by K. T. Tomb
Ben looked at her questioningly, but she wasn’t going to talk about her and Trix. He had the sense not to ask. Something felt very tight in her throat, and she knew she should not have spoken of her family. That was her rule for a reason. She would never see Trix again, and she had adapted to knowing that, but it did not make the idea more comfortable.
“My father taught me tracking,” Lux said, the words spilling like a tipped glass. She pulled the locket out into the air and nearer to Ben. “He tried to teach all of us, but it only really caught with me.”
Ben continued. “My mother taught my brother, who taught me. She was from El Salvador, never learned English.
“My father was in and out of prison most of the time we were young, and when he was out he wasn’t around. Julian was seven years older than me, hauled me after him everywhere.” Ben had half a smile at the memory, just barely visible in the moonlight.
Where is he now? she wanted to ask, but she didn’t. Ben already answered that with his tense face.
But he saw the question on her face.
“He went home,” he said.
Going home, she had learned on her first tracking assignment with Ben’s old gang, meant suicide.
***
Lux did not like the morning the instant she woke. Whatever had been wrong in the air for the past several days was much stronger. The musky scent in the air had her gagging out the side of her hammock, her stomach dry-heaving its empty contents. They had penetrated too deep into forbidden territory, and now the very air itself was angry. Lux was glad they had left the graveyard. There was a sullenness in the air over breakfast and as they broke camp. The heavy smell of anger and animal permeated every thought, and Lux was sure she felt the cold rake of unnatural eyes on the back of her neck the whole time.
“Where are we headed?” Hal asked.
“East,” Lux grunted.
“Why?” Samuel said.
“Because I said so,” Lux said.
“That’s not good enough.” Hal dropped his pack from his hand, demanding an answer.
“Hey, we follow the tracker, so deal with it,” Ben interjected,shutting down any argument.
Lux tied her pack up and set off, the others following. The watched feeling only increased, along with the soporific, cloying smell infesting the forest. A nagging fear – no, not fear, more subtle than that, a gloaming dread – swelled and bit away at Lux. What if there were monsters in the forest? She had never considered it before, but flashes of the horns she had seen by night flitted through her brain. Those horns had definitely been there, and definitely had not been natural. Whatever she had seen had not been natural, couldn’t be an animal born out of evolution. Bipedal, with horns. That didn’t make sense. And that scared Lux. They had only been walking for about thirty minutes before Julie called a halt. “Guys, wait,” she said.
“What?” Lux said, trying not to let her annoyance crawl into her voice. She was not annoyed with Julie per se, more the situation. Being turned from predator to prey was not in the mission brief.
“I don’t like this. Can you guys feel it? It’s like… the air pressure before a thunderstorm, but the sky is clear.”
“This is what we’re looking for,” Hal said excitedly.
Julie gave him an incredulous look. “But did you really expect to find it?”
“Yeah, why else would I have come?” Everyone looked at Hal.
“You’re the only one then,” Samuel said.
“We came out here to find Bigfoot. So we’re going to find something because I’ve worked with Stevens before. He doesn’t make mistakes. He says there’s something here,” he shrugged, “then something’s here.”
“Well, we’ll just have to see it and then go, I guess,” said Julie.
“I really don’t like this,” Julie said. “We have no idea what we’re walking into here. We should be cautious.”
“After today or tomorrow, we’re headed back,” Lux said. “We’ve found evidence, and that’s what we’ll do today, find more. Then all that’s left to do is leave.”
Even as she spoke, Lux saw a flash of dark movement in the trees.
Keep calm, she told herself, keep calm. It wasn’t working. It was stupid to be afraid of something in the woods. She had been in much worse situations, much more dangerous situations. But there was an eerie feeling to the forest that made it absolutely impossible to calm down. It was the fear of the prey animal, when faced with something larger, smarter, and more dangerous than itself.
She patted her holster, finding the reassuring weight of her pistol. The solid feel of it let her pull in a deep breath that pushed her lungs open.
She looked across Julie to Ben. His bird eyes were dark, almost supernatural in their own right. He had seen it, too. But the other three were oblivious. Fools! They had not paid attention, and now they would not believe even if Lux and Ben both told the group what they had seen.
Lux felt a panic swelling and billowing in her. She had to find a way to lead them out without becoming Bigfoot’s next meal or garden decoration. The absurdity of Bigfoot stalking them was gone, replaced by the very real sensation of terror. Lux started a loop to lead them back around to the west. There was safety the way they had come, she hoped. They were deep in the creatures’ territory now, so they just had to navigate their way out of it, as a little boat must run before the coming hurricane.
Chapter Four
She failed. Despite her best efforts to lead them to salvation, the devil himself had cornered them, not far from where they had camped the night before. It had been a mistake to pass this close to the graveyard. With her team in single file behind her, she stood frozen, gazing into green eyes wilder than the wild trapped inside of her and Ben. No one moved, all of the others could now see what Lux and Ben had already witnessed. Lux couldn’t feel her hand as it gripped the butt of her pistol, she wasn’t sure if she could even draw it, let alone fire. Intelligence, mean and flickering brightly, shone from the eyes holding her. If she moved, it would charge, she knew that. But if she stayed, it would eventually do something. The creature stood just taller than her, pale brown fur standing up along its shoulders. It was dappled like a hyena, horned like a goat, built like a bear.
Its mouth was prickled yellow with teeth that made her want to throw up in horror. Nature had certainly never made such a creature. But there was another behind it. Slightly darker, slightly larger. It looked hungry, as all wild predators did when faced with an easy meal.
Lux felt like she should say something, but it was a beast, no matter how humanoid the eyes were. And beasts could not speak. The dark music of the wind and the wild stirred the forest, sucking more of the beasts out from the trees.
There was no getting out of this, she realized. They would die right where they stood. Their blood would turn the dirt red for only a few days. Then the Texan heat, wild, and weather would erase their remains. Lux felt a hysterical laugh brim and bubble up her esophagus. Maybe it was vomit.
“Stand opposite of how it is, mirror it,” Samuel said, his voice high and sudden in the stillness.
Lux expected a war to break out at the simple sound, but nothing happened. The creatures exchanged looks, intelligent looks, she reminded herself. Samuel’s words sunk in.
The beast held a strange posture of being curled forward. His shoulders were hunched to offer protection to his chest, and his head was thrust forward and downwards slightly. Lux sucked in a deep breath and decided she didn’t have anything to lose. She jutted her shoulders back and tilted her head to expose her neck slightly. The angle was small as she could not bring herself to completely bare her skin to the beast. The creature advanced to within a couple of feet, close enough to touch and close enough to smell the damp animal stink of it and Lux stiffened with fear, but held her ground, her heart bounding in her chest and blood pounding in her ears. The wait was agonizing hours, though perhaps only a moment or two, until the beast let his stance drop into something more relaxed looking,
though not by much.
He took a step forward and reached out. His fingers were claw tipped, but fingers all the same. One thick claw grazed the taut skin of her neck, and caught on the chain hanging from it.
He bared his teeth and gave the chain a slight tug, though not enough to break it. The sight of all of those sharp teeth so close to her almost made Lux soil herself.
“I think he wants the necklace we found,” Samuel said.
Lux didn’t care where the conclusion had come from, anything to get those teeth away from her face. “Then please get it, at once.”
Her voice cracked with the stress, but the beast didn’t move. His face was vaguely simian, although what she had thought had been horns were in fact merely boney protuberances of the skull, still covered with flesh, skin and fur. These didn’t quite correspond to the legends of the Bigfoot she had been told as a child. Another of the creatures crept forward, this one clearly a female from the swollen teats on her chest. She was dark, almost blacker than pitch, her fur like night wrapped around a strange body.
The male gave the chain another tug and his other hand, for it was a hand, landed on the female’s back, just where her neck ended and her shoulders began.
In the voice of an earthquake, the male said one meaningless yet unmistakable word.
“Taj.”
“Do you have the necklace yet?” Lux demanded, again in a croak that she kept as calm as she possibly could, given the circumstances. Clearly, in their human error the team had stolen the female’s necklace. Lux guessed that these… beings, not animals, had no concept of keeping things in a container, or wardrobe. Hell, that tree that they had found the necklace on might well be a wardrobe to them.
“It’s on Julie somewhere.”
Hal’s voice came from behind her. Great, her life lay in the hands of the packing skills of a botanist.
Movement rustled behind her. Lux did not move a centimeter. The beast had no weapon on him, just the claws. The claws were more than enough. She felt like she was at gunpoint. In fact, she would prefer gunpoint.
“Here,” Hal’s voice whispered in her ear, and the ape-man’s eyes darted to where Hal had moved, over Lux’s left shoulder, and bared his teeth in a snarl. The leather touched her hand and she closed her fingers around it. She brought it out, the shapeless rock dangling down. Every beastly eye sunk through the air to land on the rough stone.
“Here,” Lux said with a gasp, holding it out to them. In a moment, the female was upon her, but the killing blow never came, and when Lux’s right hand was only halfway through drawing her pistol, the necklace was tugged free of her fingers, and she had bounded back to join their three fellows, waiting in the tree line.
The female’s sharp fingers cradled the stone reverently. There was no mistaking reverence, and Lux could see it in every eye, every warped face and body. The hanging rock meant much to them. The male met her eyes again. His breath whistled between his glistening teeth, wafting the scent of fetid meat and decay over Lux’s nose. He grimaced in a threatening brace of teeth. One curved claw ran delicately along the line of her clavicle, nicking just the tip and bringing a trickle of blood to the surface of her skin. It was a warning, and Lux had no trouble understanding that. He stepped back, and then again. The rest of the creatures melted into the forest, their glowing eyes disappearing one by one and then all at once until just the male and female stood in the shade of stout oak.
Then they, too, were gone.
Lux braced her hands on her knees and retched on the foliage covered ground. She was a girl of the forest, but her fear betrayed her. Panting, she reached for her canteen to rinse away the filth.
***
They did not stop for lunch and kept walking well into the night, although in the dark they had not made as much distance as Lux had hoped. Whilst time had calmed her, she could still taste the creature’s breath on her, and the scratch on her chest itched. Perhaps she had been poisoned, some foul toxin that the creatures carried in their deadly fingers. When they finally stopped, the low glow of the moon was the only light they had to string their hammocks up by. Lux was relieved to have the others there, their hammocks rocking gently into hers in the breeze and restlessness of their sleep. But Lux did not sleep. Her eyes would not close.
All she could see when she stared at the solid overhead in her hammock was a pair of glowing green eyes. That intelligent face was there, burned into her open eyes with an invisible cattle brand.
***
The morning brought no respite.
“We need to go back to the graveyard,” Samuel said.
“Are you nuts?” Julie said. Her face was pale and sunken, which actually made Lux feel a little better about her own mental state. At least she wasn’t alone in madness and fear.
“We need proof,” Samuel insisted.
“We have this proof,” Hal said, his thick finger gesticulating wildly to Lux’s neck. “They did that to get back a lost necklace. What’s going to happen when you go in and dig up a body?”
Samuel did not say anything, but Lux could see he was still just as determined.
“Look,” she said. “I’m leading everyone out, and I’m leading everyone out now. We don’t split up, and you aren’t calling the shots. We have photographs of the graveyard, and we have a map leading directly to it. Stevens can send someone else in.”
“We’re going back,” Samuel said.
“Fine,” Lux growled. “Go back, but don’t expect me to haul your ass out of here. We’re leaving. I don’t care where you go.”
Hurt flashed through his eyes, though they had never been friendly. Lux felt guilt flood her. She knew she was too stubborn to leave someone behind on a mission.
“I will,” Samuel threatened.
“Do it then,” she sneered.
The camp was silent. Then Samuel picked up his pack and shouldered it.
“I will,” he repeated.
Lux was so tired that her eyes shook and she felt dizzy. She hadn’t slept for a single second the night before, and just barely the night before that. Exhaustion was like lead fishing lures puncturing every square inch of her skin, dragging her to the ground.
But when he walked away, Lux recognized her failure and shouldered her pack, too.
“Get your shit,” she barked at the others.
“Are we leaving?” Julie asked, her sunken face drawn.
Lux sighed.
“Not quite.”
“Are we leaving Samuel?” Hal asked.
“No,” she said.
The three faces blinked at her expectantly, ready to go, awaiting her leadership.
“Samuel,” she called out. “It’s this way.” She pointed.
He looked relieved, but Lux marched out before he could say anything. She was too tired for talking, sick of the job, sick of these foolish scholars who seemed hell bent on getting them all killed, but she knew that without empirical proof of what they had seen, no one in the real world would believe any of them, even if all their stories were the same. She would be ruined professionally, as would everyone else with her. The graveyard was well lit in the dawn. Having brought the team to their destination, she looked Samuel square in the eye.
“Don’t take anything with you when you’re done except pictures and notes.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but she turned her back, leaving him, Julie, and Hal to the graveyard. She tied up her hammock twenty yards away and slid in, her eyes shutting. Ben was awake, his sharp eyes on the forest, the others too. She could finally sleep.
When she woke, the sun was high in the sky, mid-afternoon. Tiredness scratched at her eyes, but she sat up and climbed her way out and to the ground, desperate to pee. The graveyard was still a buzz of scientific research, and she could hear Smith directing the works. Lux walked into the brush to relieve herself. As she squatted, she found herself thinking about the creatures again. How many were there? These woods could probably support a fairly large population, but not without discove
ry. The discovery was a problem. How had they never been found before? Piney Woods was a wild place, but people were a common sight even deep within the woods; although, they had not come across any human trails within the creatures’ territory. Was it possible that this place was truly isolated? Lux did not believe that. The creatures had been doing something proactive toward it, something to keep humans away. Whatever it was, it had not kept them away.
Lux briefly considered that it was an elaborate hoax. It was possible, but highly improbable. She wiped on a leaf and pulled her britches up. She wondered what would happen to this place when they returned with the pictures to Dr. Stevens. They would need to search around the other end of this territory, further to the south, and around the bluff that was the highest peak, and around which the team had been making their way for what seemed like weeks. To truly finish the project, they would need to spend months in the trees. They needed a linguistic anthropologist to work on the language of the beasts, if they could be found again – one more friendly than Samuel, for sure. Stiffly, she climbed back up the tree. Her hammock looked beautifully soft and inviting, and her chest was burning. She felt a little feverish after all. She crawled down and stretched out in it, zipping herself shut. She had her knife and pistol and the creatures were nowhere to be seen. She was safe to drift back off.
When she woke, Samuel was digging. As Samuel dug dirt, it flew from the ground around him. Julie documented, the camera clicking rapidly. Hal reviewed notes with Julie, the pages of their notebooks flipping in still morning air. Unzipping, flying down the tree, sweating like a marathon runner, Lux kicked the small shovel from his hands.
“What did I say?” She couldn’t keep her voice down. “Are you a total moron? Do you not remember what we are dealing with here?” She slapped Smith hard in the face. Smith slapped her back, backhand, knocking her to the ground. Makarios shoved him in the chest, but Smith did not swing for him. The confrontation was over, as a physical contest. Instead, he yelled at her over Ben’s shoulder.