Fangs in the Dark Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

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  About the Author

  FANGS IN THE DARK

  BY

  T. JAMES LOGAN

  Bear Paw Publishing

  Denver

  Copyright © 2018 by T. James Logan

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Illustration and Cover Design: jim pinto

  EBOOK EDITION

  Bear Paw Publishing

  Denver, Colorado, USA

  www.bearpawpublishing.com

  Jace’s opponent ducked under his guard, clamped strong arms around both his legs, and drove him onto his back. Takedown. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to get himself pinned.

  “Base out, Jace! Base out! Don’t let him shoot on you like that!” Coach Slade’s voice boomed over the noise of the other wrestlers on their mats, but it was too late.

  Docker had quickness for such a big kid, and his weight drove Jace’s breath out of him as he bore him onto the mat. He grappled with Joe Murdock, “Docker”, almost every practice, and had gotten used to being the “grappling dummy.” Why Coach Slade kept pairing them in practice, he couldn’t reckon. Docker, a freshman, was undefeated so far this season, at the top of his weight class. Jace was only an eighth-grader, but his gangly height had put him at the bottom of Docker’s weight class.

  Slade clapped Docker on the shoulder. “Nice takedown.”

  Docker beamed. “Thanks.”

  “But now I’m going to teach Jace how to beat you, all right?”

  Docker laughed. “Yeah, right.”

  Jace’s ears heated, and Docker’s words echoed in his own brain.

  Slade’s hand was like a hard, callused wedge on Jace’s shoulder, steering him aside out of Docker’s earshot. Slade was not a tall man, maybe 5’9”, but he was built like a cinder block, with steel-gray eyes, chiseled features, and close-cropped salt-and-pepper curls.

  Jace wiped the sweat from his eyes, and felt the eyes of the St. Sebastian’s wrestling team on him, even though most of them were doing grappling drills. As one of the two youngest members of the team, he had more to prove. The older boys were entire truckloads better at this, and so much cooler they weren’t even the same species, guys like Eric and DaShante who caused flocks of girls to flutter like birds.

  “I can’t beat him, Coach,” Jace said.

  “I’m here to show you a way. Question is, you ready to learn it? You ready to man up?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s doesn’t sound very sure. How long you been here at St. S’s?”

  “Two years.”

  “Where you come from?”

  “Killeen, Texas. That’s where my mom was from.”

  “Daddy?”

  “She never really told me, but I always figured it was a guy from the Army base.”

  “What happened to your mom?”

  “She packed me up in the car one night, and we headed north. Don’t know where to, she wouldn’t say. We got as far as Nebraska. She fell asleep at the wheel.” He had told the story so many times, it was almost like it didn’t hurt no more. If he had any living grandparents or other relation who might take him in, mom had never told him. “Ended up here.” At St. Sebastian’s School for Children, with Nebraska’s finest losers, drug heads, kleptos, and gang-bangers.

  “That’s a tough story, son. Question is now, you gonna rise above it? Make your momma proud?”

  The sudden pang of missing his mom stabbed him like a switchblade. There was so much he would never know. In his mind, she was as much an imagination as a memory now. “Yeah.”

  “Now, I’ll ask you again, you ready to man up?”

  “I’m ready, Coach!”

  “Better. First, why in the hell do you think I pair you up with Docker all the time?”

  “I’m easy for Docker to practice on?”

  “No! Because I’m trying to toughen you up for bigger things, son. I’m trying to see how much heart you got. How much heart you got?”

  “I dunno, sir.”

  “Don’t you want to find out?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then listen. See, Docker is strong, but he relies too much on it. He’s a one-trick pony...”

  The next time Docker went for Jace’s legs, he sprawled his feet back and out of reach, pressing his chest and full weight down onto the back of Docker’s neck. Docker went face down onto the mat, but before he could right himself, Jace snaked one arm under Docker’s armpit and the other around his neck, forming a front headlock, then he squeezed, putting pressure on Docker’s carotid artery. If Jace could hold on long enough, Docker would start to flag.

  Docker thrashed and spun, but Jace used a broad stance to keep his weight balanced on the back of Docker’s head, riding him against the mat. Docker struggled, but after what Coach Slade had told Jace about how to maintain that front headlock, it was easier than he expected. He could feel Docker burning up so much more energy.

  Then, the moment came, that tiny window of fatigued balance, and Jace flipped Docker onto his back for the takedown.

  Slade tweeted his whistle.

  Docker lay underneath Jace for a moment, gasping, red-faced, eyes a little confused. Elation shot through Jace. He had never taken Docker down before.

  As they extricated themselves, Slade gave Jace a look of appreciation. Docker lumbered to his feet and shove-punched Jace’s shoulder with a similar look and a low chuckle. “Nice one. Don’t try it again though.”

  Jace’s chest swelled like a balloon.

  Slade called out. “That’s it, hit the showers, men.” The wrestling team began to disperse, but he called Jace aside.

  Jace’s grin felt like a light bulb he couldn’t turn off. “Thanks for the help, Mr. Slade.”

  “You executed it perfectly. Be careful using that in a match, though. Some refs would call the choke part of it an illegal move.”

  “It’s against the rules?”

  “Again, it depends. Sometimes rules are relative. Listen, I got a proposal for you. Spring Break is coming up, and I’m putting together a special, team-building exercise. A camping trip.”

  “Off campus?”

  “Father McManus and I have an understanding. But this is not for everyone. You got to keep it to yourself.”

  A ripple of apprehension set Jace’s short hairs on end. How many times had his mom drilled caution into him about any situation that led to an adult male getting him alone, no matter who? A bazillion. “Who’s all going?”

  “You, me. Eric, DaShante, Garrett, Juan, and Caleb.”

  All of these were older boys, the ones Jace looked up to. Except for Caleb, who was an utter douchebag. But the prospect of hanging out with those guys defused his alarm bells. “Sounds like fun. I never been camping before though.” Except for those weeks where him and Mom had lived in the car.

  “Then it’ll be an instructional
trip for you.”

  Jace could hardly resist telling other boys in his dorm section, or his two bunkmates, Lee and Malcolm. He simply puffed up with pride at the thought of hanging with the juniors and seniors. Spring sprang and the snow in the cornfields surrounding St. Sebastian’s finally melted, baring earth and rows of stubble. The distant silhouette of the modest, downtown Omaha skyline became visible more often. Warmth was in the air. Why Mom had wanted to come north where winters were so crazy-cold, he would never know.

  Finally the week of Spring Break arrived and he was packing up for the trip.

  Lee came into their room, long and lanky with greasy blond hair, caught in the throes of an acne invasion, chomping on some gum like it was his last meal, and saw Jace packing up his duffel bag. “Where you goin’?”

  “Coach Slade’s taking me on a special camping trip. It’s on the hush-hush.”

  “‘Hush-hush,’ huh? You sure he ain’t a creeper?”

  “Well, there’s a few others going, some of the juniors and seniors.”

  “How come he didn’t ask me?”

  “I dunno. Maybe he’s grooming me for varsity or something. Did you see me beat Docker last week in practice?”

  “You only told me forty-seven times.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You shut up. Don’t let that kinda thing go to your head. Why you want to hang out with a bunch of seniors anyway? Me and Malcolm not good enough for you?”

  “No! It’s just...”

  Lee lifted up his mattress where he hid his comic books. “Hey! Where the hell are my Superman comics?”

  “They gone?” Jace felt a pang of relief from the discomfort of Lee’s accusation.

  “Yeah, somebody effin’ stole ’em! Where’s that little turd Malcolm?”

  Malcolm walked in. “What about me?” His normally sweet and innocent face turned a dark, reddish-brown, scowling.

  Lee puffed up and faced him. “You steal my Superman comics?”

  “Oh, please. I’m a Marvel aficionado.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And I’ll thank you to never accuse me of such a thing again, or I shall resort to fisticuffs.”

  “To what?”

  Jace grinned. “To punching you in the face.”

  “Indeed,” Malcolm said. “Now, apologize, and I’ll keep an eye out for them.”

  Lee grumbled, “Sorry.”

  Over the two-hour drive to Indian Cave State Park, Jace felt the eyes of the other boys on him, constantly evaluating, sizing him up, perhaps silently wondering why Coach Slade had picked an eighth-grader to come on this trip. The longer it went on, the more he drew himself inside a shell. If any of these guys tried to give him a hard time, he would throw a damn-sight harder one back at them.

  After an hour of looking out across the endless stubble cornfields and pastures of eastern Nebraska, Jace surfaced from his well of shyness and looked around. Coach Slade drove the van, speaking little, sipping from a travel mug that smelled as much of whiskey as coffee. Eric and Juan were napping, DaShante was bobbing his head between a pair of headphones, Garrett was reading a book called A Princess of Mars, and Caleb was reading a Superman comic book...

  A Superman comic book.

  Jace recognized the tear on the top corner of the cover.

  Suddenly his ears heated and his fists clenched. If Lee were here, he’d have launched himself over the seat at Caleb, fists first, regardless that Caleb had three years and forty pounds on him.

  Should Jace go to Slade about it? Should he handle it quietly? Demand it back? Try to steal it back from Caleb? Jump Caleb in his sleep with a hunting knife? They were all “troubled kids” after all. Such a measure might be the only thing Caleb understood.

  Caleb was another kid jettisoned from the system. Shoplifting and vandalism charges, punching a fellow foster kid, all typical of St. Sebastian’s boys. They were all at St. S for a reason, or many reasons, long strings of bad decisions and bad luck. For many, it was the last stop before juvenile detention. Which meant that Caleb would be no pushover.

  Jace stewed about it the rest of the way to the campground. But one way or another, he was going to get Lee’s comic back.

  The evening air was cooling into the bite of lingering winter as Jace climbed out of the van with the other five boys. The trees of Indian Cave State Park rattled their naked branches in a chill wind.

  Eric opened up the van’s back doors and tossed out their bags, then totes full of camping equipment, and a cooler. They took turns ferrying the stuff to their campsite. Indian Cave State Park was a remote, a rugged patch of densely wooded hills hugging the western bank of the Missouri River, far from any sizable towns.

  It was quiet in a way Jace had not heard quiet in a long, long time. No city noise. No traffic. Just a few birds, the wind, the trees, and the distant murmur of the river. Pretty cool.

  “Let’s go, men,” Slade called from the campsite. “We don’t want to be setting up tents in the dark. Chop chop!”

  Their patch of camp was a small clearing with a fire pit and a picnic table, at the end of the winding trail down into a dense glade of oak, cedar, and cottonwood trees. They hadn’t seen a single other car since buying their pass at the guard shack. The park seemed darn near deserted.

  The older boys started setting up their tent, a six-man enclosure that looked like a Mars habitation. Jace ferried coolers of food from the van. Each of them felt like it weighed a ton. He peeked inside one, and his eyes bulged at the stack of steaks and raw burgers filling the cooler to the brim. His mouth watered. He had never eaten a steak before, except the chicken-fried kind his mom used to make. It made him feel important that Slade meant to feed him so well.

  The tent went up surprisingly fast and soon all their gear was unloaded.

  Eric piped up, “Who wants to go check out the cave before it gets too dark?”

  Three other voices whooped and jumped up.

  “What kind of cave?” Jace asked.

  Slade said, “This park gets its name from a cave, right down by the river. It’s full of prehistoric petroglyphs dated at 15,000 years old. Or it was until white settlers started coming to this area for picnics. They climbed up into the cave and started carving their initials onto prehistoric cave art. The guy who owned the land at the time dynamited the entrance to the cave, instead of letting ignorant pukes destroy all the art that’s older than any human civilization.”

  “That’s pretty sad,” Jace said.

  “Humans suck,” Slade said, his eyes flinty and cold. “No sense of respect or honor. Give them something nice and someone will find a way to crap all over it.”

  Given what he’d seen of the world, Jace couldn’t disagree.

  “Is it all right if we take Jace down there and show him around?” Eric said.

  “Sure,” Slade said.

  Eric gave Jace a grin. “Come on, it’s pretty cool.”

  Jace followed Eric down an earthen footpath into the forest. He felt nature swallow him, immersing him in the night’s deepening chill and creature sounds. He’d never seen anyplace like this before. Forests like this were only on TV, in books. He felt like Davey Crockett, a mountain man, hunting beaver pelts with a coonskin hat. Being from Texas, he’d had Davey Crockett drilled into him from the first day of kindergarten.

  The path wound around rocky ridges and undulating forest for some three hundred yards until it emerged into a paved parking lot at the foot of a rocky cliff maybe a hundred feet high. A path of wooden planks and bridges reached into the hollowed-out cliff base. On the other side of the parking area lay the rippling brown expanse of the mighty Missouri. It wasn’t moving fast, but somehow he could feel its relentless power, ever-moving but quietly sleeping.

  Eric crossed over a wooden foot bridge toward the cave and disappeared into the shadows.

  Then a sound reached over the wooded bluffs that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

  The howl of a wolf, long and deep.

&nbs
p; And close.

  So close it could be right up there on top of the cliff.

  “Eric! Did you hear that?” Jace called.

  No response.

  He ran over the bridge into the shadows under the cliff, wishing he’d brought a flashlight.

  “Eric!” he called again.

  Yellowstone was the closest timber wolf population. He’d heard plenty of coyotes in the nighttime hills around St. Sebastian’s, so he knew what a coyote sounded like. What he’d heard couldn’t be a coyote... Could it? Was that animal—and its pack—between him and campsite? Had Coach Slade heard it? Could it be the other boys messing with him?

  He reached the end of the path, a raised platform nestled in the hollow beneath the cliff, with placards describing the history of the cave. “Hey, Eric!” He sighed at the silence. Eric must have jumped off the path and be hiding in the bushes. “Quit messing with me, you buttheads!”

  It was too dark to read the placards, but he could just make out the cave opening in the ceiling of the hollow, a horizontal opening maybe five feet across twenty feet from the ground, choked with huge rocks. Eric certainly wasn’t hiding in there. Where had the rest of the boys gone?

  At the top of the cliff, something was moving through the bushes.

  “Who’s up there?” he called. His stomach felt like a balloon full of helium, empty and buoyant.

  The world fell silent, even the night creatures.

  With a snort of disgust he hurried back toward the parking lot, where he’d look for the path back to the campsite. He didn’t need this kind of hazing crap. “You guys are dicks!”

  But the hairs on his neck wouldn’t lie down. His feet thumped on the boards of the path louder than he liked, faster than he’d admit. The trailhead down which Eric had brought him was still barely visible in the fading dusk. He was alone, with nowhere to run except back up that trailhead...or up the paved road. At least on the road he would be able to see something coming. Would the road lead back to the campsite? He couldn’t be sure. A look at the park map back at the van had told him that all the roads and trails wound every which direction.