The Beast of Barcroft

Prologue

Thursday, November 6

Manny Benavides hated being called to Barcroft. It was a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood, but the residents were getting angry. He was a member of Arlington’s Public Health Division, and so rodent control and animal trapping fell to him, and it had been a busy year. This afternoon’s call was a woman who lived on the edge of the woods, just off Four Mile Run—a wolf sighting. This was Arlington, Virginia; they had snakes, bats, and deer. A small number of coyotes had returned after a long absence and there had been a rare black bear sighting at the county’s northernmost edge, but no wolves. Not for two hundred years at least. The woman who called sounded elderly and probably didn’t know a gray wolf from a German shepherd. Still, it was his job to solve problems, or at least pacify the taxpayers.

Barcroft had a legitimate problem that took up most of Manny’s time: rats.

In the past year, he had been called out to Barcroft more than any of the other neighborhoods, mostly dealing with animal control issues that could be traced to one resident, the Roux woman. An animal rehabilitator on 3rd Street South. She took in raccoons for the county and nursed them back to health, but the conditions were horrible and attracted every manner of vermin the county had to offer. Manny appreciated what she was trying to do, but more important, he appreciated balance. Arlington had its own ecosystem, and she was single-handedly throwing everything out of whack in Barcroft. And there was something wrong with her, something off. She was young, and he could tell she had been pretty once, but the one time he was on her property, she had unnerved him. He had pointed out dozens of rat burrows surrounding the foundation of her house.

“You have to do something about the rats,” he told her.

“What do you mean ‘do something’?” Her voice had a faraway quality.

“Well, kill them.”

“But I don’t want to kill them.”

After that, she would not answer her door.

She was the source of the problem, but unless neighbors complained there was not much the county could do. He could issue a citation if her neighbors filed for one—and they did so, monthly, like clockwork—but she had thirty days to comply or be fined. He found that she would do the minimum work to avoid the fine, then things were twice as bad the following month. The neighbors were furious. He was sympathetic to their plight and urged the residents to organize and continue their filing. It was the only way she would get the message. It was the only way he could maintain some control and protect the balance.

He parked in front of a red-brick house near the base of 7th Street South, a short, steep avenue that bottomed out and dead-ended at a guardrail with a stand of trees crowded behind it like unruly spectators. Beyond the trees and running perpendicular to the pitched avenue was the Washington & Old Dominion Trail, the paved path that ran alongside Four Mile Run. The woman was old, but she seemed completely rational. He explained that she had probably just seen a fox. She looked unconvinced.

Manny smiled. “Ma’am, I’m New Mexico born and raised. I know wolves. Coyotes too. If there was either within ten miles of here, I’d smell them,” he said, tapping his nose. “I promise, it was probably just a mean old dog.”

She looked toward the woods at the bottom of the street. “Big dog then,” she said.

Manny ran through the precautions with her, to be polite. Keep any pets indoors, especially at night, starting at dusk. Bring all pet food inside. He asked her if she had any problems with rats, but she had not. “I’ll just have a quick look around, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” she said and went inside.

A quick look around the base of her house and her fence line confirmed there were no burrows. It was almost 5 p.m. and getting dark, but he climbed to the top of the steep street, grunting, then started back down, looking over other houses in the fading autumn light. He had to be let onto properties to do an official inspection, but he doubted if the neighbors would have minded. In Barcroft, they were on the same side. Luckily for 7th Street South, it seemed anything coming out of the woods was heading straight toward the dinner bell up on 3rd. He suspected the “wolf” went there as well.

Manny walked down the street, passing houses to his left side, the woods on the right. The woods dropped off steeply on the opposite side of the old woman’s house, down to a ravine that branched off Four Mile Run. For being such an urban area and so close to Washington, D.C., Arlington abounded with woods. You just had to know where to look. A network of streams and trails connected more than seven hundred acres of parks and natural lands, nestled in and between neighborhoods just like Barcroft. The business districts and residential areas may have been Arlington’s economic muscle, Manny often told residents, but its circulatory system was truly green. Finally, he stopped at the guardrail at the bottom of the street. Beyond the rail there was an opening in the trees where a short path led to the trail and Four Mile Run. He had turned back up the hill to his truck when he heard the baby’s cries.

He bounded down the path and burst through the brush onto the Washington & Old Dominion Trail, commonly called the W&OD trail. He looked up and down its paved length but saw nothing, no runners or bikers in distress. He stood there for a moment, then smiled and shook his head. Probably a parent biking past and pulling one of those kiddie trailers, and he had heard a snippet of a crying child as they zipped past. He thought those things looked silly, like a stagecoach, but as he caught his breath and his pulse slowed, he had to admit, maybe those parents had the right idea. At fifty-five, perhaps it was time to get more exercise than his job afforded, chatting up old ladies about raccoons in their chimneys or wolves in the woods.

The sun had set and all that remained of the crimson sky was a thin red line over the trees to the west. It was November, just after the dreary end of Daylight Savings Time, which had freshly sliced an hour of sunshine from his day. Too dark too early, he thought. He turned his back to the trail and was on the short path back to the road when he heard it again.

A baby crying.

He brought his hand to his mouth and called out. The crying continued at the same volume, as if the child had not heard him. It was difficult to get a bearing on it. It sounded like it came from inside a well but it also seemed to drift down from the branches overhead. A trick of the autumn wind, he told himself. For a moment, he thought of La Llorona, the Crying Lady, who drowned her children in the Rio Grande to impress a suitor. When the man was understandably not impressed, she had killed herself, but her spirit roamed the riverbanks, wailing and taking children after nightfall ever since. It was just a bit of folklore his father told him to keep him from falling into the river, but he shivered. He called out again and closed his eyes to listen harder. The crying floated around him. He had started for his truck to get a flashlight when he cursed himself.

The stream. He had not checked Four Mile Run.

He sprinted back down the path and crossed the trail to the edge of the valley. The stream was thirty, maybe forty feet below, and the steep face was choked with vines and roots, rock outcroppings jutting out and obscuring the bank directly below him. Stream my ass, he thought. It looked like a river. Water, from a week of heavy rains up north, roared over the rocks. It was so loud you could barely hear yourself think, even at this height. In the valley, it was darker and harder to see, and a corner of his mind nagged at him to get the flashlight, but the crying was clearer now, pinpointed. And insistent.

“Hang on!” he yelled. “I’m coming!”

He clambered down as quickly as he could. Halfway down, clinging to the undergrowth, he wiped the sweat from his eyes. He peered over the lip and spied a figure below. “I’m coming.”

The figure turned and sniffed the air between them.

Manny swiped his eyes again and blinked. What he saw should not be here in Arlington.

He moved faster scrambling up than climbing down, using every limb and muscle to get back to the trail, to his truck that would take him away. Promises and prayers jumbled his thoughts. If I make it, Madre Mía, I’ll exercise, he thought. His heart burned, but he shot up the tangle as fast as his body would allow. He got his head over the edge and raked at the valley wall with his feet to clear it, but the thing caught his ankle and pulled. For a moment, he could see the trail, just feet in front of him. Beyond that, the small beaten path that led to the guardrail, the border between the woods and Barcroft, between this nightmare and the real world. Then came a sharp, wrenching pain. Manny hollered, but in a split second his leg was blessedly free again.

He pumped it but found no purchase. He looked down and saw his foot was gone.

With the little air left in his lungs, Manny threw back his head and screamed. Maybe someone on the trail would hear and come running, but it was November now and too dark too early. There was no one to flag down, and the rushing water drowned out his screams just the same. He wasn’t going to make it to the truck or the trail or out of this valley. It had him by the knee now. The trail slid from his view. Overhead he saw the stars beginning to reveal themselves on a clear night, framed now by the walls of the valley. Then the beast pulled him down into the stream and he saw nothing. The last thing he thought before losing consciousness was his inability to distinguish the icy sting of Four Mile Run from the teeth.