CROOKED ANTLERS
I sit down, pop a piece of spearmint gum and watch the woman across from me. She’s nervous, her hands are fretting in her lap and her eyes are bloodshot.
“Long night?” I ask.
She looks up, timidly. Her face is awash in anxiety. She doesn’t understand what’s going on here. She doesn’t understand what she’s doing sitting inside an abandoned warehouse with an asshole twice her age.
It’s fine. I’ve seen it before.
“Look,” I say, loosening the tie around my neck. “It’s just like I said. I only want to ask you a few questions, then you can go.”
“Why here?” she says, in a small voice. “This looks like the kind of place you’d take me to… I don’t know, murder me.”
I crack a smile. She isn’t wrong. “You don’t like it? It’s private. Besides that, it’s probably the safest place in the world for you.”
“Why? Do you have snipers on the rafters?” There’s sarcasm in her voice, but her eyes flick to the steel walkways lining the walls. She pulls her sweater tighter around her, shivering at the draft. “Or is this some secret government fortress?”
“No, and no.” I lean back in the wooden chair, and it groans under my weight. Damn. Not as slim as I used to be. “It’s much simpler,” I say. “This warehouse is the safest place for you, because I’m inside of it.”
It’s not a lie. At least, not entirely. Still, she gives me an incredulous look. It’s the sort of look one reserves for blowhards and narcissists, and I probably deserve it. Time to change gears. “Tell me about the Event.”
She studies me for several moments, and then shakes her head. “On second thought,” she says, picking up her purse. “I think I’d prefer talking to the police.”
She stands up, makes to leave and I don’t stop her. Her footfalls echo across the empty warehouse, the haphazard lighting casting her shadow in every direction. I hear her mutter something beneath her breath, but I can’t make out the words. I probably don’t want to.
Then, she stops. They always do.
“What’s an Event?” she asks.
I click my pen, and reach down for my clipboard with a groan. The last job did a number on my ribs. “An Event,” I explain. “Is a paranormal phenomenon, most commonly characterized by contact with a sentient entity. To use a more common turn of phrase, it means you stumbled across an urban legend.”
She swallows. At this distance, I can just barely make out her expression, but I already know I have her. I bring my pen to my clipboard and clear my throat. “You said your name was Amanda Haynes, correct?”
“Yes.”
I scribble it down. “And the Event occurred two nights ago, just outside city limits in the Cascade Mountains?”
Her sneakers patter across the concrete floor as she returns to her chair. Her expression shifts; gone is the nervous shyness, the small posture and the darting eyes. She’s staring at me now. She’s deciding whether she’s in or out.
“Yes,” she says at length. “It was in the woods. We were camping.”
I check three more boxes on my clipboard. “Stupendous.” So far the location matches up with previous sightings of the beast. I sigh, resting the clipboard and my lap and place my pen on top of it. “Why don’t we start from the top?”
“Before we do,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “How do I know I can trust you? This feels so... “
“Bizarre?” I offer.
“Dramatic. Like I’m in an episode of the X-Files.”
“Fair point. You’ve seen my badge.”
“Badges can be faked.”
I bring a hand to my face, tracing along deep scars. “How about these? You don’t get these working for television.”
She’s quiet, skeptical, and her eyes drift down to the clipboard on my lap. She’s analyzing it. Determining if it’s a real government form or not. All things I’ve seen before. She wants to believe, but she isn’t ready yet.
“Let me ask you this,” I say, handing her the clipboard. She begins looking it over. “When you told the search and rescue team a monster attacked you, did they believe you?”
Her eyes meet mine, and I see it: the surrender. She knows as well as I do that I’m her only shot. What she doesn’t know, is she’s my only shot too. I’ve been looking for this legend for close to forty years now.
One might say it’s been my life’s work.
“I see your point,” she concedes. “Let’s get this over with.”
She passes the clipboard back to me and I click my pen, bringing it to the box labeled ENCOUNTER. “Alright. You said that you were camping. Who was with you?”
“Just Rachel,” she says. Her eyes are filled with something. Guilt, maybe. “We’d been friends since elementary school. We hiked together pretty often.”
“Ah,” I say, noting her name on my clipboard. “Rachel Tully, correct?”
The victim.
Amanda nods. “We went up to get a break from the doldrums of city life. Rachel just got out of a pretty serious relationship, and I didn’t want her cooped up in that apartment, stuck with all those memories.”
Her voice cracks. Emotion spills into her words. “I suggested we take the weekend and go for a hike into the Cascades. There’s an old trail we spotted the last time we were up there, just off the main path. I said we could follow that, see where it leads us.”
She brings a sleeve to her face, wiping at forming tears. “Rachel didn’t want to. She said she was too depressed to shop for groceries, much less go on such a big hike. I convinced her eventually, though.”
“I see,” I say quietly. “How long was the hike?”
“I don’t know. It was a really old trail, overgrown in parts. There weren’t any mile markings.”
“Ballpark it.”
“Eight miles, maybe? We left early that morning, and it took us seven hours to get up there.”
I whistle, scratching at my gut. “That’s quite the walk.”
“It’s not that bad, honestly. We’d both done longer hikes, on harder trails. We actually didn’t go as far as we intended.”
“Why’s that?”
“We came across an old cabin. It was run down, with shattered windows and it looked like it hadn’t been lived in for decades.”
My breath catches. I swallow the excitement before it has a chance to leak into my voice.
“A cabin?”
She nods.
I’d gone looking for that cabin a hundred times. It was never there.
"What sort of cabin?"
Her eyes leave mine, they’re gazing off at some distant point on the ground, transfixed. She’s replaying the memory. “We figure it must have been an old ranger cabin, which would explain the overgrown trail that led us there.”
She pauses, her mouth hanging open, words struggling to break free. “Rachel suggests instead of using our tents, we could just stay inside of it. I remind her the windows are busted and it’s the middle of November. Plus, it’s probably filled with spiders. She says all the better. Let’s set up our tents inside the cabin. Double the protection.”
Amanda gnaws on her bottom lip, her voice growing smaller and smaller with each passing sentence. “There’s dark clouds above us. It was supposed to rain, but it looks worse than that now. A lot worse. It looks like a storm’s coming, so I agree and we head inside to check the place out.”
“What did it look like on the inside?”
"It looked like... a nest. We spend some time walking around it. It isn’t very big, there’s only a handful of rooms, but there’s… branches and leaves all over the floor. Every step we take, there’s a snap of a twig.
"The entrance leads through a small kitchen alcove, with a wood stove and dining table, past that it opens up to a living area with some rotting chairs, and at the very end is a bedroom filled with splinters from a broken bed frame. The place is a mess."
The layout sounds familiar. I can almost smell the cedar and feel the toasty warmth of the wood stove burning during cold December evenings.
“I check out the bedroom first,” she says. “I spot a couple of shattered picture frames. Call it the millennial blogger in me, or call it dumb curosity, but I’m drawn to them. One is old, yellowed and faded. It looks like it could be from the thirties. It’s a picture of a young man and woman, dressed to the nines. Probably their wedding day.”
She smacks her lips, and then looks up at me. “Do you have anything to drink?”
I nod. “Of course.” I reach down and unclasp my briefcase, opening it up to reveal a stack of documents and three water bottles. Two filled with water, one filled with a black grime. I grab the two filled with water, crack them, and pass one to her. We both take a sip.
“Thanks,” she says, wiping her lips. "All this talking works up a thirst.”
"Sure," I say. "And the other picture?"
“The other picture is more recent. I mean, still old, but not ancient.” She laughs, but it’s a nervous, self-conscious laugh. “It’s a photo of an older guy, and a young kid with this mess of black hair. The two of them are standing outside the cabin holding rifles.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah, I figure it’s probably the ranger that lived there, back when the cabin was operational. Before I can check out anything else though, I hear a snap. It sounds like wood cracking in half, and then a crash. I drop the picture frame and Rachel starts screaming from the other room.”
“Screaming?” I lean forward, my pen scratching at the clipboard. It feels too early for the Callous Man to appear. Certain criteria haven’t been met. Still, if the work of my late colleagues has taught me anything, it’s that legends can evolve, and I keep an open mind to that.
Amanda nods. “Yeah, she’s screaming bloody murder. I storm in there, my bear mace in hand, expecting to see a wolf or cougar or bear, but I don’t see shit. I don’t even see Rachel. I call out to her, and she calls back, but she’s whimpering. The sound is coming from the pantry, just outside the kitchen alcove.”
“I look toward it, but I don’t see her there. I jog over, wondering what the fuck is going on, when I catch sight of the floorboards inside of it. They’re busted. Splintered and shattered. There’s a dark hole in the ground, one big enough for a man to fit through. I almost have a heart attack when her arm reaches out of the blackness.”
Amanda closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. “She shouts at me to get her out of there. I tell her to give me a second, and I take off my jacket and put it over the jutting pieces of broken floorboards, because I don’t want her getting impaled on the things, and then I reach down and pull her up. She’s bawling her eyes out, hyperventilating and once she’s firmly out of the pit, she’s pointing to her foot. I ask her if she’s hurt, and she tells me thinks she twisted her ankle.”
Pieces of Amanda’s Event are beginning to connect in my mind. The twisted ankle. The panicked friend. They’re all familiar ingredients, and the end dish is anything but delicious.
She keeps talking. “Rachel says we need to get help right now, and I’m a little thrown off by her panic. I mean, it’s a twisted ankle, not a death sentence, right? Still, I pull out my phone and check for service. Predictably, there isn’t any. I ask Rachel for hers, and she can hardly speak. She’s still pointing, but this time it isn’t at her foot. It’s at the hole in the cabin floor.
“She keeps whimpering about dead things. Over and over. Dead things. Dead things. Dead things. I’m wondering if I just became a party to my best friend having a psychotic break, but I give her the benefit of the doubt and check out the hole. It’s dark enough that I can’t see the bottom, so I flick on my phone’s light.”
Her fingers play at the tips of her hair. Tugging at it. “It takes me a bit for my eyes to adjust, but once they do, my blood goes cold. There’s bones littering the ground. Deer bones. Rabbit bones. Then there, at the edge of my vision, I catch sight of a human skull.
“I’m swearing up a storm, and my imagination’s going haywire. Rachel’s hysterical, and I’m feeding into it, both of us are repeating the words ‘what the fuck’ like it’s a personal mantra.”
Amanda takes a breath, holding it for a few moments. There’s goosebumps on her arms. Even reciting the account is beginning to work her up. She exhales. “Then I remember I’m not living inside of a horror movie. I remember what I thought Rachel was screaming about in the first place. I tell her to relax, that it’s probably just a mountain lion, or a grizzly's dumping ground.”
“In the basement?” I ask.
“Sorry,” she says, hastily. “I probably should have mentioned it earlier, but the cabin’s raised off the ground on these wooden stilts. Where I’m at, it helps thing’s avoid getting trapped beneath snow. There’s a crawl space beneath it. I figure an animal was probably using the crawl space as some sort of shelter.”
I check a box on my form. The story matches up, so far at least. The cabin is identical to the one in my memories. The question is, did she really encounter the Callous Man, or some rabid wolf? A human skull is a promising detail, but it’s not like predators don’t occasionally snack on hikers.
“A logical conclusion to draw,” I say. “Does it calm your friend down?”
“Yeah,” Amanda says with a nod. “Rachel starts to breathe a little slower. She relaxes a little. Eventually, she’s ready to try standing, and she can — but just barely. She limps over to a dusty wooden chair near the fireplace and sits down in it, grimacing. She tells me she doesn’t think she can make it back down the mountain.
“There’s a crack of thunder in the distance. I walk over to the windows, and see the sun turning a blood red, setting over the tree line. Storm clouds are rolling in. Rain starts pitter-pattering on the cabin roof. Rachel’s groaning in pain, and she shows me her phone. It doesn’t have service either.”
“You were picked up by a search and rescue team, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How’s that, if you had no way of contacting them? You weren’t gone longer than anticipated.”
Amanda sighs. “I was just about to get to that, actually.” There’s an undercurrent of annoyance in her tone, she clearly doesn’t care for interruptions once she gets going. I lean back in my chair. All the better for me.
“Like I said, Rachel and I go on these sort of hikes pretty often. Me more than her, but still. I come prepared. All-weather clothing, bear mace, flint and steel. You name it, I got it. I don’t cut corners, so I made sure to pack my GPS locator beacon. It sends a one-way distress signal.”
“Ah,” I say, noting it in the report. “A survivalist.”
The fire in her eyes falters, and she pauses. A moment of silence stretches between us, and when she starts talking again her voice cracks. “Not as much of a survivalist as I should have been. Rachel wants me to use it, but I tell her no.”
Odd.
“Hear me out.” Amanda’s eyes connect with mine, and there’s a pleading expression on her face. A desperation to be understood. “Rachel wasn’t in any immediate danger. Not then. Neither of us were. Plus, a storm was rolling in, and it looked like a big one.”
She takes a shuddering breath. I know the look. Memories are clawing at her mind. “My father was a search and rescue technician. He was killed trying to rescue a couple of teenagers who got themselves trapped in a cave.”
Ah, there it is.
The tragic backstory. I was wondering when it’d squirm its way out of her mouth. Somehow, all the human stupidity in the world can be traced back to our emotions overriding our will to survive. I scratch her reasoning down on the clipboard.
“I didn’t want anybody risking their lives when we had food, shelter, and weren’t in danger. I told her no. No way. I— I couldn’t have that blood on my hands if something went wrong and…” She trails off.
“... And Rachel understood.”
Amanda gets quiet. She’s staring at me, and there’s that same look I’ve seen a thousand times before.
I want to roll my eyes, I want to spit in her face for being such a naive idealist, but I hold it down. Instead, I plaster an understanding smile on my lips, and nod my head sagely. “You made the right choice. It was the only choice you could have made, knowing what you knew in that moment.”
It works. She perks up. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“So the two of you decide to stay inside the cabin then? You’re not worried about the bear or cougar using it as a snack bar might swing by?”
“At that point, we don’t really have another choice. I’m the outdoorsy type. I’ve seen storms, and I know that the one coming our way is going to be a big one. We decide the cabin’s our best bet, but we take precautions. I keep my bear mace close by, and we close all the doors. A cougar isn’t going to open a door, and a bear might break it down, but only if it feels it needs to. It’s far more likely to wander into the crawl space, safely away from us.”
“Sure. Makes sense.”
“I decide to put an extra layer between us and the front door though. Just in case. I clear out the busted bed frame and sweep the splinters from the bedroom floor, then I get to work setting up the tent.” Her voice dies. Memories are calling to her again. Difficult memories.
“What happened?” I ask, the hairs on my arms rising. “Did you see something?”
She nods. “Yes. Animals were running through the clearing outside of the window. They were running past the cabin. Deers. Rabbits. Then a whole flock of birds burst through the tree tops and started flying over us.”
I lick my lips. Yes. This is very promising. My pen scratches at the clipboard in excitement. The Callous Man has a defining characteristic, one unique to him in the realm of legends. He always comes from the same direction. Always.
“Which way were the animals running?” I ask.
Her voice is small. Brittle. I barely hear it over the sound of my pounding heart. “South,” she says.
I write the word, and underline it three times. My fingers are shaking with excitement. My mind’s racing. After so many dead ends and broken threads, so many killed and missing, it’s finally coming together. I’ve found one. A survivor, and not only that, but one that might still have the Link.
“How many animals were running?” I ask. I know the answer, but I need to hear her say it.
It takes her a second to get the words out. They’re uncomfortable for her. Disturbing. “All of them,” she whispers. “It was like... an exodus of life.”
My heart hammers. My breath quickens. All of it, each detail of her story means one thing.
The Callous Man is coming.
I take a breath and stand up from the chair, stretching my legs. My back feels like it’s been crushed between two boulders, and sitting for any length of time always turns it into a pin cushion. Still, I couldn’t be happier.
“Everything alright?” she asks.
“Peachy.” I pick up the clipboard and clear my throat. “What happens after the animals flee the tree line?”
She opens her mouth to speak, but stops. Her eyes glance down to my open briefcase, staring at the manila folders and the crinkled old water bottle, filled with grimey black fluid. “Why do you have that?” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Its label is… yellow. It looks like it’s twenty years old. What’s that gunk inside?”
I scowl, kicking my briefcase closed. “An experiment. It’s nothing to concern yourself with. Now then, if you wouldn’t mind continuing, I’d like to hear what happened following the exodus.”
There’s a moment of shared disdain between us. She feels like I’m hiding something from her, and I feel like she’s putting her nose in places it doesn’t belong. Thankfully, it doesn’t last long, and she continues her account.
“Rachel calls my name from the main area, then she limps into the bedroom, leaning against the doorway. She looks really shaken up. She asks if I saw all the animals taking off, and I tell her I did. Her eyes are getting wide and I can tell she’s throwing herself into another panic attack, so I… I tell her that they’re probably just running from the storm.”
“Do you believe it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? It seemed like the only logical reason, but at the same time the whole scene felt so eerie. So wrong.” She opens her water bottle and takes a drink. “Either way, it’s not like I’m gonna start feeding into Rachel’s paranoia. One of us has to be calm, right?”
I shrug. “Sure. You said the sun was setting when the animal’s made a run for it. Is it dark yet?”
She nods. “Mostly. I mean, the last rays of sunlight are just barely peeking over the treetops. The storm’s making it worse. The clouds are blocking a lot of the light. I get a move on with finishing setting up the tent, and we set up this LED lantern that Rachel brought. It… feels weird.”
“In what way?”
“The silence.” She pauses, shakes her head and then mutters something. “Sorry, that’s the wrong word. It isn’t silent. The wind is howling and the rain’s coming down pretty hard, but there’s no sounds of life. No crows cawing, no squirrels chattering. I don’t even see any bugs in the cabin, despite a whole shit load of spiderwebs.
“I brush it off though. I keep telling myself one of us has to be calm. So we close the bedroom door and settle ourselves into the tent. Neither of us have much of an appetite, so we eat a couple of protein bars for supper and pull out our books. We don’t talk. I don’t even know if we actually read — I know I don’t. I stare at the words but my mind’s a million miles away, too wrapped up in the feeling that something is wrong with this place. Something’s wrong with this scenario.”
She sighs, running a hand through her blond hair. “I chalk it up to the darkness. Things always seem scarier in the dark, you know?”
I nod. The dark has always had a powerful effect on human beings. It makes it more difficult for us to see our enemies, and in my line of work, easier for them to see you. It’s a lose/ lose environment. Unfortunately, it’s often a necessary one.
“You don’t talk at all?” I ask, sitting back down in my chair.
“Not at first," Amanda says. "After ten, maybe twenty minutes, Rachel breaks the silence. She asks if we should use my rescue beacon, since it’s getting pretty bad outside. I know that’s not why she wants to use it, though. Not the real reason. I remind her that we can weather the storm in here, and call for help in the morning once the storm clears.”
Amanda screws up her face like she’s holding back a wave of emotions. “I manipulate her. I remind her my dad was killed during a botched search and rescue job, all because some teenagers couldn’t exercise a little bit of common sense.”
I study her. Perhaps she’s more cunning than I thought. Naive though. Still so naive.
“Rachel lets up. She agrees we can call in the morning. I can tell she’s scared, and honestly, so am I, and I know what we’re both thinking so I blurt out that there’s no such thing as monsters. I tell her we’re…. Fucking adults, and we’ll deal with this.” Amanda chuckles, it’s a small thing, full of disbelief and regret. “I promise her we’ll laugh about it in the morning.”
The woman’s not bad with a story. I idly wonder how popular her blog is. Unlike the gum in my mouth, her words have flavor. I dig in my jacket pocket and pull out my pack, popping a fresh piece free. Spearmint. It’s not a cigarette, but it’s the next best thing.
“Famous last words,” I say with a grim smile. “What’s Rachel think of your peptalk?”
“She… she’s fine with it, at first. I think she might even be on board. She doesn’t want to spend the night terrified anymore than I do, so anything that makes that fear a little smaller is a welcome distraction.”
Amanda swallows, and her expression goes blank. “It seems like everything’s going to be just fine, like it's just another overnight hike. At least, until we hear the footsteps outside.”
Here we go.
“There’s a creaking sound — like old wood straining under something’s weight. It’s hard to hear over the roaring wind, but given of our mental states, it’s practically unmissable. Something’s outside. The footsteps are slow, gradual. Whatever’s out there is taking its time, and both of us are frozen in fear.
“Rachel grabs the lamp and turns it off, and I suddenly realize just how dark it really is. It’s pitch. I can barely see Rachel, and she’s sitting close enough that we’re touching. It’s just us, the storm, and the sound of footsteps now. I whisper to her that it’s probably a deer, or maybe a mountain lion or just some kind of animal looking for shelter from the storm.”
Amanda's eyes are glazed, her hands picking at the fabric of her jeans. She’s lost in the memory.
“I don’t believe it myself. Something inside of me is rioting and telling me that we’re not safe. We haven’t been safe since the moment we walked into that cabin, and we won’t be safe until we’re far away. Still, I take a breath. I repeat that stupid internal mantra that one of us needs to be an adult. One of us needs to be rational.
“So we wait. I whisper to her that all the doors are closed. No animals are going to get inside. We’re safe. We’re safe. I keep repeating it, like if I say it enough, I’ll start believing it too. I do my best to reassure her and stave off another panic attack.”
Amanda uncaps her water bottle and takes a quick swig. Her hands grip it, squeezing, and the plastic crinkles. “It works. Maybe. I can’t see her, but I can’t hear her either. She’s not screaming. It’s good.” She swallows. “Then I realize things are bad. Really bad.”
“Why?”
“We hear this sharp whining sound — like rusty hinges, and we recognize it. It’s the front door of the cabin. Something opened it. The next second, the sharp whining is followed by dull thuds, like heavy footsteps. The floorboards groan, and we hear it, whatever it is, moving through the kitchen and into the main area.”
I remind myself to keep writing, but it’s hard. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, the moment when I can finally determine whether or not she’s actually encountered the monster I’ve been chasing my entire life.
“I’m clutching my can of bear mace to my chest, and Rachel’s whimpering beside me. I’m hissing at her to be quiet, to shut the fuck up, because I know that if whatever’s out there hears us, it’s going to come in here.
"She listens. Neither of us move, we just listen for the footsteps. Thunder’s crashing outside, and the weather’s screaming through the busted window, but somehow in spite of it all those footsteps are clear as day. I couldn’t tune them out if I tried."
Her fingers find the armrests of her chair, and she grips them. They scratch against the tattered wood. “I pull the safety tab on my bear mace, ready to blast something if that's what it takes. Rachel grabs my arm, and I feel her hand trembling, her whole body is. Something smells like piss, and I realize it’s her. She’s losing it.
“The footsteps get closer. They’re halfway through the living area now, and they’re approaching the bedroom door. Whatever’s out there is close enough that we can hear this… snickering sound. Like really fast, short breaths. Nyeh nyeh nyeh. It doesn’t sound human, but it doesn’t sound like any animal I’ve heard either. It sounds like a nightmare.”
I circle a box on my clipboard, identifying the sound as CORRECT. According to more recent eyewitness encounters, the Callous Man snickers before engaging with his prey. An evolution of his mythology. In my memories, I recall only the screaming.
Amanda keeps talking.
“Rachel’s squeezing my arm so hard that it hurts. Her nails are digging into me and I can feel her warm piss on the bottom of the tent, it’s soaking through my jeans but I don’t care. I don’t do a damn thing. I can’t, because as soon as I make a sound or a move, those footsteps are going to get faster, and something’s going to open the bedroom door and then I don’t know what happens.”
She stops talking. Tears are forming in the corners of her eyes, and she grips her sweater sleeve and dabs at them. “Rachel… Rachel can’t take it anymore though. She reaches across me, hissing at me to give her the rescue beacon. She’s begging me to activate it, and I’m trying to get my hand over her mouth and shut her up but she’s desperate and she’s fighting me.”
“The footsteps pick up their pace. They’re walking toward us, these heavy thumps on the creaking floor. I whisper to Rachel if we send the distress call, the beacon’s going to start beeping.”
Tears slip down her cheeks and Amanda stares, transfixed at the concrete floor. There’s something swimming in her eyes, and I think it’s self-loathing, but I can’t be sure. All I know is it’s familiar. “Continue,” I say.
“Rachel gets hold of it. She hammers at its buttons, and it works. It starts beeping. The signal’s sent.” Amanda’s voice trembles, her lips quiver with the onset of her next words.
“The bedroom door opens. It’s this long, drawn out screech and both of us freeze. It’s just the rusty hinges, and the beacon beeping. I want to scream. I want to run. I think we both do, but we’re too afraid. We’re paralyzed.”
She swallows. “I get my finger ready on the trigger of the bear mace. I don’t want to use it inside. It’ll probably fuck us up just as bad as whatever’s standing in the doorway, but I’m ready to if I have to. Moments pass, and all we hear is the beacon beeping, and the rain and thunder outside.
“Then, there’s that snickering again. Fast and raspy. It’s followed by footsteps, and now that it’s in the room with us it sounds big. The tent shakes, the whole room shakes. It’s dark enough that we can’t see so much as a shadow through the canvas of the tent, but soon we don’t need to. The footsteps start circling us, and then a finger presses to the wall of the tent and begins tracing around it.
“Whatever it is, it starts sniffing. Softly at first, then louder and with more intensity. I realize it isn’t a man, it’s some kind of animal. It sounds beastlike. Feral, and hungry.”
Amanda closes her eyes, putting her head in her hands. She takes a moment and groans. When she looks up again, her eyes are hollow. “Rachel can’t stand it. She screams. She screams to leave us alone. She screams we have a gun. She turns on the lantern and tells it to fuck off, go to hell, die in a fire, you name it.”
“I’m going to assume that didn’t go over well.”
She rubs her arm anxiously. “I don’t know. It didn’t seem to hurt things. It left the room— walked into the living area, but then it stopped. It didn’t leave the cabin.” Her voice trembles.
“What happened after he — after it walked into the living area?”
“Rachel hisses at me that we should run,” Amanda says. “I remind her that her ankle’s fucked. She barely limped into the bedroom, how far does she think she’s going to get in the woods, over uneven ground that’s slick with rain? She tells me if we stay here, we’re both going to die.”
Amanda shivers. “I know she’s right. I know it, but I can’t bring myself to leave. It feels like the tent’s the only thing keeping that thing away from us. Like, as long as the canvas is between us, it can’t see us and we can’t see it. It doesn’t exist.”
It takes everything I have not to roll my eyes. Still, I flip a page on the clipboard and keep a neutral expression. Her perspective is not unlike a child’s. People often approach terror with irrational and sometimes nonsensical methods of survival. Of course, there’s nothing magical about her tent. There’s nothing about it that will save their lives.
“Continue,” I order.
“It starts with a creak of a floorboard. We hear it walking again, but it’s not coming toward us. It’s pacing back and forth, out there in the living area, and it’s snickering faster than before. Soon, the snickering gets heavier. Violent. It starts grunting, then growling.” She takes a breath, and chokes back a sob. Tears race down her cheeks, and her eyes are alight with terror.
"Then it goes silent. No movement. No grunting. No weird fucking snickering. Just the thunder outside, the howling wind, and the rain on the roof. I’m sitting there, clutching the bear mace and Rachel’s crying, and both of us are praying it’s gone. We’re praying it’s just given up. Decided to move on. And… and...”
“And what?” I press.
She meets my gaze with her own, and a hopeless horror swims in her eyes. “... And then the entire cabin shakes. Footsteps pound on the floor, and there’s this hateful, agonizing sound, like a hundred human screams mixed together and poured out of a single voice. Rachel and I lose it. We’re shouting, crawling over each other trying to unzip the door of the tent and get the hell out of there and then our world turns upside down.
“It’s like we’ve been thrown in a washing machine. My head cracks off her knee and we’re rolling around, bouncing in this cacophony of sound and fabric and then I realize the tent's been lifted off the ground. Above me, in the light of the LED lantern I see two crooked, broken antlers piercing through the canvas. That monster’s throwing us around, bucking like a damn deer.
“Soon the tent canvas tears and we fall free, crumpling to the ground in a painful heap. Rachel’s scrambling over me, holding the lantern in her hand and in the madness of it all I see her make a break for it toward the window. As she does, the light passes over that… that fucking monster.”
Amanda chokes back tears and sniffles. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I just need one second.”
“Of course.” I reach into my jacket pocket and retrieve a set of tissues. I pass them to her. “Here, blow your nose.”
She does. When she’s finished, both of us sit in silence for a moment. Her bottom lip quivers. “It must have been eight feet tall. It was crouched over, humanoid except its chest was covered in fur and its legs were scaly, like a bird’s. It had a long tangle of black hair and… and its antlers jutted out from its eye sockets.”
I mark the details down in excitement. Yes. Good. It’s a near-perfect description. It’s missing only a few key things. “The antlers,” I press. “Can you describe them?”
“They were crooked,” she says, slowly. “They came out at odd angles, both different, and around them was a halo of eyes. Tiny black ones.” She closes her own eyes and takes a stuttering breath. “I almost missed them except they all blinked in unison, and I remember thinking it was the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen.”
“The fact that all of them blinked?” I ask.
“No. The fact that all of them were looking at me.”
“Did it attack you?” I have to know. The defining characteristic of the Callous Man is his method of attack. If she nails it, then I’ve got her. I’ve got my Link, and I’ve got him.
She shakes her head. “No. I thought he might, but then Rachel makes a racket. She’s throwing herself up onto the window ledge, and then she falls over the other side. The creature turns toward her, snickers, and launches itself at the window. It seems like it should be too big to fit, whatever it is, but it isn’t. It’s like a snake, the way its body contorts to fit itself into the window frame. It perchs there, and I see at the bottom of its scaly feet are these thick claws, and the hands it uses to grip the window have thin, impossibly long fingers. It drums them on the wall, before it launches itself after Rachel.”
My pen races across the form, filling in details and circling boxes as the information presents itself. This is very good. I’ve waited my entire life for this moment.
“I sit there for a second, in too much shock to move, and then I realize my friend is out there being chased by some… some fucking monster. I get to my feet and turn my phone’s light on, and in the distance, through the rain and swaying trees, I can see Rachel’s light, bobbing in the darkness.
“I call out to her. I shout her name, but she either doesn’t hear me or she doesn’t care. I scan the area for the monster, but I don’t see a thing. I lean out the window, looking around the cabin, using my phone’s light to illuminate as much as I can, but it’s not there. The monster’s vanished.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t take your opportunity and run,” I say. “The creature was clearly more interested in Rachel.”
Amanda glares at me. There’s a stubborn defiance in her eyes, and I have to remind myself that most humans have a perverse obsession with self sacrifice. Maybe it’s the Hollywood brainwashing, maybe it’s the fact that they just haven’t suffered enough, but they can’t get enough of it. Before she even speaks, I see it in her too.
“I couldn’t leave her,” Amanda snaps. “I was the one who dragged her out there on that hike. I was the one who suggested we follow that stupid, overgrown trail. I was the one who refused to use my locator beacon before it was too late. All of this was my fault. If I walked away from her then, I could never forgive myself.” Her voice breaks. “I still can’t.”
Time to get a move on. “You went after her then?”
“Yeah… I clambered through the window and took off, following her light as best I could. I had the bear mace in one hand and my phone in the other. The light from my phone wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep me from tripping on roots or running into trees. I kept calling Rachel’s name. Kept telling her I was coming.”
“She can’t have gotten far with a twisted ankle,” I say. “Then again, adrenaline can do incredible things.”
Amanda shakes her head. “She wasn’t moving that fast, at least compared to me. I was gaining on her. I could just barely see her silhouette ahead of me, and the LED lantern bobbing up and down as she limped away. Then the light drops. Rachel’s silhouette vanishes, and I hear her scream.
“I double over, running with everything I have. My lungs are burning and my feet are slipping on the mud but I don’t care. I’m not thinking anymore. I’m acting on pure instinct, and my instincts are telling me that if I don’t get to Rachel soon, that creature’s going to kill her.”
The words stop. Amanda’s body trembles, and she breaks down. She can’t hold it in anymore. The torrent falls out of her, and her face gets ugly as she sobs into her hands. It doesn’t take long before her palms are glistening with wetness, but to the girl’s credit, she forces herself to keep going. She doesn’t quit.
“Rachel’s screams stop. I can’t see anything really. The lantern’s on its side far ahead of me, and I can just barely make out a shape in the darkness. It’s the sound that still haunts me though.I think it always will.”
“What sound?”
“This wet, tearing sound. Like skin being ripped, and blood splattering the ground. It’s followed by a dull crunch, and then I hear slurping. Swallowing. I charge forward and I’m basically just adrenaline at this point. I hold my phone up as I close the distance and I see… I see it.”
She takes a sobbing breath. “I see the man with crooked antlers. He’s crouched over Rachel’s corpse, and one of her arm’s has been torn in half, dangling by a thin strip of flesh. It’s missing her hand. Blood is everywhere, and it’s still spurting out of her torn limb. I’m too stunned to move. Too shocked at seeing my friend, dead on the ground in front of me, being eaten by this thing.”
Her voice trembles, and she launches into another fit of tears. She brings a tissue to her nose and blows a thick wad of mucus into it, before throwing it unceremoniously onto the warehouse floor. She wipes her face with the back of her sleeve. “Then the thing rears back its head, and it tears what’s left of Rachel’s arm off. It starts to chew it.
“It’s… it’s more gruesome than anything I’ve ever seen. I don’t think we’re wired to deal with seeing that shit, as human beings, you know? Like nothing in my programming knew how to deal with that. Once it finishes chewing, it swallows the arm, and it opens its mouth again.
“Its bottom jaw falls all the way to the forest floor, its gaping maw large enough for a grown man to walk straight into. It sits there in front of her corpse for a second, and then that uproar of screaming starts again, like a hundred anguished voices stitched together.
"A flurry of human arms reach out of its mouth, clawing toward Rachel’s limp body. They clutch at what’s left of her torn limb, her hair, her jacket. They clutch at anything they can reach. Then they start dragging her into the monster’s mouth.”
There it is. It’s just as I remember.
Amanda loudly blows into the tissue again. “Then… I hear Rachel whimper, and my fucking blood goes cold. I realize the entire time I’ve been standing there, watching this thing eat her, she’s been alive. I was watching her get eaten alive.”
“My mind goes blank. I point the bear mace and let loose a blast toward the monster, shouting at it to get the fuck away from her. It recoils, howling in that symphony of screams and shuffling back into the bushes. I take my chance and press the lantern into Rachel’s hand. I tell her she needs to hold that for us, and she nods weakly. Her face has lost all of its colour, and I know she’s not long for this world.
“I get her good arm over my shoulder, and keeping a grip on the bear mace, begin putting some distance between us and that monster. She’s groaning. She keeps saying my name. ‘Mandy.’ Over and over again, but I tell her to be quiet. She needs to save her energy, and I need to hear that thing.
“We don’t get far before I hear it’s thunderous footfalls pound against the forest floor. It’s running at us. I wheel around, and Rachel’s lantern illuminates the monster for only a split second before I let loose another round of the mace. It snickers in pain and brings those long-fingered hands to its eyes.
“I don’t wait around for it to recover. I keep going. I don’t know where. All I know is I need to get away from this thing, because it isn’t going to stop until it finishes what it started. Again, I hear its footsteps pound and the dirt, and again I wheel around and blast the monster. It shrieks in pain and shies away, but only a few moments later it charges again.”
Amanda keels over and starts bawling. She grips her hair, then starts pulling on it so hard I half-expect her to tear a chunk from her scalp.
“I realize,” she says, choking out the words between sobs. “I realize Rachel’s too heavy. I can’t carry her. I can’t get away from this thing because I can feel the can of mace is almost empty and every time I hit it with the mace it affects it less.”
She shakes her head, her eyes are bloodshot, her cheeks tearstained. She sniffles and wipes mucus onto her sleeve. “I have to leave Rachel. I have to. If I don’t, it’s going to kill us both. You understand, right?”
For the first time in her desperate recollection of the Event, I do understand. “Yes,” I say. “Life isn’t easy. There aren’t any real heroes, just people who pretend to be. You made a difficult choice, but a necessary one.”
Amanda stares at me, she stares at me for a long while like she’s searching my expression for something. Finally, she nods, slowly. “Yeah,” she says, wiping more snot onto her sleeve. Her voice evens out, the tears no longer coming in torrents
“I did what I had to do. I put her down, apologizing. I apologized over and over again, and I heard that thing coming and I took off. I ran, full tilt into the woods. Behind me, I heard that screaming. All of that awful, horrible screaming.”
She swallows, and her voice stutters. “I listened to that familiar sound of tearing flesh, and then the dull crunch of snapping bone. I listened to the creature chew on Rachel. I tried not to. I tried to just focus on running, or the sound of the rain, or the thunder, or the wind, but I couldn’t. All I could hear was my friend being eaten alive.”
Silence stretches between us. I clear my throat. “Is that it? You got away, ran into the SAR team on your way down the mountain?”
“No,” she says, closing her eyes. There’s a look of resigned regret in her features. “I hear another sound. I hear a helicopter. A moment later, I catch sight of its search light, beaming over the forest. I know this might be my only chance, so I start waving around my phone’s light, trying to make as much of a scene as I can.
“It works. The helicopter swings over, and it lowers a ladder with a rescue technician. He straps me to a line and asks me if I'm alone. I'm hysterical, shouting a mile a minute. I shriek that a monster attacked my friend, and I point toward Rachel’s lantern, faintly visible in the distance. I tell him it killed her.”
Amanda gulps, wiping at her eyes. “He radios in to have me brought up, and says he'll go look for Rachel. I tell him not to. I know if he does, he'll die too. It'll kill him just like it killed her, but over the wind and rain he either doesn't hear me, or doesn't care.
“I'm pulled into the helicopter, and a few minutes later I hear the man’s voice over the radio. It's desperate. Full of grief. He says he needs a stretcher down there. He says he found the other woman, and that she's still alive.”
Jesus.
“Have you spoken to Rachel since?” I ask quietly.
Amanda shakes her head. “No. She um — she’s in a coma. Both of her arms are missing, the wounds are infected and she’s developed serious pneumonia. Doctor’s aren’t sure if she’s going to make it.”
She brings a hand to her mouth and chokes back a sob. Her eyes are wide, and her body quakes. “I… I left her there to die. If I had just stayed with her a couple minutes longer then the rescue chopper would have found us. It would have scared that fucking thing away and Rachel…”
“Would still be gravely injured,” I finish. “You can’t blame yourself. You didn’t know the chopper was around the corner. All that you knew was something wanted to kill you, and it was winning the battle for your life.”
Her shoulders wrack with silent sobs. “I could’ve stayed with her.” She breaks down all over again, and this time I give her all the time she needs. I’ve scarcely seen somebody so grief-stricken in all my years of doing this, and it's almost as bizarre to me as the anomalies I’ve spent my life hunting. To hate yourself for something as simple as wanting to live. It’s inhuman.
“I’m sorry,” she says finally. “That’s… that’s everything. Can I go now?”
I lean back in my chair, frowning. It’s not that I don’t empathize with her, but such messy reactions only serve to get in the way of actually fixing problems. In her case, getting revenge for Rachel.
She stands up, sniffling, then answers her own question. “... I’m gonna head home.”
“Wait,” I say.
She stops in her tracks. “What?”
“Can you take me there?”
She stares at me with red, puffy eyes. Her face is a mask of confusion. Disbelief. “Excuse me?”
“The cabin, I mean." I lean forward in my chair. "Can you take me to the Callous Man?”
_____________________
I’ve never been a fan of the woods.
Call it a bad childhood experience. Call it being an out-of-shape asshole. I’m even less of a fan when I’m stuck hiking through them for work, and yet it seems like work has a sick sense of humor, because I find myself in these fortresses of shit and sticks more often than I’d like. Which, for the record, is never.
Well, except for today.
It’s a long time before we reach the cabin. The girl said it took her and her friend eight hours. Well, it takes us twelve. My best days are behind me, unfortunately, but luckily I don’t need to be very fit for what I’m about to do.
“I still don’t understand why you couldn’t have just followed the map," Amanda says. " I told you exactly how to get to—”
“Because,” I say, still breathless from the hike. “This cabin doesn’t exist on a map. You can point it out to me all you want on your iPhone, but unless you’re right beside me, I’ll never see it. It’s just the way the Callous Man works.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You keep saying that name. Why do you call him the Callous Man?”
I pull open the door of the cabin, and instantly it smells like shit and dead animals.
Great.
“I call him the Callous Man,” I say, strolling across the creaky floorboards, “because that’s his name. It’s the name the first person that ever encountered him coined him with, and so it is the name with which I refer to him.”
“The first person?”
“Yeah,” I say, stepping into the bedroom. “Me.”
The floor is a mess, covered in what’s left of Amanda’s tent. A small device lays a few feet away, and I figure it’s probably her locator beacon.
“Hang on,” she says, appearing in the doorway behind me. “You’re the first person you saw the crea— the Callous Man?”
I nod, bending down and picking up one of the shattered photo frames she’d mentioned. Dusting it off, I hold it up to her. “This is my grandpa and I, showing off our rifles before going deer hunting.”
She looks shocked. Stunned. Her eyes gaze at the picture, then back at me. “On second glance, you two really do share a resemblance. You and he look so much alike.”
“Yeah, I suppose we do.” I toss the frame onto the ground.
“You lived here?”
“Visited. My grandpa lived here.”
“You're kidding.” She shakes her head, incredulous.“This whole thing is so bizarre. It has to be a nightmare. It can’t be real.”
I flip the water bottle full of black grime in my hands, catching it with a smile. “You’re preaching to the choir, lady. If I had to guess, I probably hope I wake up from this even more than you do.”
“Unlike you," she says with a glare. "I don’t have any… secret agent training, or whatever.”
“Unlike me, you’ve got my gun. The only training you need is to point and shoot, and not hit me with the bullets.”
She taps my revolver, strapped to her thigh. It was the sole condition of her joining me on this little woodland excursion, that she gets to be the one who carries the gun. I told her that’s fine, with one stipulation:
“Remember," I say. "Don’t fucking touch that thing unless the Callous Man’s already pulling you into his big mouth. I don’t need you shooting me before I finish my business.”
“What if he's attacking you?” she asks.
“I’ll deal with it.”
“You’ll deal with an eight foot tall monster with nothing but your bare hands?”
The water bottle crinkles in my grip. “Just trust me on this. I’m a professional.” I place my hand on the windowsill and look out over the clearing, out past the treeline. The sun’s turned a golden red. Soon, it’ll be night.
“Nervous?” I ask her.
“What do you think?” she says. “I hope you're as good as you say you are.”
The way she moves, the way she speaks and the way she keeps touching the revolver on her thigh tell me everything I need to know.
She’s terrified.
“Relax,” I say. “Save the anxiety for when our friend shows up.”
Amanda pulls one of the chair’s from the living area into the bedroom with me. She sits down on it, rigid and straight. I’m almost proud of her. Sure, she was only willing to accompany me with a revolver strapped to her thigh, but she still chose to do it; she chose to get revenge for what thing did to her.
What it did to Rachel.
“Almost there,” I mutter. My eyes follow the sun as it slips behind the treeline. Shadows stretch out, engulfing the cabin in thin strips of darkness. “He’ll be here soon.”
Seconds pass, then minutes, and then things begin to change. It starts with a crow taking flight, and I already know he’s coming. I can feel him. A family of rabbits follow, bounding through the clearing. Soon, the entire forest is fleeing past us, far away from the Callous Man, and the death he represents.
I pop a piece of spearmint gum and start chewing. It helps me focus. “You ready?”
“Why?” she says, shooting up from the chair. “Is he here?”
“Does it make a difference? You're either ready or you're not."
She scowls at me, but her body relaxes. “I'm ready. Are you sure you can kill him?”
A mad mixture of impatience and nervousness flutters in my stomach. I toy with the idea of lying. It’d put her at ease. Then I decide it doesn’t matter anymore. Both of us are in too deep. “No.”
“No?” she repeats, hysterical. She rises from her chair, rounding on me. “You said you were professional!"
“I am.”
“You told me you’ve dealt with a hundred different monsters!”
“I have.”
Her mouth opens, but no words come out. She stares at me with something between stunned disbelief, and absolute loathing. She thinks I’ve signed our death warrants.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” I say. “I’ve dealt with a lot of creatures. Some bad, some worse. I know this job inside and out, and I don’t plan on dying today, but the Callous Man is different.”
“How?”
“He’s—” I catch myself. We’re on the precipice, and there’s no going back, but there’s still words that can upset the operation. I exercise some tact. “He’s powerful. He can distort this world, and manipulate dimensions. It’s why I needed you here, it’s why I needed your Link. He chose you. The Callous Man gave you the key to his world, and only you — but he never said you couldn’t bring visitors.”
She shakes her head. She’s trying to piece it together — bless her heart she’s trying her best, but there’s not enough pieces to make sense of it, and that’s intentional. It's by design. I need her obedient, not unruly. Everything hinges on her cooperation.
“I don’t understand. Why did he choose me?”
The sun finishes its descent, its red-orange rays fading to darkness. I flick my flashlight on, holding it up to the window and watching the clearing with bated breath. The Callous Man is coming.
“He chose you because of the life you live," I explain. "The values you represent. It means something to him.”
“Values I represent? What, like honesty and integrity?" She snorts. "What do values mean to a monster like that?”
I smirk. “They mean you taste good.”
The night is still. Silent. Just as she earlier described, there’s no sounds of life, except this time there’s no storm either. It’s a cloudless sky, without so much as a breeze, and I can almost hear Amanda’s heart beating out of her chest.
“Ha ha,” she says sarcastically. She’s close enough behind me now that I can feel her breath on my neck. She really is terrified. “What do those values actually mean to it?”
“To him," I correct. "Believe it or not, that monster really is a man. When you become as powerful as he is though, food stops meaning what it means to you and I. It’s less about calories and more about filling a void. It’s trying to supplement its diet with concepts, ideas that it’s missing.”
“Why?”
“To become better. To cure itself.”
There’s movement in the clearing, and my breath catches as I see it: a set of crooked antlers. They rise from the bramble, soon revealing a face covered by matted black hair, one with a tiny snout and a halo of dark, beady eyes. The dots glimmer in the beam of my flashlight.
“It wants to stop being a monster?” she asks, her voice thick with disbelief. “It’s eating people to save itself?”
“Shh!” I hiss. My eyes are wide, and my mouth is split into the largest grin I’ve worn in years. “He’s here.”
I sense her tense up behind me, but to her credit she doesn’t unholster the revolver on her thigh. She keeps her cool. I grip the water bottle tighter, reaching a hand to its cap.
No.
I pull my hand away, reminding myself that I need to keep my cool too. It’s still too soon. The Callous Man can still make his escape. Fade away. I need him committed.
At the edge of the clearing, the man rises to his full height. I can see clearly now his dark fur chest, and his long, thin fingers resting on the ground. His bird-like legs begin a slow march forward, their claws digging at the loamy earth.
“He’s coming,” I say, taking a step back. “Stay behind me. Directly behind me.”
She doesn’t speak, but I know she’s nodding. I hear her feet creak on the floorboards in concert with my own. My fingers play at the cap of the water bottle. Everything comes down to this. Forty years of horror and misery have led me to this moment.
A snickering sound pierces the air. The man’s moving faster now, each footstep coming at the pace of a light jog. There’s hardly any time left, but still I wait.
“He’s coming,” Amanda hisses from behind me. She’s panicking. Her hand clutches at my shoulder and I grunt, shaking her off.
“Don’t,” I tell her. “Relax. We’re almost done here.” My heart races. Seeing the monster again after all these years is dredging up old memories, and the little boy threatens to take hold inside of me. My palms are thick with sweat.
It doubles over, sprinting on all fours. Its armada of eyes connect with my own, while its crooked antlers sway in concert with its powerful body. Clouds of earth burst out from behind it, its long fingers tearing at the ground with each stride. “Nyeh nyeh nyeh,” it snickers. “NYEH NYEH!”
It leaps at the window.
For a moment, time seems to stop. I stare, transfixed at the creature I used to know so well. Its horrifying, inhuman face gazes back at me and inside of it I see an insatiable hunger. A need to feed.
My body freezes, my blood goes cold. Terror grips me as its fingers reach outward, passing through the window while its vocal chords chitter in anticipation. It wants me.
I lunge to the side.
It collides with Amanda, its antlers piercing her stomach and showering the bedroom in blood. Her body crashes against the wall with a sickening crunch, and lays there in a broken, whimpering heap.
I stay as quiet as I can. The Callous Man shakes his tangle of black hair and looks around, reorienting himself. First to me, then to her.
Then back to me.
Fuck. My fingers begin untwisting the cap of the water bottle. It’s too soon. I need him distracted. I need him feeding and committed, but I don’t think I have an option anymore. It steps toward me. The floor groans. My mouth feels dry, my limbs twitchy. Fear takes root in my chest, and the little boy inside threatens to take hold.
No. I have to hang on. I open the water bottle, and my mouth begins stuttering the words. “T-Thu Val Nolar…”
The Callous Man lowers himself. His back arches, and his tiny snout begins to open, growing larger and larger. Screams of a hundred souls echo from the void inside of him, their arms reaching toward me, desperate to draw another into their nightmare.
“Gal Nush Alza…”
I continue the words, but there’s no time. They’re so close. He’s so close. I press myself as far against the corner as I can, but still I feel their cold grip on my leg. They pull. They’re strong. My balance goes out from under me, and I fall on my ass. “Yust val kulna…”
It wasn't supposed to happen like this. She held the values he needed. Her. Not me.
I keep speaking the incantation. I keep moving my lips, but now my body’s acting on instinct, on learned behavior. I can’t so much as think as I slip further and further into the abyssal darkness of the Callous Man’s jaws. I keep speaking the words, but my voice is drowned by the pleas of the dead. Screaming. Howling. Begging. The incantation is all I have left. It’s not enough. It’s taking too long.
A deafening bang rings out, interrupting the chorus of screaming souls. The Callous Man recoils, its jaw sliding across the floor and its body writhing in agony. It stumbles to the side and then two more gunshots pierce the night. It falls to its knees.
I can see behind him now. I can see Amanda’s bloody, mangled heap. One of her legs is snapped backwards, and her white shirt is torn at her stomach, with pieces of her falling out of the hole. Blood spills from her mouth like a fountain, and in her trembling hands she holds the revolver.
“Thank you,” I breathe, rising to my feet on shaky legs. “Thank you, Amand—”
Another blast of the hand gun, and this time my ears are ringing like church bells. I stumble to the side, and in the dim light of my lantern, I see a bullet hole in the wall beside me. I barely have time to look back at her before agony rips through my thigh, and I collapse onto the bedroom floor.
Fucking bitch! My hands clutch the wound instinctively. I don’t need to look at it to feel the warm wetness of blood seeping through my fingers. I gaze up at her, and she steadies the gun at me. I was so close. So goddamn close. Forty years of this shit and I’m undone by a blogger.
“Do it,” I growl. Death by a bullet isn’t a bad way to go, all things considered. “Do it before he takes us both!"
She lowers the revolver, and tears fall from her eyes. She’s choking on a word, but all that’s coming out is a torrent of blood. It’s fine. I know what she wants to say.
“I did it because it was the only way,” I explain through gritted teeth. “One of us always had to die, but if it was me, then it meant we both did.”
Her body’s twitching in shock. She’s still moving her mouth, but it’s just blood now. No words. Only blood. Her face is pale and glassy eyed, but I only see it for another moment before the Callous Man begins to rise. Nyeh nyeh nyeh. He’s snickering, but it’s violent. Angry.
His eyes gaze at me. The antlers are casting twisted shadows in the light of my lantern, and it’s making him seem even more unnatural. More inhuman. Nyeh Nyeh. He turns away from me. He turns to Amanda.
“Fel guz rea…” I whisper. “Morath un gre’ shan.”
His footsteps groan on the rotting cabin floorboards. I don’t see Amanda, but I hear the gurgle of blood. I hear the desperate shuffle of her body, pushing itself against the wall. I hear a gunshot ring out. Then another.
The footsteps march forward, and so does my incantation. The water bottle’s shaking in my grip now, the grimey fluid swirling in a murky maelstrom. “Grea yulia.”
Another shot.
“Thel ra dua.”
A cacophony of screams.
“Set kil ona.”
Amanda lets loose on the hand gun twice more, and then the firearm clicks impotently. She’s burned through every round that it has. It wasn’t enough. It never could be. My lips keep moving even as I hear her body being dragged across the floor.
The ancient language flows out of me, and I’m deaf to the sounds of her flesh being ripped and torn, her limbs being devoured inch by inch. She needs to hang on. Her role in this isn’t over yet.
I speak the final words.
“Set rindas!” The water bottle jolts from my grip, the murky fluid inside exploding into a dark cloud, twisting around the room like a tornado of smoke. I hear the screaming falter, then I hear the Callous Man lurch around, snickering in confusion. I hear Amanda groan.
She’s a fighter. Good.
It takes the cloud only a handful of seconds to coalesce into the greatest monster I’ve ever seen, but in that moment it feels like a lifetime. Its form snaps and cracks with bolts of electricity. Its twelve eyes glow an impossible blue. Upon its six muscled arms are heavy chains, linking to a choker on its neck and its face roars in fury.
“This time I’ll have your soul, little man. I’ll enjoy it over a glass of your misery!”
I let a grin slip across my lips. For the first time since the Callous Man appeared, I feel my sense of humor returning. “Sorry to disappoint, Dreighar, but I summon you by means of an offering.”
The genie’s brows furrow and his mouth opens to reveal a row of jagged teeth. “I see no living humans here, save for one.” He’s smiling. He reaches an arm out to grab me, but as soon as his fingers brush my throat, they hiss and steam. He recoils, snarling.
“She’s your offering,” I say, pointing past the Callous Man, to Amanda’s mangled body. “Now obey my command.”
A legion of screams interrupt us. The Callous Man’s jaws have opened, and once more a hundred arms reach from the maw — this time toward the newcomer. They grasp at the genie, phasing through the gaseous image.
Dreighar scowls, his voice dropping to a low growl. “Very well. The words are spoken. A soul for a soul.” His body splits in two, circumventing the Callous Man and reforming in front of Amanda. She’s nearly dead. She’s confused. She doesn’t understand what’s happening.
I’ve given her a mercy. Dreighar will treat her soul better than the Callous Man ever would. The genie’s hand reaches out to touch her, and in the next instant, her body is gone. Only the bloodstains remain.
The Callous Man looks back to me, its jaw scraping along the floor. It recognizes there’s nothing in the genie to consume. It wants what’s inside of me, though. It wants the memories of its humanity. Revenge.
It takes a heavy step toward me. Then another. The screams are deafening, but I know I don’t need my voice to be heard. A command is a command.
“For her soul, I want His.”
The pale hands reach out from the abyssal maw, grasping my legs, and I let them. My body falls to the floor. It inches toward the jaws of the beast. Toward damnation.
Then, light fills the room, and the cabin shakes with the low bass of eternity itself. The screaming fades to a whimper. Then, after a loud pop, it’s gone.
Everything’s gone.
The Callous Man. The cabin. I’m alone, laying in a dark field, my lantern illuminating a clearing of grass, with tall trees surrounding it. My thigh aches, my mouth is parched, and my conscience is in tatters. But I’m alive.
I’m always alive.
“Soon you’ll have fulfilled our contract,” says a hissing voice, scraping along my inner ear. It’s everywhere and nowhere. “I’ve taken ninety three souls for you. Only seven more to go.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it before,” I say with a groan. “Now, hand over my soul.”
There’s a swirl of smoke, and the frowning genie appears before me. He snaps a finger on one of his six arms, and produces a vial filled with murky purple fluid. “The man never deserved this,” he says. “He was your own blood.”
“Don’t lecture me,” I say, reaching for the vial.“You and I both know he was never supposed to turn into that.”
The genie pulls back, gazing at the vial. “What is meant to be and what comes to pass are two different things. You shield yourself in the delusion of intention.”
He encircles me in a snaking ribbon of smoke, his face materializing near my ear. “You forced that destiny on the man. He had no desire to participate in your war.”
“Yeah, well none of us do. And yet it’s coming anyway.” Something takes a seat in my gut. Regret, maybe? Remorse? It’s an ugly feeling, whatever it is. I blame it on the woman. Why didn’t she just kill me?
No, I think to myself. Shake it off. I've got more important things to worry about.
"The vial," I growl, holding my hand out.
"I think I may have miscalculated," Dreighar mutters, staring at the vial with curiosity. "A soul for a soul, such is the terms of our contract, and yet..."
I swallow and it feels like sandpaper. When's the last time I had something to drink? "You got your soul, now give me mine." My voice cracks. Fuck. My voice cracks.
The genie's twelve eyes swivel their gaze to me. A smile slips across its lips. When he speaks, his voice is quiet. Unsettling. "I count over a hundred souls in this vial."
My heart slams against my ribcage. Damnit. "That's not fair!" I shout, trying to rise to my feet, but my thigh screams in pain and I fall back to earth. "I only asked for his soul! I never asked for the souls he devoured."
"And yet, they are still a part of him."
"Please…" It can't end here. "Be reasonable."
"Reasonable?" the genie roars, and his form becomes massive. Lightning sparks around him, and the wind whips into a gale threatening to unseat me from the ground.
"You chain me to this earth for decades, turn me into a common reaper for your own ends, and you confine me to a plastic bottle! You speak of reason to me?"
"I did what I had to!" I bellow. "A war is coming, and we need these souls! We need an army!"
"Your petty war means nothing to me." Dreighar points a long finger toward me, and a red aura swirls around it. Sparks crackle at its tip. Then slowly, reluctantly, he curls it back into a fist. "I am, however, a reasonable being."
My breath hitches in my chest as I hang on the monster's every word.
"You have broken the terms of our contract, but I have also willingly fulfilled your wish. For that, I will give you a compromise, little human."
Compromise? That's good. Better than nothing, at least.
Dreighar's eyes glint. "One month."
"One month?"
"Settle your affairs. Prepare for your war. One month from now, I'll take the soul I've dreamed of for decades. I'll spend the next century picking you out of my teeth."
I sigh, falling back onto the grass. It's better than I could expect, all things considered. I'm surprised the cosmic asshole didn't just scoop me up right then and there.
Fucking fine print.
"Okay," I say. "Can you get me out of here?"
He smirks, turning into formless smoke. "A soul for a soul. No more, no less." He begins swirling like a mad tornado of shadow, howling and roaring and a moment later he’s gone, vacuumed back into the water bottle.
Asshole.
Looks like I'm finding my own way down. Once more I try to rise to my feet, and once more I wince in pain and fall to the earth. Damn. The revolver did good work on my thigh.
No, she did.
The woman tugs at my thoughts. Her resolve. Her strength. Her blog. She could tell a story, Amanda Haynes. She's gone now, but there's still a story that needs to be told, and I'm running out of time to tell it.
I spot a mess in the corner of my eye. A pile of canvas, torn and bloody with tent poles poking out.
That should do.
I crawl toward it, and a moment later I find what I'm looking for: a black device laying a few feet away — just like it’d been in the cabin.
The beacon.
I reach out and grab it, and click the button. It beeps.
Good.
It beeps.
_____________________
You don’t need me to tell you that the search team located me, and you don’t need me to tell you that they had a lot of questions, but that the Facility stepped in and took care of it. You also don’t need me to tell you that I’ll be walking with crutches for the rest of my short life.
What you need me to tell you, is why I’m sharing this. You need to know why I’m telling you this story, and why I need you to tell it to others. Your friends. Your family. Everybody.
The reality is, a war is coming. It’s a war that humanity isn’t outfitted for, but we’re doing the best we can. Strictly speaking, everything I’ve just said is classified, and yet it’s critical this information be spread far and wide. What’s coming for us can’t be stopped by missiles and guns. It can’t be overcome by men and women. It has to be through other means.
Legendary means.
The folks at the top don't want to admit that. They don't want to sow chaos and uncertainty and admit our hourglass is dangerously low on sand, but it is, and chaos is coming one way or another.
We're doing what we can at the Facility, but it isn't enough. Not even close. They'd skin me alive for telling you this, but my time's already up, so fuck 'em.
I’m asking you —all of you, if you see a creature that defies explanation, or a certain something that goes bump in the night, share your experience. Make it known. Against the eldritch abominations coming our way, those monsters might be our only chance.
And honestly?
We need all the help we can get.
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