Claw

by Katie Berry

  Sweat beaded on Olsen’s brow, despite the frigid temperature outside. His forehead steamed as he stepped toward the open door. Unslinging his shotgun, he took the safety off and moved through the entrance into the darkened barn beyond.

  “This is Constable Olsen with the Lawless City Police Department. I have a weapon aimed directly at your location. I need you to step out of the barn and identify yourself.” He walked in a little farther, barely able to see anything now after being dazzled by the sunlight outside. Reaching to his belt, he grabbed a small flashlight clipped there and removed it, turning it on and shining it about the room. Satisfied there were no immediate threats, he attached the magnetized light under the barrel of the shotgun, and reluctantly moved deeper into the bowels of the structure.

  Rusty chains hung from the barn’s solid supports, dangling next to equally rusty saw blades. They were complemented by a lovely coating of dust and cobwebs. Oscar cast the light about -- everything seemed fine on the main floor. He shone it up into the murk where the loft was located. A narrow ladder led up into more darkness. He was disinclined to climb it and check on the loft at the moment, thank you very much.

  Against the far wall of the barn, another large door opened onto the old root cellar that Norbert had dug into the foundation. It was a large opening, as large as the main entrance, in fact. When he’d put the cellar in, Norbert had made sure that he would have enough room to drive their old tractor and its attachments right down into the workshop located there. Very handy when he had forks loaded with a bin of potatoes and trailer full of apples or whatever else they wanted to keep chilled in Mother Earth.

  The root cellar door opened inward as well, and was currently standing open, flung back inside the darkened room. Oscar didn’t think there was anything in the root cellar any more, but he walked over to take a quick peek inside, just to see if perhaps there was a jar of Gertrude’s tasty canning left on one of the pantry shelves that he could sample. He licked his lips at the thought of some canned peaches or pears. That was something that would really hit the spot right now.

  The floor of the barn ramped down into the cellar below. At the bottom was a spacious storage room and shop, with a separate cold room to store apples, potatoes and other hardy root vegetables. On two of the walls, shelves meant to house canning other preserves sat empty.

  Oscar frowned, disappointed and feeling slightly nauseous. The stench was overwhelming. It smelled like something crawled up and died down here.

  The far wall contained an extended workbench and a man-sized, storm door exit. In one darkened corner, an ancient tractor sat draped in a tarp. There also looked to be a plentiful supply of old burlap sacs in the opposite corner across the tractor. A huge mound of them was now piled in the other corner. Oscar thought it strange for Geraldine to be so messy, knowing how neat and organised she was after so many calls to her property over the years.

  He stepped closer, exploring with his flashlight's beam. The sacks were a filthy grey colour and…

  They suddenly moved.

  He stepped/stumbled back a bit. “What the hell?” he muttered aloud.

  Oscar began backing away, farther and farther until suddenly he felt a jolt to his spine and heard the tools hanging on the pegboard jangle behind him. He had backed up as far as he could go.

  The mound of burlap sacs was not made of burlap, he could now see that. No, they were thick, ropey muscles that rippled beneath a matted, gore-covered pelt.

  Thanks to Oscar’s penchant for speaking aloud to himself, the monstrosity across the cellar that inhabited this pelt was now alerted to the interloper in its private domain.

  Angular and lean, the beast slowly turned toward him. While most bears had layers and layers of fat to subsist off of when times were tough, or during hibernation, this massive creature had none. It was cut like a bodybuilder, its hard-muscled back and sides flexing as it began to stand. The beast looked into Oscar’s eyes, hunger sparkling in his light's beam. Now on all fours, the stump of one blood-crusted ear grazed the ceiling of the root-cellar, almost three metres up. Its other uninjured ear lay back against the side of its head, like a cat getting ready to pounce on its prey.

  Oscar couldn’t look away. The thing seemed to devour his soul as it stalked slowly forward, never taking its eyes off of him. Olsen broke the creature's gaze and spied salvation.

  A short flight of stairs lead up toward dual doors at the top. Crisp daylight leaked through their seam. There was no way he was going to make it across the large cellar and back out the way he came before the creature brought him down and devoured him. The storm doors were his only chance. Preparing to make a run for it, he prayed they weren't locked from the outside.

  In one fluid motion, the creature charged toward Oscar from across the cellar. He stumbled quickly backward up the stairs. Looking up, the double doors appeared firmly sealed above his head.

  All at once, he remembered the double-barrelled shotgun clutched protectively in his hands. He levelled it at the beast approaching him and pulled both triggers.

  ------------------------

  The boiling water steamed into the teapot as Geraldine filled it up. Placing the near-empty kettle back on the stove, she decided to add a couple of extra cookies to the plate already on the trolly. Oscar was such a nice boy. She remembered his affinity for her chocolate chip pecan cookies the last time he was here to check on her, and she didn’t want to disappoint him. This time, there was an entire dozen of the ten-centimetre wide cookies on the plate, unlike the half dozen last time which hadn’t seemed to be enough. She put the cosy-covered teapot next to the cookies on the tea trolly near the stove and wheeled it all into the front parlour. She turned and grabbed her walker, heading out the front door to let Oscar know the tea was ready.

  Finally at the rear corner of the porch, she looked to see where Oscar had gone. The last she’d seen him, he’d been heading toward the barn after investigating around the property like a regular Columbo.

  But he was nowhere in sight right now. Thinking maybe he had gone around the house the other way, she started to move back toward the front of the house to see if that were the case.

  At her back, the silence of the mountain air was shattered by two simultaneous shotgun blasts coming from the direction of her barn. She lost her grip on her walker temporarily and almost fell to the porch floorboards from the shock.

  Geraldine turned as quickly as she could and looked toward the barn. The storm-cellar doors burst open, and Oscar flew up the steps. She was surprised he had thrown them open with such apparent ease because they were really quite substantial. It seemed his newfound strength was motivated by whatever it was he had been shooting at in the root cellar.

  He sprinted toward her, arms and legs pumping, yelling something at the top of his lungs. She couldn’t hear what he was going on about since he was too far away. Her brow knitted together in concern. It seemed that in addition to his newfound super-strength, Oscar had developed super speed as well. She didn't think all of this exertion could be good for a man of his size. Whatever it was, it must be important.

  Oscar looked over his should toward the barn. The main doors exploded into slivers as if made of balsa, and wooden shrapnel flew everywhere.

  Geraldine suddenly saw the motivation behind Oscar’s superhuman feats emerge from the barn. She gaped as the monstrosity paused, blinking in the bright sunshine.

  The heavy padlocked doors of the barn had not slowed the creature's pursuit in the least. Oscar turned and stumbled forward, continuing to sprint toward Geraldine as fast as his beefy legs would carry him.

  Pausing for a moment to assess the situation, as any good predator would, the beast looked toward the log house. It locked eyes with Geraldine on the porch for a moment. Then it looked back to its prey of the moment once more and looked no further. It began loping casually toward Oscar, saliva pouring from its mouth. It didn’t seem in any particular hurry, as if the creature somehow sensed that hits prey could ne
ver outrun it.

  Constable Oscar Olsen ran toward Geraldine, waving his arms as he went. She finally heard what he was shouting, “Bear! It's a goddamned bear! Get inside! Lock yourself in the house!"

  “No shit, Sherlock!” Geraldine clucked. She turned her walker around and shuffled rapidly in retreat. Ol’ Bessie was currently sitting just inside her front door, where she’d left it after making tea. She cursed her stupidity for coming back out without the elephant gun.

  Looking back over his shoulder, Olsen saw the beast now focussed solely on him. It began striding rapidly toward him on long powerful legs. He turned, faltered for a moment, then suddenly found his second and third winds all at once, and his legs came alive.

  Geraldine was moving like she hadn't since she was a spry eighty-year-old. In her peripheral vision, Oscar began to overtake her. She pumped her walker as it had never been pumped before, renewing her efforts to get to Ol’ Bessie and help the constable.

  Olsen’s attempt to win the First Annual Lawless Bearathon was ultimately doomed to failure. The beast was fast, lean and ravenous while Oscar was slow, fat and delicious.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Geraldine saw Oscar brought down by the monster. Sickle-sharp claws tore through his back as he was flattened into the frozen earth.

  Geraldine put her head down and focused on putting one walker-wheel in front of the other, pumping and pumping. Her sole reason for living now was to make it to her front door, and make this thing from hell suffer a reckoning at the muzzle of Ol’ Bessie -- payment for her little Norberts and now Constable Olsen.

  Arriving at the door, she leaned slightly backward and pushed the unlatched door open with her bottom. She grabbed the large gun and heaved it up, cocking it in the process. With the barrel of the gun on the front edge of her walker, she braced the stock against the door frame at her back.

  The creature quickly finished its appetiser of meat and assorted by-products that had previously been known as Oscar Olsen and looked toward the house. Eyes still wide with hunger, it spotted the woman on the porch and strode confidently toward her.

  Geraldine stood defiantly on her porch in front of the beast, Ol’ Bessie straining to be unleashed.

  The monster had almost reached the first step, then the second, then third...

  Leaning forward into her walker, Geraldine pulled one of Ol’ Bessie's triggers. The muzzle flashed a brilliant white as the gun ruptured the quiet of the day.

  It had been a while since she'd used the gun, and she’d forgotten how loud it really was. Aiming in the general direction of the monster, she’d hoped to wound it or at least scare it off. However, her ability to target the gun was somewhat limited after so many years of inactivity, and she missed.

  The concussive blast did have an effect on the bear, and it halted in its tracks, startled by the noise. Its brown eyes locked onto the woman's once more, its wounded ear twitching back and forth like a radar dish.

  Geraldine fell backward through the partially open front door. It slammed back into the wall, denting the plaster. She landed on the thick, occasional carpet that covered the gleaming hardwood floor, with Ol’ Bessie landing on top of her. Her spine impacted the floor, and she shrieked in agony as her arthritis reminded her of who was boss around here.

  The bear shrieked, the side of its face stinging from the rock salt charge the elephant gun had drilled into its skin. It lunged up the steps toward Geraldine and jammed its head into the open doorway. Pressing into the frame, the wood creaked and groaning as the creature’s jaws ratcheted open and closed in quick succession, snapping like a castanet as it tried to grab her and drag her back outside.

  Geraldine kicked her heels down hard on the maple floorboards inches from the creatures slavering mouth and pushed with all of her might. She slid the thick carpet backward on her immaculately polished hardwood floor. This gave her some breathing room, moving her a couple of metres farther back from the snapping, drooling jaws of the creature.

  With its mouth wide open, the beast roared and tried to ram its head all the way through the doorframe. It reared back and then dove forward once more, head down as it ducked under the sheet metal porch roof. The beast’s massive shoulders buckled the log posts that held the doorframe in place. Above, the sheet metal on the porch roof folded back like an accordion as the creature surged forward and backward, again and again. As it tried to smash its way into its prey’s burrow, the door frame and attached logs started to creak and groan alarmingly.

  Recoiling in fear, Geraldine snatched her feet back once more from the gnashing teeth. She suddenly recalled the antique shotgun she still held protectively in her arms, and what it contained -- she had one shot left.

  Pulling back the second hammer, she pointed the gun at the massive head in front of her and pulled the trigger. The gun roared, and the sixty-gram bullet blasted out of the elephant gun’s barrel. The rock salt inside peppered through the creature’s already injured ear.

  The beast shrieked and pulled back, sounding as if all the damned souls of hell had finally been freed from purgatory.

  Geraldine was temporarily deafened by both the concussive blast of the gun inside her house, combined with the monster’s insane roar.

  The predator continued to rage, angry at its inability to kill this insignificant little creature -- this small morsel that had dug itself into its burrow and managed to cause it such pain. It lunged toward her again, smashing its head into the doorway repeatedly as it tried to grab the food in front of it. With every impact, little by little, the frame, along with the thick wall it was attached to began to shift inward ever so slightly.

  Scuttling backward a bit more, Geraldine ran up against the wall on the other side of the entry. She found herself jammed up against the bottom of the staircase.

  The bear pulled its head back and readied itself for another massive attack on the door frame when Geraldine felt a sudden tingling in her bottom, which grew and grew. Before she knew it, the whole house was trembling and shaking around her.

  Unsure what this new sensation was, the beast pause. It felt the ground moving underneath its paws, and roared, angry that its meal was being interrupted. Pulling back again, it reared up to its full height and drove both of its massive paws downward into the porch steps, smashing the wood to splinters as it tried to stop the ground from shaking beneath its feet.

  The decorative roof over the front porch had been severely weakened by the beast’s previous actions, and the heavy canopy collapsed, dropping down onto its head as it thrust once more into the house.

  Geraldine had hoped it would squash the bastard, but it was short-lived. Within seconds, the ugly son-of-a-bitch reared back up through the splintered wood, squealing with fresh rage so loud it seemed it might shred her eardrums.

  The ground continued its horizontal dance, and the beast gave one final rending roar of frustration. It suddenly turned and loped away on unsteady legs across the shaking, unstable terrain.

  With a mixture of relief and fear, Geraldine watched as the enormous predator disappeared from view. It pushed through into the forest off to the side of her house, moving toward her neighbour’s property now, the Gold Mountain Casino and Resort. She felt relieved that she was still alive but also felt fear for any unfortunate soul between here and the resort who might encounter this now enraged, wounded creature.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The searing oil snaked across the floor toward Austin, smoke rolling off its surface. At over two-hundred and thirty degrees Celsius, it would literally melt the skin from his body if it touched him. He looked out from underneath the table, desperately trying to find another sanctuary, but knick-knacks were still raining down from the walls and ceiling above. They smashed into the heavy pine table that protected him in a killing crush of plummeting paraphernalia.

  Seeing the searing oil spreading out toward his father, Alex shouted, “Dad! Look out for the oil!”

  Austin prepared to take his chances dodging the dropp
ing debris, ready to scramble out from the safety of his table to avoid the oil, now only an arms-length away from his face.

  It suddenly poured into a metal strip grate in the floor, sizzling and steaming as it made contact with the residual moisture in the drain. Due to some debris blocking his horizontal view of the world, Austin hadn’t seen the stainless steel grill earlier, and he heaved a huge sigh of relief as the smoking oil poured into it.

  “I’m just fine! Stay where you are!” Austin called over, “There’s a grate in the floor here catching the oil. I’m okay!” The grating’s purpose was to collect spills near the pop and ice machine to avoid slippery and sticky floors. In this instance, he was quite relieved to see it worked just as well with superheated oil.