by Nick Cutter
“Yet his soul was mad,” Ebenezer whispered. “Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.”
Joseph Conrad. As a boy Ebenezer had been forced to study that malarial old moper. Those lines from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness had leapt into his head unbidden. But Eb wasn’t in a jungle, was he? He was in a forest . . . and yet. The green was of a different shade. But it was everywhere.
“Did you say something?” Ellen asked him.
“Nothing of importance, my dear.”
THEY CRESTED the back of a ridge. The sun hung above the treetops.
“We’ve put eight or nine miles under us,” Minerva said. “We should find a place to camp for the night.”
They made their way across the ridge, scanning for a sheltered spot. The daylight was guttering, and they still had to pitch their tents and gather firewood. Minerva saw the Englishman staggering toward her, cursing. She did not want him to collapse—he might fall down the steep slope and break his loathsome neck, robbing her of the opportunity to slit it later on and dance a happy jig in his fountaining blood like a child skipping around an opened fire hydrant. She was half considering retreating to help him, when her thoughts were derailed by something that sat high up in a tree.
She stopped short. Ellen, who had been following tight on her heels, slammed into her back.
“What’s the—?”
Minerva heard Ellen’s breath escape in a whinny. She must have seen it, too. When Micah and Eb caught up, they also saw it.
It was seventy feet up, near the top of a ponderosa pine that had shed most of its needles. Dangling at the end of a branch. It wasn’t that big. It could have been many things. Twilight prevented accurate identification.
It seemed to have been skinned, whatever it was. It glimmered wetly. If it was a body, it could only be that of a small woodland animal. A rabbit, a kit fox. It hung from the branch on a thin strip of something-or-other like a Christmas ornament suspended on a line of filament. What predator would do that? Steal the skin of its prey and hang the body way up there?
The wind spun it in a slow circle. Spinning, spinning. Rags of flesh swayed from its limbs, as though it had perished thrashing and shrieking. The longer a person gazed at it, the more familiar its outline became . . .
“Let’s go,” Micah said.
9
THEY CAME UPON a tiny meadow carved from the trees and hunkered down. It was too dark to hike any farther.
The tents were made of heavy canvas. The poles were packed in eight-inch sections that had to be slotted together. They snapped on their flashlights and got to work. It took the women twenty minutes to set theirs up. The men muttered and griped as they struggled with their own.
“I’ll sleep outside!” Eb yelled, hurling a pole into the trees. “Bugger it all! I’ll sleep outside like a dog!”
Ellen helped the men get their tent up. She worked quickly but deftly, shooing the men aside so she could work unencumbered.
“A million thank-yous.” Ebenezer offered a bow. “I am afraid I’m all thumbs, my dear.”
Ellen curtsied. “Think nothing of it.”
Their exchanges were exaggeratedly comical—a distraction from the dread they had felt earlier while watching that small thing spin at the top of the tree.
They gathered wood and soon had a fire. The forest closed in, isolating them in that trembling pocket of firelight. Minerva pulled a Hebrew National salami from her pack; she cut it with her pocketknife and ate the thick wedges. Ebenezer drank his warm Yoo-hoos and stared at the can of beans he had brought.
“A can opener,” he said. “Ebenezer, you horse’s ass.”
Micah said, “Give it here.” He stabbed the lid with his dirk knife and levered it open.
“I am not built for such rough living,” Eb said, accepting the can back.
Knots popped in the fire. Minerva produced a flask and drank from it. She passed it to Ellen, who took a nip.
“Is it even legal?” Minerva asked. “An isolated society way out here? No laws, nobody to answer to?”
“They’re adults, is how you have to look at it,” said Ellen, passing the flask back. “It’s their right. Nobody’s forcing them.”
“Unless they’ve been brainwashed,” said Minerva.
“Yeah, unless. It’s not that uncommon,” Ellen said. “You’ve got little, what, enclaves like this all over the country. Utah, Montana, California. I went to the library and looked into it. It’s not that the authorities don’t know where they are; it’s that they don’t give a rat’s ass.”
Minny said, “But you got kids there, too.”
Ellen nodded. She had thought about that part of it quite a lot. It was—apart from her nephew’s general safety—why Ellen felt compelled to make arrangements with Micah. Nate had no choice but to go with his dad. And if Reggie wanted to devote himself to God in some remote encampment, okay. But Nate was being forced down a line, was how Ellen saw it. He was being pushed, bullied for all she knew, to accept this new life. That didn’t sit well with her. If he chose to walk that same line as an adult, fine. But to have that crucial element of choice taken away just because he was too young to make up his own mind seemed totally unfair.
“What about this Grand Poobah?” Eb said.
Ellen said, “I don’t know a thing about him.”
“We know he’s fussy about his hair,” said Minerva.
“Sherri and I weren’t raised religious,” Ellen went on. “So the idea of following someone—one person—devoting your whole life to him, it just doesn’t add up. What if he’s wrong? What if he’s nuts?”
Ebenezer said, “O ye of little faith.”
Eb said it with a smile. He thought this Bellhaven woman was a fool but a good-hearted one, and those were the best sorts of fools. He would gladly take her money. She would get a gander at this rug-rat nephew of hers. On the way back, he would pay a visit to Ruby at the cathouse in Albuquerque. Ruby did this most delightful thing with her hips.
Micah said, “You will not get him back.”
He peered across the fire at Ellen. His face was grave.
“You should not harbor that hope.”
Ellen stared back at him. “All I’m asking is to see him. He doesn’t even know who I am. He won’t remember me. I am—” She casually encircled her face with one finger. “I look different than I did then. Nate was just a baby anyway. Reggie couldn’t pick me out of a lineup, either. I just want to make sure he’s okay.”
Micah said, “Okay by whose estimation?”
Ellen’s shoulders drew tight. Her head dipped.
“You know what my sister said to me once? She said that maybe the best thing about having a child, especially a young one, was that you could love that child shamelessly. She said that you could put everything into that kid, love crazily, give everything in your heart and mind and soul over to that other person. You can’t do that for a husband or a wife, not really. The only other entity you could love that way would be God, if you’re a believer.”
She looked up again. Directly at Micah.
“You and me—we don’t understand that kind of love, do we.”
Micah blinked his eye. He said, “We should turn in.”
10
THUMP.
The first one landed softly. Micah stirred.
Thu-thump.
He cracked his eyelid. He was inside the tent. The Englishman was snoring somewhere to his left.
Thump.
Something collided with the tent. Micah heard it roll down the canvas.
He grabbed one of his pistols and crawled past Ebenezer.
“Whuzza?” Eb mumbled.
Micah pushed the flap aside. The clearing was washed in pale moonlight.
Thump. Thump.
“What the bloody hell?” Ebenezer said. He sounded like a man who had been kicked violently awake.
Thump.
That soft pattering all around them. Something e
lse struck the tent and rolled off. Things were landing on the ground with muted whumphs.
“Shug?” Minerva called out. “You okay over there?”
He didn’t answer. No sense in disclosing their position. He had no idea what manner of assault they were under.
Thump.
This one landed eight inches away, on the grass in front of the tent.
A bird. He did not know what kind. He wasn’t a birder. It was small, its body no bigger than a plum. Its wings were folded tight to its body.
Micah reached out and touched it. Cold. Stone dead.
Thump. Thump.
They continued to fall, the oddest downpour Micah had ever encountered. Ebenezer crawled up next to him. His hair was in disarray, but his eyes were sharp to the task.
“Arm yourself,” Micah whispered.
Ebenezer retrieved the Tarpley carbine. “What is it?” he said.
“Birds.”
“Birds?”
Micah pointed at the ground. Ebenezer’s fingers crept along the grass; he picked the bird up. It must have felt so light, Micah figured, seemingly hollow, but then, birds were built that way to help them fly. Its feathers were brown except the tips, which were shock white. Its beak was open as though it had died midchirp.
Its eyes were white, too. Not black, as a bird’s eyes should be. The white of mother-of-pearl or of concentrated smoke.
There came a final snapping impact—the sound of something much heavier plummeting to earth. The rain of bodies slackened, then stopped.
Micah and Ebenezer crawled from the tent. Ellen and Minerva were already out. Minerva had one Colt stashed behind her waistband, the other Colt in her right hand, and a flashlight in her left hand. Her flashlight beam swept the meadow. They were everywhere. Two dozen birds, maybe more. Most of them were the small brown-winged ones, but there was at least one large bird—a hawk, could be a falcon. None of them were struggling. No wings flapped. It was as if they had died midflight and tumbled gracelessly from the sky.
“It’s like that goddamn Hitchcock movie,” Minerva said.
“They’re kites,” Ellen said softly. “Most of these birds, I mean. They’re called kites. Their coloring’s a bit different from the ones back home, but it’s the same bird.”
“Tippi Hedren,” Minerva went on. “That broad’s got a scream to wake the dead.”
Micah scanned the trees beyond the clearing. Nothing moved.
“I’ve heard about such a thing,” said Ebenezer. “In Dunchurch, a village in Warwickshire not far from my hometown. Birds fell from the sky there one day. Hundreds, they say. Their hearts had burst. Every damned one of them.”
Micah knelt before the largest bird. Its wings were tucked tight to its body, as if it had curled into a protective ball. He tried to pull a wing back to see if it had been shot, but the flesh and bone were locked in place. That was strange in itself. All bodies were softest in the minutes after death, after the muscle and nerve spasms and before rigor mortis set in. But he could not peel the bird’s wing back.
A sharp inhale. Ellen was staring at the woods to the east of the meadow. The blood had drained from her face.
“What is it?” Micah said.
“There’s something there,” she said.
Minerva trained her flashlight. The trees fringing the meadow shone whitely in the glare, the woods impenetrable beyond. They all looked, waiting. Nothing materialized.
“I swear I . . . ,” Ellen said.
“What?” Minerva asked.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head as if to dispel a bad thought. “Just movement. Something . . . Hey!” she called out. “Who’s there?”
Micah clapped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes were wide and shocked above his hard-knuckled fingers. Micah held a finger to his lips. Ellen got the message. She nodded.
“Give him one of your Colts,” Micah told Minerva, nodding at Eb.
“He’s already got the rifle.”
“He is the best shot amongst us. You know it. Best he be armed.”
Reluctantly, Minerva handed Ebenezer one of her pistols; he stashed the Tarpley back in the tent and accepted the sidearm. Minerva pulled the second Colt from her waistband and thumbed the safety off. They faced the woods.
There. A flash. A pale flickering. It trembled through the flashlight’s beam, impossible to categorize.
Micah took a step back. He needed to widen his perspective. He couldn’t make sense of what he’d seen or was still seeing.
But he felt something out there. He suspected they all did. Watching them from the blackness past the trees. Its presence was unmistakable. It galvanized their blood and rashed their necks in gooseflesh. It seethed at them with a hunger they could feel squirming in their own stomachs—hunger, and a malignancy of purpose none of them could even guess at.
It’s nothing, Micah thought, his mind rioting just a little.
“It is nothing,” he said. “Not a damn—”
11
A FLASH. Nothing definite.
It wasn’t that it was too fast for the eye to chart—it was more that the eye rebelled, defaulting on its own optics and reducing whatever was out there to an indefinite smudge. Maybe their brains did this as an instinctive protective measure, to spare them the true contours of the thing.
What they did see was long and gleaming, like an enormous length of bone.
That was all they could make out. It was enough.
Ebenezer raised the Colt and fired. Three quick shots. Flame leapt from the barrel. Minerva’s Colt tore the night apart, making four concussive booms as she squeezed the trigger.
The gunshots trailed away. They squinted through a haze of cordite smoke. Nothing. It had left. They could feel it. That squirming insistence in their stomachs was gone.
But then . . .
Sounds to the left of the clearing—wait, the right? No, both sides. Twigs and pinecones snapped underfoot. With those came another kind of sound, more difficult to grasp. Snortings, gruntings, these weird high whistles . . . scrapings and whickerings and noises that might have made sense in isolation but taken together created a lunatic symphony.
Micah ducked into the tent and grabbed his pack. Minerva followed suit. Micah stepped into his boots; Eb blundered inside the tent to yank his own boots on.
They had one obvious escape: the trail that continued onward to Little Heaven. The one they had traveled was on the far side of the meadow, where the noises were coming from. And the meadow felt constricted now—a killing jar.
Ebenezer laced his boots with fingers that shook—just a little, but still. It took a lot to rattle him. He had seen things, done things. Once a man has witnessed a certain kind of human pestilence and seen some of it reflected in his own soul, well, that man turned hard. The last time Eb had been scared, really scared, was during the Suez crisis. But that had been a vital fear, one shared by every soldier in his regiment: of being blown to bits by an enemy mortar, his body scattered in wet chunks over the canal banks . . . of dying far from everything he knew and could draw comfort from.
But this fear—no, this worry, just a gnawing worry right now—was airy and dreamlike, because it was unanchored from any clear threat. Just noises in the dark. They could be anything. An overweight raccoon, for Christ’s sake!
But it really wasn’t that, was it? No. Ebenezer could not say how he knew that, but it was a fact. The thing (things?) in the woods was dangerous. So what he felt was, if anything, the terror of a boy who knows that something is lurking underneath his bed, even though he has never given that monster a name.
Minerva shone her flashlight on Eb. She saw the pinched worry on his face. Her breath rattled in her lungs. She wanted to run. More than anything on earth. She finished with her boots and picked up the flashlight and her Colt. The gun dangled limply at the end of her arm. It had never felt so useless. A mere toy.
The trees shook. Sixty-foot pines trembled as this thing, whatever it was, grazed their trunks. A smell wafted
to her nose—decay and a sourness that reminded Minerva of something her father once said.
You ought to kill an animal with one shot, Minny. It should never die in fear, for two reasons. For one, no creature should have to die that way. And two, when a creature dies terrified, its meat tastes sour. One shot, one kill. Make sure the poor thing never knows what hit it—
She turned to Micah in time to see him raise his Tokarev and fire. Six shots in a tight grouping. He lowered his pistol and then, sensing movement, raised it again and emptied the clip. He ejected the mag and slammed a fresh one in. He was already backing toward the trail. He hissed at the others. They began to retreat, too.
A shape broke through the trees on the far side of the clearing. The night was too thick to make out its exact definitions, but it was enormous. Shaggy and lumpy and stinking of death.
A bear. It could only be.
Minerva fired while backing away. Ebenezer squeezed off a few shots. The thing kept coming.
Something broached the trees on the opposite side of the clearing. The moonlight glossed its contours. Another bear? Micah’s head swiveled. Events occurred more slowly, the way they always did when his adrenaline started to flow.
It wasn’t a bear. This creature was slightly smaller. One of its legs stepped between the pines. Long and clad in coarse fur.
Was that a . . . wolf?
It made no sense. A wolf and a bear stalking them together? Different species didn’t team up to form a hunting party. It wasn’t natural.
Micah watched the wolf-thing creep forward. Its paw came down near one of the larger birds on the grass. Micah squinted, his head cocked at the inconceivability of what he was seeing—
What he saw was—no, no. The thing’s paw and the dead bird seemed to . . . to merge. The bird’s body broke apart, liquefying somehow, passing into the other thing’s body. It was absorbed. The thing’s flesh rippled as the bird became a part of it. But that couldn’t be. The starlight bent at weird angles, refracted unnaturally so that it merely seemed this was what had happened.
