Mark woke up and banged his head on the metal lantern.
He saw stars and covered his forehead with his hands. When his vision cleared, the Coleman lantern hanging from the roof of the tent was still swinging in the dark. His heart was racing. Cold sweat ran down his back.
What woke me up?
It felt as though his body was ready to leap up and sprint. All the hairs on his arms and legs were standing up. An electric current of fear coursed through his veins.
He listened for the forest sounds.
There were no crickets or owls, though their songs were what lulled him to sleep in the first place.
It was dead silent out there.
The night was waiting for something to happen.
A low moan broke the stillness. Like someone sobbing while covering their mouth. Shuffling through grass. Snapping of a branch.
Mark reached for his hunting knife he had hid under his pillow. He knew there were bears and even mountain lions out here in Pine Haven so he had come prepared. But he couldn’t remember where he stashed the bear spray. Maybe it was still in the Jeep, just ten or so feet away from the tent.
The sounds stopped.
Mark gripped the knife tightly. Listened for the next twenty minutes. The crickets came back. Even the owls joined in later.
They comforted his mind and he fell back to sleep.
Mark woke at sunrise. Stretched his arms out and hear a pop in his spine. Got out of his tent and looked around the camp ground. Aside from his own, he found no tracks from any animal that could have been making those sounds last night.
Mark didn’t like to do what the crowds did. When he first drove up to Pine Haven, he saw hundreds of people crowding the official camp grounds down by Lake Halcomb. Summer turned this quiet mountain town into a frenzy of people desperate to squeeze out some last minute enjoyment before the brutal reality of work and school came crashing down on them.
Mark didn’t want to deal with any of that, so here he was, deep in the woods, off trail, no one else in sight. Of course, this meant he also had no cell coverage.
He pushed these thoughts out of his mind as he fried up some eggs and bacon. Made his coffee. Walked down to the creek with his lawn chair and plopped down in it.
Cast his fishing pole into the rhythmic water. He didn’t care if he caught anything, it was good to just be.
Hours passed and nothing took his bait. He cracked open a beer from his cooler and sighed away all the stress of city life.
This was life. Birds chirping, no traffic, no tasks ahead of him.
Peace.
Until the silence came again. So abrupt were the birds cut off, that Mark jumped to his feet. Ice flowed down his arteries and clogged his heart. That same electric fear from last night came upon him.
He scanned the forest on the other side of the creek.
The muffled moaning came back. Followed by a shuffling through underbrush.
Mark had both the knife and the bear spray on him this time and got them ready.
Though, it didn’t sound like a bear, did it? It was almost like… a person. He read once that mountain lions could sound like a woman in distress, but this sound wasn’t that exactly.
It sounded almost like speech. Language. Close enough to English that it felt like he should know what was being said, yet nothing made sense.
He stared straight ahead, across the creek, where the sounds were coming from.
So focused on the woods across the water that he didn’t notice what was standing to his right side on the creek bank, until it moved.
Mark turned and pointed the bear spray forward.
It was close enough that he could see it, but far enough away that the spray wouldn’t reach it.
A human-like face. Twisted so that the lower jaw nearly touched its hunched left shoulder. Teeth black. Eyes milky white. Skin yellowed and jaundiced. Body nearly indistinguishable from the tree it crouched next to; covered in moss and wood, sticks poking out through patches of skin.
“Holy shit!”
Mark fired the bear spray at the thing but it dissipated before it reached its target.
The thing didn’t flee.
It stared at Mark with its vacant eyes.
Moaned that sobbing lament.
Rose from its crouching position.
Mark had to crane his head up to see how tall it really was.
Mark ran.
Raced through the woods back towards camp.
Felt all his insides drop when he reached it.
The tent was in ribbons. Food and supplies strewn about everywhere.
The Jeep’s tires were shredded. Steam shot out of the engine like a geyser. A log was sticking out of the hood.
None of this made any sense. It had to be happening to somebody else, not to him. He felt dizzy and numb, as though he were outside his body and watching it all happen from some safe distance away.
The shuffling of feet from right behind him.
Mark saw his backpack near the firepit. It had water and some food in it so he ran forward and grabbed it. Didn’t look back and ran out out onto the path he had driven up to this spot by.
How far was the paved road from here? Mark tried to think as he ran, it took him about twenty minutes to get from the road to this site. By car. At least he had the dirt path to guide him. He remembered that there was one fork in the path, he had taken a right at a large boulder, so all he needed to do was make sure he switched paths at the rock.
Mark ran until he needed to catch his breath. Then he ran some more, just to be sure. He collapsed on the path and dry heaved. All while looking behind him.
He didn’t hear it pursue him, whatever the fuck it was. But he wasn’t taking any chances. After the nausea and lightheadedness passed, he got back up and walked forward.
Every few seconds he looked behind him.
There was no movement. No moans.
Mark walked for two hours. Drank water from the pack. Shook the bear spray and guessed it was still half full. Kept the knife in his right hand.
Soon, the sun began to drop near the heads of the trees.
The rock has to be coming up.
If he turned left at the boulder with the heart shaped cleft in it, that would take him back to town.
Yet as fast as the sun fell behind the trees, so too did his hope. He walked on for another hour. Neither the rock nor the road ever came.
As the blood red sunset smoldered on into charcoal black, the dirt road ended at a wall of pine trees.
He had gotten turned around and gone the wrong way.
There was just enough fading light to see right in front of him, but no further than that. Back on the path, he saw a shape, standing there. Vague and fuzzy in the twilight.
“Get the fuck away from me!”
The figure responded with a sobbing moan. He couldn’t see it clearly, but it looked like it had to be over ten feet tall. It was thin, with arms that touched the path.
The last of the light bled away.
He couldn’t see anything now. He reached into the backpack and grabbed the flashlight. Had to put the knife away in the bag to hold it in his left hand, the bear spray still in his right.
Shuffling coming up the path. Mark didn’t want to flee into the woods. He’d get more lost than he already was. Whatever happened, he could not leave the dirt road. It was his only hope. He stood firm in the path, light shining forward, knees shaking and piss dribbling down into his shorts.
He tried to speak and sound aggressive but his voice only came out in cracking squeak.
The thing emerged from the dark and into the silver glow of the flashlight. It stopped. The twisted face worked its jaws open and shut. It moaned and even sounded like it was weeping in pain. It raised two long arms with gnarled tree-root like fingers towards him.
Mark was borderline hyperventilating. But he knew this was it. He wasn’t going to run into the woods. He needed to fight.
He ran at the thing, screaming, finger pulling on the bear spray as he got close to it. The thing recoiled at the spray and wailed. Mark pressed down on the trigger until it was empty. Threw the can away and pulled out his knife. His hands shook and made the light swivel over the creature, causing him to lose sight of it as it retreated.
Mark laughed. Let out a war cry he didn’t know he was capable of making.
“That’s right motherfucker, run!”
The wailing of the thing grew distant as it moved away.
Shuffling behind him.
To his right and to his left.
Mark spun around and shined the light at the noises.
To his right a malformed face followed by a stunted body slid down from the top of a tree. To his left three more of them stepped out from the woods.
Mark yelled and slashed out with the knife.
The things rushed him and all went black.
Mark woke in a dark place that smelled of wet soil and rotting meat. His hands and waist were bound to an earthen wall by what felt like tree roots.
He tried to move but couldn’t.
Weeping and moaning filled the void.
“No, please,” he rasped. He imagined those twisted jaws clamping down on his throat. He yanked at the roots but they were too strong.
Why didn’t they kill me?
The thought terrified him. He was ready to die back at the road, as ridiculous as that seemed to him just now. But this? This was worse.
The moaning grew louder. A vague shadow approached. With no light, he couldn’t see it, but he felt the warmth of its body as it shambled right up to him.
“Please, don’t.”
The thing spoke in that almost human language. Guttural and jarring.
It left him.
Mark let out a deep sigh of relief.
He felt something wet tickle his throat. It was like a snake but with a firm body. It quickly wrapped around his neck and cut off his air. Choking, Mark tried to pull at the roots with all his strength but failed to move even an inch.
The thing at his throat stabbed into his skin. Mark screamed.
The thing forced its way into his throat. He felt it moving under his skin. His teeth shattered. He felt his face twisting. He started wailing and screaming. The thing moved on to his shoulders, his chest, his legs, wrenching his muscles, splitting his skin from the inside out.
Mark’s voice changed. No longer screaming.
He was moaning. Sobbing. He tried speaking but his words made no sense to him.
He was no longer afraid.
All he felt was immense sorrow.
And the need to spread it.
Oh no! Poor Mark!
Love the creatures