[Chapter 5] of [Book I likely won't finish]

It's been going a bit badly lately I have to say. I'm trying to slog through the middle at the moment and I've realized my adversary has no real goal (as usual one of my biggest problems). Anyway. Here's chapter 5 and I'll try to post on time again tomorrow. Heh.

Gregory Han lived an hour from Blackwater, at the edge of a bigger a town called Hamilton Park. He didn't answer his doorbell when Riz rang it once, and he didn't answer when she rang a second time. At the end of her patience, she lifted a fist to and banged on its decoratively carved wood.

Didn't she have better things to do than hunting ghosts? Whatever she'd seen on the road the night before hadn't been real. What more did she (and Huber) want to find out? As a police officer she wasn't even supposed to be alone out here either, but Huber had made no mention of taking a partner with her.

She banged on the door again.

"Blackwater police, open the (damned) door!"

Silence, but there was a scuffle somewhere behind the door that told her someone was home.

"Blackwater -" she started again, but was interrupted.

"This is Hamilton!" a voice snapped back. "You have no jurisdiction here!"

Riz rolled her eyes. "You reported an incident in Blackwater, thus we are required to investigate." She paused. "Do you want me to break down the door?"

She couldn't of course, not officially, but by the decorative door she judged he wasn't a guy to know legislation very well. She was right. When he did open the door (ten minutes later after some more shouting back and from) she realized he was an artist. His one bedroom apartment was small (not that this was an indication of artistry), and it was also crammed with cans of paint and finished paintings on canvas. It took all her willpower not to roll her eyes again. An artist. They were the worst. Entitled, they thought the world belonged to them, and if it didn't, they could shape it so it did. She saw the evidence all throughout his pictures, the discarded canvases and sheets of paper, and what bugged her most was he seemed to idealize his life as a starving artist. Riz didn't necessarily hate art (except Russian art) but she hated artists (of every kind).

It was only when her eyes wandered over to more recently painted pictures (the colour still too shiny to have been sitting in his apartment as long as the rest) that she halted. He'd painted a leshen, like the one she'd seen, tall, dark, with red antlers on top of its skull-head.

Riz swallowed against a suddenly dry tongue.

"You a gamer?" she asked, as casually as she could muster.

Han rubbed his hands together, and his whole body language told her he was uneasy. "No. No, I don't game. I haven't since I was a kid."

"Then what are these creatures?" she asked.

"They're - they're nothing."

Riz crossed her arms. He was avoiding looking at his paintings almost as much as he avoided looking at her, and as an Asian, despite her travels around the world, to her, he was difficult to read.

"So you just painted 'nothing' because you thought it'd be fun."

He didn't respond.

Riz decided to cut to the chase. "Are these the things you saw on the road when your friends, Mr. Miller and Mr. Wang, crashed their car?"

Han's expression changed from cowed to aggressive.

"I've already talked about it with your colleagues."

"And yet you can't get it out of your mind." It was a guess, but a good one. As quickly as his temper had flared, the air seemed to drain out of him and his chest deflated, but still he kept his mouth tightly shut. Why did he have to be so stubborn? This was exactly why she despised those closed-off art-or-nothing types.

"It isn't relevant what I thought I saw," he said, and he began to pack away the canvas that showed the leshen in its (their?) tall form. He threw blankets over some of them, sheets over others, but he didn't speak.

Riz was inclined to agree with him (what he'd seen wasn't real and thus not relevant to the police), but she couldn't push away the image of the leshen she thought she'd seen, and anyway, Detective Huber had sent her here to talk to the man, not accept his silence.

"Who says they're not relevant? I wouldn't've made the trip down here to Hamilton if I didn't want to talk."

Han halted in his covering of the paintings, but then continued quickly a moment later.

"Your colleagues didn't believe me."

Again, she desisted the urge to roll her eyes at his dramatic tone. It wasn't that she didn't understand him, because she did, but did he have to be so elusive? She put on her best patient voice, thinking how easy it'd been to talk to the boy yesterday night, although their emotions had both been highly charged. Ekko hadn't needed to be coddled.

"I'm not my colleagues, and you're obviously stressed out about this." To punctuate her words, she pulled up another painting of the leshen, this one more detailed than the others, which diffused into streaks of black (body) and white (skull) and red (antlers) after a few strokes to suggest a person's outline. "Don't you want to talk? I'm here to help you."

"I don't need help."

Phew.

"Well, I do," she said, ignoring her pride, ignoring her irritation at Han. "I need to know what you saw and when you saw it and why two people died in that car and you survived."

He glanced at her, and his expression was full of guilt, full of pain, and momentarily, she felt bad about making him speak, and had to remind herself it was for the greater good. Real or not, something was scaring the citizens of Blackwater, and it'd - Why wasn't she telling him?

"Listen, Han," she said, a bit calmer, a bit softer. "Whatever it is that scares you scared other people as well." She dug in her uniform jacket's pocket for the scrap of news she'd printed about Henny Pipers. "Here's a bit of a report of a woman called Henny Pipers. She's old enough to be your grandmother and she also (thinks) encountered something on the road late at night. It scared her enough she offroaded her car and in her flight back to town crashed into a lamppost opposite of the police office."

She watched him swallow, hard.

"You think I can help?" he asked, and she would have answered (yes, of course. You saw it, and you're the only one who can talk about it, considering Henny is now being held at the psych hospital), but a screeching voice interrupted her.

"Gregory! Who is it?!"

He gave Riz an abashed look.

"No on, gma!"

"I heard the doorbell you little skint. Don't lie to your grandmother's - Oh."

Riz hadn't known there was a staircase, but an elderly lady suddenly appeared in the corner of Han's apartment, from a staircase (that must've been where the smell of Chinese food came from), her narrow eyes narrowing even further as she took in the scene.

"Blackwater police," Riz introduced herself.

The older lady turned to Han.

"Have you gotten into trouble again? Is that why you never help out at the shop?"

Han's pale skin had turned a shade of dark-brownish pink she never observed on Caucasians, but it made sense, considering the shop below was a Chinese restaurant.

"This isn't the time!" he said. "This lady wants to know -"

"Is this how you speak to your elders?" the grandmother demanded, but Riz meant to see a spark of amsuement in her eyes. "I will bring tea." And away she went again down the steps.

Han couldn't meet Riz's eyes when his grandmother had left, but Riz was quite immune to the antics of the elder generation. After all, being an only child, she knew how it felt to be the focus on their scrutiny.

"Shall we sit?" she asked Han.

It was his home, and she was preposterous, but he was whipped, and she didn't have the time (or at least, she didn't have the patience) to wait until he remembered what civilized people did.

"Yes, oh, of course," he said quickly, and with delicate fingers plucked some of his paintings (flowers, in painstaking detail, mostly) off the kitchen table and then, as if his grandmother made him remember his manners, pulled out a chair for her.

Riz plopped down on it, and when he didn't look, made some space on his table by swiping away some more canvases, then put the detailed picture of the leshen she had held onto in front of him.

"So. The creature," she said. "Is this what you saw when Mr. Miller's car went out of control?"

His Adam's apple bobbed. "I - yes."

"You're sure this is what you saw? Dark skin, antlers on its head?"

"Why? Don't you believe me?" he shot back.

No, she didn't, or she shouldn't, but he was evidently traumatized.

"You seem uneasy talking about it."

"Wouldn't you be?" He threw up his hands. "My best friends died! I almost died." He lifted his shirt to show a long scar across his stomach. "And all because - because of some freakish thing in a mask."

Her eyebrows conctracted. "A mask?"

"What else could it be?" he demanded. "A monster? No. No, I'm not a child. There are no such things as monsters beyond the realm of my pictures. I know a mask when I see one and this - this person in the mask, what was his purpose? Have you caught him yet?"

She hadn't expected this from an artist, but collected herself quickly.

"No, but that's why I'm here, why I need your help."

"It must be a mask."

"I'm not saying it isn't."

But did he truly believe that it wasn't a mask? She wasn't sure.

"Can you tell me what happened?" she asked.

"We were driving along [country road] a week and a half ago," he said, grudgingly. "It was dark, around half before midnight, and we were the only car around. Wang was - was playing with his magic cards again, getting on our nerves, and Miller, well, he was talking about football, as usually, but somehow the topic changed after a while -" He cleared his throat.

"To what?"

"To uh - to - to women, if you want to know!"

That, she could relate to.

"All right, go on."

He blinked. "Well, we were talking about girls, and then suddenly, I don't know. We thought it was a deer, it just came out of the woods around us. It jumped into the road, or I don't know if it jumped, it suddenly was there, and all we'd seen before was a flash of fur or something, and Wang, he screamed, like a girl, and then Miller cursed and he tore the steering wheel to the side not to hit it, and then, and as we swerved past it I saw - I saw -"

"You saw this thing."

She held up the painting he'd made, and he gave a nod.

"What did you think of it?"

"In the moment? Nothing. I - we - the car slipped on some leafs, you know, the trees are just shedding and this was in the woods, where there's a lot of them on the ground, and we just slipped, and I stared at at that thing through the back window -" He went silent.

"And then?" she pressed. Despite herself, her heart rate had gone up slightly, and she could feel her pulse pound. There was something tangible here, some tangible fear, as if Han wasn't just recounting a traumatic event, but reliving it.

"And then nothing. Then I woke in the hospital, and my best friends were both dead."

The tension was still high, but her anticipation faded somewhat. Han lifted his head defiantely at the end, and she could see his eyes were red. She didn't know what she'd expected, but it hadn't been this.

"I'm sorry about that," she said, half expecting a snappish answer, but instead, he inclined his head with what she thought was gratitude. Then he said, "What have you found out? You're investigating the case, aren't you? Have you found the culprit, any lead?"

Riz shook her head. "It's difficult. Whatever - whoever it is going around like the wrath of - I mean whoever is underneath the mask only strikes at night at unpredictable locations. That's why I have to follow up every lead (she cringed at the word) I can get."

"Did I - Did I help?"

She wasn't certain, but that's not what he wanted to hear.

"Yes, I believe so."

"What will you do next? Will you find him?"

"Him?"

Han gave a nod. "It must be a 'him'. What woman would do such a thing?" His cheeks coloured again and he seemed to bite his tongue. "I'm sorry. I know there are also woman murderes. I just meant - the thing - the person was tall. I don't know how tall, but he towered over the car, and I couldn't see his face - his mask - clearly at all even though we passed only half a meter or so next to it when Thomas crashed the car."

7 feet tall. Riz kept her face carefully still. The night before, she'd thought the thing she saw on the road was extraordinarily tall. Taller than any man she knew, it'd looked taller than her favourite basketball players even at a distance. But there was no reason to tell Han that.

"That helps," she said. "I'll make a registry of tall men in the area and go from there."

"What if he's from outside?" Han asked. If he was a child, he would have been tugging on her sleeve.

"There aren't that many 7 foot people 'round, even in the US." And if there were, they'd all be playing basketball.

"And masks!" he said as she stood. "You have to find out who sells those kinds of masks."

"Uh - huh."

"I'm serious."

Riz turned around before the door, and saw Han's grandmother coming up the back stairs in a waft of Chinese-food-smell. Her stomach growled, but she ignored it. There were donuts in the office, still, and it was only an hour, not that she didn't love Chinese food.

"You're leaving already?" the old woman demanded. "I've only just finished the tea and there's fresh moon cake downstairs - only three dollars each."

Riz cringed, but only inside. The blackwater PD didn't need any more bad publicity.

"Mrs. Han, I'm so sorry, I have to get back to work. Mr. Han, thank you for your cooperation," she said formally, then closed the door in their faces.

[Chapter 4] of [Book I likely won't finish]

It's a bit of a slow day today. I reached chapter 12 by now and it's slowing down a bit towards the middle. I'm not sure if I can make it or if I should take a break and try again tomorrow but motivation is a bit meh today. I had to edit some stuff in chapters 9 and 10 so am a bit confused. But let's see!

Riz dropped the boy off at what she hoped was his school (You could never know with teenagers these days) and then sent a message to the headmaster where he'd been found the other night. If he chose, the headmaster could involve the boy's parents, but she wanted to give Ekko a chance to come clean himself. He'd said his parents weren't awful (like many other parents) but that didn't mean they'd appreciate a call from the police about their son being found in the woods where just the day before an accident had happened.

Then she went back to the police office and sought Detective Huber at his desk.

"Are they ready yet?"

"Good morning to you too, Clarisse."

"The Pipers," she said. "Is Mrs. Pipers ready to be questioned?"

"You make it sound awfully harsh."

"Detective -"

"Why don't you take a seat?"

Riz sat. There was no doubt she should be talking to Huber with more respect (He was her superior after all), but he was German, or of German descent, and while he was meticulous with his methods, he didn't often care to reprimand any of his deputies for their lack of etiquette. Today, however, seemed to be a day where he did care.

"I heard you went up to the Blackwater forests yesterday night."

"Mel told me?"

He gave a short nod.

Riz shrugged. Why couldn't Mel have stayed quiet? Huber must be thinking she was crazy now as well. "I thought I'd check out the crash site."

"What of the other part of the report?"

"What part?"

"Come, don't play games, Riz. We both know you know what crash sites look like, and as Mrs. Pipers wasn't injured, I don't think there was any need for you to drive there, never mind in the middle of pitch dark night. No? You don't want to talk about it?"

"There's nothing to talk about. I found tyre tracks like at any other crash site, nothing else."

"Mel says you seemed afraid."

Riz snorted. "Afraid?" Me? Have you seen me? Almost 5'7' and quick with a gun or rifle (and donuts) - why would I be afraid? But even his words sent a chilly shiver down her spine.

"And the boy?" he said.

"Ekko? He's a police work enthusiast." Or something like it anyway. Why else would he have been in that forest in the night? As if in answer to her question, the image of the leshen he'd shown her on his phone popped up in her mind, but she pushed it away. Leshen belonged to Geralt the Witcher, not Blackwater.

Huber stared at her a moment longer, then glanced down at his desk and pulled out a file from a stack. He held it out to her.

"The Pipers?" she asked as she took it.

He shook his head. "A certain Mr. Han."

Han.

"Sounds familiar."

"Indeed. He is the survivor of the three person crash last week up near Blackwater Creek."

Ah, that was it.

"What do I want with him?"

"You want to talk to him about what he's seen."

"What he's -" Riz groaned. "Not the yeti again."

"Precisely the yeti. If there's someone going around in an animal suit, on two legs, scaring our citizens half to death, or to death in Mr. Han's friends' case, then we ought to know, don't you think?"

Riz couldn't argue with that, so instead, she stood. Han didn't live too far away and if she was quick about it she'd be done in time for (donuts) lunch.

"And Riz!" Huber called after her as she left his office. "If you need any help let me know. Whatever you find out."

At the whatever his eyes lingered on hers, and she had to work on her sneer to keep it up.

Did Huber really believe in this supernatural thing? He was German, and she'd always thought Germans were reasonable, detached, what was the phrase? Down to Earth. (This same efficiency was the reason she felt safe in Huber's presence too although usually she preferred to avoid men) Then again, maybe he'd meant something completely different when he mentioned the animal suit, a killer in hiding, something like it, and she could really count on his help if she needed it.

[Chapter 3] of [Book I likely won't finish]

All right. Tomorrow is a long wait and Chapter 2-2 isn't really a full chapter so here you go: chapter three. And now I really need to get back to working on this or I won't have a chapter 4 to show tomorrow.

Riz ended up at Mel's place anyway, but they didn't have sex. One reason was Ekko, who refused to tell them where they were from and what a leshen was until they agreed he could stay at the police office fort he night. The other was that Riz felt particularly stubborn about the events of the night. She knew what she'd seen, but Mel didn't seem to believe any of it, and that was fine, but it also meant she was in no mood to have sex or talk about their relationship (which Mel often tried after they had sex).

The next morning Riz was even grumpier than the day before (sleeping on a narrow couch will do that to you, but then again, it was her own fault), and only managed to put on fresh clothes when they came in the office (separately) at 6 AM. The clothes she'd kept in the office were too small and her chest (grown considerably since she'd started here) strained against the cloth until she left it open under her uniform jacket. It wasn't standard, it wasn't proper etiquette, but if she wanted a straightjacket, she'd go straight to Huber and tell him all about last night's campfire experience.

At the office, Ekko waited, and Deputy Hailey, a bear-like guy in his thirties, made a grimace at her as she arrived.

"Where'd you pick up that brat?" he said.

Ekko bared his teeth at him, and Riz shrugged. "Dark forest, north of Blackwater."

Hailey lifted an eyebrow, then seemed to think better of it. "Yeah, not gonna ask what you were doin' in a dark forest north of BW."

He left. Riz stared at Ekko and he stared back defiantely.

"Time to go," she said.

"No," he said.

"I have work to do, and this isn't a kindergarten. I'm gonna take you straight to school, or straight to your parents. Your choice."

He too, was wearing clothes that didn't fit, and it looked like one of the deputy guys had lent them to him.

"I'm not goin' anywhere."

"Wasn't a question," she said as she turned to make her way into the corridor, down into the parking lot to her car.

Ekko followed sullenly.

"Did you manage to get anything on camera?" she asked when he'd caught up to her and they were walking side by side.

"All white," he said. "I shouldn't'a used f."

"Hm," she said. Bummer.

At the door to the outside, she stopped, because he stopped.

"What?"

"I can help," he said.

"Help with what?"

"The leshen."

"You've said that word twice and I still don't know what it means," she said. She should've googled it, but in the (relative) safety of Mel's apartment she hadn't felt like unpacking all the crazy she'd seen. She really should have, though, then perhaps she would've slept better that night.

"I'll show you if you let me stay."

"Let you stay where? This isn't kindergarten. It's a police office." What else could she add? Ah, the adult card. "Your parents will be worried."

"No they won't." His eyes darkened. "Don't look at me like that. It's not like they neglect me or some shit. They think I'm at a friend's."

"Hm."

"I can help you with this case."

"Oh yeah? And what case is that, if you're so smart?"

"The leshen case!" he snapped.

"Still don't know what that is."

He made a noise somewhere between angry dog and angry cat, but more dog, and pulled his phone out of male-deputy Guile's pocket. In a few swipes he got what he wanted and held it up to Riz's nose.

"This is a leshen."

Riz stared at it. It was a drawing of a man-beast, a greyish-dark skinned man up to the neck, on which the white skull of an elk sat, and from the skull protruded red antlers. It was exactly what she'd seen, or thought she'd seen, on the road the night before. The two visions were uncannily alike when she layered them on top of each other before her inner eye.

Then her eyes caught something else on the bottom of the picture - like a signature.

"It says Witcher III fanart" she said, suddenly annoyed that he was wasting her time.

"So what?"

"So it's not real."

"You saw it yesterday!"

"I saw a person on the road" she said. "It was Mel."

It had to have been, didn't it? Mel had left her car and came down to collect them in the incline after she'd seen Riz's car stopped close-by. Whatever else she'd seen had to have been something pathological. Anger about the reports, about people like Henny Pipers, driving hands-unfree with their phones, had set her off, and she'd imagined whatever horns or antlers or dark mist. It must've been. Mel hadn't seen it and she'd arrived only a moment after Riz's flashlight went off.

Riz glanced at Mel at her desk, then away again.

What was she thinking about changelings? She'd known Mel about half a year now and there never were any sightings of strange creatures before last week. Besides, if Mel was a leshen, then she was hiding those antlers pretty well. Likely in her cleavage.

Riz sighed. "I'm not buying it."

"But it's right here!" He thrust out the phone towards her.

"I see an image drawn by a fan of something mythical creature out of a fantasy realm -"

"It's not fantasy, it's folklore of [eastern Europe]."

"Uh-huh," she said.

"Your name is Clarisse Hunter, isn't it?"

"Riz," she said, unsure in the next moment why she was telling him anything about her.

"Ok, then, Riz," he said. "I can help you find out where the creature is, what it likes, what it does -"

"You're a gamer."

At this, he pulled himself up straight (about chin-height compared to Riz) and, his eyes burning like (not devil's) embers, he declared, "I'm not a gamer. I'm a scientist."

Riz managed to stop a snort before it left her nostrils, with difficulty, and only because she didn't want to hurt the boy's sense of pride in whatever science class he achieved good grades in school.

"That's good," she said instead. "The world needs more scientists." She opened the door they'd been standing in front of and gestured outside. "Now, however, Einstein, you better get back to your studies."

[Chapter 2-2] of [Book I'll likely not finish]

Here's the third chapter of this venture. It's actually more like part two of chapter two however... and yes. I do know I'm going a bit overboard with Cthulu jokes! But that's what editing is for - right? :)

PS: as this is the second part of chapter two it's a bit shorter (sorry!) but I'll have the real chapter three up by tomorrow morning!

"I - I don't understan -"

The boy beside her moved first. His phone went up and there was a sudden flash as he pressed the trigger button, and then he gasped as if he'd been wounded. His terror brought her back to herself and finally her gun was out. Had the creature noticed the flash of light? Riz killed her flashlight. What had she thought coming here alone? What did she know Cthulu was capable of? All she'd heard about him was fiction and this? This creature? What if it was a ghost and she couldn't wound it?

"What should we do!" the boy whispered. His voice was harsh and terrified and HOW SHE HATED CHILDREN. Why had he come out here? He wasn't any smarter than she and now he expected her to solve it! How could she protect this brat if she didn't even know what she was up against? She could barely see anything ahead, her eyes still trying to adapt, and he thought she could do something to protect them?

"Officer!" he whimpered.

"Quiet!" she snapped back. Protocol. Remember protocol. The innocent behind you, the gun in front. "Don't speak and follow me! Quickly!"

If she could go around the road she might be able to get a better look at it, and they'd have a better chance to get in their car, but if it spotted them...? Then what? Where was it, even? Her sight was coming back somewhat, but the thing she'd seen was gone, the road empty, except.

"Riz?"

Tension drained out of her like a rushing waterfall and she was suddenly inexplicably tired.

"You followed me."

"Of course I followed you!" Mel exclaimed. "Gee, you look like you've seen a ghost."

Riz chuckled. A ghost, huh.

"Haven't you seen anything when you came down here?"

"A lot of trees. Who's that?"

Riz turned to see the boy staring at Mel (well, her lips, anyway). "That's uh -"

"Ekko," he said, half mutinous, half enthralled by Mel.

Riz scowled at him, almost jealously (she caught herself just in time) then turned back to the road, to her car. "And you didn't see anything when you arrived?"

"No." Her brow creased. "Was there anything I was supposed to see?"

An apparition, a ghost. Cthulu's grand grand-kid. An apparition in the dark, shrouded by mist, with antlers on top of its head.

"What did the witnesses say the yeti looked like?"

"Uh," said Mel. "Tall, like a man, dark fog surrounding it. It wears a mask of bone, like the skull of a moose, or an elk, but Riz - Do you believe in this crap?"

What was she to believe? A moment ago she would've bet her life (or at least Ekko's life) that there'd been something supernatural on the road, but now, with Mel there, it was difficult to concive such a notion, difficult to say she'd spotted bigfoot with a straight face.

"I need sleep" she said instead, and walked past Mel to check on her car. It was undisturbed, but in the darkness around her, Ekko's words echoed when he spoke.

"It's not the Yeti," he said, as if annoyed. "It's a leshen."

[Chapter 2-1] of [Book I likely won't finish]

All right. I've decided to take the plunge (if only to maybe try and figure out if/what the rules are about books you don't think are yours to write) and here is Chapter 2. This is again a first draft and you're reading at your own risk (of what I don't really know).

Please be advised that I'll be doing this project alongside another (edit 100000 of First Book Ever) and there is NO GUARANTEE I'll finish this one if it doesn't work out. For now, however, enjoy! It might be someone can learn from this.

Riz stopped her car at the site off the last report, and with the engine, [country singer] shut her mouth as well. The road was really in a rural area. The asphalt was cracked and there was no street light in sight as she climbed out of the car and pocketed her keys so she had her hands free for a torch. The torch, small and cheap as everything at the Blackwater police department, didn't reach very far, and the residual heat from inside the car evaporated quickly as she took a few steps.

So where was that monster that'd scared Henny so thoroughly she wasn't able to speak to the police? Riz grumbled. Her car had left tracks on the side of the road where she parked it (couldn't park in the middle of the street no matter how rural the area) and after a few minutes she found the old woman's car tracks as well. In one hand a donut (Ha. Ha.), in the other her flashlight, she observed the way Henny's car wound on the road (tyre tracks) and then close to the slope leading into the forest beyond the road. Henny had been driving straight, at least, while she chatted on the phone, but something deterred her, scared her, Riz could see where the black brake lines shrieked over the cracked asphalt. Then the old woman might have lost control of her car momentarily, tearing the wheel away from whatever she saw on the road, coming close to the incline before once again she ripped the steering wheel the other way. Riz couldn't help some admiration at least for the old biddie. Despite one of her hands being occupied, the woman had managed not to crash down the incline and into a tree. It spoke of some skill in driving, other encounters with deer over her 65 years of life perhaps.

Then why was she playing traumatized now? Riz growled. Her stomach did, too, and she took another bite of the donut. There she was, a policewoman in her early thirties, writing speeding tickets and eating donuts. This wasn't what she'd imagined her life would be like when she signed up some, what, ten years ago? There was much less glamour than she'd expected, and too much paperwork, but on the other hand, it never was achievement, was it? If she'd wanted to be a celebrity she wouldn't have signed up for the police force in an obscure town such as Blackwater.

Chewing, she walked back onto the road. Here, she'd see if it a car came miles away by the headlights, and even she didn't spot them through the trees immediately, she'd hear it. But cars didn't interest her as much at that moment. The beam of her flashlight combed the street like it would if she were trying to clean up after an accident, only she was looking for animal tracks instead of pieces of metal, glass, shards of plastic and airbags. It was well enough to say a few witnesses spotted bigfoot, but Riz didn't buy it. Her mother might be superstitious, but she was not. She had a gun, and she wasn't afraid. If a ghost wanted to challenge her, it might as well. She'd put a bullet through anything that decided to tangle with her.

But nothing did.

It was almost more frustrating than if Cthulu suddenly jumped out of the trees. At least Cthulu she could shoot. This phantom man-elk? She'd have to believe in it first.

Ten minutes passed as she walked down the road and then back up to her car. The donut was gone and the chill was seeping into her bones quickly now as the last warmth she'd held on to faded. She really should have taken Mel up on that offer. A bit of a movie, a bit of popcorn to go with the donuts, a bit of sex.

Riz stopped in the middle of the road (really, one shouldn't) and pointed the flashlight up to see if she could spot some stars as she blew out a sigh. A bit of sex often went a long way when one was stressed. Venus winked down at her as if she knew what Riz was thinking, and Riz scowled back up at the planet.

"You know nothing," she said.

She might have given up then. There were no tracks on the road or on the side of the road of anything, animal or supernatural elk-man, but the moment she lowered her flashlight again, something moved in the corner of her eye. A sharp intake of breath, her heart suddenly frantic, she suppressed that cold jolt of terror and whirled around.

"Oi!"

Something moved. She couldn't see it well because it was still in the trees and at her call started to run away. Run away? What elk-monster was this to be scared this easily? Cthulu didn't bow before anyone! Riz ran after the creature as it sprinted away, but it had a headstart, and anyway, wasn't it a bit small to be the great Lord's offspring?

"OI, I say again!" she yelled after it. Her flashlight bounced, the beam going wildly this way and that as she crashed into the treeline, through the trees, after whatever it was she was chasing.

"Will you stop!"

"I didn't do nothin'!" a voice came back at her.

No elk-man then.

Riz caught up to the creature (a teenage boy could still be considered creature, couldn't it?) and grabbed its hood. The boy jerked forward with momentum, and they might have both tumbled had she not grabbed a tree on the other side as well.

"Why do you run?" she snapped, but the teenage boy, scared as he'd been a moment ago, seemed to have found his juvenile disregard again.

"Why do you follow me!" he demanded back. "I've done nothin' and you're the police! You have no business followin' me around!"

"And what business do you have here, in the middle of the night?"

"Ain't none of your business!"

They stared at each other momentarily, panting, and Riz hated how out of shape she was despite her penchant for donuts.

"I'm not trying to arrest you," she said.

"Why'd you say that? 'Cos I'm black?"

She rolled her eyes. "'Cos you're a (stupid idiot) little careless to be out here in the middle of the night."

His arms crossed and Riz noticed he carried a lit phone in his hand. The phone's camera showed on the screen.

"Why?" he demanded. He sounded defensive and she supposed it fit to his crossed arms.

As she deliberated what best to say (The yeti is on the loose? Cthulu's spawn has been sighted in these woods?) she realized there was something odd about the camera and the phone and most importantly the fact that he was out here at all.

"Why don't you tell me why you're here instead?"

"No deal."

Damn it. She couldn't just warn him there was a monster loose. He'd have questions, and he'd think her mad, and besides, she had a hunch he already knew about the sightings if he was here in the middle of the night with a camera.

She straightened her shoulders, watched as he shrank back ever so slightly, probably not even conscious he did it, and relaxed again. Scaring this kid wasn't the way to go. He was already scared, whatever had possessed him to come out here to re-enact Ghostbusters.

"I was just investigating a crash site," she said, casually, trying to make her voice sound calm, unexcited. "An older lady tried to offroad here and she's in the hospital now. As an officer it's my duty to inspect, yada yada. You know all this. You've seen police work before."

His mouth was still pressed together and she thought he was chewing his lip, but he nodded, carefully.

"Anything you can tell me about the crash, since you're here?"

It was difficult to tell but she thought he paled somewhat.

"If you don't know anything, that's all right. I'm - I got a bit carried away chasing you, that's all. I'm not gonna arrest you." She paused. "I got two more donuts in the car if you like."

"No."

She lifted an eyebrow. "You don't think I'll leave you here by yourself, hm?" Yeti or not, it was late, and way past a teenager's time to be on deserted country roads. "As an officer it's my duty to -"

"All right, all right," he said. "I'll come with you, but, but not to the road."

"Not the road, and why not?"

He didn't respond. Riz was about to repeat her question when something drew her attention to his eyes like a sudden gunshot. Her words stopped in mid sentence she stared. It seemed the boy's eyes were turning red. There was something in them... and a reflection of something small behind her -

Her hand was halfway toward the gun as she whirled around. The boy was staring at the street and now she was too and there was... something out there on the road. It was hazy and dark, but tall, almost half as tall as the trees around it, with two antler-like protrusions on top of its enlongated head. Riz felt suddenly cold. Her breath stopped, and it seemed like her pulse did too as she stared at the road.

Isn't that a cliffhanger!

As always comments are appreciated! And now back to my other project.

[Chapter 1] of [Book I likely won't finish]

Here as requested: (PS: http://jmtrent.blogspot.nl/2017/12/do-you-have-to-write-every-idea-into.html)

This is simply chapter one of the story that came into my mind yesterday. I'm not sure it's my story to write - but I did get a request to put it up/show it to the world - so enjoy!

65-year old Henny Pipers was driving home alone on a rural road in CO when what she later described as a man-beast appeared in front of her car. Mrs. Pipers's wild ride hit a tree and uprooted...

Riz threw the article on her desk in digust. Mrs. Pipers saw a man-beast had she?

"Where is she now?"

"Ahh... that's a difficult question."

"I'm not in the mood, detective Huber."

"It is a difficult question, however. Mrs. Pipers, you could say, suffered some trauma and is unavailable for comment at the current."

Riz turned her scowling face towards the detective. She hadn't become a police officer to listen to fairytales of man-beats loose in the countryside. And yet the frequency with which these reports were coming in was mounting.

"How does this -" Her hand flicked at the article. "-know that she encountered a man-beast then?"

"She was on the phone with her husband, Mr. Pipers."

The detective's words only agitated her further. She'd seen Mrs. Pipers's phone (It had been confiscated as evidence when she rolled over the three cars in front of hers in her sudden panic) and it was definitely not designed to take calls through the car's speaker system.

"While driving?" she snapped.

"While driving," he confirmed.

Riz's temper was bad enough as it was with all the fictitious cases that'd come her way this week, and now this.

"You want me to write her up?"

"I want you to speak to her," he said, seriously, then on a lighter note, "but yes, the rules must be observed as well. Mrs. Pipers isn't exempt from fines."

Riz grabbed her uniform jacket to head out. It was late and she'd been looking forward to a quiet night, but now, with all these cases about monster men, and the strange tracks found, her mind spun too wildly to rest.

"Why don't you come to my apartment?" Mel said as she passed the other deputy's desk. "We could order pizza, watch a movie..." Her voice trailed off.

And then what? Riz thought. Have sex? She didn't need sex. She needed to find out why all of Blackwater had suddenly gone insane with these fairytales.

"No."

Mel crossed her arms. It wasn't as if Riz didn't like her - actually more than that, because who wouldn't immediately fall for those dark locks and pretty lips, and pretty tits - but the cases. The cases of the fairytale monsters. About a week ago people had started seeing bigfoot here and there on deserted country roads, and some accidents had happened because of it. Two people had died. The third, the passenger in the back seat (also the only one with a seatbelt), spoke of a man-thing that suddenly appeared before them out of the woods. It had antlers and walked on two legs. That was about all he'd seen, and now it was on Riz to figure it all out. A man in a carnival suit? An elk rearing up on its hind legs when the light startled it? And yet eyewitness acounts claimed there had been something ominous about the creatures. A black veil around them, or a black sort of fog, and its eyes gleamed like, as one eyewitness named it, 'the devil's eyes in embers'.

Riz stared at Mel (or rather her boobs, because it was difficult to keep eye-contact when her mind was somewhere else) and scowled.

Unless they weren't fariytales.

Mel lifted an eyebrow as she crossed her arms.

"Clarisse?"

But Riz had already unravelled her arms again and was rushing out into the corridor to grab her coat. It didn't matter if they were fairytales or if they weren't. If she went home, she wouldn't be able to sleep, and if she stayed in, Mel would drive her crazy with those boobs and lips, and detective Huber would bother her about more fairy cases. So why shouldn't she investigate herself?

Leshen! Do you HAVE TO write every idea into a book?

I went out to cycle around the close-by lake yesterday. It's about an hour and a half around and you can cross some islands (pirate island is one of them! Treasure island another!) while you do it. Treasure island (where you start) has a small path across it. This path is about one bicycle wide and surrounded by the lake/rivers on either side of it. As you'd expect close to the water there's also some brushwork around the water's edge and some trees stretch their branches over the path. It's quite idyllic.


It's also scary when you're alone (but that might just be my imagination).


As I was riding my bicycle through it I had this idea: what if suddenly a leshen appeared out of the brushwork before me? It was quiet and though the bushes around the edges of this path aren't particularly thick it seemed entirely possible.

(PS: if you don't know what a leshen is you absolutely need to google! They look awesome. They're a kind of ancient spirit - at least in the Witcher - with human-ish bodies and elk skulls/antlers. They must be one of my favourite monster of all time.)

Let's get back to the story:

A few leafs got stuck in my wheel and I got off the bicycle to remove them.

I DID look over my shoulder while doing it but predictably there was no leshen (sigh).

I got back on my ride and had the idea that: what if there's this old lady driving her car in rural Colorado (or somewhere else?) when suddenly this elk-man thing jumps out at her? I gave her a name: Henny. Henny doesn't have time to do much except push the brakes and steer away and because she's old she has a near heart attack. This gets back to the sherrif's department when Henny's husband calls into report the accident.

Henny's file is placed in front of my main character's desk (a woman called Clarisse INSERTLASTNAME). The department of course doesn't believe in Henny's elk-man BUT there have been other such incidents where a leshen was spotted. Riz's superior wants her to write Henny up because when speeding away she crashed her car into two others (or a tractor) on the other lane. Riz is getting tired of these yeti-reports she gets daily and though her job is easy (write a speeding ticket) there's been too many coincidental reports of fairytale monsters to sit still.

At the end of the first chapter Riz is going to rural CO to find out what the heck Henny and the other witnesses have seen.

This is where I stopped writing yesterday and I've been considering the story ever since. I have this voice (obsession) urging me to write the rest but at the same time I'm not sure this is a book I should/would write. I probably could. It seems like I have to (thanks obsessive compulsive) but I'm not sure that I want to.

Here's the argument in my mind:

I only have one other new project going and the rest are edits. I might as well try this story out.

However - I've already started a new story and I keep starting stories I don't finish. Do I want to add another?

And also: I am currently editing two stories and have one more on the back burner to edit. Do I really need more work on my plate?

These are all questions you should keep in mind. I have no clever answer - or any answer really - in this post. I'm still trying to figure it out myself.


Here's my favourite part of the first chapter however:

"Why don't you come to my apartment?" Mel said as she passed the other deputy's desk. "We could order pizza, watch a movie..." Her voice trailed off.

And then what? Riz thought. Have sex? She didn't need sex. She needed to find out why all of Blackwater had suddenly gone insane with these fairytales.