Jabberwock Jack
Dennis Liggio
Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Liggio
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Hello There
We were on the hunt. For a monster, of course. Always monsters.
I lay in the mud, the gray sludge slathered all over my skin, caked on my legs, piled up all over me, just allowing my arms and head to move. I was blending into the thick mud by becoming one with it. My scent was covered and the crossbow hidden. The mud smelled foul, but at this point I was used to the stink. The mud was everywhere - between my toes, under my fingernails, and it had seeped into all my clothes. Even my underwear. I was pretty sure my balls were stuck together with the gray mud. I had been waiting in the muck for over an hour for my prey. At this point I identified more with the mud than myself, that sticky stuff becoming an intimate friend and confidant.
You might say that this was terrible, that this was an uncomfortable situation that you'd never be in. You'd never wallow in the mud. But I didn't complain. I felt like I was in the movie Predator, when Arnold sets a trap for the alien creature. And I was deep in the mud because I was laying in wait to kill a troll, something I had never hunted before. So of course it was awesome!
I was out here on the hunt with my brother Szandor. My name is Mikkel and we're the Nowak brothers. I kill monsters - we both do. But from what I understand, that's a line you've heard before. So I guess I'll go a word farther: I kill monsters too.
My brother was in another sloppy mound of clay-like mud hidden by dead grass about ten meters to my left. That's about thirty feet for us Americans. We were being mentored on troll hunting by a man named Tor. He was European, so everything had been in meters for the last week. Now I can't decide how far away anything is without deciding which measurement I should be using.
However, our brief flirtation with the metric system would be over soon. Assuming we succeeded, our current hunt would be our graduation day. We were hunting a troll without Tor. If my brother and I took it down without aid, we passed basic training. If Tor never heard from us again - well, I guess we failed the muster and he'd need to find our bodies to give us a decent burial. Monster hunting is a rough business.
Maybe business is the wrong word. It's not as much a business or profession as much as a calling. To be truthful, it's actually a terrible business and there are far better ways to make money. We're monster hunters not for the money, but because it's the right thing to do. We've seen good people lost due to creatures nobody had ever told us about. We hunt monsters and put ourselves in danger to protect people who aren't equipped to deal with those deadly creatures.
The experience with Tor was different than most in our lives. When it comes to monster hunting, we're mostly self-taught. We've never had a mentor. We had no old man rambling on about the Force, no stoic master asking us to steal the stone from his hand, not even a gruff and merciless father with impossibly high standards teaching us the family business. We cobbled it all together on the job. Knowing what I know now, I'm surprised we're not dead.
Due to our self sufficiency, Tor actually teaching us to hunt and kill trolls was an odd experience. We're just not used to learning from someone, and especially not deferring respect to someone. Szandor has the bigger issues with authority, so he had the greater frustrations learning, but it weighed on us both. However, at no time did we think of giving up or checking out, even when frustrated. We wanted to learn to hunt trolls. But even more important than that, we needed Tor's signoff. Without that, we'd never get to hunt Jabberwock Jack. But more on that later.
After over an hour slouching in the muck and mud, becoming less Mikkel and more Mudman, the guest of honor finally decided to make its appearance. Its entrance was quieter than expected. Before this training, I would have expected a massive monster like a troll to cause a rumbling when it walked, or at least a lead-footed thumping wherever it went anywhere. The truth is that they are outdoor predators and can be quiet if they want to be. In this case the troll's arrival was signaled by just a rustling of bushes as it stepped into this semi-clearing. There was a pool where water had collected from the recent rains and of course, lots of mud. Good cover for us, and the water was a likely draw for the troll. According to Tor, they preferred standing water to moving streams for drinking. He had also been tracking this particular troll for us - there would be no use in giving us real world feedback on trolls if there were none around to test our skills on.
How would I describe this troll? Big and hairy. Though supposedly there is some variation in their appearances, this one was just like a dirty, hairy ogre - a fictional ogre, I don't think they actually exist. The troll was eight feet tall, its limbs massive but vaguely human. It had a furred hide, but that fur was dirty. Covered with mud and dried blood, at places the fur stood out in spiky hairs. There were parts the fur didn't cover, patches where a gray skin showed through. Its form was somewhat man-like yet also not. Imagine if you crossed a gorilla and a bear, then you gave that poor abomination of nature some kind of cancer. That's what a troll looked like - vaguely humanoid, sort of bear-like, but having some pestilential quality where it lumbered around breathing heavily, always seconds away from a cough that never came.
As the beast came closer, I could hear its breathing, a perpetual wheeze that only ever gave way to a pant. I was impressed that I hadn't heard it from farther away, but this close, it would be hard to ignore the strange breathing of the creature. By human standards, it was sick. But I knew not to sympathize with it - it could easily destroy a group of men that were unprepared. If you ever encounter anything like a troll in the woods or mountains, you should run. Don't question it, just run.
At this distance, the creature's head was much more clear in the dappled light. Again, the gorilla-bear comparison was apt here. The face was leathery and lacking fur, like a gorilla. But unlike a gorilla, this troll had a snout. A deformed set of nostrils on that snout scrunched up, taking in the smells of the area and hopefully missing my brother and I. Snaggletoothed teeth stuck from odd angles in its jaws. Its eyes were intelligent. They were dark and lacking visible pupils, but otherwise similar to the expressiveness of human eyes. But the expression I saw was not rage or hatred. Instead, the troll seemed rather sour, almost put upon and tired - qualities my brother often shares. If my brother hadn't been thirty feet away (or should that be meters?) I might have joked about dubbing this the Szandor Troll.
Between the expression and the gorilla-like qualities, I was tempted to think differently about the troll. Maybe this one was that gentle giant of the pacific Northwest, that reluctant celebrity hunted by the paparazzi of the cryptozoological scene, Bigfoot. Maybe this was just a misunderstood monster or the missing link. Maybe it would just be a friend to you and I if we gave it the chance.
But then my eyes wandered down to what the troll was holding in its surprisingly human-like hands. At first I had thought it was just a simple club. Surprising for an animal in the wild, but given that trolls seemed intelligent and had opposable thumbs, I figured a club wasn't quite a sign of a hostile nature. Even gentle Bigfoot would need a good club sometimes, right? Yeah, well, in this case, it was more than just a club. On closer examination, this club was a human femur. Yes, a person's leg bone. I guess it was possible that the troll had just found it, but when I have our
local troll expert Tor telling us how trolls like to eat human flesh, I'm pretty sure I'd find gnaw marks on that bone if I looked closely. My sympathy drained away and I took a tighter hold on my crossbow.
I looked through the crossbow's scope. That was one of the few parts of the device not covered in mud. It was also the one possible flaw in our trap. Light could easily reflect off the glass of the scope, alert the troll, and kill the hunt. That's why we were glad for the heavy tree cover. Some light penetrated but not much. As the troll approached the small pond to drink, I carefully and quietly aimed the crossbow. As much as I wanted to, I didn't go for the headshot. According to Tor, unless you can get them through the eye, it's not worthwhile. Troll skulls are thick. Sure, a crossbow bolt with modern enhancements is likely to still penetrate, but there are too many variables. It's too easy for the bolt to have only a glancing strike or a shallow penetration. And then, based on Tor's experience, you have a pissed off troll with a crossbow bolt sticking out of its head that wants you dead while you have to reload.
I aimed instead at the troll's neck. Like most mammals - yes, trolls are probably mammals - there are a variety of veins and arteries there. Arteries should make a troll die in seconds before it could do anything like bash either of our heads in. A vein strike would technically be lethal, but it would also mean we should run like hell until the troll bled out, collapsed on the ground, and then we would still shoot it a few more times before coming within ten paces.
We didn't have some sort of specific signal for my brother and I to start shooting. Any sound would alert the beast and screw up our chances. Instead, we said once it bent down to drink, we'd aim and fire. Like Tor had said, one well-placed bolt would kill a troll. We were attempting to hit it with two from two different angles, so we expected we would take down the monster immediately.
It was time. The troll leaned down, resting the hand with the club on the ground for balance and cupping the other hand for water. I kept my aim on the troll's neck. I wished my brother and I luck.
I pulled the trigger and let my bolt fly. A second later, I heard the sound of Szandor's bolt. But so did the troll. The bolts travelled very fast, but even the troll's split second reaction screwed up our aim. My bolt struck it in the top of its chest, an inch or two shy of the neck. Szandor's bolt hit it on the other side of its chest. Both deep, bloody, and from the troll's reaction, very painful wounds. But neither was a kill shot.
That sour, tired face of the troll twisted into that of frenzied rage. A roar escaped its snaggletoothed lips. It was bleeding badly, but it was not disabled. Its grip tightened on its femur club as it straightened back up. I immediately began reloading my crossbow bolt but also readied myself to run if it came at me. I watched to see what it did and if it would turn toward me.
It turned away from me. It was a mixed blessing. While I was safe, but my brother was not. We had hit it twice. His had been the second bolt. The troll's attention had followed the second hit. As I struggled to reload my crossbow, I could see that the troll was charging Szandor's location. Even not knowing exactly where my brother was, the troll would find him. And if he tried to run, it would see him immediately.
The monster ran toward the heaps of mud where my brother was hidden. Where before the creature seemed to walk lightly, almost spritely, now every footstep clomped down with great noise. It drove home just how massive a creature the troll was and how much my brother was probably shitting himself in his hiding spot. He couldn't even reload another bolt because that movement would give him away. I even more frantically quickened my reloading, knowing I was my brother's only hope.
The troll had reached the mud pile and now it swung its head around, searching out my brother. It knew he was there even if it hadn't found him yet. While our camouflage was good, it couldn't be complete. We couldn't cover the crossbows completely with mud, only cover the non-interactive parts. The mechanism still needed to work. So the crossbow was visible to a careful eye. We had covered our scent pretty well too. Even if Szandor was sweating, it would still be a few minutes before his fear sweat stink would penetrate the mud. What eventually got him was hearing. Szandor didn't move, but his heart was pounding and his breath involuntarily quickened. Even with him trying to stay calm, there was just something in his breath that the troll could hear.
The monster crouched down, its massive head becoming level with Szandor's mud covered face. My brother swears he saw something like a smile curl across the troll's mouth. The gigantic hand that wasn't holding the club reached into the mud and grabbed at Szandor. His cover already blown, he wriggled away, but the troll's hand found his jacket, yanking Szandor up in the air by the fabric. My brother dangled above the ground in front of the monster while it made a noise that was something like a coughing laugh.
"Uh, Mikkel, I think I need help," said Szandor. "Like now."
Either not understanding or not liking my brother's plea for help, the troll opened its mouth and roared in Szandor's face, spraying him with spittle and what he later called the foulest morning breath he had ever experienced.
"Uh, Mikkel?" said my brother even more sheepishly.
My crossbow bolt was now loaded. Since the troll had moved from my original firing zone, I wriggled out of the mud, that previously welcoming sludge grabbing at my legs like a jilted lover, and pulled myself into a crouch. The creature was almost definitely going to bleed to death from the chest wounds, but it still had the power to kill both my brother and I before it went to its doom. I knew we had to take action. Unfortunately, the creature's back was to me. If it were a human being standing upright, I would have the back of its neck to target. But the hunched posture of the troll hid its neck behind two meaty shoulders. Another flesh wound would make it bleed out faster, but would probably not help my brother.
This was the time for something risky. Normally, it was my brother who took the wild, unjustified risks. It was his entire reputation among hunters. But since my brother was already knee deep in shit, it was time for me to take a risk on his behalf.
"Hey asshole, over here!" I shouted while aiming my crossbow.
I'm not sure if the troll understood and resented being called an asshole or if it simply looked because of the sudden sound and new potential threat. Whatever the reason, it turned, still holding my brother, and looked at me. This was what I wanted.
I aimed for just a second, relying on quick reflexes and wild luck to see me through. I held my breath and pulled the trigger.
I was still holding my breath as the bolt launched through the air. This was my Hail Mary. If I had fucked this up, I would need to start introducing myself as The Nowak Brother (singular) and having very different Thanksgivings.
The bolt struck true, piercing the eye of the troll. I let out my breath. Yes, I had just done that thing I wasn't supposed to do. Somehow, through blind luck, stupidity, and being a cocky jackass, it had somehow worked. If this is your first Nowak Brothers story, this is how we do things around here. It's also a fact that keeps me up at night sometimes worrying about the next time.
What came next was not a roar, a squelched shriek, or any other further sound from the troll. Its body seized up and tensed for just a moment, then went perfectly limp. My brother and its club fell to the mud. The troll teetered and then its entire form fell over. With a gigantic wet schlump, the massive body hit the mud, splattering everything in the clearing with that wet gray dirt.
With a cheer, I ran over to the troll's body. It looked pretty damn dead. I wanted to poke it and confirm, but I wasn't going to use my crossbow and risk my only weapon, which was also a delicate piece of machinery. There was the troll's femur club lying next to it, but that was a bit too morbid for me. Instead I settled for using my boot. I poked it a few times, but there was no reaction. The troll was dead.
I cheered again! We had done it! We had killed our first troll! All that training had paid off!
I started doing a victory dance. Yeah, I had killed monsters before, but your first ki
ll on something you previously thought impossible was cause for celebration. I mean, seriously, if you had just laid in wait for hours to kill a massive eight foot tall monster that carried a human bone as a club using only a crossbow and your wits, you would be fucking thrilled too!
It was part way through my self-indulgent victory dance that I realized something was wrong. Where was Szandor? He should be here dancing with me or at least making some sour comment about how I should be embarrassed for dancing.
I looked around and then found my brother. He was back in the mud. Face down. And stuck, by the frantic yet futile movement of his arms against the slick gray sludge. I suddenly thought of a disabled turtle on its back. Suppressing a chuckle, I grabbed him by his shoulders and turned him back over.
He gasped for breath, his face gray and splotchy with mud. "Thought... I was... dead..."
"The troll is dead!" I said elatedly.
"Didn't want... to get killed... by mud..."
I shrugged and let him get his breath back. I resumed my victory dance.
Victorious and still covered in mud, we made our way back to Tor's camp site. We were within earshot when the bushes parted and Szandor was tackled by a gigantic dog. Three more followed and Szandor was buried in a sea of wagging tails and licking tongues. It didn't matter that he was still mostly covered with mud. Tor's dogs loved Szandor. He loved those dogs too, but nowhere near as much as they loved him. It's not like he's even the damn dog whisperer. He can't get any dogs, much less Tor's, to obey him more than the rest of us, but he's like fucking dog catnip. They love him.
Tor's daughters were chuckling as we passed through the bushes to the campsite, Szandor practically herded by the dogs. Tor's RV dominated the campsite with other tents dotted around the fire. Their other vehicle, a pickup truck, was parked on the trail they drove in on. Our van was just past that. Tor travelled the greater Avalon area hunting Trolls. Once he got a lead, he setup his RV as camp in the vicinity and used it as a base of operations. This was his life. His family had been doing it for generations with traditional monsters and trolls. When it came time, Tor decided to focus on the Avalon variety of monster. We've never seen any of the supposed "traditional" monsters, but they're supposed to be the ones you hear about in stories that the historical equivalents of the Van Helsings killed. Since we had never seen even one of the traditional monsters, it has always sounded like bullshit to us. But every so often we bump into a monster hunter who claims to be from some long lineage. I'd like to say that I'll believe when I see one, but I'll also admit that those families were clearly hunting something. Maybe if we ever leave New Avalon, we might see a different sort of monster.
Jabberwock Jack Page 1
