Howls From Hell

by Grady Hendrix

  Leigh noticed Ben’s abandoned marshmallows, discarded in the fire. She picked up the clothes hanger and withdrew it. The marshmallows were shriveled, ashy black, still toasting within a fidgeting flame. She watched the blackening metamorphosis for several seconds, sad and entranced, then mustered a breath and extinguished the tiny flame.

  After breakfast, they decided on a hike.

  Fresh air seemed to be the answer for the unresolved tension between them. And she liked being outdoors with Ben. He knew so much about nature—the plants, animals, mushrooms, bugs, rocks. There would be plenty to talk about in the woods.

  Pines and alders and the occasional sycamore kept the shadows plentiful on the ground. Above, sunlight speckled the foliage. Everything smelled fresh. Earthy. Their feet crunched on dried pine needles. Either side of the trail was thick with overgrowth. Birds fluttered in the branches, filled the air with a mix of songs. For the first time since the trip began, or maybe in weeks, Leigh felt peace.

  “If you see a junco, will you tell me?” Leigh asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.”

  “Sure,” Ben said.

  “It would be a shame to be at Junco Creek and not see a single junco.”

  “If you’re meant to see one, it’ll happen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Scoutmaster Mike had this guy come talk to the troop, a Native American named . . .” Ben stopped. “Well, I forgot his name. But he talked about how animals appear to you when you need to learn a lesson. Spirit animals.”

  “How do you know if an animal you see is a spirit animal and not just an animal?”

  “You just know,” Ben said, and stopped walking. “Hey, look at this.”

  He left the trail, veered around some plants, and bent over a small decomposing animal, covering his lower face with the collar of his t-shirt. Leigh walked toward Ben, holding her nose. The dead animal's eyes were gone. Thousands of maggots writhed in the remaining fur, working on the dead tissue. The sight made her stomach clench, but it was too engrossing to look away.

  What remained looked like a beaver or some sort of gigantic chipmunk.

  “What is it?” Leigh asked. “Or what was it?”

  “I mean . . . for where we are, I’m going to guess that it’s maybe a marmot . . .”

  “What’s a marmot?”

  “It’s like a fat gopher-type animal . . . or kind of like a beaver, without the big tail.”

  Ben leaned closer, as if it was the first time he was seeing active decay up close and every detail was being scrutinized and memorized. Leigh left him to it, unable to stomach the sight of the maggots any longer.

  Ben joined her a minute later, back on the trail.

  “That was absolutely disgusting,” he told her.

  “It’s disturbing to see anything in that state,” Leigh said.

  “You mean death?”

  “Yes.”

  Ben shrugged.

  “It’s all a cycle,” he said. “That kind of death, anyway. More like a change.”

  “What? Marmots don’t have an afterlife?”

  Ben barely smiled at her attempt at a joke.

  “Circle of life or whatever. Dead marmots feed the maggots and then the soil. Become plants. And feed more things. The marmot changes into something else.”

  “I like that,” Leigh said. “Constant change.”

  After she said it, she immediately vetoed the statement in her mind. She didn’t like change at all. It caused Ben to pull away from her.

  You’ve changed.

  Leigh heard cracking branches to her left. Heavy breathing. She stopped cold.

  Ben stopped as well, squinting through the clusters of shrubs.

  “It’s a black bear,” he told Leigh.

  Leigh’s stomach twisted. “A bear?”

  “Yes, but don’t worry. They rarely attack people.”

  The comment did not reassure Leigh. Maybe it was the bear’s unexpected presence, but the surroundings, which had seemed so tranquil only minutes before, were suddenly bereft of bird song and sparkles of sunlight. The hair on the back of Leigh’s neck bristled.

  The bear came into view, maneuvering around trees. It headed straight for them.

  Ben stood tall, facing the bear, and waved his arms in the air.

  “Hey, Bear! Go on! Piss off!” Ben yelled.

  The bear did not stop.

  “Ben,” Leigh said.

  “Stay calm and don’t run,” Ben told her. “Stand tall. It’s just testing us.”

  Leigh stretched herself out, tried to make herself tall, but she felt smaller than ever. Like her spine was made of dough.

  The bear took a few steps back and gnashed its teeth. Stood on its back legs.

  Ben yelled again, waving his arms. “Get out of here!”

  Suddenly, the bear returned his weight on all fours and charged, heading straight for Ben.

  Stunned, Ben jumped out of the way and rolled. The bear didn’t stop. Instead, its gaze homed in on Leigh, barreling toward her.

  She backed up. Straight into a tree. Instinctively, Leigh covered her face with her arms and closed her eyes, not moving.

  The stench of the bear struck her first. Beastly. Foul.

  A blur of hot, fiery pain slashed through her above her right breast.

  Leigh screamed and fell to the ground, curling into a ball. She braced for another strike, for a chunk of flesh to be ripped from her body.

  Instead, the bear let out a pain-infused roar. She heard it stagger backward.

  When she turned to look, she saw Ben holding a bloody hunting knife above his head.

  The bear snarled again, lunging at him, and Ben brought the knife down once more, this time stabbing the bear in its right shoulder. The animal let out another painful roar and then turned away, barreling back through the woods.

  Ben hurried over to Leigh, still clutching his knife.

  “How bad did it get you?” Ben asked, examining the bloody tear in Leigh’s shirt.

  Leigh peeked down at the wound. It was too bloody to determine the actual damage.

  “I don’t know,” Leigh said.

  Ben grabbed her hand and pulled her up off the ground.

  “Let’s get out of here in case it comes back.”

  Although bloody, the claw marks weren’t deep. She’d had worse encounters with kitchen cutlery. She cleaned out each gash, added some disinfectant, and taped a thick layer of gauze over the mess.

  It wasn’t until she was putting away the first-aid kit that it sank in how close she’d come to being ripped apart by a bear. The whole thing seemed surreal.

  She thought of Ben holding the bloody knife above his head.

  Like some primeval force had overtaken him.

  Thank god it had.

  When she exited the bathroom and walked back into the living room, she found him sitting on the couch, staring up blankly at the knotty pine wall.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

  “Actually, it’s not that bad,” she told him. “There was just a lot of bleeding.”

  She sat on the couch and sighed, feeling abruptly exhausted now that the adrenaline was waning.

  “It’s so strange that a black bear attacked you,” Ben said. “Black bears never do that unless their cubs are threatened.”

  “Maybe there were cubs.”

  “No,” Ben said. “There weren’t. It was a male.”

  “Maybe it was just me it didn’t like,” Leigh said.

  Without warning, like the bear, Ben lunged, wrapping his arms tightly around her. He squeezed her, burying his face into her neck.

  Leigh hugged him back tightly.

  “I’m okay, Ben,” she told him again. “Really. Thanks to you.”

  “I think we should leave,” Ben said, finally loosening his grip. “Even if you’re not that hurt, you should see a doctor.”

  “Let’s get packed up then,” she told him.

  Ben stoo
d up and hurried down the hallway, leaving Leigh alone to process. Their time may have been cut in half, but at least the attack had brought them together in a way that the cabin and roasting marshmallows could not.

  Maybe this would help mend things between them.

  Beneath Leigh’s bandage, her skin began to crawl.

  She rubbed her hand over the spot until the sensation went away.

  It was midafternoon when Leigh locked the front door and placed the key next to the old wooden owl statue on the porch instead of beneath it. She couldn’t bring herself to touch the owl.

  “I think it’s going to rain,” Ben said, looking up through the pines.

  Leigh descended the porch steps and looked upward. Gray clouds congealed, blotting out the pale blue sky.

  “Hopefully, we’ll beat the rain,” she said.

  Together, they walked towards the car.

  “Hey, there’s one,” Ben said, pointing to a small bird with a black head and brown body. It perched on a spindly sapling branch only a few feet from them.

  The bird was unimpressive compared to a blue jay or a cardinal, but there was something honest about its presence.

  “That’s a junco?” Leigh asked.

  “Yep,” Ben told her. “I guess you got to see one after all.”

  Leigh watched the bird quietly. Its dark eyes stared back at her. Pure.

  “Leaving?” a gravelly voice blurted out of nowhere.

  Leigh and Ben jumped and looked over to see Douglas Sable standing a few feet away. Leigh had not heard or seen him approach. He wore a charcoal gray t-shirt. The same grungy, black jeans and boots. Dark colors. Perhaps he’d blended into the shade.

  “Yes . . .” she said.

  “The lease is for the week,” Sable said.

  “A bear attacked me this morning,” Leigh said. “On a hike.”

  She pulled down the collar of her shirt to reveal part of the bandaging.

  “We have to go to the hospital,” Ben added.

  “Of course,” Douglas Sable said. “There’s an urgent care center in the next town over.”

  Although the information was helpful, his voice was void of concern.

  Leigh wanted to mention a refund, but the domineering gleam in Sable’s amber eyes made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She was filled with the overwhelming urge to flee.

  She nudged Ben toward the car.

  “Bye,” Leigh said. “Thank you.”

  Douglas Sable muttered something, although she couldn’t make out the words beneath the rustling of the wind in the pines. A storm was definitely blowing in. They might not even make it to town before the first drops fell.

  They climbed into the car, and Leigh automatically locked the doors.

  “That guy gives me the creeps,” she said.

  She jabbed the key into the ignition and turned. The car wouldn’t start.

  “Seriously?” Ben said from the passenger’s seat.

  Leigh tried several times. Nothing.

  “Shit.”

  She popped the lever for the hood and climbed back out of the car. Ben followed.

  “Car trouble?” Douglas Sable asked.

  “Yes.”

  She propped open the hood and studied the car’s innards. Ben stood by her side.

  “Battery?” Sable asked.

  “The battery isn’t old,” Leigh told him.

  “Did you leave a light on in the car?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Let me have a look,” Sable said, walking to the front of the car.

  Leigh stepped aside. Ben backed away, wiping grease onto his shorts. They exchanged a quick, uncomfortable glance with one another.

  Douglas Sable stooped beneath the hood and prodded. The faded tattoos on his forearms—the snake coiled around a rose on one and the feather on the other—writhed as he tinkered with Leigh’s car.

  “I see what it is,” he said, seconds later.

  “What?” Leigh asked.

  “You got some wires that’ve been chewed through.”

  “By what?”

  “Marmots most likely,” he told them. “They like to climb up into the engine block. They’re addicted to the taste of antifreeze.”

  “But that’s poisonous,” Leigh said.

  “That don’t stop ‘em. Fat little bastards can’t get enough of the stuff,” Douglas Sable told them. “You’ll have to get a tow truck up here.”

  “Our phones don’t have service.”

  “I know.” His amberish eyes glinted despite the stifled sunlight. “No one has service up here. I’ve got a landline.”

  Leigh took in a deep breath, completely vexed by the situation. She in no way wanted to walk with Douglas Sable to his home to use his phone. His presence made something recoil inside of her. His smell alone was unpleasant. A mix of sweat and earth and something animalistic. The way a large dog smells in the summer when it’s long overdue for a bath. The stench was bold and familiar and made her pulse quicken.

  “I can drive you to urgent care,” Douglas Sable continued.

  He removed the rod propping open the hood and let it slam shut. His hand glided up and massaged his own shoulder, as if soothing a pained muscle.

  Despite her silent aversion, Leigh heard herself say, “I guess we—”

  “It’s all right,” Ben said. “We don’t need a ride.”

  Ben’s face remained wan and glistened with sweat. He did not take his eyes off Douglas Sable.

  “My dad will be here soon,” he said. “He can help us.”

  “Oh,” Sable said, giving Leigh’s ring finger a hard glance. “I didn’t realize you were married.”

  “Separated,” Leigh said, but she followed Ben’s cue. “But Ben’s right. Russ is meeting us here today. In a few hours. He can help us fix the car situation and drive me to a doctor.”

  Douglas Sable stopped rubbing his shoulder. He brushed a strand of bristly gray-and-white hair from his forehead and stepped away from the car.

  “All right then.” He took a few slow steps backwards. “If you need anything, my house is right down the way.”

  “Thank you,” Leigh said.

  She didn’t take her eyes off him as he walked back down the road in the shadows of the tall trees. Leigh was once again unsettled by how large and muscular he was for a man his age. He seemed younger than he had been only days before. Maybe he wasn’t as old as she originally thought. Maybe it was only his silvery hair and dark, sun-scorched face that made him seem older.

  After a dozen feet, Douglas Sable looked back over his shoulder, directly at Ben.

  He winked.

  When she glanced at Ben, the boy had lost all color in his face.

  “Goddamn marmots,” Leigh said, once they were back inside the cabin.

  “It wasn’t a marmot that messed up the car,” Ben said.

  “What do you mean? You think he cut the wires?”

  “I know he did.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Did you notice how he was rubbing his shoulder?” Ben asked.

  “What about it?”

  “Do you remember where I stabbed the bear yesterday?”

  An image of Ben flashed through her mind, the knife going into the bear’s shoulder. She remembered the animal’s pained roar. And then the animal’s smell.

  It was Douglas Sable’s smell.

  “That’s—” She stopped herself from using the word crazy. “That’s not possible, Ben. People can’t turn into animals. That’s folklore. Myth.”

  But even as she said it, she believed Ben. She knew it deep down.

  A burning itch blazed beneath her bandage. Perhaps agitated by her sweat.

  “Regardless, we need to get out of here,” she said. “I don’t feel safe with him around.”

  “It’s miles and miles back to the base of the mountain, Mom,” Ben said. “It will take us a day to walk back to town. Especially if it storms.”

  “Ther
e were other cabins, right? Maybe there are people nearby.”

  “The other rental cabins were empty,” Ben told her. “And there weren’t any other houses. Only Douglas Sable’s house.”

  Leigh suddenly realized how intentional it all was. Luring tourists way up a mountain surrounded by acre after acre of nature. Renting only one cabin at a time and leaving the others empty. Junco Creek was a place where people could easily vanish without a trace.

  Douglas Sable was toying with them—prolonging the death of his prey for fun.

  Even if they ventured out during the storm to make a run for it, they’d never make it back to civilization before dark, and she did not want to be anywhere out here in the night. Not with him prowling the woods. At least the cabin provided some sort of protection. Walls. A locking door. Sable would have a key, of course, but a shelter was better than being hunted in the night by an animal.

  “We’ll wait until the morning,” Leigh told Ben. “At dawn, we’ll leave.”

  The storm rolled in an hour later and continued into the evening. Thunder rattled the cabin. Rain and the occasional pine cone pounded against the old, shingled roof.

  Ben had thought to haul several pieces of firewood from the woodpile to the front porch so they could keep a fire going through the storm. It was the only thing that kept them calm—watching the flames, tending to the fire—even if it made the cabin entirely too warm.

  By the time the weather tapered to a steady rain after nightfall, Leigh felt dizzy. Her body temperature had steadily climbed over the past few hours, and sweat oozed from every pore. Infection. Her body crawled with it. It ate her up from the inside.

  To fill the silence, Leigh tried to tell Ben about a movie she saw recently, but she was having a hard time describing it, and he only looked at her as if she was speaking gibberish.

  “You aren’t making any sense,” Ben finally told her and placed the back of his hand on her forehead. It felt like a cold stone against her skin. “Mom, you’re burning up.”