Monsters Within (4 page)

2

Had Lester Dobbs known Saul’s true nature, he might not have made the stupid mistake that he and one of his gullible drinking buddies made that night. They had been at a distinct disadvantage from the start and had not even known it. They had both reeked of booze and Lester’s friend, an unfortunate man named Hank Dooling, was not the best at keeping quiet when he’d had too much to drink.

Saul heard them when they were halfway down his driveway. The one called Hank was speaking in a loud rasp that was meant to be a whisper. Less than ten seconds later, Saul could smell the alcohol seeping from their pores. He smirked; beneath the stench of alcohol was an even more pungent, unmistakable scent – fear.

Saul was sitting on his couch with a book when he heard them approaching. He glanced at the clock; 2:45 in the morning. He could only assume that Lester would think he’d be asleep at this hour  – he doubted the men would dare approach him awake and aware. Not after the spectacle he had put on today. With an annoyed roll of his eyes, Saul put his book down and went to the living room window. He could just barely make out the ambling shapes of the two men. Saul closed his eyes, focused, and was able to catch most of their conversation with the animal-like hearing most of his kind possessed.

“…got lucky when he pushed me.” This was Lester’s voice, shaky with fake confidence. “I wasn’t even looking. Cheap shot if you ask me.”

“Damn Lester, are you sure about this? Seems like we could get into awful lot of trouble.”

“What’re you, a pussy? Just do what I told you to do!  And remember, keep the story straight! When the police ask, we say he contacted me to apologize and invited us over for drinks. Then he attacked us and we had no choice but to defend ourselves. Got it?”

“I guess,” Hank said. “Still—,”

“Shut your face,” Lester snarled.  “You want that fifty bucks or not?”

Saul lost interest at this point. He went to the door, unlocked it, and then retired back his place on the couch. The only light in the cabin came from a small lamp that sat on an end table by the side of the couch; Saul didn’t think the two geniuses currently walking towards his cabin would think anything of it.

He’d been in this situation many times before, usually with teenagers trying to one-up each other. Sometimes it was stupid boys, trying to impress their girlfriends by walking up the driveway. Others were just too drunk or high to care where they were; somehow, they would sober up rather quickly when they came within fifty yards of the cabin. Then they’d  turn tail and run back to their parked cars as their friends laughed, not understanding where the bone-shaking fear that hounded them was coming from. Saul would watch them from within the shadows of the Cabin, laughing internally.

Prey knew when they had stepped too far into a predator’s den.

Tonight, there was something different in the air. Something different about the smell of fear on them—on Lester in particular. Saul could not quite place it, but it stank to high heavens.

Two minutes passed before Saul heard the first of their footfalls on his porch. They were slow, but purposeful. Saul eyed the door knob, waiting for the slow rotation as it was turned from outside. He smiled slightly as he tried to imagine what they might think when they found the door unlocked.

Sure enough, the knob turned and the front door opened slowly. Saul looked up from his book, playing along and acting surprised to see Lester Dobbs and his friend standing in his doorway.

“What the hell are you doing?” Saul asked in mock surprise. He set the book down and got to his feet.

Almost instantly, Hank Dooling stepped back. His eyes had widened ever-so-slightly, throat bulging noticeably as he gulped down nerves. Lester on the other hand stepped inside, pushed on by drunken determination. Saul saw that he had a large knife in his hand. Lester had been embarrassed earlier today, so Saul didn’t expect him to back down out of simple fear. When pride was involved, humans had a tendency to become incredibly stupid.

“I’ve come to teach you a lesson,” Lester said. The booze was slurring his speech and making his southern drawl thicker.

“Mayb
e
yo
u
need the lesson,” Saul said.  “That lesson being that you should learn when to shut your mouth when you’ve been drinking. That’s especially true when you start talking about people’s families.”

As if he hadn’t heard any of this, Lester nodded to some quiet comment within his own head. “Yeah, I’ve been wanting to hurt you for a long time now,” he said.

He took another step forward and flexed his shoulder, readying himself for action. Sau
l
almos
t
felt sorry for him. Lester was a large man and Saul suspected that whenever he placed himself in situations like this, his opponent backed down. As Lester stepped forward, he appeared to realize that Saul wasn’t some normal loser that would shake in his boots and back away. Doubt began to show in his eyes and Saul could smell the fear begin to seep out through the beer smell.

For the briefest of moments, something swarmed inside of Saul. The instincts he had been raised with recognized the fear and wanted to taste it. He had long ago trained himself to keep such urges at bay. Still, this arrogant little man had come here to break into his house with the intention of hurting him. That certainly couldn’t be forgiven, could it?

As if sensing that Saul was thinking of violence, Lester lashed out with the knife he had been clutching in his pocket in a manner he’d probably thought subtle. The action was quick and almost out of nowhere, as if some unseen hand had pushed a button and Lester had responded.

Saul was much quicker than Lester, moving with a speed no human could hope to match. He dodged the stabbing motion easily and countered by swatting at Lester’s arm. Saul didn’t use much force, as he didn’t want to shatter the poor drunk’s forearm. The force of his blow still made Lester stagger. Behind him, standing like a scarecrow in the doorway, Hank Dooling watched with eyes wide in fascination.

Lester regained his composure rather quicker than Saul had expected. When Lester righted himself and threw a punch, Saul let it fall. He wanted to let Lester think he had a chance here. The punch landed squarely against Saul’s left side; the power behind it would have cracked a human’s ribs.  Lester smirked, thinking the fight squarely in his favor. Saul barely smothered the laughter building up in his throat.

Lester’s next punch did not so much as graze Saul before the man caught it, surprising both Lester and his useless friend. Wrapping his fingers securely around Lester’s fist, Saul began – gradually and calmly – to tighten his grip. Bones ground beneath the pressure, joints popped and muscles strained. Lester groaned with the pain, wrapped his other hand around Saul’s and tugged, trying desperately to get free. Saul did not budge, lips thinning in a chilling smile. Lester’s own mouth trembled.

Saul released Lester’s hand moments shy before every bone within it would have shattered. The drunk let out a moan that was half-pain, half-relief. The latter did not last long, however, as Saul had  wrapped a hand around Lester’s neck and lifted him straight into the air a moment later.

“Please don’t ever come back to my house,” Saul said, mock-polite. To make the order stick, he let some of his true power shine through his eyes: Fire and ash and blood, all focused on Lester’s shivering form. Lester gasped; the glint of red in Saul’s eyes was more frightening than everything else that’d happened to him. He would not forget it, either, even if he would question if it had ever happened in a few days’ time.

Lester gave a confused look and shook his head, as if to clear the cobwebs. It was the most sober he had appeared since walking through Saul’s front door uninvited.

Hank spoke up from behind them, still standing by the opened front door. His voice was light and shaken, like that of a scared little boy. “Lester,” he said. “We um, we have to…”

Before he could finish, Saul jerked Lester towards him, so close now that their noses were touching. The red in his eyes was gone, but Saul could see that he had instilled just enough terror in the man to have him never step foot on this property again.

“This is your only warning,” Saul growled. “If you ever come here again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

Too scared and helplessly angry to respond, Lester only nodded.  That was good enough for Saul.  He pitched the man hard towards the door with a flick of his wrist. Lester collided with Hank and both of them went falling through the opened doorway. When they thudded on the porch in a heap, Hank was the first to scramble to his feet. He cast Saul a weary glance and then started to shakily step back down the porch steps.

Both men ambled down onto Saul’s front yard and into the night. If the speed in their step was any indication, the experience had sobered them up a bit. Lester cast one final glance over his shoulder before the night swallowed him up.

Saul stood in his doorway, waiting. He knew the men would not return, but the brazen nature of their arrival was alarming. In all the years the Benton family had lived on this property and despite all the rumors, no one had ever come right up to the cabin’s front door. Not even the dumbest of rambunctious teens trying to impress their friends had dared to be so bold.

When he could no longer smell the beer and sweat coming from the pair, Saul closed his door. Feeling slightly ridiculous in doing so, he locked his door for the first time since his family had claimed the cabin nearly one hundred years ago.

He returned to his book but couldn’t get back into it. He poured himself another glass of wine, unable to shake the feeling that something was amiss in Red Creek. Maybe The Guard had something to do with it, or maybe the people were simply becoming more and more obnoxious. Either way, it was something different.

When you lived the life of a dormant vampire, different was never good.

3

Nikki Galimore sat in front of a computer monitor in the Red Creek Public Library, drumming her fingers on the edge of the keyboard. She was staring at the log-in page for the library’s digital microfilm archives. With a bit of a nervous twitch in her hands, she typed in the log-in information the woman at the front desk had given her.

She thought about where to start as archives opened up. Being that Red Creek was such a  hole in the ground, finding what she needed was easier than she’d expected. All she had to type in was a single word
—
Benton
—
and she was provided with the only written and recorded information on the Benton family.

Sure, she knew about the rumors, especially about the death of a man she assumed had been Saul’s father. Given her own experience with the town gossip-mill, she had always assumed that at least half of what people said about the Bentons was a hundred percent false. Still, there must b
e
somethin
g
weird about that family. Even if it wasn’t as dark and morbid as the Satanic rituals she had heard about, there was surel
y
som
e
reason that they had lived out there in that cabin, tucked away from everything and everyone, for so long.

Her search fo
r
Bento
n
resulted in only three articles. The first was the one she had been expecting to see. The headline alone told it all: GRISLY MURDER OF ISAAC BENTON IN RED CREEK WOODS HAS POLICE BAFFLED.  She decided she’d save that one for last since she had been expecting it.

She went to the other two articles and opened each one. The first headline read: UNRULY TEENS CAUGHT TRESPASSING. The article was brief, telling the story of two teenage boys that were caught partying at the top of the driveway that led down to the Benton’s cabin in 1987. Nikki knew that some teens still did that sort of thing. When she had been in high school, there were a few Goth-oriented groups that had tried to get up the nerve to go all the way to the cabin to summon the evil spirit of Isaac Benton.

The third article surprised her a bit. The headline read: LOCAL GIRL MAIMS WOULD-BE RAPIST. She read the article, fully expecting Saul Benton to be the rapist in question. However, the article went on to tell the story of a young woman, aged 17, named Jillian Benton. She had been walking home from town one night and had been picked up by a rowdy local who had tried to rape her. He got a broken arm and a long bloody scar down the entire right side of his face for his troubles.

Nikki had never heard of a Jill Benton. Could this perhaps be Saul’s sister? . If so, why did everybody talked as if Saul was the last of the family?

Frustrated at the appearance of yet more questions, Nikki sighed and went back to the first article. She opened it, and started reading. This one was longer, but not more useful. .  Two paragraphs in and she saw just how much of the story had been stretched and manipulated by small-town gossip. According to local lore, Isaac Benton had been killed as part of a Satanic ritual. At the same time, the events surrounding the murder were labeled as “unknown.” His body had been discovered by a hunter in the woods surrounding Red Creek, mangled almost beyond recognition. Saul and Jill Benton -ah, there she was again and yes, according to this article, she was indeed Saul’s sister - had both been questioned and their stories checked out. Nothing about said stories was mentioned..

Oddly enough, that was all there was to it. Nikki couldn’t find any other articles that spoke of an investigation or any breaks in the case. It was as if the town was almost glad that Isaac Benton had died. Which, if local gossip was to be believed, was in fact the case.

She went back to the article about Isaac Benton’s murder and looked at the one picture of the murder scene. It was really nothing more than a black and white snapshot of the woods where Isaac had been killed. A few policemen milled around and there was crime scene tape strung up along the trees.

Then Nikki saw the man standing near the back of the picture, leaning against a tree. His face was mostly turned away from the picture but she was certain she recognized it. A chill made her shudder and she leaned away from the monitor, letting her eyes focus. Maybe she was seeing things, maybe she—

But no…she was seeing it. Saul Benton was standing against the tree, standing on the edge of the scene where his father had been murdered. The picture had been taken a little over twenty years ago, yet he looked exactly the same as he had yesterday when she had seen him speeding away from town. 

“Holy shit,” Nikki breathed under her breath.

If she had ever needed any proof aside from the slanderous Red Creek rumors that there was something off about Saul Benton, this was it. Apparently, the man had not aged a single day in twenty years. Nikki stared hard at the photo. His likeness was so spot on, the picture could have been taken yesterday. She then thought of that anger she had seen on his face; even through the windows and the space between them, she had seen it perfectly. And had sh
e
reall
y
seen that exact same, nearly-evil hatred on the face of the monster in Jason’s grainy trap-cam footage?

No
,
she thought
.
Don’t jump to conclusions…you’re getting to be worse than Jason. That thing on the footage was barely human-looking. You’re trying to make connections that belong in a horror movie…and not a good movie at that.

Nikki closed the window and stepped away from the monitor. She then left the library, suddenly eager to put as much space between herself and anything to do with the Benton family as she could. Outside, the sun reigned high in the sky; she shivered, loving the feel of sunshine on her skin. It washed away that ungodly cold that had come over her in the library. Nikki walked slowly to her car, trying her best to digest the oddities she had recently uncovered about Red Creek’s resident recluse. She was slightly alarmed to find that she wasn’t scared. In fact, she was curious.

Nikki spent most of her ride back to the Red Creek B&B trying to convince herself that making an unannounced trip to the Benton Cabin would be a bad idea.