Arnold Yates had spent 20 years in big city law enforcement. Ten years as a Cop and 10 years as an investigator. As a result he’s lost most of his faith in human nature after seeing what people do to each other. For 3 years after his wife left luckily before his pension would kick in, Arnie, as his friends, what friends he had left, called him, he had searched for some affordable real estate in a quiet setting. Low priced, easy to afford, and a bargain compared to the part of the country he lived in, he came up with East Texas where the population density was low, crime stats were below the national average, and real estate was undervalued compared to much of the US.

Losing a wife he had intended on spending the rest of his years with was a blow, but it didn’t change his long term goal of getting away from the cruelty and savageness of the big city! Hortonville had been a lumber town and railroad center for a time in the 1930’s and was now simply a rural farm community center with a grocery store, feed store, gas station, and few shops aside from the sheriff’s office. When a realtor showed Arnold the spacious cabin with a nice piece of land around it with a price that couldn’t be matched anywhere else, he took it! Living on his pension now, he’d always be able to afford it! Now all he had to do was buy some furniture and appliances before he could move in.

A local directed him to the Penny Inn off the main drag where he could stay a few nights until he got situated. Mrs. Branch ran the place and was decent enough giving him a weekly rate and letting him know she served basic breakfasts starting at 7:30 in the morning until 9:30 biscuits and sausage gravy, egg and cheese omelets, or bacon and eggs. Since her last checkout she told Arnold he’d be all by himself in room 66 at the end of the hallway.

Arnie was waiting on deliveries when a knock came at the door. He answered it and in front of him was a well-dressed portly fellow who extended his hand, “You Arnold Yates?” He asked with a smile.

“Who wants to know?” Arnie squinted suspiciously not taking the hand shake.

“I’m Ray Hutchison, County Commissioner. Mind if I come in?”

Arnie stepped aside and gestured him in, “To what do I attribute this personal greeting to?”

“Let me get down to brass tacks. I have an offer for you that I think you’ll like. Being that we have a small county and not a lot of law enforcement here, I’m looking for an experienced lawman that we can depend on. A county detective. You’d answer to the sheriff’s office.”

Before he could get started Arnold swung his head back and forth, “I’ve spent 20 years in a big city police force and I’ve had all the crime I can stomach!”

“Look,” Ray replied, “I know all about your record. We could use a seasoned man like you. Excellent life insurance, salary, and you get your own vehicle too!” You’d be more like a consultant than a full time detective! Most times our farming and ranch community get along just fine. It’s nothing like where you come from.”

“To tell you quite truthfully, I really wanted to get out of this profession.”

“Oh, come on now!” Ray insisted, “It’s in your blood! It wouldn’t be long before you miss being involved. You know that as well as I do! Please consider it.”

What this persistent man was saying was unfortunately true, “let me mull this over. I’m not sure if I want to jump back into the furnace so to speak,” Arnie sighed.

“Look, you’re invited over to the sheriff’s office, talk to some deputies, get a feel for the operation, and if you want, we’ll talk more,” Ray smiled and extended his hand once more which Arnie took.

“By the way,” Arnie asked, “Why didn’t the sheriff contact me on this instead of you?”

Ray took on a suddenly dark countenance and sighed, “Well our Sheriff Porter, died while on the job of a heart attack. He was a good man! It hit the department pretty hard.”

“I see.”

“We could really use the help, Sir,” Ray almost pleaded.

“Okay, let me go down to the office in a couple of days after I get things situated around here and get the lay of the land, but this is no commitment, understand?”

Ray nervously shook his head, “No worries! No pressure! Just come in and tell me what you think!” Ray grabbed Arnie’s hand again and scurried out the door.

Three Days Later

The first chill of fall had begun and a light drizzle had begun to fall as he hit the windshield wiper switch and headed out from the edge of town, onto the main drag, and to the sheriff’s office. It was quiet as Arnold introduced himself to the Marcy, the Dispatcher. “Would you be able to pull up a few weeks of the blotter so I could see what kind of activity has been going on?” He smiled.

“Why sure. I’ll put’em in a folder for you!” She replied as she looked over this tall man with brown hair that hung off his shoulders. What an interesting specimen, she thought.

“Thanks,” Arnold spoke absentmindedly as he walked through the deputies offices.

“May I help you, Sir?” A young deputy asked, thin and wiry, but tough besides his uniform and badge, a pair of well-polished boots, seemed he took his job seriously.

“Name’s Arnold Yates. It seems your County Commissioner has been anxious to get me out here.”

“Oh yeah! You’re the new guy!” He stuck out his hand. “Glad to meet you!”

“Deputy Can I have a minute with you. Where we can talk?”

Buck closed the door to the office and gestured for Arnold to have a chair. “Shoot,” he said.

“How have things been lately here? I heard your sheriff suffered a heart attack.”

Buck’s face become suddenly gloomy, “Yeah that was a tough one. I found him in his truck, deceased. Dispatch had been calling and we were out looking for him.”

“What do you think?” Arnold pressed.

“Uh, something disturbed me about it. He had this look on his face like something or someone had scared the hell out of him. Like he’d seen a ghost! He was a big man like you, and he had nothing to be afraid of from any man.”

“What did the coroner say about it?”

“I was not privy to the autopsy, but I did see what the end result was,” Buck explained with is hands folded nervously in front of him. I thought it was unusual.”

“How are things? What’s been happening lately?” Arnie squinted inquisitively.

“Most of the time, everything is routine, patrols, occasional traffic accidents, cattle falls out of a truck, nothing too big to handle but lately we’ve had a slew of animal mutilations and someone breaking into farmer’s meat freezers.”

“Any ideas?”

“I have one lead, but I don’t know if it’s related to the Sheriff’s death,” Buck advised, “I got a feeling anyway.”

“Tell me about it?”

“Well, there’s this widow, and I mean she is a looker, but a peculiar Gal. She reported a peeping Tom or something that looked scary that she saw in her window! We went out and checked it out. Found some big footprints outside her place. Big ones!”

“You get a plaster cast?”

“No, it rained the following day and washed them away! But, you should go and check her out,” He said with a sly smile.

“What are you some kind of matchmaker?” Arnold frowned.

“I’m just saying she is different, mysterious, I’d say. You might find out something from her.”

“You playing games with me, Mister?” Arnie growled. “I don’t have time for games.”

“No! No!” Buck held up his hands defensively. “She’s an artist.”

“Getting back to the break-ins. Are there bears or cougars in the area?”

“No bears in years around these parts, but cougars, yes!” Buck explained. “But whatever has been doing this is no damn bear.”

Chapter II

Before he left the office, Marci, had dropped a folder of blotters in his lap and Arnold went over them. Most of it was all routine uneventful calls and patrol chatter, but the break-ins were serious along with a couple of cattle that had been drained bloodless. That was flat out of the norm! It reminded Arnold of FBI reports coming out of New Mexico years before about cattle mutilations! And he thought things were going to be quiet. Damn it! Arnold decided to go over to this widow’s place and interview her.

It looked like a small 2 story house as he walked up to the porch and rang the doorbell. Only the screen door was left open. From the shadowy interior came the figure of a tall woman, slender, wearing a house coat open in the middle revealing a sheer gown she was wearing. In one hand she held an artist’s paint brush and in the other a drink. “Who may I say is calling she wavered in a cunning manner as though it were all a joke and she wore a mischievous smile.

“Name’s Arnold Yates, I’m an investigator for the county,” He tipped his hat. “May I come in?”

She nodded and backed away from the door, “Come,” She replied, leaning her head as she looked him over.

“Would you mind answering a few questions?” Arnie asked.

“I thought I did all that before when your deputies showed up,” She replied while giving him odd glances as if interested but undecided yet.

“Sorry to bother you,” Arnold apologized.

“That’s alright, Detective, can I interest you in a drink. It seems pretty late in the day for duty,” She was right about that. He’d spent hours at the sheriff’s office and it was late in the afternoon now.

“You caught me in the middle of my daily cocktail hour before I make dinner,” she mentioned as if telling a boring story.

There was a scent she gave off faintly of vanilla and musk that was alluring, even arousing! Arnold hadn’t been with another women since his wife had left. “Get your mind out of the gutter!” he told himself.

She glanced at him like she knew what he was thinking, “By the way, my name is Amanda.” She held out her hand, the one that didn’t have a drink in it.

“Let me put away this paint brush. I have a small studio in the back. It keeps me busy now that I exist without a man in my life,” She explained with a knowing look in her eyes, “How’d you like to fill the bill?”

Arnold cleared his throat as she strolled back into the kitchen, and offered him a drink, “What’ll yuh have?”

“Whatever, is convenient for you to make. Do you have rum?”

“Oh yes, what is life without rum?” She mixed it with soda and bent over toward him revealing her cleavage through the sheer gown that parted the house coat. Arnold swallowed and tried to look into her eyes.

“I’m widowed and so living here alone, I must make life interesting for myself here. I regret selling the larger house my late husband and I shared, but living alone and constantly attending to everything it takes to maintain a place for too time consuming,” She sighed. “Now I must live among these local yokels, who make rumors about me.”

Noting that Amanda was a statuesque woman with a willowy figure and seductive charm, Arnold spoke up, “I find it strange that you haven’t found a man that would worship the ground you walk on.”

She blushed momentarily, “I’m afraid I’d walk all over him. Besides prospects here among these country bumpkins, no thanks!”

“Well, I guess you could always move to where there’s more action,” Arnold replied sarcastically.

“Aside from the disappointment. I like it here, but living without someone to share it with is a challenge, and how about you?”

Arnold tried not to look too outwardly grim, “My wife of 17 years left.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said as she took a sip off her drink.”

Arnold drained the rest of his glass.

“How about another?” She offered

“Why not?” Arnold sighed.

As Amanda poured him another drink, Arnold asked, “Can you tell me what happened? What you saw?”

She got a sudden unpleasant look on her face as she recalled, “It was around this time of day. I was about to cook for myself and I saw what I thought was a peeping Tom, until I looked closer and thought I was looking at something like a creature more than I a man! Like to have scared the hell out of me! When I screamed, he or it ran off!”

“Can you describe in more detail?” Arnold asked.

“The head was wide, eyes large and brown from what I could see. A furry head with only part of the eyes, nose, and mouth uncovered, the rest, dark brown. “I’ll do a very professional sketch for you if you like being that I’m an artist,” She offered.

“We might need that,” Arnold sighed and finished his drink. “I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time, but I better let you attend to your dinner.”

“Aw, you have to go?” Amanda feigned true regret. “Just when it was getting interesting too.”

He couldn’t deny it, this woman who was supposed to be around 50 was definitely well preserved and very alluring. His arousal was undeniable, but he decided this might not be an appropriate time to grab her and taste those wicked lips of hers.

“Do me a favor. You can come back any time you like. I enjoy your company,” She smiled once again mischievously.

“I will!” Arnold said as he took her hand and kissed it wondering if he’d gone too far, but she accepted it gracefully and nodded to him. With that he walked out of her place.

It was just about dark now and he got his atomic flashlight from his car and scanned around. At her window he noted that whoever it was would have to have stood 7 foot tall in order to look into that window! His visual scan took him to a ditch filled with a tree line that extended a mile down the road as they lined the culvert that ran alongside the road! It was dark and tangled in tree trunks and brush, no way was he going to get down into that, but it could be a great escape route for a Peeping Tom or whatever that ape man thing was! He went back to his vehicle, thinking about Amanda, and drove off.

That night the dream state was a crushing experience as it seemed Amanda’s presence hovered over him as she slept. Several times he awake in a dark void convinced he had made love to the bewitching widow who it seemed called out to him in his sleep. It seemed Amanda was haunting his sleep and there was nothing he could do about it! The next morning when he arrived at the Sheriff’s office he called in Buck, who was just about to leave on patrol. “What do you know about this woman who reported the Peeping Tom?” Arnold frowned.

“All I know is she’s a widow, she’s pretty decent looking, and I examined the area where she claimed she was being watched from. That’s all!”

“Why were you suggesting that I go check her out?” Arnie demanded.

Intimidated by the irritation is Arnie’s mood, the deputy shrugged innocently, “I swear, I don’t know anything else about that woman. I just thought you might finder her interesting is all? Why?”

“Nothing, but yeah you’re right, she’s interesting in a wicked sort of way. You can go now,” Arnie said dismissively.

“I didn’t mean anything by it!” Buck explained.

“Okay, fine, just proceed to your duties, Deputy!”

Amanda was still weighing on his mind, and it seemed nothing could halt his obsession, Beads of sweat rolled off his temples. What the hell had happened to him? Was he losing his mind? Arnie now regretted he accepted the offer to consider taking this job! But, knowing all this he couldn’t help himself. Arnold got in his truck and drove over to Amanda’s home. Feeling somewhere between being an idiot and a love sick puppy, he walked onto her porch, the screen door as before was the only thing keeping the front entrance secure. He knocked.

Amanda approached from the dimly lit interior of her place wearing only a shawl that spit down the middle revealing her nude form, “I knew you would be back! I waited for you!” She hissed with delight and opened the door looking into his eyes with a twinkling of excitement and lust!

She grabbed him around his neck and pulled his face down to hers and gave him a long kiss! Arnold was shocked and amazed. It was like the dream he‘d been having simply continued into his waking consciousness. Was he dreaming or what? He grabbed her, carrying her to the bedroom on his right beyond the kitchen not knowing what had come over him. He was seeing red! He was choking with a lust he had no control over! What was he doing? How could he stop himself? The answer was, he couldn’t! They grappled with each other’s bodies tangled in kisses and animal hunger! After what had seemed like hours, Amanda emerged from the bed and put a finer to her lips. She came back with a couple of drinks-some mysterious kind of liqueur, he’d never tasted before, tangy, herbal, sweet, yet unknown to his taste buds.

She sipped a mouthful and poured it into his lips then giggled with a girlish yet unsettling laugh. Amanda held him in a trance-like state that had captivated Arnold. What had he gotten himself into, but that question had long since become irrelevant. He was hopelessly under her spell and could not figure out why! “I have something to show you,” Amanda grinned mischievously.

She carried an easel to the front of the bed with a cloth covering it standing there in her uncovered body and in a formal posture she unveiled a startling portrait. It was a perfect likeness of her Peeping Tom creature-it startled him! He jerked in astonishment! What was this all about, he wondered.

“I have a photographic memory,” she explained ignoring the bizarre implications of the moment. “It helps with my art work. What do you think?”

Arnie rubbed his face in disbelief, “Why did you choose this moment to show something like this to me? I mean it looks like something Rembrandt would have painted, but why now?”

“I wanted you to see my work. Besides, I thought this might help with your investigation,” She offered in false sincerity with the expression of a little girl who had been caught doing something she shouldn’t.

Arnie couldn’t resist pulling her back down into the bed and kissing her again, somehow overlooking the awkwardness of the moment! This was not like his careful nature. Something had happened to him that he couldn’t explain! She touched his lips with her index finger and said something unusual. “This painting of him. He said he would never let go.”

“What do you mean?” Arnold frowned, sat up in the bed, and started at the bizarre portrait again.

“He’s part of my gallery, a captured moment of my past, and instead of just passing away like any mortal husband should, he came back in this form,” Amanda explained as if the explanation spoke for itself.

“Are you saying that this thing you painted on canvass has the spirit of your dead husband?” Arnold blurted out disbelievingly.

Amanda just stared into his eyes and replied quietly, “I knew when I met you that you were the one. You would liberate me from this-this incarnate from the grave. He feeds on animal blood from the local farms to keep himself in our plane of existence. Now you have intervened.”

Arnie was truly bewildered now and turned away from her, though he didn’t want to, but he had to exert his own will sometime. “What the hell are you, a witch?” He muttered.

He felt the warmth f her body as she drew close and pressed against him. Her warm mouth pressed against his ear, “If you want to call me that. Then I am. He could never bring out the true lover within me like you do, and after he died, I never knew this could happen, but he told me that he used a curse to tie our souls together and only another outside of the bond can break it,” She whispered.

“You’re freaking me out! You know this don’t you?”

“Come now Mister big law man from the big city, if anyone should know about the true evil of human nature you should!” Amanda pressed against him with her lustful ways.

Goose bumps erupted from his flesh, his hair stood up on his neck, and he was aroused all over again, turned back on top of her and clutched her writhing flesh! He pierced her again! She latched onto him digging her nails into his back and urging him on with her fiery tongue and scorching, provocative, language.

“You must stop this entity who refuses to let go of me,” Amanda pleaded with him once they had subsided from their scorching love making. She sat atop him and looked down into his eyes. “You are the only man I have come to for this. Only you. He has come to me before in different forms and I always had a spell to offset his curse, but he always managed to come back in another form, never intending to let me go! Please believe me.”

“What other forms?” Arnie muttered.

“He once haunted me as a wolf, once as a hawk, another time as fox, but this time he had incarnated as a very powerful and savage being that is willing to battle whoever dares to connect with my body, my emotions, my soul, and you have!”

“Do you know how crazy this sounds? Arnie sighed.

“You don’t think that you, despite your careful and tormented nature, could end up so passionately intertwined with me in such a short period of time? I did come to you in your dreams, you do know that don’t you?”

“Yes,” Arnie nodded, conceding there was something to all of this. Momentarily drifted off, fantasizing about what life would be like with this bewitching seductress while trying to hold down his county job. Would this be the bizarre ending to his later years? Amanda massaged his face in her hands with her eyes closed, reading his thoughts unbeknownst to him. Yes, he was the one, she knew.

Amanda bent down close to Arnie’s face and stared into his eyes, “You must save me, and you will have me always,” she whispered urgently.

Two Days Later

Amanda had told Arnie everything about this spiritual bond that had remained after death. In life he had been possessive and overbearing even if he had been a wizard of investing had provided a lifetime of income. It was still a form of bondage. The plan was set. They would set a trap! Once again the beast would come to her window, perhaps even attempt to get into the house. In this present form, as powerful as it now was, it might have intended to take Amanda with him into death so that there was no escaping the spiritual bondage in the afterlife! Arnie had consented to the plan. Dressed in a tactical uniform, his vehicle hidden from the premises, and heavily armed, he waited. The night air had grown cold. It would be about the same time frame as the last encounter.

As he crouched behind some foliage and camouflage, he heard it. The sound of a large and powerful presence emerging from the long row of dark trees that ran along a shadowy ditch. Amanda was waiting inside hear the window where she had last been spied upon by that beast! She trembled, contemplating her plan, wondering if Arnold was up to the task, he sure was in bed. She licked her lips on that thought, and held an ancient trinket to her breasts and waited.

The massive figure lurked in the darkness and slowly crept in silence but for the occasional crunch of a leaf underfoot. Standing over 7 foot tall as Arnie was already aware, it made its way to Amanda’s window to peer in. It seemed the normal noises of the night vanished in a deadly vacuum! There it was reaching at the window sill. Then the thought occurred to Arnie, what the hell was he going to do? Fire at the ape man creature and hit the wall of the house and wound or kill Amanda with a stray bullet? No way! He hadn’t thought about this at all. His thinking had been unclear. He had been too preoccupied with Amanda to think straight! He moved parallel to the wall of Amanda’s house to get a batter shot, but in doing so gave away his position and alerted the beast.

The moonlight illuminated a grotesque human-like but ape face that was glaring at him with a furious expression. Arnold raised his AR-15 rifle and fired, taking care to keep his aim away from the outer wall! At first it was stunned by the blast, it then charged at him with such quickness all Arnold could do was throw the rifle at it which it stopped momentarily to swipe it away like a mere nuisance and it kept coming! Arnold back tracked unholstering his 357 magnum and raised the heavy caliber pistol, but as he did so he fell backwards! When he raised his arm to fire, the creature had already grabbed his legs and flung him like a rag doll several feet away from the house and into the yard! The impact of hitting the ground knocked the 357 magnum from his grip! Arnie had no choice but to run, throwing whatever he could find backward, a rake, a neighbor’s trash can. He could hear the ground being pounded by a heavy bipedal impact behind him!

Arnie leaped over a hurricane chain link fence on the next door neighbor’s property with his assailant in hot pursuit! Then he heard the voice of a man screaming from inside his house open window, “I’m calling the police! You crazy son of a bitch! Get outta my yard!”

“Call them!” Arnie answered breathlessly as he attempted to climb a tree branch and scale an old oak tree. The beast grabbed Arnie once again launching him onto the grassy yard that he hit hard! With the breath knocked out of him and grasping for anything he could find. There was a hatchet next to a tree stump he was able to get a hold of. As the monstrous figure came at him, Arnie swung and hit it in the leg above the knee. The ape man screeched in a horrid, ear splitting, howl, and Arnie swung again landing it in the side of his hell bent attacker, but it grabbed the axe and snatched it from Arnie ready to use it on him when the crack of a rifle shot rang out in the air of the night! The neighbor who was seeing the struggle going on in his property responded with force!

One shot, and the creature froze in its tracks, two shots, and it staggered, a third report, and the man ape splattered in blood, collapsed with a heavy thud on the ground! Arnie got up and raised his hands, “Don’t shoot! That damn thing was trying to kill me!”

“I already called the sheriffs!” The older man said as he carried his rifle with him to see who or what he had killed.

“I’m with the sheriff’s department,” Arnie answered still winded from his life and death struggle.

“What in the hell is that?” The neighbor muttered, looking down at the furry corpse lying on his yard.

“I believe this is what has been breaking into farmer’s meat lockers and killing cattle,” Arnie replied feeling his bruised ribs as he began stumbling toward Amanda’s, “Wait for the law!”

“Sure is one ugly son of a bitch!” The older man called back.

Where was she? He thought aloud. Had she been hit by a stray bullet, he worried. Wouldn’t that be par for the course, he grimaced. In the distance, he heard sirens of approaching deputy sheriffs as he limped to Amanda’s front door. He opened it and walked in. The house was dark, which disturbed him. He flicked on a light but didn’t see her anywhere! “Amanda, he’s dead! You’re safe now, “Arnie gasped as he held his side.

He limped past the kitchen and past the bedroom to his right where he and Amanda had made such passionate love  that contained that easel of a portrait of what had died out there in the neighbor’s yard and further toward the gallery, the secret room where she did all her painting. The room she had never bothered to show him what her work was all about. He flicked on the light to view a disturbing collection of portraits. One, in particular caught his attention. It was a perfect likeness of himself swinging an axe at the very ape-like creature that she had captured on canvass and it was all in the pale moonlight just as on this unholy evening. He gasped. He then saw something else as he scanned the room. It was a doll roughly of his own likeness with a pearl pin stuck through its heart lying on a small table near the portrait of his struggle with the ape creature.

A voice came from behind him, “I guess you must know now that I can paint the future and make it come to pass. Do you understand now?”

Without turning around, Arnold Yates, in surprise, replied, “I guess that you really are a witch aren’t you?” He turned toward her.  

What Arnold saw, startled him! It was Amanda, older, grayer, wrinkled, possessing features that seemed to be the classic weathered sorceress of evil depicted in folklore and legend. “Come to me my lover. I am yours forever!” Her lips spluttered!

The End