What Waits Through the Trapdoor Read online

What Waits Through the Trapdoor

  A Reidy Chronicles Bite

  Jude Michael Connors

  Tucson, Arizona

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © 2013 by Jude Michael Connors

  Cover design by Jude Michael Connors

  ISBN 978-0-9882702-2-0

  www.judespage.com

  Dedication

  To my godson, Sean, my zombie expert.

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Jennifer Connors, Darren Connors, and John Steele Urban.

  What Waits Through the Trapdoor

  Nightfall offered no respite from the sweltering heat. The sun had baked the concrete and asphalt all day long turning the city into a giant oven. The heat radiated from the ground and buildings. Making matters worse for Tom Reidy was the fact that the A/C in his car had gone on the fritz just as he had started the engine that night. If he even bothered turning the damn thing on, all it would do was blow hot air through the cab of the car. Surveillance details were never fun. Having no A/C in Phoenix in the middle of the summer made it virtually unbearable.

  Attempting to ignore the oppressive heat striving to cook him from the inside out, Reidy scanned the sidewalks on either side of the street. Nothing looked out of the ordinary—just some homeless people lying on their cardboard beds and a pair of drug dealers trying to peddle their wares. He steered the car around the corner as a tube-top and micro-skirt clad prostitute waved at him. It was understandable that the hooker—who may or may not have been a woman—thought Reidy was an interested john working up the courage to pick them up. This was the fifth time in two hours Reidy had driven by her corner after all.

  Reidy was working. As a member of the Order of St. George, a clandestine organization working for the Vatican, Reidy was on the lookout for something far more nefarious than whatever STD the prostitute may have offered. He drove through this less than reputable part of the city searching for a potential monster that was eating teenagers.

  Over the past few weeks, there was an increase of reports that missing teens were last seen in the vicinity that Reidy and his fellow Order members were patrolling. Many of the kids had juvenile records or came from troubled homes and the police simply racked their disappearances up as runaways. Last week however, a girl named Andrea Buckner showed up wandering in a daze through Margaret T. Hance Park. Andrea and her boyfriend, Austin Lowe, were reported missing the day before by their parents. When found in the park, Andrea appeared to have suffered some sort of traumatic breakdown. The girl was admitted into the local psych ward. According to the official reports, the girl was repeating the phrase “They ate him” over and over again.

  That caught the attention of Reidy and his fellow team members of the Order of St. George—or Georgies for short. It was clear something horrible happened to the missing teenagers. There was a possibility that there was a human behind these crimes such as a cannibalistic serial killer. If the Georgies found that a mundane human was the murderer, they would alert the authorities via an anonymous tip and let the courts deal with them. However, since Andrea had said, “they ate him,” Reidy and the other Georgies doubted this was a mundane case. Serial killers, by their nature, often worked alone. More likely than not, there was some supernatural force behind these crimes. That made it Order business. A sect, cult or coven that practiced dark magic could be performing some sort of cannibalistic ritual in a bid for power. Monsters, such as goblins or ghouls could be eating the kids.

  Reidy drove slowly down another street looking over the sidewalks and stores for any suspicious person. A few monsters tried to pass themselves off as being relatively human. Reidy kept an eye out for anyone wearing a large jacket or an oversized hat that might hide some non-human trait like horns or giant bat-wings. He also kept an eye out for any teens wandering about. If someone or something was targeting kids, it only made sense to be on the lookout for them.

  He pulled his sweat soaked, thin T-shirt off from his chest and wiped the moisture from his eyes. The car was like a sauna. Rolling down the windows had done nothing to alleviate his discomfort. Phoenix was no place to be without an operating air conditioner.

  Just as he began driving down another street, something caught his eye—a pair of teens strolling down the sidewalk. This wasn’t the first time in the week since he had been patrolling that he’d seen kids. That was a common occurrence. What grabbed his attention about this particular couple was the boy. He was sixteen or seventeen years old, tall and rail-thin. The boy’s face was what concerned Reidy the most. The boy was white as a sheet and gaunt. The emaciated and pale features could have been a sign that he was a vampire. The boy didn’t share the deformed face of a Class Four vamp—a type of vampire that gnawed on their victim’s flesh and organs. However, the sole survivor, Andrea, could have easily mistaken a vampire ripping out the throat of her boyfriend as eating him. Then there was the look the boy gave the girl whose hand he was holding. It was a hungry look, as if the plump little girl was a hunk of meat.

  Reidy pulled the car over and parked before getting out and moving to the trunk. A voice of reason spoke up as he opened the trunk. It tried to explain that the hungry look in the boy’s eyes was nothing more than the kid’s hormones. He was just the average, run-of-the-mill horny teenager. Years of fighting vicious monsters, however, had made Reidy an overly cautious man. Where others saw young love, he saw a monster hiding in plain sight.

  Opening a box within the trunk, Reidy pulled out his compact sub-machine gun and a machete. Since it was too damn hot to wear a jacket large enough to conceal his weapons, he opted to stuff them in a gym bag. Next, he selected two clips of tracer rounds out the dozen magazines stored in another box. Reidy knew from experience that the phosphorous coating the shells was useful against vampires as well as a number of other monsters. He loaded one clip into his Kriss Vector sub-machine gun and zipped the bag closed before slinging it over his shoulder.

  He fell in walking two dozen-feet or so behind the teens. The streets were sparse—few people took a stroll in this area at night. If either of the kids happened to turn around, Reidy would not be able to lose himself in the crowd and they’d surely see him. He hung close to the buildings they passed, hugging the shadows and ready to jump into an alcove or behind a wall. Thankfully, the boy and girl were too focused on one another to notice anyone else much less the man following them. The boy continued to look at the girl with his hungry eyes and the girl was clearly infatuated with him. Even though Reidy could not hear what the boy was saying, it was clear the girl hung on every word. She looked at him with pure adoration. Both of her hands were wrapped around his right hand and she leaned into him, pressing her body into his. The girl’s infatuation may have been born from teen love, but Reidy was concerned that the boy had hypnotized her. This just led credence to Reidy’s suspicion that the boy was a vamp.

  The kids were dressed in a similar fashion to each other—black on black on black. When Reidy was a kid, people who dressed like this girl and boy were called “Goths,” but now, from what little Reidy knew of popular culture, they were called “Emos”—whatever that meant. The boy wore frayed and tattered black jeans that were f
ar too skinny in Reidy’s opinion and a black T-shirt. The girl wore a black skirt with pleats and black tank top. Other than their taste in clothes, the pair couldn’t be more different. Whereas the boy was skinny enough to clean pipes with his arms, the girl was a touch on the plump side. In a few years, she might grow into a voluptuous woman but now a layer of baby fat hid her figure. The boy had natural, sandy-blond hair and the girl had her hair dyed a striking purple—the only splash of color on her.

  After a bit of meandering, the pair walked into a second-hand shop. Reidy waited outside watching them through the wide window. The two kids went up and down the aisles, laughing and examining clothes. Reidy noted that neither one looked at anything that wasn’t a deep, dark black. The boy walked to a rack on the wall that held necklaces and earrings. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the shop’s employees were out of sight. His hand snaked out, grabbed one necklace and stuffed it into his pocket. The boy then took the girl by the hand and led her out of the shop. They briskly walked around the