***
Abel stared down at Lucas Merton with quiet contempt.
Years before, he had felt a slight respect for the hermit. He did not live as most others, was not weak and feeble and faint of heart. Therefore he had allowed this man to hunt deer and moose in what Abel considered to be his own territory. He had overlooked the man’s discretions—the needless killing of coyotes, displaying their corpses as a deterrence to all others, only because of their sheer numbers. Still, whenever the chance had presented itself, he had always set Merton’s victims free from the traps, and destroyed the snares in the process.
But this was different. He could not overlook the murder of a lone wolf, one bold enough to strike out of Canada, venturing south into lands their forefathers had long been driven out of by men such as Merton.
“Do you fear me?” he asked.
The hermit could only blubber and gasp and struggle for air.
“You always have,” Abel answered for him. “When you felt yourself being watched from the shadows, dreading what you could not see but could feel, it was me. When you sensed yourself being tracked, when the fine hairs on your neck stood on end, it was me. Who else kept watch over your use of the land? Who but me raided your snares, freeing your victims? Who but me caused you to curse in anger as the game played over and again, year after year?”
“You’ve watched him that long?” Erica asked, knowing that the elder could understand her even in his human form.
“Patiently,” he answered her, glaring at Merton. “But did you heed my warnings, Mr. Merton? Did you heed the gut feeling of being toyed with by something, of not being alone? Did you dismiss the obvious when you suspected that someone had entered your cabin, that your old wallet, kept high on the beam, had been moved?”
“Maybe he thought it was a ghost,” Erica snarled.
“Maybe he didn’t care,” Abel said. “Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? In all those years, you refused to yield to your senses and regard my warnings. You continued in your arrogance, and now it has led you to helplessness.”
Merton tried to say please.
“How many living things have looked up at you as you took their lives from them?” Abel said. “How many deer pleaded with you while your arrows pierced their bodies, filling their lungs with blood, while you stood by, sharpening your knife, waiting for the kicking to cease, refusing to waste an extra bullet to shorten their misery?”
“P-p-please,” Merton gasped. “Indecipherable.”
“Please,” Abel repeated, his eyes glowing deep crimson. “Please, what? Have mercy on you?”
Merton spluttered and coughed as he nodded yes.
Abel shook his head slowly. “How many raccoons and coyotes felt your traps close on their delicate limbs? Did you regard their cries for mercy as you came upon them struggling? Did you honor their pleas as you dragged them to the stream to drown them, holding them down with your boot so that you might save your valuable ammunition for larger prey? I hear your plea, Merton, as I see it also in your face. As you answered them, so I answer you.”
Merton was shaking all over now. Panic was taking him.
Abel regarded his misery with an unmoved expression and said, “You have grown fat on venison and potato these decades, hermit. You came to my woods to escape the society which you did not understand, yet in all these years, you have failed to understand this wilderness that has accommodated you. As you plundered its life to extend your own, rather than growing in reverence, your appetite increased. So you came to kill and eat more than your fill, enjoying your lawless dominance. And though you were full, still, you begrudged your fellow creatures of their smaller daily allowances of sustenance.”
“No, no,” he tried to say.
“Yes,” Abel said over him. “You resent them even to the point that you torched a den of coyote pups after killing their mother. Yes, you did. Don’t shake, don’t lie. I see through you. I know how greatly you enjoyed it. And your only regret now is that you cannot shoot me for confronting you with the truth of your misdeeds.”
“Nothing but a snake,” Erica growled. “Look at him cringe. He’d slither and hide if we let him.”
Glaring at Merton, Abel said, “She speaks the truth, though you are not privileged to understand her. I wonder … in the times when I was not here to watch you, did you smile proudly in your temporal power, relishing your control over your victims? Did you revel in the thrill of your dominance?”
“G-g-god,” Merton said, choking on his own tongue.
“No,” Abel corrected him. “Do not hope to be spared. All your life you have been accumulating a just wage. Now, the time has come to receive your payment. Can’t you see that we are not vessels of mercy to the ungrateful? We are sentries, judges, executioners.”
With Merton staring at him with crazed eyes, Abel moved back a pace. After almost casually raising the heavy splitting maul he’d taken from the porch, he brought the flat side smashing down on Merton’s left hand, breaking the skin and shattering all the delicate bones and joints.
The hermit convulsed, screaming dryly as Abel, undaunted by his suffering, broke the other hand with a second swing.
Now that the victim had no hands to resist with, the young wolf lifted her weight from him and moved back. She watched as Abel used one of Merton’s own snares to lash his ankles painfully and inescapably together. He took the rope which the dead wolf had been suspended from and tied it to the snare. Then he reached down and, closing his fist on the man’s puffy beard, dragged him by the chin, groaning, to the base of a big maple tree.
Looking up, Abel tossed the free end of the rope up over a heavy limb, gripped it with both hands as it returned to him, and then began hauling Merton up, hoisting him until he hung upside down several feet from the ground. Tying off the rope on a smaller tree, he pulled the knot tighter than any four average men working together could hope to cinch it.
With Merton secured, Abel then carried the dead wolf, its head in one hand, its torso in the other, into the cabin. He placed it on the floor, then knelt before the little fieldstone fireplace. The fire had burned low as Merton had slept and now the old Snow held a strip of dry pine kindling over the coals. Turning it slowly, the end was soon crackling aflame.
Rising, he used the kindling to set Merton’s cot and cotton blankets ablaze. The fire climbed quickly and the dry pine logs of the wall the cot bordered were soon smoldering. He tossed the burning stick into the fire.
On his way out of the cabin, he saw Merton’s oil lamp on the little wooden table. He hurled it against the smoldering wall. Glass shattered, oil spilled, and the resulting flames stood up tall.
Outside, he returned to where Merton dangled. The old Snow regarded the hermit through the lens of his long lifetime of acquired understanding. He recognized the sensation of power, of triumph he held over the defeated man. But he did not enjoy it as this man had enjoyed all of his lifetime of dominance. He did not crave power in the manner in which insecure humans crave power and harsh dominion over all forms of life other than themselves. He simply appreciated it as a singular instance of just rewards in exchange for misdeeds.
Though his efforts with Merton had taken him only a few minutes, Abel detested every second spent in the form of a man. He despised even the idea of identifying with such a self-centered, ungrateful creature. He would only endure it long enough to impart a final statement.
“We will not kill you,” he then informed the hermit. “Rather, since you are a man who has lived so long amid nature, we have decided to allow nature take its course. You have felt your own snare cutting into your flesh. Soon, your fitting end will follow, and the same creatures you have so callously brutalized will enjoy this rare reversal of fates.”
Merton choked and croaked something unclear. Though he could breathe somewhat better now, in his terror, the ability to form concise words still eluded him.
“I will warn you,” Abel resumed. “Should you still be alive at sunrise, the crows will
torment you greatly. They will pluck your warm flesh from you, bit by bit. But I think you will not last that long. The coyotes that always follow me, squabbling for my scraps, will likely find you first. Your scent is strong and ripe with fear now—irresistible to them.”
“No, no,” Merton croaked.
“Yes,” Abel said softly, as if explaining a simple lesson to a small child. “They will circle this clearing, warily evaluating the scene. Once they have understood that you are no longer a threat to them, they will relax. Coming forth, they will gradually surround you. Smelling your blood, they will lick your wounded hands, like dogs. Then the frenzy will set in, which is sheer excitement and gratitude of life to them—and horror to you. In their elation they will begin eating you alive, with no regard for your screams.”
Now Merton thrashed for all that he was worth, sending himself twisting round quicker in a dizzying nightmare. Words were no use, he knew. Escape was all that he could set his mind to.
Abel grasped the rope, halting the spinning, and said, “Though I do not wish you well, Mr. Merton, pray that the coyotes arrive soon. In their thankful feasting, they will end you much sooner than the birds. Welcome them as friends sent to liberate you.”
With those parting words, Abel transformed before Merton’s bloodshot eyes.
Now as the wolf, the overwhelming sense of the man’s fear and weakness was difficult to ignore, even for one as experienced as the old Snow. But after giving the man a menacing snarl, he reigned himself in, pushed down his desire to execute judgment personally, and turned away, never to regard him again.
“Can he squirm free?” the young wolf asked.
“Doubtful,” replied the elder. “And even if he can summon the strength to escape with broken hands, so be it. After he has suffered long, we may finish him another night.”
With the flames climbing higher about the hermit’s cabin, the two wolves moved off into the darkness.
***
Merton, twisting slowly in his own snare, saw an upside down slideshow of the two shadowy monsters moving away, mingled with the darkness of the forest, and the blazing fire consuming his home. It had all happened so suddenly, he could not begin to rationalize it.
In time the crackling inferno burned down to a heap of glowing coals. As its great heat faded, Merton began to shiver in the cold night. Silence returned to the area, and by then he was tired of the spinning that resulted of his thrashing and had finally resigned himself to hang there silently, sinking deeper into his wretched thoughts. His only hope was for the pervading detachment of shock or hypothermia to take him over before the scavengers arrived.
4
He could hear David Wilson running up the main trail.
Looking up from the little fire he was tending, Lars saw the young man approaching the campsite, making no effort at the sort of slick, silent travel he was truly capable of. Dressed now in sweats and running shoes, he showed no signs of having sprinted nearly half a mile from his house. He plunked down gracelessly in a folding camp chair across from the insomniac mercenary.
“What?” he asked after a moment.
Lars shrugged, returning his eyes to the fire.
“Seriously, what?”
“You’re not even slightly winded?”
“Should I be?”
“I would be.”
David smirked but held back from making any derogatory jokes about growing old without grace.
“It’s just funny,” Lars said. “I mean, your dramatic range of physical capacity. You put track stars to shame, then flop into my chair like someone dropping a sack of potatoes. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have said anything.”
“Is this envy or strictly professional observation?”
“You decide.”
“Envy doesn’t suit you.”
“No?”
“No. It softens your edges.”
“I’m strictly human, you realize. How could I not be a little envious?”
“Is that really how everyone is? Everyone wanting what the other one has?”
“Afraid so.”
David took a can of soda from his hoodie’s pouch pocket. He balanced the can on his thigh, letting it rest after being shaken by his sprint.
“I can be very stealthy, almost like a mouse,” he said after a pause. “But it’s not always necessary … without any serious competition.”
Lars shook his head, forcing back a grin, and went on prodding the fire.
“Hey, at least no one wants to hunt you for your talents,” David pointed out.
“There are a few who might, if they knew how to find me.”
“Maybe down by the equator.”
“Oh, I’ve made a few enemies north of the border as well.”
“Any other directions?”
“All of them, at one time or another. But who’s counting?”
David snapped the soda can open and took a drink. He looked relaxed.
“Yeah,” he said, “but still, you’ve got your general anonymity. No one wants to dissect you. Find out what makes you tick.”
“That’s open for debate. At least partially.”
“Sure it is.”
“Normal people don’t do what I do.”
“Because they don’t have to,” David said. “Men like you do the dirty work so the rest can sleep easy.”
“I’ve never tried to make it sound glamourous.”
“No. But it is necessary.”
“Sometimes. The trouble is, who decides when?”
“You’ve got a comeback for everything, don’t you?”
“Isn’t that the point of conversation?”
David nodded.
“A minute ago I was green with envy. Now I’m a mouthpiece.”
“I’m just giving you a hard time,” David said, cracking a smile. “You’re not all hot air. And I know you’ve got plenty of questions.”
“Plenty,” Lars agreed.
“Well, join the club.”
Lars inched back from the heat of the fire and sat on his backpack. David watched him. He could see that he was itching to get beyond banter and onto a serious topic.
Finally Lars said, “Let’s say this Merrill character had succeeded in her—”
“They won’t,” David told him.
“But let’s say they did.”
“They’d have to kill the last of us trying. It’s pointless.”
“There’s nothing at all for them to discover?”
“I doubt it. No one can understand it but us. And we only understand it after it’s already taken hold of us.”
“So they’re just chasing the rainbow’s end.”
“Pretty much.”
“Awful lot of effort and money to keep throwing at nothing.”
“Maybe Joseph will toss them a box of Lucky Charms for a consolation prize.”
“All jokes aside, someone will come looking for this Merrill character. Powerful people don’t just disappear like that.”
“Everyone likes a good mystery,” David said. “Let them look.”
“And let them die if they come too close?”
David nodded.
“Speaking of mysteries,” Lars said, changing the subject after observing the intensity of David’s expression. “How much are you allowed to share with me?”
“Not much.”
“How much do you know?”
“The elders are the only ones who know everything.”
Lars opened a bottle of iced tea, took a long drink, and set the bottle at his feet. He produced another cigar and lit it while David watched him.
“You remind me of a kid mustering the courage to ask for a cookie too close to dinner,” David said. “Just ask and I’ll say what I can.”
Without hesitating Lars said, “What else is out there?”
“You mean, besides wolves?”
The mercenary nodded and David could see his earnest interest. He wasn’t just a kid working up the nerve to ask for something. More accurately, h
e was the type who would disassemble a radio in hopes of discovering the source of the music.
“Personally,” David said, “I only have firsthand knowledge of wolves and cougars. But there are others. I guess the further west you go, the more you find. All that space, you know.”
“Yeah,” Lars murmured. All that space. All that room to hide.
“What’s it to you?”
“Maybe I’m still a kid when it comes to monster stories,” he admitted. “But more so, I’ve read some interesting stories, had a few strange experiences. Secrets to do with people and politics don’t interest me much. Maybe because of the nature of my work. But secrets such as yours scratch me right where I itch. Always have.”
“Weird,” David said. “I mean, it’s kind of ironic that you were hired to come up here and spy on us.”
Yeah, Lars thought, nodding. Weird. But really it’s not. In the end most people get what they really want. You’ve been west, then way up north that one time. And now you’ve been to the quiet east, twice, before you really and truly got a clear look at anything. But you saw, all right. They caught you easily but no matter. You weren’t wrong. Now you know for sure. And now look. A few of them are willing to talk to you rather than kill you.
“I’m fairly ignorant,” David confessed. “As kids, we’re all kept in the dark about these things, until we reach a certain level of maturity.”
“Discrete enough not to spill the beans.”
“Basically. But even then it’s a strange thing to get used to. Imagine having your parents sit you down one day and start explaining, ‘Hey, by the way, something really crazy might happen with your body any day now.’ ”
“I can’t imagine,” Lars said. He puffed on his cigar and scratched his chin whiskers, clearly agitated.
“What?” David asked.
Tentatively, Lars said, “You ever read about all the strange disappearances that have taken place in North America? Especially out west?”
David shrugged.
“It’s creepy stuff. And I don’t mean anything to do with suburban crimes. I’m talking rural, nowhere settings.”
“Like here.”
Snow Rising (The Great North Woods Pack Book 4) Page 3