Steve: Hunt 1, The Hatefiend

The silver cube had been sitting next to Steve’s couch for two weeks now. Polished to a mirror sheen and with no visible openings, it looked like a bad piece of modern art. Or maybe a good piece of modern art. Steve wasn’t much of an art guy. He reached into the mini-fridge he kept on the other side of the couch — a much more useful box than the one he was currently staring at — and popped the top on a cold beer. He took a long sip and stared down the mystery cube, going over how he’d come to be in possession of it for the thousandth time.

He’d woken up on an uneven pool table in a dive bar in Texas, lying next to the box, fifty grand, and a note that said If you want a job, take the cube. We’ll be in touch. The last thing he remembered was getting into a bar fight with a guy who had transformed into a boar as soon as he stepped outside. It’d been a full moon that night, so Steve figured that made him a wereboar. A wereboar that had left a nasty gash on his left side. It sounded insane, and Steve might’ve been inclined to think he had hallucinated the whole thing because of the blood loss. Except someone had patched him up, that cash spent just fine, and this damn box was sitting in the living room of his one-bedroom apartment.

An indignant mewl came from behind him. “I’m coming Butch, hold your horses.” Steve turned and saw the impatient cat doing laps on the countertop, an empty bowl in front of him. Steve rose from the couch to grab some cat food, but his first step was interrupted by a strange sound. It was coming from the cube, and it was loud. On instinct, he hopped the counter into the kitchen, grabbing Butch on the way. The cat, apparently lacking all sense of self-preservation, was less than pleased at being snatched from its perch. Steve peeked up over the counter. The cube sounded like it was struggling to contain an industrial vacuum and a jet engine fighting to the death. Then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped.

Steve gave it a solid fifteen seconds before he budged from behind the relative safety of the kitchen counter. He approached the box the same way he’d approach a skunk — ready to run in an instant but also acutely aware that it probably wouldn’t do any good if it went off. Once he circled into the living room, he was finally able to get a good look at what had happened. Steve whistled. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d been expecting to see, but this wasn’t it.

The front face of the cube had slid up and completely detached from the rest of the box. It hovered about an inch and a half in the air, as if suspended by magnets. Or magic, who even knew at this point. The inside was surprisingly plain. No shelves, no drawers, no lights. All that was inside was a white ring sitting on top of a note.

Steve reached down and picked up the ring, inspecting it in the cheap fluorescent lighting of his apartment. It was a pearlescent white and had been expertly carved. At a glance, the outside of the ring was simply highly polished wood. The inside, though, had been carved with tiny shapes all the way around the band. Steve looked closer. He didn’t speak anything other than English, but these didn’t look like any Chinese or Japanese symbols he’d ever seen. These were something else entirely. He palmed it and picked up the note, which had been written up on an old-school typewriter.

Hatefiend, Jacksonville FL.

$100K

Wear the ring.

On one hand, Steve knew this was insane and that the smartest thing for him to do would be to chuck the whole kit and kaboodle right into a dumpster. But, then again, that was more money than he’d ever seen in his life. And whatever a Hatefiend was, it couldn’t be worse than that thing he tussled with in Texas. He looked back down at the ring in his hand and slipped it on. It fit perfectly. Whoever was on the other side of this box, they did their homework. Good enough for him. He filled Butch’s food and water, grabbed his keys, and headed for the door. It was a long drive to Florida.

Steve’s companions for the trip were his black Trans Am and Colt Python revolver. Both were made in 1971 and both had been lovingly kept in pristine condition. Steve didn’t get too hung up on worldly possessions, but these two were dear to him. The drive down had been filled with six energy drinks, two drive-through burgers, and one call to Steve’s landlord to ask him to check in on the cat while he was gone. But he was finally pulling into Jacksonville. The only problem was that he had no idea what he was supposed to do now that he’d arrived. He didn’t know what a hatefiend was, much less where to find one. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing he could just ask a gas station clerk about.

With no real leads, Steve started driving toward downtown. He’d gone all of two and a half miles when he felt the ring on his hand begin to respond. It wasn’t a pulse or a buzz, but it was definitely directing him. Steve had never set foot in Jacksonville in his life, but suddenly every turn felt like driving home along a familiar road; he just somehow knew where to go. Eventually, he found himself in an out-of-the-way part of town staring across the street at the dive-iest of dive bars.

The paint was faded, a couple of cans littered the front, and there wasn’t even a sign outside to tell you the name of the place. The only way one might even know this bar wasn’t condemned was the tiny LED sign in the corner of the lone window that said BEER in plain red lights. Steve smiled. He was much more at home in these kinds of joints than places with $13 cocktails and tiny food. He crossed the street and stepped inside.

The initial comfort Steve felt evaporated the moment he set foot in the bar. It was busy. Too busy. These hole-in-the-wall joints attracted the type of people who didn’t like crowds. Something about seeing the room packed out like this just didn’t sit right. Steve looked around and saw a trio of younger guys dressed in business casual in the corner. They were out of place here and the nervous looks on their faces meant they weren’t oblivious to that fact. They must’ve heard about this place from someone, which meant it was a good place to start looking for information.

Steve maneuvered his way through the crowd to them. “Hey, fellas.” They shared a worried glance between them before the one in the middle spoke up, “Hey, man. We’re not really looking for any trouble, ok?”

Steve held up his hands, “No trouble here. I’m just wondering what brought you boys to this fine establishment. It’s not exactly on Yelp.”

“Cheapest drinks in the city,” the one on the end said. “I’d go just about anywhere for $1 beers.”

“Dollar beers?“ said Steve. “Well, I can’t blame you for that.”

“Yeah. That and the fights,” said the third one, who was definitely not on his first dollar beer.

“What, like a fight club?” Steve asked. He thought those only happened in movies.

The middle one elbowed the blabber mouth of the group, but he kept blabbing. “Nah, guys come in here, get drunk and start fighting pretty much every night. Happens like clockwork; it’s like free entertainment.”

“And the cops don’t shut this place down?” Steve asked.

“Nope. I’ve never even seen a cop down here.”

“Hm. Thanks, amigo.” Steve headed toward the bar. If he was to do some proper detective work then he needed to blend in with the locals with a beer or three. He squeezed through the crowd and saddled up to the bar. The man running it was short and wiry, with a sharp nose and narrow eyes. He dropped a bunch of bottles on the counter for a group of guys and then slid over to Steve.

“How many?” he asked. He didn’t even look at Steve, instead, he was surveying the crowd, continually sweeping over them with an uncomfortably intense gaze.

“One, but I didn’t tell you what I wanted yet,” Steve answered.

The bartender graced his customer with a momentary glance.“We have one beer and it’s whatever was cheapest this month. Drink it or get lost.”

“I ain’t picky.” Steve shrugged and slapped two bucks on the table — one for the beer and one for the tip. The bartender pulled them both into his pocket and poured a pint out of the single draft spout that sat crookedly on the bar.

“Thanks,” Steve said, but the bartender had already skulked over to the other end. Steve took a long pull and looked around, but it wasn’t like he even knew what he was looking for. The mystery box could’ve been a little more specific.

It was already loud in the bar, but a pair of angry voices rose above the noise. Steve turned his head to see two broad-shouldered gym rats squaring up, both with violence in their eyes. Those kids weren’t lying when they said this place got rough. Steve hadn’t even been here 20 minutes. He couldn’t quite make out what the two were saying to each other, but they didn’t sound like compliments. In no time flat, fists were flying and a small circle had formed around the combatants. Steve watched for a moment, but it was the bartender that caught his eye. The slender man was watching the fight from behind his bar very intently. But not in the way of a business owner worried his place would get smashed up. Or even in the way most men enjoy watching a good brawl. No, the bartender was watching this with an intensity etched into his expression that creeped Steve out, even here in a run-down bar surrounded by nothing but alcohol and testosterone.

The slightly shorter of the fighters caught the other with a perfect right hook and sent the taller man crashing to the sticky hardwood floor. The bartender hopped over the counter with a speed and purpose that he hadn’t given any of his customers. He shoved his way through the crowd and grabbed the unconscious patron by the feet. “Ok, ok, break it up.” With great effort, he pulled the man around the bar and into the back area. With the unconscious man out of sight, it was as if the crowd immediately forgot what had happened. Every single person was already back to talking and laughing with whatever circle of friends they had arrived with. Even the guy who won the fight seemed perfectly at ease talking to one of the bikers like nothing had happened.

In all of the excitement, Steve hadn’t noticed that the ring on his finger had started to insistently pull him again. With silent insistence, it beckoned him toward the back of the bar where the bartender had disappeared. “Alright, alright, I’m going,” he told the ring. Great. He was talking to jewelry now. He hopped the counter and then did a quick check of the bar to make sure no one was going to say anything. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be a single other soul working this place. Perfect. Steve slowly opened the door to the back section of the bar.

He entered what passed for a kitchen and was immediately glad this bar didn’t serve food. The place was a mess, and there was a slight odor of decay that made Steve’s stomach quiver. The bartender had his back toward the door and hadn’t noticed Steve enter. Lying at his feet was the guy who’d been knocked out cold. Steve peered closer to see if the man was okay, but the answer was a definitive “no.” He had blood running down his neck out of a giant gash that definitely hadn’t been caused by a haymaker to the chin. Steve’s eye’s traveled upward to the butcher knife the bartender was holding in its hand and he felt a wave of righteous anger well up within him. If this new gig had him hunting murderers, he was all for it. He reached down slowly and gripped the handle of his Colt, not yet wanting to alert the bartender of his presence. It was at this moment that things went from bad to completely off the rails.

Right as Steve was about to draw, the bartender reached up and hooked two fingers into his nostrils. In one swift motion, he pulled the top half of his face up and off like he was lifting the visor of a motorcycle helmet. As he did, the bottom half of the face dropped down and folded around his neck like a scarf. Beneath where the skin had been was a shiny, sticky black surface that made an uncomfortable squelching sound as it moved. The grotesque horror of it froze Steve in his tracks.

The…thing crouched down and hacked off its victim’s arm with a single blow. Steve fought back the urge to vomit. Whatever he was going to do, now was the time. Normally, Steve would consider himself above shooting someone in the back, but this was a something not a someone. He pulled the heavy revolver up and fired three shots right into the creature’s back. It screeched and lurched forward, but didn’t fall over. Three circles of black sludge began to seep from where the bullets had struck it. The creature spun around and Steve got his first good look at its face.

It had no eyes or nose — its only facial feature was a gaping mouth filled with long, needle-like teeth. It reminded Steve of one of those deep-sea angler fish he’d seen on Discovery Channel. Apparently, no longer having a human mouth made it difficult to form words, because the thing simply hissed at him, although its meaning was crystal clear. It looked down. The bullets had gone all the way through, and a small river of sludge was flowing from its chest. Steve hoped it would simply collapse here and bleed out, but he wasn’t that lucky.

The monster brought the severed arm to its mouth and took a huge chunk out of it. As it did, the wounds filled in, healing nearly instantly.

“Shit.” Steve didn’t hesitate. He fired off his remaining three rounds and found himself wishing he’d had the foresight to bring extra ammo. All three shots found their mark, but it still wasn’t enough to put the thing down. It brought the severed arm back up to its mouth to take a bite. “Oh, no you don’t!” Against his better judgment, Steve charged and tackled the creature, slamming it up against the tile wall.

As soon as he made contact with the monster, the ring on his hand went absolutely nuts. It was pulling on his knuckle like a chained dog straining to chase a cat. The creature noticed this, too. One look at the ring and it screeched, shoved Steve off with its free hand and jumped through a back window into the alley behind the bar. Steve looked down at the ring, “Okay, so you’re more than a monster finder then, aren’t you?” Here he was talking to jewelry again. Although now that he was chasing a literal monster, it made him feel a little less crazy.

Steve knocked out a few remaining shards of glass and vaulted through the opening, careful to avoid the broken window that littered the area. The creature hadn’t gotten far, it was leaning up against the far brick wall, pulling its human face back down like a Halloween mask. Even though Steve knew what it was, it was terrifying how convincing its human disguise was.

Two guys who had been smoking farther down in the alley jogged up, looks of concern and confusion on their faces. “Hey, is everything ok here?” They came up beside the thing masquerading as a man, in a commendable — if poorly timed — act of kindness.

The creature didn’t answer. Instead, it placed a hand on both of them. The two men turned to face Steve with pure malice in their eyes. If looks could kill, he’d already be dead. “Hey,” one of them said, “what the hell do you think you’re doing to this poor guy?”

“Um, listen fellas, you’re definitely going to wanna hear my side of the story on this.” Steve might as well have been speaking Latin; there wasn’t a hint of recognition from words didn’t the two men as they stalked toward him.

The other one cracked his knuckles, pointed at Steve and snarled, “You’re a dead man.”

In a moment of clarity, Steve remembered the word that had been written on the piece of paper he’d received. Hatefiend. There was no reason for these two random bystanders to be this angry. And those fights in the bar were no accident either. Apparently, this hatefiend had a superpower, and it was to get people really, really pissed off.

Behind its two new bodyguards, the hatefiend was still dripping black sludge. It put its hand on one of the wounds and slipped around the corner to the sidewalk.

Steve split the two men bearing down on him in a move that would make Barry Sanders proud and barreled around the corner after the monster. It hadn’t gotten far. Unfortunately, the hard pounding of Steve’s boots on the pavement betrayed him. The hatefiend turned its head to look at him, then took off running in the opposite direction. Because fate was rarely kind to Steve, this particular sidewalk had about ten different people walking along it over the next few blocks. And as the hatefiend ran past each one, they all honed in on Steve with that same crazed malevolence on their face.

Steve didn’t like the idea of punching a complete stranger, especially one who had no control over their faculties, so he took a wide berth around to the opposite side of the street as he ran after the monster. The crowd of bystanders, in turn, ran after him. By his count, he was being chased by two convenience store employees, a family of four, three college-aged girls and one older woman who kept shouting obscenities at him as she ran. Steve wasn’t sure if that was part of the hatefiend’s spell or if she just had a lot of pent up anger.

Steve lost sight of the hatefiend somewhere between juking the convenience store clerk and dodging a purse thrown by the foul-mouthed grandma. He cut through another alley, down a side street and managed to lose the mob. That was the good news. The bad news was, the monster had lost him.The ache of disappointment clenched his gut as he leaned on a dumpster to catch his breath. As his heart rate slowed, his mind cleared too and Steve had an epiphany. The hatefiend was still hurt, but needed fresh meat to heal. And there was a fresh body — minus one arm — in the back room of the bar. It would have to either double back there, and soon. Careful to avoid the way he came, Steve headed back to the scene of the crime.

He quickly arrived back in the alley behind the bar. Thankfully, the two smokers the hatefied and sicced on him were nowhere to be found. The back way in was his only option. If he went through the front and the creature turned that crowd on him there would be no escape. As quarterly as he could, Steve joisted himself up and crawled back through the window. He landed in a crouch and looked around. The monster was nowhere to be found. Good. That gave him time to set up a proper ambush. Steve took a few steps forward and got a better look at the poor sap the hatefiend had butchered.

Steve noticed the fresh bite taken out of the body at the exact same second the ring on his finger started going nuts, which was exactly a second too late. He spun to meet the hatefiend but it got the drop on him, knocking him to the ground. The back of his head cracked the wet linoleum and stars danced in front of his eyes. Steve blinked hard. No time for stargazing now. In an instant the hatefiend was on top of him in all of its slimy, horrific glory. It grabbed his hand, the one with the ring, and pinned it to the ground. It gnashed its needle-like teeth at Steve’s face, anxious to get a bite of whatever it could. Steve shoved his free hand into its chest and got himself out of biting distance, but he couldn’t hold it off forever. This thing was strong.

Steve could feel the ring on his hand pulling with all its might. He tried to work it off with his thumb but that was no good. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Steve let go of the hatefiend’s chest long enough to rear back and punch its black, eyeless skull as hard as he could. The hit caused it to loosen its grip just enough for him to get his arm free and pull the ring off. The moment it left his finger, the ring shot through the air like a heat-seeking rocket and crashed onto the finger of the hatefiend, spinning so fast it was a white blur.

The monster screeched. It hopped off of Steve and desperately tried to tear the ring off, but it was no use. The ring began to make a high-pitched whine as it continued to spin like a NASCAR tire. The hatefiend stopped struggling and, though it had no eyes, Steve fully recognized the look of contempt it gave him right before it exploded into a shower of black goop.

Steve let out a deep sigh. From his head to toes, he was covered in hatefiend guts. He looked like someone had tried to tar and feather him but had run out of chickens. The ring was nowhere to be found. Apparently it had disintegrated along with the creature it had so thoroughly annihilated. Had Steve known it was that easy he would’ve started with the ring and saved himself six bullets and a trip to the cleaners. Eventually, he would need to call in an anonymous tip to the cops to let them know there was a body here, but right now he needed a drink.

Steve pushed through the door to the front of the bar, which was as lively as ever. He grabbed a mug off the rack, walked over to the single, crooked tap and poured himself a beer. This was a hell of a gig he’d stumbled into. Some part of him wanted to swear the whole thing off and drop that stupid shiny box into the furthest dump he could find. But... hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money. And he’d stopped a serial killer of sorts. And, in some twisted way, the whole thing had been kinda fun.

“Holy hell what happened to you?” one of the bar guests finally asked from the far end.

Steve looked down and realized he'd been dripping on the bar. “Oh. Uh, got a burst pipe.” Steve took a long drink and smirked. “It’s all good, though. Hazard of the job, I guess.”

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