Rampike

by European P. Douglas

  Angling the car towards his home a mile down the hill, he let it roll for a bit before kicking it into gear again. He liked the feeling of the free rolling heaviness under him, especially when he’d had a few too many beers. It gave him a sense of power, inexplicably, that he could feel at no other time during his week.

  Mouse saw the white car of the young couple and he recalled hearing from Jeff how badly damaged it had been, and how Joe had been in asking if anyone knew where Maul was living now. Everyone, save Sally, thought it could only have been Maul who had done this to the car, and the girl, Ava, had said he had been peeking in at her before bed as well. The sooner the better Joe found him and arrested him for this.

  He was so busy thinking on these things and looking at the white car that he let his own slide further than usual and it took a huge swerve while getting the car into gear at the same time to stop him caroming right into the steps of the sheriff’s office. He laughed with relief as he got control and slowed on down the hill.

  “That would have taken some explaining,” he laughed looking back out the rear window as the town receded.

  The road was like a black tunnel ahead with white borders all around it. Small flutters of snow falling looked like they were coming at him from within the darkness and he liked seeing them splash lightly into the windshield and slide down.

  Mouse got to his home in only a few minutes and he slowed to take the awkward angle of his driveway. As he did this movement caught his eyes, and he looked to something rushing fast from the side of his house.

  “What the...” He crashed the car into a picket fence that ran over his lawn and pressed hard on the brake as the car juddered and splintering wood filled his ears. “Fuck. What a night!” he said. In his shock at hitting the fence, he had forgotten for a moment what had caused it, but then the image flooded back into his mind and scared him. He looked all about but could see nothing. Had it been a man? That had been his first idea, but the body shape that hung in his memory didn’t hold up to that idea. It looked like a man, but it didn’t feel to Mouse that it had in fact been a man.

  Peering into the dark of the woods that surrounded his house from three sides he could make no sense of anything out. Everything looked different to him, like this was somewhere entirely new to him, but he had been in this house since he was a child and knew every inch of his land. Still, nothing looked like it had when he left here only six hours ago to go to the tavern. What was it? He got out of the car and took a deep breath of the cold air hoping it would go some way towards unblurring his vision a little. He closed his eyes and kneaded them with his fists and then looked around again. Everything looked white that was it. Was there snow stuck to the bark of all the trees? He didn’t recall seeing much of that before.

  He walked towards the house, looking around nervously as he went. He’d seen something, of that he was in no doubt, but the fact that he didn’t know what he had seen made him fearful. It was so white everywhere, even with all the snow it shouldn’t be this white, it was throwing off his concentration, stopping him from thinking rationally about what he should do which was getting his gun. He stumbled towards the side of the house where he had seen the thing and he noticed then that the trees closest to the house were not covered in snow like he’d thought. They were white and grey and looked like they had been long dead, scorched by the fire of many decades past. It was dead wood, rampike, but that made little sense at all. It would take years for this kind of damage to show up, and that was only after a fire. Nothing had happened out here where he lived, least of all a fire. All around him, these dead trees stood like silent soldiers looking down on him. He began to feel uneasy like he really was under their gaze and scrutiny. This time he did rush into the house.

  Going straight to his gun cabinet he took out his rifle, assured himself it was loaded and cocked it. Then he stood there silent and listening on the off chance that he wasn’t alone in the house. He knew the house to be of old wood and there was not a chance of anything moving without his knowing about it. When no creaking came for a long time, he went to the window and looked outside into the forest again. The dead trees were everywhere. He watched for movement but saw nothing in any direction.

  At last, he mustered up the courage to go back outside and went to the side of the house where the intruder had been. He intended to see the footprints to confirm this. What he saw instead was nothing he could put a name to. There were markings all over the snow but nothing he could call a footprint. Tiny lines scratched the surface all over and it looked like the snow had been gathered up like with a sweeping brush. In fact, now that he thought about it, it reminded him of the tracks left in the snow when a Christmas tree was pulled through it. What could it mean?

  With his gun cocked, he walked a few steps into the darkness and looked at the ground. It looked something similar, but the terrain was getting more uneven with each step and it was hard to tell in this dark where the track might lead. Mouse decided that he would need the torch he kept in the trunk of the car for this job. He crumped back out to his driveway and walked along to the diagonally abandoned car. Just as he got to the truck, however, he lost his footing, slipped and banged his head hard on the rear fender of the car. He slumped to the ground and groaned, putting his hand to his head and feeling the slick of blood there. He tried to pull himself back up but found he didn’t have the strength for this and instead slid further down until he was on his back on the snow. For a few moments, he looked to the sky, seeing his own shallowing breaths rise above him. Something was moving nearby, something in the trees but he couldn’t turn to look; there was no power left in his body. He was terrified but even that was only a feeling as if from far away, like from another time. He tried to speak but nothing came from his mouth and then he slipped into the darkness of unconsciousness.

  Chapter 13

  It was still dark when Sheriff Joe Moorefield was rudely awoken by the persistent hammering on his door. He sat bolt up and looked around, confused for a moment as to what was going on. Someone was knocking on the outer door of the office; and that meant something must have happened.

  “I’m coming!” he called out as he jumped out of bed and got dressed. No one had ever called on him like this before and he could only assume the worst. Someone was dead; there had been an accident or a fight of some kind. What else could be so urgent? The knocking had stopped but now Joe could hear the sounds of heavy footsteps as the person on the planks outside paced up and down.

  “Who’s out there, anyway?” Joe called putting on his watch and nothing the time of 3.22am.

  “It’s me, Mouse,” the voice came back. It sounded like he was chattering through cold but Joe didn’t notice that it was all that cold compared to lately. He went to the door and opened it to see Mouse standing there shivering and with damp bloodstain matted on his face and head.

  “What happened to you?” Joe asked in surprise.

  “There’s someone down at my house, sheriff,” Mouse answered, “you have to come look.”

  “Who is it?” Joe asked stepping out of the house and closing the door behind him.

  “I don’t know, but we got to go see.” Mouse was rushing back off and Joe saw then that he had come on foot.

  “Where’s your car?” he asked,

  “Back home,” Mouse answered looking at him as if it was a very strange question to ask. Joe walked up to Mouse and took him by the arm to have a closer look at his head.

  “I think we should go inside and get this cleaned up before we do anything else,” he said.

  “No, we need to get going; they’ll get away if we delay any more.”

  “Mouse, you’ve come all the way from your house on foot, if they are looking to escape they will be long gone by now. Was it someone burglarizing your house?”

  “I’m not sure; I think I disturbed them when I came home.”

  “Let’s get you cleaned up,” Joe suggested again.

  “No, I can do that when I get home,” Mo
use insisted and Joe saw there was no point in trying to argue with him. He was both drunk—by the smell of him—and probably concussed by the gash on his head.

  “What were you hit with?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mouse answered in impatience. “Can we just get going?”

  “Alright, Mouse, take it easy,” Joe said, and he unlocked the jeep and they both got in.

  They were at the house in only a few minutes and Joe saw at once the car crashed up over the lawn and the smashed fence,. He looked at Mouse but the large man jumped out of the car as soon as it had come to a halt and was waiting eagerly for Joe to follow him.

  As Joe got out of the jeep, he looked around for any tell-tale signs in the snow and his eyes landed on a rifle underneath the car. He bent down to pick it up and as he did he saw blood on the fender and ground there, and also the marks that might be made by someone slipping on the snow.

  “Is this your rifle?” he asked holding it up for Mouse to see. Mouse looked at it and then a confused look came over his face.

  “It is,” he said and Joe could tell he didn’t remember having it before.

  “So what happened here, Mouse,” Joe asked nodding to the car.

  “I came home and just as I was about to pull into the drive, I saw someone coming from the side of the house.”

  “And that made you lose control and crash the car?”

  “Yeah, I was trying to see who it was and didn’t realise the car was still moving.”

  “You’re pretty drunk, Mouse,” Joe said with a sceptical look on his face. “Are you sure you didn’t just imagine seeing someone?” Mouse’s face turned red with indignation, but Joe didn’t see this. Just as he had been asking the last question, he had noticed the white of the trees all around and a sense of fear came into him once more.

  “I swear to you, Joe, I saw someone!” Mouse said. Joe wasn’t listening, he was thinking back a couple of days past when he knew for sure that he had passed by this house on his way in to Emerson. There had definitely been no sign of this damage to the trees then.

  “When did the trees go like this?” he asked Mouse. Mouse looked around and it was like a switch went of his head and he was seeing it again having noticed it himself earlier.

  “I saw that too when I got home, it wasn’t like that when I was leaving to go to the tavern this evening.” Though he sounded as sure as could be, Joe scoffed at this.

  “You want me to believe all of this happened while you were in town for a few hours?”

  “I’m telling you the truth!”

  “Mouse, look at the fender of the car here, and this slip mark and then your outline in the snow,” Joe said pointing. Mouse looked down, and then back to him and shrugged. “You slipped and banged your head and were knocked out just here. That’s when you dropped your rifle under there!”

  “I don’t remember that,” Mouse admitted. “But come over here and look at this!” he said running to the side of the house and beckoning the sheriff to follow. Joe sighed, thinking of how tired he would be all day tomorrow now that he had been dragged from his sleep on a wild goose chase. He walked over to where Mouse was now standing and looked down to where he was pointing.

  “What’s this supposed to be?” Joe asked wearily. He could see the ground was criss-crossed with markings but none he could identify.

  “That’s from whatever was here; this is what ran from the side of the house.” Joe looked at it again and then looked up to Mouse who was staring back at him expectantly.

  “This is nothing,” he said, “nothing at all.”

  “It’s tracks from something,” Mouse insisted. On seeing that Joe was still not impressed, he said, “Wait here a second.” Joe stood as Mouse hurried back to the car and looked around on the ground. After about thirty seconds, there was a sound of triumph and he came back with a torch with the light beaming at the ground. “I was just starting to follow the tracks earlier when I got distracted, I think.” Joe took the torch and looked at the markings on the ground. It was true that it looked like it was moving in the one direction but it still didn’t look like any tracks Joe had ever seen. Walking into the trees, he scanned the ground and saw that it seemed to be leading away from the house as Mouse had said. It got harder to see clearly in the choppy ground within the tree line but Joe managed to follow it until it came to an abrupt end at the trunks of one of the trees. From here, there was no more trace of it. The only thing he could imagine was whoever or whatever it was must have climbed a tree and he ran the light up the trunk and into the branches above. There were signs of damage to the limbs up there but that when he scanned around with the torchlight, it was the same in all the other trees. It was this new white weakness that seemed to break so easily.

  “What the hell is all this white on the trees, anyway?” he asked aloud.

  “It looks like rampike,” Mouse said, “but I’ve never seen it like this and I never knew it as a thing that could spread either.”

  “Rampike?” Joe said; he’d never heard the word before but was glad that it had one.

  “Yeah,” Mouse nodded. “It's dead wood, normally been killed by fire or struck by lightning, but this is very strange and there sure hasn't been any fires or lightning around here lately.”

  “This is happening all over the mountain,” Joe said. “Maul’s house is completely surrounded by this stuff and even his house is damaged by it.”

  “It was probably him who I saw here tonight,” Mouse said bitterly.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The reason I think it was him who damaged that couple’s car; who else could it be?”

  “We can’t go around making assumptions like that with no proof,” Joe said, but even he thought it very odd that all of this was going on at the same time that Maul Thorndean was missing.

  “Well, you tell me who else then?” Mouse asked.

  “I don’t know who else,” Joe said. “But I’ve nothing in my mind pointing towards Maul at this point.”

  “So what are you going to do about this?” Mouse asked indicating his land with his hands.

  “I will come back here in the morning and have a look in the daylight. Until then, I think you should get yourself cleaned up and then get some sleep. Don’t come out here and disturb the place until I come out, do you hear me?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Mouse said.

  “And you need to stop driving home drunk, too,” Joe said nodding back to the car. Mouse nodded grumpily in agreement but didn’t respond verbally.

  As Joe pulled away from the house and did a U-turn in the jeep. He scoured the land that was lit up in the headlights and wondered what, if anything, had been going on here tonight. Mouse seemed adamant that he had seen someone and there were marks to indicate that someone, perhaps dragging something behind them had been here. Then again, Mouse had been very drunk, so drunk in fact that he had managed to fall and knock himself out for a time. It was hard to know what to think. In the morning, he would be able to see the area better; Mouse would be sober and perhaps better able to know if he did see anything, and he would also be able to tell if anything was missing from the house. Joe just hoped he might get at least one more hour of sleep in before it was time to start another day.

  Chapter 14

  The light of the morning sun reflected off the glass of Susan Bloom’s windscreen as she made her way over the high roads that would lead soon back to Mercy. There was still snow all around, but clear skies glowed now and the world looked as about as beautiful as possible. The white powder lay everywhere, on the ground, roads and every limb of every tree and it sparkled in the sun like exotic jewellery.

  The road rose and dropped in front of her, making sections in the near distance invisible until cresting the hillocks before those sections. About two miles out from Mercy, Susan noticed on one of the rises that there was something large in the road ahead. It disappeared and reappeared a few times before she finally got the sense of what it might be. Whatev
er it was large, but not a tree— she didn’t think so, anyway. It was dark in colour. A couple of rises out she finally saw that it was a felled deer and as she got closer saw that it was a big steer. It would have taken a lot to take this guy down. She pulled up about twenty feet from the prostrated animal and looked at it for a few moments.

  It wasn’t moving and there was some blood at its rear legs and on the ground behind. She wasn’t sure if it was dead or not. There was room to go around it if she was careful but she was too curious and after a few minutes, she got out of the car and looked at it from a closer vantage. The animal was huge and apart from the blood on its hindquarters, the fur all over looked slick with sweat — like a horse after a race. She took a step closer to try to have a look at the animal’s face but just as she moved, the whole body twitched and the legs jerked into the air for a moment. Susan let out a shriek of surprise and stood rigid to the spot. She was very suddenly aware that this creature had the capability of killing her even in its injured state — perhaps even more likely to kill her in this state. Thick plumes of mist rose from the mouth and nostrils as it breathed heavily.

  The head rested back on the cold hard road and Susan felt very sorry for the deer despite her fear. She looked once more at the injuries and wondered how a car could have done that and yet leave no trace of the car anywhere she could see. As far as she was aware, there were no predators capable of taking down a stag deer in this mountain range. The thought came to her of putting the dying animal out of its misery but there was no method coming to mind that she had either the stomach or capability of carrying out.