Dweller

by Jeff Strand

  It went directly into the center of the cave entrance and disappeared from sight.

  Toby listened closely but didn’t hear a grunt or an “oomph” or anything to indicate that he’d hit the monster. He waited for about a minute, then picked up another rock and threw it. Not as impressive as his last throw, but this one also went into the cave.

  Still nothing.

  Okay, the big decision. Did he dare venture into the cave, or should he keep throwing rocks?

  Rocks. You couldn’t really go wrong with rocks.

  He threw another rock, which also went into the cave. He was getting pretty good at this.

  “C’mon, you toothy freak, let’s see your grotesque face,” he said as he threw the next rock. “Get out here, you big dumb ape!”

  The monster walked out of the cave.

  Toby’s stomach dropped as he watched it step out into the light, moving at an almost sluggish pace, like an annoyed neighbor coming outside to investigate what woke him up at four in the morning. It looked to each side, and then directly at Toby.

  They locked eyes.

  The monster began to walk toward him.

  Shit!

  Though it wasn’t running, there was definite menace in its gait, like a predator who knows its prey can’t escape and is in no rush to deliver the killing blow. Toby immediately forgot about the idea of photographing the monster and quickly grabbed the shotgun, uttering a string of rapid obscenities under his breath.

  You weren’t supposed to be able to attribute human emotions to animals, but this thing looked pissed.

  I’m gonna die! Toby thought as he fumbled with the shotgun, nearly dropping it onto the ground. Oh my God, I’m gonna die!

  The monster wasn’t even ten feet away. Toby wanted to scream in an effort to gain its pity again, but he couldn’t find his voice. Nothing in his body ever worked when he needed it to!

  But then he had the shotgun pointed at the monster’s chest. He squeezed the trigger.

  For a split second Toby frantically wondered why the weapon hadn’t fired. He realized that the safety was still on. However, the monster took a big step back and let out a pitiful whimper. It held its clawed hands up in front of its face.

  Toby flipped off the safety but didn’t shoot. He backed up a few paces, putting enough space between himself and the monster that he didn’t feel that his bloody death was seconds away. The monster kept its hands over its face, almost sounding like a puppy as it whimpered in fear.

  Toby felt a bit of his courage return. “That’s right, asshole!” he shouted, waving the barrel of the gun at the monster. “I’m a lot scarier than you, aren’t I?”

  Picture. He needed the picture. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure how to snap the picture while still keeping the shotgun safely pointed at the thing that wanted to devour him. He backed up a couple more steps, and then tried to balance the shotgun with one arm while grabbing

  the camera with his free hand. The instant the barrel wavered, he changed his mind. Maybe he’d skip the photograph.

  No. That’s why he was out here, risking a great big bite mark in his throat. If he didn’t get proof, he’d have wasted the effort. He needed some kind of reward for all of the forthcoming foot pain and nightmares.

  He let out a snort of laughter. The answer was obvious. He rested the barrel of the shotgun on one of the tree branches, keeping it pointed at the monster. After a moment of hesitation to make sure the branch didn’t snap under the shotgun’s weight, he picked up the camera with his left hand and peered through the viewfinder.

  Say cheese…

  He snapped a quick photograph. It might not have been a very good one, but he didn’t want to get greedy. He let go of the camera and clutched the shotgun in both hands again.

  Now what?

  He could shoot the monster. Blow open its chest, get photographs of its corpse from every possible angle, then bring the authorities back here. He’d be world famous. The coolest kid in Orange Leaf. Maybe the coolest kid in Ohio.

  The monster lowered its hands from its face.

  No, he wasn’t going to kill it. You didn’t kill something like this. It could be the last of its kind.

  Or it could be one of thousands, which were circling him at this very moment. That was a new spin on the situation that Toby hadn’t considered. He nervously glanced around at the trees around him, but there didn’t seem to be any reinforcements.

  The monster was no longer whimpering, though it still looked frightened. And sad.

  He couldn’t kill this thing, even if it weren’t a scientific discovery. He’d been the one to invade its territory. And it had let him go when it had the chance to kill him.

  Toby lowered the shotgun. One act of mercy for another.

  Of course, he kept his arm tense, ready to bring the shotgun right the hell back up if the monster rushed at him. But it didn’t. It just looked at him.

  “Uh, sorry about that,” said Toby.

  The monster did not acknowledge his apology. Toby felt kind of silly for having said it. He couldn’t exactly gauge the monster’s facial expression, especially not with all those teeth, but it almost seemed to look grateful.

  Did it live out here all by itself?

  How old was it?

  It was far from cute, but Toby couldn’t help feeling sorry for it…not that he would hesitate to blow its head off if necessary.

  They stared at each other for a long moment.

  “Do you…talk?” Toby asked. “Do you speak English?” Toby was 99.9 percent sure that the monster didn’t talk and that he was asking a very stupid question, but if the monster did talk, it would be much stupider for them to stand here staring at each other when they could be communicating through spoken language.

  The monster didn’t respond. It just kept looking at him.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Toby promised, hoping that his tone of voice would get his message across. “If you stay where you are, I won’t do anything with the gun.” He patted the barrel to show the monster what he was talking about. Then he decided that patting the barrel of the gun was more of an intimidating gesture than a reassuring one, and quickly shook his head. “I won’t shoot this.”

  There was no evidence that the monster knew what he was talking about. But at least it wasn’t charging at him.

  Toby patted his chest. “Toby,” he said. “I’m Toby.” He said it more slowly, enunciating as well as he could. “Toby.”

  It was hard to tell with its sunken eyes, but the creature seemed to squint a bit. Toby had no idea what that meant.

  He was starting to relax. This was probably a bad idea, considering that there was a savage beast standing not too far from him. Toby was pretty sure that he’d pushed his luck as far as it was going to go in this particular situation, and that his best course of action would be to walk away from the monster while it was relatively sedate.

  “Good-bye,” he told it. “I guess I’ll…see you around or something.”

  Now came the tricky part: turning his back on it.

  Toby backed up a few steps, keeping his eye on the monster, but he knew he couldn’t watch both the uneven path and the monster at the same time. He turned around and slowly walked away, imagining his ears as finely tuned robotic instruments, capable of hearing the slightest movement behind him. If the monster exhaled, he’d hear it. If the monster blinked louder than necessary, he’d hear it. If the monster did anything at all…

  He heard it.

  He spun back around, withstanding the urge to aim the shotgun. The monster took another step toward him. It didn’t look like it was trying to be aggressive or threatening—it was simply following him. Still, nonaggressive or not, Toby couldn’t have a monster following him home.

  “Shoo!” he said. “Go away!”

  The monster stood in place. It clicked two of its talons together, and Toby felt some fresh perspiration run down his back.

  “Don’t follow me,” Toby told it. “I’m going hom
e. You can’t come.”

  The monster licked its lips.

  Shit.

  Should he run? Should he blow a hole in its face? Should he wet himself and perish?

  None of those sounded good. Well, the running part sounded good, but not on a sprained ankle.

  “Stay,” Toby warned. “Staaaay.” God, he hoped that the monster didn’t think he was being condescending.

  He waited for a few moments, until he decided that the monster wasn’t going to keep moving toward him. He turned his back on it once again and resumed walking. Robot ears…robot ears…

  He made it a few steps before he heard some rustling, but when he spun around the monster was still standing there. Just normal forest rustling. No imminent peril. He returned his attention to the path ahead.

  There were seven more false alarms before the monster was finally out of sight. Toby walked home, feeling relieved to still be uneaten…and absolutely exhilarated by his encounter.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Toby lay in bed, his injured foot elevated on a couple of pillows. His camera rested on his bedside.

  He hadn’t told his parents about the monster. They’d believe him—they’d have to, at least after he developed the picture and showed them the proof, but he just didn’t feel like sharing his discovery quite yet.

  It was his monster.

  If he told people about it, he’d probably be famous, but then the government would swoop in there and capture it. They’d either throw the monster in a cage and study it, or break out their scalpels and start slicing it up. His wonderful discovery would be nothing more than strips of flesh under a microscope. Its jaws would be on display over the mayor’s fireplace.

  Maybe he should keep it a secret for a while longer. Why let everybody else ruin his discovery? And his forest? The best part of the forest was that nobody really ever went in the area near his house. His only close neighbor was Mrs. Faulkner, who now relied on a walker and hardly ever went outside. Some lady came in once a week to bring her groceries. If people knew about the monster, the forest would be swarmed with tourists and scientists and everybody. He’d lose his favorite place.

  He could study the monster. Get better pictures. Try harder to communicate with it. And if it did attack, he’d rather be the one who shot it than some police officer. Why should they get the honor?

  That’s what he’d do. Enjoy the monster all by himself for now. There was plenty of time to let the rest of the world know.

  “I had a great big bean burrito for dinner last night,” Larry said, leaning in his desk toward Toby just before economics class started. “After we dunk you, you’ll have to shave your head to get rid of the smell.”

  Despite a desperate need to use the facilities, Toby stayed out of the restrooms for the remainder of the day.

  Toby didn’t need to throw rocks after school. The monster sat on the ground, right outside of its cave. It looked up as Toby approached but didn’t stand. Toby double-checked the shotgun to make sure the safety was off, and kept it pointed at the dirt as he walked forward, stopping at the same fifty-feet-away point he’d used last time.

  “Hi again,” he said. “It’s Toby. Remember me?”

  Wow, that thing had big teeth.

  “Do you have a name?”

  Toby wondered if there were others like it. If not, would it even need a name?

  “I’m going to give you a name, if you don’t mind,” Toby informed the monster. “I’m sure it’s not your real name, but I should call you something, don’t you think? And you can name me whatever you want. So for now, I’m going to call you Owen.” He pointed at the monster. “Owen. That’s you. Do you like it?”

  Owen—the human Owen—was the closest Toby had ever come to having a real friend. They’d met in sixth grade. Toby had been impressed by his ability to create paper airplanes that could sail all the way across the classroom, and even more impressed by his stealth in doing so without being seen by the teacher. For about three months, they went to each other’s houses every day after school, and spent the night most weekends, and had a great time.

  One Saturday morning, they were playing catch with what remained of a baseball that Toby had cut apart to see what was inside. Owen’s throw was off center and the baseball bounced off Toby’s shoulder. In a momentary flash of fury, Toby grabbed the baseball off the grass and hurled it at Owen as hard as he could, bashing him in the face. Owen ran for home, blood gushing from his nostrils. Toby chased after him, yelling out apologies.

  Owen had run inside and slammed his front door shut. When Toby knocked, Owen’s mother angrily sent him away. Toby, sick to his stomach, had gone home and tried unsuccessfully to read comic books for the rest of the afternoon.

  Owen refused to talk to him the next day. Toby didn’t have much experience, but he didn’t think this was the way friendships were supposed to work, at least with boys. They were supposed to pick up right where they left off, as if nothing had happened. Owen wasn’t playing by the rules.

  They didn’t speak again for the rest of the year. Then Owen’s dad got a job all the way over in Nevada and they moved away.

  Toby had been so stupid. The baseball hadn’t hurt that bad.

  “Do you understand anything I’m saying, Owen?” he asked the monster. “If you understand me, nod your head. Nod your head like this.” Toby nodded his head, slowly and emphatically.

  Owen the Monster stood up.

  “No,” Toby said in a firm voice. “Don’t stand. Nod your head.” He nodded some more.

  Owen raised his arms high into the air and let out a howl. Whether it was frustration or rage, Toby couldn’t tell, but it was most definitely not a good howl.

  “Fuck!” Toby screamed. He turned and limped away as quickly as he could.

  There was another howl. This one sounded sorrowful.

  Don’t forget about the shotgun, you idiot!

  Toby spun back around, but with his panic and sweaty hands the shotgun slipped out of his grasp. Losing his weapon concerned him for a fraction of a second. Then his concern immediately switched to his wrapped ankle as the wooden stock smashed against it, creating a fireball of pain that brought tears to his eyes and nearly knocked him to the ground. He cried out, lost his balance, and braced himself against a tree.

  He didn’t have a legitimate frame of reference, but based on his mother’s description of the pain of childbirth, he felt like he were having a baby through his ankle.

  Oh, God, it hurt.

  Having the monster’s fangs slowly sink into his flesh probably hurt worse, though, so he scrambled to pick the shotgun back up. He glanced over his shoulder to see how close he was to having it take a nice generous bite out of him, and saw that Owen still stood in front of the cave.

  Why wasn’t it coming after him? It had some injured prey, right within eyesight. Toby deserved to get eaten, just for his ridiculous incompetence.

  Owen made a coughing sound.

  No, not a cough. That was a laugh. A goddamn laugh. That thing was laughing at him!

  That was a lot better than it trying to rip him apart, but still…

  Or maybe it had just been a regular snort. It was impossible to say. Either way, Owen wasn’t coming after him, and if he wasn’t attacking now, while Toby was lying there like a complete buffoon, he probably wasn’t going to attack at all.

  He clenched his teeth together as tightly as he could to keep from crying out again. You really weren’t supposed to drop a shotgun on a sprained ankle. He wondered if he’d broken it. He stayed on the ground, waiting for the agony to subside while watching closely to make sure that Owen didn’t change his mind about going on a rampage.

  The pain took several minutes to fade to a manageable level. Toby grabbed a branch and pulled himself to his feet. His whole foot was throbbing. He wiped the tears from his eyes and forced a smile. “You may have to nurse me back to health, big guy,” he said.

  The movement was slight, and almost certainly not what Toby tho
ught it was, but he was positive that Owen nodded.

  It was cool, yet unspeakably freaky.

  “So do you mind if I take a few more pictures?” he asked. “I don’t want anybody to see them, so I probably won’t get them developed right away, but I should take them now just in case you…I don’t know, migrate or something.”

  He dug his camera out of his backpack. As long as the flash didn’t scare or enrage Owen, he should be able to get some good shots before he hobbled back home. Owen leaned forward just a bit as Toby looked through the camera, but the monster had been photographed before without ill effect and it didn’t seem to mind this time. Toby took eleven or twelve pictures then tucked the camera away.

  “I’ll come back,” Toby promised. “Probably not tomorrow, since by then my foot will be the size of your entire body, but soon.” It felt kind of weird to be making a promise to a creature that couldn’t understand what he was saying, that had no apparent emotional attachment to him, and whose desire to devour him remained an active possibility, but he couldn’t help himself.

  Maybe he’d injured his brain instead of his foot.

  Dad was already home when Toby got back. That wasn’t such a good thing.

  “Any special reason you’re walking around in the woods with my shotgun?” Dad asked as he walked inside.

  “Fake hunting.”

  “Fake hunting?”

  “You know, pretending to hunt.”

  “You’re wandering around the woods with a sprained ankle and a loaded shotgun pretending to hunt?”

  Toby shook his head. “I took the shells out.”

  He’d left them in until right before he exited the forest, just in case Owen was silently following him and preparing to pounce, and had almost forgotten the detail of emptying the gun before he walked back in the house. He looked like less of a foolhardy idiot explaining the situation if the gun was unloaded.

  “You’re a strange kid,” Dad said.

  “Genetics.”

  Dad frowned.

  “Sorry,” Toby said.