My Black Beast (2 page)

There should have been some sense of
resistance, but the brick slid into the creature with incredible
ease and fired through the roof of the skull, sending monster
brains all over the yard. The monster reeled and stumbled backward,
falling over in the clearing a few feet back from the
girl.

She breathed heavily, staring down at it,
warily. It didn’t move but she kept her eyes on it. At least, she
did until Lowell took another step. The sound from her side caused
the girl to spin defensively and look at him. Her eyes went
wide.

“
Ah… I… hello. Are you…” Lowell
looked to the dead thing on the ground, a monster from some other
world. “Are you alright? Is… that thing?”

He came close to her and she stared at him,
putting herself again into a defensive position.

He stopped in place and held a pair of empty
hands forward. “No, no! It’s okay! I’m here to help!”

The girl cocked her head to the side,
suspicious. The glow was gone from her leg now. She squinted her
eyes a bit and then wobbled. Before Lowell could move to catch her
the girl collapsed onto her face in a pool of rainwater and black
monster goo.

Lowell rushed to her side and flipped her
over. He put his head close to her mouth and felt cool breath
escaping, her chest rising and falling rhythmically. He leaned his
head back and let out a sigh, closing his eyes in the rain. When he
opened them again, he realized the scene around him for what must
have been the first time. The corpse of the monster was leaking
groans and hisses as bits of unfamiliar organs leaked out into the
concrete below.

He looked to the thing and down to the girl.
This was not normal. That was an understatement. For some reason,
he thought of the pizza place. Even a cold slice would be pretty
great right now. Even if he had to pick off pineapple or
something.

He realized he was staring at the girl when
the sirens cut through the fog in his pizza-addled mind. Police.
Not good. Not good at all. He stood and turned toward the alleyway.
He had no explanation for this. Who could have an explanation for
any of it? What the hell had even happened? He looked to the hole
on the ground. Was it some… some like… sewer thing? Like a flushed
pet? Those urban legends were stupid but… he looked at the dead
frog monster.

And what about the girl? He looked to her on
the ground and a wave of stupid washed over him like a wave he
wasn’t quite ready for. He knelt down and lifted the girl up. She
was incredibly light, lighter than he had expected. Lighter than a
girl her age ought to be. The feel of the cloak told him that it
was made from the same stuff that the beast lived in. It was dense
and felt like dead skin full with memory foam. He looked down at
the sleeping girl. If he could not make sense of the scene, what
hope was there in leaving her for the police? The scenes of a
million films flashed through his mind. Men in white lab coats and
long needles and other ridiculous crap like that.

The sirens were closing now and he’d made up
his mind. He turned for the far side of the square and the alleyway
beyond, giving the hulking pile of dead monster a wide berth. He
began to run, not wanting to be anywhere near the thing when
authority figures arrived. He couldn’t say how close the police
were when he exited the alley, but he saw no lights and slowed his
run to a slight jog.

He sighed, turning to move away from where he
guessed the sirens originated. Looking down at the girl, he laughed
to himself. “Well… this is fine.” He shook his head and made for
home.

Chapter 2

The walk to Lowell’s apartment
after
he’d left the alleyway was mercifully brisk and devoid of other
people. There’s not a whole lot that a person can say to explain
why they’re carrying an unconscious girl around in the middle of
the night shortly after what were probably explosions. The small
lobby of the modern apartment building was empty, as well. He opted
for the stairs rather than the elevator at the left side of the
lobby. Even with the glut of health conscious people in the city,
stairs went mostly unused when a building offered an
elevator.

It was four flights to the floor where his
apartment was. Whatever he may have thought about the slight figure
of the girl when he had first lifted her out of the puddled water
had long since given way to that lactic acid burn. He tried his
best to shift her gently to relieve the burn but it was of little
help.

The girl was tall for her age, or, at least,
Lowell thought she probably was. Maybe a bit over five feet. Was
that normal now? He wasn’t in the habit of interacting with
children. She was maybe eighty-five pounds and, though it was
thick, the cloak added very little weight to her tiny
frame.

At the top of the stairs, he knelt before
opening the door to the hall and rested the girl on his knee. He
pulled his keys out of the damp pocket on his jeans and stood
again. He pushed the door open a crack and checked one way and then
the other. It was clear. He stepped into the hall and moved to his
door, shifting the girl awkwardly as he shook his keys to get the
one he needed. The key found the lock and the door swung open,
banging on the wall behind.

The apartment wasn’t so large. A single
bedroom with a kitchen just to the left of the door. It was
separated by a little bar from the main living area. There was a
little hallway just down the wall to the right with a bedroom and
bathroom. The whole place was furnished with Swedish crap and the
only real thing of quality in the room was a TV that was larger
than it ought to have been for its modest surroundings.

He brought the girl in and flipped a light
switch with his elbow. They did that dim, energy-saver bulb fizzle
and lit the place slowly. After pushing off his shoes, Lowell moved
to the hallway, being careful of her legs and head near the walls.
The door to his room was open and he stepped in, flipping on
another light. His bed was a bit of a mess, but there wasn’t much
other choice. The couch was no place for a young girl anyway. He
put the girl on the bed after pulling a few pieces of dirty laundry
down with awkward swipes of a socked foot.

With the girl safely on a surface that wasn’t
ooze covered brick, he shook his arms out and rolled his neck. A
full body shudder of pleasure ran over him as the burn in his
muscles washed out. When his body had settled he looked down at the
girl. That cloak needed to go. There was a bone clasp at the top of
it, near her neck. She didn’t move as he undid it and lifted her
back to take it from under her. The thick hide of the cloak was
weirdly spongy, he could tell now. Mottled yellows and purples ran
across the cloak with spots of black. It was bone dry and warm to
the touch.

When he laid her back down, the girl shifted
of her own accord, but didn’t wake. At least she’s moving. He put
the cloak over the back of a crap chair that he’d probably been
given by his mom. The seat was home to a stack of unopened mail and
a sad, slumped pizza box. He started to turn but the box nagged at
him. He looked to the girl and grimaced before reaching down to
grab it, sending mail onto the floor.

Back in the hall, he closed the bedroom door
and tossed the box toward the living room. It spiraled to a soft
landing on the grey-blue carpet. The box was followed by a wet
jacket, shirt, and the rest of his clothes. He was naked now except
for a silver locket around his neck. Lowell moved across the small
hallway to the bathroom. The chill of the air wasn’t so pronounced
in his apartment, but the rain had soaked into him and he could
feel it now.

In the bathroom he wrenched the shower dial to
somewhere just south of boiling and let steam fill the room before
he turned it down to some reasonable temperature and stepped in. He
ran his hands through the long brown hair he’d let grow out and
pushed water up through the rough beard that had come along with
it. He could hear his mom’s disappointed voice telling him he
looked like a bum.

He just sort of stood in the shower for
fifteen minutes, staring at the wall, not thinking about anything.
At some point, everything came rushing back in and he realized he’d
basically kidnapped a passed out little girl.

“
Fuuuuck.” The word leaked out of
him. “Fuck. Fuck! FUCK!”

He slapped the wall a few times and then just
let out this weird goat noise and started flailing his arms around.
This went on for longer than it should have for an adult man in any
situation and only stopped when his hand slapped off of the hard
metal of the temperature dial. It didn’t hurt so much as it turned
the water ice cold. Lowell yelped and jumped back, pulling away
from the freezing stream. He shifted the dial back to comfortable
territory and sighed.

It was another twenty minutes before he
finally felt like it was worth getting out. He half expected there
to be cops standing in there. Maybe a girl cop. She’d eye his junk
suspiciously and scoff, probably. That’s how things like this went.
Insult to injury. Or… or whatever this was. It had been the right
thing to do, he figured. Maybe she wouldn’t agree when she woke up,
but he would just have to sort that out then.

The thoughts ran through the typical things
you might expect of someone taking in a lost child, minus the whole
telling-the-cops bit. It wasn’t until he sat down on the couch,
skin red from the heat of the shower, a towel wrapped over him,
that the whole idea of a lost little girl started to fall
apart.

Lowell’s brain started to catch up with him.
The rush of fleeing duly appointed officers of the law had finally
burned away and now all he had left was a swimming head full of
pictures of a little girl kicking a goddamn brick through the brain
pan of a frog… demon… thing. It wasn’t the sort of thing you saw,
so much. Maybe in one of those Guillermo del Toro movies. The ones
with the weird shit that aren’t in English.

He rolled his head back on the couch and
played the scene over and over and waited for some sort of wire or
rigging to show up in the pictures, but they never did. It’s not
like he could go back and look at the hole now. Make sure it was
still there. No, that wasn’t going to happen. He could go look at
the cloak, maybe. Weird, spongy skin cloak.

He pulled in a deep breath and knitted his
brow. There was nothing for it, after all. She’s just a little
girl, even if she had magic bullet legs or whatever. She needed
help and the cops weren’t likely to give her anything like
it.

The remote was just out of reach, so Lowell
leaned over and snatched it from the far arm of the couch. His
finger hovered over the power button for a few seconds before he
tossed the remote away. There was nothing good on and he definitely
wasn’t in the mood to see helicopter shots of that little
alley.

Lowell pulled himself up off the couch,
leaving the towel behind. There was a sliding door beside the TV on
the far wall, but he’d never been modest enough to care. There was
basket of clothes waiting to be washed against the wall to his
bedroom. There were clean clothes in his room, but he didn’t really
want to be in there when she woke up. He pulled on a grey shirt and
a pair of pajama pants and returned to the couch.

He’d been laying there, half asleep, half
counting the shadows on the ceiling, for about an hour when a thunk
sounded from the bedroom. Lowell sat up and looked at the wall,
waiting for another sound. There was a slight scratch. It was
enough for him. He hopped over the back of the couch and ran to the
kitchen. He grabbed a glass from the cabinets above and filled it
with water. He nearly dropped it on the way across the room to the
door.

When he finally got there, he had no idea what
to do. It all made sense up until the doorknob was in his hand.
He’d just open the door and give her some water. It would be fine.
Now he wasn’t sure. She kicked a brick through a demon frog’s brain
and his brain was probably way softer than that. It doesn’t matter,
he said to himself with as much conviction as he was
able.

He twisted the handle and pushed the door
open. The girl was standing beside the bed, looking out through the
curtain with wide eyes. Her eyes whipped to him as he pushed the
door open and the both of them froze, staring.

“
I… uh…”

It was all he said before she ran up onto the
bed and pulled a pillow up over her head in a defensive stance. She
cocked her head to the side as Lowell stepped into the room,
holding the water out. She pulled the pillow back further to show
her intent.

“
I, no… it’s okay.” He held up a
hand. “It’s just water.”

He took a sip from the glass while inching
forward. He swallowed the water and held the glass back out in
front of him. She eyed the glass as he got close. Lowell stopped
where he was and offered it up to the girl when it was close enough
to grab. She pulled the pillow aside and looked at the glass a
moment.

She pushed her head closer to inspect the
clear contents, not convinced. She sniffed at the air a few times.
Whatever it was she smelled, she didn’t like it and with ridiculous
speed she swatted the pillow down to the floor.

“
AH!” Lowell shouted in surprise
and pulled his hand back.

The glass hit the carpeted floor and the water
splashed and spilled, darkening the spots where it landed. Lowell
stared down at the unbroken glass on the carpet, breathing hard
from the shock. The girl looked too, watching the dark spread out
from where the glass had landed. He looked back up at her and she
met his gaze. She had let her guard down and quickly pulled the
pillow up again in case this was his plan all along.