Return to Red Creek Nathan Hystad (e books free to read .txt) 📖

It was dark now, the sun setting fairly early in late March. She set the picture frame onto her coffee table and considered grabbing her jacket. She didn’t have a choice. She needed to bring it one more sacrifice, then she knew it would be strong enough on its own once more.

Emma wasn’t herself again, and she smiled now, widely and greedily. Yes. It would be happy again, and she could take her end of the bargain. She’d be blessed with riches, and she could finally leave this dump, and the monster would be sated for the time being. It wouldn’t need to hunt again for a few years, and she thought that might be a fair trade.

Part of her deep within fought the thoughts, banging against the barriers the creature had placed in her mind. But the inner cries went ignored.

Emma Smith washed the blood from her face and smiled.

_______________

Everything was spread out over the tabletop at Aunt Beth’s, and Taylor was standing, her can of diet soda precariously balanced on the edge of the journal, holding a page open.

Taylor’s uncle Darrel was there now, standing behind his wife protectively as they talked about what they’d found. Darrel had been there, and he knew exactly what they were dealing with. He’d even shot Jason in the arm at seeing the shadow man for the first time.

Her dad acted tired, the energy drained from him as she talked about the journal and what their family had done.

“You’re saying our family traded their son’s soul for a bargain with the creature? What did they get from it?” Paul asked.

Taylor wasn’t entirely sure. “Some sort of future protection. I don’t know. The pages are missing.”

Isabelle had her laptop open and had been frantically searching files, anything of public record in the immigration archives, and she let out a cheer. “I found it!”

Taylor leaned in, trying to see what exactly she’d located.

“It says here that the Smiths first arrived in eighteen ninety-two. We know they’d immigrated to England fifty years earlier, changing their name to Smith. We also know there are vague reports of a killer in the neighborhood outside London during that time,” Isabelle said, looking proud of herself.

Taylor’s mom spoke up first. “So let’s map this out. Northern Germany. The Schmidts dig up a forest and find a nest with this Schattenmann inside. They strike a bargain with it, one that suggests they sacrificed their son to save the rest of the village, for a time. Is that about right so far?”

Taylor’s dad nodded. “Then they left, apparently well off after selling the logging rights and the camp they’d spent a decade building up. The family headed to England, where they changed their name to Smith after a few years. If we didn’t know their last name now, they would have been hard to trace. They lived there outside London for five decades, running a successful inn.”

Taylor sipped her diet soda; the carbonated beverage was sticky against her tongue. She smacked her lips and continued. “Then they took a boat across the ocean, landing at Ellis Island in eighteen ninety-two, presumably with their friend aboard.”

“How do you travel with a shadow monster?” Darrel asked, cracking a grin, but no one laughed with him. He quickly lost his smugness.

“They moved upstate, and eventually bought the land here with the income from the sale of the logging camp and the inn they’d built from the ground up. It looks like Conway’s grandparents were the first settlers, and they came to Red Creek in the late eighteen hundreds, and that’s when the records of missing children start, going all the way until now. Why have they stayed in one place so long this time?” Paul’s eyes were intense as he ran his hands over the assortment of papers spread across the table.

Aunt Beth finally said something after staying quiet and sitting pale-faced at the edge of the table. “They grew complacent. But what I don’t understand is Uncle Timothy. Why kill one of their own? Why go after you, Paul?”

Taylor leaned toward the journal, pointing at it. “This is missing some pages, but it was right there at the start. It demanded a link to their blood. The child.”

Her dad glanced up at her, locking eyes. “It all makes sense.” He rubbed his forehead a few times, like he always did when he was stressed. “My mom told me all about it. They had ‘protection’ for me.” He looked at Beth. “For you too, I guess. But Mom told me we didn’t have protection for Taylor. That’s why she was taken as soon as she stepped foot out in the open.”

Goosebumps rose on Taylor’s arms. “But it didn’t want me. It wanted you,” she told her dad.

“Maybe. But that was Conway. The shadow may have had other ideas,” her dad said softly.

She’d never considered that before. She suspected they’d all be dead if the creature had any say in the matter.

“Wait! I have it!” Isabelle barked. She was flipping through the journal, comparing it to the translated notes they’d printed out. “It needs the blood of our family to sustain itself, or else it kills with impunity.” She pointed to Timothy Caldwell’s name circled on an old obituary. “He was the last one. Your mother’s brother. His bloodline was strong, and then you were next, Uncle Paul. The family allowed it to take you, but your parents weren’t in on it. At least, I doubt they were.”

Paul listened without interrupting, until she paused. “Mom knew all about it, didn’t she?” he asked Beth, who could only nod as if the revelation made sense.

“They were different people,” he added. “Think of the money. Dad worked for the orchard when we were kids. They were poor, and the Smiths paid Mom and Dad off after Cliff found me. Instead of sustaining whatever the hell it is – the demon’s soul, let’s call it – it kept feeding. We lost a lot of kids because