One foot on a root, he paused and quieted his breathing. He’d heard someone yell. Babe barked non-stop, but under it, Garret heard another long “Halloooo!”
It was Pa, somewhere up the southern slopes. He was looking for Garret. What did he want now? To apologize for having no spine? To boo-hoo his sorrow on Garret and bemoan how poorly life treated him? Garret glowered and stalked ahead, keeping his back to the sound. Pa could undoubtedly hear Babe on the chase as well as Garret could, which meant Garret probably couldn’t get away from him. It made Garret furious.
Pa never learned to whistle, so when they raccoon hunted together, he used the long yell to let Garret know where he was. In return, Garret had picked a particular whistle which lilted like a cardinal’s song. Pa halloo’ed again. Garret didn’t whistle back.
He picked up his pace after his dog. Though her barking sounded as if it was coming straight up the draw, Garret suspected she had veered slightly to the east, and was climbing through the broken shale slopes, judging by the extra exertion in her bark.
On and on they went, Garret tracking his frenzied dog and trying to ignore his insistent father. Babe bayed here and there, always listening for her master’s encouragement, which he gave. Babe lived for the hunt. She lived to chase, and to tree, and to be there howling and salivating when her master arrived to see what she had treed for him. She was a good dog and Garret would love her no matter what happened. He wished he hadn’t been sharp with her earlier. He’d find a way to make it up to her. Unlike people, who were often cruel and unkind for no reason at all, dogs were always loving.
Pa halloo’ed again. Garret bristled, but he whistled to encourage Babe again and adjusted his course slightly to the east. He’d begin the climb on this side of the valley so he’d be on top of the shale by the time he arrived at Shaver’s Mountain. Babe had found a wanderer, for sure. The raccoon had looped all over the place to forage. Food was getting scarce. He couldn’t imagine why the dumb thing wasn’t already asleep for the winter anyway. The thought made Garret pause. Basically, then, he was stomping around the woods chasing a dog that wouldn’t quit, followed by a father who wouldn’t take a hint, and they were all chasing a raccoon which was apparently an idiot, because all of them—Garret, Pa, Babe, and the fuzz-brain—were too stupid to be curled up someplace warm on a freezing cold night.
The end to a perfect day, Garret thought with a glower.
Pa halloo’ed again. Garret saw red. He drew another breath to whistle at Babe, but instead he spun around and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Pa! Go back to the house!”
The rugged hills echoed the rage in his voice back to him, then juggled it around as if teasing him with it. Garret’s shoulders slumped at the sound.
Pa was closing on Garret’s position, but Garret paid attention to Babe, and to his own climb. The hillside was steeper than he remembered. Late summer had been unusually wet, and the hill had slid away in places, which left the soil loose and shifting, but also exposed a number of roots which he could grasp with his free hand to steady himself.
He pulled himself upwards on saplings and roots until he made the top. He whistled to Babe. She was closer now, even though the hill had slowed him, so the raccoon must have taken to the trees to try to throw off his dog. The end of the chase was near. He whistled again and began picking his way through a tumble-down slope of boulders and trees. Pa called again. Garret gritted his teeth. Judging by the sound of the distance between them, Pa was probably going to find Babe at about the same time Garret did.
He worked his way through a dense spruce stand near the top of the incline, slipping only twice on the slick needles before finding a deer trail in the moonlight. Animals had an uncanny ability to find the easiest path to anywhere, and by the time Pa hallooo’ed again, Garret had used the path to put a more comfortable distance between them.
Babe was close. Her barks rang off the trunks as if a dozen dogs had come to help her. The deer trail was leading in Babe’s general direction, so Garret stayed with it. It took him around the crest of the hill before starting the gentle descent down the back side and skirting a large bald spot, which looked more like a small field. Some long-since disaster had shorn the area of trees, leaving only a thin cover of broomsage clinging to the rocky ground. Babe’s barking ratcheted up with excitement. The wind was ruffling Garret’s hair in her direction, so she’d probably caught his scent.
Halfway along the field, the deer trail veered down over the steep side of the hill away from the barking, so Garret left the trail and followed a narrow ridge which descended from the broomsage clearing. Tall conifers and a few hardwoods sheltered it sparsely. Garret picked his way through them towards his dog. The ridge wrapped into a bowl shape which dropped into a rocky ravine. Across the ravine, a couple hundred yards away, Babe was leaping at the base of a knotty pine. Garret exhaled crossly. As with any evergreen, pines kept their needles all winter, so getting a clean shot at the raccoon wasn’t going to be easy. But it wasn’t Babe’s fault.
“Good girl,” he said as he caught up to her.
Babe had her front paws up on the trunk, leaping and prancing on her rears, but she took her attention off the furious raccoon long enough to give Garret a glance of doggy pride that said, See! See what I did?!
“Good girl.” Garret smiled honestly that time. He rubbed the head of his bouncing hound, who was going crazy now that her master was there to watch. Garret couldn’t see much in the murky heights of the pine. He pulled the rifle off his shoulder and circled the tree. Babe’s howling and pointing nose gave him a basic idea of where the raccoon was, and the animal itself was chittering and scolding, but unless he could see it, he couldn’t take a shot. A movement caught his eye. Garret shifted his gaze a few feet to the side. In his peripheral vision, the light-and-dark contrast was more distinct, and he could make out a pudgy, bushy-tailed animal clinging to a branch and cursing his dog.
Garret hefted the rifle in his hands and weighed his options. The old rifle didn’t kick as badly as his Pa’s shotgun, but the rifle also didn’t weigh as much, so its recoil slapped the shoulder fast and hard. Garret’s head had finally cleared from the blows he’d taken over the previous day, but that would change the instant he pulled the trigger. No matter how he positioned the gun, firing it was going to hurt.
Babe howled and howled, slobbering for her prize. He’d never get her away from the tree until the raccoon hit the ground. Cringing, Garret lifted the rifle to his right shoulder. The sights wove gently in front of his eye as he tried to pick the raccoon out of the shadows. He usually had a steady hand. Maybe his head wasn’t as clear as he’d thought. Babe had fallen silent.
Garret frowned and focused on steadying the gun. He drew a breath and aligned the site beads on the lump of darkness he hoped was a raccoon. Slowly, he released his breath halfway and held it. He tightened his trigger finger.
Babe was not a quiet dog. Especially at the end of a hunt. She should be going berserk. She hadn’t been silent since she’d been small enough for him to hold her whole body in both of his hands. But she was silent now.
Garret dropped the rifle away from his shoulder. “Babe?”
She was nowhere to be seen. Garret stepped back around the tree and scanned for his dog. She’d never left a treed raccoon before. A thin whine drew his attention. She stood a few feet from the pine, her attention focused back around the bowl towards the broomsage field. Her back was hunched up, her tail tucked between her legs. The hair on the back of his neck prickled.
Garret knelt beside Babe and laid a hand on her back. Her muscles were banjo-string tight beneath her fur. She wasn’t making a sound, and he decided it might be a good idea to follow her example. Winter’s cold made the air feel empty around Garret, as if it was just a hollow space for sound. A twig under his foot snapped like glass. He released his breaths as gently as possible, but each one rushed like a river. Sometime during the last few seconds, the feel of the forest had changed in the same way the fee
l of a room changed when a door was opened silently behind one’s back. Nearby, a pine cone thudded to the earth. Seconds ticked away, and the sense of a presence grew heavy as an oncoming rain. The space among the trees which had been free and open now felt oily and claustrophobic, quivering with intent. Garret’s heart dropped. He’d felt this cold watchfulness before. Recently. On an empty road with a shadow that didn’t fit. Hidden in the trees watching him and Violet on the road to Dr. Bentley’s. On the Malvern’s roof above his head.
Babe crept forward into a patch of moonlight. Her shadow hunched more than she did. She was wound tighter than birchbark, but she seemed uncertain what to do about what she saw or smelled. Just then, Garret caught it too. For a split second, the scents of the forest sharpened and multiplied in his nose: earthiness, the dryness of old needles, the tacky sharpness of pine rosin, and a hundred others he couldn’t identify, and under them all, the smell of death, twisted, decaying, rotting, but still walking around.
Garret fell back in the leaves. The rush of scent was overpowering and his mind struggled with it, but as soon as it came, it vanished. Gone or not, Garret knew what he’d smelled, and as he got to his feet, another thought occurred to him. Pa. Where was he? He should have caught up with them by now. When was the last time he’d hallooo’ed? Garret couldn’t remember.
Babe crept uncertainly through the leaves, headed back towards the broomsage field which was obscured by the trees. He followed her and called cautiously, “Pa?”
As soon as she saw her master following her, Babe broke into a run. Garret’s throat tightened and he sprinted after her. “Pa!”
Babe flung herself though the trees, tail tucked, making not a bark or whimper, sending every shred of energy into her legs. Garret ran as hard as he could on frost burned feet, but Babe left him behind.
“Pa!” he screamed between gasps. The ridgeline became a bending corridor of trees, with his dog shrinking away from him at the far end. He ran and ran, stumbling and staggering over the ground he couldn’t see, his head beginning to pulse with dizziness at the jarring.
As Babe vanished around the bend, she let loose a single high-pitched howl. In return came a sound that raised the hair on the back of Garret’s neck. Garret had once heard Father Bendetti describe the things that lived in the lake of fire at the center of the earth. If one of those demons clawed its way to the surface and howled with freedom, it might have sounded like the noise that rippled through the trees in response to his dog. It was a throaty, but strangely keening sound, high-pitched and full of bloodlust.
Garret didn’t have breath to scream for his Pa again, and he was having trouble even keeping himself in a straight line over the treacherous ground. Trees seemed to crawl past him, as if he was talking a stroll. Through his own panting, growls and cries of pain sifted to his ears. He ran the last few feet and rounded the last trunk. The small field opened in front of him, sloping gently up the hill. The broomsage shone bristly white under the moon’s eye, except on the far side, where Babe was making a suicide charge on the thing. The sight of it brought Garret to a halt.
It was huge, whatever the blue blazes it was—every bit as large as it had felt when its weight was pressing down on him through the Malvern’s mansion roof. It wasn’t an animal, but it certainly wasn’t human either. It was dark and shaggy in places and moved with effortless strength. It wore so much moonlight on its greasy fur that it seemed to have erupted from the earth and taken half the field with it. It had something down in the sage, wallowing it, tearing at it like a toy.
Even at the distance, Garret could see huge humps of muscle shifting under its fur as it hauled and played with its prey. Babe, who had reached the far end of the clearing, was an ant by comparison. She shot through the last of the weeds, leaped into the shadow of the creature, and clamped her jaws down. The black thing shifted, rose to its hind feet, and brought a potato sack-sized paw through, smacking Babe into the nearest tree. She hit with a canine cry, fell to the dirt, and struggled to stand.
Garret pushed himself forward, stumbling and trying to line up a rifle shot. The rifle sites bounced crazily around the monster. Boooom! Garret must have squeezed off a round when he stumbled. Only God knew where it went.
A man’s hand rose out of the broomsage, a big calloused hand that struck the dark animal the same way it swung a hammer to strike an anvil. The creature had Garret’s Pa down, and from the grunting and snuffling, it was gnawing on him as Babe might pin down and gnaw a pork rind.
Garret tried to run again, screaming something, not even he knew what. He pulled the trigger again and the gun roared. The ground was little more than dust over broken rock, and each small misstep made him wobble. One large misstep sent him headlong. He hit hard, losing the rifle into the broomsage and making his head roll with a disconnected sensation. Colors flashed across his vision. He scrambled forward on all fours, reeling through the broomsage in search of the weapon. He screamed every time he exhaled. So did Babe. So did his Pa.
Garret searched forwards, right, and left while the rocks cut his palms. The creature made a throaty popping sound, a sort of chuckle. Garret’s knee bumped the butt of the gun. He snatched it and rose. He’d crossed half the field in his search. He tried to line up a shot, but dizziness was making his vision unreliable. He squeezed off a round anyway. Boooomm!
Babe was on the attack again, limping and howling. She snaked here and there, leaping, snapping, seeking a vulnerable spot, trying to avoid the claws. They were bigger than the butcher’s carcass hooks, from which swung the dripping folds that used to be farm animals. A similar fold hung from one of the monster’s claws until it flipped the shred away. It was a piece of Pa’s shirt, soaked with dark liquid.
Under it all, Garret discerned a sentence, teary with agony. “Run Garret… run…”
Garret screamed and staggered forward, squeezing rounds out of the rifle. “Pa, stay down!” he cried, as if his Pa had a choice.
The monster paid no mind to the gunshots, but as soon as Garret called for his father, the creature whipped its head out of the sage and stood, giving Garret his first clear look. The animal’s long head and snout protruded from between its furry shoulders—all of it atop a shaggy, tree-trunk-torso tapering to a thin waste. Big claws sprouted from its paws, but they looked more like oversized hands. The long limbs themselves moved with a dexterity and speed belying their size. The head was almost buried between mountains of shoulder muscle.
When Garret called for his Pa again, the creature’s ears pricked towards him. They were triangular like a dog’s ears, but unnaturally long, and as Garret tried to draw a bead on its forehead, its long tail rose into sight behind it, whipping and curling as if by its own designs.
All of this Garret saw in the single second it took him to line up his shot, but as he put pressure on the trigger, the creature snatched his father out of the weeds, holding the big man out like a toy, not so much as a shield against the shot, but as if taunting Garret, offering his limp, bleeding father if Garret was man enough to come and take him. Pa hung there, blood covering his right shoulder and side, tears gleaming on his face. He was limp as a rag. He moved his lips as if to form the word run again, but the sound didn’t come.
Slowly, the creature pulled Pa back, tucking him against its chest. It crossed its long black arms over him, and rested its toothy maul atop his head as if hugging him. It started towards Garret, taking its time. Pa grunted. The grunt became an agonized whine. Garret saw the rippling cords of muscle in the creature’s arms drawing tight. Pa let out a strangled scream. It was crushing him.
Garret was hyperventilating and begging God, angels, anyone who would listen to help him steady the rifle. His arms were so shaky he was as likely to kill his Pa as the creature. It closed its eyes as it approached, rubbing its snout along Pa’s throat as if snuggling with him. Pa’s feet were quivering as they hung in the air. One of his ribs snapped with an audible crack. And another.
Each sound ripped a piece of
Garret’s soul away. The sites were weaving crazily, but the next time they bobbed across the creature’s head, he’d take the shot. His finger tightened on the trigger, waiting. The creature neared him. The creature’s arm passed through the weaving sites, followed by Pa’s chest, then Pa’s own face, pale and glassy, then—
Pa was flying towards Garret. Garret dropped the rifle and tried to catch his father. Garret would have struggled just to catch his Pa’s dead weight if he’d slumped, but the creature had flung the big man like a dishrag. He hit Garret and both of them tumbled into the sage in a mess of bruises and a tangle of limbs. Garret landed on a rock, winding himself.
Garret was mostly pinned under his Pa’s weakly struggling form, but the creature found Garret’s exposed left shoulder. Garret screamed as a stake-like thumb-claw sank into his shoulder, and the opposing set of finger-claws were driven into his back.
The deathly smell of the thing covered him, and it set its grip, driving its thumb claw deep under his collar bone. Then the creature used the claw as a hook to drag him from under his father and up into the air.
Garret shuddered, whimpered, begged for mercy as he hung from his collar bone. He grabbed at the huge claws, sunk into him like steel bands. A massive, misshapen face full of teeth and black eyes lit with hellish light filled his vision. The creature squeezed until its finger claws grated against his shoulder blade and its thumb claw curled around his collar bone and the tip of it erupted out the top of his shoulder. Garret shrieked like an infant.
The creature withdrew the claw part way and began to squeeze his shoulder as if it was going to crush an insect between its thumb and finger. It watched Garret scream with rapt attention, soaking up his cries for mercy, relishing his pain. His collar bone snapped in two, and new levels of agony engulfed him.
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