A second later, he wished he didn’t know.
Something strode out from behind the cabin.
And it was huge.
The thing stood on two legs like a man, but no man like this ever walked the face of the earth. It appeared so black it looked like somebody cut a man-shaped hole in the very night itself. None of its features could be discerned, only it’s outline. But that outline itself confirmed its inhuman nature.
It towered seven or eight feet tall, from its feet to the crown of its head. And from its black head sprouted a rack of antlers that would have done an elk bull proud. A forest of sharp ebony points spread to an impressive width, yet only slightly wider than the massive shoulders beneath them. Everything about it reeked of power, death…and decay.
The thing also stank.
Badly.
It smelled of corruption, shit, and blood. The very air around them became a choking miasma of stench that reminded Carl of a slaughterhouse in full operation. The smell became so thick and cloying the sheriff felt surprised he couldn’t see it. He fought to keep his gorge down as he peered around the tree trunk at the monstrosity.
Carl now had no doubt how the state policeman died last night. Even worse, the trooper’s empty gun bore silent testimony of their own odds for survival if they confronted this thing. And yet despite its massive size and power, it had left no tracks…nothing to hint at its existence other than a pair of bodies that died in the wrong order. Then it had vanished, leaving an island empty of everything but two corpses for the policeman to find the next day.
And that told him more than he wanted to know about the nature of the threat they faced.
His mind reeled as it fought to accept the evidence in front of his eyes. Even worse, while his logical mind and everything he knew about the world fought to reject what he was seeing, something deep inside stirred with recognition. Old tales told around a boyhood campfire when he spent one summer with his uncle in Michigan reared in his memory. One in particular, an Ojibwa legend…
A ghost…a spirit…a spirit that eats human flesh.
He fought to remember, reaching back through a half century of living to get in touch with the ten year old sitting by that fire of yore. A name…an Indian name…Carl struggled to recall. For a moment he thought he couldn’t remember, then his eyes widened in disbelief as the answer came to him.
A wendigo!
Holy shit! It’s a god damned wendigo!
If that were true, and the legends were accurate, they were in trouble. Very bad trouble. And legends told of only a few ways things like that came into being.
Looking down at the ground beneath his feet, Carl cursed the politically expedient decisions state employees were famous for. If he ever met a certain state geologist again, he would personally see to it the man spent the rest of his life crapping out a whole new orifice.
Natural formation, my ass!
Movement from the behemoth in front of the shack tore his attention back to the present. It turned and raised its head, revealing a profile that included a beastlike muzzle, and loudly snuffled the air.
Recognizing the danger, the sheriff motioned to his stricken looking companion to begin a careful retreat. He had to do it again, before catching Pete’s attention, but then the pair of law officers faded backwards into the trees. They slipped quietly down the hill about fifty feet before the young deputy caught Carl by the arm and whispered in his ear.
“Sheriff, what’s the plan?”
For a brief second Carl thought about swatting the kid upside the head for asking stupid questions, but then realized he had a point. Blind retreat wasn’t the answer here.
“Okay,” he sotto voiced back. “Here’s what we’ll do. We go back to the trooper and get his body. Then we take it down to his boat. Then we get the hell off this damn mound.”
“Mound?”
“Later, right now we need to…”
At that moment, a tremendous howl shattered the night.
It rose from the area of the cabin behind them…a powerful, deep throated cry that sent ice water running down Carl’s spine. The sound rang of madness and slaughter. It was a primeval bellow of rage, bloodlust, and a red eyed savagery that announced to the universe the hunt now began, and something was about to die.
“Let’s go!” Carl hissed and increased his pace down the hill.
The sheriff moved as rapidly as he could in the dark, not daring to turn on his flashlight. He could hear Pete’s ragged breathing behind him as they fought their way through the limbs and brush in the blackness. He knew they were making too much noise, and wondered how long it would take for the atrocity up the hill to pinpoint them.
A second, even louder bellow answered his question.
With no further need for stealth, the sheriff switched on his light and started running down the hill. Even downhill, he found it hard going. The deputies light came on behind him, casting Carl’s own shadow ahead of him and adding chaos to the already bewildering thicket of limbs and brambles rushing toward him out of the darkness. He stumbled and staggered forward, taking branches in the face and twice tripping over roots. The sound of Pete staggering, thrashing, and cursing from behind told him the youngster wasn’t having a much better time of it.
A loud crash of splintering wood somewhere to their left and rear announced the thing was already coming down the hill…and it was close.
Carl took a split second pause to push the deputy ahead of him, knowing they could make better time with the younger and faster of the two of them in front. He just hoped the kid hadn’t panicked to the point he lost all bearing and led them down to the lake. Another thunderous bellow told him they wouldn’t have much time to correct any mistakes. For a split second he imagined what it must have been like for that trooper, hiding alone and hurt in the dark while listening to this thing stomp down the hill toward him.
He pushed the thought aside, realizing the same fate loomed for him and Pete unless they got lucky.
“C’mon, Sheriff! I can see the lantern ahead! We’re almost there!”
“Right behind you!” Carl gasped, “Grab the body, leave the lantern!”
“By myself?”
“Yes, yourself!” the sheriff panted as they broke into the small clearing with the body and the lantern. His lungs were already on fire from the run, and it wasn’t over yet. “You can carry it faster over your shoulder than two of us wrestling with it through the trees. It’s wrapped up and it don’t bite…not like what’s after us.”
“What IS after us, sheriff?” The boy’s eyes were huge as he sat down his rifle and hustled over to the corpse. His face bled from where a branch must have slashed him in their race down the hill. “What is that thing?”
Carl looked back up into the blackness of Deerhunter Hill and winced as another unearthly howl rent the night. It sounded like all the wolves in the world, wrapped up in the mother of all bears.
“That,” he rasped, “was Luther Cole.”
“Luther Cole! But Luther Cole is dead! Are you saying that’s his ghost?”
“I’m saying,” Carl grunted as he leaned the corpse up, then put it in a bearhug to pull it to its feet, “that thing up there is what this place twisted Luther into before he died. He was already eating people. Hell, he was eating them raw!”
“You already said the man was crazy.” The deputy bent over and let Carl lean the body over his shoulder.
“I said he was a kook. But he was still a human being before he built his shack up there. But while he’s been up here, something got in to him. It got in to him deep. I think it messed with his…spirit…or soul…and slowly turned him into that thing inside. Now he’s dead and that’s what’s left. C’mon, lift!”
Pete stood up with the body over his shoulder, then looked helplessly over at his rifle leaning against the tree.
A second later the lantern sputtered, waned, then starting burning a sickly blue.
“Forget it!” Carl barked. He pushed Pete’s fl
ashlight into the kids free hand, then ratcheted the lever on his own rifle, “Get to the boat and untie it! Don’t start the motor, just paddle your way out. I’ll be right behind you!”
“But sheriff…”
“Go! Do what I told you! That’s an order!”
The deputy stared at the sheriff for a second, clearly not liking the command. Carl could tell he suspected something, but at the moment he didn’t care. Pete’s jaw worked, but he chose to keep whatever he wanted to say to himself. Instead he turned away and did as ordered.
The sheriff watched him disappear into the woods, then turned back in the direction of their pursuer.
***
Satisfied the deputy had left, Carl snatched the lantern up and raced to place it in the middle of the small clearing. He untwisted the cap to the reservoir and sloshed kerosene out onto a patch of ground before setting the lantern in the middle of it. A heavy grunt sounded from the nearby trees and he back pedaled furiously, making sure to angle away from the direction Pete had taken.
He was exhausted, and knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the kid despite Pete’s burden. His legs were just too old, and his middle too thick. To continue to attempt it would only make him the slowest deer in the herd…and nature had a firm way of dealing with those. Even worse, the young deputy might slow down in an effort to help him keep up and that would just get them both killed.
Carl wanted at least one of them to get out of this alive. He just hoped Pete would have the sense to lie about what happened here if things turned out that way.
But at the same time he refused to just lay down and die without trying to get back home to Martha. She wouldn’t take kindly to that. Besides, he didn’t know who won the Cotton Bowl, and he had bet twenty dollars on Rice. And there still remained the matter of a plate of deviled eggs waiting on him as well. He might be old, but he hadn’t gotten all these gray hairs by giving up when things were grim.
Still, sooner or later the odds were due to catch up with him, and what he was about to try was a long shot.
“C’mon, let this work, let this work, letthisworklethiswork…” he breathed as he hid behind a tree trunk, and raised his rifle.
His wait ended mere seconds later.
The thing that had once been Luther Cole stalked out into the clearing and thudded to a stop in front of the lantern. A deep bass growl, almost too low to hear, emanated from the monstrosity. Its great rack of antlers turned as it appeared to scan the area, hunting its prey.
Standing only thirty feet away, Carl still couldn’t make out any features of the colossus.
It remained a hole in the night—a thing so eye-achingly black every single inch of its silhouette stood out in sharp contrast to the mere natural darkness of the woods behind it. All the light from the lantern which should have illuminated it appeared to be simply absorbed. The massive phantasm seemed to be almost as much an absence as a presence…an insane, feral hunger given form.
A loud snort thundered, followed by the sound of the unearthly creature sniffing the air.
Alright, Pete. I sure hope you did what I told you, Carl took careful aim, because if you didn’t we’re both dead.
He pulled the trigger.
The Marlin, lever action 30.30 barked, spitting an uncomfortably conspicuous flash from its muzzle. A split second later the lantern leaped and shattered. The flame landed in the kerosene soaked area, and fire rose from the ground…not the instant flare up like one would get with gasoline, but the flames still spread at a good rate.
The wendigo screamed and stumbled back.
Don’t like fire, do you, Carl thanked the heavens his hunch had been right. Otherwise you would have destroyed entire villages way back then.
The sheriff knew the flames would only last a few seconds, and wasted no time in taking advantage of the distraction. He fired two shots directly at the shape then fled from the clearing, careful to take a different direction than Pete used before him. His path took a sharper angle downhill. It meant a steeper and rougher run, but it also lead more directly to the water.
He hoped it would be close enough. This time he didn’t have as much of a head start as before.
A thunderous roar exploded behind him and Carl knew his little diversion had expired. He could hear branches smash as the thing charged like a bull into the trees after him. Its heavy footsteps shook the very ground. The sheriff hoped by sticking to the most heavily wooded of paths he would be able to gain ground as his pursuer fought its way through the tangle.
It sounded like that hope was misplaced. The heavy footsteps and crashing actually grew closer as they both careened headlong through the woods.
Carl slipped, staggered, and fought his way through the dark, dodging around tree trunks and pushing through brush and whipping branches. He bounced off one tree, rebounded forward, and twisted to try and dash through a bewildering thicket of branches. He didn’t make it. One thicker limb caught him across the eyes and knocked him to the dirt, causing him to scramble blindly forward on all fours.
He struggled to regain his feet, then slipped and fell forward with a strangled cry.
A mighty howl from directly behind told him this race had just reached its inevitable conclusion—the one he pretty much expected when he sent the deputy on his way. The laws in force tonight were old ones, and they respected neither badges nor men. They were primordial edicts, as immutable as time itself, and they were relentlessly unforgiving in their verdicts. In their eyes the old elk had wandered away from the herd and lost one too many steps. And the sentence for that crime never varied.
Now the greatest of all wolves closed in for the kill.
A powerful grip closed on Carl’s shoulder with crushing force. The exhausted man cried out as the thing jerked him up and backwards out of the tangle. It hurt…bad. His one attempt to struggle only made matters worse. The titan’s grasp tightened, squeezing the bones in his shoulder to the snapping point as it hauled him off his feet.
A second later he hung before the great antlered head, dangling like a ragdoll in the apparitions grasp. This close, the things stench was almost unbearable. Carl gagged and tried to focus on its face. But even at this distance it remained a silhouette of the deepest black imaginable.
Yet somehow he knew, maybe by the tilt of its head, it now opened a great ebony maw in preparation of ripping his throat out. It was the final act in the great ancient dance called the hunt.
Curtains time.
“Except I’m not a damned elk,” Sheriff Gartner snarled. He drew his pistol and started firing it directly into the horror’s head.
The .357 Magnum roared, belching bright gouts of fire that stabbed straight into the entity’s face. Not even the flashes of light revealed its features, but the effect was instantaneous.
The thing gave an ear shattering shriek and clawed at its face. At the same time, it hurled the man away from it with unbelievable force.
Carl hurtled into the blackness of the woods. Live or die, this was going to hurt. He curled his battered body into a ball and hoped for the best. He ricocheted off a limb then smashed through a thicket of brush, before hitting the ground hard. His limbs flailed as he tumbled and rolled over stones and roots. It felt like he hit every hard surface on the island before he finally came to a stop.
Face down in the water.
The water.
Carl jerked his head up with a gasp, and shook it to clear his eyes. It didn’t help much.
Stars crowded the vision in his ringing head. He hurt in so many places he couldn’t even begin to count them. Jagged fire flashed up one knee when he moved it, and his shoulder hurt in a way that suggested real damage had been sustained there as well. The sheriff suspected a full account of his injuries would be impressive. But that would have to wait, because the howling shrieks back up the hill informed him this still wasn’t over. He groaned and cleared his eyes to take stock of his situation.
He lay at the edge of the new lake.
Whil
e darkness still shrouded the temporary shoreline around him, the trees ahead opened up ahead to reveal the fog covered waters. After having his eyes get so used to the murk under the trees, the light coming from the lake almost blinded him. The rising moon flooded the scene, transforming the low mist into a brilliant carpet of white under the night sky. It looked cold and forbidding, but compared to what screamed up the hill it was a thing of beauty.
Carl suppressed a groan and pulled himself forward into the lake. The icy water bit into his skin, adding another layer of misery to his assorted hurts. He made slow progress, but walking didn’t even enter the equation. His leg wouldn’t support him, and the sloshing would only attract the attention of the supernatural killer nearby.
Its cries were already changing from shrieks of pain to screams of pure rage. It didn’t take a genius to figure out it would be wanting to settle scores in a minute or two.
The lake didn’t offer much in the way of escape either. Carl held no hope of swimming for the far shore, but anywhere away from the monster behind him counted as an improvement. If it came down to it, he would far rather drown than die in that thing’s stinking jaws. At this point he would consider himself lucky if he even got the choice.
The water finally deepened enough to provide a little buoyancy, making it easier for the injured man to pull himself along. At the same time, he could hear the thunderous approach of the wendigo. It took every fiber of his will not to try and get up to run into deeper water. Only the knowledge it would guarantee the death he just escaped prevented him…assuming it wasn’t guaranteed anyway.
Carl eased himself past the moonlit trunk of the final tree and pulled himself into the lake proper. The mist hugging the water made it hard for him to see more than a few feet ahead, forcing him to navigate by simply moving in the direction away from the sound of the terror hunting for him. At the same time, the bottom began to fall away a little more which allowed him to bring his good leg into play and push himself forward.
Shades: Eight Tales of Terror Page 8
