by K. T. Tomb
Which was worse... or wilder… was still up for debate.
Growing up not five miles from the spot they stood now, at the eastern edge of Belle, they had kept a shotgun by the door; kept it there and used it there.
As the final step in her setting out ritual, she touched the lump of charms hanging from her neck. She had protection against the evil eye, which she would never tell a soul that she believed in, a bent cross that belonged to her mother, a narrow dog tag from her brother; and the chipped locket which held the only picture of her whole family. Almost her whole family, at least.
“Okay, everyone ready?” she said, partly to get going, and partly to keep her mind from dark history lessons.
Four pairs of eyes turned to her.
“Why are you in charge?” Ben Makarios said.
“Because,” she snapped, though trying to stay calm, “I’m the tracker.”
“What are you tracking now?” he said.
“Common sense. You think you can do better?”
He didn’t break eye contact, but an almost sheepish look came over his face.
Good, Lux thought.
“We go this way,” she said, starting into the woods.
A weight seemed to drop out of the sky and onto their backs as they crossed the invisible line in the trees. There was no wind, no breeze, and no movement. Lux knew she was imagining things, but she always felt like there were eyes on her in these places. The wet ground absorbed sound. All the sounds of the forest were erased. Her ears pricked to the sound of a squirrel scrabbling along bark, a rabbit peaking forward and stepping on a leaf, a bird cooing. The sounds returned once she relaxed, became one of the animals instead of an interloper. The people behind her crunched along through the scrub, ridiculously loud. Birds scattered in their bold wave of noise. She frowned. Now that she paid full attention, she could only hear two sets of feet. That was interesting, she thought. Half the team knew how to become invisible in the woods. She turned to see who was loud and who was silent.
Samuel Smith and Julie were walking side by side, crunching away at the ground. Lux suspected there was something between them and hoped it developed, provided they did their jobs and watched her back; they could keep each other out of her hair at least.
Like ghostly sentinels on either end of the couple, Ben and Hal melted along, neither talking, neither making a sound, scanning the woods, a pair of automated security cameras on legs. Lux turned back to face the forest, the hair on her neck standing up. There was nothing wrong, she kept telling herself, but something about the place had her on edge. Unusually so. What was going on with the air? It felt thick, psychotropic almost. The trees were beautiful and thick, but keeping secrets. The forest stayed quiet and so did the team as best they could. Samuel and Julie would strike up conversation occasionally, but it never seemed to last long.
The woods became a unit of wind to her, a wind that would pass through her and whisper lies and sometimes things that were true. But when the woods spoke to her, it was never beautiful like the trees. Forests, she had long ago learned, kept only the darkest secrets, the vilest ones. Things born in the forest always died in the forest.
Her first true assignment had been in the forest, the southernmost area of Piney Woods in fact.
A convict from Gib Lewis Prison had greased himself up and slid out a duct. Lux had thought that was just in the movies, but he had done it and escaped into the woods. She had tracked the man through the trees for a week. The bugs there had never been smaller than the pad of her thumb. The gnats would crawl up her legs, biting. She could feel the sharp sting of their bites still. By the time she found the convict, he was almost dead. Dehydration and exposure had wreaked havoc on his body.
The forest had told her where to find him. A bent twig could be from any animal passing by, but the trees would smell of dog or hog or man. Somehow, she could always tell the difference. The wind would send little whispers of the convict’s voice, even when she was miles away. Lux had a connection to the forest; it was in her blood and her lungs. Even when she was in the city, the forest was always there.
They set up camp at an arc in one of the little feeder streams. It was narrow, but the water ran and was clear. The hot colors of the sun were spreading out on the ground like melted butter. Lux was feeling more pleased with her team than when they started out. She hadn’t heard a single complaint about the pace or how much distance they covered.
Even in the pictures of them that Dr. Stevens had shown her, they had the sun-burnished look of people who could hold their own against the elements. But Lux had learned from the school of hard knocks that people could look different from what they truly were. When she crawled into her hammock that night, she kept her Bowie knife close to her hand. The team wasn’t unified enough for her to trust, and the forest crawled with danger. She knew how to handle that danger, but she knew there was no such thing as being too cautious when in the woods.
It was the moment the sun began to rise the next morning that Lux knew that the trip would not go how she planned. The morning was already saturated in heat. It was the wet heat that sunk down through skin and organs into the bone. There was no dismissing it, no ignoring. She had learned as a small child that the heat had to be accepted, never fought.
Wind rolled through the trees, whistling a haunting tune she hadn’t heard in years. Lux peeked at her watch in the predawn glow. Five thirty. She sighed and looked at the top of her hammock tent. It was a comforting, familiar olive drab. She rolled over and looked out of the mosquito netting. The gray light did not show everything, but it revealed the slow outlines of dark trees and light birds. A squirrel skittered across the ground, just a silent dark.
Fumbling with the zipper, she slid out of her hammock and alighted quietly on the ground. The warm breeze brought to her the smell of sweat and blood and dirt and leaves. There were several deer near them. She couldn’t see them, but she knew they were there. By the river, there was the still, slightly silhouetted form of a man sitting. She recognized Ben after a moment and unfroze. He was just sitting there, silent like a still tree. Not a tree. A vulture. Lux craned her head around, but she could not see anything disturbing. The forest didn’t smell or feel like it had witnessed violence.
“You think this trip is useless.”
It wasn’t a question. She squatted down on the sandy bank next to him. She could smell the murky dampness of the water and the mud and the rankling of dried sweat coming from Ben.
“Yes,” she said.
“The others do not,” he said.
“No,” she agreed.
They were quiet. The sun reflected off the water. The forest slowly woke. Lux kept her body relaxed, but she was tense. Something was going to happen soon, she could feel it in her blood.
“You think this trip is useless, but,” his eyes turned to hook hers, “but you know that something out there isn’t natural.”
Lux caught her breath. The air itself was heavy with the weight of something that was just wrong, and he knew it too. “You speak like a shaman or something.”
For the first time Ben smiled.
“When was the first time you realized you would die one day?”
She wasn’t sure whether she should be freaked out or sad. His face was expressionless, an absolutely still mask. She watched his pulse beat even and steady in his throat.
“When I was very small,” she said.
“Me too. This is a trip for people who have realized that.”
Lux shifted uncomfortably. His words didn’t have an innocent ring to them, and Lux was one to always trust her gut. Ben Makarios made her uncomfortable.
“Why are you here?” she said.
He didn’t respond for a minute.
“I’m here for the same reason you are.”
“And what is that?” she said.
His fighting eyes sunk down to the river. He didn’t need to answer because Lux knew it. He could read things like she could, the little details writte
n in invisible ink on trees and wind and faces. But at the same time, there was something very different inside of him. He could read those details like she could, but he saw them differently, of that she was sure.
She watched a bead of sweat roll down his side over the dark green letters of one of his tattoos.
It was something in Greek. The letters were little and square. She looked back up to his face, but his eyes were still very far away.
“Why does nobody here have a next of kin?” she asked.
The sun was bright by then, the gray of the dawn gone. Hot rays burst white into the leaves, shattering yellow all around. Behind them, there was the ripping noise of a zipper being pulled.
Ben looked back to her.
“Some things are better left unsaid.”
He stood, his boots digging into the dirt and his chest flexing.
“I imagine we will move out soon.”
Lux sighed, nodded, and stood along with him. The day was growing up, but her worries were too. Ben had only made the whole adventure more unsettling and strange rather than clearing anything up.
The dark green that enveloped them like water was lush and alive. Lux felt like every leaf was an eye in disguise, watching them, watching her, waiting for her to make a mistake. She led them deeper and deeper into the bristling forest.
“Wait,” Julie called out from the rear of the column.
The group froze; the tension in the forest palpable. All ears scanning for noise.
Lux turned.
“What?” she said, doubling back to come alongside the other woman so that they could speak softly.
Julie stood by a tree, her delicate face scrunched in confusion. The expression made her look much older than she actually was. It was not a look of fear or even of having been shaken up. There was only confusion, and Lux found that reassuring. The tree was a normal tree, so far that Lux could see anyway. But Julie obviously didn’t think so.
“Look at this,” she said.
Lux crouched down close, the rest of the team peering in. There were four thick gouges along the base of the trunk. Lux sniffed at it, ignoring the questioning looks on their faces. She was the tracker and she would track how she wanted. Through the scents of the team’s sweat and deodorant, she caught a whiff of the faint tangy odor of urine. It was weak and barely there, but she was certain.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Julie said. “And I’ve been in the jungles of both South America and Africa.”
“What do you think made it?” Hal asked.
Lux did not miss the excitement in his voice.
“I don’t know; your guess is as good as mine.” Julie was looking nervous again, but she didn’t seem to be freaking out. She examined the ground around the tree carefully. “It’s old, whatever it is.”
“You mean the mark or what made it?”
“The mark,” she confirmed.
Lux stood. She had never seen anything like it either, and since she did not believe in ghouls, ghosts, or anything to do with cryptozoology, there was only one animal that could have caused it in her mind: human. She had no illusions about the type of people who went deep in the woods and never came out. Some were hermits; fine, just anti-social. But there were others, crazy and dark. She had seen them before, tracked a few of them. Hal and Samuel were mumbling to each other excitedly. Julie had taken out a camera and was carefully documenting the scene. Ben was standing, like her, watching the woods. Nothing big moved, just the skittering of squirrels and flutter of birds.
“Julie?” Lux asked.
“Yeah?” She packed the camera away as she peeked up.
“Have you seen any dog or pig prints today?”
“Not since this morning. We crossed an old path used by a pack of dogs at about ten or so.”
Lux nodded.
“That’s what I thought too.”
“Why?”
“Because that would mean that something’s driving them away.”
Ben met her eyes over Julie’s head. She wondered if he actually believed that they were going to find a Bigfoot or if he was there for some other reason. She would have paid half of her earnings from the trip to know that reason. Well, maybe not half, but she might have bought him a beer.
“We should keep moving,” she said. “This is old. It will lead us, but that’s all.”
The wind was picking up, bringing all sorts of interesting scents to her. Lux opened her mouth and put her nose to the wind. The smell of some type of spore came from the east, from where they were headed. Lux pulled out her map and marked the spot where they stood at that moment.
“Ready?” she asked the group at large.
“Did you just sniff the air?” Julie asked.
“Yes.” She felt color in her cheeks.
“What are you, part dog or something?”
Lux shrugged.
“Just because I’m human doesn’t mean I have to stunt my senses.”
No one said anything after that. Fine by her. Humans were annoying.
***
Lux strung her hammock up in the fork of a thick oak, higher up off the ground than usual.
“How’s it going up there?” Hal asked her jokingly as she tied the final knot.
“You should think about it yourself,” she said.
“Why?” Samuel asked, coming over to them.
“Because,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “there’s obviously something in these woods and we don’t know what it is. Until we do, I’m taking the precaution.”
She didn’t care if it was the abominable snowman, Hannibal Lector, or just some backwoods redneck; she wasn’t going to be caught by any one of them at night, at least not without some advance notice.
“You’re kind of paranoid, you know that, right?” Samuel said.
She watched every one of them scale their hammocks higher. Lux slept fitfully. Something was bothering her, and she wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe it was just all the talk of monsters hiding in the woods, but around three in the morning, she heard something moving. Lux took a deep breath and hoped that it was just one of the team getting up to pee. She hadn’t heard a zipper though. Slowly and oh so carefully, she rolled over to look out of the netting along the sides of her hammock. A shadow moved, just a twitch really. Her breath caught in her throat. It could just be a wild dog, but she didn’t think so. It was too... hulking.
There was only the faintest of rustling noises to accompany it, but her sharp ears picked them up. She watched, frozen in her hammock, as it slunk through the camp, stopping every few feet to snuffle at something. It could be a bear. There was a small black bear population in the woods, she knew.
She tried to reassure herself that it was a bear, but deep down, she knew it wasn’t. There was a humanoid lilt to its gait, comfortable on two legs in a way that bears weren’t. There was no lumbering. It flowed through the night like a raw shadow and nothing else. It was just the night playing tricks on her, she told herself. Too many bug bites and not enough water, that was all. There was just a bear down there and she was tired, imagining things.
The wind tiptoed through the trees, clearing the clouds away. Moonlight streamed down through the dark leaves, illuminating the camp ever so slightly. Lux’s stomach clenched and curdled.
It was a demon. There was no mistaking it, even to Lux’s doubtful mind. She was not religious, but more than anything, she trusted her senses. And those senses were on fire with panic because the thing below was not natural. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
Then it was gone, in just one leap into the shadows. The flash of horns. The glow of black fur. The easy gait of something on two legs.
Lux felt bile rise in her throat, but she swallowed it down.
Hoax, hoax, hoax, she told herself.
Dr. Ramsey Stevens was planning an elaborate hoax to become famous. He had rigged the whole thing and sent them into a trap. Bastard.
That was all.
She didn’t go back
to sleep that night. She laid, eyes wide, staring at the top of her covered hammock.
The tracker in her wanted to rise immediately and search out the creature, to yank the mask off and reveal a conman. But there was a part of her that did not believe it was a hoax, and that scared her more than anything. Lux made her living by not being afraid of things. She would march headlong into anything and retrieve a person. There was no one and nowhere that could stop her. She had pulled grown men out of their mothers’ basements and delivered them, very illegally, to loan sharks for their beating. She had tracked a woman out of hiding in the northern badlands to stand as a witness against MS-13 violence.
But never had she seen anything like that creature.
The morning was slow to come. It crept like a scared child, inching along the ground. She stayed in her hammock while the darkness lingered, not emerging until she heard someone’s zipper.
Rolling her head, she could see Hal slide out of his hammock and slip to the ground. His dreads were splayed in all sorts of crazy directions, making him look like a sad and wet puppy. His face was calm; he had not seen the thing during the night. Maybe it had just been a bad dream. She clambered out and began untying her hammock. It was a dream, she decided. That was all.
They broke camp after a hurried breakfast. No one seemed very talkative. Lux was relieved.
Her dream, she now believed it to be a dream, had rattled her.
Lux kept her senses sharp as they slid through the forest their third day on the hunt, without sure aim or a clear quarry. They were well within the territory they were looking for, so all that was left was to search for signs of Bigfoot, or as Lux felt sure was more likely, a six foot five, overweight cousin Clem hiding out in a shack.
A few miles further down a gentle incline, a valley in the woods, they found more of the gouges in trees all accompanied with the smell of urine. They were definitely in something’s territory. Lux didn’t like it. Humans could be crazier than monsters of legend. Check weapon. Check safety.