Mauve sat the freshly baked apple pie on the windowsill over looking the back yard near the area of the barn. Beyond that was the old tool shed where, Kyle, Hank and Jack were hiding she mused. To her it seemed like they were playing at some game, a man thing that she just wasn't allowed to partake in. She sighed and went back to the stew she was making for dinner. It was time for a taste. It needed a little more parsley and pinch more salt, with a quick stir. Carefully she fastened the lid on tight to seal off any escaping heat. Satisfied now that her kitchen tasks where completed she returned to the apple pie on the windowsill waving the smell towards the shed hoping to draw the occupants out.
It didn't work and her curiosity was getting the best of her. So she decided to bring them some more coffee. After all Kyle never said, "stay way," he just said not to bother them. The two phrases never meant the same thing, besides was more coffee a bother?
She smiled as she walked over the black and white tile floor pasted the stove with its simmering stew to the pantry off to its right. There she retrieved another thermos to put the coffee in. She reached for it but something on the opposite shelve caught her attention. And with a crash of some glass preserve jars that something snarled a little meek snarl and dashed away, leaping over the pie with enough force to send it to the grown below.
The glimpse she did catch of the little thing was enough to make the ends of the hairs of her arms stand up and for that little shiver of someone walking over the grave to make her feel a bit out of sorts. She sank to the floor avoiding the falling glass.
Jess was out in the yard playing with one of the new pups that Mr. Potter dropped off the other day. It was a black leggy mutt almost a Curly Coated Retriever with more a Labrador grate he named Marlin. "Marlin?" His father asked. Jess shook his head yes saying it fit the pup. So far Marlin didn't seem to care if you called him hey you as long as you played fetch with him.
But the pup didn't go after the ball when he saw the thing leap out of the window. Jess just caught something flash by him as the pup yelped after the newer toy to fetch it. Jess ran after Marlin just as he cornered the thing in the wood pile that stood against the solid sheet metal fence near the left side of the barn about twenty five feet from the shed. Kyle put it the plate behind the wood to prevent a sudden chance of fire. "One can never be to careful with ones barn!", Kyle's Dad use to say.
Jess glanced at the shed briefly wondering if he should get his Dad. With a smile akin to a young man's awareness that he didn't need a parent so often he shook his head no. Jess's face lit with maturity before focusing his attention back on Marlin trying to rip apart the stack of wood. He couldn't bear to stop the dog so intend he was to get the thing. As if he was studying Marlin, Jess stood back watching to see how strong Marlin was.
The puppy's barking got stronger as his nose caught sent of the pray. To Jess it was as if the dog suddenly released that this toy was much different from a ball. This toy was flesh. That made Jess a little nervous. He understood a farm dog must kill things that threaten the livelihood of the farm but Jess didn't want to train the dog to do that. That was something that Kyle did with his farm dogs. Jess though he went hunting with his Dad and some of his Dad's friends has yet to pull the trigger. He even at a young age felt killing to just be plain wrong.
His Dad understood. Jess wasn't going to be like the farmer he had to become. So he never forced the boy. He would just say that it was okay there was always a next time. But Jess didn't want the next time. For some reason being around Jack made him understand he wasn't a hunter. He wanted to be a writer. But sometimes you need to experience something of the world in order to make your written words have meaning. So he made a choice to some day pull that trigger just to feel how wrong it really was. It sounded childish but some things needed doing. He just had to make sure he didn't like it. But some how he just knew deep down that wouldn't be possible.
He felt his stomach turn as thoughts of Marlin getting at the creature entered his mind. He didn't want to his dog to be a killer either.
"Marlin, come here!" He yelled not sure if the dog heard him over his increased barking.
Marlin's bark was sounding hoarse as the dog just kept at the pile trying to get out the thing inside. Jess hesitated for a moment before he began to help the dog away from get at the critter. But something made hem let go of the dog. He became curious to see just what the dog would do if it got to the thing. Jess felt strange like he needed to observe this for his art hoping that Marlin didn't hurt the creature, but he needed to see what his dog was capable of doing. Mentally he began to jot down notes for his journal later studying the dog's contorting muscles, listen to his raspy bark and memorizing the way the pup's hair stood up. So with all his strength both moral and physical he began to remove the wood piece-by-piece tossing each log aside away from the frantic Marlin in hopes of exposing the thing.
Jess didn't hear Mauve's cries as after she regained her senses and spied what was happening out the window where her apple pie once was she tried to stop the boy and pup from any further mayhem. She felt a chill again. Something with the thing that was in the pantry wasn't right, it was just wrong.
"Jess, get that dog and you away from there. I'm not sure what it is that came flying out of the pantry but it wasn't a rat!"
He didn't know his mother yelled after him as the pup's howls grew louder the closer Jess came to the scent in the dog's nose.
It was like slow motion then as Jack, Kyle and Hank came out of the shed alerted by the sound of the dog's carrying on. Jack caught site of Mauve as she ran towards her son desperately trying to get the boy to hear her warning.
Jack was well aware that something wasn't right as a unique sound, like an echoed growl on reverb came out of the pile. The source of the noise leapt out of the pile avoiding Marlin's snapping teeth and went straight for Jess. It latched with its teeth to the boy's chest sending him screaming to the ground. Marlin was on him as well trying to rip the thing off his master.
The thing turned on Marlin and with split second movement ripped the pup's neck open sending him whimpering to the dirt. Seeing all the people running to the boy the creature was visible to the group for a split second before it vanished moving at some accelerated speed in the direction of the woods. No one but Jack caught a clear view of it. What Jack saw had him worried. His eyes latched on to something alien before it vanished.
Jack paused allowing Kyle and Mauve to see to Jess as Hank watched the thing go rapidly out of sight. Hank blinked barely able to see the thing it move so rapidly out of sight.
"What the hell was it? I mean that wasn't native to these parts." Hank looked at Jess bleeding from a bad wound before he turned and went to his patrol car to call in the accident and get an ambulance to the farm. Jack just stood transfixed with the path the thing took to the woods. To Hank, Jack seemed like a statue, focused only on the point ahead and his form seemingly timeless. He tucked the thought in his head for later as he made the call.
Jack shook himself out of his trance like stare and went to see how Jess was.
The boy was in pain but awake as he tried to tell his parents what he saw. He looked up to see Jack nearby. "You saw it, right Jack?"
He knelt by the boy and checked his eyes before looking at the wound. It wasn't bad but it wasn't good and there was no way of knowing what bit him if the creature was gone. It could complicate things "Jess, just relax. You're going to be fine. Kyle can you handle this?"
Kyle looked up at his friend. There was something in Jack's eyes that Kyle never saw before. It was like a primal urge had awoken and Jack had to go after the thing, hunt it down like prey. Kyle was in awe of the strength he saw as Jack's fixed jaw and sharp eyes stared back at the field and beyond. Kyle suddenly was aware why Jack had to go, the creature bit Jess, it was alien that much he even knew, so it may be harmful to his son.
"Go, when you find it bring it to town. Doctor Langberry has a lab if needed." Kyle turned his attention back to his boy knowing that Jack was gone when he had said go.
He relived the image of the blood as it oozed from Jess's chest, Marlin lying almost dead near the boy. He still could smell the blood left in his nose even over his heavier breathing as he ran to the field. Jack paused before the fence to trace the area with his Vortex Manipulator. There was a signal. After he confirmed its direction he turned to scan for Jess's life signs up in the farmyard. When he saw the boy's life signs weakening he sent a silent thought to the boy. "Be okay, Jess, just be okay!"
It was then he thought of another little boy, Grey, his brother who must have been scared when his big brother let go of his hand. And another boy came to mind as well. His grandson scared and shaking but showing so much trust in his eyes as the man known as Uncle Jack told him it was going to be okay. Jack shook the thoughts out of his head returning to the task at hand, he didn't need the distraction. Jess was in trouble and that thing that did this had answers that were needed. But now was not the time to dwell on the future or the past, he needed to be focused on the present. After one long look towards Jess he had the incentive to jump the fence and race through the field.
His breath quickened as the chase went forward, his VM picking up heavy traces of a small alien life form covered in a temporal resonance. Its life form was not found in his database. It was times like these he wished he had the Hub to ask for more Intel, he also wished Tosh was still in this world. Her voice always made the chase seem better. It was lonely doing all the work by himself. But he had done it in the past as he supposed he would be doing it in his future as well. But some how a friendly voice on the other end made the job feel grounded, maybe more important. The one thing Jack missed was being part of a team. He silently wished he still had this as his feet hit the grass bring up the smell of this afternoon's rain. It was the moister that had Jack thinking again of Cardiff.
The rain here reminded him of the rain in Cardiff. There was a difference in the two, Tempest was a small town and Cardiff was a city. A city Jack haunted as if he was a specter of times to come or that is times gone by. Knowing the future was a hindrance to him. Though he embraced his human roots in the past world he lived in, he, not in form, was alien to those around him. It was only practiced behavior that allowed him contact, but even those found out in the end he was more than just some human with a WWII fetish. To them he was that corner of the eye thing, he was what Torchwood hunted down, a strange and dangerous thing out of place on planet Earth.
His Vortex Manipulator beeped as its sensors picked up something else as he approached the end of the field and was just about to step into the woods. It was then the wet earth smell changed and was replaced with a heaver hot moisture odor. He turned his head at the sunny field endangered of being ruined by the forbidding dark clouds that exploded with thunder over the forest. Jack smiled at the unusual activity. "I was in needed of an adventure today. This is going to be interesting, at least I hope it will be." He sniffed the air this time to gage the mist coming out of the woods in front of him.
"Steam?" He questioned as he scanned the woods confirming what his nose told him already. It was nothing like the last time he shifted realities making this slightly scarier. "Like the other day, that pocket in the storm was part of the fabric of this time but it wasn't. It was an incident created with in this time by another time. At least I would like to think that we are dealing with that type of phenomena. I just wonder what will be on the inside of the forest?" He checked his gun as he stepped in to the darker world in front of him.
It was like a door opened to one room and then shut taking the other room away. It was different in the forest then the field. The light was wrong almost unearthly if Jack was to pick a term. He felt like he was walking in an unknown land. The ground was spongy, spread thick and deep with the layer of black moss he felt grow as his feet moved carefully through this new world. He was still breathing hard but it was more from fear of his current surroundings unlike early when he ran after the thing that attacked Jess.
He heard an unnatural howl from the trees in front of him. To his clouded mind he thought that maybe the trees responded to his thoughts on Jess. To Jack the group he was heading towards, still unsure of his footing, seemed to inch away as he drew closer. He couldn't gage if it was a trick of the light or lack of light or maybe he mused the thick steam was some type of hallucinate coming from the thick moss around his feet.
"Mushrooms make you trip, they are natural, what if this forest from where ever has the same effect. The Moss, it might make me see things." He pause pointed his VM at the trees before he moved forward. He blinked when he saw the truth. The trees were moving or rather the earth was moving away. He slowly put one foot in front of the other as he studied the phenomenon in more detail. The earth was being pulled almost sucked in to Jack's amusement like sand when the waves role up the shoreline and pull back.
As he inched forward he could sense the land retracting. So he stopped and took another readying. The thing or what temporal trace it gave off was in those same trees he couldn't get near. He grunted as they repeated yet again the little game, teasing him still as he set one foot forward.
"This isn't helping. I have to some how break this pattern or I will never find the damn thing." He glanced back at the way he came in. All he saw of the world he left was a small pinch of blue sky that just came in above the first group of trees, those that didn't move, and from what Jack could tell that spot was disappearing.
"Well this isn't good. I lose that patch of sky and I may never get out of this, whatever this is. I don't like the way this is panning out. If I stay here to look for that thing, I may never get out of here even if I find it. If I don't go and something happens to Jess, I'll never forgive myself. What if the bite was toxic and kills him?"
He saw Steven's face so trusting standing there so innocent when the first resonate signal sliced through his brain linking him with the children of the whole world and the 456. Jack closed his eyes allowing his mind to clear so he could think out the best course of action. It had to be the right choice, because right now another dead child on his hands wasn't something he wanted.
They were hunting, around five of them from town. Ken Trummble tossed his camifloged cap over his head after he smoothed back his close-cropped spiky light brown hair. He didn't like the feel of the woods. He just had an ill feeling when they disturbed a bunch of settled Starlings that sprung to the air but instead of flying to the sky they vanished in a thick fog that started to cover the woods they traveled.
Andy Meyers shorter than the six foot tall Ken, removed his hat off his greasy unwashed mane of dark hair and said. "I still say the sky is stupid." Ken took Andy's hat and smack Andy in the head with it.
"Andy, I told the sky can't be stupid. The sky has no brain to begin with." He huffed as the fog removed any trace of the blue sky they that dawn had given them when they began the hunt.
Andy's slouching blue eyes looked and Ken with a perturbed pout didn't miss a beat at Ken's logic. He added to it by saying, "So if the sky has no brain, Ken, that makes it stupid." He walked a head of Ken ignoring the change in the forest around them.
To the others it seemed humid, almost moist like it had just rained. But they hadn't had a storm since yesterday afternoon. So the forest should have a little drier.
"Hey Ken, I know this isn't a good time, but doesn't it seem a little off in here. I have been in these woods after the rain and this just doesn't feel the same. It isn't right like something changed it." It was Tim Hunts doing the talking. He shifted his heavy legs in place as he puzzled out the change. He was anxious like the other two men with them. "Besides all that talk of yours about this Jack guy being a curse, makes this sudden change in the woods I grew in seem, well…" He didn't want to say what he felt. But the change made Ken's and the Preacher's words seem to be true. These familiar woods seemed to be cursed by evil. The very ground they walked on was thick with a dark moss, that wasn't there a week ago when Ken and him went hunting. "This is are favorite spot Ken, but it isn't, if you get what I mean.
Ken glanced at him side ways shifting the shot gun from his right hand to his left. "What are you on about Tim, it is just the woods. Oh so now you see what I've been saying." He watched Tim and the others once more before glance around the area. It was different enough to send a shiver through body. Andy moving a way from Ken to follow the path they came from. "And where are you heading, Andy? Are you chicken or something?" He slung the shotgun over his shoulder as if he was relaxed.
"No, just smart." He turned to look at Ken, blue eyes shining. "If you had your eyes open instead of trying to be a smart ass you would see that thing over pasted the trees. I know what the devil looks like. And I'm not about to meet up with him. I promised my Mama I would be good, so I'm heading away from the evil. Praise God!" He quickened his pace away from the beast that now seemed brighter as the whole group caught sight of it.
Ken blinked a few times when he saw some thing else with the great horned beast. The others saw who the person was as well and as he knelt in front of the devil. They all saw it was Jack. The group felt the great scream come from the beast, the earth shaking when it stomped its great hoofed foot in its minion's direction. They fled shaking, sweating from the close call with the devil the five men headed to town to spread the word that Jack was the evil one bring chaos to Tempest. For now in their minds Jack was dancing with Satan.
It was on Jack in moments. His Vortex Manipulator started going crazy with beeps when it found what Jack had set into the scanner earlier. But the thing crashed through the woods, toppling trees and leaving giant prints in the wet soil wasn't that small invisible thing that killed Marlin and hurt Jess. This thing was gigantic standing at least two stories high rubbing its horns on the lower tree branches. Those horns alone stood over his head and stretched out at least seven feet over the creature's shoulders. Jack's wondered just how it could stand with the weight of those things extending out farther than the width of its body. "Gods, you are ugly!" Jack said in its direction.
But something else found Jack's interest enough not to see the great beast turning his attention on Jack. The branches it seemed caught Jack's attention, he should have seen it before when he first walked inside this other world. Though the forest was ancient being undisturbed by human kind, it wasn't like this. The trees weren't the same ones he walked through with Jess. They weren't the ones he gotten use to on his long walks alone. He liked those woods. This wasn't even something from Earth; it was primeval almost to new to be near a town that humans lived in. It didn't have that feeling of man's presents at all.
The creature let Jack know it had spotted him by crying out. It sounded like a thousands birds scream the same pitch almost as if they became a whistling teapot left on attended for too long. Jack covered his ears as the great beast repeated the sound as it stood up on its powerful hoofed hind legs stomping its anger as it went in Jack's direction.
"Hey I'm sorry I didn't know that you didn't like to be called ugly! But please don't sing anymore. I think my eardrums started bleeding!" Just as his hands came down the beast let out another scream sending Jack to his knees. "That was so not fair!" He yelled right before he passed out.
End part 6
TBC