by Rick Hautala
“Missed, asshole!” Eddie shouted, laughing hysterically as he floated away. He knew they couldn’t hear him, but that didn’t matter. He raised his hand and waved to men who were lined up on the bridge. His glee died in an instant when, spinning wildly down the rapids, he was suddenly pitched up on a sandbar. Fighting for balance as the water tugged him off balance, he lurched up onto dry land just as another spray of shotgun pellets powdered the rocks beside him.
I’ve got to get out of sight, Eddie thought as he staggered away from the river. The roaring of the water masked every other sound except for his labored breathing and the wet slap of his feet on the rocks. Before he rounded the bend in the river, he looked back at the bridge one last time. His heart dropped when he didn’t see Webster up there. He knew the pig was either back at his van, radioing in for help, or else was coming after him.
Eddie looked around frantically for the best escape route. A desperate idea hit him when he saw the huge tangle of briars no more than a hundred feet up on the riverbank. If he could hide deep enough in the briars, maybe Webster would assume he had jumped back into the river and continued on downstream. Once the police had gone past, searching for him far to the south, he could wait until night and then, under cover of darkness, head north, maybe all the way to Montreal.
Every muscle in Eddie’s body was screaming with agony as he raced around the bend and then up the slope toward the briars. Any second now, he expected to see Webster round the corner and come at him. The skin on his face tightened, and his ears hummed as he waited to hear the blast of the shotgun and feel the searing pain as the pellets tore through his body. His lungs and ribs ached with every breath he took, but he pushed himself to make it.
“Run, you mother-fucker. Run!” he grunted as he leaped from rock to rock and then scrambled into the weed-choked riverbank. Without any hesitation, he ran straight into the tangle or briars, unmindful of the sharp thorns that ripped his clothes and flesh like hundreds of tiny hooks. Dropping down onto his hands and knees, he crawled along on the ground until he was well inside the twisted mess of brush. Once he was positive he was out of sight, he collapsed onto his back on the damp soil. Panting heavily, he stared up at the blue sky that was crosshatched by the dense spread of thorny branches.
Already Eddie could hear the distant sounds of his pursuers far down by the river. From the scattered comments and replies, he realized that Webster had commandeered several of the construction workers to help run him down. Wincing from the pain of hundreds of lacerations, Eddie rolled onto his hands and knees and burrowed even deeper into the briars. Water and sweat mingled with the blood running down his face into his eyes. He didn’t think any of the men would be crazy enough to venture into the thorny barricade—not unless Webster was offering one hell of a reward.
He was safe.
He’d make it.
But Eddie tensed and turned around quickly when he heard a faint rustle of vegetation behind him. The steady roar of the river blocked out any sounds, but it sure as hell sounded like someone was crawling in the brush nearby.
“All right, you son-of-a-bitch,” Eddie muttered. Shifting into a low crouch, he clenched his fists and got ready to fight. He prayed it was Webster. Even if he did have a shotgun, he wanted to whip the tar out of that son of a bitch just for refusing him a cigarette after lunch. The cocksucker had it coming!
Eddie looked left and right, trying to pierce the screen of vegetation, but he didn’t see anything move until it was too late. The thorns and the ground around him suddenly erupted as dozens of small, brown creatures burst up out of the soil. Eddie’s first—and practically final—thought was that a pack of oversized groundhogs were attacking him, but then he saw the wrinkled, nearly human brown faces and the curved, black talons that reached out for him. Wide, unblinking eyes that burned with hatred and hunger stared at him from the dense shadows of the thorn bushes as the creatures, chittering shrilly, tore into Eddie. In less than a minute, he was nothing more than a twisted pile of shredded pink meat and broken bones that wasn’t even close to recognizably human.
5
After a hurried breakfast, Mark hiked to the excavation site to start his day’s work. Last summer, he and two other graduate students from the University of Maine in Orono had discovered several post molds. After probing the area, they had discovered an ancient site a hundred feet up from the streambed. Three feet below ground level, beneath a thick layer of silt where the stream had overflowed several centuries ago, they had dug into an ancient shell heap, a prehistoric Indian garbage dump. For the past month and a half, Mark had been digging a trench, exposing a nearly eight foot face of sedimentary layers that were loaded with artifacts—broken pottery, arrow heads, and numerous other chipped stone fragments. He knew he was working against time as he spent all morning digging out another layer of the hard-packed substrata.
A hundred yards downstream from their camp, Janie was up on a narrow ledge about twenty feet above the water. She was so involved doing graphite rubbings of the carved inscriptions on the cliff face that she didn’t notice when two uniformed policemen, one with a German shepherd on a leash, came out of the woods near the tent.
“’Morning,” one of the policemen called out to her as they approached.
The voice startled Janie, and she almost lost her balance when she turned quickly to see who it was.
“Oh... Hi,” she said nervously as she carefully climbed down the cliff to the ground.
“Didn’t mean to startle you,” the policeman said as he and his partner came closer. “I thought you heard us coming.”
Shrugging, Janie walked toward them, not knowing what to say. The German shepherd stood stiffly at attention, so Janie kept a respectable distance. Her first thought was, what in the hell are two cops doing out here this time of day? She and Mark had all the necessary permits from the Forestry Service, the State of Maine, and the University to be out here doing their work.
“I’m Officer Parkman, from Thornton. This is Patrolman Fielding,” the policeman said. He paused and looked around, scanning the tent site and the twisted lump of Mark’s sleeping bag. “I thought there were two of you out here.”
Pointing in the direction of the trench, Janie replied, “My partner’s Mark Murray. He’s over there. Is there a problem?”
Parkman nodded. “Mind if we call him over? I want you both to hear this.”
Without waiting for her reply, Fielding went over to the trench and signaled for Mark to come up. A second later, Mark clambered up over the side, blinking like a mole in the bright sunlight. His face, hands, and clothes were streaked with dirt. In his hand was a small, pointed trowel.
“Look, I don’t mean to alarm you,” Parkman said after clearing his throat, “but we think there might be an escaped convict in the area.”
“Really?” Janie said.
Mark scratched the back of his neck and shook his head. “Sorry, officer,” he said. “We haven’t seen anyone.”
Parkman drew a breath as he scanned the woods around them. The forest rippled with the bright green of newly sprouted leaves. Deeper under the pines, the light was shattered into bright needles. Overhead, thin white clouds rode across the pale blue sky. The distant song of morning birds was lulling, peaceful. The policeman let his breath out slowly.
“You two might consider packing it in until we ruin him down,” Parkman said. “This fella, name of Eddie LeFevbre, was in for murder. He jumped off the bridge up on 25 this morning. Best we can figure, he’s heading down to Kittery. ‘Least that’s where he’s from, so we figure he’s going that way, but you never know …”
He turned and looked at Fielding, who shrugged and said nothing.
“Goddamn!” Parkman muttered, shaking his head. “I can’t make you folks leave, but—”
“If you don’t mind, officer,” Mark said, “I’m made some fairly significant discoveries in this area. Those rock carvings up there aren’t the only things. I’ve got an extremely rich excavation
site, and I have just three days, counting today, to finish up my work here. I can’t afford to stop now because, frankly, I don’t think I’ll get the funds to come back here later this summer.”
Parkman sighed deeply. “This convict is considered extremely dangerous. For your own safety, you might want to consider leaving until he’s been apprehended.”
Mark glanced at Janie, then back at the cop. Shrugging his shoulders as though absolutely helpless, he said, “I appreciate your concern, but I’ve got important work going on here. Besides, I don’t see where we’d be in any danger. Like you said, he’s probably miles from here by now.”
“Probably, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it,” Parkman said. When he and his partner turned to leave, Janie walked over toward Mark and watched as the two policemen and their dog disappeared into the brush. Without another word, Mark walked back to the excavation and disappeared into the trench.
6
“Will you please look at this,” Janie said.
It was dark, and she and Mark was sitting beside the campfire. Supper was over, and the woods were draped with black. After an exhausting day digging in the trench, Mark looked through slitted eyes at the paper she was holding out to him. Within the wide swatches of black graphite marks, there were numerous lines, circles, and other markings. Some of them looked vaguely human although most were horribly distorted figures.
“Looks great,” Mark said, sounding both sleepy and uninterested.
“Look at this,” she said, tapping one of the marks with her forefinger. “See it?”
“Yeah, it’s a bunch of lines and squiggles,” Mark said after pretending to study the markings for a few moments.
“Well these squiggles, as you call them, are repeated here—here—and here,” she said, jabbing the paper every time for emphasis. “And do you want to know what I think they mean?”
“No, but why do I have the feeling you’re going to tell me any?”
“I think they mean there’s some kind of ...danger lurking around here. It’s clearly a warning of some kind because of the—”
“Janie...”
“Because of the prostrate figures underneath each one. Look. This one is clearly a wolf or a coyote, but all the others look more human. And see these circles here?” She traced the pattern on the paper. “They appear to be in regular order, but look carefully. Every fifth one is hollowed out, so the rubbing is a completely black ball, not just a circle. You said yourself that there was evidence the Indians who lived here suddenly abandoned the place, right?”
“Yeah, but I don’t pretend to know why,” Mark snapped. “And if they moved out fast because of some danger, they probably wouldn’t have taken the time to make rock carvings first.”
“Well I think these carvings have something to do with it. I think they explain the whole thing...if we only knew how to read them.”
“So what?”
“What do you mean, so what?”
Janie sighed deeply as she looked up at the darkening sky. Deep in the woods, a night bird began to sing, lending an eerie note to the night. Shivering, she picked up a stick and poked the fire, raising the flames higher.
“So, I think there might be some connection between these rubbings and what you’ve been digging.”
“Jesus, Janie, of course there’s a connection,” Mark shouted. “We don’t have exact dates on either the shell heap or your carvings, but I’d say it’s a fairly safe bet the same people are responsible for both. What’s the big deal?”
Before Janie could reply, the silence of the night was broken by a deep-throated, rumbling sound. Janie started, her eyes wide as she inched closer to Mark’s side of the campfire.
“What the hell was that?” she whispered.
Mark tensed and looked all around with his finger on his lips as he hissed her to silence.
“What if it’s that escaped murderer those cops told us about?” Janie said. Her voice was little more than a harsh rasp in the gathering gloom.
“There’s no escaped murderer around here,” Mark whispered. “That sounded like—”
He cut himself off when the sound came again—a low, crunching sound of dirt and rocks tumbling down a hill.
“Oh, shit!” Mark yelled suddenly as he bolted to his feet. “That’s coming from the trench! Shit! I thought it looked a little unstable. I shouldn’t have dug under that last bit of ledge.”
He ran to the tent and scrambled around until he found the flashlight. Snapping it on, he swung the beam in the direction of the trench. A thin haze of dust filtered up into the air, sparkling in the light. Without another word, Mark raced over to his work site, all the while dreading what he would find there.
Janie stayed where she was, close to the fire as she watched Mark’s frantic activity. As obvious as it was that the problem was in his excavation trench, she couldn’t stop thinking this had something to do with the murderer the policemen were looking for.
“Oh, Jesus! Oh shit!” Mark shouted when he saw the dirt walls of his trench crumbling inward. He clenched his fists and shook them in anger. Almost two month’s worth of painstaking, intensive work had been lost in the few seconds it took the dirt walls to collapse and fill the trench.
But when Mark looked more closely, though, he realized that the trench wasn’t filling up with dirt. The thick dust rolling upward was as thick as smoke, making it difficult for him to see what was going on, but he had the impression all the sand and rocks were funneling down through a hole in the bottom of the trench.
“Oh, boy. This is fucking weird,” he muttered as he crouched on the edge of the trench, trying to figure out what was going on. The ground he had been standing on all day had suddenly opened up, exposing an underground tunnel or subterranean stream. It made him think of a huge ant lion trap—those little funnels of sand where the insect in the bottom pulls the sand inward so fast any crawling insects—their food—can’t escape, no matter how hard they try.
The flashlight beam projected a thick, yellow cone that swung back and forth along the length of the dust-filled trench. Choking and waving his hand in front of his face, Mark leaned closer, trying to see exactly what was happening to his excavation. He didn’t notice the pair of thin, brown, clawed hands reaching up out of the loose earth until it was too late. Before he could scream, the fingers encircled his throat, and needle-sharp talons sank into his flesh with a wet, tearing sound. Hot blood spurted out with a whistling hiss as the claws ripped open his windpipe. Thin, strong arms, scaly and brown, jerked him down into the hole at the bottom of the trench floor where, an instant later, dozens of arms reached up out of the subterranean darkness and sank claws into his warm, quivering flesh. Mark’s lifeless body twitched violently as it was dragged down.
“Mark...?” Janie called out, her voice rising to the threshold of a scream. She had seen him fall—or jump—headfirst into the trench, and she wanted desperately to believe that it hadn’t looked as though he had been pulled in by...something. Every muscle in her body was wire-tense as she eased herself up from the ground. The night closed in around her with a dead, muffling effect as she stared, horrified, at the dust-filled trench.
“That’s not very funny, Mark,” she called out, trying hard to find courage in the sound of her own voice. In the feeble light of the campfire, the dust was silently settling to the ground like a dusting of yellow pollen.
“Come on, Mark,” she said, glancing quickly behind her, as she looked for the nearest escape route. “If this is one of your half-assed jokes...”
She crouched beside the fire, not knowing what to do next. Something told her this wasn’t one of Mark’s lame jokes.
Something bad had happened.
What if he had fallen into the trench and had hurt himself? He might be unconscious underneath the pile of dirt and debris that had caved in on him.
Moving slowly, her joints aching, Janie eased into a full standing position. Her lungs burned as she tried to take a deep, calming breath. What finall
y forced her to breathe, at least enough to fill her lungs and try to scream, was the sudden burst of noise that issued from inside the trench. The chittering sound reminded her of the sound insects made—hundreds of insects, beating their wings futilely against a window screen, only louder. It rose until it filled the night. As she stood rooted to the spot, Janie watched in numbed amazement as a seething, tangled, dark mass erupted over the edge of the trench.
It sure as hell wasn’t Mark!
The blur of motion resolved into a snarling pack of small, clawed creatures, but it was already too late. With a final, wavering scream, Janie was pushed backwards and fell beneath the tearing claws and fangs of the creatures.
7
“Jesus Christ! I told them to get out of here!”
Officer Parkman was standing beside the shredded tent, his lower lip trembling as he shook his head and stared at the mutilated remains of Jane Crawford.
Parkman’s partner, Fielding, stood several paces behind Parkman. His face was sheet white, and he was wiping his chin with the flat of his hand after losing his breakfast. What was left of Janie was barely identifiable as human. It looked as though someone had taken a chain saw to her. Splintered bones, tangled chunks of red meat, and purple-veined internal organs were scattered all around the campsite. Some looked as though huge bites had been taken out of them.
