by R. T. Lowe
“See anything?” Simon asked him a moment later.
“Trees. Maybe the wind was just blowin’ some branches aro—”
“What wind?” Simon said, annoyed. “It was right over—”
Tha-woomp
“What was that?” Robby lowered his rifle, feeling his breath catch in his throat. “You hear that?”
“Yeah.” Simon glanced all around, letting the binoculars dangle from the cord around his neck. “What the hell? Sounded like an air gun!”
Tha-woomp.
Tha-woomp.
“There it is again!” Simon said. “Where’s it coming from?” He spun in a tight circle, eyes wide with confusion. “What the hell is that?” He shrugged out of the shoulder strap and held his rifle out in front at chest level. “I think it’s coming from over that way.” He used the barrel to indicate a thick clutch of trees some thirty or forty yards up ahead and to their left. “Let’s check it out.”
“What?” Robby said, surprised. “Let’s get the hell outta here. I don’t care what it is. C’mon, Simon. People have died out here, ya know.”
“Don’t be such a little girl,” Simon said with a sneering smile. He looked at Robby, and seeing the fear in his eyes, his smile stretched over his handsome face. “What’s the matter? You wanna go home and clean your vagina? Don’t be such a pussy. Come on.” He started off down the slope.
Robby could never say no to Simon. No matter how much he wanted to. He just never had it in him. Even after all these years, to hear his little brother call him a ‘girl’ and a ‘pussy’ was the absolute worst thing in the world, as emasculating as physical castration. So Robby tagged after him like an obedient Labrador, and when they reached the bottom, they headed for a cluster of three enormous Douglas firs. Centuries ago, the trees had taken root in a straight line, one next to the other, and there had been ample space for the saplings to flourish. But now the trees were prehistorically gigantic and they competed for room, encroaching on each other’s territory like skyscrapers constructed too closely together on the same city block.
“Alright,” Simon whispered as they approached the trunks, which, Robby noted with apprehension, formed a nearly perfect wall that blocked out everything on the other side. “Whatever I saw was right around here. That deformed tree with the weird knot is there. See?” He motioned off to his left at a little hemlock that had died, probably from some kind of tree disease. “You go around that way and flush it out.” He readied his rifle.
“Me?” Robby said, his voice scratchy. “Why me?”
“’Cause I’m a better shot than you. Don’t be a pussy.”
“You gonna shoot it?” Robby asked uncertainly.
“No, I’m gonna invite it over to bang my girlfriend.”
“What if it’s a person?”
Simon’s brow wrinkled in thought as he seemed to consider this possibility. “Okay, hold on a sec. You cover the left, I’ll cover the right.” He cleared his throat and bellowed: “Hello! If you can hear me, listen up! We have guns and we’re not afraid to use ‘em. If anyone’s back there, come out slowly.”
“With your hands up!” Robby added quickly.
“We’re not cops, idiot.” Simon flicked a disapproving glance at Robby, shaking his head.
In the ethereal quiet of the forest, they waited for what seemed like a very long time. Robby felt small and foolish, and the silence was grating on him, pushing his anxiety buttons. He wished something would make a noise. Some birds chirping or a woodpecker chipping away on an old snag would be nice. He’d even settle for a gust of wind.
“Okay,” Simon said to him when it was evident that no one was coming out from behind the tree wall. “Go around that way.” He nodded to his left. “I’m shooting on sight. I don’t care what it is. We gave fair warning. Go!”
Robby gulped down his anxiety and looked at his hands. They were trembling.
“If you see anything, shoot it,” Simon said forcefully. “Whatever it is. But don’t be a goddamn fucktard and shoot me!”
“Okay.” He drew in a deep breath and moved past Simon, gripping the rifle tightly in both hands, squeezing the jitters from his fingers. A sense of dread crept up his throat but a single thought tamped some of it down: maybe this was his chance to take the bull by the horns. When his dad found out that he was the one who took the lead maybe he’d stop calling him Gump. He knew it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference to his dad, but just the prospect of earning his dad’s respect gave him the courage to keep his feet moving forward. With the trunks to his right, he went slowly, careful to keep his boots from getting tangled up in the underbrush or any branches hidden beneath moss and pine needles. When he reached the edge, he paused for a second before circling around the last tree, leading with his head, trying to see if anything was on the other side. He was literally sticking his neck out. His heart was beating so hard it seemed to shake his arms.
But there was no one there: no knife-toting psychopath; no guy in camo; no bear; no cannibal; and no lab-created monster. It was just a small clearing of ferns and some decomposing logs swimming in moss. And beyond that an emerald carpet of vegetation and lots of big trees. More forest. There didn’t seem to be an end to it. He turned back and looked for his brother, but the tree wall obscured his view.
“Hey Simon!” he called out, feeling stupid for addressing trees. He didn’t like being all alone out here even if he wasn’t really all alone. “Nothin’ here! I don’t see any tracks or anything.” He kicked at a fern and checked the ground just to make sure he didn’t miss a big pile of steaming bear crap, or anything else that might be obvious. If he missed something like that, and Simon saw it, he would never hear the end of—
A scream ripped through the forest, shattering the silence like a rock skipping across a reflecting pool.
Robby tensed up instantly, the blood in his veins freezing solid, paralyzing him in place. He recognized the voice. It wasn’t a spider crawling up your pant leg kind of scream. This was different. This was real. Filled with terror. Robby had never heard his brother scream before—not like that anyway. His heart was pounding fast and he could feel it in his ears. He couldn’t breathe. He wanted to run—but not to his brother. He wanted to run as far away as he could from this place. He wanted to get back to the Hummer and tear out of the forest at a hundred miles per hour. But he knew he wouldn’t do that (couldn’t do that); he could never leave his little brother behind. He took one unsteady step forward and then froze again. He felt like his boots were stuck in the ground. His breathing was labored. He wasn’t getting enough air. His legs were weak and rubbery.
Another scream.
This time, the sound of Simon’s terrified cry rattled Robby out of his stupor like a splash of icy water to the face. He ran in a half crouch, speeding around the wall of trees, holding his rifle at shoulder height, preparing to take aim. He didn’t know why Simon was screaming—hazy images of killer bears and mountain lions popped into his head—but he was ready to shoot whatever it might be. He cleared the last tree.
A man was standing in the exact same spot where he’d last seen his brother. His back was turned to Robby, his head bent forward and slightly to the side like he was trying to touch his ear to his shoulder. Dressed entirely in dusty orange, his shirt and pants were too big for his frame, and his shoes (basketball high tops) were different colors: one was chocolate brown, the other, mustard yellow. His hair was dark, short and as wiry as a doll’s.
Robby was too stunned to intelligently process what he was seeing. He stared vacantly at the man for a while, thinking odd and dumb thoughts: Do I know him? What’s he doing here? Is he Simon’s friend?
His heart racing, Robby aimed his barrel at the center of the man’s back. He swallowed hard and croaked out as loudly as his fear-impaired vocal cords would allow: “Hey!”
The man did nothing.
“You!” Robby tried to shout. His voice was slightly stronger this time, though not nearly as authoritative a
s he’d hoped. “I’m talking to you, mister!”
No response—again.
Robby’s feet felt numb as he forced them to shuffle forward, circling around to get a look at the man’s face—to see who he was dealing with. But after a few tentative steps, he saw someone else’s face—his brother’s. The man was hugging Simon. As Robby attempted to make sense of why a strange man in the forest would be hugging his brother, he noticed something else: blood streaming from Simon’s nose.
Robby blinked in disbelief, cemented to the spot. Simon was looking up at the sky. His eyes were bulging. And his skin was as white as the walls in Robby’s studio apartment above the garage where he worked. The man in the oversized clothes had one hand on the small of Simon’s back and the other fastened to the back of his head. His face was buried in the soft hollow of Simon’s throat and his jaw was going up and down. Up and down. Like he was chewing on something. Like he was eating.
Robby’s rifle went off. He jumped back in surprise as the weapon discharged into the ground, the noise vibrating in his chest. The deafening ka-krack echoed throughout the forest. He hadn’t intended to pull the trigger; a few inches to the left and he would have blown off his foot. His hands were buzzing from the recoil.
Simon thudded down limply to the forest floor face up, his head coming to rest on an insect ravaged branch, which propped it up like a pillow. Blood spattered across his cheeks and forehead, his eyes glassy and uncomprehending. Robby’s eyes slowly drifted down Simon’s face and his heart went cold. Then he lost his Cheerios all over his boots. Simon didn’t have a mouth or a chin and his neck was shredded. Raggedy strips of bloody flesh protruded grotesquely in every direction. Sloppy joes, Robby thought vaguely. That’s what his face looks like. Blood soaked through his camouflaged jacket from collar to waist.
Methodically, the man turned around, but Robby didn’t fully pick up on it. The blood was mesmerizing him. He couldn’t take his eyes off his brother’s face; it didn’t even resemble Simon anymore. Then the movement out of the corner of his eye finally registered in his slow-firing brain and his eyes darted from his brother’s mutilated face to the person standing in front of him.
Overcome by shock and fear, Robby felt foggy. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. Its skin was a light sandy color, and its eyes were large and gray. The lips were full and seductive—the lips of a woman. But the jaw was a man’s jaw, strong, thick and masculine. Blood coated its mouth and throat like a thick glaze—Simon’s blood. It was roughly the same height as his brother and built more like a man than a woman: wide shoulders, narrow hips. The man—he decided it must be a man—wasn’t moving. He just stared back at him. As Robby was about to pinch his ear to wake himself from this terrible dream, the man opened his mouth and his jaw unhinged like a snake’s, his chin dropping all the way down to his sternum. Robby gasped. His mouth was big enough to swallow Robby’s head whole and lined with rows of long triangular serrated teeth that simply didn’t belong in the mouth of a person.
This can’t be happening, Robby thought dimly, staring at the mouth. Things like this don’t exist. It wasn’t a woman… or a man. It wasn’t even human. And then it dawned on him: This is what everyone was talking about. This is the answer to the Ashfield Forest Mystery. This thing killed all those people. It killed the hikers. It killed the campers. It killed his brother. And it was a monster. He’d been right. The guys at the shop were right. Robby’s eyes were glued to the bloody teeth. They had to be at least an inch lo—
“Hello,” it said in a clear tenor.
“Wha…?”
“Why are you here?” Blood dripped down its chin and onto its shoes.
How can it be talking to me? Monsters don’t talk, right?
Tha-woomp.
Tha-woomp.
Two more things—Robby didn’t know what else to think of them as—had materialized seemingly from nowhere and descended on his brother’s body, tearing at it with their teeth. Like animals. Like monsters.
Tha-woomp.
Another thing appeared and joined the others, all viciously diving into Simon’s corpse in a feeding frenzy. With a sickening ripping sound one of the things tore off Simon’s leg at the hip, and then, with the limb locked firmly in its mouth, ran away as if it was a hyena stealing a scrap from a pride of lions. A thing in a red velvet jacket quickly caught up to it and bit into the femur, trying to yank it from the other’s mouth. Another thing bit into the foot, tearing the leg off at the knee while the original thief quickly swallowed down Simon’s thigh. Meanwhile, the one with the foot in its mouth crouched and sprang into the air, flipping acrobatically and landing high up in a tree, clutching the trunk with its head toward the ground, a bloody boot dangling from its mouth. The others wouldn’t give up; two more things jumped onto the trunk ten feet off the ground and slithered effortlessly up the tree. But as soon as they closed in on the one with Simon’s boot in its mouth, it vanished—tha-woomp—taking its prize with it.
Tha-woomp. Tha-woomp. Tha-woomp. Tha-woomp.
The sound of more things making their arrival in the forest—were they teleporting?—resounded all around him. It reminded Robby of air cannons. Like the T-shirt launchers the pretty young girls at the minor league baseball games he went to with his buddy Cal on two-dollar-beer-night used to shoot souvenirs up into the crowd.
The things were savaging what was left of his brother’s body like an ant horde swarming a grasshopper. Robby watched as one tore out something—a liver or some other organ—and the others fought over it with growls, shrieks and roars that seemed to cause the forest itself to cower in fear and silence. Another thing ripped off a large piece of flesh and bone from his torso and quickly disappeared with its bounty. It was the worst thing Robby had ever seen. Maybe the worst thing anybody had ever seen. But he couldn’t take his eyes off it.
“Look at me,” the thing said to Robby.
“Huh?”
“Look at me,” it repeated calmly.
He turned his head and looked into its eyes and as he did so, he immediately lost his balance. He managed to keep his feet under him, but he felt dizzy and sick to his stomach.
“Tell me why you’re here.”
His gut heaved and a wave of nausea rocked him, sending a spurt of stomach acid up his throat.
“Why are you here?” it asked in a steady voice.
“Hunting,” Robby replied sluggishly as its eyes held him in their grip. “We’re just hunting.”
“What are you hunting?”
“Deer. Black-tailed deer.”
“Do you have any other reason for being in the forest?”
“We’re just hunting. Hunting deer.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“No,” Robby said.
“I’m Number Twenty-Seven.”
Part of Robby’s brain was wondering why he was having a conversation with the monster that had just killed his brother. But the rest of his brain was incapable of doing anything besides obeying the thing. It was compelling him to respond, and to respond with the truth. “Can I go now?” Robby asked weakly. The thing only replied with a thin smile, so he added: “Are you going to let me leave?”
Tha-woomp. Tha-woomp.
It laughed. “No one can leave the forest.”
Robby saw a flash of color, and before he could react, the thing had knocked him on his back. It moved fast—inhumanly fast. His elbow was shrieking. He’d landed on something hard, and a tingling pain was shooting all the way down to his fingertips. He caught little bursts of movement all around him and then his rifle was ripped out of his hands. He rolled to his stomach and staggered to his feet, searching frantically for his weapon.
There were now three things—were they all Number Twenty-Seven?—in front of him. Other than their odd mismatched clothes (one was wearing a puffy ski jacket over a tank top, another wore running shorts with striped knee-high athletic socks, and the third had on overalls with no shirt underneath), they looked identical. He backpeda
led away from the wall of trees, keeping his eyes on the things, praying his rifle was in plain sight. He held his breath as he quickly searched all around him. Nothing but moss, ferns, branches, rocks and dirt. Hopeless.
He told himself not to panic as he twisted and turned his head in all directions, trying to protect his back—and trying to get some sense of their numbers. There appeared to be at least seven or eight, but they jumped around a lot, and he thought he might be double counting. He was thinking more clearly now, and he no longer felt dizzy. He wanted to make a run for it, but he and Simon had walked for just over an hour before stopping, which put the car at least two miles away. The things were fast—a lot faster than him—and he didn’t even know if he could find his way back to the Hummer without getting lost. He didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting to the car before they brought him down. So what was left? Yelling for help? He was in the middle of the forest. And all alone. There was only one option left. He unsheathed the eleven-inch Bowie knife from his belt holder and brandished it at the things, watching their faces, expecting them to attack.
They didn’t move.
He squatted down in a half-crouch and waved the knife back and forth across his chest just like he’d seen in the movies, just like Schwarzenegger in Commando—or was it Predator? He wouldn’t go down without a fight. He would make his dad proud.
They didn’t approach. They simply watched him.
“What are you waiting for?” Robby screamed. “I’m right here! Come on!”
One of the things opened its mouth until it was large enough to swallow a basketball. But it didn’t make a move. Neither did the others.
What were they doing? Trying to scare him? Setting him up? Robby glanced over at his brother. The things hadn’t left much behind. Simon looked like roadkill after the birds had picked it clean. He couldn’t believe that a few ravaged pieces of clothing and a red splotch in a bed of bright green moss was all that was left of his baby brother. It didn’t seem possible. Or real.
