Return to Red Creek by Nathan Hystad (free ebooks romance novels .txt) 📕

to missing children in the volume of their Schattenmann. There were various Greek mythological creatures that ate children or stole them, but none quite fit the bill.

The duelling laptops they had on the table at his sister’s house couldn’t find a demon folklore that quite matched this case either. Paul let out a grim laugh as he thought of it as a “case.” This was much more. This was their lives, the lives of kids. Real kids. His friend Jason Benning’s kid had been taken and killed; a year later, Jason was gone, dead by its hands.

So many deaths in the last hundred years. Paul guessed the number of people killed by the monster would be in the three hundreds, dating back to Germany, England, and more recently, upstate New York.

“You think it’s still too weak?” Brent asked from behind them.

“I don’t know. The two kids prove otherwise.” Taylor pointed to the lights as they flickered throughout Wood Street.

Paul wasn’t so sure. The shadow might be alive, but they’d caught someone on the missing children. A physical man, and not someone related to him, as far as Paul knew. “What about what the deputy said?”

“Dad, it’s lived this long. Do you think it would still be around if it was stupid?” Taylor asked, her tone so teenaged, it reminded him of a younger Taylor: one in her eye-rolling phase.

“Good point. We don’t know how to kill it. I wish we’d found something useful about them,” Paul said, gripping the steering wheel hard as he headed toward his old house. It was pitch black out, and the clouds had rolled in overhead. The lights flickered a few more times, but only on three lamp posts. Paul guessed their photocells were faulty. When something broke in Red Creek, it took a long time for anyone to fix it.

He stopped as they spotted the path at the end of the block. He had a wave of déjà vu as he stared at it, the SUV still in the middle of the road.

“Dad, what are you doing?” Taylor asked, but Paul hardly heard her. He parked and got out of the car, the interior light of the Rover turning on. A speaker chimed, advising him the driver’s door was open while the vehicle was running. He only noticed those things peripherally as he walked, one foot after the other, down the road.

He heard doors open and shut behind him, but he kept moving. Taylor shouted at him, but he could hardly hear her through the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears. Warm liquid spilled over his lips and chin. He ran when he felt the touch of a hand on his shoulder.

A warm summer day. The smell of rotting apples. A damp dirt cave. The sensation of that day so long ago filled his senses. It was like if Paul stretched his hand out, he’d find a wall of musty soil.

“Dad! Dad, stop!” The words broke through, and Paul’s eyes snapped open, as if seeing for the first time in minutes. Arms were wrapped around him, pulling him toward the SUV.

He woke from the dreamlike state as if he’d been shoved to the ground. “What the hell was that?” he asked, his voice a shrill shriek.

“Dad.” Taylor was crying. “You’re bleeding.”

Paul wiped his face and saw blood smear on his hand. Another nosebleed. He hadn’t had one since… since he’d been back in Red Creek, looking at this same path.

Paul stood on the road, and Darrel and Isabelle were running from his parking spot in front of Paul’s old house. Darrel had a rifle in his hands and was puffing air by the time he arrived. “What was it? Did you see the thing?”

Taylor answered for him. “No. He just started walking for the path. And then his nose began to bleed. It was like he was possessed.”

Paul trembled at the word. “I wasn’t possessed. But I think it wants me to enter that path. We have a history, and it senses I’m here now.” Paul wasn’t sure how he knew all this, but he could feel it in his bones. “Shit, why didn’t I see this? If what you think is accurate, about it being too weak and needing help, then it needs someone of our blood to aid it. It wants me. It wants to take me and use me like it used Conway, and a long line before him.”

Taylor was dragging him away now, heading for the house. “Dad, we can’t stand in the middle of the street like lunatics. Uncle Darrel, can you put that away?” She pointed to his rifle, and Darrel leaned it on his shoulder, shaking his head.

“No way. I’ve seen this thing before. There’s no way I’m giving up the gun,” Darrel said.

“You shot Jason last time. Do you think bullets are going to help us kill a shadow?” Paul asked.

“I think it’s more than that. A shadow can’t kill, can it?” Isabelle asked. She was under the impression it needed a corporeal body to carry it. She might be right, but they had no proof of that.

They needed to find the nest, but first, Paul wanted to see it with his own two eyes. If the kid who’d lived in their house had viewed it, then Paul thought it would show itself to him.

He shook the cobwebs from his head and found his nose was finished bleeding. Small victories. “We’ll take the path,” he said with finality. He grabbed a jacket from the trunk of his SUV and passed the girls flashlights. Brent took Stevie’s baseball bat, and Paul almost told him to leave it, assuming an aluminum bat wouldn’t do much against mist, but it couldn’t hurt.

Paul opened the compartment under the back mat and pulled out a handgun lock box. It was a 9MM pistol, and he’d made himself learn how to fire it at the range after the last time he’d been in the Creek. He’d told people it was