by George Wier
“I’ll shoot, damn you!” Wolf called out.
But he was scared. His wits had packed up and moved off to parts unknown without a forwarding address. He felt a hot wetness in his underwear and knew what was transpiring.
The movement, the whisper among the weeds ceased.
It was there, not twenty feet away, crouched down behind the claw bathtub where Callie used to tend her lilies. Only there weren’t any lilies there any longer, and Callie had run off with the satellite dish fellow two years before. The last time he’d looked in the tub there’d been nothing but black, brackish water and a dead frog.
He could almost feel the bulk of the thing in the darkness. Whatever it was, it was big. And it was neither man nor gorilla.
He smelled it then, and fear almost made him drop the shotgun and run off into the night as fast as his fat legs could carry him. Wolf Dillard was a big man, but he was a nimble and quick big man. He’d not yet met the man he couldn’t either catch or outrun.
Wolf stood his ground.
The odor worked its way into his brain and spun images in his head like a movie projector. Images of small animals being ripped apart and eaten while still alive, of graves being robbed not for meanness, but for...food. The smell was musty death and it was an odor that had strong, long-fingered hands.
Wolf steadied his nerves, held his breath, and strained his ears for any hint of sound. And then he heard it—a whisper again, like a breeze in the grass.
He tracked the business end of Brewster toward it in the blackness and pulled the trigger.
Brewster belched flame, and in the frozen instant of time the flame lived, he saw the thing coming at him. He saw its face. It was huge, it was hairy, and it could have been Chewbacca from Star Wars, except Chewbacca would have been shorter by a couple of feet and about a third its width. Also, Chewbacca had never quite looked so...ticked off.
It swept Brewster from his hands in the same instant its bulk struck him, hurling him backwards.
Wolf landed hard. Something felt as that it had given way in his back and the back of his head thunked down hard against the earth and made the stars overhead spin about. Also, he’d lost his wind somewhere over there near the back porch. He caught it again a moment later when he felt the thing’s footfalls in the grass, coming toward him.
He heaved in air with a shudder. The stars went out one by one, and it took a moment to realize why.
The thing stood over him. It had to be ten feet tall. It’s great, hairy arms likewise blotted out the stars.
It’s going to kill me now, Wolf thought. I’m a dead man.
The arms came up over it’s head and there was something between them. It was Brewster.
Wolf could do nothing but breathe as the hulking thing slowly bent the hardened steel shotgun. The metal whined and the wooden stock splintered.
Then it dropped the thing on Wolf, issued a loud grunt—as if to say “Take that!”—and lumbered away as if it had never been there.
Wolf counted his heartbeats. He was still alive. His breath still came in and issued back out again. The bent barrel of his shotgun grew cold against his chest.
Wolf heard something then at the back of the house. The distinctive sproing of the screen door.
The damned thing was going in his house.
The racket began.
Wolf could identify the objects as they were destroyed by the sounds they made. First the thing had shoved the deep freeze over and it slammed loudly against the floor, after which its hard-frozen contents tumbled across the back porch. The back door itself was splintered next, and he imagined one of those great arms passing through the upper panel like a finger through tissue paper. Next, the kitchen table went over and one of the chairs was used to smash every object in the kitchen.
Wolf winced at each sound.
It went on like that for an interminable time. The thing moved from the kitchen to the living room. He tracked it in his mind by the quality of the sound—the number of intervening walls made for a slight muffle effect, and he could feel each thing as it was destroyed, could picture it in his mind as it had once sat where he’d placed it. The stereo, the television, his fishing tackle box, the coffee table, the matador painting above his couch. Each beloved object met a violent end at the hands of an enraged monster.
I need to kill it, Wolf thought. I need to—
But how?
The answer came to him then. Fire.
Burn the house down, with the thing inside.
Wolf tried to roll over, but something felt wrong with his back. His useless shotgun fell beside him. His feet were still there, but they were almost numb. An electric pain shot into his head the moment he rolled onto his side.
Wolf ceased attempting to move. Meanwhile, the racket from inside continued. It was inevitable. Wolf was forty-three years old and he’d collected a lot of crap over all of those years. And the thing was destroying all of it. It would take awhile.
And then, as Wolf Dillard lay there on his side listening to the demise of everything he’d ever cared enough for to bring home, he remembered.
*****
It had happened during a camping trip with his cousin Farrel about five years before. They’d gone into the Sam Houston National Forest for four days of drinking, poaching, and hell-raising where there would be no law to tell them they couldn’t. Farrel was one of those true snuff-dipping, goatroper-wearing, Miller Lite-drinking East Texas cowboys with far more energy than sense and an apparent overpowering drive to get himself killed before his thirtieth birthday, which at the time was no more than a few weeks away. Farrel had very nearly gotten both of them killed several times in the past, each incident usually proceeded by those infamous two words that should signal a red flag warning to anyone with common sense, the two words of course being, “Watch this!” Needless to say, Wolf drove the whole way, both there and back.
That first night camping they heard a blood-curdling howl in the night. Both Wolf and Farrel came out of a drunken stupor and sat in the darkness of their pup tents, each waiting for the other to say or do something. Once the howl died down—what seemed a terribly long stretch of time—Farrel asked, “What the hell was that, Wolf?”
“Sounds like...I dunno. Somethin’ from the zoo.”
“You gonna do somethin?” Farrel asked.
“Yeah. I’m gonna go back to sleep, if’n I can.”
The two heard nothing more that night, and neither of them slept.
When the light of dawn came on, affording a look around, the two men took their rifles and a six pack of beer and went walking toward the distant ridge. Neither of them had ever been out in the woods that far before. There was a dim chance they’d get lost, but Wolf knew that if that happened, all you had to do was reckon where you were within about ten miles or so, then strike either east or west. Either way you went, you’d eventually run into a road, most of the main roads running north and south, of course. But Wolf didn’t relish getting lost, so he vowed to himself to let Farrel drink the beer and he’d keep his wits about him.
Half a mile into the woods, they met the woodsman.
National forests are often a haven for those who can’t live around other people, and upon their encounter with the woodsman, Wolf Dillard and his first cousin, Farrel P. Cooner, met the original. His name was Don Ramsey, although neither would come to know his name until they were escorted from the park by a pair of Park Rangers who would just as soon have hung them both from one of the millions of hundred foot loblolly pines thereabouts.
They smelled Ramsey before they saw him. There wasn’t much running water nearby, and Ramsey didn’t often bathe until Strake Lake was devoid of Boy Scouts and their leaders in the late fall. Ramsey ranged all over the forest, from Highway 105 near Conroe all the way up Highway 30 near Hunstville. The forest was his home.
“You two!” he said, startling the two men. Ramsey appeared from around the trunk of a pine. His clothes were so many rags. His shoes weren’t so much
shoes as they were plastic and canvas sandwiches bound to his feet with several wraps of some unrecognizable ribbon—possibly crime scene tape.
“Kee-riminy!” Wolf exclaimed. “Where’d you come from, old timer? Do we know you?”
“You don’t know me, and I aim to keep it that way. Every time you two come here the woods take a week to settle down again. Why’nt ya git! You’re not welcome here.”
“Well shoot,” Farrel stated. “You got a deed to these woods in your pocket?”
“You’re going the exact wrong way,” Ramsey said. “I won’t accept it.”
“How the hell you know where we’re going?” Wolf asked.
Ramsey pointed to the ridge distant ridge between the trees ahead.
“’Cause. You’re headed for that place. And let me tell you, that’s where the Old Man lives. Him and what’s left of his family. They won’t cotton to you coming near.”
“Old Man?” Farrel asked.
“Nobody sees him exceptin’ he wants to be seen. And you two...you two make more racket than nest of rattlesnakes set loose in a henhouse.”
“And you’re crazier than a peach orchard boar, is what you are,” Wolf stated. “We’re going where we please.” And Wolf made a show of brandishing his .22-250 deer rifle.
“So you’re threatenin’ folks, is it?” The old coot took two steps toward them and stopped. “I’m giving you one last warning. If’n you go up there, there’ll be no accounting for what happens to you. I suspect I’ll find your bones one day. In the meantime, I’ll get word to the Rangers to come get you. But there’ll be no help once you climb on that ridge.”
“Aw,” Wolf said, and thumped his rifle butt on the ground. “Why don’t you go jump in a lake somewhere, old timer. It’d do you a world of good, and you’d be out of our way.”
“Fine, then,” the man said.
Wolf turned to Farrel, who gave him a nod and a smile, as if to say, “I’ve got your back, Wolf.” But when they turned back to face the old hermit again, he was gone.
“That’s just strange,” Wolf said. “Give me one of those beers, Farrel. Suddenly, I’m powerful thirsty.”
They made the base of the ridge in ten minutes, but the climb up the ridge took a great deal of gusto out of the two. By the time they were three quarters of the way up, Farrel sat himself down and refused to move. The sun was edging up high in the sky. It was coming on toward noon.
“This is stupid,” Farrel said. He had is back to a pine tree, his heels under his butt and his arms draped over his legs. He dropped the three remaining beers he was carrying and they rolled down the ridge and bounced out of sight. “No reason to go up there anyway. What we heard last night is long gone.”
“No he ain’t. You heard what that woodsman called him. The Old Man. Some crazy old-timer who likes to let out a scream in the night.”
“Oh,” Farrell said. “I getcha. Primate screaming it’s called, I think.”
“Yeah. Only it’s primal screaming. It’s supposed to be good for you, or some stupid shit.”
“I can’t see how screechin’ like that could do any good. Make you hoarse.”
“Right. Come on. Up with you. Let’s go.”
And so they went the last leg.
*****
Wolf lay in his backyard in the dark, listening to the continuing demolition. A fear had seized him. What would the thing do once it had finished inside? Would it come for him then? Was it about to be all over?
“No,” Wolf told himself. “Sonuvabitch ain’t gonna get me.”
He rolled over slowly to his other side and felt the vertebra in his lower back pop back into place. For the briefest of instants the pain was excruciating, then relief slowly washed over him. The muscles in his back began to adjust themselves back to the old configuration. Wolf’s toes began to tingle.
Wolf began backpedaling with his arms, scooting his butt backwards through the weeds and away—away from the house and the creature inside. The creature would be coming for him any minute.
*****
Wolf and Farrel found the Old Man’s home near the top of the ridge. The pines were thick around it, and it was hidden from view from the rest of the world. You had to be standing in front of it to see it.
It was man-made cave of sort. The opening was narrower and taller than regular door, but it yawned like the mouth of a cavern.
“It’s dark in there, Wolf. What if somebody’s home?”
“If somebody was home, they would have heard us by now. Naw. This place is empty. Can’t you feel it?”
“Maybe you’re right,” Farrel replied after a moment.
“But I agree. It sure is dark. Wish I had brought a flashlight.”
“Brought one,” Farrel said, and grinned. He reached for his side and brought a small Maglite out, gave the head of it a twist and shined it in Wolf’s eyes.
“Good,” Wolf said. “You go in first.”
“Why me?”
“’Cause you got the light, dumbass.”
Farrell moved to the entrance, shined his light inside, gave Wolf an odd look, sniffed, and went inside. Wolf counted from five to one.
“Here goes nothin’,” Wolf said, and followed Farrel inside.
“Would you look at this place!” Farrel stated, his eyes bugged and moving about.
“Weird,” Wolf agreed.
Inside the cave-like structure the ceilings were high and composed of overlaid branchwork mixed with mud that had hardened into place. The walls were about the same except where they were the actual living rock of the ridge itself. There were rooms—several of them, to the extent you could divide one from the other by the narrowness of the passage; there were no doors inside the place.
“What’s that smell?” Farrel asked.
“I dunno. Smells like...I dunno. Maybe skunk musk and bear fat and buzzard guts mixed in a pie.
Farrel whipped the light around quickly, trying to see everything at once.
“What’s that?” Farrel asked, his voice a whisper.
“Sleeping place, I think.”
“Damn.”
The Old Man’s bed was a pile of leaves covering one corner of the place, laid out roughly in the shape of a very large man lying on his side with his knees tucked in.
“Not a man,” Wolf said. “A giant, maybe. But not a man.”
“A weird man. Maybe that’s why he’s livin’ up here. Maybe he’s too big to be seen in public, and people laugh at him, play jokes on him and shit.”
“Maybe. Stop whispering. He ain’t here.”
“I know he ain’t here,” Farrel replied.
“Then stop whispering!”
“All right.”
They worked their way to the rear of the place and there Farrel’s flashlight beam fell upon a shelf of rock. There were small, odd figures there. Like toys.
“Well shit fire and save matches,” Farrel whispered.
Wolf walked forward and hefted one of the dolls. The body was a double-forked stick so as to make arms and legs that were about right. The head was a small pinecone. There were two little chips of broken glass for eyes. A piece of paper from a brown grocery sack made for a shirt and pants.
Wolf shivered. He set the thing down.
“Whassamatter?”
“I...I think that’s you, Farrel.”
“Whaddya mean it’s me?”
“The shirt. The pants. You always wear the same thing. Always brown, like this. There’s even the bulge of your Copenhagen can there in the front shirt pocket.”
“You’re messin’ with me. Lots of guys dip snuff. Hey, if that’s me, then that thing over there is you.”
Farrel’s flashlight beam was on another of the dolls set further back. The instant Wolf saw it, he knew. It was himself, all right.
“Tell me it ain’t,” Farrel said. “I double-dog dare you.”
“Yeah,” Wolf said. “Black Harley tee shirt and all.”
“What the hell, man? I mean, like...what the—?�
��
“I don’t know. Don’t bother me right now. Lemme think. And don’t go freakoutski on me.”
“I’m fine. I tell you, I’m fine.”
“Right. When your eyes start doing the watusi like that, that means you’re fine, huh?”
“Shut up, goddammit.”
Wolf sat the doll of himself back down on the shelf. He took a step back.
“Shine that light wherever I point,” he told Farrel.
Wolf moved his finger about and the beam followed him. All the dolls—all told there were twelve of them—were placed in some kind of odd pattern. Two of the dolls were men in a uniform of some kind. Park rangers, likely. The others Wolf couldn’t place. There was not a woman among them.
“Well shit,” Wolf said.
“What?”
Wolf ignored him. He thought for a moment, and then tracked his finger slowly up the wall. There below the roof the light paused on a small ledge. On the ledge was the thirteenth doll.
“The woodsman,” Farrel said.
“I’m afraid you’re right.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Farrel said, his voice no longer a whisper. It sounded more like the start of a prayer. “Let’s get out of here right now. I’m goin’. I’m goin’.”
Wolf reached out his hand and clamped down hard on Farrel’s shoulder, stopping him.
“We ain’t scared kids, Farrel. We’re men. And we’re gonna do what men do.”
“And just what is that, huh?”
Wolf gripped his hand around Farrel’s hand holding the flashlight. The flashlight came up between them, illuminating both of their faces from below.
“A man’s always got two choices, Farrel.”
“What’s that?”
“Hit it, or screw it.”
“Hit, or screw. Got it.”
“So, what we’re gonna do is totally screw this place over.”
Farrel’s face began to pacify. His eyes ceased their rapid jumping jacks and a slow grin began to spread across his face.
*****
“No,” Wolf said. He said it like one of those chants that was supposed to bring knowledge, enlightenment. He said it over and over again.