by Hunter Shea
He tightened his grip on her. “I’ll carry you inside if I have to.”
“We both will,” a voice said behind her. Ryker was holding his cellphone, the meager light made all the smaller in comparison to the deep, dark woods around them.
“Let me have that,” she said, plucking it from his hand.
“I’m serious, Kate, you have to get inside. We don’t…we don’t know who’s out here.”
She wanted to say, I don’t give a good goddamn, but that would have been a lie. The spreading pain in her chest urged her to listen to her husband and brother. They had enough to contend with without having to worry about rushing her to the hospital. The speck of rational thought she allowed to creep in knew she had to head inside, sit or lie down, and take a pill to calm down. Because if she didn’t….
Nikki called out from the open front door, “Where are the keys to the car? We might as well get the hell out of here while we can!”
“Not without Buttons,” Kate snapped. “But-But, come to Momma.”
He yapped, but sounded farther away.
Kate sprang free from Andrew, using the cellphone’s light to scan the front yard, or at least the miniscule swath it was able to illuminate. Staggering toward the tree line, calling for her dog, she’d forgotten all about the terrifying noises and the house shuddering. Her baby was out there, and she wasn’t going anywhere without him.
“But-But! Come here, But-But!”
The beagle barked in reply, this time coming from the side of the house. She followed the sound.
“Kate!”
She turned the corner, keeping the light pointed at the dirt so she could see where she was going and not get tripped up. She had a hard enough time navigating paved ground.
Something huffed to her left.
She froze.
Skin crawling, she lifted the phone, slowly turning.
The feeble light quivered, moving higher, higher, higher.
When it lit upon the terrifying face, Kate tumbled into a silent scream.
* * *
The moose had been split open, ribs pulled back, meat and organs steaming in the dirt.
Kate crouched on her hands and knees, peering into the dead animal. She sniffed the rotted contents of its perforated intestines.
“Come inside,” the moose said.
Its eyes were human, sky blue and clear as a cloudless day. Those eyes captivated her, daring her to look away.
“Don’t be afraid,” it said, though its mouth never moved. No, its mouth, black, parted lips buzzing with flies, would never move again. “It’s safe in here. I promise.”
Without hesitation, she crawled into the hot, putrid cavity.
“Welcome home,” the moose said.
She nestled deeper into its chest.
Ribs closed down on her like an iron maiden.
Kate wasn’t afraid.
She was home.
She stretched her legs, slipping into its legs as if they were comfy socks. With little effort, the Kate/moose stood.
There was a light in the woods.
She would go to it.
In her home.
* * *
Andrew heard Kate cry out and for a terrifying moment found himself unable to move. Eyes furtively searching the darkness, he spotted the soft glow of Ryker’s cell phone. The only problem was, it was on the ground.
“Kate!”
Andrew shoved the rifle into Ryker’s chest and ran toward the light. He found her on her side, unconscious. After scooping her into his arms, he headed back inside the cottage, bumping into Ryker.
“Honey. Wake up. Kate, can you hear me?”
“What happened to her?” Ryker said.
“I don’t know. It looks like she fell. She might have hit her head.”
They hustled to the lambent light spilling from the open front door. When Nikki saw them, she backed out of the doorway, hand to her open mouth.
“Is she okay?”
Andrew carried Kate to the bed, gently laying her down. Twigs and leaves were caught up in her clothes, falling onto the sheets. Kate’s flesh was hot and clammy, a pungent, oaty smell coming off her in waves. He realized she’d peed herself and quickly covered her up so Ryker and Nikki couldn’t see the triangle of wetness.
Grabbing the washcloth, he dabbed the perspiration from her face. She was out, but her brows were knit as if she were concentrating or angry.
“Kate? Come on, little crip, come back to me.”
Her breathing was steady, but he was very concerned about the fever that had come roaring back.
He heard Nikki say to Ryker, “What happened to her?”
“I don’t know. She screamed and Andy found her passed out.”
Andrew whispered her name over and over, hoping the sound of his voice would be a beacon, luring her back to them. While he did that, he checked her head for lumps, plucking detritus of the woods from her hair and tossing it onto the floor.
“Did you find the dog?” Nikki asked.
“No. He’s still out there.”
Andrew hadn’t heard Buttons barking, but he also hadn’t been listening for the pooch since he found Kate passed out.
“Kate, honey, if you can hear me, please wake up,” he said softly by her ear. He kept squeezing her hand, hoping for her to clutch him back.
Nikki and Ryker lingered behind him.
“Come on, sis, this is no time to take a nap.”
“Katy, sweetie, please wake up.”
Kate took a deep, ragged breath. Her mouth pulled tight and her eyes flashed open. She looked absolutely terrified.
Struggling to get out from under the sheet and Andrew’s grasp, she twisted around in the bed.
“Oh my God! Close the door! You have to close the door! Andrew, Ryker, close the fucking door!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kate had never been so scared in her life.
She’d also never seen anything like the creature outside the cottage.
Andrew tried to hold her down, but she had to get out of the bed. Her nerves were too frazzled.
“Please, Andrew, let me up.”
“Kate, you were just unconscious a few seconds ago.”
Ryker had slammed the door and locked it.
It wouldn’t be enough.
Pushing Andrew away, she got to her feet, the interior of the cottage going hazy for a moment. She felt the wetness at her crotch but didn’t care. She parted the blinds over the sliding doors and peered into the darkness.
It was out there.
If it wanted to come in, glass doors and meager locks wouldn’t stop it.
Shivering so hard her teeth clacked painfully, Kate wrapped her arms around herself. A sliver of fiery pain flared in her back, bending her over. She caught her breath, wishing the microwave feels away.
“Katy, why don’t you at least sit down,” Nikki said, reaching out to guide her to the chair.
“Leave me alone!” she snapped. “You didn’t see it. None of you saw it. You don’t know.”
Andrew approached her but was wise enough to give her some space.
If he saw what I saw… Kate thought.
He said, “Kate, what’s going on?”
Just thinking about it made her want to sink back to sweet oblivion.
“It…it’s not human.”
“What do you mean? Was it an animal?”
She shook her head, her back to the door, feeling all too vulnerable.
“It’s a monster.”
Ryker tried to hand her a glass of water. “It’s all right, Katy. You just need some time to settle down.”
She smacked the glass out of his hand. It shattered at her feet, water splashing her bare ankles.
“What the hell?” Ryker said, staring at the glass
bits.
“I’ll get it,” Nikki said, rushing to get the broom.
Andrew didn’t say a word, but the expression on his face spoke volumes.
He thinks I imagined it. The sick girl with the fever and on enough meds to knock out a rhino is just having a hallucination. It’s not just Andrew. They all think it!
“Don’t you dare look at me like that,” she snarled, pointing at Andrew specifically.
Her eyes started to sting from the sweat pouring into them. She blinked hard, stomach quivering, legs wobbly, but she refused to be treated like an invalid.
“I saw it! I didn’t imagine it.”
Andrew held his hands up, palms out. “Why don’t you tell me what you saw and we’ll take it from there.”
Nikki was on all fours, sweeping up glass and mopping the water with a dishtowel. The broom knocked into Kate several times but she refused to move. She was going to stand there for as long as she wanted. They couldn’t make her lie down like some maiden with the vapors. They couldn’t!
“Why should I bother?” Kate said. “It’s not like you’ll believe me.”
“Don’t say that,” Andrew said, keeping his voice calm when it was plain he wanted to yell at her. Ryker stood to her side with his hands in his pockets, unsure what to do.
She grabbed the cord and ripped the blinds open. Beyond the window was pure onyx. Nothing was standing on the porch, waiting to be revealed.
But it was out there. Kate was sure of it.
“You want to know? Fine. But if you say one word about me having a fever or try to tell me what I saw wasn’t real, I’ll…I’ll punch you in the freaking throat.”
Where was this coming from? Kate had never been a violent person.
Because I’m scared and it’s real and they won’t believe me and it’s going to come in here and they won’t be able to stop it and even if we try to get to the car I know it will be waiting for us and oh sweet fucking Jesus what are we going to do?
And Buttons is out there with it.
Everyone was taken aback by her outburst. Nikki looked like she was about to say something, but instead she turned away and dumped the glass shards in the kitchen garbage.
When no one said anything to stop her – or piss her off – Kate took a breath and decided there was no going back now. Funny, the moment she started to speak, she began to feel uneasy, as if putting it in words made it less real. She had to keep telling herself it was real, and they were all in danger.
“It was big, really tall. I’m not good with judging height, but I’d say it was around seven feet. Maybe more.” She’d once met Patrick Ewing, who had played for the New York Knicks. If she remembered his bio correctly, he was seven feet tall. The thing outside was definitely taller.
Andrew, Ryker, and Nikki stood in a row opposite her, faces grim but mouths closed. She continued.
“It had a wide face, like in a cartoon when someone gets run over by a car and just kinda flattens out. But it wasn’t flat at all. Just wide, almost human looking but with exaggerated features. And it was scarred, like someone had slashed it at one time. It also had deep pock marks and gouges taken from its flesh. It looked hurt…diseased. I couldn’t see much of its body, but I think it was covered in hair.
“And I don’t know if it was the reflection from the phone, but it had yellow eyes, just solid and almost glowing. Those eyes, I couldn’t look away. They were terrifying. I was looking in its eyes and then I was in here.” She swallowed hard, her stomach coiled in a painful knot. “I can still see them, staring into me. It was like being stabbed. Those eyes. Those eyes…”
A wave of exhaustion threatened to pull her under. She wanted to throw up. She felt like passing out. Her mouth was dry as dust, all of the moisture in her body expended in running rivulets of sweat. The building microwave feels nuked whatever fluids were left in her. Kate shuddered as a strange, pulsating wave swept through her. It left her spineless, her muscles turned to jelly.
She looked at Andrew, her gaze sliding up toward the ceiling. She heard shuffling feet and found herself in her husband’s arms.
“I’ll get her legs,” Ryker said from the next town over.
“Nikki, I need a fresh, cold washcloth,” Andrew said, setting her on the bed.
“You don’t believe me,” she croaked. Her throat made clicking noises when she tried to swallow.
He pushed the covers aside. “I do, honey. Right now, I’m more concerned about you. Can you put this under your tongue?”
She turned away, the thermometer hovering inches from her mouth. Andrew’s hand was trembling.
“No, you don’t believe me,” she said. “But you’re going to.”
Kate recoiled when Nikki wiped her head with the washcloth. It forced her to open her mouth, and Andrew was quick to insert the thermometer. He took her pulse and waited, the candlelight making her feel as if they’d tumbled back in time. They were early settlers cowering in their cabin, terrified of the unknown animals crying and grumbling in the pitch.
“Your heart’s racing,” Andrew said.
“For a very good reason,” she mumbled around the fragile thermometer. She was both boiling hot and ice cold. It took all of her strength to keep her teeth from chattering and breaking the thermometer. She didn’t need to add mercury poisoning to the list of her ills.
She’d been struck by the mother of all bad feels. That thing out there, that horrid, monstrous thing, was the living, breathing embodiment of all her darkest fears. One look from its cancerous eyes and she’d been turned to dust.
Andrew read the thermometer by the light of his phone. “Just under a hundred and four. I need you to take two more Tylenol. If this goes up any higher, I may have to get you in a cold bath.”
“No.”
He’d had to do it twice before during their marriage, and both times she’d nearly hit the ceiling, the icy water propelling her from her delirium.
The big difference this time was that she wasn’t delirious, despite what Andrew, Ryker, and Nikki might think. Something was wrong with her; that she knew. She regretted not telling Andrew about the strange microwave feels all this time. They might have been burning her to a cinder and infecting her dreams, but she hadn’t been dreaming outside. It was real, and it was out there, waiting for them.
Out there with Buttons.
“I want my dog,” she said.
“I’ll go out and find him,” Andrew said.
She lashed out and grabbed his arm. “You can’t! It will get you if you do. Promise me you won’t go out there!”
He patted her hand condescendingly, but she could tell he wasn’t all that anxious to go back outside. He couldn’t deny the strange noises and the cottage being shaken from its foundation. Something was definitely out there, but he wasn’t buying her monster theory. It infuriated her to no end, and she knew the more she insisted, the more they’d resist, especially given her high fever.
I must look and sound like a crazy person to them. So what? I’m not lying to them. I’m not!
Why couldn’t she be dealing with this and not have a raging fever clouding their opinion of her? Did it always have to be a total shit storm?
Ryker had gone to the dining room window and opened it a crack. “I don’t hear him,” he said. Buttons had either run clear from the cottage or was cowering somewhere, too afraid to make a sound. Kate’s heart broke thinking about him out there. Even if he didn’t see the creature, his dog senses would know it was out there.
Run, Buttons, and don’t come back until light, she silently pleaded.
At least they had the cottage walls between them and the thing in the woods. Her baby was all alone, exposed, with only his old stumpy legs to save him. She started to cry.
“In fact, I don’t hear anything,” Ryker added. He was now in possession of the rifle. It was so strange, seeing her pac
ifist brother with a rifle. She wondered how the people who paid for his positive life enhancement seminars would feel if they could see him now. Ryker preached that with the proper frame of mind, anything was possible. The universe would open itself to you, enfolding you within the slipstream of intention and reward.
Have a monster stalking your house? Affirmations that it would go away, if you believed them in your heart, were all you needed to rid yourself of the beast.
Kate made a low chuckle, covering her mouth.
I guess they don’t cover monsters in his seminars.
She laughed louder, this time catching Nikki’s attention, her brows knit, looking with pity at the sweating, sick girl in the bed.
Maybe I am losing my mind.
Ryker held his hand out. “Wait!” His voice got lower. “Something’s moving around out there. I think it’s at the back of the house.”
Andrew strode across the room and took the rifle from him, leaning into the window to listen.
“Footsteps,” he whispered.
Kate couldn’t hear them from across the room. Nikki crouched down and held her hand. Both women turned to look at the sliding glass doors, the blinds still pulled away.
It was right there!
Kate’s palm dripped with sweat but Nikki didn’t let go.
“Ryker, the blinds,” Nikki said. “Whoever’s out there can see us.”
Kate wanted to grab her by the shoulder and shout, “It’s not a who! It’s a goddamn monster!”
Andrew and Ryker ran to the back door. Ryker fumbled for the pull string to close them, unable to find it in the flickering light.
Kate saw the eyes before anyone else.
Appearing from within the impenetrable gloom, a pair of golden, luminous eyes hovered between the rails of the back porch. They were looking right at her. Kate’s entire body was engulfed in flame. She was Joan of Arc at the stake, the pain too great for words or wailing. The convulsions started right when Nikki screamed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Nikki’s shriek caused Ryker to pull the blind cord so hard, it broke off in his hands. Andrew nearly dropped the rifle.
“It’s out there!” Nikki shouted, pointing out the glass door.
