We watched the sun go down through the broadcast room window. The sky, painted with strokes of red and yellow that melted into deep purple, would have been a picture of serenity if it didn’t remind me of a wildfire rising up from the trees. Maybe that would have been preferable to what it really was: a long, dreadful night on its way. Even inside, the humidity filled the air with a tense electricity that put my nerves on edge.
We were leaving for the woods, getting our things packed: a compass, flashlights, batteries, the handgun and all the ammo we had. As we did, we decided to tune our ears into one more of those cassette tapes. We bypassed the audio journals in the middle - including the second-to-last that we still hadn’t found - and went straight for the final recording.
It wasn’t what we expected.
“It’s February 10th, 2013.” This voice was different; it was a lady’s voice. “This is Number Eight from the Emergency Broadcast Station … I have been here alone for four days since we lost Number Seven, who reached a record-breaking three months of service before his death. I regretted that I only knew him for a short while, and even more I regret having to be there when he was killed. I had been warned. They told me that the creatures in the woods like to take parts from their victims, but I couldn’t believe how savagely they ripped him to shreds.
The only thing left was his head in the end. But even then, the eyes were gone. Both of them, taken clean from the skull.
I almost thought I saw a glimpse of them this afternoon, but it was just this strange-looking bird that’s been hanging around near the broadcast room window, right where the tree line ends. I can’t see him now, but I feel watched. I’m sorry, Number Seven.”
The recording sent a chill up my spine, or maybe several. Daniel was skeptical at first when I told him that I wanted to go into the woods and get rid of that fuck that stole my eye right out of the socket, but I think that seeing my reaction to the recording was enough to sway him more towards my side.
“I just don’t like it,” I told him as I clipped one of the glorified fanny packs we found in the closet around my waist. I put it to the side so that I didn’t look like a tourist. “I don’t like the thought of my body being out there, even just a part of it.”
Daniel shook the box of ammo that Elijah had given him, making sure it was enough to get us by. He scoffed, his laughter laced with a hoarse snort.
“So is this one of those cases of, ‘If I can’t have it, nobody can’?”
I looked back at him, lips pursed in a frown. “Yes.” I said it bluntly, and I was serious about it. “You don't need to go if you don't want to. After the last time, I'd understand.”
Dan didn't say a word at first. But he looked straight at me as he laced the strap of his bag around one shoulder, securing it tightly and zipping it shut. With one last peek at the monitors to make sure the music was set to play until morning, he gave me a singular, decisive nod of the head.
“Ready.” He stated. “Ready to … go shoot a tree in the face, I suppose.”
If everything failed, he’d be ready to die, I thought. I didn’t dare speak it out loud since those words wouldn’t have been useful; he already knew.
Our steps down the metal stairwell had never echoed the same way they did then. The sound was sharp, oddly uniform, like the hit of sticks against the drum in a funeral march. When the heavy door at the bottom pushed open and the summer air came washing over, it was humid and thick. I heard the crickets and frogs, the sound of my own boots kicking up the dirt and grass beneath me. If I focused hard, maybe I could have imagined that I was still at my mom’s house or drinking a beer while sitting outside my old college dorm.
As the last few rays of sun disappeared and the sky became the darkest it would be, the crickets and frogs went quiet. In an unnatural change of pace, they were buzzing one moment and then silent the very next, as if the night fell so thick around us that it choked the sound out of every living thing.
“Do you want to carry the gun?” Daniel asked, pointing down at his bag. A generous offer, but maybe not the most thought-out one.
“I, uh … don’t think my aim is what it used to be, Danny Boy. I’ll trust you with it, okay?”
Our first steps into the woods were dizzying. There was an energy out here, and I don’t mean that as in some vague ghostly bullshit. It felt teeming with too much life, even when there was none to be seen. When the branches above our heads cracked and moved, the groans of the old wood sounded like a voice. When small animals ran through the overgrowth or scaled the sides of the trees, I felt as if they were watching and whispering to one another. Even the mosquitoes, which were eating the hell out of Dan’s neck right from the start, were active and agitated. This place was crowded and unhealthy.
I stopped for a moment to listen, and Daniel did me the courtesy of standing still as well. There was a very distant sound, like a low bellow. It was far away but the vocal moan was tired and unhappy. I thought of some old dragon being awoken from its slumber, and all at once hoped to god it wasn't as real or big as it sounded.
“I hope the root man doesn’t only show himself when there are kids around,” I said to my companion, who was squinting his eyes to see my lips move.
Daniel shrugged. “He seemed content enough with you and your eye.”
I answered his sass with a sneer and scrunched eyebrows. The one above my right eye socket still hurt to move, but it was worth that pain. “This time, if he wants to take a chunk, he can take one from you.” I immediately felt like trash after I said it. “Sorry...I'm in a shit mood for jokes.”
From the corner of my vision, I saw Dan’s hand reaching out, and I suspected he was going to pat my arm. “I understa--” He never finished the word. From out of complete silence, I heard the crunch of leaves and both of us witnessed a dark, almost shapeless form pass not five feet away from where we stood. It darted from behind one tree and then disappeared around another, crossing directly in front of our path.
Daniel’s hand finally did find my arm, but instead of the gentle pat I had expected, he gripped it tightly, almost painfully. My heart skipped a beat and the air in my lungs was pushed out in a loud, sudden exhale. It was hard to catch another breath. I almost didn’t want to breathe, as the air around us was filled with a rotten, molded stench. It reminded me of rusted metal, mildew, and decay, all set out to soak in the heat.
I could hear him: the creak of old wood and the rattle of mummified flesh and bone.
“Gun.” I mouthed the word to Daniel, nodding my head down at the satchel around his shoulder. ‘Take out the gun.”
He fumbled for it. I wanted so badly to be annoyed, to just tear it out of the bag on my own, but even in the dark I could see his hands shaking. I could see that shadow lurking nearby, circling around. It wasn’t a curious gesture, like an animal just trying to get a better look at something it couldn’t quite discern as predator or prey. He moved rapidly in randomly-chosen directions, and I felt tension in my chest knowing that if I stopped turning to watch him, he could bound towards us so easily and so quickly.
“Fuck!” Daniel almost dropped the gun while he attempted to load it, distracted by the movement between the trees. “Come on, come on...”
I heard the click of the magazine being pushed into place. Daniel readied his stance, but the weapon still trembled and rattled in his hands. His head turned one way and the next, always looking for a single moment when the creature stopped, but the shadow never sat still for more than an instant. In the dull light from the moon, I could see the whites of Daniel’s eyes as they continued to dart in every direction, worry drawn on his face with a heavy brow.
I thought the same thing I thought when he came back after his very first traumatizing day: he didn’t need to be here, but he chose to.
Goddammit, Dan.
A gunshot pierced through the air, way too close to my head for comfort. I covered the ear that got the worst of the sound, but any words that I would have exclaimed would have just been drowned out by the bellow that sounded out and shook the ground under our feet. It came from the mountains, but even that distance made the insides of my ears pound.
Birds abandoned their perches at the trees, the buzzing flies grew silent, and the root-faced man had retreated to the shadows during the silence that followed. I watched Daniel flinch, a hand twitching as it raised half the distance to his ear by pure instinct.
All this time, I wondered about the final sound he ever heard with perfect ears. I considered that moment to be my answer.
“What the fuck was that?” I turned to squint my remaining eye towards the tops of the trees, horrified by the very distant movement that I saw. Suddenly, I regretted not having a weapon of my own. “What the fuck was that?!”
“I don’t care, we’re leaving.” Daniel sounded urgent, the gun still held in one hand while the other flailed outward and grabbed the sleeve of my t-shirt. He tugged me toward him, and in that moment we were both utterly content to leave and give up this entire mission. Did I still hate the thought of that creature having my eye? You’re damn right I did. But I had the distinct feeling that if we waited any longer, the forest would end up taking more than we would be left with.
We made a mistake then in thinking that the bellows and the earth-rattling weight would chase away the creature we came out to find. We turned and began rushing through the same path we took to get there, but the crack of twigs and the rustle of leaves followed after us. A shadow darted to my left, then disappeared when it crossed in front of us, leaving Daniel and I both to stop in our tracks. The son of a bitch was still trailing us, even when the distant rumble of giant steps became not-so-distant anymore.
Just as soon as he was there, he was gone. The woodland stretching out before us, thick with vegetation and spots of shadow, was empty. But then I heard the crack of slow footsteps behind us, this time with a purpose.
The root-faced man released a rattle of breath, like a gasp taken from dried, mummified lungs. He had no mouth, but I could see the dust and dried leaves leaving an empty cavity between his exposed rib bones. He had grown since we last saw him. The worn and ratty clothes he once wore were gone, but where he would have had a naked human body, the forest had replaced the flesh with vines, thorns, and what appeared to be very pale, thin … small hands coming out of his body and curling around the bone and bark.
Oh, God. The hands still moved. They still clawed as if trying to escape.
They were half the size of mine.
We moved before he did. Daniel still gripped the handle of the gun tightly, but while facing both immediate and eventual dangers, I preferred the fact that he wasn’t trying to shoot it in every direction. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to run so quickly or for so long, not until I knew the feeling of adrenaline taking over every move I made. And yet, no matter how far we thought we ran, it never seemed far enough. We still heard those pounding feet behind us, we still saw a shadow darting from one side to the other, and somewhere up the mountain, we couldn’t outrun that angry bellow.
We didn’t know which way we were running. In the dark, every tree looked exactly the same as the one next to it, but one thing was unfamiliar. My eye caught the straight edge of a wooden sign, the words so old and chipped from the surface that I couldn’t have read what it said even if I had time to stop and look.
A singular sign wasn’t all there was. Twice I almost tripped over bits of wood and stone on the ground, and the second time, the toe of my shoe caught something distinctly metallic. It was a track, smaller than a railway for a train, and moving … downward?
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit!” I skidded to a stop, grabbing the back of Daniel’s shirt before he had a chance to stumble into the dark and lose his footing. We were standing at the top of a steep downward drop, which had probably been a smooth hill until the ground began to cave and reclaim it. Wooden stakes in the ground held up the partially-collapsed entrance to an underground mine, but the track leading into it was being swallowed by what was at least several decades worth of moving earth and mudslides.
As I moved to race around it, I felt the earth shift under my feet. The ground didn’t feel safe - it didn’t feel sturdy, and those few seconds of hesitation was all it took.
The rattle of bone and bark sent a chill through my body, but nothing froze my blood the way the glimmer of a single eye in the darkness did. Darting, searching, finally focusing itself on me - my own eye sat nestled in the center of the creature’s throat and stared unblinkingly forward as he took staggering, noisy steps through the dirt.
Those tiny fingers in his chest were reaching, clawing, either trying to get out or trying to pull something in. When he moved closer, I moved back, and I could even see Daniel hesitating as the earth underneath is began to shift again. It took him a moment, but I heard the metal click of the gun he had been waiting all this time to use.
He pointed it, hands shaking. I could hear my own heartbeat. I could hear … something else as well. The crack of branches in a large oak tree, the huff of breath through a dust-filled snout.
A single gunshot rang out and I could see the scatter of wooden splinters in the air, but the screech that followed may not have been Daniel’s doing at all. In a split second, a shadow bigger than anything I could have expected fell down from the trees, taking branches with it and snapping a thin birch in half as it landed. The amalgamate had changed. It always did. A flurry of arms and claws, some of them at its sides and others reaching out from its stomach, grasped together to wrap around the smaller beast. The giant stood, four of its hooves still on the ground but two of them in the air. Where its ribs would have once been underneath the fur, the bones had now sharpened into a gaping mouth, one that rippled and dripped in a blood-filled cavity. Antlers cracked against the tree limbs as it rose to its full height, lifting the root-faced man and holding his body immobile.
God, the way it screamed. A dry wheeze escaped his opened chest, but I swear that somewhere muffled in that twisted body of plant and human, I could hear small, pathetic, fearful whimpers…
Like a twig snapped in half, the giant tore his prey in two pieces, cracking the bone and bark with ease. It threw the bottom half aside, leaving the forest floor to reclaim it, while I watched in disgust as the cavity in its chest opened to welcome the rest. It ate him alive, swallowing his body piece by piece until the arms, hands, roots, and that one singular eye were all absorbed, only to find new homes.
Two of the small arms broke through the skin near the beast’s shoulders. Another clawed its way out of its chest. I became aware in that moment of just how many pieces had been taken: bones, hooves, claws, teeth. I could see so many human parts just in one glance, but I wasn’t going to count them. I didn’t want to.
The creature blinked, six eyes glimmering through the dark all at once, until a seventh opened blearily on its forehead for the first time.
If this thing had it, I was never getting it back.
“Oh, fuck this!” Daniel pointed the gun just as the amalgamate fell back on six legs and began slowly approaching us with the confidence of something that knew we couldn’t outrun it. This time, Dan didn’t hesitate. I heard one gunshot, then two, both of them aimed at the beast’s head. The first shot grazed an antler, which agitated but didn’t even seem to injure it, but the second one…
The bellow the beast made was ear-splitting. I felt as if my brain were melting inside of my skull and both hands covered my ears to keep it from dripping out. Daniel had hit the mark the second time, a stream of dark blood falling onto the grass beneath the monster’s front hooves. How Dan managed to hit a target in the center of that thing’s head, I’ll have no fucking clue as long as I live.
The beast stomped, flailing its head in anger, blood pouring from the eye socket. It was a small injury in comparison to this thing’s massive size, but goddamn if that didn’t piss it off. Each step I took backwards, I felt the earth shift a bit more. Those stomping hooves, that weight: he was going to cave us all in.
“It’s okay.” Dan gripped my wrist with a white-knuckle hold and took a large step back. The dirt shifted again, this time crumbling down into the dark pits of the mine. I looked behind myself and couldn’t even see the floor. “Just take one more step back. On three. One. Two.”
Daniel didn’t get to three. The amalgamate flailed its antlers one last time and then began to charge toward us, but those first two steps were enough to crack through the ground and send the earth crumbling beneath our feet. The cold shock of falling backwards, never knowing how far you’re going to fall or what you’ll be falling onto, was a lot like falling into water. Cold, overflowing bath water.
I remembered something then. That split second before my head hit the ground, I could see the tile on the bathroom ceiling where I used to live. It was ugly, made up of all these random scratches and shapes. I stared at one for the longest time because it looked a little bit like a man’s face. A man’s face with a big beard.
When Jennifer slapped me awake, choking on cold bath water, her stark-white face covered the view of the ceiling. After that day, I couldn’t see that face in the tile anymore no matter how long I stared.
There was no water this time, but the stone poking into my back was painful and cold all the same. I opened my eye to the dim, jagged opening above my head, a silhouette blocking the moonlight. It wasn’t Jennifer. Daniel was panting, out of breath, and the dust was still clearing around us. I was only out of my mind for a few seconds.
“Shit, are you okay?” He asked, slipping a hand behind my shoulders to help me sit up straight.
“My back hurts like hell. But yeah. I’m fine.” I squinted my eye up above us, the dust and dirt clouding my vision and stinging something awful. I half expected to see that beast had fallen in with us, but it was out of sight. Somewhere above us, but growing further away, I could hear the heavy steps of its hooves along the forest path.
“I didn’t kill it.” Daniel said, sitting down on the ground. In the pale sliver of moonlight we were offered, I could see his dirt-covered face, tan skin turned red with scratches and glistening with sweat down here in the hot, humid cavern. He wore a scowl. “...Sorry I shot your eye.”
I wiped my face, smearing the dirt that was already on my cheek. “It’s fine, Danny Boy. I didn’t have use for it anyways.” Painfully, I sat up on my knees and then forced my legs to stand. “We should see how far this mine goes, I guess. Got a flashlight?”
He was pulling his out of his bag at the same time I was, but the light illuminated only more unpleasant sights. I expected stone and coal down here, but at first glance, all I saw were roots. The roots of the trees above had taken over, fighting their way through the dirt. An old mine cart was tipped on its side, cocooned in the roots of a tree that had grown over it as if trapping it against the dirt.
We walked quietly, tiredly, and with purpose. Any desire I had to investigate was gone. But a shuffle of sound from my right made my heart skip a beat, my hand almost instinctively turning the light to see. The roots covered every inch of the walls, but somewhere in there, I could see the movement of something half-formed trying to break through. There wasn’t just one. If I looked up close and for long enough, I’d probably see plenty of animals from the forest trapped in those roots, all of them in various states of decay and all of them still moving. Some of the remains, both skeletal and fleshy, were draped in bits of rotten old cloth. I felt another wave of discomfort as I recognized an old firefighter’s coat, almost like the one I used to steal from my dad and wear around the house, only older. Much older.
“What do you think caused them all to come back like that?” Daniel was flashing his light on the opposite wall.
I wished I had an answer for him. “Honestly, I’m not sure anyone knows. Maybe nature’s just different here and no one thing made it that way.”
Daniel took in a deep breath through his nose, but in the dim light, I could see him wince. It smelled awful down here.
“That was a terrible answer,” he told me.
“I know.”
We followed the mine for about a mile, give or take. Maybe it just felt that long. When we emerged, a red glow in the sky signaled the very early hours of morning, but the fresh air was the most welcoming thing. I took in a deep breath and coughed, tasting dirt and ash in my lungs. I looked like shit. I probably smelled like shit. But seeing the treeline behind us would have been worth ten times as much dirt caked into my body.
We followed the treeline back towards the long gravel drive that Daniel took to work every day, and the same drive where I had been dropped off on my first day at work. Back then, I had no idea what all of this would become. And when I saw the tower again, I thought I’d feel a heavy pit of regret in my stomach. I didn’t, strangely. It’s weird how a place like that can almost feel like home when everything around it is a hundred times more dangerous.
Finn was waiting at the top when we got there, looking like a disappointed dad who had been waiting up for us all night. We got an earful, as I’m sure you can imagine, but in the end I think he was just glad to see that we came back at all. Hell, he even congratulated Dan on getting a single shot in, telling us that they could hear the beast screaming all the way from the main road.
You know, it seems like we didn’t do much. I didn’t get my eye back, we didn’t kill that antlered fuck, whom I’ve decided to call Big Boy from now on. But like all things, I guess it was a learning experience. Finn mentioned in passing that there’s been whispers among his old friends at the police station of forming a new branch, one he’s hopeful he’ll get placed in. Something about ‘trapping and removing’ the creatures that are already in the woods, hoping that maybe putting them down off-site will keep them from coming back to life. We were standing in the kitchen at the time. I poured distilled water into the coffee maker when I asked him if they’d ever really get it under control out here.
“Sometimes you can’t fight to win,” he told me. “You just fight until you can’t fight anymore.”
That was a bit of lukewarm optimism I could get behind.
With two cups of coffee in hand, I stepped out onto the fire escape, which we decided to keep open now that Finn forked over his security keys. The morning was cool and breezy, even if the view was garbage.
“Here.” I handed Dan a cup of coffee, one without blood in it this time. He just smiled and scooted himself over so I could sit next to him.
“You know,” he started. “We’ve got our Number 30 now.”
“Yeah?” I laughed.
“Yeah. We can go on that vacation we talked about.”
I leaned my chin against the railing for a second, but it wasn’t that comfortable. With a sigh, I decided that maybe Dan’s shoulder was a much more cozy spot to lay my head. I was correct about that.
“Where do you wanna go?” I asked.
I peeked up at him, shifting hair out of my eye as he cracked a stupid looking smile.
“I don’t know, I hear outer space is pretty decent this time of year.”
My laugh came out as a snort. Letting the coffee cup warm my hands, I took a long glance out at the tops of the trees, wondering how on earth we’d actually relax if we left this place behind.
My gaze caught a flutter of wings. A familiar face decided to show up then, Bartholomew the bird with its hazel, human eyes landing on a branch closest to us at the edge of the treeline. I watched him pick at a nest of twigs and grass. There was something in that nest - a squared edge of something black, a bit scratched, and made of plastic. I guess we know where that missing cassette tape went.
I stared at him, that shitty little bird. Then I broke contact to blink my one remaining eye.
He winked back with the same eye.
“They’re not all bad.” Daniel said. He took a sip of his coffee, but kept his shoulders still so that I didn’t have to move. “Yeah, some of them are downright rotten, but … some aren’t too bad, right?”
I gave a weak laugh and watched the bird hop away, glancing up at Dan again. “Yeah. They’re not all bad.”
I don’t know if I was talking about monsters anymore, or just people.
Some of them may have been just people.
...
This is Evelyn McKinnon, and on behalf of everyone here at 104.6FM, thank you for tuning in.
---
Credits
Comments