by Logan Keys
And that’s when she sees it. At the edge of the clearing, a giant shadow breaks away from the trees and steps into the moonlight. Slowly, it lumbers forward, muscles bulging, a head the height of one tall man on another man’s shoulders. She has to crane her neck to see its face.
Sally goes very still.
“Aniiiitaaaa,” Jared sings from the forest and the thing’s head snaps in that direction.
But she can’t tear her eyes away from bulbous features and a caricature-like face; a monstrosity with arms long enough to tickle the ground while remaining upright.
“Where are you, girl?” Jared calls and then appears at the end of a path.
He crosses the meadow when he sees Sally, focusing on her. He doesn’t see the creature until it makes a chuffing noise. Jared’s bow-legs freeze underneath him. “Oh. My. God. What is that!”
Sally hears rather than sees Jared take off. His feet hiss through the grass, carrying him back the way he’d come. The troll seems hesitant to leave her. It takes slow steps toward the running man, but pauses to look back at her with a peculiar reluctance.
Then it turns to run after Jared. With immense speed, leaning on its knuckles, it covers the space in an eye blink before plucking the gangly Amish man from the ground as if he weighs almost nothing.
It’s a surreal moment then full of incredible feats, like watching a circus act. Jared rises in the monster’s clenched fist, tossed into the air. His hat floats above him as he comes back down in a free-fall, plummeting to earth with a long yell of terror. It feels like forever before he strikes the ground with a thud and stays silent.
Sally fears Jared’s dead, but then a cry rents the night air and the man rolls onto his side, clutching a leg. “Help! Help me! Dear God, please somebody help me!”
The thing’s over him at once, making awful grunts. It sounds… excited.
“No, no, no, let him go!” Sally shouts, backing away. “You let him go!”
It scoops up Jared again, this time bends his body between large hands one way and then the other. As if making a bow for a giant arrow, it pulls Jared u-shaped from each end. His head arches back, Adam’s apple bobbing as he hoarsely screams for help, before a crunch eclipses his tortured wailing.
Sally is running. She’ll run forever. Even now she imagines the thing galloping right behind, ready to grab her at any moment and toss her, too, as high as the trees. Her jelly legs carry her aimlessly past and around the next tree, and the next, until she’s lost.
And just as Sally’s sure her body will give out, just as she is certain the troll will grab her and bend her like a straw…
“In here!” a voice calls from the woods.
It’s Jane. The missing girl. She stands like a tiny ghost between the trees, waving at Sally and pointing to a cave. “In here!”
“Jane?” Sally half whispers, but without slowing she turns to follow the girl inside.
She has to bend at the waist to walk further, but they move to the most rear part to huddle, then wait, both panting in the dark.
After only a few moments, the monster bounds near the mouth of the cave with surprising lightness for a primitive knuckle-dragging giant. Long hisses echo back to them and Jane touches her nose in a mime.
“Smelling,” she whispers.
Sally gapes. Her English blood. Can it really tell?
The troll chuffs and calls in a terrible sound that echoes through the cave. They cover their ears to block the noise before the troll crashes through the bushes—moving away from their hiding place.
Jane’s white-blond hair and the shine of her eyes are the only things visible in the blackness. “They grind your bones to make their bread,” the girl says when it’s gone.
Sally shudders at the retelling of the children’s tale of trolls.
Thunder booms and the two cling close together in a hug, trembling.
“Jaaaanneeeeee!” Uncle Jimmy calls from outside and Sally slumps in relief.
They’re saved.
On hands and knees, they crawl out to find the entire group on the path, searching. Jimmy holds his rifle up, and she realizes the thunder sound they’d heard had been Jimmy firing in the direction the troll had gone.
When the group spots the two girls, they point and gasp, moving to stand fanned out, their flashlights blinking yellow like eyes in the dark.
Jane runs forward, and Sally’s never been so happy to see so many wackos together in all of her life.
But when the child catches up to them, Jimmy shoves her away and raises his gun.
“What’d he do to you?” Jimmy asks the pint-sized girl.
“I hid, Uncle Jimmy. He never caught me,” Jane replies.
“Show me.”
The girl lifts her dress and spins around, showing him her arms and legs, each one. “He never touched me, see.”
Jimmy lowers his gun in relief as Jane’s mother runs forward to claim her.
Sally walks slowly toward them, her stomach tight and sick. It’s like an animal’s inside of her guts trying to claw its way out. “What… what did you mean, touched her?”
Jimmy lifts his weapon again, aims it at Sally. “Stay back!”
“What? Why?”
“Show me,” Jimmy says.
Sally swallows before shaking her head. The pain from her shin has moved all the way up the leg and she can barely put any weight on it. She knows how awful it will look.
Jimmy’s already watching her lame walk with dark eyes that shine knowingly.
“Did he touch you?” he asks, softly.
Sally bends her head in a stiff nod.
The group is whispering to one another and some children are pulled behind skirts.
“It’s not my fault,” she cries. “I was out here one night, and I fell asleep. I think it…it must have happened then.”
“I’m sorry,” is all Jimmy says.
Sally’s eyes burn. “But I don’t understand.”
“That face. It’s a dead giveaway.”
She stiffens in surprise. “What did you say?”
Jimmy’s looking at her strangely. “I said we can’t allow you to come back with us.”
“Why not? And what did you mean about my face?”
He shakes his head in confusion. “I said nothing about it.”
“Are you sure? I swore I heard—what do you mean I can’t come back? Where will I go!”
The group turns, one by one, to make their way back into the forest, each flashlight disappearing to leave behind a black space.
Jimmy’s the last to leave. “You don’t follow…you hear?”
His light dims and then he, too, is gone.
Without the flashlights, the woods are pitch black. There isn’t even a moon.
“Wait!” Sally calls, limping forward, her arms reaching out frantically to feel the way. “Wait! You can’t just leave me out here with that thing!”
Sally tries a few different paths, but she’s been lost since the moment she left the meadow. “Stop, don’t leave me! Come back! Please!”
She leans on a tree to catch her breath. Fear has made her heart pound so loud she can’t tell if she hears the troll coming back or not.
Her hands flutter like spooked pigeons to her face and they trace the old scars again and again. What does it matter now?
To calm herself, she counts them, as she’s done so many times before. This one from surgery seven, and another deeper groove above her right eye, from surgery eight. Too many. Anything past five was too many, they’d said. Then the doctor who did numbers eight and nine told her ten, anything after ten was too many. But she’d searched and found another one to do eleven. And that had been the one, number eleven had gone wrong. They couldn’t fix it after that. Even though they’d tried…again…and again.
Sally, the girl whose face is falling off.
Sally, the monster…the troll.
With a sob, she drops her hands by her side in surrender.
She swears her arms feel lon
ger.
THE CAVE
“It’s too dark to see anything,” Cal said as the horses plodded along a thin trail that the animals could see well enough, but the boys were having to trust their own choice of path. “We can’t find a calf if we can’t see.”
“You scared of the dark, Cal?” Henry called back, the smile in his voice clear. “It’s dad’s best heifer’s calf. She come back all bloody, no calf. Probably hung up in the fence somewhere. Let’s hope them wolves aren’t back.”
“Wolves?” said Cal knowing full well they haven’t seen a wolf in two years.
“Wolves. Coyotes,” Henry said.
“That’s not why Cal wants to head back,” Gregory said from behind, his mount Molly putting her head practically into Cal’s lap.
She’s a nervous mare, and more so in the dark.
Cal tried not to think about how maybe she’s afraid for a good reason.
“I’m not scared,” Cal argued. “I just don’t think we will be of any good out here in the black without lights.”
“It’s cause of the cave,” Gregory said as if his little brother hadn’t spoken. “Whenever we get close to it, he turns white as a ghost. Eh, Cal? I’m right, aren’t I?”
Cal hunched his back and sulked. He pushed Gurty onward, the mare old enough to be his own mother. “Probably dead anyway.”
Henry swung around at the waist, his own horse Polly startling. “Then we bring back proof. You think dad’s gonna be okay with us shirking duties, Cal? All on account of you being a Scaredy cat?”
Gregory laughed. “Yeah. Run on home, Cal.”
“What? Alone?” Cal shuddered.
It was almost worse to think about trying to make it home alone….almost. The only thing that scared him more was that cave. They didn’t know it, but one time, he’d seen what was inside that cave.
His mother had told him, “Don’t you go near that place. All right? When I was a kid, I heard hell itself come out of that cave. A girl in my class, she got lost, came home with hair pure white. She didn’t have to tell us kids that it was the cave that done it.”
But his brothers had laughed. They’d dared each other to go inside. They’d had even run up in there and out a few times without their hair going white.
But not Cal.
He wouldn’t go in ever, not after he saw what he saw.
One summer, he’d been on old Gurty-gurt bareback. He was barely old enough to walk. He got turned around and Gurty had been in season, so she’d bucked him off, tired of his pullin’ on her mouth.
He’d had to walk back. He’d had to pass by that cave.
And when he’d gotten close, though, it could have been his “overactive imagination” as his Auntie Claire liked to call it, but he’d told himself not even to look at that old spooky cave, and when he was almost out of sight of it, he’d just had to.
Cal had pulled up, turned his head just right, so the cave was only in the corner of his eye. Sun going down, the rocks casted long shadows. That could have been it. The shadows.
But somehow, he had known that it wasn’t. That he’d really seen what he’d thought. An old demon gargoyle poised on a rock. One with red eyes and wings and talons, just part of the gray landscape almost at dusk.
It had sat there watching him.
It hadn’t moved a muscle, not that Cal had looked long, no, he’d hightailed it out of there, running as fast as his little legs would carry him
But it hadn’t ended with that.
Then Cal had start having dreams.
All them kids who had joked about going near the cave, in Cal’s dreams they didn’t come back.
They were dragged down by the monster.
His brothers most of all.
Over and over, in every which way, whenever they got closer in the dream, that is, he’d watch them dragged away into hell.
“Cal! Kick that hoss on, slow poke!”
Gregory snapped the end of his reins on Gurty’s rump and she shambled out of the way so Molly could pass.
Molly didn’t want to lead, she like being right behind Gurty, so she balked and shifted. But Gregory was quite the rider. He got her in line, kicked her on, and now Gurty was last and falling behind.
Cal didn’t want to be first, but he certainly didn’t want to be last.
Last meant any wolves or coyotes could get him.
Or say Gurty bucked him off? What if his brothers didn’t notice?
What if he got lost? Or found himself back at the cave?
Even if Gurty hadn’t done that since he was little, Cal kept thinking about it over and over again.
His legs tightened, and he got extra jerky on the reins from nerves.
Gurty felt the change. She neighed and shifted underneath him in reaction to his tension.
“Hey, you guys!” Henry shouted from up the trial and Cal flapped his legs until Gurty trotted onward.
When he caught up, Cal found Henry off his horse, bent down over a calf struggling and stuck in the fence.
“Come help me. Cal, you got them wire cutters?”
He nodded and dug into his pack before getting off Gurty and bringing the cutters to his brother.
Cal felt a drop on the back of his neck when he leaned down.
“Great,” Gregory said, holding all the horses by the reins while Cal and Henry worked on freeing the calf.
“Storm?” Henry asked trusting Gregory to tell better than the other two.
Gregory had that ability. He could say if a storm was coming down to the minute. “Yeah.”
Cal felt his nerves crawling around in his belly. He turned and spit out a bad taste in his mouth and then grabbed hold of the scared calf’s leg. “It’s okay,” he told her, feeling silly.
Henry was a wiz with the cutters, flying through the parts wrapped around the other leg. “That’s good, Cal. Keep talking to her.”
Cal opened his mouth and lightning flashed.
The calf’s eyes widened, and then she jumped, as Cal did too, when the thunder rolled.
“Cal,” Henry said, fighting to keep hold of the leg he was working on.
“Uh. You don’t be scared, okay girl? It’s just a dumb ole thunderstorm.” Cal tried to pet her and get her to be still. “Good girl. That’s it.”
He even put a finger in her mouth for her to suckle on.
That made Cal smile when the calf eagerly latched on.
“She’s hungry,” he said.
“I bet,” Henry replied.
This was the closest he and his brother had been in a long while. Time was, Henry worked on the farm with their dad, while he and Gregory stayed home. Gregory with his books, more focused on school, and Cal was the baby still.
But Cal didn’t want to be the baby, he realized.
He wanted to be like Henry. Someday. Maybe tonight.
Lightning flashed again.
“Hey look!” Gregory said pointing. “It’s your cave!”
Cal froze. He wildly searched the darkness. Without the lightning he couldn’t see it, but he knew Gregory was right. They were close to that side of the canyon.
“Come on, Henry,” he muttered. “Hurry!”
Henry chuckled but most of it was drowned out by the thunder. “I am. I am. And…she’s free.”
“Here,” Henry said, handing the calf over to Cal. “Gurty will pack her best.”
He was right. Cal hadn’t even thought of it. His mount would be the best one to carry the calf home. “Shhh shhh shh,” he murmured to the frightened calf. “I got ya. I got ya.”
He and Henry put her next to the old mare.
Cal got on first, then the boys handed him the calf across his lap.
The baby cow mooed. It called for its mother, but didn’t fight being placed in front of the saddle.
“Hold on to her,” Henry warned, and Cal nodded.
He could do this. He could prove to Henry and his dad that he was ready to help on the farm.
Henry and Gregory mounted their horses, a
nd the three started back.
It was slow going now that Cal had to be careful not to drop the calf.
The weather was no help, and the rain picked up. Thunder boomed more loudly.
The lightning was close, making static.
Molly was the first to spook. She shot sideways, then reared.
Henry cursed. The F word. He shouted it loudly and tried to calm her down.
He didn’t look like he was close to falling off, but it didn’t matter, Molly bolted and took off into the brush before either Gregory or Cal could say boo about it.
“Henry!” Gregory called. “Wait here, Cal,” he shouted over the noise and soon he was gone too, kicking his own mount the way Henry had gone.
The only time Cal could see clearly was when lightning struck.
He waited and waited, but neither of his brothers had come back and the calf was getting anxious, and so was Gurty.
She was even starting to fight him. She pawed at the ground, stamping her front feet out of frustration and fear.
He tried to talk her down, he did, but the old mare had had enough.
Cal gave in and kicked her onward towards home. It was that or Gurty might buck both him and the calf off.
Just then Gurty froze, her ears strained forward, neck tense, body shivering with anticipation.
“What is it, girl?”
But Cal already could guess.
He’s seen it in his dreams.
And he’s close to its cave once again.
Somewhere in the darkness lurked the demon.
Red eyes watched him. He knew that they must.
Gurty leapt upward, and the lightning lit the pathway.
Cal almost lost the calf, but managed to get Gurty to settle and keep the cow in his lap.
It wasn’t the demon, at least. It was just Molly crashing through the brush. She appeared on the pathway. Alone…
She was blowing hard when she stopped next to Cal. She dug her head into Gurty’s flank, obviously terrified.
Cal reached out and took Molly’s reins. “Come on, Gurty. We gotta get dad. We gotta get help.”
He even risked bringing Gurty to a trot which jostled the calf. “Go, girl, go!”
Fear was pressing him past being careful.
And the old mare listened for once.