Matt Hults - Anything Can Be Dangerous

Stuart’s house emerged out of the murk.

Jimmy drove the stolen car right up on the lawn and left the engine running when he hopped out and hurried to the door. No lights glowed in any of the windows, but he pounded on the door and franticly thumbed the ringer.

When no one answered, he kicked the door open.

Inside, he found Stuart sitting in the living room with a double barrel shotgun.

What remained of his head was still dripping from the ceiling.

Jimmy pushed through the police department’s front door at ten minutes to midnight.

Deputy Vern Ferguson was eating a late dinner behind the long counter that separated the lobby from the offices, and Jimmy ignored the kid’s muffled commands to halt as he tried to speak through a mouthful of ham sandwich.

“Hey!” the young officer shouted when Jimmy let himself through the partition.

He found Sheriff Picket sitting at one of the desks in the open central area of the building known as the bullpen, and even from a distance Jimmy noticed the frown beneath his storm cloud of a mustache.

And he wasn’t alone.

A tall American Indian man in blue jeans and a suit coat (cop casual, Jimmy called it) stood off to the left. A roadmap of fresh cuts crisscrossed the man’s face, some linked by dozens of black stitches that looked all too reminiscent of the patchwork monster he’d faced at the motel. The sight stopped him in his tracks, and he had to make a cognitive effort to refocus his thoughts on what he’d come here to say.

“Want me to cuff him?” Ferguson asked from behind, but the Sheriff merely motioned for the kid to go back and finish his food.

“Sheriff, we got trouble,” Jimmy said.

Pickett stood, repositioning his pistol belt as he did. “Oh, I don’t doubt that,” he answered. “After what you pulled yesterday—”

“Forget that shit!” Jimmy rushed on. “I’m the reason that dead guy disappeared from the morgue today!”

Pickett let out a short bark of laughter and raised his hands as if surrendering to Jimmy’s statement. “What a surprise!” he added with sarcastic flare. “Tossing a feller outta the john with his pants around his ankles and stealing his phone wasn’t enough fun, was it? Ya just had to find something more interesting! Alright, then, Cooley, enlighten us; what the hell did you do with a half-mutilated corpse?”

But before he could answer, Pickett’s eyes narrowed to two suspicious slits that focused on Jimmy’s boxers.

“You didn’t fuck it, did you?”

Jimmy stared at the man. “What? No! Jesus, Sheriff, I ain’t like that; I just ate one of the fingers—”

Pickett’s bushy eyebrows seemed to fly off his forehead. “Christ, almighty, son! Now you’re mixed up in cannibalism?”

Deputy Ferguson laughed through a mouthful of his drink, expelling spurts of orange cola out his nose.

Pickett glared at the younger officer like an executioner with one hand on the power switch, ending the amusement. He then redirected his attention at Jimmy with equal intensity.

“This is Detective Riverwind,” Pickett said, motioning to the American Indian with the lacerated face. “He’s the one you’re going to have to make friends with if you don’t want to spend the next decade in prison.”

A phone rang at the desk. Vern answered it.

“Now listen up, Cooley,” Pickett continued. “If it wasn’t for the detective’s investigation I’d can your ass right now and Judge Morton would put it on the shelf ’till winter. So if you have some serious information—and I mean it better be a goddamn treasure map with a big fuck’n X at the end of it—then start talking.”

“Hey, Sheriff!” Ferguson said. “We just got a call from that rescue shelter over on route nine. The neighbors say some nutjob broke into the place and hacked up all the animals with an ax. Sounds real messy.”

“Wonderful!” Pickett exclaimed. “Has the whole world gone crazy?”

“I think it would be best if I questioned Mister Cooley alone,” detective Riverwind said. “Do you mind?”

It was the first time he’d spoken since Jimmy arrived, and the power of the man’s voice sent a shiver down his spine.

Pickett waved them away. “You can have him!”

A scarred, coffee-stained table sat in the center of the police station’s only interview room and Riverwind gestured for Jimmy to have a seat as he closed the door.

“Look,” Jimmy said once they were alone, “this is a waste of time, man. That psycho you’re after ain’t dead! He’s walking around right now, looking for me!”

Riverwind nodded his acknowledgement of Jimmy’s predicament, but didn’t reply. Rather than sit down, the man took off his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair.

“The ‘psycho’ you’re referring to is a Navajo witch,” the detective explained, now rolling his sleeves up as he talked. “My people call them Skinwalkers because they have the power to assume the shape of an animal to avoid our detection. Seven days ago I beheaded the one you encountered, trapping its spirit inside its body, but the confrontation left me severely wounded and unable to fully dispose of the remains.”

Jimmy gaped at the man’s words, looking to his ravaged face and recalling the coyote-headed corpse ripping out the bathroom wall of the motel.

“I could tell you the whole history of how they came to be,” the detective went on, “but as you said, there isn’t much time. All you need to know is that by consuming the Skinwalker’s flesh, you’ve given it the power to thwart death and seek a new body.”

“Me!” Jimmy gasped. “But how—”

“Your friend Stuart isn’t very good at keeping secrets,” Riverwind answered. “He told me about your little scheme when I questioned the morgue staff about the disappearance of the Skinwalker’s corpse. He mentioned how you’d inadvertently swallowed the creature’s finger. Now it’s using your energy, your life force , to stay in our world until it can transfer its spirit into your body.”

“So how the hell do we stop it?” Jimmy asked. “I mean, you can stop it, right?”

“There are two options,” the man answered. “One is to completely destroy its physical form, either by force or simply by waiting until the creature’s body decomposes to the point of being useless. The only problem is that you’re now linked to the Skinwalker by the same magical bond that reanimated it, which will allow it to follow you wherever you go. It will anticipate our moves.”

“Great! So it could be here any second?”

The man nodded.

“What’s choice number two?”

“I cut off your head.”

Jimmy blinked. “What?”

Riverwind reached behind his back and pulled out a knife large enough to reflect Jimmy’s whole face in the blade. It glinted in the light of the overhead fluorescents.

He jumped to his feet. “You can’t kill me! You’re a cop!”

“Decapitation is a proven method of separating a host’s spirit from his life force. You and Mister Wyllie have left me no choice.”

Jimmy shivered as a sudden pang of understanding ripped through his brain. “You killed Stuart!”

“An act of necessity,” Riverwind admitted. “I had to be sure he wasn’t lying about which one of you ate the finger.”

You stinking motherfu—”

The detective slashed, and Jimmy leapt backward. He dodged death by scant millimeters, but the tip of the blade still managed to plow a red trench across the skin of his chest.

Jimmy dropped back in his chair and kicked upward as the wild-eyed detective lunged over the table. This time Jimmy was faster. His heel slammed into Riverwind’s face, popping loose a score of fresh stitches and peeling back a section of cheek.