The drive home along the old woods was monotonous. Norman Taylor had heard the stories about those woods his entire life. The old folks from the depression era hated telling those stories, but younger generations held a grotesque fascination with them. He could remember his uncle telling him about something living out there in the woods. Thanksgiving and Christmas the hours rolled around into the late night and the stories would go from old memories and hunting stories, sports and life to the old legends from around those parts.
His Uncle Drew swore something had chased him in those woods once when he wasn’t out by dark during hunting season.
The most popular story was that the early settlers had come to Ravenswood, West Virginia around 1771. Sent by none other than George Washington, they got snowed in and had to winter in a shelter not really fit for more than some barn animals.
The native Shawnee had reached out to the men but had been shot at for their troubles. They cursed the men for their arrogance and ignorance. Locals around Ravenswood often talk about the old legends of the Shawnee. Some said that they could curse a man to terrible ends. The legends also warned about the hubris and greed of men and how it could make a man into a monster.
As the story would continue, it was said that hunger started to take hold of the settlers. They ate the horses first, then they ate the dogs. They tried going out to hunt but they were forced back by the new enemies they had made in the Shawnee. Hunger gnawed at the men and starvation became a real possibility.
Then one day, one of the men froze to death on watch. The others, 6 in total, hadn’t eaten in 2 days and they were happy there was one less mouth to feed. Soon pieces of the dead man started going missing and suddenly one of the men wasn’t so weak from hunger anymore. Then all of the men went missing. The tale says one of the men actually survived, but he became a monster. Cursed to wander those woods forever and to be forever hungering.
Norm chuckled as the goosebumps went up his arms. His Uncle Drew had been a master at telling that particular story to them. Everyone would be all cuddled up in his Grandfather’s living room by the old potbelly stove they used to heat the small house with. For such a tiny house, you sure could pack a lot of people in it.
He didn’t get spooked easily, but sometimes those damn woods felt like they were watching him.
Norm reached for his cigarettes to have a calming smoke. He put the marlboro red to his lips to light it and flicked open his dad’s old Zippo he had carried through Vietnam. He liked to carry it with him to remember his dad by and as a token of protection. If it went with his dad through Vietnam then it must have had some kinda magic in it, he reckoned. As he lit the cigarette a gust of wind blew through the open window and made it fly from his mouth.
“Fuck, damn it!” He exclaimed, as the cigarette fell to the floorboards. He looked down to make sure it was out so as to not start a fire in his floorboards. When he looked up, the deer sprang across the road. He slammed on his brakes with a squealing of tires. He hit it square on. The zippo landed in the passenger floorboards.
“Fuck!”
If his mother were there she’d smack him for cursing like that.
He turned on his cautions and got out to make sure the deer was dead. He had his 9 millimeter if he had to finish the job, but then he ran the risk of a ticket. Roger Crane, the retired Judge, only lived 50 yards from there and he was as crotchety and mean as any old man ever was.
As he came around the front of the old Ford he noticed a huge dent in the front bumper and grill. That was gonna cost him, and Sarah was gonna bitch and moan about him driving distracted and speeding home from the bar.
The deer, however, was gone. No blood, either. As hard as he had hit the thing, there was no way it survived. He sighed heavily. He was gonna have to spend the night tracking a wounded deer now. Right across Roger Cranes field.
He got in his truck and pulled it off the road. At least it still ran. He grabbed his phone.
“Hey, Babe.” A pause. “No, I’m not hammered! I hit a deer in front of Roger Cranes and I gotta track it and make sure it’s dead.
“I can’t just come home. If it dies in Roger’s yard, and then I take the truck into Carlo’s on Friday, Roger will know I hit the deer.
“Ten minutes, if I don’t find it, I’ll be home.”
He hung up and got out a headlamp. It was a bright LED that you strapped to your hat, then he grabbed the pistol he kept under his seat and started looking for blood.
He found hoof prints in the gravel along the road, clear as day, but the gait was off, and they looked like they should belong to a horse, not a deer. They were huge.
Norm knelt down to take a closer look when he heard the tall grass rustle along the barbed wire fence below the berm of the road. The thing was still alive.
He shined the light towards the noise, but couldn’t see anything.
“Alright, you son of a bitchin’ deer.”
Just then he felt a cold chill run down his spine. Cold sweat beaded upon his skin and he instantly felt nauseous. He could smell something dead and rotting like weeks old roadkill.
Within seconds the deer burst from the brush below the road and slammed its antlers right into Norm’s chest. He screamed out in pain as it rammed him directly into the side of his truck. He had a moment to appreciate the fact it had a gorgeous ten-point rack before he, in sudden horror, realized the smell was coming from the deer, but it wasn’t a deer, it was something else altogether.
He coughed up blood as the antlers withdrew from his chest. The creature stood on two legs and towered above Norm. It had two black skeletal hands that slammed into his chest and started to rip at his flesh.
As he died, he noticed it seemed to have a cloak with a fur mantle. How odd that he would focus on that as he died.
The last thing he saw was his beating heart being ripped from his chest, and then Norman Taylor saw no more.
Trooper Bud Raker stared at the scene as confused as any man had ever been.
Sarah Taylor called the Sheriff Thursday morning. Norm hadn’t come home. Roger Crane called to complain about Norm Taylor’s truck parked up along the road. Deputy Cole went out and looked over the scene and found blood splattered on the truck and its front dented in. The gravel along the road was scuffed up as if a creature had thrashed and rolled about some. Some hoof prints moved off into the grass and there were drag marks, too. First through Roger Cranes field, then towards the creek. Then the trail went cold.
At first, everyone thought the deer Norm had hit had its back legs broken and it was bleeding a good bit as it dragged itself towards the creek, but no deer body was found, even after Deputy Cole climbed the hill to try and find a body.
There was also no sign of Norm Taylor anywhere.
Bud pulled his State Troopers hat off and wiped his brow. It was the Thursday before Thanksgiving and it was still 75 degrees out. He put his hat back on as he tried to come up with what might have happened.
The facts were, 1, Norm was missing. 2, He’d obviously hit something hard enough to make it bleed a whole hell of a lot and probably kill it. 3, There were no dead bodies.
They’d also found Norm’s pistol lying in the ditch and his phone was still on the truck seat. Things just weren’t adding up.
Wyatt Hunter sat in front of his computer reading about the Mothman for about the hundredth time. He hadn’t missed any school that year so far and the school gave those kids an extra day towards their Thanksgiving vacation, making it a Friday, Saturday, Sunday through to the next Monday vacation.
Wyatt was smart and had straight A’s, so he didn’t feel the least bit guilty spending so much time on discord or other chat avenues talking about cryptids. He’d even found a pseudo-family on discord for a podcast he loved set in Appalachia.
He heard his dog, Bowser, bark, and wondered what could be going on outside. The mastiff bounded into Wyatt’s room and looked out the window toward their neighbors. He always came to Wyatt’s room when something was going on because he could see over the fence from the second-story window.
There was a State Trooper parked over at Norman and Sarah’s. Except for Norm drinking a little bit on the weekends, those two were never in trouble.
Wyatt had always dreamed of something exciting happening, a mystery that he could solve, but right now, he had a sinking feeling in his stomach. It wasn’t so much knowing something bad was happening, it was more a feeling that Troopers don’t usually show up unless something bad was happening.
Wyatt turned back to his computer, but he just wasn’t feeling the same excitement now. As he started to scroll through his myriad of discord servers he was a part of his phone rang with a video call.
“Hey, Jenny.”
Jenny Laken had been his friend since third grade.
“Hey, have you talked to Jerry today?” She looked worried. Jerry had been Wyatt’s friend since kindergarten.
“No, I haven’t. We were up late playing Fortnite.”
Her face scrunched up. “Aren’t you guys a little old to be playing against 10-year-olds?”
“Ah, come on Jenny. We’ve had a team going for a few years now. All the little kids are gone by midnight.”
She just shook her head. “I’ve been calling Jerry all morning and he isn’t answering.”
“He’s probably still asleep. I mean, he does crash hard on weekends.”
“Yeah. Maybe. I think I’m gonna head over there.”
“His mom is gonna go ballistic if she sees you. You know how they feel about the two of you hanging out.”
“She can go fuck a cactus.”
Wyatt laughed as Jenny ended the call. Jenny was part African American and part Native American. Jerry’s family came from a long line of conservative racists who even had a Confederate flag in their yard on the flagpole under the American flag. They HATED Jenny’s dad, Devin, just for being a black man. It was all so fucking stupid.
Wyatt sighed heavily and texted Jenny to say he’d be over in a few minutes and to stay out of sight until he got there.
It only took Wyatt about 20 minutes to talk to Jerry’s house. He could have run it in 5, but he hated running. The Trooper had been gone from his neighbors by the time he got outside, so he hadn’t seen anything of consequence. This made him feel good and bad at the same time.
He also had Bowser with him. The big dog needed his exercise and Wyatt was just as happy to take him as he was to go. The dog was such a sweet boy, he never growled at strangers. He’d bark occasionally but it was only because he was excitable.
As they came around the corner of the hedge that followed along the street across from where Jerry lived he saw Jenny sitting on the small little set of stone steps Wilma Rose had had her son put in last summer.
“Sitting awfully close, aren’t you?” She was sitting directly across from Jerry’s house.
“No one’s home.”
“Jerry never said anything about going anywhere today.” Wyatt looked at the small tan house.
Jenny shrugged. “Maybe it was something last minute?”
Jerry hated that, but his mom did it to him all the time and guilted him into going to help “carry stuff”. As much of a pain as Mrs. Leery was, Jerry still loved his mother.
“Well, we can take a walk around town and stop back by later. His mom probably decided today was the day to get their thanksgiving stuff.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
They walked towards the center of town. It was nice to be out. It was so warm that Wyatt was in a pair of cargo shorts, his vans, and a gray Mothman shirt he got from the museum last year at the Mothman Festival. Jenny, who was always perpetually cold, was in jeans, her black boots, a shirt, and her pink “fuck hate” hoodie.
As they walked past Bobby Lyn’s Burger Shack, they stopped to order some milkshakes and seasoned waffle fries.
“Did you hear about Norm?” Gene asked. Gene was Bobby’s son and was, somehow, more knowledgeable about things going on in town than any waiter at a burger place should be.
Teddy Wolfe, Sheriff of Hallows Grove, sat at the old counter, on the first red stool near the break in the counter and drank a coffee. He was visiting his Aunt Edna before Thanksgiving, making sure she was alright. He’d made the drive over to Ravenswood around 5 times a year for the last 15 years. He was all Edna had left.
“Norm Taylor?”
“Yeah. He was on his way home from Jimmy’s across the street last night. They say he hit a deer or something, but now he’s missing.”
“Allegedly!” Dan said from his stool in the corner. Dan was the resident conspiracy theorist and sometimes he came up with bonkers stories about stuff.
“I heard it was out by the old woods. In front of Roger Crane’s place.” Gene said.
Dan piped up again. “He probably got tired of his life not going anywhere around here. He got turned down for that new mine again for the third time last week. He hasn’t had work since the summer.”
“He wouldn’t run off without Sarah, you nitwit.”
Teddy sipped his coffee. It was really good. Almost as good as what he used to get from The Old Galleon back in Hallows Grove.
“Teddy, aren’t you a Sheriff?” Teddy sighed as he looked at Gene.
“Yeah, I am Gene. And no, I’m not gonna go ask questions for your nosy ass.”
Gene looked shocked, but everyone knew that was what he had been playing at.
Wyatt and Jenny were mostly ignored. It was the way of adults around town. Bobby usually talked to them if he wasn’t busy, but it looked like Gene had control of the Burger Shack for the day.
He brought over their milkshakes and fries. Wyatt paid and the two took off again. Bowser looked annoyed they hadn’t gotten him anything and they had made him sit by the parking meter and watch them order food he couldn’t have. How rude of the humans.
The two teens made a slow circuit back towards Jerry’s house.
“You think Norm is missing?” Jenny asked, breaking the silence that seemed to have laid heavy.
“I saw a Trooper over at their house this afternoon. He was gone before I came out though.”
“Sarah graduated with my sister. Only a few years older than us.”
Wyatt hadn’t really thought about that. Norm was about 5 years older. As a teen that seemed like a lot but it really wasn’t.
“I can’t see him running off like Dan said.”
“Me either, not without Sarah, at least.”
They came upon Jerry’s house and saw the car was parked in the driveway now. Jerry’s mom came out the side door and stopped to stare at Wyatt and Jenny.
“Jerry isn’t here. He went with his dad up on the mountain to get ready for hunting season. They’ll be back Wednesday.”
Wyatt was taken aback. Jerry hated hunting. Mrs. Leery noticed his confusion and looked smug about what she was about to say.
“Richard is trying to make a man out of him. So he’ll see he needs to stop playing with things he’s got no business being around.” She looked right at Jenny as she finished speaking.
Jenny started to say something but Mrs. Leery decided to talk faster.
“He’s only playing with you, ya know? Like an exotic pet. A monkey he can train to do as he pleases then ditch when it’s too much responsibility.”
Jenny didn’t let her continue. “Listen here, you hateful bitch. Jerry and I are happy and he’s more of a man than that prick of a husband of yours ever will be!”
She turned and stomped off, flipping Mrs. Leery the bird as she went.
“You best find yourself some good friends, Wyatt. Girls like that aren’t good for much.”
“Fuck off.” It felt good to tell her how he really felt. As he walked after Jenny he knew they’d both pay for it, and Jerry too, probably, but damn it sure felt nice letting her know they could see past her bullshit.
Victor Smoke sat up from his couch where he’d fallen asleep and had a bad feeling. He was having the dream again. It used to terrify him when he was 13.
Large hoof prints in the mud. A buck snorting loudly in the dark. Huge antlers covered in blood and gore. There was a story in his family that dated back to when his ancestors roamed the land before white men came. There was a place not far from the woods where Ravenswood stands today, a cursed place.
It was said something evil lived there, a spirit of darkness and pure evil. If any man came too close and shed blood there, it would sense it and could possess the man.
One day, white men from the east came and the snow trapped them. His ancestors tried to contact them and help, but they were fired upon by the white men. They wanted to warn them that they had built their cabin almost directly in front of the place of the spirit. After they fired on them, though, the tribe decided the men would be left to their fate.
None of the men survived that winter storm, but the spirit found a new home.
Victor had told his grandfather and father about the dream and they had asked him when it started. The night of the new moon. It was then that they took Victor, and his two Uncles into the woods.
Victor shook his head clear. He didn’t want to think back on that night, or the things he’d witnessed and done.
After that, he’d learned he had a connection to the spirits. He could feel them, sometimes, even see them. He had learned from his grandfather the prayers and rituals to bring them peace. It didn’t always work, but he never stopped trying to ease their painful existence stuck between here and the great beyond.
He walked to the kitchen and grabbed a Pepsi from the fridge. He was so thirsty he downed the whole can in one go.
If the dreams were back, then something wasn’t right. He was sure they had banished the spirit all those years ago. If only his grandfather, his father, and his uncles were still alive.
“Sarah Taylor said he’s been out of work since early summer and that he had started drinking a lot. He was hoping to get a job with the loggers out near the old Washington Grove.
“I’ve been back out here two days already, Warren. Once the forensics comes back on the blood, I’ll be done. Nobody, makes it a missing persons case that the Ravenswood PD and Jackson County Sheriff’s Department can handle.”
Bud Raker had been driving back and forth for this case for 3 days now. It was Sunday, usually his day off, and he wasn’t happy he was back out here again.
He’d known Warren Fields since he’d been a cadet, and now he was his superior. Bud didn’t mind, he liked being just a Trooper. He’d never been one to climb the ranks and try to jockey for a better position in the rank and file.
“He’s probably off somewhere on a binge after a buddy picked him up. Sarah said he’d been pretty depressed too and withdrawn lately.”
He was almost done for the day. The forensics report would be here in less than an hour and then he could head home and have a week with his family.
“Yeah, I’m ready to be home for the holidays. Take it easy Warren.”
He hung up the phone and sighed.
Richard Leery wasn’t about to let anyone else get that 10-point buck. He was out on a Sunday evening and he had every intention of killing it illegally then taking it in on Monday afternoon to the game checking station.
Usually, he wouldn’t even bother with that, but he’d seen this thing late at night in the woods on his trail cam for almost two months now. It had a huge rack and he wanted to brag to everyone at the old gas station.
As he sat in the blind he’d built using fallen limbs, the hanging vines, leaves, and other plant matter, he thought about his stupid useless son. Jerry was soft and weak, and worse yet, he kept sneaking around with that stupid bitch. It just didn’t make any damn sense. Why did he have to hang out and mix with them kinds of people, anyway? It was disgusting.
As his blood started to boil he heard rustling. There, just past the brush line where the trees got thick, he saw antlers and heard a buck snort.
He got his .30-06 bolt action rifle up and aimed through the scope. It was close to dark and this thing was gonna be his!
Richard Leery didn’t even see that it had circled around so fast and so silently, that he would have been amazed. It was the smell that gave it away, though. He’d only smelt an animal that bad after it’s been dead for a few weeks in the heat of summer.
He turned to look and find the source of the smell, but all he saw was black as something tore away the makeshift blind as if it was nothing but small sticks stacked by a child. He realized something 6 or 7 feet tall was looming over him and his eyes went wide with fear as he saw antlers on something that couldn’t be called a deer. No, this was something else entirely.
Cold, blackened bones that looked like hands slammed into his chest. His flesh was being ripped away. Richard Leery screamed a ragged scream that sounded like a woman.
He was miles away from anyone. His brother’s cabin was 3 miles down the mountain. His last thought was that he was going to die, and no one would believe it was some antlered monster with the most gorgeous 10-point rack he’d seen in years.
Jerry hated the fact he was stuck out here instead of back home. His uncle Frank was dying of cancer and his last wish was to spend a few days with his brothers at the old hunting cabin for deer season. He was too sick to hunt, but he could stay at the cabin and trade old stories with his brothers, have a few beers, and live it up like old times.
Jerry was forced to come because he was Frank’s only nephew and Jerry’s dad thought it would be good for him to hang out with them all and “become a man”.
“Hey, Uncle Frank, it’s been dark for an hour now, shouldn’t dad be back?”
“He probably didn’t see that deer until it was almost dark. He’ll have shot it and be packing it down the mountain now.”
“Shouldn’t we go check?”
“Naw, Luke is out there, too. He’s probably helping your dad now.”
Jerry wasn’t convinced. Even though they were pretty far up the mountain, he’d have at least heard a shot.
Luke leery stood by the old game trail smoking a blunt. He’d been scouting his spot to get ready for the buck season, and now he was waiting for his brother Richard to come loping down the trail.
They called the place the mountain, but truthfully it was just a giant hill that his family had owned since, well forever. It was about a mile up to the top, then about two miles across, and then another mile down the backside. It made a nice patch to hunt on and it had made them well off with two natural gas wells on it and they had sold timber on several places.
Luke inhaled and held it in as long as he could. He heard some leaves rustling about and called out.
“That you, Rich?”
There was no answer. Figures. His brother liked to be a dick about 100% of the time.
“Don’t be fucking playing.”
Still no answer. He could be back home banging his girlfriend while his wife was away for 2 more days, but Frank insisted on all of them being out there to relive the glory days before he died.
“I ain’t got time for your shit big brother.”
Luke puffed on the blunt some more. He hated this. Frank and Richard used to torment him in the dark when they were younger, and even though he’d grown out of that fear, he was still a bit anxious about people jumping out to scare him.
Just as he was ready to turn and leave, he saw a shadowy silhouette not too far up the trail. He could just see the antlers in the dark above the humanoid figure.
“About fucking time, I was gonna just leave your ass out here. Did you get him?”
The figure moved slowly towards Luke. Then he heard an animal sniff like it was tasting the air. Seconds later, the thing he thought was his brother stomped so hard Luke felt it in the soles of his boots and reverberated up his legs.
He reached for his 1911 Colt his dad had bought him when he turned 16 but dropped it when the thing in front of him bore down on him and charged. He fell on his ass and turned over trying to find the pistol in the dark. His hand landed on the cold metal just as he felt something hard and cold grab his head.
It stunk so bad and something black dripped down his face as whatever it was grabbed and pulled. It lifted him by his head off the ground and he was in immense pain. Then it did something he didn’t expect. It started slamming him into the ground.
He felt his neck snap and his body go limp as it continued. Everything went numb. His vision started to blur as he heard a wet sound and the motion stopped. His face was shoved into the dirt as the darkness claimed him.
It was now 8 pm and his dad and Uncle Luke still weren’t back.
“Uncle Frank, We really oughta go check on Dad and Uncle Luke now. It’s been dark for 3 hours.”
“Yeah, okay.” Frank said as he got up out of the chair by the fire and grabbed his boots.
“We’ll take the side by side. You drive.”
Jerry blinked hard as his uncle tossed him the keys. Then he beamed wide. “Nice!”
They drove around the mountain on the trails three times. They found his dad’s stand completely destroyed and his rifle broken on the ground. The ground was soaked in blood.
“What the fuck, Uncle Frank?” Jerry was scared.
“Let’s go. We’re going to go find Luke then go get help. Something bad has happened here.”
They piled back into the ATV and started back towards the cabin on the old game trail out of the woods where Luke would most likely be. At the bottom of the drive down, less than a quarter of a mile from the cabin, they found Luke’s pistol and more blood.
Frank was freaked, but Jerry was in a near panic. He slammed the thing into drive and started down to the cabin and a breakneck pace.
“Slow down, kid. You’ll get us killed out here in the dark.”
Jerry started to slow down when something slammed into the side by side and rolled it. He saw his uncle Frank go flying and slam into a tree. The ATV slid on its roof a few paces, then tipped and went down the rest of the hill and slammed into a massive maple at the bottom.
Jerry could tell his left arm was broken and his right ankle was throbbing. He grabbed the knife sheathed beside the seat. The sheath zip-tied to the hard plastic. He cut himself free of the safety straps and fell out kind of sideways onto the wet grass.
His Uncle’s screams were fuel for a nightmare Jerry never even knew he could have. They choked off with a whimper and a gurgle and then there was silence.
Jerry got to his feet and immediately felt pain shoot up his leg. He ignored the excruciating pain and started to run down the hill. He heard something stomping behind him, running fast. His heart was beating so fast he could feel the blood and hear it roaring inside his head.
Something tackled him to the ground and held him there. He could feel sharp protrusions pushing into his back. His cheek was pressed into the wet grass. He flopped and panicked more, trying to get up, but the thing pushed all its weight down, and then, it sniffed the air around him, inhaling hard enough his hair actually moved with the breath of the creature.
A skeletal hand of black bones pressed into the grass right by his face as it leaned closer and sniffed even harder. Jerry started to cry. As it sniffed one more time, Jerry just knew he was going to die.
Within seconds the weight was gone. The creature no longer was on him. He didn’t move for another 10 minutes and then he slowly rolled over and saw he was alone. He crawled half the night the rest of the way to the cabin where he got into his Uncle Luke’s Dodge Challenger and drove it a few miles away until he had service.
He barely made sense when the 911 operator answered, but they were able to figure out where he was and send a patrol car to find him. They found Jerry Leery passed out in the car with a broken arm, a broken ankle, and several puncture wounds in his back.
Bud sighed heavily as he stood at the cabin out on the Leery “mountain”. He had 3 missing persons, a dead body, and a half-dead kid now. The teen, Jerry, had been so incoherent when they got him to the hospital they had to sedate him.
What he knew so far was that Richard and Luke Leery were now missing, along with Norman Taylor. Frank Leery had been attacked by something, his chest ripped open, but then he was just left there to bleed out and die.
Forensics on Norman Taylor’s truck came back and it was his blood, not that of a deer splattered everywhere, and he figured that all the blood out here was going to be the Leery brothers’ blood.
He’d never seen anything like it before. He had heard of something like it, though. A Trooper turned serial killer who was hunting in Hallows Grove and along the river. Mike Townsend had had them all fooled and actually led his owner murder investigation until Sheriff Wolfe figured it out and shot him in self-defense.
The bodies had been savaged and half-eaten at times. It was one of the weirdest investigations on the books that he knew of. Until now.
The drive to the hospital had been full of thoughts about what could have happened to Taylor and the Leery Boys. When Mike Townsend had been murdering people and dismembering them, he blamed a bear. What was the coincidence that they actually had a murderous bear out here? None.
Bud was smarter than that and had already checked to see complaints about wild animals around menacing people or getting into trash bins. He found nothing that would lead him to believe it was a bear or any other animal out there taking bodies and killing people. That left the most savage of beasts. Man.
He pulled into the hospital and headed up to where the youngest Leery boy was. The nurse let him know that Jerry was more coherent today, but had been mostly silent since he woke up around 10 am.
Bud Raker stepped into the room to find Mrs. Leery sitting beside her son’s bed, eyes red and bloodshot, her face blotchy from crying all night.
“‘Scuse me, Mrs. But could I try to speak with your son?” He took his hat off to show respect.
The woman, tired and weary, stood. “Go ahead. He’s not said more than a few words.”
She left slowly but seemed little concerned about her son now that he was awake.
“Jerry? You think we could talk a moment?”
“Bones.” Jerry said quietly.
“Excuse me?” Bud asked in confusion.
“It had a hand of bones. Like some kind of zombie.”
Bud Raker wondered if maybe he hadn’t had a break from sanity.
“A zombie, you say?”
Jerry stared out the window now. Only the sounds of machines beeping, registering his pulse, made any sort of noise.
“Jerry?”
The boy looked at him, but his eyes were wide and his face was contorted into a look of pure fear. Then he just started crying.
Bud Raker left the hospital no clearer to a solution than when he had gone in. His only living witness had essentially suffered so much trauma that his psyche was broken.
Victor sat on a flat rock by the river. The water rushing over the rocks and him being so close to nature was his perfect place of happiness. It was also a place his grandfather had brought him to many times to commune with nature and whatever spirits would reveal themselves.
Today he sought the advice of his elders. His breathing was slow, his mind was clear, he heard a hawk screech as it flew across the sky. He opened his eyes to see the hawk land in a tree only a few feet away.
“Grandfather.”
The hawk bobbed its head slightly and then moved a few inches to the right on the limb.
“The hungering spirit has returned.”
The hawk tilted its head to the right and screeched.
“I know we dare not speak its name and I know what I must do, but I fear I am not strong enough alone.”
The hawk flew away. Victor bowed his head and just as he was ready to leave, the hawk landed beside him on the rock. From its beak, it dropped a match, and then it took to the skies again.
Victor picked up the match and looked at it. The ancestors truly can still speak.
Wyatt and Jenny had tried to visit Jerry, but nothing he said made much sense. He kept talking about zombies and black bones and death. It hurt Jenny to see him like that and Wyatt hated to see Jenny hurt.
Jenny and Wyatt were sitting in his room. She was on his bed on her Chromebook and he was on his PC.
“I just think, maybe, we oughta take what he said a little seriously?”
Wyatt wasn’t convinced. “Jenny, I would love for there to be an actual zombie out there, but it just can’t be real. Besides, Dad was talking to some cops and they think it’s some serial killer like that Trooper that thought he was a werewolf or something?”
Jenny sighed. “But what if it’s real?!?”
“Okay, let’s say it is real. Who are we going to convince it’s real? No one. No one in their right mind is going to say, “Hey, we got a zombie out there, let’s go do this thing!”
“We could go see my cousin Victor. He has done a few of those paranormal investigations and even helped cleanse the properties of spirits. He could help!”
Wyatt wasn’t sure. Victor was cool and all, but he was a little out there.
“Jenny, I figure your cousin is busy.”
“Yeah, hunting a zombie! Come on Wyatt, if this is real, do you wanna really miss the chance to have seen something actually paranormal? We owe it to Jerry to go find the truth!”
“Okay, we can go see Victor, but if he says it’s just some murderer, we let the cops handle it.”
Jenny jumped up and off the bed in excitement.
Wyatt and Jenny had taken his dad’s golf cart and drove it over to Victor’s place. It was less than a 15-minute drive and the golf cart had enough gas to go 10 times that. Wyatt had to forfeit the rest of this year’s allowance to borrow it, though.
Victor lived in one of the older houses in town. It was slightly aging, but overall it still showed an incredible amount of life.
Jenny knocked on her cousin’s heavy oak door. The dull thud of her knocks seemed ominous.
Victor, though, wasn’t inside. He came from around the side of the house with a canvas bag full of stuff.
“Jenny, what are you doing here?”
He strode forward and hugged his cousin, her small stature practically disappearing as his arms wrapped around her.
Victor was tall and lean with muscle from manual labor. He helped out on the old Draper Farm doing every kind of job Kenny Draper needed.
“Wyatt.” Victor nodded to the young man as he let go of Jenny.
“Hey, Victor.”
Jenny stepped back and looked down at the canvas bag. “Going somewhere?”
“I need some tools for a job.”
“Draper doesn’t have what you need?” Wyatt asked.
“This is a private undertaking.”
Jenny looked back at the bag and back up to Victor. “Are you hunting a zombie?”
Wyatt rolled his eyes. “Damn, Jenny, just come right out with the crazy.”
“Shut up!” She pointed at him for emphasis.
Wyatt held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay.” He decided to let her lead.
Victor didn’t laugh, nor did he do so much as flinch.
“Not a zombie. No.”
Wyatt narrowed his eyes. “What’s that mean?”
Victor motioned for them to come inside. He led them to his dining room table where he had a map laid out.
“Jenny, has your mother told you about any of the stories from our ancestors?” Victor sat at the table as Jenny and Wyatt took the two seats closest to where they stood.
“Some, but not a lot.” Jenny looked a little sad at that revelation. “She’s always had to hide it, even more so after marrying dad and having me.”
She looked down at the table, sort of staring at nothing. Victor laid a hand on Jenny’s shoulder.
“What I am about to tell you is an old Shawnee legend. One our grandfather told me when I was about your age.”
Jenny nodded and looked back up at Victor to listen. Victor placed his finger on the map he had laid out. A map of Jackson County.
“Here is where the Washington trees stand. This small field is where George Washington’s men stayed when he sent them here.”
He tapped a spot circled in black ink. “This is a place the Shawnee have known of since before the white men came.
The black moon eats. It is a place where a dark spirit lives, one that will possess a man when blood is spilt. This creates a hungering spirit.”
Wyatt snorted. “Oh, come on! You’re “not a zombie” is a spirit of some kind? Wait, like a Wendigo!?!”
Victor looked at Wyatt evenly. “We dare not name what the spirit is. To name it is to give it power and call it to us. Just because you do not believe, does not mean the spirits do not believe in you.”
Wyatt wasn’t quite sure what to say. He wanted so badly to believe it was real, but then again, he’d be just as good leaving them as a myth.
Jenny smacked Wyatt on the arm as she spoke to Victor. “How do you know it’s a hungering spirit?”
“When grandfather told me that story, it was because I was having dreams of a deer that walked on two legs, leaving large hoof prints in the mud, its antlers covered in blood and gore.
“He took me into the woods with my father and our uncles and we performed a ritual to banish the spirit and lay the beast to rest.”
He touched a large hunting knife with a deer antler as the handle that was laying on the table.
“We succeeded, but only just. Or so we thought.”
Jenny looked at the old antler knife and gulped. “What did you have to do?”
Victor shook his head. “That is not a tale I want to haunt you with.”
“Victor…you can’t face it alone.” Jenny put her hand over his.
Wyatt stood suddenly. “This is nuts. Jenny, can’t you hear how nuts this is?”
Jenny took a deep breath and turned to Wyatt. “It sounds crazy, but, something is telling me, deep inside, that it’s not. I can’t explain it.”
As Jenny finished speaking she heard a screech and watched a hawk land on the table outside of Victor’s front window.
Wyatt and Jenny both watched as the hawk dropped a heart-shaped stone on the table from its beak.
“Thank you, Grandfather.” Victor said to the hawk through the window. It then nodded its head and flew away.
“The hawk was grandfather’s spirit animal. He has often sent me guidance in this way.”
“What’s a rock got to do with anything?” Wyatt asked incredulously.
“In this case, the shape of the rock. To banish the hungering spirit, you must remove its heart.”
Jenny gasped. “See Wyatt! This is proof!”
“How do we know he didn’t train the bird to do that?”
“How would he have known we were coming here?! How could he have known what we’d ask!?” Jenny looked like she was on the verge of violence.
“Wyatt, you’ve always said you wanted adventure! To see a cryptid! Experience the paranormal! Well, now you can!”
“Whoa..okay…what do we do then?”
“The two of you go home and do nothing.” Victor said sternly.
“No way! I don’t think so! I’m family, and you need help, Victor. You can’t face this thing alone.”
Victor sighed heavily. “If you are going to help, then I will need to explain some things to you. We must do this properly, once and for all.”
Sandra Leery drank straight from the vodka bottle. She wanted her husband back. If she could, she would trade Jerry for Richard in an instant.
Her son was worthless, even his uncle, Luke, was worth more and all he did was smoke weed, sell weed, and chase high school senior girls.
She drained the last drop from her second bottle of the day and wondered if she could make it to the liquor store before they closed in 15 minutes.
She forgot she was in her bathrobe and nothing more as she grabbed her keys, slipped on her knock-off uggs, and headed for her car.
Leaving her front door open wide, she stumbled to the car and dropped her keys. She bent to pick them up, grabbing the handle of her car, which then allowed her to open it and hit herself in the head, and forced her on her ass.
She laughed. Everything was so off. Her life would never be the same and was practically over.
She tried to get up but was way too dizzy. So, with her head swimming and the world swirling like a fastball from a pitcher, she laid back on the blacktop of her driveway and laughed some more.
“Mebbe I’ll just satay ere for a while.” She was so drunk her words slurred into almost nonsense.
She closed her eyes for just a second, only to scrunch up her face to the smell of raw garbage. It smelled like the dumpster from the fast food place she used to work at after the garbage sat in the sun too long.
She opened her eyes and heard movement on the other side of her car. She looked, but it was too dark to see over near the fence.
“Wadda wan?”
She rolled to her side but couldn’t get up. Then she saw something 8 or 9 feet tall.
“Wha da hell?”
It stamped its foot and snorted so loud she felt it in her chest. She panicked and in that adrenaline-fueled panic, she got to her feet and practically sprint at a world record pace into her house.
She slammed the door and slammed the deadbolt home. She made it to the kitchen and grabbed a huge butcher’s cleaver they used for deer meat.
The thing outside slammed into her door repeatedly until the door frame shattered and the door exploded into the foyer.
Sandra screamed at it as she threw the cleaver, but it was no use. The creature batted it aside.
It had to stoop to come inside. Its antlers making deep gouges in the plastered drywall of the ceiling.
She turned the corner and got into the closet, grabbing the shotgun full of slug rounds.
She aimed and fired, shattering a cabinet. The next shot blew a massive hole in her antique oak table her great grandfather had built.
The third shot, by luck or because she was sobering with the help of adrenaline, slammed into the chest of the thing.
She stared as bones blew out the new hole in the back of its black tattered cloak.
Rotting flesh dripped to the floor and blood seemed to pour out of it in gallons, but even then, it did not stop.
It charged across the space and through the wreckage, creating more damage and chaos.
It thrust its arm out in a punch that landed right on her neck. She was dead before she hit the floor. The shotgun clattered to the hardwood floor.
The creature looked at her and made a noise of anger and then picked her up and threw her body across the room.
In a rage, it destroyed everything on the bottom floor.
As it left, unnoticed by the beast, a red light blinked steadily from overtop of the front door.
Ravenswood PD had responded to the silent alarm at the Leery house within 15 minutes of it going off. What they walked into was a nightmare.
Sandra Leery was dead, old clotted blood made the floors slick and rotting meat was strewn about with old rib bones. Her heart had also been ripped from her chest, but it had been left by her body.
Bud Raker had arrived 30 minutes later and was shocked. Everyone stood and watched the home security footage for the tenth or eleventh time so far. It didn’t make sense. The guy in the costume had to stoop in a room with an eight-foot ceiling. They watched as he took a slug to the chest from the shotgun and just kept going. This couldn’t be any normal guy. He was taller than any man Bud had ever seen and he had to have been on PCP or some other drug to take a blast like that and keep going.
They quickly deployed to search the area but found no dead bodies within city limits. They did see large hoof prints tracked from the blood that trailed about a block away, but then they just stopped in the middle of the intersection.
Bud stood in the yard as the forensics guys took photos and started bagging stuff. He saw two teens on a golf cart drive by slowly, watching them intently. He recognized the girl from the hospital, at one point she was hanging outside the Leery kids’ room.
That poor kid. His entire family was gone now. Bud shook his head as he got behind the wheel of his vehicle. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving, and it looked like Bud was going to be spending it in Ravenswood trying to make sure the town didn’t panic.
Wyatt heard the gruesome details from his dad by overhearing him talk to Wyatt’s mom. He couldn’t believe it, but the details fit a Wendigo to a T, or at least the legends he’d been looking up and reading online since they left Victors. He’d called Jenny and soon they were at Victor’s again.
The plan was rather simple. They would go out where the spirit dwelled when not feasting. Victor would lure it out, and then, they would take it down.
“Our mistake was we didn’t burn the body, just the heart. We took the body apart and buried it in multiple places. Grandfather believed that the spirit would not be able to possess anyone if the body still existed. It would simply wander lost from part to part. We were wrong.”
He had the canvas bag on the dining room table. He pulled out two machetes and a large knife sheathed on leather belts. The knives were all made from bone or antler of some kind.
“These knives have existed in our family for generations. Each ancestor who possessed the power to commune with the spirits had to hunt and kill and fashion their own knife for ritual work. Mine is from the antler of a deer I tracked on foot for days, killing it with a bow and arrow.
“Jenny, that is grandfather’s knife. His knife is from the antler of an elk he killed as a very young man out west.
“And Wyatt, your knife was our great grandmothers. Hers is made from the antler of a caribou.”
Wyatt and Jenny stuck them in their backpacks.
“Do we..uh, get a gun?” Wyatt asked, looking at the shotgun and pistol on the table.
“I do not think so. If you’ve never handled a firearm, then you should not be given one now in a time where you may panic and hurt someone else.
“The shotgun shells have a specific mixture within them, blessed through ritual as I made them. They will slow the spirit down, but not stop it.”
He slung the shotgun across his back. And holstered the pistol at his side.
“I will scout ahead near the Washington trees. Meet me just before dark. Tonight this must end. No more shall this dark spirit be a blight upon this land.”
Bud sat at his computer staring at the screen. He wasn’t sure what had brought him to this exact moment. A random thought had grabbed him and he had decided to give it just a little bit of space in his mind.
Several hours later, he had found himself on Reddit reading about Wendigos. He had randomly decided to look up monsters with antlers that his suspect could be imitating. He first found several pop culture references, each one was mostly contradictory to another. Then he found the actual Native American legends. He scrolled through countless articles, endless images and figured this was what his suspect was trying to be. A Wendigo.
Then Reddit came along and had stories from people who swore they saw one or had heard of someone who saw one. The stories all felt eerily similar, and they all matched what Bud Raker had been trying to piece together for a week.
At some point, as a cop, you figured you’d seen it all. Bud had been a trooper for over 30 years now. His 50th birthday was in January and he planned on retiring. He could have retired 5 years ago, but he liked his job.
He remembered that the Shawnee had lived in the area, but they had been relocated until he did some digging and found a few families were still in the area. His eyes narrowed at the family name and the relatives. Victor Smoke and his sister, Helema Lewis, married to John Jeffrey Lewis, daughter Jenny Lewis.
He knew John. He worked at the courthouse as a law clerk. It was then, in a flash of memory, he realized why that girl visiting the Leery boy seemed so familiar. He’d met her when she was about 10, so she’d grown up a bit since then. Bud didn’t know Victor, but, just maybe, he could help.
It had become obvious that something else was out there in the woods. He remembered the old stories about the woods around Ravenswood being haunted. The stories extended even out to Point Pleasant, where Bud grew up and lived his entire life. They were stories that he and his buddies used to use to scare the younger kids in Boy Scouts.
Now, he wondered if it wasn’t all true. His mother had been a hardcore practicing Catholic and she always warned him of dark spirits that were evil. He’d grown up believing in demons and spirits that could possess a person, but when he got older, he regulated it to old-world superstitions his mom had learned from his grandmother and grandfather.
He called John.
“Bud! What can I do for you?”
“I’m sorry to interrupt your Thanksgiving, but I was wondering if you could give your brother-in-law’s phone number?”
“Victor? Sure, I’ll ask Helema if she has it.’
“Bud heard John ask Helema if she had the number. There was some muffled discussion and then John responded back.
“So, a bit of a snag, Bud. Jenny says he’s out hunting near the old Washington trees.”
“Does she know when he’ll be back?”
“Not exactly. I’ve got his number though, you can try later this evening.”
John gave Bud the number and they said their goodbyes.
“Out by the old Washington trees.” He knew exactly where that was at. It was out where the new logging outfit had come in.
Bud Raker went out and kissed his wife. He apologized for having to go. They had had dinner early in the day, just in case he needed to leave. He got in his car and headed towards where Victor Smoke was supposed to be.
Victor had found a place in the field and had begun to prepare. He could see several trees had been removed in the woods and several logs were stacked up at the edge of the field where he now knelt.
He had tried a few days ago to find where the remains his family had buried nearly 20 years before, but with all the logging activity, his points of reference were completely gone.
He theorized the logging was what awoke the spirit, and its various remains were probably dug up as they came through and ended up in a pile of dirt, back together. This time they wouldn’t make the same mistake.
He was apprehensive about Wyatt and Jenny helping, but she had been right. He was going to need help.
He took the blood from the butcher he had bought and poured it into a large metal mixing bowl. He then added from a small pouch a bunch of coins and money. He poured a jar of moonshine into the bowl as well.
The next part was far more important. He used a needle and drew blood from his arm. It wasn’t a professional job, but it was what he needed.
He squirted half of the blood into the bowl and then the rest was soaked into a cloth that he placed on the logs at the edge of the woods.
He called on the black hoof of the black moon that hungered. He chanted it several times.
One would think his choice of things to go into the bowl was odd, but the moonshine represented a twofold symbol. Corn had been very important to the Shawnee, and thus it represented food. It also represented having excess with which they can waste on making into alcohol.
The spirit didn’t just hunger for flesh. It was driven by a deeper need to fulfill itself with all manner of pleasures and excesses.
Gluttony, greed, lust. All of these things would attract the Wendigo.
Victor heard a hawk screech as it landed near him in the field. His grandfather had come to help as best he could.
He’d survived the spirit before and this time he would prevail as well..
Wyatt and Jenny had spent Thanksgiving with their families, enjoying food and company. Wyatt, as the day wore on, grew increasingly anxious. His stomach started to hurt by the time dessert was served.
He’d never been so nervous before, but he was also kind of excited. The feeling he had about the events to take place was a strange mix to him.
As the hour came close to dark, around 4:30 pm, he excused himself. He’d told his family that he and Jenny were going to go see Jerry and make sure he was okay. He convinced his dad to let him use the golf cart because a soft gentle rain had begun to fall.
Jenny had spent the afternoon helping her mom cook and try to hide her excitement for what was to come. When she told her mom and dad she was going with Wyatt to visit Jerry, they were happy to know she wanted to be there for him.
Jenny met Wyatt out in front of her house and hopped into the golf cart as soon as he pulled up. She had dressed in a pair of camo coveralls, a black T-shirt, and her black boots. Wyatt was in black jeans, a black shirt, and a pair of muck boots.
“You ready?” He sounded nervous.
“Yeah, let’s go kill an evil spirit.” She was almost bubbly with excitement.
Wyatt started the golf cart and headed towards the old Washington trees site.
“I’m not sure we are gonna be able to do this, Jenny. I mean…it’s a monster.”
“Victor was our age when he fought it last time.”
“Yeah, and he had your grandfather and your uncles to help him!” He kept looking towards any noise out in the darkness with apprehension. “This is, like, an Indian thing.”
“Wyatt!”
“Sorry, sorry. Native American. But you know what I mean. I’m not…I’m white….I can’t DO anything.”
Jenny looked at Wyatt and smiled softly. “You are my friend and chosen family. I love you Wyatt Hunter, and that makes you enough.”
He laughed nervously. “Let’s hope the spirits agree.”
They pulled up behind Victor’s Jeep as he stepped around it into view.
“Are you ready?”
“As much as I can be.” Wyatt responded.
“Hell yes!” Jenny said excitedly.
Bud pulled off across from a Jeep and a golf cart. It was strange seeing a golf cart out like this, but he recognized it immediately. As he got out of the car, he could see flashlights in the field. He pulled his Maglite off his pistol belt and turned it on and started towards the lights.
As he got closer he could tell there were three individuals in the field. The lights turned towards him and focused on him. He slowed to a stop and held his free hand up in a gesture to show he wasn’t armed or a threat.
“Victor Smoke? Is that you?” Bud kept his light out of their faces and aimed more towards the taller man’s chest.
“Yes?” the voice sounded confused. “Who are you?”
Bud cleared his throat. “I’m Trooper Raker, West Virginia State Police. I think you can help me with something.” He started to move slowly forward again. “You’re looking for the Wendigo, right?”
Bud was close enough now to see the two teens from before. The girl gasped when he finished saying Wendigo and the boy looked like he might go into convulsions.
Just as he got close enough to talk, the most inhuman bellow came from near the log pile.
“Oh shit!” This from the teen boy.
“Wyatt, Jenny, get ready! Trooper, if you would be so kind as to draw your firearm and be ready.”
Even as Victor spoke Bud had been drawing his weapon. That sound sent cold chills down his spine. Victor had a shotgun in his hands and he racked the pump to load a shell. The boy and girl, Wyatt and Jenny he guessed, both drew large knives from sheaths and looked alert. They were all facing the way the noise had come from.
Bud attached the light to his pistol and held it low and ready. He could see the girl had a belt draped over her like a bandolier with a big machete on her back. The boy had his belt on like a gunfighter or a woodsman.
As the sun was almost gone and it was almost dark, they could see an eight or nine feet tall creature with antlers upon its head. He crouched low as the light hit it and then it charged across the field.
Victor started firing, as did Bud. Bud hit it as much as he missed it and soon he was reloading. He only had three magazines with him. So he slowed down as he ejected the spent one and loaded a new one into the gun.
Victor’s shotgun blasts roared like a beast of its own, and there seemed to be some small amounts of fire in the rounds as he shot the creature. He hit it three times and it roared again. That sound thumped through Bud Raker’s chest and nearly made him turn and run, but he didn’t, and that should have earned him some kind of medal.
The thing came within a few feet of Victor until he fired at its face. No, face was the wrong word. It was a deer skull covering the face of whatever was charging at them, rotting flesh hanging off the antlers. It looked as if it had tried to rub away the velvet of the antlers and also rubbed away the flesh down to the skull.
Wyatt, though he looked scared as hell, charged in and jammed his knife into its back. The creature jerked away, but the knife stayed stuck in place. Smoke seemed to rise from where the blade remained. A thick black curling smoke that smelled like sulfur and rotting meat.
Bud took aim and fired at the skull. He watched as he shattered the left half of its face, only to reveal something else below it. A gnarled black face, its skin so thin that it looked skeletal, was underneath that skull.
Wyatt turned and puked. The creature went for the boy but his friend, Jenny, stepped in and jammed the knife right where Bud had shattered the skull. This sent the beast flailing and thrashing. He tried to grab the knife handle to pull smoke billowed from its bony hands.
Victor stepped over to the thrashing thing and fired the rest of his shells into its body. It kicked and bucked a couple of times and then went still. Laying on the ground now was not a deerlike creature like most stories of the Wendigo told. This was a man, or what was once a man. Its body had elongated and become skeletal and rotting.
Bud moved closer. “Holy Fucking Hell.”
“Stay back, Trooper. It is not dead.” Victor walked to a bag and pulled out a small jug. “Moonshine my grandfather made. In it are the ashes of the hungering spirits first heart.” He poured it over the body. “That should help seal it to this spot. Jenny, you and Wyatt go to my Jeep and bring the gas can and the torch. Tropper, if you may, please take my shotgun. Load the last four shells please and if it moves, fire and don’t stop.”
“You can call me Bud.” He said as he loaded the shotgun then aimed it at the beast on the ground.
Victor nodded as he knelt by the creature and quickly started field dressing it like a deer. Black rotting intestines, liver, heart, lungs, and other things spilled from the creature. It started to move, but Victor held up a hand to stop Bud.
He shoved the guts into a black trash bag and moved them away from the body, careful to not rip it. Jenny and Wyatt returned with the gas can and the blow torch.
“Pour gas on the black bag. Then the contents of the bowl there.” Victor motioned towards the metal mixing bowl. He then pulled the knives from the body.
“Wyatt looked at the Wendigo’s body. No gas for that?”
“Yes, save about half the jug.” He stood and drew his machete. Wyatt and Jenny did the same. “Now we dismember it. Burn each piece separately.”
Victor moved over to the monster, as did Jenny and Wyatt. Victor brought the machete down at one of the shoulders, but the blade just bounced back. In an instant, it was up. It grabbed Victor and shoved him with such strength that they all heard a crunching noise. Jenny screamed as Wyatt slammed the machete towards the monster’s neck, but it was moving far too fast and was by Bud in less than a second.
The shotgun roared as it was ripped from Bud’s hands. The shot went wild. The shotgun went flying out into the darkness and a hand of bone as cold as ice ripped Bud Raker’s throat out. He fell beside the black trash bag in agony as his blood pumped out of his neck with his heartbeat.
Wyatt panicked. He couldn’t see anything so he ran. Pure adrenaline carried him in the first direction away from the creature he could flee towards.
Jenny fell with the torch in her hand near Bud Raker’s dying body. On instinct, she lit the torch with the automatic lighter and lit the gas on the bag. The flames took off roaring.
The creature screeched and turned towards the flames, but whatever it had planned to do, it was too late. It fell sort of sideways as smoke poured from it’s insides.
Jenny looked frantically for Victor and found him about 15 feet away. He was alive, but his left arm was bent at an awkward angle. Jenny moved towards Bud as Victor got to his feet. She could see the life leaving his eyes.
“We have to do something!”
“He’s dead, Jenny.” She looked down and saw him staring lifelessly at the stars. She fell to her knees and started to sob.
“Wyatt?!” Victor yelled. “Wyatt, it’s over!”
There was no answer.
Victor couldn’t explain what had happened to the authorities. Nothing he said would make sense. The remains of the creature, basically bones, a deer skull with antlers still attached, \ and an old cloak were taken to be examined. So was Bud Raker’s body.
After going through Bud’s notes they concluded that the group had been the intended victims of a deranged killer. They spoke with Victor and their questions led him to tell them about a big horned something attacking them.
Wyatt Hunter had disappeared. After four days of searching, they called off the search and kept an open missing persons case file.
Jerry ended up going to a mental facility in Pittsburgh. They were unsure if he’d ever be okay.
As for Jenny and Victor, they started hanging out more, and Jenny started to learn about her ancestry and the traditions, legends, and folklore of the Shawnee. She planned to never stop looking for Wyatt.
Wyatt Hunter had run until he couldn’t anymore. After he collapsed he puked blood and other things for days. He ran a fever that was so hot, he should have been dead, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t sure what was wrong, but now he was hungry. So, so hungry.
He had woken up in several inches of snow and he had a pounding headache. He looked down through the forest and saw a sign.
Welcome to Hallows Grove.
E. L. Knight Writes 