Chapter 7
Matthew Nelson Neil rolled over and looked at Con. Flies covered the man’s face. They crawled across his pale flesh, buzzed over his open eyes.
The Sandman made no effort to swat them away.
“Where is she?” Con demanded. “Where is Valerie?”
The Sandman opened his mouth to reply but instead of words, a stream of flies spewed forth. Hundreds of them, an endless supply of fully engorged black bodies.
Con jumped back only to bump into his partner, Tate Abernathy. He shouted, yelled at Tate to move, to fucking move, but the man didn’t budge. When Con peered over his shoulder, he saw that Tate’s eyes were open, too.
He was dead, strangled like all The Sandman’s other victims.
When he turned back, he saw that Matthew’s corpse was now upright and the man was extending a finger in Con’s direction. The nail was broken, maroon blood crusting the tip.
Con’s fear was palpable, but he was locked in place, trapped between the two large men.
The Sandman’s finger prodded his chest. It burned. My god did it burn.
The reek of singed hair quickly filled his nostrils.
Singed… hair ?
That didn’t fit.
Con’s eyes snapped open, and he was disoriented, unsure of where he was.
Then he felt pain and looked down at his chest.
“Shit!”
He brushed the cigarette that had fallen from his lips away, then winced upon seeing the red burn mark that it left behind, the patch of dark hair that had melted.
Con cursed again and jumped up.
He glanced around, realizing that he was still on his porch and that he’d stupidly fallen asleep listening to the California Gold Rush audiobook.
It was dark out and the cool air caused goose pimples to break out all over his skin.
That was the thing about California: no matter how hot it got during the day, once the sun dipped behind the hills, the temperature dropped precipitously.
Con yanked the headphones from his ears and allowed his eyes to drift to the phone on the small glass table to his right.
He’d listened to six hours and couldn’t recall a goddamn thing. Not one fact about the fucking book.
But he could hear Matthew Nelson Neil’s voice.
The thick, throaty voice, the monotone way he had of speaking as if the man suffered from a brain injury.
Maybe if Matthew had such an injury, it would explain his actions in a way that his unsatisfactory answers during the pre-conviction interview never had.
But he didn’t.
Matthew had gotten a clean bill of health—if you discounted the elements that plagued pretty much every middle-aged man in America: heart disease and diabetes.
Con, a disgusted look on his face, shook his head. And then he froze.
He was no longer alone.
“Easy—easy boy,” he said, holding his hands out in front of him.
A large coyote stood not ten feet from the edge of his porch. Its haunches were raised, its teeth bared.
The animal glared at him.
“ Git ,” Con hissed. “Get out of here.”
But the animal didn’t back down. It snarled, foamy saliva dripping from its black lips and falling to the desert sand beneath it.
“ Git! ” Con screaming, standing tall and holding his arms above his head in an attempt to intimidate the beast.
His efforts had the opposite effect: the animal inched closer.
Con grabbed the object nearest to him, an empty beer bottle, and, without hesitation, flung it at the animal.
It struck the ground beside the coyote’s left paw before spinning away harmlessly into the tall, burnt grass.
The animal didn’t so much as blink.
What the fuck is wrong with it? He wondered. Is it rabid?
“Con? What are you doing out here?”
The sound of a voice behind him sent a shiver up his spine.
“Beth?” He chanced a glance over his shoulder at his wife. She was standing in the doorway, wearing a pantsuit, her traditional work outfit. “Go inside. Go inside and get my gun.”
Beth’s eyes darted over his shoulder. Then she sighed and removed the elastic from her hair, letting the dark locks drop to her shoulders.
“What are you talking about, Con?”
Con held his palm in front of him.
“There’s a coyote. Get my gun.”
She didn’t move. Instead, Beth took in the array of empty bottles surrounding Con, the full ashtray.
“There’s no coyote,” she said tiredly.
Con, his brow knitting, looked back to the rolling plains. The beer bottle he’d chucked was still there, glinting in the moonlight, but the coyote was gone.
“There was a coyote... I think it was rabid. It—”
“Come inside. Come to bed.”
“But—”
“Bed, Con. It’s late.”
He heard Beth retreat into their home but couldn’t tear his eyes off the spot where the coyote had been moments ago.
There were no palm prints, no scat, no evidence that the animal had ever been there.
But it had— he’d seen it.
Or had he?
Had he imagined the entire thing?
His chest still ached from the cigarette burn, the skin already starting to blister.
He hadn’t imagined that, at least.
Confused, Con began to cautiously pick up the beer bottles and put them back in the case. He’d drunk all six, and couldn’t remember doing that, either. Just as he grabbed the full ashtray and turned his back, he heard a distinct sound carrying over the plains like a tugboat horn echoing across the Pacific.
A coyote’s howl.
Con hurried inside, making sure to close both the screen door and the interior door even though this would make the house hot and stuffy overnight.
Then he put the beer bottles in the recycling and emptied the ashtray before heading upstairs.
Beth was already asleep, her back toward the door. Con crawled in next to her, wrapping his arm protectively around her waist and pulling her close.
She grunted in her sleep, and he removed his arm.
Con turned the opposite way and closed his eyes.
When sleep finally came, it was full of nightmares.