What Hunts Me

Chapter 1

Chapter 1April 2016

“And that's how it happened.” The words came out sloppy and sort of squelchy. I tried to sound sober, over-enunciating my next sentence. “That's how I killed her….”

An hour before, I'd pulled off the interstate onto the main street of a dusty little town, ironically named Flourish, population seventy-one. It was somewhere between the intersection of nothing and nowhere, but it had the two things I needed and wanted the most; a tavern and a small motel. I walked to the motel first, paid for one night, and dropped my backpack in the room, then headed straight to the tavern a few doors down, hell bent on getting drunk.

The tavern was as dusty as the town it sat in, with a dispirited décor that hadn't been updated since the mid twentieth century. I sat at the bar, paying little attention to the other patrons, of which there were few, and ordered a whiskey and beer chaser. I quickly downed the whiskey and ordered another, which I put away equally as fast as the first. Just as I was about to order my third shot, the man a few barstools down began to cough…I was pretty sure he hadn't been there when I sat down.

When the coughing fit stopped and I asked if he was okay, he turned to me and said, “Fine, just fine. But you, kid, you look like you been dragged through hell and back.” He was old and worn out, his skin leathery, a severe red scar on his neck, his hair white and sparse, but his eyes were bright and sharp and his smile was warm.

I looked into the dingy bar-back mirror and saw a haggard version of my former self in its reflection. I'm not a bad looking guy—I keep myself fit, muscled, well groomed—but today was definitely the exception; my normally neat and trim brown hair was too long and starting to curl around the edges in an unkempt manner. A long scab graced my forehead; I'd only just gotten the cut hours before, but as a ghost killer, I heal very fast, and it would be gone in another day or so. My T-shirt had blood on it, but it was dry now and mostly blended with the dark color of the shirt.

I looked into the mirror again and caught the old man's gaze, then nodded and smiled. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

He replied by saying that he was a damn good listener, and if I was interested in talking, he'd be happy to hear what I had to say. It turned out I was interested, so I talked and drank. By the time I'd slurred my last words, the old guy had started coughing again, and when he got it under control he waved at the bartender for another round. He'd been putting bourbon away almost as fast I'd been downing whiskey, but his level of inebriation didn't hold a candle to my own.

He finally said, “That's a hell of a story, kid. I'm sorry about your friend. Maybe you should give this whole quest of yours up and go home.”

I looked at him through the bar-back mirror. His eyes had narrowed and turned an inky color. His skin looked grey, and the wrinkles appeared to slither and move. He grinned at me, his teeth darkly discolored; a front tooth was chipped to a jagged and violent point, and two others were missing. He looked like a ghoul. I shook my head to clear it and looked back at the mirror, where clear hazel eyes and a light smile on a rough and wrinkled face reflected back at me.

The old man's forehead furrowed and he asked, “You okay, kid?”

A year ago I was just a normal guy with a normal life and a normal job. But that all changed, and now I not only saw ghosts and demons that haunted people with illness, in some cases killing their victims violently, but I, George Sinclair, had the unusual gift of killing these monsters and alleviating their victims of pain and suffering. I'd encountered ghosts so strong they could possess ghost killers like myself, and I'd been an integral part in stopping a vault full of angry demons, sanctioned by Satan himself, from being unleashed on San Francisco. I'd spent the last week chasing a monster so vicious it could unleash an army of ghosts and demons, and it killed indiscriminately. What I thought I just saw in the mirror could only have been brought on by my recent experiences and the fact that I was damn good and drunk, but deep down inside my brain, something was screaming, trying to tell me to run; I just wasn't listening.

I smiled and exhaled loudly, “Yeah, but I think it's time for me to turn in.” I slid off my stool, pulled some money out, and dropped it on the bar.

The old man started to do the same, saying, “Yep, that's a good idea. I'm guessing you're staying over at the motel?” I nodded and he said, “Me too. We can walk over together.”

The town's main street was sparse, consisting of a market, the motel, and the bar, all of which ran along one side of the cracked asphalt road. The west side of the street was comprised of a dirt lot that looked onto the railroad tracks and the Truckee River below. The interstate was just beyond that, but concealed by a small hill. Traffic had been at a standstill earlier, but it sounded like it was moving now. I knew I needed to get back on the road, but what was the point? Billy was dead, and the monster I'd been chasing had gotten away, not to mention I was in no condition to drive.

There weren't any street lights either, but there was a full moon to light our way. As we exited the tavern and turned towards the motel, our shadows were outlined in moonlight before us. I had my hands in my pockets, head down in drunken despair, when I noticed my companion's shadow changing. He was no longer a hunched-over old man, he was growing, elongating, transforming into something grotesque. My drunken exhausted state slowed my reaction, and by the time I turned to him he was lunging at me, his hands like claws, his eyes that inky black color, but this time large and full of malevolence. His lips pulled back in a hungry grimace, all of the teeth rotten and jagged.

He grabbed me by the shoulders and dug in. I could feel the talon like nails breaking into my skin and scraping my collar bone, and pain reverberated through my body. Drunk or not, I was still a ghost killer and still damn strong. Raising my arms up and out, I broke free, but not before he tore a chunk of skin and T-shirt off my shoulder. I flipped out of reach and started to run, but he was fast and on me in a matter of seconds, landing solidly on my back, and then I was face down in the dirt of the vacant lot across from the tavern and the motel. He grabbed me by the hair, and the next thing I knew my head was slammed to the ground, over and over again. Blood trickled into my eyes and then nothing, just blackness….