The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Skunk Ape, Part 1 of 2

Mickey Malloy has hunted down the elusive Lizard Man, but he wasn’t the only one on its trail. From hunters to militias to other cryptids, it seems everyone wants a piece of his strange prisoner.

Crazy, Crazy, Crazy, All the Time is available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

The Case of the Skunk Ape directly follows The Case of the Lizard Man, which should be read first.

Content warnings: Mild Swearing, Death, Racism

SATURDAY MORNING, AUGUST 29, 1942
LEE COUNTY COURTHOUSE
BISHOPVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

“That's a lot of people out there,” Gator Wayne muttered, peering between the bars of the third-floor window to eyeball the growing mob.

“Mostly out-of-towners,” Sheriff Harper Hoke noted.

“It's barely six in the morning,” Mickey Malloy grunted. He was still wiping his face and neck down with a damp cloth as he looked out the window. He'd meant to get some shut-eye, but the smell from the bait bomb juice had kept him awake. Now that he'd scraped most of the residue off, he had another problem keeping him on his feet: the murmuring crowd milling about outside.

Hoke kept his distance: the huge fed smelled like a sun-baked slab of roadkill had gotten dunked in a rotten egg bath. The Lizard Man itself didnt look much better. The thing was laid out on Hoke's floor like a dead deer, bound at the ankles, wrists, and snout with pink rubber bands. It was all black feathers, save for a few ugly bald spots. More than anything, it looked sick.

“I didn't believe it was real,” Hoke said. “Between the sightings of that thing, and those stupid old skunk ape stories, and now this three eye man in the city, it's all been too much to give any percentage to.”

“Skunk ape?” Gator asked.

“Never heard of it,” Mick said.

“Where are you boys from?”

“Louisiana.”

“Florida.”

“Yeah, I'm pretty sure y'all got skunk apes. Or at least the crazy stories,” Hoke said.

“Just 'cause a story's crazy, don't mean it's fake,” Mick intoned like he was imparting some ancient wisdom.

“Yeah, and there's seven-foot furry monsters stalking the woods and aliens with eyes in their foreheads in the sewers,” Hoke said.

“It's going to be tough to get through them,” Gator noted, abandoning the whole kooky topic.

“By the way, the mayor wants you gone in the next fifteen minutes,” Hoke told them. Mick glared out the office door and saw a white-haired man realize he'd been spotted and duck behind a corner.

“Easier said than done,” Mick grunted.

“Folks aren't too happy that a G-man caught their prize,” Hoke explained. “'Specially now that an actual reward was posted.”

“I'm not a...” Mickey Malloy tried, then shook his head. He was seeing a lot of guns out there. Might be good to step away from the window. He walked over and sat on the edge of the sheriff's desk. “Who's bank-rolling this reward?”

“Came on the radio last night, about twenty minutes after you called me. A local hunt club put up a thousand bucks for this thing,” Hoke said. He leaned against the wall and stared at the Lizard Man. It really was an ugly thing, like if a blackbird and a wolf had relations. It sat stock still, glaring right back at him from the floor of his office. “To be fair, they're more of a drinking club with a hunting problem. Probably got fed up with no progress and called the radio station after a few too many drinks.”

“So it's just a coincidence they offered a thousand smackers to get this thing the very night we pick it up?” Mick thought out loud. “And that the crowd knew where it would be.”

“You got a lot of frustrated crazies with a lot of big guns out there, law man,” Gator said. “Sounds like your hunt club knew they'd be lighting a match.”

“What does this 'hunt club' call itself?” Mick asked.

“They're harmless, a bunch of oddballs out there in the woods,” Hoke deflected.

“A name.”

“Lee's Faithful,” Hoke replied. “Church-based hunt club, that's all.”

“Named after a traitor who damn near took down the whole country,” Mick pointed out.

“Hey, there's a lot of Lees that ain’t traitors out there, Malloy,” Gator interjected. “If they're Chinese, that is. These boys Chinese, sheriff?”

“The whole damn county's named after Robert E. Lee!” Hoke snapped, ignoring Gator's comment.

“That ain't the defense you think it is,” Mick told him. “You got a badge on any of these Faithful?”

“Dig attends that...” Hoke thought to himself, then stopped and puffed himself up. He didn't trust Deputy Diggins any further than he could throw him, but he was still a deputy of Lee County. “Exactly what accusation are you trying to make here, Agent Malloy?”

“I called you for a spot to land for the night and within fifteen minutes every crazy in your county is outside, raring to collect on what can easily be construed as a bounty placed on our heads,” Mick said. “You understand what I'm saying now, sheriff?”

Hoke counted to ten before he spoke. He'd had too many late nights over the last three weeks, shooing off poachers, breaking up bar fights, and putting out-of-control campfires out. Meeting a stinking fed, a half-drunk Cajun, and a tied-up monster at his office at two in the morning had about been the last straw.

“I understand how you're connecting those dots, Agent Malloy, but I can assure you that you are safe here, in fact...” Hoke sighed. This would cause a lot of issues down the line, but there was something brewing here, and he didn't want anything to make it boil over. “Diggins! Dig! Get in here.”

A few seconds later, about the amount of time someone listening outside the door would take to pause a moment and look less suspicious, Deputy Diggins ambled into Hoke's office.

“What can I do you for?” he asked. His angular face was a bit redder than usual.

“How about you take the weekend off, on me,” Hoke offered.

“With all this mess going on?” Dig objected, indicating the growing crowd outside.

“We can handle it from here,” Hoke replied. Dig had about ten years and thirty pounds on the sheriff, but Hoke was a little taller, a little straighter-backed. Dig looked up at his boss, then to the hulking, odorous out-of-towner in the corner and the filthy bearded man peering out between the blinds.

“I see how it is,” he huffed. “Bowing down to the feds. Well when you get in over your heads, you assholes better not call me.”

Dig stalked out of the room and slammed the office door behind him. Mick could hear him mouthing off to the other deputies on his way out.

“You happy? That is going to be a screamer of a headache for me,” Hoke said.

“You know the guy and you think he's a liability, I'm liable to trust you,” Mick replied. He ambled back over and scoped out the situation outside alongside Gator. Their car was boxed in by the crowd. He was relieved to see they hadn't turned it over yet, but it was still early. Get some coffee and some hooch into these folks and anything could happen.

A murmur rose from the middle of the crowd. Hoke stepped up to see what the fuss was. Diggins, that sour dog turd, had left out the front door, right into the middle of them. He was in his undershirt, with his uniform draped over his arm. They couldn't quite make out what he was saying, but he was riling folks up. The word spread quickly through the crowd, and impatient curiosity sudden metamorphosed into demanding need.

Mick clocked the folks he'd have to get through. The people closest to the door were damn-near all white men decked out in green and brown. Many had their rifles and shotguns with them. The weapons were generally utilitarian, but there were a few fancy, international, or exotic models in there. These were the trophy hunters, the people who'd come chasing this crazy story to get an alligator-raven-wolf-thing head on their wall. Something clicked for Mick.

“What do you boys think of 'crow-codile?'” he asked absently.

“What?” Hoke and Gator snapped at the same time.

“Nothing, forget I said anything,” Mick muttered. He resumed his analysis of the churning mob. Beyond the hunters were other white folks, in normal attire. None of them were armed, but they looked just as mad as the inner crowd. Men and women in this group, kids too. This Lizard Man had turned their lives upside-down: they needed to see what all the fuss was about.

Even further out, a whole crowd of Black folks had showed up. Now, in spite of the monochromatic make-up of the town's leadership and the sheriff's department, the population of Lee County was almost sixty percent Black. They'd been as hassled by this whole situation as much the rest of the county was, and probably worse. Everyone wanted to get an eyeball on the the Lizard Man, and they felt that they'd earned a look as much as anyone else had.

“They going to listen to you if you tell 'em to leave?” Mick asked.

“They're worked up,” Hoke said. “I can't rightly say.”

“From what I gather, about the only thing everyone agrees on out there is that federal agents and incompetent and corrupt,” Mick observed.

“That is an opinion that some folks around here have been known to profess,” Hoke said carefully. He had yet to get a good read on this Malloy character, just that he didn't act like any fed Hoke had ever met. The other one, Gator, was too smarmy and too shifty to be anything other than a criminal. Hoke had inspected their badges for a solid thirty seconds when he'd met them, just in case they were a couple wiseacres trying to pull a fast one.

“How about we prove 'em right?” Gator asked.

“Confirmation bias, I like that,” Malloy said with a smirk.

“I say the critter gets free,” Gator suggested. “'Them dumb city boys, letting our Lizard Man slip through their fingers!'”

“That thing nearly gutted me,” Mick objected. Hoke had noticed that Malloy's shirt was in tatters, but the smell of him was so distracting he hardly thought to ask about anything else.

“I'm not saying it actually gets loose,” Gator said. He looked to Hoke for intel: “What was that across the street, a park?”

“Cemetery,” Hoke replied. “Presbyterian.”

“That'll work, we still got a little dark on our side,” Gator said. “You got dogs?”

“One, Hildie,” Hoke said.

“Well get her out there, get her barking. Have the rest of your boys start combing the plots. Flashlights, the whole nine. Anybody asks, they're not looking for anything,” Gator said.

“Good idea,” Mick said.

“My men won't play along with some ruse,” Hoke warned them.

“It doesn't matter,” Mick told him.

“That's the beauty of it,” Gator added. “If they tell our hunters they ain't looking for a Lizard Man over there, that'll convince 'em that they are. People love reading between lines, thinking they're clever.”

“And of course they're going to assume that the pair of us are dumb enough to let it loose. They won't be able to help themselves,” Mick said.

“Then what?” Hoke asked wearily.

“Soon as the crowd moves over there to harangue you, we slip out the front,” Mick replied. “Load up gruesome while everybody's looking at you, head to Columbia, then catch the train.”

“So the plan is for me to lie to my neighbors to cover your asses?”

“That's about the long and short of it,” Gator confirmed. “Think about it this way: if you think you've had issues with this thing running around your woods, wait 'til you see what kind of storm stirs up when a couple federal agents get shot up on your front steps.”

“Fair enough,” Hoke said. He took his gun belt off his coat rack and buckled it on. Once it was secure, he looked at the three ragged characters that had turned his night upside-down. “Wish I could say that it's been a pleasure. You going to be able to wrangle that thing?”

“It's lighter than it looks,” Mick assured him.

“We got it up here,” Gator said.

The Lizard Man hissed at the three of them from the floor.

“We appreciate your help, sheriff,” Mick said.

“Sure thing, just get on out of here,” Hoke sighed. He put on his hat and stepped out of his office, shutting the door behind him. Mick and Gator listened to his muffled instructions for his few deputies, then waited while they gathered their gear and headed out.

“You think this is going to work?” Gator asked.

“It was your idea,” Mick snapped.

“I thought it would be more collaborative, not that we'd jump on the first one,” Gator said.

“Aw, cram it,” Mick grunted. He looked down at the glaring creature. It stared back with its yellow eyes. He asked: “Which end you want?”

“I had the tail last time and it almost knocked me down the damn stairs,” Gator replied.

“Fine,” Mick said. He squatted next to the Lizard Man and examined the Band-It straps. They were still secure without cutting off circulation. Mick could here a raspy rattle rising in the critter's chest. It had gone stock-still, furious that he was so close to it.

A few minutes later, an old bloodhound started baying in the distance.

“That them?” Mick wondered.

“Let's see what happens,” Gator said.

It took a few minutes, but eventually the mob got curious. A couple locals peeled off to check on the commotion. Some of them came running back to tell their friends what was happening. The word spread quickly then. The hunters were the first to bolt, followed by the townies who took their time. The Black folks went as well but they were rightly wary of excited white folks with guns and kept their distance. Within ten minutes the crowd of over two hundred had boiled down to a manageable fifteen.

“That's our cue,” Mick said. Gator wrapped his jacket around the Lizard Man's head like a hood, then they squatted and scooped it, Mick under its thick tail and Gator wrapped around its narrow torso. The thing thrashed with enough force to almost bowl Mick over, but he kept his feet by bouncing off the wall.

“Holy hell,” he grunted. The tail was all muscle. Despite the creature being light, holding it was like wrestling a bucking bronco.

“What'd I say?” Gator said, though he was having just as much trouble with the front end. Its snout might have been lashed shut and its little hands bound together, but it was still trying to claw and kick at him. He had to do the Twist just to avoid catching a foot in the kidney.

“Let's just go,” Mick snapped. The lurched out the door with the thing, stumbling and crashing into walls and furniture with every step. The Lizard Man whipped its body and threw them around, knocking over lamps and chairs, clearing desktops.

“I'll let him know to bill us,” Mick said after the third typewriter went clattering to the floor.

They fought their way to the stairwell and took it one stair at a time, keeping their hands clamped onto the handrail. After an excruciating descent, they made it out the front door.

Most of the few people remaining perked up and came rushing over, but Mick and Gator had momentum on their side and shoved past. A few more watched from the distance, a couple families and a woman crouched on a tree branch across the way. Mick loosened his grip on the Lizard Man a little while he searched his pockets for his keys, letting a couple of the more persistent gawkers get walloped by that whipping tail.

Once Mick got the door open, they shoved the whole critter into the back seat and slammed it shut behind it. The Lizard Man coiled up, still blinded but ready to lash out at the next person that touched it. Mick and Gator piled into the front seat, cranked the engine, and leaned on the horn long enough for the looky-loos to get out of the way, then jammed on the gas.

Mick settled back into the driver's seat and put Bishopville in the rear-view. The woman in the tree dropped down, landing like a cat. He watched the deceived crowd come surging back to the courthouse until the road bent and they were out of sight for good.

THURSDAY MORNING, JUNE 25, 1942
SCAPE ORE SWAMP
LEE COUNTY, SOUTH CAROLINA

“I've braved the Kalahari,” Sherwood Temple wheezed. They'd dubbed him the White Hyena after that little misadventure, and the White Hyena would not be deterred by some mud hole in South Carolina, of all places. He groaned and dragged his foot out of the silt and placed it in front of his other. His hip burned, his arm was swollen to the point that he could not close his hand, but he still stumbled forward. There was no back for him. His shoulder throbbed with every step.

“Broken,” he grunted to no one but himself and the mosquitos. He knew the feeling well. In his youth, his own broken bones had hardly slowed him. Now, in his old age, it felt like he was dying. He'd already lived decades longer than he'd ever hoped to, and now his body was failing him.

The heat in his hip could only be infection, he could no longer deny it. Still, he needed to keep going. The Kíngó-Ngóla was his ticket. He had been exiled in Africa for thirty years. Taking this foul creature to the Antiquary would wipe his slate clean. The awfulness from the old days would be gone, his penance would be over. Lydia could see his home.

He had hunted this damned creature for weeks through the jungle when he'd captured it the first time. A few days in this dismal place would be nothing. He had outsmarted it when it was healthy, in its home terrain. Here would simple. Of course, his daughter had been there the first time he'd caught it, and his crew. And he had not been eaten through with infection, nor had his arm broken by a car crash.

“You old fool,” he muttered to himself. His bad leg was stuck in the grabby mud again.

Temple replayed the events of two days prior in his mind as he struggled to free his foot. If he had secured the Kíngó-Ngóla better, it would not have gotten loose and scratched his neck as he drove. If he had hired a driver, he would not have been behind the wheel in the first place. If he had budgeted better, he could have flown the damn beast to Charlotte. If he had brought his daughter, she would have treated his injuries and caught the beast already.

He had never told her, but she was already faster and smarter than he'd ever been. She was a demon on the hunt, far beyond what he'd raised her to be. Still, until the Antiquary restored his life, this nation would be no place for her. Women with her complexion were in danger in this place. Strong women, too confident to be meek, were almost guaranteed to be targeted by weak men with authority. Unless she was protected, she would be dead or jailed within the year. Temple knew her and how she responded when unimpressed.

“Lydia,” Temple wheezed. He needed to find the beast, more for her than anything else. It was their ticket.

The water here was waist-deep, and so dark that his body might as well have been sliced in half. He used his rifle as a lever, jamming its stock into the soft mud to shove his boot out. He stumbled forward, landing face-first in the brown water. He floundered, but eventually came up sputtering. The water stung his neck, and he reached up tentatively to probe his wound with his good hand. It was puffy and oozing, and pain lanced from his neck into his chest just from brushing his fingertips across it. The Kíngó-Ngóla’s scythe-like claws were filthy, and it had sunk them into his flesh.

He tried to cough up the swamp water, but that just increased the pain. He doubled over, and by the time he was done hacking and wincing and sobbing, he realized his rifle was gone. His neck hurt so bad, he could not dive down and fish around for it.

“I couldn't shoot the bastard anyway,” he groaned. He needed the creature alive, that was the agreement. He left the rifle wherever it was and stumbled back to the bank. His head was throbbing. He'd been wading through this swamp for days. He didn't remember how long it had been since he'd eaten. He must have had something to drink, but if he had once had iodine pills on him, he didn't any more. He couldn't recall drinking any tainted water, but he couldn't recall drinking any water at all.

Sherwood Temple, the White Hyena, collapsed onto a fallen tree. His lungs felt full. The long goodnight would be coming soon, and he was afraid it would come while he was alone.

He'd lived a hell of a life. He'd been a fugitive longer than not. If that foolishness with Howard hadn't happened so long ago, if he'd just listened, everything would be different. Even still, after so many years, the people in the place he'd been raised wanted to lock him in a cage. For a single mistake. If only he had kept his temper that day, or that Howard had chosen his words more carefully. Howard was his brother, if anyone should have known what would happen, he should have.

Temple had lived with regret for all these years, but what came after was something he would never change. His ordeals had made him the White Hyena.

After his flight to Africa, Temple had taken on a life he'd never imagined before. In America, they'd called him murderer. In Africa, he'd been a hunter, a courier, a guide, a missionary, and a cartographer. He'd conquered legendary mountains and mythological creatures. He had rescued a tiny child from the wild bush and raised her to be the greatest hunter he had ever seen.

Lydia was still on the boat. She was a queen in the wilderness, but men did not understand her. She was to stay put until he made delivery of this creature. It was her ticket to a real life.

When he died out here, in this awful place, she would never know what happened to him. She would be trapped here, in America, a place she had never seen and that had never seen the like of her.

Temple ran his good hand through his filthy hair, plastering what was left of it to his scalp. It was thin and stringy now, the color of sun-bleached zebra bone, after the vultures had had their fill. Once he'd carried a thick mane of brown curls, now all that remained of it was a few wayward mugshots in colonial police stations across the continent.

He was still breathing hard. His lungs felt smaller, and his neck was tight as a drum. He resisted the urge to touch the throbbing wound on his throat again. He hoped the oozing he felt coming from it was sweat and not pus.

“Where are you?” Temple croaked. His voice was raspy and weak. Something rustled in the branches above him. He groaned and twisted, his bones creaking in their swollen sockets. By the time he battled through the stabbing pain, whatever had been watching him was long gone.

These scrubby oaks were nothing compared to the towering jungles where he'd found the thing, but it careened through their canopies like it had been born there. He might not remember when he'd last eaten or drank, but Temple remembered watching it go.

He had been taking these back roads from Charleston to Charlotte, careful to steer clear of anywhere he might be questioned about who he was or what he was transporting. When they snuck the Kíngó-Ngóla off the ship, Temple was half-convinced it was about to die. The thing had been ripping its own feathers out and refusing food and water for the entire sea voyage. Not a scrap of the brilliant red plumage that had coated its throat remained to it. It wheezed where it lay, and its eyes were glazed over. He could count its ribs. He didn't think twice about simply leaving it limp in the back of the small box truck.

If only he'd leashed it, at the very least. He knew better. He shouldn't have taken risks or cut corners. It was her ticket. It was worth more than any other man or beast he'd ever caught and sold.

Perhaps he was what they called him. Scum. A failure. A poacher. A kidnapper and a smuggler and a mercenary and a liar. He had promised Lydia a new life. She would not have to be the hunter anymore. She liked that the other blackhearts he hung around called her the Lady Lioness, but that was all he had taught her to like. They loved that she could take down a wildebeest with her hands and snatch an asp off the ground. But until he secured her future, she would only be a curiosity, at best gawked at until she could be exploited. He wanted to save her from that. He did not want her to realize that he had not raised her to be a person, but had molded her into a freak, though it is what he had done.

The White Hyena and his Tick, they had once called them. Once. The little Black girl following the scoundrel around. Temple buried his skinning knife in one man for calling her that, and had to kill that very man's cousin years later over the same insult. But even while he twisted this little girl into his own image, the Lady Lioness, she twisted him right back. He found himself protective, he found himself thinking about the future. With Lydia in his life, he thought about being an old man. Sometimes this made him patient, sometimes it made him scared.

When the Antiquary reached out with a request for another rare specimen, Temple saw an opportunity. The Kíngó-Ngóla was a prize unlike any he had ever found. It was like asking him to catch a fairy. If he could pull it off, he would need something more than money: he and Lydia would need futures. That is what the Antiquary would provide. That is why he took risks, why he had ended up in this place, so far from her.

Desperation had made him soft and foolishness. Or perhaps it was the opposite.

Temple had come upon the dirt road through the swamp in the dark of night. Calling the packed dirt track through the swamp a ‘road’ was the last bit of generosity left to him. The only places the gravel had yet to wash away were the potholes left by the trees that hung low overhead. Their branches scraped the top of the truck, pushing it around as he drove. When the Kíngó-Ngóla slid open the small window in the back of the cab, Temple had been too focused to notice.

Temple held up his good hand. It shook so hard he imagined he could hear his finger bones rattling together. He ignored his bad arm. It hung heavy from his bruise-blackened shoulder, and when it didn't feel ice cold it felt like he was being cut to pieces. He clenched his good fist and pressed it against his good thigh.

When he was younger, he'd once been taken by surprise by a pride of lions visiting a water hole. He hid from them beneath the fallen trunk of a lightning-struck baobab. The fire ants that had made it their home were none too excited for his intrusion. Still, he stayed silent for nearly two hours. He had suffered for that later, of course, but he'd had self control then. Now, all it took was one weird, sickly creature to leech away the last of his grit.

When those talons raked his neck, Temple had panicked. He had no practical experience with fear, so the unwelcome, unfamiliar sensation was all the worse. He jammed the gas to the floor, jerked the wheel, and plowed the truck off the road and into the still swamp. He was neck-deep in the brown water before he realized what had happened. His arm was useless, and it took what little sense he had left to drag himself out of the cab and onto the muddy bank.

The impact knocked back door of the truck ajar, and Temple watched the Kíngó-Ngóla warily emerge. It sniffed the air of this alien continent, then clambered onto the roof of the truck. It glared at him for a moment, then jumped. Its quartet of wings tried to catch the air, but it was missing too many feathers and it fell. Before it could hit the water, it snagged a branch with one of its talons. The thing swung around like a baboon and hauled itself into the canopy.

Then it was gone. Her ticket, her future. Gone because he was old and feeble and scared.

Two days he had searched for the creature. Or three days. Perhaps a week. It was gone. His future. Lydia's.

Sherwood Temple tried to stand. His foot was buried in the silt again. He pushed and pulled, but it offered no respite. He coughed at the effort, expelling a knotty glob of green and pink. His back ached, his hip ached, his arm and lungs and neck and head ached. His foot was stuck and he hadn't the strength to free it. He slipped off the log and plopped down into the water, sinking up to his neck.

“You old fool,” he sputtered again.

Lydia had loved the life he'd made for her. To her, his exile, his punishment, was adventures and challenges, scoundrels and reward. It was him that wanted the change. He wanted her to live the life he'd lost. He wanted her to have a home, and a family, to be raised like he and Howard had been. But she was a grown woman, and a life of chaos and wilderness was all she'd ever known. A farm in America would be as jarring to her as life on the lam in the African bush had been for him. Bringing her here had changed her life as surely as that awful argument with Howard had changed his. The Kíngó-Ngóla had never been not her ticket, he realized: it would be her curse.

Sherwood Temple's good leg slid out from beneath him, and his head slipped beneath the brown water. His eye went wide, then he squeezed them shut against the stinging tannins. He thrashed and struggled, but it wasn't enough. He sank deeper and deeper. The blackness behind his eyes softened and flowed until it blanketed his consciousness. His last thought was of the little girl who’d never know what happened to him. The surface stilled after a moment, and the White Hyena’s last hunt was over.

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Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Bruce Conners.