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October 1st - When the Lightning Strikes


The night sky split in two, bisected by brilliant light. The darkness parted, falling away like receding waves on an obsidian shore. Thunder, the sound of the waves crashing back together, returning the sky to the night. Drowning the fields and the woods beneath its crushing weight.

Little Stuart Browning couldn’t sleep. He’d undone his own covers and rolled on to his belly to stare out his bedside window. Lightning struck once more, way beyond the germinating fields, somewhere beyond that gray horizon.

Sleep didn’t come easy on stormy nights, not for Stuart. His mother said he took after her, but he didn’t. Her anxiety fueled her thunder-triggered insomnia, whereas Stuart felt drawn to the sights and sounds with an acute fascination. She had called it God’s wrath, but Stuart saw no anger in the clouds. Nothing more, perhaps, than a solemn regret.

Eyes-wide, and with no want of sleep, Stuart watched. Each bolt, each lash, restored a life to the earth, to her skies. It uncovered the fields stretching for acres on the horizon, his own, empty backyard, and the creek that separated the two. There were the woods to his right, standing tall and imposingly over the young fields. A single playset, where a swing gently swayed, as if the wind pushed on an invisible jockey.

The rainless storm persisted.

A flash of light, and then a booming thunder.

Flash of light, booming thunder.

Flash of light.

Flash of light.

Flash of light.

Stuart cautiously rose to his knees, edging himself closer to the window. His palm met the glass’s icy face. He waited.

Flash of light.

Wrong. It was all wrong. The thunder had gone. He couldn’t hear anything anymore. Rubbing his eyes, scratching his ears. Nothing changed.

Flash of light.

Stuart wondered if he’d fallen asleep. No, he would know. If he was asleep, it wouldn’t feel right. Everything would be off, not just the lightning. He wouldn't feel the soft cushioning of his bed beneath his knees, the sharp kiss of the chilly moisture on the window pane. If it were all a dream, he could wake up.

He couldn’t wake up from this.

Flash of light.

Questioning his own ears, he snapped, and he heard it. Crisp and sharp, his snap seemed to echo in the silence causing him to childishly recoil, as if somehow his snap would have awoken his parents in the middle of a thunderstorm. His ears worked fine, but it didn’t change a thing. There was still no thunder. It was like someone had put the storm on mute.

He wondered, perhaps, if his window had somehow blocked the sound. Unlocking his window, Stuart pried it open, and listened. Whistling wind. Echoes of distant rain. Another flash of light, but still no thunder.

But there was something else. Stuart had been listening, but now, now he was watching. In the next silent bolt, his eyes were caught by an invisible hook, and pulled straight to the fields.

Darkness had taken over, covering his vision. He didn’t know what he had glimpsed, he couldn’t recall, but it had made his heart quiver. Slamming his window shut out of instinct, he waited for that next strike.

It came, and he frantically searched for something, anything at all unusual. Looking for what he had seen before. His heart didn’t settle. It couldn't. So, he waited again.

This time, this time he knew he had found it. The field should have been empty, freshly tilled, freshly planted. Nothing had as of yet sprouted. Nothing on that earthen plane should have stood taller than a few millimeters.

But something did.

In the briefest of seconds, Stuart saw something tall in the middle of the field. It was distant, but certainly hadn’t been there before. In that moment, he thought maybe it was a post. The farmers used scarecrows before, it would make sense.

Except, it wouldn’t explain how it got there.

A flash of light, and this time Stuart focused on that spot where he’d seen the tall thing before. It wasn’t there, not in that spot, but Stuart did find it.

The tall thing had moved. It had moved closer.

Stuart wasn’t sure of it, not until the next flash confirmed that the thing, the shape, was getting closer and closer with each flash of ominous lightning.

Worse, Stuart no longer believed it was a post. No post moved on its own. Another flash. No post had two legs. Another flash. No post had two, flailing arms. Another flash. No post could ever run.

Someone was coming across the field, fast.

Stuart gasped as the lightning showed him the figure in motion. Long legs carried the strange someone quickly across the rugged fields in leaping, almost predatory, motions. The arms, spindly and gaunt, were poised at the figure’s front, coiled like a praying mantis.

Stuart gasped in the silence of the night.

Another flash, the figure grew closer.

Another flash, the figure bounded across the empty fields.

Another flash, the figure had leapt across the border creek!

In that leap, Stuart had seen what he hadn’t, couldn’t have, imagined.

The thing wasn’t human.

It was hunched forward, granting it a raptor-like posture. It wore no clothes, but had a pale, almost luminescent skin. Its legs were muscular, like a dog’s, with long toes and ragged hair. It propelled itself forward, making a mad dash directly for Stuart’s house.

Worst of all, with the next flash, Stuart noticed the creature was staring upwards. Towards the house. Towards his bedroom window. Towards him.

He saw no eyes. Where they should have been was the only place where the lightning couldn’t banish the dark. They were soulless patches of nothingness. Contrasting color shone from its nose, and around its neck. Sickeningly, Stuart realized the monster reminded him of a clown. Its pointed nose, and neck, which was inflated with accordion-like flaps of stretched skin, seemed to bleed with a bright crimson.

Its smile hung low on its tall face, and it stretched wide.

Stuart was paralyzed. He didn’t scream when the darkness returned once again. That was the worst of it all. Each and every time the darkness fell, Stuart wanted to pretend that it didn’t exist. That it was impossible. But he knew better.

He knew that in the darkness, it just kept coming.

Lightning showed that it had reached his fence now, perching atop it with a hungry grin. It pounced from its perch just before the light relented and the returning night seemed to hit Stuart like a freight train.

It was in his yard now. Slinking towards his house somewhere in the black. Towards his back door. He should have screamed, but it felt too wrong. Too out of place in the calm, eternal silence.

How long would this next stretch of darkness last? Seconds? Minutes? All night? What if the storm had ended? How would he know where the creature had gone? Would the creature leave with the storm? He could only hope.

He could only listen.

Leaning forward, and with all the bravery he could muster, little Stuart pried open the window.

The wind whispered. Everything was dark.

Everything was dark, and then it wasn’t.

With a shocking, bellowing thunder, lightning struck just once more, right in the Brownings’ backyard. It masked Stuart’s screams, as it shone brightly upon the torturous face right outside his open window.

October 2nd - With What Eyes the Heavens Gaze
We looked up one night, and there it was; the moon had grown an eye.

Scientists could only tell us one thing, something we already knew; it was massive. Thousands of kilometers across, it covered more than half of the full moon. Easily seen by our naked, tiny eyes. It looked human. Brown iris that dilated during the day. Black pupil so dark that it made the night sky glisten. We had no idea what it was, or how it had come to be.

The fear it sparked in us was primal. It was the same feeling our ancestors must have felt when they still lived in the plains. The fear they knew when a predator had set its gaze upon them.

The only difference between us and our ancestors, however, was that we had nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. That fierce gaze, the penetrating glare that injected us all with sacrilegious fear, came from the heavens themselves. Inescapable.

There was nothing to do. It followed us at night, but during the day was worse. Sometimes you could still see it, and follow it in the sky, but on the days when you couldn’t, then no one wanted to move. Seeing the predator watch you was one thing, but knowing it was still out there, still watching, but knowing that you can’t find it?

That was the worst.

People talked in whispers. They stuck to the shadows. As if doing any of that would settle their unease. Even though NASA launched probes only days after it first appeared, no good came of it. Nothing was discovered. Because, by the time most of those probes landed, the unthinkable had happened.

The eye had vanished.

It was if it had never existed. The moon returned to how it had been before. Irregular, barren, lifeless. The only evidence that the eye had ever even existed were the pictures and videos we had all taken. Remnants of an awful nightmare that nobody could forget. One of the few things, like creation, that we couldn’t explain.

It was nice when we thought it was over. I know most had hoped it was. Even when the eye had been gone for months, there were still many people who wondered if it would, or even could, ever happen again. After all, no one could have ever imagined it would have ever happened to begin with.

The eye didn’t return, but I think I would have preferred it if it did.

Because now, sitting there in the moonlit sky, a mouth stretches from pole to pole.

It is smiling at us.

October 3rd-The Oesterling’s House is Haunted
“No, it’s not,” Angelica sighed, rolling her eyes.

“Is too!” chuckled Felicia. “Just ask your boy, Charles. Said he couldn’t get three feet past the door before he could hear the moaning.”

Angelica shook her head as Felicia started circling her, making ghostly noises, her collar pulled up over the back of her head. With an arched eyebrow, Angelica crossed her arms and stared Felicia down.

“Knock it off,” she ordered. Felicia listened, relaxing, but with a sly chuckle.

“Come on,” she said, warmly. “Look at it!”

Angelica turned her head. The Oesterling’s house fit perfectly beneath the gray, swirling clouds. The black shutters were infested with vines and rot. The once white siding had long lost all of its sheen, infected by moss and grimy black mold. The cracked posts around the front porch gave it almost a twisted, grinning appearance, with two cracked windows serving at the empty, haunting eyes.

It looked almost like it was alive.

“If there was ever a house to be haunted,” Angelica smirked, before moving to walk away.

“Wait!” Felicia called. “Girl, look at this thing!”

“I did!” Angelica said, giggling if only to amuse her friend. “Did you not just see me?”

“I mean really look! The damn thing’s got one of those weird-ass spire-looking things. It’s old as hell. Don’t you want to see what’s inside?”

“I know what’s inside,” Angelica said back. “Mold, dust, lot of unstable floorboards. Loads of cobwebs.”

“Man, I told you, this house is two hundred years old—”

“It’s actually one hundred and seventy-two,” Angelica interrupted.

Felicia’s jaw dropped, “You looked that up just so you could be right, didn’t you?”

“No,” Angelica quickly lied. “Just happened to find it.”

“You always gotta be right, girl. It’s annoying.”

“Not as annoying as this,” Angelica said, motioning to Felicia and the Oesterling’s house.

“Come on,” Felicia pouted. “Don’t tell me you’re too chicken. Everyone who’s anyone goes into that house!”

“Do they all come out, though?” Angelica asked, jokingly. “I heard they don’t. Besides, I’m not chicken. There’s just nothing in there to see.”

“What, you don’t want to see a ghost?”

Angelica let out an audible and exasperated sigh through her still smiling mouth, “There’s no such thing as ghosts, Felicia. It’s not haunted.”

Felicia crossed her arms, pressing her tongue deep into her cheek. Angelica could see the conniving gears turning inside her head, like Felicia’s pleased eyes were made of glass.

“Prove me wrong, then.”

Angelica chuckled, once, and then she also crossed her arms. The two looked like they had fallen into a stalemate.

But Angelica knew she’d already lost. Felicia had played her like a fiddle.

“You know me too well,” she sighed. She uncrossed her arms and groaned.

Angelica pushed open the house’s rusty gate. Felicia, satisfied, grinned.

“Knew you looked that damn house up,” she said, cocky.

“What do you want me to do?” Angelica asked.

Felicia leaned in, resting one arm on Angelica’s right shoulder, while pointing up at the house with the other.

“That window,” she said, pointing to the room underneath the spire. “See it? The one with the shades still drawn? Get to that bedroom, pull those shades open, give me a nice smile and a thumbs up. Maybe give a wave or two. I’ll snap your picture, just to prove that ghosts aren’t real, of course, and we’ll be good.”

Angelica shook Felicia off her.

“Why do you get off on this shit?” Angelica asked?

Felicia just shrugged. Annoyed and only slightly amused, Angelica started walking towards the front door.

“You’re full of shit,” she called back.

Felicia, who was too busy texting everyone she knew that “Angelica is actually going into the Oesterling place!!!”, replied to the accusation with a simple, “Yup!”

Creak by creak, Angelica stepped onto the ancient porch. She could feel the soggy, forgotten boards bending beneath her weight.

“Man, I don’t want to go to the second story of this thing,” she mumbled. “It’s not going to support my ass.”

Her hand trembled as she reached for the door knob. Glancing backwards, she was glad to see that Felica’s face was still buried in her phone where she couldn’t see. Taking a deep breath as her palm met cold, rusted metal, she turned the door.

Unfortunately yet expectedly unlocked, the door opened to welcome her inside. Creeping through a short, muggy entry hall, she entered into the heart of house

The scene before her was as decrepit as she imagined it would be. It might have been totally dark, had it not been for the rotten holes in the ceiling that bled gray daylight into the shambles that someone had once called home. The entryway was surprisingly open. Angelica had expected more broken furniture, more evidence of the lives that used to be, but it seemed to be nothing more than an empty shell. Only a single, broken chandelier had been left behind. It dangled from the ceiling by a thread, covered in layers of dust and filth. A balcony stretched around the entry way, stairs to the second floor were on Angelica’s left.

She was actually amazed. There didn’t seem to be any cobwebs.

“Any ghosts?” Angelica hollered into the house. She didn’t know what she had expected. An answer. An echo. She got nothing, and that should have settled her.

Should have.

She felt like the damn thing was breathing.

“Don’t know if I mentioned,” Felicia called at her, “but you gotta go INSIDE to reach the second floor. Don’t know if that helps or not, it IS pretty complicated, but I’m hoping it’ll at least get you on your way.”

Angelica slammed the door shut behind her, drowning out Felicia’s hyena-like cackling. Alone, inside the house, she decided there was nothing to fear. Even so, she moved slowly towards the stairs.

She tiptoed up them, cautiously taking each step with a measured precision and delicacy. They creaked and moaned beneath her weight, but they held her. She was ok with the moaning.

Maybe trees have ghosts, she thought. That’s why all wood moans when you step on it.

She smiled, reaching the top of the stairs. Running her hands through her frizzy hair, she took a moment to breathe. Not that it was a particularly easy task. The dust in the air was thick, and it felt like it was trying to clog Angelica’s lungs.

Covering her mouth with the collar of her t-shirt, Angelica moved along the banister.

Gripping it with her hand, she could swear she felt the wood tremble as if it, itself, pulsed with life. She assured herself it was nothing more than the trembling beats of her own panicky heart. The floors still creaked, still groaned under her footfalls. The room she needed was just up ahead. Up in the shadows.

But, above the creaking floors, Angelica started to realize something else. There were sounds, very obvious sounds. The floorboards groaning, her own, labored breathing, but there was something else. A noise she wasn’t making.

A muffled and labored droning.

And it was coming from in front of her. From the bedroom she was supposed to go in to.

For a moment, there was fear. Fear always came first. Fear needed no thought to exist. No rationality. No understanding. So first, there was fear.

There was a ghost.

Then, came anger.

Could Felicia be tricking her? Could this all have been set up? They were friends, they pranked each other, but this was all new kinds of low. That anger drove Angelica to the closed bedroom door.

Then came doubt, and it slowed her. It made her hand hover just above the doorknob. The doubt that the fear had been too easily dismissed. The doubt that she was wrong.

The doubt that maybe, just maybe, she was still alone in that house. That no one waited for her on the other side. At least, no one living.

Even though she fought it desperately, her hand lowered down onto the doorknob like it was a magnet and her hand had been forged of lead. The end result was inevitable. When her palm finally found its perch she followed through if only out of pure adrenaline.

She turned the doorknob.

Inside, the room was black. No rot let the outside light in from above, and none seemed able to creep inwards from where Angelica stood in the open doorway. All she could see was a short little hall that seemed to lead into the larger bedroom chamber. Beyond it, she noticed the faintest of blood red outlines where the sun ate along the edge of the blinds, begging to be let in.

The room seemed empty.

It could have been easy—a short, ten-step walk, had that been all. If only.

When she had opened the door, the moaning had only grown louder. Someone, or something, was inside the room.

Taking only one step forward, Angelica took her phone from her pocket before she proceeded. Lighting the flashlight app, she scanned the light across the ground as she continued forward.

She saw what she was very quick to hear. Each step she took sounded moist, almost like she was walking across a marsh. Below her, the floor glimmered with liquid that was black and putrid. She could only imagine what it was. Something moldered from the ancient lumber, perhaps. Despite this, the air was incredibly stagnant and dry, yet suddenly pungent with odors that Angelica couldn’t describe.

She hesitated entering the actual room, wondering if the floor was too unstable. Wondering if it was safe.

But she couldn’t stop. Not so close.

Not when she had no idea what was making that awful, growing sound. The moaning. The tormented groaning. Coming from just up ahead.

Her feet nearly sticking to the floor in the awful liquid, she trudged forward, entering the main body of the large bedroom. She shined her light around, forgetting about the window, forgetting about her goal for just long enough. Just long enough, perhaps, to see the impossible.

There was nothing there. The floor, although wet and decaying, was barren. There was no furniture, no closets for anyone to hide inside. Nothing present to make any kind of moaning. In fact, the moaning had seemed to stop once she had entered the chamber. Angelica began to wonder if it had ever even been real.

Giving her entire body a good, cleansing shake, Angelica reached over and pulled the blinds open on the window. Sunlight flooded the room. She stuck her tongue out and flipped the bird as a wildly ecstatic Felicia jumped around and took her picture.

“You did it! I can’t believe it! You crazy bitch! I can’t believe you actually did it!”

Angelica, sticking her tongue out in disgust at how much dust had settled there, pried the window open to shout back, “No ghosts up here, bitch. You’re doing it next!”

“No way!” Felicia said. “I’m not dumb, unlike some people I know.”

“Screw you,” Angelica murmured, slamming the window shut.

Moving for the door, she looked down at her phone to quickly check her messages.

“Make people think I’m chicken?” Angelica asked herself. “Make them think I’m wrong? I don’t think so. I mean, could you even imag—?”

She stopped mid-sentence.

There was a zipping sound behind her, and the sunlight disappeared from the room. Aiming her flashlight at the window, Angelica was shocked to see that the blinds had fallen on their own, once more blocking the window.

Before she could even mutter to herself, “What the—?” she heard the moaning once more. Just in time, she turned to see the door slam shut in front of her, trapping her inside the room.

Frozen, she could only move her eyes, and they wandered. They wandered from the door, to the soaking wet floor, and from the floor they moved up. Following the her light, they wandered up the side of the wall, and across the ceiling. Angelica couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t scream.

There, stuck to the walls, were dozens of decaying, digesting bodies. They were trapped, sucked inside grotesque, pulsating masses of red flesh. Most had been reduced to nothing but gray, petrified bones, with pulsating tendrils linking them to the mounds of encompassing tissue. It was feeding off of them, stripping them bare.

Most had been fairly well digested, but some were fresher. Some still bled.

Particularly one body, stuck right on the wall next to short entryway. He still had plenty of skin. He still had a fresh face. Claws, or perhaps teeth, protruded from the wall around his body, rippling along his entire height, digging into him in slow, coursing intervals. Covering the man’s mouth there was a mask of almost clear, mucus-like tissue. Enough to preventing the still living, still breathing teenager from doing anything.

Anything other than moan.

And that was what it wanted. That’s why the teeth stabbed him, over, and over again.

To get him to moan.

Angelica gasped as all the teeth plunged into the teen’s flesh and he let out a final, choked scream of pain.

The boy had been bait. And with the door shut, the trap had been sprung.

Angelica tried to get back to the window, but it was no use. Her feet had been glued fast to the floor. She tried to call Felicia, but shapes quickly swarmed her from the sides of the wall, surrounding her in a warm, pulsating mass.

Angelica had been right.

The Oesterling place wasn’t haunted.

But it was worse. Much, much worse.

The Oesterling’s house wasn’t haunted.

The Oesterling’s house was alive.

Very alive, and very hungry.

October 4th-Of Wolves and Sheep
“Pa! Get in here, dinner is ready!” “Hold on, Ma! It’s almost commercial!” They sounded just like Kyle’s Ma and Pa. They talked just like them. They moved just like them. They even called each other “Ma” and “Pa”, just like them. But they weren’t Kyle’s Ma and Pa. Kyle was bound to the chair at the kitchen table, but not physically. He was trapped there because he was too afraid to move anywhere else. Overhead, the dangling lamp swayed and rocked, casting a flickering and unstable light over the messy wooden table. Blood, still horribly fresh, ran across it, dripping off the sides. Kyle could see her moving around the edges of the light. She was slow, bulky, moving and swaying about the room. He saw her hands every now and then, entering the light, setting silverware down on the table. Her skin was stained red. It was his Ma’s skin, but it wasn’t his Ma. A buzzing grew from Kyle’s right. He caught the waves of fleeting shimmer in his peripheral vision. The television set was on, but no channel played. Static waves rolled busily across the small screen. He could almost see, in the glow of the T.V., a silhouette that lay across Pa’s favorite armchair, in the furthest corner of the living room. His Pa’s chair, but that wasn’t his Pa who sat there. Not completely. “Are you coming, Pa?” she asked. “Dinner’s ready!” It was two in the morning. The T.V. fell dark. Kyle turned away, bringing his chin to his chest like an embarrassed child, as the silhouette rose from the chair. He heard the great, lumbering footsteps as the thing, as “Pa”, approached. Each step fell like hooves upon his house’s wooden floor. “Yes,” the thing pretending to be Pa said. “Are you happy now, Ma?” “I just don’t want it all to get cold, Pa. I worked very hard on this meal.” “That you did, Ma. That you did.” Kyle trembled as the thing pulled out Pa’s chair, the one just to Kyle’s right. The wood chair protested and bemoaned the thing’s weight as it sat down. Eyes closed, he listened as Ma’s chair to his left squealed just as well. Both of them pulled themselves closer, bringing their bellies right up to the tableside. At the edge of his vision, Kyle saw both creatures each extend him a hand. Not-Ma said to him, “Come on, Honey.” Not-Pa said to him, “We gotta pray, Son.” Together they said, “Take our hands.” Kyle’s head rose, slowly and fearfully. Weak, shaking, he extended his hands. He felt like vomiting as their taut, frigid skin met his own. But it wasn’t their skin, not really. In the light, they could see he was crying, and he could see them. What had once been his Ma’s and Pa’s faces were stretched tightly over long, monstrous countenances. They wore his parents’ skins as if they were nothing more than clothing. Clothing they barely fit in to. Emerging from both his Ma’s and Pa’s mouths, long, naked, bony snouts protruded, like those of a deer. Antlers erupted from torn flesh in his parents’ scalps. Through their fingertips, razor sharp claws raked against Kyle’s naked, human palm. All parts that the damned creatures just couldn’t fit inside his parents’ skins. “Pa,” the creature said, in exactly his Ma’s voice, “would you like to say Grace?” “No,” the other said, in exactly his Pa’s voice, “I think Kyle should. I don’t think anything else would be appropriate.” Both turned painfully slowly to look at Kyle, and they waited. Kyle said nothing, but neither creature seemed unwilling to wait. Patiently, they both encouraged him onwards. “Go on, son,” one said. “Make your Ma and me proud.” “I know you can do it, sweetie,” the other whispered. “You did it so well for us earlier. Pray to Him. Pray to God.” He did pray earlier, but not for them. He had prayed for the two corpses that lay on the table. The bodies from which all the blood had flowed. The bodies that he had once known as Ma and Pa. The raw, naked bodies whose skin the two creatures beside him had stolen. The dinner that the two creatures spoke of. Stammering, and soft enough that just he could hear it, Kyle began to pray. “Blessed Holy Father, protect our spirits, and deliver us from evil.” As he continued, the two creatures bowed their skeletal snouts. “…be my parents’ keeper, and deliver them to the Kingdom of Heaven…” Then, he paused. The creatures had both started to heave, to cough, and for a moment there was hope inside Kyle. Hope in the power of prayer. It sounded, almost, like the creatures were choking. Like they had been hurt by some divine intervention. But only a moment. Soon, as their noises grew, and their heads raised, Kyle understood. They hadn’t been harmed. The dry, heaving noise they made with wide-open jaws was nothing more than laughter. Sick, evil laughter. Kyle closed his eyes, and continued praying, raising his voice trying to drown out the monsters that wouldn’t release his hands. Their laughter only ceased when Kyle could pray no more, and one reached upwards towards the light. Grabbing the lightbulb firm in her hand, the one that pretended to be Ma said in a cheerful, yet sinister voice, “Let’s eat.” She pulled, and she banished the light from their table.

October 5th-The Butcher’s Woods
“We shouldn’t go,” Jesse Waller had said before the three set off that morn. “Them’s the Butcher’s woods.” Now, Jesse Waller lay dead on the ground, nearly a mile into the Butcher’s woods. Gazing out from the abandoned shack, Tony Boone could clearly see him. He lay not ten feet from the front door, blood running from his gashed neck. He was only ten feet from safety. It stood right above him. The Butcher. It was everything their grandparents had warned them about when they were kids. But now, it was more than just fanciful, terrible stories. Now, it was real. Something palpable. Now, it had just murdered one of Tony’s oldest friends. The beast was an ill shade of white, with taut skin that was thin enough to almost be translucent. It hovered above Jesse’s body almost like a wolf, leaning forward to bring its lengthy snout just inches away from Jesse’s lifeless eyes. The Butcher had no eyes, and no eyes could be seen at all on its face. The only orifice visible was a small, human-like mouth at the end of its horse-like snout. That mouth opened, and a black tongue emerged from between its very human teeth. It licked the blood from Jesse’s throat with a wide smile. Feeling like he wanted to scream, Tony turned from the window and slid down the shack’s mossy wall. He shook as his mouth gaped, struggling to breathe. Silent tears warmed his cheek. Hearing the creature snort, he turned his gaze back outside. He’d been so shocked, seeing Jesse murdered right in front of him, he had almost forgotten what the creature still held beneath its front arms. The third member of their party. The man who was still alive. Bill Dixon. One of its mighty, clawed hands clamped shut around his face so he couldn’t scream. Beneath the Butcher’s weight, the scrawny man could only do so much. Tony could only watch as the young man’s hands flailed in short, spastic attacks that failed to accomplish anything. He couldn’t even phase the large beast. He was completely at the Butcher’s mercy. And Tony knew, from those old stories his grandpappy used to tell him by the fireplace, what happens next. He could see it, on the creature’s back. All along the creature’s backbone and sides, sprouted about a dozen terrible spines. Each one, probably as large as an elephant’s tusk, looked like it had been carved out of bone, and sharpened to a razor’s edge. A few were broken, snapped at the base. They splintered like logs. Blood stains stretched across the handful that were intact, but, on a few of them? They still carried more than bloodstains. Two of the spikes still held flesh. Dangling from them, the remains of the last two unfortunate individuals to cross the Butcher’s path. “There’s a reason it’s called the Butcher,” Tony mouthed in fear. “It’s because it saves its meat on hooks, for later.” The nearly skeletal remains hung from the Butcher’s spines like puppets. What little sinews and cloth remained were all that held the two together, and Tony could see where tooth and claw had stripped and pulled bare the flesh off what had once been two men. In a moment that made Tony’s eyes widen, a realization cruelly barged into his racing mind. It came to Tony when the beast had reared itself up like a bear, with Jesse in one hand and a still struggling clasped Bill in the other. Tony realized what was about to happen. When it did happen, Tony had to gag himself with his own, muddy hand to keep his screams in check. It started with Jesse, since he struggled the least. Holding him in its right hand, the creature contorted its joints to bring Jesse to rest on a spine that protruded right behind the beast’s near-visible ribs on the side closest to the shack. Tony winced as the spine entered Jesse’s corpse with a sickening crunch. The creature released, allowing Jesse’s body to settle onto the slightly upwards-tilted spike. Jesse’s head dangled and swayed, his matted brown hair covering his face. But then, Tony started to shake his head and back away from the window when the creature placed both of its evil hands on Bill’s shoulders. “No!” Bill shouted, his mouth finally free and his voice cracking. “No, don’t you do it! Please! Don’t you do—Help! Help! Anyone! Please! Help!” Tony saw as the creature, holding Bill just in front of its wicked chest, turned Bill around so that he was facing the forest. Tony saw as the creature started bringing its arms in slowly, pulling Bill towards its chest. Tony saw the one, jagged edged spine that protruded right from the creature’s sternum. It was cruel how slowly it happened, and Tony knew that the Butcher intended it to be so. As Bill screamed, Tony couldn’t help but watch as the creature drove the spine through his best friend’s torso. The screams, the wails, were unimaginable. Tony could taste blood in his mouth as his aching teeth sunk into his own, numb flesh. He wanted to do something, anything, but what? There had been three of them once. Now, now it was just him. And the Butcher knew that too. Tony had no time to mourn, to weep, for the creature allotted no time for grieving. It had two of the three transgressors, and now it needed the third. Tony ducked for the darkest corner in the shed as the Butcher scuttled close. It leaned it, craning its long neck towards the window. It searched for him, using only God knew what unseen senses. Tony curled up in the protective cover of shadow, scarcely breathing, waiting for it to leave. All the while, Bill showed no sign of dying, for his screams, curses, and shouts still carried strong on the wind. “Help! Oh, God! Please! Oh, it hurts! It’s killing me! Please!” As a trembling Tony waited, he listened as Bill’s pleads started to change. “Tony!” he screamed, pleadingly. “Tony, if you can hear me run! You gotta—you gotta run, Tony. Don’t—don’t let it! Don’t let it find you! You gotta—gotta run! Run!” Tony didn’t want to. The last thing he wanted was to leave them. Jesse deserved better. He deserved to be buried at home, where his family could see him. And to leave Bill like that? To leave him alive, in that thing’s clutches? Tony would almost rather die. But, if he could make it, get back home, he would rally more hunter’s than those woods had ever known. He could make the Butcher rue the day, he thought. He could make it rue everything. He could avenge his friends. Or you could survive, whispered a darker voice inside his head, ''and stay away. ''

The Butcher circled the shack many times, searching for something, anything. Tony could feel its frustration growing, as it growled beyond the doors, as it swiped its claws at the shack’s wooden frame. It knew he was close, but it didn’t know where. Eventually, and to Tony’s initial disbelief, the Butcher retreated. Tony could tell, as its heavy footsteps fell away, and Bill’s tormented cries faded into the distance. When everything had grown silent—silent except for the bird calls and the rustling of leaves in the wind, and it had been that way for a good, long while—Tony made his move. Cautiously, he pushed open the shack’s front door, and he peered into the woods. It must’ve been past noon, but the mist that morning had brought still hung thick between the trees. But Tony wasn’t expecting to rely on his sight. He was expecting to rely, almost completely, on his ears. As he ran, sprinted, bolted the mile back, out of the woods, he listened. It nearly froze him to the spot the first time, but it happened just as he expected it would. Like a siren coming from the distance, he heard Bills’ cries echo out, as the creature galloped closer. It happened once, twice, again and again, and each time Bill’s cries saved Tony’s life. If he thought he heard them in the distance, for even a moment, Tony would duck for cover, and cower underneath some log or within some rotted tree basin until the distant wails had once again faded to the horizon. Then, he would start again. It stretched the mile into near infinity, having to stop so often. It turned every several hundred feet into a lifetime. But he persisted. It almost sickened him, using his friend the way he did. Do what you have to, he thought to himself. Do what you have to do to get out of here, to survive. He had originally told himself he would survive for Bill, for Jesse, yet the closer Tony got to the forest’s edge, the less and less he wanted to ever return. Each time Bill’s screams faded, it became easier and easier to forget, to find that drive to survive. It ate him up inside, but Tony never intended to come back. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as the edge of the forest approached. “It was my fault we even came here.” The trees were about to break. He hadn’t heard the beast, hadn’t heard Bill, in what felt like hours. “I’ll never make that mistake again.” He tripped, right before he made it to the opening. Crawling forward, he tried to keep the momentum moving as he rolled onto his back, and kicked at the leaves with his feet. Logic told him it was a branch, a stump, a root of that mighty oak he’d just passed. He could have tripped on anything. Instinctually, however, he knew what had happened before he hit the ground. He looked to that broad oak, and to its shadow. That’s where it stood, on its hind legs, heaving mighty, warm breaths. Crouched ever so slightly forward, it held its hands on Bill’s wriggling form. One was cupped over his mouth, the other around his still squirming throat. It had silenced him. It had waited. Craning its neck down, right beside Bill’s cherry-red face, it tilted its head almost inquisitively. Its lips audibly split. Its smile was indescribable, with simply any other word but wicked.

Ryan Brennaman