Suburban in a juvenile huff with no more words, and in an act of minor defiance, drove through the field to escape Shandi’s blockade and what had become hostile territory.
Shandi grinned as she turned towards Steve and Jake, entirely too pleased with herself. “Mornin’, boys!”
She pulled the Nikon from her hip and, without permission, started taking pictures of the bloody pieces of the lamb. Steve didn’t object, but he did throw an exasperated look to Jake, one full of unspoken memories of the endless mischief Jake and Shandi heaped on him over the years.
“So, whadyathink, guys? What did this? I mean, ripped in two? That’s insane. Nothing could do that, right?” She talked with a fevered clip, unlike most in Rose Valley.
Steve shrugged. “Who knows. I’m going to have to hire some extra help to keep an eye out, though. I can’t afford to be losing my sheep to whatever did this.”
“I really appreciate the text,” Shandi said, flashing a quick wink Jake’s way. “The sheriff made Bill over at Serendipity clean it all up before I could get there. A picture is worth a thousand words, they say.”
“It’s a pretty gruesome picture.” Jake said.
“Do you think cheetahs could do this?” she said. “They’ve got some over at Relics Wildlife Reserve. Maybe they got out.”
“No idea. Seems like it would take two cheetahs to rip it in half like this. And then why wouldn’t they eat it?”
Shandi dropped the Nikon back to her hip. “Yeah. Good point. Why kill anything if you’re not going to eat it?”
With Shandi done with her pictures, Steve walked in, picked up the back half of the lamb and tossed it into the four-wheeler’s trailer. Jake could tell he just wanted to move on with his day. Steve had a lot of work to do and speculating about wild animals didn’t feed the chickens or move the sheep.
“Sheriff says it was a coyote.” Jake rolled his eyes, making it clear that he didn’t buy into the theory.
Shandi laughed. “Right. I think it’s more believable that aliens did this.”
Steve picked up the front half of the lamb. “Probably just some prank. School’s starting up again soon. The kids get crazy towards the end of the summer.”
Shandi replied, “Pretty macabre prank.”
She glanced over the scene one more time. Satisfied that she had gotten what she needed, she approached Jake and embraced him in a quick, light hug.
“Thanks again for the tip, Jake. You should get out more. You’re good people.” She flashed him a wistful smile before turning to Steve. “Have a good one, Steve.”
Steve nodded and touched the brim of his ball cap. “You too, Shandi.”
She walked over to her Camry and climbed in. Within moments, Shandi tore away from Watermelon Ranch, returning things to the quiet bleating of sheep and the laid-back unflappability of the ranch-hands. The ranch felt empty without Shandi’s energy.
She would write one hell of a story. Perhaps about the Sheriff’s Department trying to hide grisly livestock mutilations from the masses. Or maybe a piece about how the sheriff failed to provide protection for the citizens of Rose Valley from a dangerous creature.
Whatever her angle, Jake knew that Shandi would take any opportunity she could to crucify her ex-husband.
What kind of creature could, or would want to, wreak this much havoc? Jake imagined a predator lurking in the shadows of Rose Valley, unknown to science and poised to shock the world with its existence. He imagined Bigfoot, or chupacabras, or something else newer and more dangerous. After a year of rehabilitation from a car accident that nearly killed him, the mystery of an unknown creature stoked a fire within him that had been dormant for far too long.
He had a mystery to solve, even if it meant embracing his place in the world once again.
