by Chris Ward
Something stood down by the lake, its massive head lowered. It was clearly a bear, but it was enormous, far bigger than any bear he had ever seen on TV, its coat jet black, thick and shaggy, its head swinging lethargically from side to side as if searching for a scent.
Jun started to back away. He had no idea how good its eyesight was, but its familiarity with the terrain would allow it to run him down in seconds.
The trees around him were between ten and fifteen feet apart, at a consistency with having been planted, or pruned over time by a combination of man and nature. Yet, as he watched, the huge creature shifted its movement and eased itself between two of the trees, their boughs shifting and creaking, showering the bear with snow.
No bear on earth was fifteen to twenty feet wide at the shoulder. The thing was a behemoth, as big as a truck.
It was all Jun could do not to cry out. He began to back away, his eyes not leaving the monstrous bear by the lake. Behind him he could hear Dai speaking softly to O-Remo, and even though the drummer’s voice was barely louder than his own breathing, Jun could only pray that the other man would come to his senses and shut up before he caused the death of them all.
‘Sticks?’ Dai asked.
Jun gave a slow shake of the head. ‘Get him moving or we’re all dead,’ he whispered. ‘There’s a bear down by the lake and it’s massive.’
Dai dropped into a crouch. ‘How far?’
‘Less than half a kilometre.’
Dai gave a resigned nod. He passed Jun the flare. ‘That thing comes near, you point this end at it and pull the cord. If you’re lucky you’ll hit it in the face and burn the motherfucker’s eyes out, but even if you don’t, you should scare it off. The better you hit it, the longer we’ll have before it comes back again.’ He squatted down again. ‘Right, let’s get him up.’
‘What about—’ Jun started, as Dai pulled a strip of tape away and stuck it over O-Remo’s mouth.
‘He’ll be quiet,’ he said. ‘Now, get hold of his arms. Three, two, one … lift!’
O-Remo’s face contorted with pain as they lifted him up out of the snow, Dai taking most of the weight with his large shoulders.
‘Get him on to my back. He’s not heavy. I can carry him back to the ropes.’
Jun glanced back at the forest but there was no sign of the bear. The shadows were starting to lengthen in the trees though, and they had perhaps only half an hour before the gloom made it impossible to tell one shape from another.
O-Remo was groaning and jerking like a bird caught on an electric fence as Jun helped Dai haul O-Remo up onto his shoulders, wrapping O-Remo’s arms around Dai’s neck. Dai straightened up and leaned forward, lifting O-Remo’s feet off the ground.
O-Remo’s face was a sheen of sweat already taking on a frosted look as the cold air froze it to his skin. Jun carried the gear as Dai trudged a few weary steps up the slope, grimacing each time his crampons broke the surface, leaving him embedded up to his knees. Each time O-Remo’s bad leg touched down on the snow the singer gave a spastic jerk, but there was nothing either Dai or Jun could do to ease his pain. Jun stared at the trail of blood on the snow and wondered if they wouldn’t be better off leaving him to his fate.
‘Kid, see how far the rope will reach,’ Dai gasped, his forward motion slowing to a crawl as the slope began to steepen. ‘I can’t carry him much longer. We’ll have to tie him, climb up ourselves and then haul him up.’
‘What about the bear?’
Dai gave him a sour look. ‘Please stop talking about it. Things are bad enough already.’
With one fearful glance back into the shadows lengthening beneath the trees, Jun moved on ahead, digging his way back to where the ropes had run out of length. Further up the hillside, he could just about make out Ken and Akane in the shadows around the lookout. Please don’t shout out, he begged silently. Dai had warned them about keeping their voices down so as not to risk triggering any further avalanches, but seeing O-Remo alive might excite them.
Dai groaned as he reached the ends of the ropes and set O-Remo down in the snow. The singer’s eyes bulged, a low moan coming from behind the tape, which he had partially chewed through.
‘Quiet,’ Dai hissed, without any hint of sympathy. ‘Tie his hands,’ he said to Jun. Make it tight, properly constricting tight. He’s not got much blood left to lose, but he could lose his life if he slips out of the knots.’
Jun nodded. He hooked the end of a rope around O-Remo’s left wrist, pulling it tight. Then he repeated the process with the other rope. The singer’s skin felt hard to the touch, almost as if he was dead already. Only when O-Remo’s fingers suddenly closed over Jun’s hand, making him jerk back, did he realise the singer was still clinging on.
‘Karrrriiiiinnnn…’ O-Remo muttered through the hole in the tape.
‘Shut up,’ Dai said. ‘Come on, kid, let’s get up there.’
Discarding all of the gear they no longer needed, Dai and Jun left O-Remo behind and began hauling themselves back up the steep slope towards the lookout. As they came within a few metres, two of the shadows eased into clarity and Jun saw Ken and Akane standing there, knee deep in the snow around the support pillars.
‘We’ve got him,’ Dai gasped. ‘He’s tied to the ropes. Get pulling, it’s his only chance.’
‘There’s a bear down there,’ Jun added.
Akane stared at him. ‘You saw the thing that made that noise?’
Jun nodded. He wanted to describe what he had seen to her, but his mouth was dry, his throat tight.
Ken, his arms fresh, was doing most of the pulling. Akane was tugging on the other rope as Dai stood a few feet further down the slope in front of her. Jun took a place at Ken’s shoulder, taking the weight off the rope as the guitarist pulled. He couldn’t see O-Remo among what were deep shadows now, but there was no sign of the huge bear either.
It hadn’t felt so far when they were climbing up, but as they pulled and pulled with no sign of O-Remo, Jun began to wonder if the singer hadn’t slipped off the ropes after all, and all they were pulling up was an accumulation of ice and snow.
‘There!’ Ken shouted, lifting one hand to point as a shape appeared out of the gloom about twenty metres down the slope. ‘Hang on, O-Remo!’
‘Quiet!’ Dai hissed, just as the rope jerked in Jun’s hands. He hauled at it but it was immovable, as if it had caught on a rock.
‘It’s hooked over a low branch,’ Dai said. ‘Fuck it. We’ll have to go down and get him. I’ll go. Jun, cover me with that flare in case that creature shows up.’
Jun nodded. He felt Akane give his arm a reassuring squeeze as he stepped forward. Dai was already several steps ahead of him, moving towards O-Remo, who was lying in the snow a short distance beyond where the rope had got snagged on a broken tree branch.
Dai reached the tree and began to untangle the rope from the branch, then the snow lifted up in front of him, a huge drift rising out of the earth that showered him with crystalline shards of ice as he looked up into the huge, opening maw of something from a nightmare. Akane screamed. Dai was gone with one swipe of the creature’s huge, chest-sized paw, barrelling away downslope as chunks of bone and flesh left a gory plume on the snow. The creature, twenty feet tall, turned away and dropped out of sight after him, knocking the rope loose from the branch with one massive thigh.
Ken was screaming as he hauled O-Remo up to the base of the lookout, the singer’s inert body dragged through the bloody leftovers of his friend. Jun’s hands were shaking so much he dropped the flare on the ground, bent down and picked it up, dropped it again.
The third time he picked it up, he glanced back to see Akane staring down into the forest as Ken hauled O-Remo up on to the path.
‘It was waiting for us,’ she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. ‘It was there all the time, Jun.’
He couldn’t answer her. There would be time later to consider the implications of what had happened if they survived. ‘Move,’ he said,
pushing her away.
Ken was dragging O-Remo up the path towards the Grand Mansion. Even though the singer was slightly built, Ken wasn’t half the size of Dai and each step brought a gasp of near exhaustion. Jun stuffed the useless flare into his pocket and hurried after him, pushing his anger towards O-Remo out of his mind. Dai was dead because of the stupid drug addict singer and his crazy actions. It didn’t matter that O-Remo was the singer in his favorite band. Dai was his favorite drummer, and more—he had begun to like Dai as a person. And that person was now a meal for some freakishly large bear.
Despite his anger, he couldn’t leave someone to die. He grabbed one of O-Remo’s arms and together with Ken they half carried, half dragged the singer until the Grand Mansion was in sight. Akane followed behind them, keeping a watch out for the bear.
‘Hurry,’ Ken gasped, lifting O-Remo up and over the fence at the back of the staff quarters. ‘Akane, find someone who knows medical care. Quickly now.’
As the girl ran off, Ken and Jun dragged O-Remo towards the nearest door. Jun’s ears were playing tricks on him, and every rustle of the wind sounded like the scraping of claws or the growl of a huge, terrifying beast.
He expected the door to be locked, but the latch opened easily when he pressed it, and a moment later he and Ken were lifting O-Remo up onto a bare wooden table in the centre of a silent, deserted mock-British pub, with dark Guinness and Bass signs over the bar, a huge, widescreen TV against one wall, and a stuffed stag’s head protruding from a shield on the wall above a cold fireplace at the end of an eating area.
O-Remo seemed to have passed out. He was moaning, but even when Ken pulled the tape off his mouth he didn’t cry out, he just continued that low, barely audible moan with his eyes squeezed tightly shut.
Across the tabletop Ken’s eyes met Jun’s.
‘What just happened out there?’ Ken said quietly, and Jun knew from the other man’s eyes that he wasn’t talking to Jun but to himself. And Jun was thankful, because he didn’t have an answer.
29
As darkness falls
Akane’s mind was a whirlwind of emotions as she pushed through the door into the Grand Mansion, searching for someone—anyone—who might help them. Mika, sitting at the reception desk, looked up and screamed as Akane ran over, her hands cupping her face as she saw the disheveled, bloody schoolgirl.
Akane’s words came in a series of breathless gasps. ‘Hurt … a creature in the woods … killed Dai … need help.’
Mika immediately began to cry. ‘I don’t know what to do!’
Akane aimed a slap at her face, hoping to snap her out of it, but the girl jerked away and Akane’s fingers only brushed her cheek. Instead she grabbed Mika’s arm and pulled her forward.
‘Look, you didn’t see what I just saw. I saw a bear the size of a small truck rip a man’s body open. We have another man who’s going to die unless we get him some medical care. Help me. Please.’
Staring at her openmouthed, Mika nodded. She reached down and pulled up a metal box from under the desk. ‘This is our medical kit. This is all we have onsite.’
The box was the size of a microwave oven. Akane’s vain hope that there might be a doctor at British Heights evaporated. Whatever O-Remo needed, they would have to do it themselves.
Without a word, she grabbed the box and headed for the door. As she reached it, she paused, suddenly terrified that the creature they had seen would have followed them into the complex. It had been lying in wait. It had shown a level of intelligence that a door couldn’t protect against, but indoors was safer than out. Instead, she hurried down the corridor and went through the door onto the covered walkway leading along the east wing. At least here she felt less exposed, but when she reached the end she paused, squatting down and peering around the corner as if expecting sniper fire. The gap between the east wing and the shop and the pub was empty, so she darted across and down the steps to the pub door. The latch didn’t move, so she hollered, ‘Let me in!’, and Jun’s face appeared in a small window at head height. A moment later the door opened and she slipped inside.
‘This is all they had,’ she said, handing him the box after he had pulled a bolt back across the door. ‘How is he?’
‘In a word?’ Jun sighed. ‘Fucked.’
‘But he’s still alive. Unlike … unlike…’
She couldn’t finish. As a flood of tears burst out of her, she felt Jun’s arms wrapping around her back. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to get the horrifying image of the creature’s claws, ripping through Dai’s chest like it was made of sponge, out of her mind. Was it worse? Could it possibly be worse than what she had seen that day when she pushed open the garage door and found … and found … found…
(please leave me alone)
He had been looking up at her father, his eyes hopeless and lost, her best friend, her Jun, the boy whose name she had written in her elementary school notebooks with a large red heart encircling it, the little boy whose hand she had dreamed of holding as they walked through a beautiful field while butterflies fluttered around them and the sun warmed their faces. He had been the only one she could ever dream of being with, and then she had found him there, and his face and the pale, dead face of her father became forever entwined.
Yet, something had happened. As the snow fell around them, isolating them from the outside world, she had felt her nightmares being wiped clean. Jun, so long shunned and avoided, had changed. He was still Jun, but he was no longer that little boy. He was a young man, one with whom she could fall in love if only she could sever the ties to her dark memories. It was possible. The snow and the isolation made it possible.
And now this.
‘Come on,’ Jun was saying. ‘We have to do what we can for O-Remo. Dwelling on what happened back there isn’t going to help anyone.’
She nodded, and let him lead her inside. The overhead lights were on, but they only filled the room with a dim twilight glow that was probably supposed to be reminiscent of a British pub. O-Remo was lying on a table Ken had dragged into the middle of the room. Ken was sawing at the singer’s bloody trousers with a steak knife, revealing a bloody gash just below O-Remo’s knee. Akane saw an off-white colour that could have been bone in behind the ripped and lacerated flesh.
‘He’s a lucky bastard,’ Ken said, his voice strained. ‘I don’t even know that it’s broken. If we can stop the bleeding maybe he has a chance.’
Around O-Remo’s lower thigh Ken had tied a strip of cloth. Jun opened up the first aid box while Akane went behind the bar to look for some towels to wipe away the blood.
‘Bring some spirits,’ Ken said, his voice rising, near hysterical. ‘Whiskey or brandy will do. I remember this time Dai … we were drunk, we were messing around backstage before a gig … he cut open his arm and all we had to hand to sterilise it was a bottle of Suntory … cleaned up perfect. What a gig, that. What a … gig.’
Akane took a bottle off a shelf and went back to them. She set it and a handful of tea towels down on the table and went back for some water, finding a plastic bowl behind the bar and filling it up from a tap. When she returned, Ken was dabbing a towel on O-Remo’s wounds as the singer groaned. Jun was digging through the medical kit for something that might help.
‘We need antibiotics, perhaps something to help him sleep,’ Ken said. ‘I don’t know. Dai … Dai was the one who understood this kind of stuff.’
He sniffed. Akane put a hand on his arm in a gesture she hoped was reassuring, but she felt as hopeless as he looked. How long before that thing came up here looking for them? The snowy paradise where she had begun to forget the horrors of her past seemed so far away.
‘These?’ Jun said, holding up a pack of pills. ‘Painkiller.’
Ken took them off him, glanced at the label, then nodded. ‘See if you can get a couple down his throat.’
Jun lifted O-Remo while Akane pushed two of the tablets into his mouth and then poured a little water down his throat until he swallow
ed them. As O-Remo gasped, his eyes briefly opening before closing again, she could only think how none of them really knew what they were doing. The receptionist, Mika, was perhaps as clueless as they were, and hadn’t seemed willing to help. And of the others there was no sign. Part of her wished that the monster had got them too.
As O-Remo drifted off into an uneasy sleep, Ken did his best to clean the wound and bind it using tape, band-aids, and bandages from the medical kit. When it was secured as best as possible, they added a splint from O-Remo’s knee down to his ankle, using two wooden chair legs tied with more tape and another bandage. It was rough and would likely do nothing to help, but there was little else they could do.
Darkness had fallen outside by the time O-Remo was sleeping fitfully, his head resting on Ken’s bunched-up jacket, Jun’s jacket over his chest and Akane’s over his legs. The shock had got to all of them so no one had really noticed the falling temperatures, but as soon as they could relax for a moment Akane found herself shivering.
‘There’s no heating,’ Jun said. He flicked up a light switch and the lights went off and on. ‘We have light, but that’s it.’
‘Let’s get that fire lit,’ Ken said, pointing at the fireplace beneath the looming stag’s head. ‘Akane, see if you can find some matches or something behind the bar. We’ll also need some paper to get it started.’
Akane went off looking for matches as Ken and Jun started to break up some of the chairs to use as wood. At first they seemed tentative about destroying British Heights property despite everything that had happened, but soon they were smashing the chairs with casual abandon until they had a large enough pile of wood. Behind the bar Akane found a box of cigarette lighters and a couple of old boxes.
In the grate, the embers were still warm from a fire the previous night. It was almost too easy to get a fire going, and soon the three of them were sitting around it, warming their hands, with O-Remo’s table pulled as close as possible.
