by Ronald Kelly
The pale beam was directed at the brass-framed bed, as were the twin muzzles of the scattergun. But there was nothing to fire at. The big feather bed was empty.
Nate and Doc stepped closer and examined the spot where Pap Wilson had once laid in agony. The sheets were twisted and soaked through with blood. The only lingering remains of poor Pap appeared in ragged tatters of clothing and the upper plate of his mail-order dentures lying near a chewed and discarded pillow. As for the parasitic worm, the only traces of its horrid existence were a few barbed quills protruding from the mattress ticking.
Where is it? Nate’s mind raced in panic. The beam of the flashlight followed a long smudge of fresh blood, like the slimy residue of a slug’s trail, crossing the hardwood floor toward the open window. Nate caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye, but too late. He whirled and fired just as the thing disappeared over the sill and into the outer darkness, leaving only a smear of fresh gore and needles along the ledge… a taunting reminder of the horrible act committed therein.
~ * ~
Nate Wilson struggled from the clutches of that ghastly dreamscape, realizing that the grist of his nightmare had actually taken place several hours earlier. He hadn’t intended on sleeping a wink that night. Since shortly after the hour of ten, when the windows of the house had grown dark, Nate had sat in the loft of the barn, gun in hand, watching, waiting for the first sign of that bristly little monster to emerge from the encompassing thicket. He knew that eventually its awful hunger would overcome its fear and would inch its way across the yard in search of an easy entrance.
A full moon was out, splashing pale light upon the immediate expanse of the Wilson property. Nate quickly dismissed the moonlit patches; it was the dense shadows in-between that worried him. From his vantage point he had a good chance of spotting the thing. If an elongated shadow started through the grass below, he could easily dispatch it with one, well-placed shot.
Or so he had intended, before falling asleep. He was fully awake now, his mind alert and instantly suspicious. Better safe than sorry, he told himself. Nate left his nocturnal perch and climbed down the rungs of the hayloft ladder. After all, this wasn’t exactly some chicken-hungry fox he was lying in wait for.
Moving swiftly, he left the barn and crossed the moonlit yard. He stopped at the long-handled pump near the back porch, set his gun aside, and cranked himself a dipperful of cold well water. Soon, he was stepping through the back door. His brother Johnny was fast asleep on the kitchen table, his breathing heavy and his slumber restless. The flashlight sat on the woodstove where Nate had left it. He now took it and started down the inner hallway. He flashed the light toward the front bedroom, but made no move toward it. The door was locked, the ugly tangle of blood-soaked bed sheets left untouched since Doc Hampton’s confused departure. Tomorrow the county sheriff would be out to investigate the incident, but that was unimportant to Nate at the moment.
A faint noise from behind the adjacent door set his nerves on edge. He turned the knob quietly and stepped inside, sweeping the walls with the beam of the hand-held light.
He had insisted that his mother sleep in the boys’ room that night. She had agreed passively and he had tucked her in, concerned with her listless mood and the glassy look in her eyes. Pap’s death had broken the old woman’s spirit, causing her to withdraw somewhere into her mind, away from the surroundings that might remind her of her husband and set the horror into motion once again.
Nate walked quietly to the bed and directed the light on the fluffy goose down pillow at the headboard. “Ma?” he whispered. His mother’s pale face stared, wide-eyed and unseeing, up at him, the muscles of her shallow cheeks twitching grotesquely. “Ma, are you all right?” Fear crept into the young man. Was she having a fit or was she in the throes of a stroke; a delayed reaction to the strain she had been subjected to earlier?
Nate’s fear changed into the wild thrill of unrestrained terror when he shined his light further downward. The bed sheets were saturated with fresh blood, the lumpy folds shuddering and shaking rhythmically. Whatever it was that moved beneath the gory bed linen, it was not the body of his dear, sweet mother. Swiftly and without hesitation, Nate grabbed the edge of the sheet and pulled it aside.
He recoiled a few feet, the light shimmying wildly in his hand. He wanted to scream. Dear Lord in heaven, he wanted to scream with all the abandon of a madman, but he couldn’t. He could only stand there and gawk, repulsed and frightfully fascinated at the sight his eyes were taking in.
Somehow the cursed thing had found its way back into the house. Exactly how was beside the point. All Nate knew was that it was here, in front of him now, and it had gotten hold of Ma. Why she had not screamed in agony like Pap had was beyond him. Perhaps it had been her state of grief and numbing shock that had kept her from crying out. It didn’t really matter now. She was far beyond help.
Ma’s body was gone. The spiny parasite had consumed her completely, clear up to the wrinkled neck, which it now sucked and chewed with relentless fervor. Ma’s face stared blankly up at her son, the jaw working, as if trying to utter some meaningful words of parting wisdom that would make her hideous death a fraction more tolerable. But no words rose from her open mouth… only a wet gurgle and a ghastly bubble of bloody spittle. A perfectly-formed bubble that abruptly burst when, with a great shuddering gulp, the toothy maw of the worm engulfed her head completely.
Nate stared at the thing and it stared back with tiny, coal-black eyes. Its prickly body squirmed, bloated to twice its normal size. Instinctively, he brought his right hand up, but it was empty. Suddenly, he remembered the awful thirst that had gripped him during his walk across the back yard. He ran into the hallway, screaming. “Johnny… the shotgun! I left it out by the pump! Get it… quick!”
He heard a frantic scramble, the slap of the back door, and soon Johnny was bolting down the hallway, shotgun in hand. “What’s wrong?” he demanded breathlessly. “What happened?”
The awful look in Nate’s eyes scared Johnny half to death. “It got Ma!” Nate sobbed, strangling on those dreadful words. “The ugly thing got her!” He traded his flashlight for the shotgun and turned toward the bedroom, every nerve in his body alive and on fire. Snapping back the twin hammers, he stepped back into the dark room. Johnny followed and directed the light of the flashlight upon the bloody bed. Nate braced himself, peering down the joined barrels of the antique twelve gauge.
The bed was empty. The petite woman who had raised them from infants to hardworking men was completely gone. But, worse still, so was the devil that had devoured her.
“Where is it?” cried Johnny. “Nate… where is it? Did it get out the window like last time?” They both looked to the room’s single window. It was closed and latched from the inside. An awful feeling gripped them both. The thing… the caterpillar-like parasite with the ceaseless hunger… was still in there somewhere!
They stood stone still for a moment, but no sound alerted them to its whereabouts. No dry rasping of long needles grating one against the other, no gnashing of razor sharp teeth. Only silence and the ragged labor of their own breathing.
“Let’s get outta here,” said Nate, grabbing his brother by the arm.
“What’re we gonna do?” Johnny moaned as Nate herded him into the hallway, then shut the door behind them. locking it and taking the key.
His brother’s eyes were wild. “We’re gonna burn that sucker out, that’s what we’re gonna do!”
Johnny was in no position to argue. Meekly, he joined his sibling in an act that some would have termed as pure madness. They first went to the tool shed and, toting two five-gallon cans of gasoline, returned to the log house they had lived in since birth. With a desperation that was almost wanton in its execution, the two splashed the outer walls with the flammable liquid, soaking the ancient logs. Nate dug a book of matches from his trouser pocket and, igniting the whole thing, pitched it at the dry brush near the eastern wall.
By
the time Nate and Johnny reached the peach orchard opposite their bedroom window, the old house was wreathed in flame. Nate checked the loads in his shotgun and waited for the fire to get good and hot. It didn’t take long. The hewn logs and chinking in-between burnt like dry tinder and, before five minutes had passed, the structure was totally engulfed.
Nate took a firm grip on the gun. His attention was glued to that bedroom window, for that was where the horrid thing would attempt to escape. The inner walls of the cabin had ignited now. As the heat rose in intensity, windows began to expand and explode like brittle gunshots. The bedroom window was the third to go.
He raised his shotgun, ready to let loose. The ruptured window stared at him like the empty eye socket of some fiery skull, but nothing moved along its sill except tongues of flame.
“Johnny,” he called to his brother behind him. “Do you see it anywhere?”
No reply. Only the crackling of the fire and the crash of timbers giving way.
Nate was reluctant to turn away from the window, but he did so anyway. “Johnny?”
His brother was nowhere to be seen. Nate stared hard into the pitch blackness, his eyes more accustomed to the brilliance of flame than the inky depth of shadow. It was noise that alerted him… a soft rustle of wet grass. His eyes focused on motion at the base of a tree.
“Johnny… is that you?” He walked a few steps closer.
Yes, it was Johnny. His younger brother lay on the dewy ground, his arms flailing frantically, his legs performing a bizarre dance of torment. The flickering glow from the house reached midway into the orchard, shedding light upon the gruesome spectacle at Nate’s feet.
The thing had somehow escaped the fiery barricade, unnoticed, and had crept up behind them, catching Johnny by surprise. It had a hold of his brother’s head and was at work with the zealous craving it had exhibited at the expense of his ma and pa. Nate raised the shotgun and pointed it at the pulsating column of the critter’s expanding body. If Johnny wasn’t already dead, he would be soon. There was nothing Nate could do for his brother… nothing but avenge his horrible demise. And Nate intended to take care of that right then and there.
The young farmer’s eyes shone with a strange emotion that was a mixture of pleasure and agony, of elation and self-destructive rage. He brought the muzzles of the shotgun flush against the bulbous head of the wretched thing and smiled. “I got you now, you filthy little bastard!”
As Nate was about to exact his revenge, he heard a rustling in the leafy branches above his head. But there was no wind that night.
Before he could pull the trigger, they began falling out of the trees.
THEN CAME A WOODSMAN
The woodsman’s axe cut deep.
In a dappling of sunlight and shade, it struck again and again, its head gleaming like pure silver. It would have taken an ordinary man several dozen blows to have chopped down such a tree. But the woodsman, with his skill and strength, dropped the mighty oak with only eight.
With a splintering crack, the trunk gave way and it came crashing earthward. He heard a grumble from the neighboring trees, but ignored them. Standing abreast of the oak, he finished the job, cleaving away branches for kindling, then separating the trunk into quarters.
When he was finished, he rested. He set his axe aside and sat with his back to a large boulder. He was not exhausted, not even the least bit tired… such was his nature. But he rested nonetheless, before continuing to the next stand of trees.
As he sat there, he listened to the sounds of the forest. Birds sang in the treetops, while toads croaked from a nearby brook. They rang like a symphony in his ears, but he derived no enjoyment from it. He felt little pleasure from such simple things, although he once had.
The sound of footsteps came from the direction of the pathway that wound through the deep forest. They were light and carefree, skipping along happily. He turned his head to see a young girl dressed in a red cloak and hood. She toted a wicker basket in the crook of one arm. From the depths of the basket he could smell the pleasant aroma of freshly-baked tea cakes and gooseberry jam. The woodsman’s stomach was empty, yet he felt no hunger.
He considered calling out to her in greeting, but refrained from doing so. He didn’t want to frighten the child.
Then she was gone on her merry way. The woodsman sat there, remembering a similar child – also a girl – from another time and place. It pained him to think of her, as well as the others. Soon, his thoughts grew heavy… much heavier than the axe he had wielded all morning… and, before long, he had fallen into a light – yet troubled – slumber.
~ * ~
He had once been a happy man; a man of the forest who seemed to be a very part it, both in body and soul. He was thoroughly in tune with nature. Since his boyhood, he had roamed the dense woods, had known every pine grove and canebrake, every rabbit hole and beehive. As a young lad it wasn’t uncommon to find him running with the deer, swimming with the fish in the lake north of the big city, or wrestling with snakes in the green moss beds.
Later, as a man who had taken on the apprenticeship of a woodcutter, his family made his life even more complete. His wife was a lovely, sensible woman from the village and his children – a boy and a girl – were his pride and joy. It was a pleasure to return to his cottage following a hard day’s work to find a bountiful meal on the table and cheerful greetings as he walked through the door. Later, after supper, he would take his pipe and retire to the bench before the hearth. His little ones would sit at his knees, eager to hear about that day’s labor and what strange animals he had encountered .
Then came that fateful night ten years ago, when the woodsman’s life had changed forever.
He had tackled a particularly stubborn stand of timber that day and had lost track of time. As the last tree fell, dusk was giving way to twilight. He set off down the cobbled pathway, aware that it was long past his suppertime. He was certain to receive a sound scolding from his wife for being so late.
As he traveled the dark forest, he became aware that something was wrong. The woods were too quiet. Nary a cricket or toad sang, nor did he hear the lonesome call of the nightbird. There was only a thick and oppressive silence, as though the wildlife of the forest had been startled into a frightened hush.
He quickened his pace. Somewhere ahead came the howl of a wolf; not a long, mournful call, but one that was savage and strangely triumphant. He looked skyward. Above the treetops hung a full moon. It was pale red in color… a blood moon, as the old tales called it. A bad omen that heralded heartache and disaster.
Soon, he was running toward the low, thatched structure of his home. Before long, he saw it ahead in a clearing, but it held none of the inviting warmth it normally did. No smoke drifted from the stone chimney and no lamplight shown from the windows.
The place was dark and desolate… like a tomb.
When he reached the entrance, he found that the door had been ripped from its iron hinges by some brutal force. The oaken boards were deeply scored, as if by the claws of some horrid beast.
As he prepared to enter the house, a cloudbank drifted in front of the moon, casting a blanket of gloom over the forest. He heard movement within the black pit of the doorway, as well a low, guttural breathing. His heart pounded in his chest as he gripped the axe handle firmly and cautiously stepped inside.
“Rebecca?” he called out. “Children?”
For a long moment, complete darkness occupied the cottage. Then the cloudbank moved onward and moonlight shown through the window panes, revealing the horror that stood before him.
It was a wolf, or something much worse than one. It was tall and brawny, its coarse gray fur glistening like spun silver in the light of the full moon. It crouched in the center of the cottage’s main room, tearing at something with its massive fangs. Then, slowly, it rose, standing on its hind legs like a man. The tips of the wolf’s ears touched the oaken beams of the ceiling, which were located a good eight feet from the floorboards.
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In the pale glow, the woodsman took in the carnage that had been wrought upon his home. His daughter lay limply across the eating table, amid shattered dishes. His son curled, crumpled and lifeless, on the forestone of the hearth, his head twisted and at odds with the rest of his body. The thick stench of fresh blood hung heavily in the air, the same way the heady scent of honeysuckle fills the air of the forest.
The woodsman took a threatening step forward. The beast stood there, holding the slack form of his wife. Her clothing had been partially torn away and her throat was an ugly, gaping hole. The wolf bared its bloody fangs and grinned, then threw back its massive head and laughed. Laughed much in the same way a man might do.
“No!” screamed the woodsman. He lunged forward, raising his axe for the swing.
But he was not quick enough. Before he knew it, the wolf had flung the woman aside and was leaping toward a side window. It crashed through the opening, taking sash, hand-sewn curtains, and glass with it.
The woodsman followed and pursued him into the dark undergrowth. He caught a glimpse of the beast as it sprang though the trees, attempting to escape. As he set off after the fiend, he found that the forest he had grown to love was now his worst enemy. Tree limbs tore at his face and clothing, and the leafy vines of the forest floor clung to his boots, threatening to trip and drag him down.
For miles, he followed the wolf’s trail, catching only fleeting glimpses of him as dark pools of shadow gave way to moonlight. The earth began to rise from the hollow of the valley. Soon, he found himself climbing the rolling, green hills that stretched to the south. Exhausted, the woodsman fought the terrain, intent on making the monster pay for the atrocity it had committed. He would find the beast and kill it, or die trying.
Finally, he found that he was gaining on the beast. He paused to catch his breath and saw the wolf, crouching on a moss-covered deadfall, staring back at him. Its horrid form – half-human, half-canine – was etched against the broad, pink sphere of the blood moon.
