The front yard and porch of Hicks Chicken Farms would be idyllic if it wasn’t for the eerie lack of chickens squawking in the surrounding fields. The double-wide manufactured home I’m parked in front of is a bright, cheery yellow, except for the added-on front porch, which is painted a white that’s almost blinding in the high afternoon sun. There’s another sign in front of the wooden steps leading up to the porch that reads “Local Honey, $10/pint.”

Sure enough, once I climb the steps, I find an aluminum card table with a wooden crate on it. The crate is stocked high with mason jars full of a deep golden honey. Next to the crate is a smallish wooden box with a hinged top. A laminated, handwritten sign has been stuck to the top of the box: “Honors system; please pay for what you take.” I peek under the lid, and I can see several loose ten-dollar bills and a few twenties as well down at the bottom of the box. Talk about your honors system.

I lower the lid and stride over to the door, but before I can even pull open the screen to knock, the front door swings open.

“You the monster hunter?” asks a short, lean man probably only a few years older than me. He’s wearing a white tank top, revealing farmer’s tan lines and a ball cap with a stylized A on it, either for the Atlanta Braves or the Alabama Crimson Tide. Don’t tell nobody, but I can never remember which A is which. Not much of a sports fan, to be honest.

“Chris Carroll,” I say, sticking out my hand, and we shake.

“Tate Hicks,” says the man. “Want to come inside for some lemonade?” He gestures into the cool, dark interior of his house.

I’m not really one for small talk; it’s my least favorite part of the job. Between chasing down monsters and talking to strangers, give me the monsters any day. Unfortunately, gig work means you gotta talk to clients. It don’t mean you gotta drink their lemonade, though.

“That’s all right; thank you, though,” I say, shifting from one foot to the other. “The listing said something about some kind of ruckus in your chicken houses?”

“Yup,” says Tate, and he turns back into the house for a second and hollers, “Emmakate!”

From deep inside the house, I hear a young voice holler back, “What?!”

“I’ve gotta go show somebody around the chicken houses. You stay here, all right?” And without waiting for an answer, he brushes past me out the door.

About a five-minute walk later, I almost wish I’d taken him up on that offer of lemonade. The afternoon Alabama sun is trying to melt me from the top down, and the air around me is so thick it feels a bit like trying to breathe in hot soup. I’m trying to pay attention to my client telling me about what he saw last night, but the beads of sweat free-falling down my back ain’t doing nothing for my concentration.

“…thought it might be coyotes at first,” Tate is saying, “because I thought I heard howling, but then I saw some light coming from the houses.”

“How do you mean?” asks Chris. “Was it more like lightning or a flickering streetlight or what?”

“I wasn’t really sure at the time,” says Tate, “but after I checked on the houses this morning, I’m pretty sure it was—”

He stops then and turns around on his heels. I turn, too, and watch as a girl of about nine or ten comes careening toward is, arms flapping out at her sides with abandon. She stops right in front of us and leans over, placing her hands on her knees and breathing heavily.

“Emmakate, what are you doing out here?” asks Tate.

“I want to—” the girl starts, still gasping for breath. She’s wearing a shirt from the Atlanta Supernatural History Museum, featuring illustrations of several monster skeletons. I notice they’ve mislabeled a wyvern skeleton as a dragon. Typical. “I want to see the—I want to help you show the monster hunter the chicken houses.”

“Absolutely not,” says Tate. “I told you to stay in the house.”

Emmakate is standing up straight now, with her hands on her hips. She’s still breathing rather heavily, but she gives as little stomp and a grunt of protest. “Please,” she wheedles. “I can help!”

“No, you cain’t. Now get back up to the house.”

By now, I’m only half paying attention. The thick Alabama air gets rustled just a bit by a slight breeze, and it carries with it a smell that turns my stomach and threatens to make me heave up Mom’s biscuit and sausage.

“Actually,” I cut in, and Tate’s head whips around toward me, “there may be something you can do for me.”

Emmakate looks up at him, eyes eager. I hate to do it, because I was just a few years younger than her when I saw that infamous Animal Planet special. It was a whole two hours and it catalogued like a hundred new species that had been discovered over the past decade or so—species that had been previously considered mythological. My future as a monster hunter was set in stone right then and there.

But that awful, acrid smell in the air—I know Tate’s right.

“I hate to ask it, but I’m real thirsty. I haven’t had anything to drink but coffee this morning, and I’m thinking now that mighta been a mistake. Maybe you can fix me something back up at the house, and once we’re done down here, I can come up and tell you what I think you might be dealing with?”

Emmakate looks disappointed, but her eyes dart back and forth between her father’s stern, angry face, and my entreating smile. She turns around and stomps back up toward the house.

Once she’s gone, Tate and I turn back toward the chicken houses.

“Hope that was okay,” I say.

“Yeah, I reckon it was all right,” says Tate. “She’s been trying to sneak down here all morning. I’m glad you came so quick; once we’re done here, I can start to clean things up.”

As we approach the first chicken house, the smell intensifies, sulfuric and smoky. So far, though, nothing looks too out of place, except for the fact that the chicken house is on a trailer bed. It’s still bugging me, so I ask, “Why’ve you got it on wheels?”

“Makes them easier to move around,” says Tate. “We’re not an industrial farm—we’re certified free-range, so we keep a much smaller stock and rotate the houses around every now and again, make sure the pasture’s not over-pecked and the chickens get the proper nutrients.”

As we move around to the back of the house, the smell becomes almost overwhelming, and its source becomes clear like crystal.

“Well, I reckon you’re right,” I say to Tate. “This sure as hell wasn’t no coyotes.”