Evil Stalks the Night

by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

  He settled for stripping a long branch off a nearby tree and dragged it over to the mouth of the well. He called down to his nephew, “I’m going to drop this tree limb down there, Jeremy, let me know if it’s long enough to reach you, all right?” He hoped he was up to the task. It was a wonder he was still on his feet, he was feeling so bad. Weak. “So watch out here it comes!”

  He didn’t know Jeremy couldn’t move, that he was hurt and his pride wouldn’t let him complain. He didn’t know when the limb came crashing down above him, dangling mere inches above his head, the boy couldn’t even lift himself up to grab it. His legs refused to hold his weight, no matter how much he wanted to he couldn’t stand up.

  “Uncle Jim, it’s not long enough! I can’t reach it!

  “Uncle Jim?” His words were weak and Jim wasn’t sure he’d heard them right at first. “I can’t move.”

  Jim cursed his stupidity. Jeremy had hurt himself in the fall. It had to be a good twelve foot drop down there. “You’re hurt?” He yanked the limp up and out of the well’s opening and peered over the edge into the black pit. Jeremy’s voice floated up to him.

  “I think so. I can’t feel my legs anymore.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Jim shook his head in aggravation. “What hurts?”

  “My legs. I can’t move them, either.”

  “Damn!” Jim knew what that meant. He’d have to find some way to climb down into the well to get the boy out. He shifted his gaze to the hulking trees that were all but concealed by the fog now.

  It was very close. If he went down the well he’d be at its mercy.

  It could trap both of them down there.

  He pursed his cold lips and went to find another branch. He didn’t have time to find a rope. A branch, longer this time than the last one, would have to do. It was either that or both of them were as good as dead.

  “Don’t cry, kiddo. It’ll be okay. I’m coming to get you.” Jim didn’t know why he happened to glance up at that moment, perhaps a whisper behind him, but he did.

  Charlie stood silently at his side, watching him with dead eyes. He’d brought him here to Jeremy and had disappeared. Jim wasn’t sorry he had, either. Charlie gave him the creeps. Now he was back.

  The ghost smiled and held out his hands. There was a longing in his eyes that even the grave couldn’t hide. Remorse. In his hands he held a tangled, frayed rope.

  Jim reached out for it and Charlie faded away into the darkness again.

  “Thanks, Charlie.”

  “You’re welcome, Jimmy,” the words echoed hauntingly on the empty air. Charlie had kept his promise.

  Jim turned back to the well and tying the rope onto a nearby tree trunk he lowered himself into it. He splashed down near Jeremy in the dark and took him into his arms. “Oh, Jeremy, thank God you’re okay!” There was tears in his eyes that no one could see.

  “Uncle Jim, you’re so cold,” Jeremy announced, as he hugged him back.

  The child must be in shock, Jim brooded. No telling how long he’d been down here in this filthy hole. Any length of time would have been too long. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.” He attempted an optimistic laugh. It came out hollow.

  “You got a deal,” Jeremy stuttered, shaking.

  “Wrap your arms around me tight, and hold on. We’re going up.” Jim grabbed the boy, careful of his hurt legs, and started up the rope. It was dark, and the walls were so slimy his boots kept sliding away from them. He ground his teeth in silent determination. With Jeremy’s added weight and the condition he was in, it was a nearly impossible climb.

  He’d get half way up and his arms would give out and down they’d slide again. He didn’t give up. He couldn’t. Something was thrashing through the forest…coming for them.

  Jim forced himself to try harder, pull harder. He gritted his teeth and bit back the agony of his weakened muscles and kept digging his boots in.

  He placed one hand over another on the rope. He had to get them out of here, before it was too late. Up above him the wind was howling, taunting their efforts to escape the hungry well. Jeremy clung to him. He was so still he thought the boy had fainted.

  Jim’s feet slipped out from under him and he felt the water at the bottom of the well lapping at his boots. Cursing, he panted at the bottom while he regained his strength to try again.

  This time they made it.

  He hung onto the rim of the well with weak fingers, unable to hold on a moment longer he somehow pulled both Jeremy and himself up into the night, with one final heave. He laid the boy down on the grass and stretched beside him. He allowed himself to rest only a few precious seconds and then got to his feet.

  “We have to get away from here, Jeremy. Now.”

  But it was already too late.

  The woods were alive with agonized cries and a living, breathing presence violently surrounded them. Jim faced the source. Strange, he was no longer afraid, only for Jeremy, not for himself. He wondered what it meant. He had a sensation of being in limbo, as if he were in a dream state.

  He bent down and scooped Jeremy up in his arms. His strength had returned. The boy was groaning.

  “Uncle Jim? It’s coming to get us like it did my dad. Don’t let it get me!” The boy clung tighter and muffled his terror in Jim’s shoulder.

  “I won’t. Trust me. It’s not going to get you, I promise.” Jim eyes glowed with a fevered intensity as he pivoted around to face his ageless nemesis. There was a smile on his lips.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “You disobeyed me!” The monster screamed at the tiny, cowering shadow as it rushed down on it. It was so angry, even blood wouldn’t assuage its wrath. It knew no blood could be extracted from the poor being that skimmed the darkened woods before him. The frightened shade was trying to escape a fate worse than death, as he’d already died. The dead boy once called Charlie had been dead a long time, but he could still be punished. It had a way of exacting its ounce of terror regardless. It could let the wretched creature relive his own death over and over or it could seal the being into a pocket of time beneath one of the trees in the forest where the thing could whimper for all eternity.

  Charlie squealed and dodged the huge black hulk one more time.

  “You helped them,” it roared, in its wind tunnel voice. “You warned them when you knew it would help them slip away again. You betrayed me and you shall pay for it. I shall lock you up in a tiny hole away from the world forever. I shall send you to your cold grave and there you shall remain.”

  Wailing, Charlie fled to the farthest end of the woods and tried to hide among the grass that bordered the creek. It found him. Charlie tried to merge with the sky and the wind. He was found. He flowed with the dirty water of the stream, his misty face pressed to the surface of the water as it lashed down the riverbed. When that didn’t work, he tried to melt into nothingness and became a thin wisp of blue smoke, but each time it found Charlie and laughed its hideous laugh.

  “I didn’t, wouldn’t betray you,” Charlie whined and screamed and tried to lie his way out, but it didn’t work.

  “Don’t lie. I saw you. I see everything. You helped them.”

  Charlie thought of the dank grave and the eternal loneliness. He couldn’t stand to be alone. “Don’t punish me!” he beseeched, as the evil enveloped him and his screams rose to the moonless sky. “I’ll do anything you want. Don’t lock me away again, please!”

  Then his cries were gone, evaporated like the wisp of smoke he’d pretended to be. The woods were hushed.

  There was an unnatural chill in the summer air that brought the leaves to the ground where only a moment before, they’d clung green and fresh to forest boughs. Now they were bright with the color of ghost blood.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Jeremy!” I cried out to Ben. “I hear
Jeremy. He’s calling.” The sounds were coming from somewhere in the woods. I was wringing my hands, in agony, as I listened to the cries of my child. “I can’t wait for help any longer, Ben. I have to go help him! Please!” I clawed at Ben when he tried to hold me back. The woods were whispering beyond the squad car’s headlights. Ben had been cradling me in his arms, hiding me from Jonathan’s gruesome body, discarded in the wet grass at our feet. Captain Sinclair was talking loudly into his car radio, demanding to know where the backup was.

  Why wasn’t anyone there yet?

  Ben heard the whispering, too. “We don’t know what’s out there.” He held me tighter.

  “Jeremy’s out there.” I tore myself away from him as another wail hit the night air. I had no flashlight but I didn’t care. I could see well enough. I’d grown up in these woods and knew them.

  “Sarah, wait!” I heard him behind me tramping through the woods.

  “Jeremy!” I shouted as I ran, cupping my hands around my mouth to send it further ahead of me. My son was out there in danger. My son. I ran crashing through the trees, sobbing. My blood ice in my veins. “I’m coming, son, I’m coming!” I pushed myself away from a tree with my hands. I ran faster.

  This had happened before. I was aware of that as I tore through the night woods. This had all happened many times before. I was running blind. The stars were hiding behind the pillars of clouds as if they didn’t want to be witness to what occurred below. Thorns tore at my hands and face as I ran towards my child’s screams, as long as he was screaming, he was still alive.

  Time was standing still. It was a night of summer so long ago and I was running from something evil. It was that night again, but this time I was running towards it. I bumped into a tree trunk, righted myself, and ran on. It’d all begun that night. Was this the way it had always been meant to end? How had it ended all those times before?

  Ben shouted behind me somewhere. I’d lost him. I hadn’t meant to. He must be frantic trying to find me. He, too, must hear the screams and the unearthly snarls.

  Twice I stumbled and fell to my knees. Once I thought Ben had caught up with me, but when I glanced back, there was no one there, so I kept on going.

  “Jeremy!” I shrieked as I came out into the clearing.

  It was the same place I’d first sensed the evil all those years ago. Now it seemed like yesterday, except there was a different cast of characters. Now I was no longer an innocent, unknowing child. I’d seen and knew too much.

  I saw my son.

  He screamed at the top of his lungs at the enormous hulking creature who hovered over him. Standing there, I froze, as I stared up at the gigantic shadow that dwarfed the entire forest. There was a fleeting impression of long tapering claws, wicked fangs, and glaring, vicious eyes that burned holes into the night.

  Then I saw Jim.

  “Jim,” I whispered disbelievingly. Then, “Watch out,” I screamed as it crouched over him…but he was walking towards it!

  Jeremy yelled as the shadow merged with his uncle. I lunged at Jeremy, knocking him to the ground to get him out of the way. We rolled together in the grass away from it and when I looked up both Jim and the thing were gone. Only one wail of anguish rent the air and slowly trailed away into the night, moving off until it was only a distant memory of a whimper. But that cry, I knew, would live forever in my ears and haunt me to the day I died.

  Not a death cry but a cry of victory.

  It’d taken Jim. My brother was gone.

  But it was gone as well.

  Shaking, I rocked my child in my arms, as we huddled on the ground crying. When I closed my eyes to stop the tears, I could see Jim’s face before me in that last moment. He’d been smiling at me, and had waved goodbye…my poor sweet Jimmy. Goodbye.

  Where was he now? I knew but couldn’t think it.

  “Mom! Mom!” Jeremy snuggled in my arms and cried.

  “It’s all right now, son,” I soothed, stroking his damp head. His clothes were wet. I looked up to see Ben over me, reaching out for both of us. The look in his eyes was indescribable. I smiled weakly up at him and touched his hand, still cradling my son in my lap in the dark. I’d lost so many, but I still had him.

  “Uncle Jim helped me, Mom. He found me in the hole and got me out, but it got him, too, like Dad.” Jeremy stared up into our faces, then he moaned and hid his eyes.

  Ben kneeled down beside us and behind him I could see Captain Sinclair coming, huffing and puffing from the long run. The cry of sirens were everywhere. Help had arrived. I wanted to laugh. Too late. Always too late. Jonathan was dead. Jim was dead.

  “Hell, did you see that thing?” Ben exclaimed, his face stricken and his eyes wide as he peered into the blackness of the woods. “Did you see it?”

  He shook his head and looked down at me and Jeremy again. He took Jeremy’s face in his hands and tilted it up to look into his eyes. “What was it you said about your Uncle Jim?”

  Jeremy told him but added to it this time. About how his father had been killed, how he’d fallen into the well and how Uncle Jim had arrived and pulled him out and saved him from the thing. His voice broke. I looked up into Ben’s face. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  Our eyes met and there was the strangest look in his.

  Ben didn’t say anything. Instead, he checked Jeremy’s legs where he claimed they hurt.

  “It was probably the fall. He might have broken something.” He took Jeremy into his arms from mine. “Let’s get him to a hospital. We can talk about this after he’s checked out.” Jeremy was moaning in his arms and I wasn’t about to object. My son looked sick to me and there wasn’t anything else I could do here. They were gone.

  As I watched Ben move towards the car with Jeremy, I felt the new tranquility of the woods; the peace. I knew somehow, looking out through the shadowy trees as I trailed behind them, whatever had been out there—whatever had hunted and stalked my family and me all these years, was gone. Truly gone. Forever.

  It had finally gotten what it had come for so long ago. I still found it hard to believe Jim had been the one it had wanted, as I’d never realized it before. I still didn’t know why and perhaps I never would. It was enough it was over, for this lifetime anyway. Could be, I thought, Jim’s supreme sacrifice would end it once and for all. I could only pray.

  It was gone and the smell of roses was everywhere.

  I got into the car next to Ben. After a few hushed words with Sinclair, who stayed behind with Jonathan’s body, we left. They’d search, I thought regarding the dark forest, for the thing that had killed, but they’d never find it or Jim’s body. It was no longer there. It’d gone back to wherever it had come from.

  My heart was numb over Jonathan’s and Jim’s deaths, but I still had my son and holding him as he lay in my lap, I was grateful for that. It could have taken all of us. I turned to look at Ben’s serious profile as we drove away. He turned the siren on and we sped to the nearest hospital. There was something on his mind and I knew I’d find out soon enough, after my son had been taken care of.

  The emergency room was crowded for the time of night. They all knew Ben and soon Jeremy was whisked away to one of the rooms to be examined. They wouldn’t let me go with him. Ben and I sat in the waiting room under the bright lights. He held my hand and let me lay my head on his shoulder. My mind kept reliving the events of the day and my brain couldn’t process it.

  We waited.

  Ben was quiet for a long time and when he finally spoke, it startled me.

  “Sarah, I have to tell you something but I don’t know exactly how to go about it.”

  His grip on my hand grew tighter and I looked at him. What else could he have to tell me I already didn’t know? What could hurt me more than I’d already been hurt. My brother was gone. My ex-husband was dead and I had never meant him any real har
m. It seemed ironic that Jonathan’s fears of his own death had, indeed, come true, and indirectly at my hands. He’d been right to run away from me. Possibly he’d known all along I’d be the cause of his death. I didn’t blame him for running, even if he’d broken my heart and Jeremy’s. Poor Jonathan.

  Then there was Jimmy, my sweet Jimmy who’d never hurt anyone. Gone too. Why was I still alive?

  “Shoot. I’m ready. You can tell me anything.” I could say the words so easily but inside of me a voice was saying, “but please, nothing bad. No more bad news.”

  “Jeremy said his Uncle Jim saved him. He said he pulled him from the well and protected him, from the monstrosity that had killed his father.” Ben wouldn’t look me in the eyes. I stiffened unconsciously and tried to catch his gaze.

  “Spit it out, Ben. I’m a big girl; I can take it.” I tried a weak smile.

  “Did you see Jim out there tonight?” he asked.

  It was such an unusual question I caught my breath before I could answer it.

  “Yes, I saw my brother. But only for a second or two before he disappeared.” I was weeping again but I didn’t know it until the drops, large and warm, fell on my hands and Ben’s. “He was protecting Jeremy.”

  “Are you sure it was Jim?”

  “Why, yes,” my voice came out harsh. Why was he grilling me like this? “It was Jim.”

  “I didn’t see him. I didn’t see anyone or anything except the huge what-ever-the-hell it was…the walking nightmare.” I could tell he still couldn’t believe he’d seen what he’d seen and I sympathized with him. I knew the feeling all too well. “I didn’t see him.” He repeated it as if I hadn’t heard him the first time.

  “What are you getting at?”