Terror in the Valley

by M. A. Salisbury

  Thank You

  Much appreciation goes out to you for your purchase of this E-book. We wish that you enjoy this short-story in its entirety.

  About the Author

  M.A. Salisbury has been a ghostwriter for over 10 years after graduating and obtaining a Bachelor's degree. She has always been a fan of thrillers, horror and suspense fiction. She left her family of two brothers and parents to travel the world after University. She uses many of her adventures and escapades in her writing

  Ms. Salisbury is also an avid movie buff and prides herself in travelling to various film festivals.

  She has many great ideas from a lifetime of imagination and creativity so please read her past works and be on the lookout for much more in the near future.

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  Terror in the Valley

  The valley community was as tight-knit as it could be. It was made up of three little hamlets with a population of just over a thousand each and after being snowed in with each other every winter, everybody knew everybody. They relied upon each other in those cold winter months when the mountain pass got too icy to surmount. Food was delivered through the dense forest on the opposite side of the valley from faraway cities and farms. Teenagers flew atop the frozen landscape each morning to deliver food to their neighbors and check up on those who lived alone. Every household had a walkie-talkie and a battery-powered radio on them at all times. It was tough, tougher than any winter should be in this day and age, but they managed.

  People weren’t so afraid of the winter anymore. A couple of people died alone in the cold each year, but it was mostly old folk who couldn’t walk across the room to get their walkie-talkie when the fire ran out. Anyone under the age of sixty who lived with at least one able-bodied adult would be fine. John Walters was a local farmer who lived with his big all-American family; his wife, two sons, and three daughters. He spent forty-five winters in this valley without an issue. One evening in his forty-sixth winter, however, things began to go wrong.

  All the cattle stayed in the barn during the cold winter months, feeling cozy with the help of a heating system and daily care. John heaved out of his bed before the break of dawn, gave his sleeping wife a peck on the cheek, and suited up for the cold.

  The farm was silent and dark. Snow spread like an icy blanket over everything, disturbed only by the footprints near buildings and the snowmobile tracks zig-zagging everywhere. In the dim light of the rising sun, however, John saw dark streaks in the snow near his barn. The sight of it made him feel colder than the winter breeze ever could. There were huge tracks going into the barn, and bloody red tracks coming out. They didn’t look very old, quite the contrary, they looked fresh.

  By the time he was back inside, the family was slowly drifting into consciousness. They sat around the breakfast table and ate a warm full meal of eggs and bacon while chatting about anything that could fill the silence. When John slammed the door open, the peace shattered.

  Two hours later, a group of men followed John into his barn to see the damage. Osborne Courtney, the thin stain of grease that owned the hardware shop, pointed out the tracks.

  “White goin’ in,” he said, “red goin’ out.”

  “Thank you kindly for the lesson, but we all know our colors, Courtney,” another man said. A ripple of laughter went through the group and Walters glared.

  “If y’all are gonna treat this like a joke, there’s no point in showing it.”

  “Don’t be like that, John.” One of the men clapped his hand on John’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s see this problem of yours.”

  At first glance, everything seemed alright. The carnage that usually came from the visit of a wolf was absent. Most of the cows were mooing hungrily, but seemed calmed down by this point. At the end of the line, however, one of the stalls was splattered with gore. Some of the wounds looked like claw marks, but others had to be carved by something more sophisticated. The contents of its stomach were split and spilled like an exploded piñata and thrown around the floor. Its throat was torn completely, and clear bite marks framed the edges of the wound.

  “I told ya,” John said, resting on one leg with his thumbs tucked in his belt loops.

  “Some animal did it,” said another famer, George Madison. “Happens every year.”

  John scowled and spit on the floor. “The door wasn’t torn and the lock has disappeared. What kinda animal can pull that shit?”

  “Oh, right. It must’ve been bigfoot, then.”

  “Madison, that was one of my most reliable heifers and you’re gonna try and make a joke of it?”

  “Gentlemen, please.” The sheriff’s voice carried over the crowd. She was a grizzled woman, scars on her cheek and under her sleeves, graying hair chopped close to her skull. “We’re gonna figure this out. Right now there’s reason to suspect foul play, so this is officially a crime scene. I’m gonna have to ask all y’all to get out.” The rest of the day Sheriff Harley called in the detail to block off the area.

  The youngest Walters kid, Lucy Mae, watched the moon rise heavy in the sky that night, spilling blue light onto the long expanse of slow. Something was watching her through the window, yellow eyes shining. She shined her flashlight its direction and it was gone. Still, she didn’t sleep that night.

  George Madison stood at the entrance to his chicken coop and scratched his head. His husband, Johan, came up behind him.

  “What’re you doing out in this cold?” he drawled.

  George chewed his cheek. “Somethin’ got to our chickens. Could you give Sheriff Harley a call for me?”

  It seemed like only one corner of the chicken coop had been touched at all. Everything was clear and clean except for that one square foot of carnage.

  “Je-sus,” Sheriff Harley exhaled. “This again.”

  “You get the Walters issue figured yet?”

  She shook her head. “Tracks look animal, but the cuts are manmade.”

  “I was thinkin’ it was just a wolf, but with John’s whole thing I guessed it wouldn’t hurt to check.”

  “I’ll send someone by; see if we can find somethin’.” She gave him a quick tip of her hat and mounted her snowmobile. “Tell Johan I say hey, and that he still owes me a game of poker.”

  News travels fast in a place like that. By the next week, everybody and their dog had heard at least three variations on the story. Old wives gossiped on the phone about calling in the army. Farmers added extra security to their barn and extra locks on their homes. Teenagers stretched the stories to scare themselves.

  “My pops said that they thought it was a man and a wolf,” Jessie Madison said.

  Tiffany and Kim, the Walters twins, gave each other a disbelieving look as their younger brother John Jr. said, “You mean like a werewolf or somethin’?”

  “No, not like a werewolf.” Jessie leaned in close. “Like a murderer with a pet.”

  “Murderer’s a strong word,” Kim muttered.

  “Y’all saw what it did to your cow! You really think people are safe?”

  “Quit it,” Tiffany hissed. “You’re gonna scare Johnny.”

  “’M not scared.”

  “Kids?” Mrs. Walters called. “Are you still up?”

  The twins shuffled into bed and Jessie Madison tumbled out the window. “We’re just talking to John Jr.! He was scared about the cows.”

  Mrs. Walters opened the door and put her hand on her hip. “Johnny, it was just a wolf. No need to be scared.”

  “Jessie Madison said it was a murderer who could control wolves!” John Jr. said.

  “When were you talking to Jessie Madison?”

  “We told him she said it,” Kim replied quickly. “We were chattin
g through the ‘talkies.”

  Their mother watched with narrowed eyes. “Johnny, go to bed. You two, hand over your walkie-talkie. You can have it back in the morning.”

  Johnny scurried out of the room, but turned to mouth “sorry” before vanishing into the hallway. Mrs. Walters followed after him. As soon as the door closed, there was a tapping at their window. Jessie Madison’s face was behind the glass. She waved goodbye before hopping on her snowmobile and riding away, kicking up a flurry of snow behind her.

  The next morning, Max, the Walters’ eldest child, cranked the engine of one of the family snowmobiles into gear. “You sure you want to make the rounds today?” he said. “Things have gotten awful creepy around here.” Kim rolled her eyes.

  “Nothin’ will get us in broad daylight, Max. Besides, Tiff and I are gonna be together.”

  “Fine,” he said, though there was little conviction in his voice.

  Tiffany pulled up beside them in her snowmobile. “We gotta go back inside, y’all,” she said. “Mom and dad just got a call from the Madisons and they said we had to stay in today.”

  Kim cringed. “You think they found out?”

  “Nah, they want Max back inside too. I think they’re fixin’ to have a ‘family conference’ or whatever.”

  “Oh, great. Another conference.” Max parked his snowmobile carefully in the garage while the girls left their snowmobiles right out in the open.

  “We can probably go out right after they tell us whatever,” Tiffany explained.

  The rest of their family sat at the table silently. Lucy was running a toy truck over the side of the table and making engine noises, and Johnny looked like he was about to cry. He looked at the twins as they walked in with an accusatory stare, and Kim gave him a dramatized shrug. Their parents, however, were whispering somberly to each other, hands clasped together.

  “Who died?” Max quipped. Their parents looked up at him together, their lips a thin line.

  “Nobody,” John Walters said, “yet.”

  “Kids, we need to know something. Did Jessie Madison stop by last night?” their mother asked, fake smile already wilting on her face. The twins looked at each other, then at Johnny.

  “Not for a long time,” Tiffany said, “and we didn’t invite her. She just came!”

  “I told her to go, but Kim opened the window for her,” Johnny said.

  “What?” Kim yelped. “You were the one who said we couldn’t leave her out in the cold!”

  “Kids,” Mrs. Walters said again. “Jessie Madison didn’t go home last night.”

  That was the first missing persons case of the winter. A few miles away, an investigation was being set in motion.

  “She was in bed, and-and then she wasn’t.” Johan spoke in a desperate rush of words. Behind him, George stood with his arms crossed. “I don’t know how this could have happened. We talked to her just the night before, I don’t understand.”

  “It’s alright, sweetheart, they’ll find her,” George said. He walked forward and slung an arm around his husband’s shoulder. “She can’t have gotten far.”

  That was probably true, Sheriff Harley realized, but only because this weather would freeze her solid overnight. “We’ll try our best,” was all she said.

  According to the official report, officers Levi and Aaron partnered with Sheriff Harley in a search through the forest just a few hours later at 12 o’clock, noon. All the rest of the valley had been explored by various volunteers. The forest, however, was an entirely different beast. There were no visible paths when the snow was this deep and all sorts of wildlife crawled through the dense trees, desperate for a meal in the barren winter. All the officers kept a handgun at their hip, but the fear that it wouldn’t be enough squirmed in the back of their mind.

  The officers back at the station waited for hours before going out looking for them. Officers Levi and Aaron were nowhere to be seen, but the gored body of Sheriff Harley was just about a mile into the forest.

  “She tried to escape,” one of the officers said, pointing at the trail of blood behind her.

  “Who wouldn’t?” another one sighed. “At least her family’s got somethin’ to bury.”

  Osborne Courtney lived smack-dab in the center of the closest that the valley came to a town. He was an excitable weasel with a surprising knack for making friends, despite his abrasive personality. Although he never married, he was never alone.

  People shuffled in and out of his store like a stampede, buying extra drill bits, sturdier wood and tougher nails. “You know how it is,” they said to him, and he pretended to understand. Osborne had no reason to board up his windows. The forest was a few miles away from his store and upstairs apartment, and as reports came flooding in of missing persons, he stayed inside. The dangers of the wild were distant to him.

  Still, in the winter night, he gradually became the sole witness to the soft falling snow on his side of town. With the growing threat darting out at night, nobody dared to risk a shopping trip after sundown. His customers kept him up-to-date on everything that was happening. The police had apparently called the national guard, they said. Sheriff Harley was dead.

  “Hope they get here soon,” said Gideon, the massive old rancher. “This whole valley’s dying out.”

  “Five people have gone missin’. The valley’s not that small,” Osborne replied. Gideon snorted a laugh and clapped him on the back. He was the last customer that day. Night was already falling. Osborne locked up and pulled the shutters down before climbing up to his apartment. It was a rustic sort of place; one may even call it a complete mess. Still, he made do.

  His bed was right next to one of the only windows. It shone the soft moonlight down on his room like a child’s nightlight. Osborne watched the flicker of the stars as his eyes grew heavy. He turned on his side and saw the imprint of his window on the floor. Then, for a moment, it was dark. Something big passed by the window.

  Osborne whipped around to see the night sky through the glass, clear and empty as ever. He peered down at the ground and still saw no creature. Tracks from customers and their snowmobiles littered the ground and – maybe it’s just paranoia – but it seems like there’s more tracks now than there were when he closed up shop.

  Downstairs, there’s a rattle. Osborne felt his heart jump into his throat. Something was shaking the door. His eyes fell on the rifle leaning on his railing. He got out of bed, softly as he could, and snuck over to the gun. The sounds from downstairs continued.

  His blood was pounding in his ears like the beat of a drum. One of the stairs creaked when he stepped down and the sound stopped for one blessed moment.

  “H-hello?” Osborne stuttered out. “Who’s-who’s there?”

  “Help,” said a raspy voice, twisted and low. It didn’t sound like a cry for help, exactly; the tone was bland with only a hint of meaning behind it, as if the yell had come muffled by a blanket. Osborne dropped his gun and ran to the corner of his bed, facing the stairs. The noise of his creaking step came back again and again, but nothing was walking up the steps. He waited in terrified suspense until he realized that, instead of something creaking up the stairs, the noise that he had made was being played over and over again.

  It was like an echo, or – or an imitation.

  The next morning, there was an arm outside his store. It was identified as Jessie Madison’s by the birthmark on the upper half. The area was curtained off for a little while but not too long. Long enough to remove the arm briskly but successfully. Business picked up again after that.

  Still, nobody dared leave the house at night. The crowds of teenagers that delivered the food moved in a pack when the sun was highest in the sky, now more focused on making sure people were still there than making sure they were fed. The disappearances slowed as the people of the valley became more careful. They lit the dark corners of their house. They boarded up their windows.

  John Jr. snuck into his sisters’ room again a few weeks later. They were sitti
ng on the same bed, with Kim hugging Tiffany as she cried. Jessie had practically been a member of the family, but everyone knew that she and Tiffany were the closest. Johnny knocked on the foot of the bed to announce his presence and Kim opened her arms to let him in.

  “I’m scared,” he said as Tiffany shook.

  Kim sighed. “I am too, but they’ll catch it eventually.”

  “Do you think it’s a monster?”

  “No,” Kim said. “I think it’s just a big animal. There’s a lot of things in the forest we don’t know about, Johnny. At least there haven’t been any attacks recently, right? We’ve been very careful.”

  “That’s why I’m scared,” Johnny said softly. “It’s going to get hungry. Dad said the worst animals are the ones who have babies with them and the ones who are really, really hungry.” Kim didn’t say anything. She just held her siblings close.

  Different police forces had come in to the valley to patrol. The national guard was staging an investigation and stopping by homes, telling people to lock their doors at night among other precautions and that everything would be fine. The people of the valley stared back with hollow eyes and nodded as if they hadn’t been whispering the same mantra to themselves each night since the nightmare started.

  Whispers of murderers had all but vanished. Everybody knew everybody, and nobody suspected anybody. They had lived together for generations. Even if they hadn’t, the thought of a single person willing to cause this much carnage was too impossible. It was hard to believe that anyone could be that heartless – or that clever.

  The National Guard’s first lucky break was a bittersweet success. They found four bodies in shallow graves, all right next to each other. News traveled fast, and soon the entire valley was pushing past the crime scene tape to see if they could recognize their loved ones.

  “God,” breathed Gideon, clutching his wife close and peering into a grave, “that boy doesn’t have any arms.”

  “They’ll show up eventually,” his wife replied.

  Max stared blankly down at the familiar faces before turning on his heel and driving home. As soon as he was in, his mother threw her arms around him with a sob.