Supernatural: Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting (15 page)

As Rufus droned on in Latin, the room got colder. A spirit was coming. When Gareth appeared, it was in his human form. He didn’t seem nearly as intimidating that way. Make no mistake, though, any spirit who’s been trapped in an incorporeal state that long by himself is going to be more than a little nuts. Gareth was no exception. When he spoke, it was like hearing a throaty growl mixed with his words. He gave us the usual ghost spiel, “Get out of the house,” “This place will be your tomb,” “You have stepped on unholy ground,” blah blah blah. Things got interesting when I asked him about the critter in the attic. He hissed at me, like he was a cat thrown in a bathtub, but pulled himself together. Said that the thing was his alone to kill.

That was no help
, I thought, and got ready to swing the iron bar through Gareth and end our fiesta. Rufus spoke up. Asked if we could at least
help
Gareth fight the creature. To my great surprise, Gareth nodded. Said there was something we could do.

There are Latin incantations that can break a demon’s bond to its host body. In the same way, there was an incantation that could
forge
a bond between a spirit and a host, allowing the spirit to ride a human like a surfboard, controlling their actions and seeing through the human’s eyes. If we would do that for Gareth, he could fight and kill the creature, and then his spirit would be free to pass on to the other side.

Rufus was all for it, said he’d volunteer to be the host. I warned him that there were several pretty gaping holes in the logic. First off, what’s to keep Gareth from
holding on
to Rufus’s body after he’s done? Also, the last time Gareth tried to kill that creature, it
murdered him to death
. His track record was not great.

But Rufus was a better talker than listener. He agreed, and we did the Latin ritual, and suddenly my friend Rufus was talking with an Irish accent and really enjoying his newfound ability to breathe air.

I’d love to tell you exactly how the rest of the hunt went, but I spent the whole time locked in a broom closet. Gareth spent forty years wanting to avenge his own murder, he wasn’t taking any chance that I’d kill the thing for him.

When he finally let me out, Rufus’s accent had returned to normal, and he told me that the beast was dead. Gareth’s unfinished business was complete, so he’d passed on to the other side of the veil.

For a solid month, I was sure he was faking it, and that Gareth was still in there somewhere. I even tried tempting him with Guinness and bangers ’n mash, until Rufus got annoyed and made me stop. It was for his own good.

RULE #4: NEVER HIT THE SAME TOWN TWICE.

T
his one’s simple. We followed a succubus to Lincoln, Nebraska, and ended up getting chased out of town by a cadre of furious husbands—a year prior, Rufus had been in Lincoln cleaning up a coven of witches when a spell went haywire. He was supposed to be making a hex bag to shield him from the magic of the coven, but instead made a hex bag that caused every nearby woman to fall deeply in love with him. Rufus being Rufus, he didn’t notice for a few days, and assumed that the women of Lincoln were simply more open with their sexuality than in other cities. Rufus’s girlfriend had broken up with him for the tenth time earlier that month, and he did a lot of rebounding. The man got more action in a week than he had in his entire life, and didn’t for a second think that something unnatural was afoot.

It wasn’t until two furious husbands knocked on his motel door that Rufus realized he had a problem. He was out of town within fifteen minutes and vowed never to return. That is, until our case took us there. It’s really hard to work a case when you have guys following you around with brass knuckles. We ended up having to call Martin Creaser to go after the succubus instead—and Rufus never went back to Lincoln.

RULE #5: IT AIN’T DEAD TILL IT’S IN FIVE PIECES.

S
peaking of witches, St. Louis is crawling with them. I don’t know why, but it’s true. You can’t go a block in that town without tripping over a hex bag. Rufus and I hunted one there who was exceptionally nasty—she’d been using spells to turn all the food in her neighbors’ houses to acid. I don’t know what her motivation was—that had to be hurting her home value.

When we finally tracked her down, I put a bullet in her head. You’d think that’d be enough, but nooooo. The bitch stood back up, telekinetically pinned me to the wall and started twisting around my insides.

The good thing about witches is that they’re usually easy to kill. See, witches aren’t monsters, they’re just folks. Folks who, for whatever reason, are total jackasses and use black magic to further their own ends while screwing over and killing people who they don’t like.

That’s why we burn them. They have it coming. It’s not that a bullet won’t kill them, it’s that burning them hurts more. Back in the day, people had all kinds of crazy theories about witches—that they’d float if you tried to drown them, that they could control people’s minds, that they rode around on broomsticks. None of that’s true.

In the case of the St. Louis witch, she musta been way higher up the food chain than we thought. Once they develop telekinesis, you know a witch or warlock isn’t screwing around. Luckily, being a witch doesn’t give them extra brains. Rufus had snuck in the back door and chopped the lady’s head off with an axe. Then he chopped her in half. Then he chopped her a few more times.

“It ain’t dead till it’s in five pieces,” he said. I loved Rufus.

Where Am I Now?

JUST HAD A FLASH OF SOMETHING.
The woman’s face, the water woman from the swamp. She was holding out her hand, and . . . I don’t know, it felt like I was getting pulled apart.

I have a confession to make. I don’t even remember starting to write this book. A few hours ago, I had to re-read the whole thing just to know what I was doing and what I’d already said.

For a few minutes, I actually thought about going to the hospital. As if they’d be able to do anything. This is . . . unsettling for me. I’m not one to ask people for help, but right about now, all I wish is that I had someone I could talk to.

Maybe I should drive back to Ashland. A part of me is afraid I wouldn’t even make it there. If I
did
get there, I wouldn’t know what to look for. Why are some things so clear, and others so muddy?

I have to keep going. Keep writing. Something will make it all fit together.

John Winchester

IT WAS DURING MY TIME RIDING
with Rufus that I first met a hunter by the name of John Winchester. He had been steadily building a reputation for the few years he was active (1983 on), and so I was curious to see what kind of man he was. The answer? Complicated. At the time, I had no idea he had kids. Just that he’d taken on a fool’s quest to hunt a yellow-eyed demon.

We joined up with him on a hunt in Oregon, in an unincorporated area outside of Baker City. A construction crew had gone missing while trying to tear down an abandoned house. The previous owners had also gone missing, so we smelled something supernatural in the air.

John struck me as a levelheaded sort of guy, but he was so driven that it was hard to keep up with him. He was inside the house before we’d even opened our trunk, and he was running out cursing before I chambered a round.

The house was, to skip to the crazy,
alive
. At some point in its history, it’d been imbued with consciousness and a self-preservation instinct, and was simply not going to allow itself to be torn down.

We tried every damn thing we could think of to bring it to the ground. Fire, axes, and sledgehammers; John even threw a grenade or two inside, but each time, the house would react, find some way to protect itself.

I got a chance to talk to John as we took a lunch break. As soon as we were “off the clock,” out came the pictures of his boys, Dean and Sam. He was so proud of them, Dean for following so closely in his footsteps, Sam for being so good at school, despite moving around so much. He missed them. Hadn’t seen them in a week and a half, had left them with a housekeeper at a hotel in Housatonic, Massachusetts.

That was my first taste of the side of John that I couldn’t stand. I empathized with him, and understood the need to get vengeance for his dead wife, but he had kids to look after. He shouldn’t have left them to be raised by strangers. I told him as much, and he stood up and walked away.

Finally, somebody had an idea, can’t remember who. Termites. Lots and lots of termites. Let them loose inside, where they could slowly eat the house’s skeleton away. It was brought up that the termite plan was a cop-out, that it could take years to work, and that it very well could fail just like the hand grenades, but none of us wanted to get bitten in half by a garage door, so there we were.

I went by that house a few years back, it was just a pile of rotted lumber. Sometimes the cop-out is the best way out.

The Shit List

SPEAKING OF JOHN,
here’s something important I definitely don’t want to forget—all the people I can’t friggin’ stand. I’ve been around the sun a few times, made my share of friends and way more than my share of enemies, and these are the ones who’ll probably dance on my grave when I’m gone. Listen up, ya idjits, I’d do the same to you. (I’m not including people that’re already dead. What would be the use?)

Kurt Dremler. For leaving me alone to fight that
shtriga
in Orlando, the cowardly bastard.

Jason Larson. That prick has owed me more money than anyone else I’ve ever known, but in tiny increments spread out over fifteen years. Every time I see him, the guy needs five bucks for something. We go to lunch, he forgot his wallet. I meet him to go fishing, he forgot his tackle, needs to stop at the bait shop to buy more. He pays it back . . . eventually, after great prodding.

Alexis Sinclair. The woman that owns the land directly behind mine. This woman has caused more problems for me than most monsters. She just won’t listen to reason. It’s gonna make noise, lady, it’s a car crusher! Geez. Call the county zoning board one more time, why don’tcha?

Derek Knightley. For that time with the rawhead. He owes me a new shotgun, a new set of tail lights, and some of my dignity back.

Michael Wal. He knows why.

Sheriff Mills. How many times do I have to explain to her—I drive that way on purpose. It’s gotten so bad that they pull me over now just for coming into town. And I may have been in a few bar fights and drank a little too much a few times over the last
twenty years
, but that’s not bad if you average it out. Like I always tell her, if I’m gonna get
really
drunk, I’m gonna do it in the comfort of my own home. Mills has redeemed herself a bit in the last few years, but I’d still love to give her a piece of my mind. Too bad I don’t have any of those pieces left.

M. Night Shyamalan. Guy owes me $8.50 for
Lady in the Water
.

Tastes Like Chicken

MAN, MY MEMORY IS REALLY GOING.
I’m just seeing flashes now, some things I understand, some things I don’t. I just had this vision of Rufus wrestling with a Komodo dragon . . . when did that happen?

Wait.

Right. Eighties. I remember it now. This is actually a good one, I should write it down before I forget.

See, sometimes, this job is gross. Sometimes it’s
really
gross. And sometimes, you’re hunting a
nagual
.

Naguals are a Mesoamerican cryptid that have been known to migrate as far north as Kansas and Colorado, if the weather is right. They prefer hot and muggy, and unlike a lot of critters, they operate both in daytime and at night. Their trick is to blend in with humans most of the time, when they’re not in their animal forms. They’re distant cousins of the shifter, werewolf, and skinwalker—all of them have the ability to change their shapes, but the nagual are more varied than skinwalkers and werewolves . . . they can transform into a buncha different animals. Depends on the personality of the nagual, I guess, but I’ve heard of one changing into a snake, one into a bird, one into a dog (though that coulda just been a misidentified skinwalker).

Naguals have a slightly different MO from skinwalkers—they will kill humans, but prefer to feed in whatever their native animal form is. If they’re a snake, they eat mice, if they’re a bird, they eat worms. You get the idea. Nagual are dangerous not because of their feeding habits, but because of their method of procreation.

A nagual and another nagual can meet, fall in love, want to have cute little blue-eyed babies together, and everything is sunshine and roses until they realize that the “birds and the bees” part doesn’t work . . . because they’re literally a bird and a bee. They can try to breed all they like, it ain’t gonna happen. A female nagual could get pregnant in her human form, but as soon as she turns into her animal form, she’d miscarry—and their transformations aren’t voluntary. Sooner or later, they’ll lose the baby.

So, to keep their numbers up, they have to recruit. They’re a lot like vamps in that respect. If they want a
baby
baby, they’ll have to steal one from a human couple and turn it.

After several children disappeared in the Phoenix metro area, Rufus and I got on the case. A few factors led us to believe a nagual might be involved—the family of the first disappeared girl said that they’d found an iguana outside their house and brought it inside, and when their daughter was kidnapped, the kidnapper took the iguana too. Didn’t seem like someone would bother taking the lizard if they were in the middle of a kidnapping, so we started to think that maybe the lizard
was
the kidnapper.

We hunted the thing across three counties before we heard a police radio squawk about a disabled vehicle on a desert road—the copper said that the vehicle was an old RV, empty except for a lizard, a couple cats, two ravens, a koala, and a marmoset. Sounded to me and Rufus like we were chasing a whole pack of naguals, and that they’d already turned the stolen kids.

Here’s the most important part of the story: once you’ve been bitten by a nagual in their animal form, you become one of them within a day. There are ways to stop the transformation, but
only if you get to the victim before they change
. Since the kids were already changed, they were already monsters. There was nothing we could do for them except stop them from doing the same thing to someone else. Sounds harsh, I know, but there ain’t another way around it. If I was forced to become an armadillo for half my life, I’d want it all to end pronto.

When we got to the RV, the lizard and the koala were valiantly attempting to use a jack and tire iron to replace their blown tire. Like I said, naguals can’t change at will, so if they were stuck in their animal forms, that was that. We thought it was an open-and-shut case, we’d just gank the things and move on with our business, until things got weird.

Rufus had pulled his Desert Eagle on the koala, which was the strangest damn sight I ever did see, and I’ve seen some strange. As he was talking to the thing (telling it to step away from the tire iron, if I can remember correctly), I was searching the inside of the RV. The two ravens flew the coop, and I chased after them. I fired a few wild shots, mighta nicked one of ’em, but both got away. Then I heard Rufus yell out, “The damn thing bit me!”

I turned to the sound, saw him wrestling with this giant Komodo dragon—it musta been laying out on the cool asphalt under the RV. It’d taken a chunk out of Rufus’s arm, and he was bleeding pretty bad. I took a few shots (using silver bullets—as cousins of weres and shifters, silver’s the only thing that’ll hurt ’em) and managed to put down the dragon. The rest of the animals went into a friggin’ frenzy like I’ve never seen. Rufus and I both fired like crazy, took the whole pack down, minus those two ravens (one of which, I swear to God, came back and took a crap on me while I was shooting).

In all the chaos, I hadn’t even noticed that the koala had scratched me. Those things look all cuddly and friendly, but they’re little jags, every last one of ’em.

Rufus and I were both infected. We would both turn into naguals by the end of the day if we didn’t do something about it ASAP. This is where the gross part comes in. . . .

The only cure for nagual venom is to consume the flesh of the nagual who bit you. For Rufus, that was the Komodo dragon. For me, it was the stupid koala. But here’s the kicker—when they die, naguals transform halfway in between their two forms. Half man, half beast. Half yuppie tax attorney, half Komodo dragon. Half hippy chick, half koala.

We had to eat them
.

Grossest meal of my life, and I already told you about the seaweed.

So if you find yourself in the same situation, make the most of it, like Rufus and I did. We got ourselves to a kitchen as soon as we could, cooked up as close to a gourmet meal as possible with the nagual as a base.

Here’s the recipe: