by Josh Olsen
Jason stared at the tree just off the road, and back to the car, thinking for a moment. “Somethings off Macklin, this tree fell too recently for them to have swerved and gotten attacked out here by that thing, the snow is too shallow on that tree, it would have piled up just like on the rover.”
Jason thought for a moment, walking over to the car once again, he swept the snow off the side, careful not to lacerate his fingers on the metal.
“Oh my god,” Jason whispered to himself as he uncovered more of the side, he ran his fingers over the marks, his heart racing. Impact marks were deep in the side of the car, the same shape he had seen before, in the photos, on the coat.
“Mother of God, it pushed them off the road.” Jason said to himself. What in God’s name was this thing? Some…thing that could push a full sized automobile off the road, going god knows how fast?
“Sheriff, you can’t be serious…What could do that? That’s impossible,” Macklin spoke almost to himself, his voice quivering, almost answering his own questions within his mind.
“Macklin, we need to get back to the town, quick.” Jason said, walking back to the road.
Suddenly, the thought entered his mind, he begged it not to be true. Jason ran as quickly as he could to the base of the fallen pine, its large snowy branches littered the road. The massive tree lay sprawled out, almost lazily all over the pavement.
At its thinnest point, the tree was still a solid 2 feet wide. It would take days to cut this up and haul it away in this weather. Reaching the base of the tall conifer, Jason’s worst fear was confirmed. There, at the base of the tree, were the same marks he had seen so many times these past few, crawling, agonizing days.
They were trapped, trapped by that thing.
Chapter 39
It had gone over easier than he had thought, gathering everyone up. The people had moved almost without any fuss into The Casita. They didn’t ask any questions about the road. They simply followed silently, their minds bogged down with too much confusion and panic to question it. Though Jason just believed they were glad to get out of the cold, and worse, the woods.
Morales sat behind the desk grinning happily as he checked out key after key, his joy seemed it would overflow with each ring of the register. Jason had protested Arturo charging the panicked people at first, but the voices of some of the panicking tourists had overpowered his, assuring Arturo they would pay, saying anything they could to get inside somewhere safe.
He had found Nate, and his boy Owen in the lobby of the Casita, surprisingly, to him. Though when he thought about it, it wasn’t that crazy. Too much had happened at The Paradise for either of them to return to it now. Jason didn’t blame them.
His voice as hushed as he could manage over the bustling crowd, the sound of boots clomping the snow off and children crying.
Jason spoke. “Nate can I see you back at the station?” Nate stared back, his eyes tired, worn. It seemed he had aged 20 years in the past week.
“Yeah, anything Sheriff. Come on Owen.” The boy, hair matted and nappy, followed.
Clark and Macklin, sat back in the police station, staring at each other unsure of how to continue. Other officers sat at their desks, staring off, others discretely passed flasks back and forth, the warm comforting liquid topping off their courage.
The old oak door popped open, Jason and Nate entered followed by Owen, the snow had begun to howl with the wind, furiously outside.
“Macklin,” Jason said, approaching the men, “You and Dane take my Jeep up to The Paradise, get anyone who’s still up there down to The Casita. Tell them whatever you have to, I don’t want any loose ends up there.”
“Hold the fuck up.” Billings gruff voice broke over the room, casting silence over the murmuring officers. “You’re not authorized to do that.” Billings said, approaching Jason with a scowl on his eyes.
Jason looked back, a built up fury just behind his eyes, “Just try and fucking stop me, Sanders piece of shit.” Jason hissed back, fist locked at his side, he stood ready.
Billings smirked back at Jason, “I’ll report you right now, I’ll have you and your family begging for scraps from now til spring.”
“There’s the fucking phone.” Jason said, his tone serious, unshaken, “While your at it, get that slime up here to clear the road.”
The officers, watched, unable to look away. Macklin, stood behind Jason, hand on his gun, his gaze focused on Billings.
Billings and Jason stared back at each other, the tension rising with each passing second, cold sweat ran over everyone’s brow as they watched with fixed attention.
Billings coughed out a tar laced laugh, “You are one dumb asshole Arndt. If that thing out there doesn’t kill you first, I fucking will.” Walking past Jason, he stepped towards the phone. His strides long, cocky.
An audible sigh of relief filled the room, Macklin pulled his hand off his gun, relaxing.
“Nate, Could you follow me?” Jason said, “Leave your boy here with Macklin, he’ll keep an eye on him.
Jason knew that Nate wouldn’t care too heavily about the news but he’d spare the boy if he could, it was his mother after all.
Leading Nate back to an office adjacent his, near the back, he slid a door open, slipping inside.
“Nate, a tree fell a ways down the road, me and a couple other officers went to go check it out and today and well, we found this, sliding open a drawer on the vacant desk, Jason pulled forth the bent license plate from Nate’s car.
The metal clattered down on top of the wooden desk. It’s twisted shape caused it to spin sideways until it slowed to a stop.
Nate stared at the license plate. Unsure for a moment, what it was he was staring at. All at once, it clicked.
“The car?!” Nate exclaimed, “Where’s the rest of it? Where….” He trailed off, confused.
“Listen Nate, there’s something out in these woods. God knows how long its been there, Jesus, it could sure as hell explain some of the disappearances. But, it got to your wife and that Roy fellow as far as we can tell and killed them, Car is a fucking mess and the whole scene really. God Nate, I’m sorry.” Jason said solemnly
Nate stared off, silent. There is a point where a man’s mind can no longer comprehend the gravity of a situation anymore after it has been subject to so much. After a while, it all becomes white noise hissing somewhere outside their consciousness.
“We also believe that it was this same thing that killed your boy,” Jason racked his mind, the name was slipping, too much was in his mind trying to be processed, “Wyatt” Jason breathed out. “If there’s anything we can do for you or your boy, let us know.”
Nate stared off, his breaths shallow and infrequent. A single tear ran down his cheek onto the chapped skin of his lips, the salty liquid soaking into the dry pores.
Looking back up at Jason, he breathed deeply, “What can I do to help?”
Clark stared at the boy, Owen. He was at least a teenager Clark thought to himself, but he was very small for his age, his worn denim jeans swung back and forth with his legs that didn’t touch the ground as he sat on the chair adjacent him.
A small, young boy was a large part of his appearance, but Clark noticed all too well, so were his eyes. The boy’s eyes held a solemn quietness that age should not have bestowed upon him yet. Clark had seen the same look before, and he shuddered to think about it, Lizzie.
Shaking his head, he turned away, his mind trying to press the unpleasant images from his mind. But, a shout down the hall snapped him out of the unconscious haze of thought.
“You fucking bastard! You can’t do this!”
Down the hallway, near the phone that hung on the wall, Billings yelled. His gruff, heavy voice, shouted into the receiver, his face red, his gray whiskers looked painted on, contrasted with his beet red, sweaty face.
Jason jogged out from the office hallway near the other end of the building, Nate following closely behind.
“Billings!” Jason yelled,
his tone exemplified his willingness to deal with the alcohol logged asshole that stood at the other end.
Billings didn’t even turn, didn’t notice Jason screaming at him from across the room. With a loud clatter, he yelled out.
“Fuck!” he dropped the phone to the floor, its elastic cord causing it to sway and bob back and forth. Billings kicked the front door open, his slow jaunting walk leading him out into the storm that swirled and howled outside.
The door swinging shut to the outside, Jason strolled over to the phone, confused. Pulling it up by the string it dangled by he pressed his ear to the phone.
“Hello?, Who is this?” Jason asked into the faded yellow phone.
“Who is this?” A familiar voice replied over the static of the phone.
Jason scowled, hissing back into the phone, “You know damn well who this is. Cut the shit and send your men up to clear the road! We’ve got people trapped here.”
The arrogant, all too familiar voice of Grease Hair paraded over the line.
“Sorry Arndt.” his malicious voice cackled over the receiver. “Sanders died in his sleep last night, his brat kids are liquidating the whole company, we’re packing our shit up over here. Good luck with your little one horse town.” Grease hair cackled to himself as he was cut off by the receiver clicking.
Jason’s eyes furrowed, wrought with a fury. “Don’t you fucking dare hang u—, God Dammit!” Jason slammed the phone down on the hook hard, again and again until plastic cracked and splintered, flying haphazardly in every direction as he reduced the phone into mere bits.
“Fuck!”
Taking a moment to compose himself, the phone lying in piles at his feet, he took a deep breath, turning around to address his men. “Well that’s it, Sanders ain’t coming. Everyone group up, we’re going out there.”
Chapter 40
The contents of the arms locker in the station really were quite pitiful. Strewn about the table in the station, were little more than about 8 or so hunting rifles, boxes of ammo of various contents sat next to them. The first group to go out, or rather, almost anyone who was left. Nate, Billings; after he had wandered back in off the street, Clark, Jason, and Anderton, selected some of the rifles off the table. Picking them up, they slid back and forth the knobs and gears attempting to break the orange rust, clinging desperately, inspecting their rifles intently.
“God, Clark, how in the hell would it even know where to begin looking for those two? Let alone that the car speeding down the road was theirs’?” Jason asked, shaking his head as his sore fingers tried to pry the action loose of its rusted grip.
“I was thinking the same thing about Elroy. God…what are we dealing with here? Why him? Coincidence?” Clark asked, staring back at Jason, a cigarette poking out the side of his mouth, smoke sizzling upward.
“That part of town is covered in cabins. How would it know where to find him?…did it watch him…go back or something?”
Billings yelled back, his back was turned to the other men, he watched out the window intently, the bite of his bitter coffee stuck to his gray mustache as he talked. “This is a God damn animal we’re talking about here, it doesn’t think, it doesn’t feel, it ain’t that smart.” Billings continued scowling off into the distance, searching his mind for a plan, something he could do.
The men stared across at each other all sitting at opposite ends of the square table, staring at each other for answers that they knew none of them had. None of them wanted to get up, to venture out into the unknown. The unforgiving vastness of the deep forest where this otherworldly creature laid in wait for them. They sat in silence, praying Macklin would never finish putting the chains on the Jeep outside.
“Wait a minute, son of a bitch.” Jason said, shooting up in his chair, “Shit Clark, Elroy when he was in the hospital, he was screaming about some cut on his arm wasn’t he? Babbling about that thing out there.”
“So? He was shouting all kinds of shit. Plus I ain’t the one who’s memory anyone should be picking, it ain’t exactly the best.” Clark said, sitting still in his chair as he took another deep drag of his cigarette.
“God Dammit Clark, I’m just asking if you remember that or not.” Jason shot back.
“Yeah sure, I remember him saying something like that.” Clark said back, maintaining his lazy position in the chair as he fiddled with his rifle.
“Listen, Ashley….Nate’s wife,” Jason said, thinking to himself as he spoke.
Nate looked up intently, staring at Jason. His gaze transitioning from the back office door where Owen sat playing with Jason’s kids.
“When I was talking to her she said the same exact same thing almost, cept it was about her leg.”
“Shit Jason, what does that matter?….” Clark began.
“Cause it just doesn’t make any sense Clark. That’s just too random of a coincidence. Both of them were screaming about some mark that wasn’t there.” Jason shook his head, resting it on his palms.
“So what would that mean?” Macklin asked to himself almost, “That it…marked them or something?” Macklin laughed, scoffing at his own idea.
“I think you may be right! It marked them, and, and…..it tracked em down again after. Followed their scent or its own scent on them or something. I don’t fucking know.” Jason said, standing up, mulling over the idea in his mind.
Nate spoke up, “Well how would it know to attack Ashley in the first place? It attacked her right in her room, and she never left that hotel. She never sets foot outside the spa or the bar when we come here. I can fucking guarantee that.”
“Oh really?” Billings shot out his voice at the table once again. The group grimaced, just hearing him speak again.
“Could you guarantee she was fuckin’ that lawyer she was with? Or did that slip by your radar too?” Billings laughed.
Nate shot up in his chair quickly, the screech of the metal on the linoleum caused everyone to jump in the chairs.
“Billings, shut the fuck up!” Jason shouted back, “Or I’ll test my theory out on you, you dumb cocksucker, tie you out to a tree out there and wait. Wait for it to come and sniff you out.”
Billings glared back, shutting his mouth.
“That’s a good question Nate, and the only hole in that idea.” Jason said, trying to put the argument out of mind. “What about Roy though? Maybe it was coming for him-“
“Wait,” Nate said, cutting him off. He shot up in his chair, a look of sudden realization hanging on his face. “Did you recover anything from the car?”
Jason listened intently, staring back at Nate, confused.
“Yeah,” he said, standing up, pulling a suitcase out from behind the front desk, “Two of these.” Jason said, setting it down on the table.
Nate clicked open the case, rifling through the contents. “Oh my God,” he said. Eyes wide, he pulled a slashed up coat from the case. “This is Owen’s coat, she…she must have stolen it…more of her evidence.” Sprawling the garment out across the table.
“These marks here.” Nate gestured to the torn arm of the coat, shredded to pieces. “Are these the same you saw on the car?”
Ray spoke up first, “Those are the same as the ones in the room I can tell you that,” his fingers played with his glasses, as he straightened them up on his face.
“Oh shit,” Billings said, rushing to the table, he snatched the coat off the tabletop hurling it into the fire that crackled and popped beside them.
“Billings what in the…” Jason yelled, but quickly understood.
“If that thing’s scent is on that coat, its just ringing the dinner bell for that fucking thing, we probably should burn the whole case here too.” Billings said back, staring out the window, he gestured the men to do it.
