by Rick Hautala
“Shit, man. Sorry I woke you up,” Jack said through chattering teeth. He rubbed his forearms vigorously, hoping to restore the circulation. “I—you wouldn’t believe the fucking dream I just had, thanks to you and your half-assed story.”
Ryan didn’t say a word as he stared across the remains of the dying campfire at Jack.
“There was a ... Jesus, it was weird. I ... I heard this voice, whispering to me ... telling me things, saying ... saying—”
Jack’s voice cut off with an audible click as he suddenly spun around and tore the top of his sleeping bag off the small rise of ground that he’d been using as a pillow. His body was shaking as he looked down at the small mound. The voice in his dream and what it had said were slowly coming back to him.
“It’s right here,” he said in a hoarse whisper. His hand was shaking as he pointed toward the mound. “It’s buried right here!”
Without waiting for Ryan to respond, Jack ripped open his pack and grabbed the hunting knife he always carried on the trail. In the campfire’s dull glow, the blade looked smudged and dirty, but he ignored that as he hunched over and began to scrape away the turf. He dug down until the knife blade fetched up on something hard enough to make his teeth grind. He wanted to believe it was just a rock … or maybe one of the oak tree’s roots, but he knew better.
He knew exactly what it was.
He sucked in quick, shallow gulps of air that burned like acid in his throat. His chest felt cold and heavy as if a block of ice was lodged under his ribs. His arms and legs tingled with pins and needles, and he could barely control his actions as he frantically scraped away more dirt.
”It’s right here!” he shouted, glancing at Ryan over his shoulder. “When it rotted ... once all the flesh was gone and the ... the screaming finally stopped screaming, it fell from the branch and landed right … here!”
His vision was spinning with dark spirals within darker spirals, but in the faint glow of fire and starlight, he could see that he had exposed ... something ... a rounded, gray object that certainly looked like bone.
“See?” he called out triumphantly. He barely recognized the wild cackle in his voice. “It’s here! This is—”
He dropped the knife and, using both hands, clawed the dirt away until he fully exposed the object buried in the tightly compacted soil. Wiggling it back and forth like a rotten tooth in diseased bone, he struggled to free the thing. At last, he exposed the dark wells of the eye sockets. They stared up at him with a chilling, sightless gaze. Dimly, Jack was aware that he was muttering to himself like a crazy man, but he had no idea what he was saying. He was focused on exposing what he knew was ole’ Jed Harpe’s skull.
“He spoke to me ... Jed did ... in my dream ... He told me he was here ... that he was still here ... that he’d been buried here for over a hundred years ... a hundred years! ... Oak leaves have tannin in them... That’s what they used to use in the old days to tan hides ... And that’s what preserved the skull ... so it didn’t rot away to nothing ... His skull didn’t decompose!”
Jack was lost in a blind frenzy until he finally pried the skull loose from the earth. Gripping it by the eye sockets like it was a bowling ball, he held it up to the night sky.
“See?” he shouted, turning around to show Ryan the skull. But his friend still lay there on his side staring at Jack with a wide-eyed, empty gaze.
“Jesus, Ryan! Do you realize what this is?”
Scuttling like a crab across the ground, Jack crawled around the campfire and thrust the skull forward so his friend couldn’t help but see it. The only sound, other than the faint sighing of the wind in the branches overhead, was the ragged gasps of Jack’s heavy breathing. For several heartbeats, he looked at his motionless friend until the horrible truth hit him.
Ryan’s eyes hadn’t blinked.
Not once.
They were wide open and staring, two glassy marbles that reflected the dying coals of the fire with a dull, lifeless glow.
“Ryan—?” Jack’s voice just a strangled whisper. “Oh, Jesus ... Ryan?”
He was shaking as he leaned forward and pushed his friend’s shoulder. Jack watched in stunned horror as Ryan’s body flopped over onto its back, but his head remained where it was. Only then did Jack notice the thick, black stain that covered the ground and saturated Ryan’s sleeping bag like spilled oil.
“No ... oh, Jesus. No!” Jack whimpered as he got up and stumbled away. His friend’s severed head lay there, his glassy eyes staring at him with an unblinking, dead gaze.
The night closed around Jack like heavy drapes. With so little light to see by, he wasn’t even sure what he grabbed as he gathered up a few things and stuffed them into his backpack. The cold, hard knot that had formed in his chest now dropped down into his gut. His arms and legs were numb, like foreign objects he could barely control as he hurriedly laced his boots. Without a backward glance at his friend’s corpse, he slung his backpack over his shoulder and ran off into the woods. As he ran, he had no idea where the trail was or if he was keeping to it.
It didn’t matter.
All he knew was that he had to get away from Outlaw’s Cave ... away from the oak tree and his horrible discovery ... and away from his dead friend!
As Jack struggled through the dense underbrush, stumbling and tripping, he could hear in the darkness all around him the rising howl of someone screaming. The keening sound was distant at first, muffled, but as he ran, it got louder and louder until it echoed in the woods and from the cliffs on the opposite side of the river. It rose higher and higher until it drowned out everything else, even the heavy thud of Jack’s feet on the hard-packed ground and the rapid, painful pulse of his heart in his chest.
Ryan—his best friend—was dead!
Murdered!
Branches whipped Jack’s face and hands, stinging him and drawing blood that streamed down and mingled with the cold sweat that bathed his skin. Time and again, he tripped on the uneven ground and had to pinwheel his arms wildly to keep from falling. He was vaguely aware that the river was to his left. He figured as long as he kept close to it, he’d eventually reach a house … or an outpost or town.
Blind with terror, his only thought now was to keep running to get away from that horror, so that’s what he did.
He ran.
Dawn eventually came. The eastern sky gradually lightened to a dull gray, and still Jack ran. His face and hands were caked with mud from the innumerable times he had fallen down, and he was cut and bleeding from scores of scratches and gashes from thorns and branches that had ripped through his shirt and jeans. His throat felt like it had been flayed with flames, and his lungs were burning with a terrible ache that sent bone-deep tremors rumbling through his legs and back.
And still, he ran.
He was past the point of exhaustion. When he came to some low-lying, swampy ground, the mud sucked at his feet and tripped him. He fell face-first into the fetid water and, without thinking, gulped down a mouthful. Nausea squeezed his gut. When he staggered to his feet again, he was only dimly aware that his boots had remained mired in the mud, and he was now running barefoot. It didn’t matter. He wiped his face with his forearm and kept running, unmindful of any pain.
The sun rose slowly, spreading sunlight and warmth across the land. Thick, twisting blankets of mist rose from the river and shifted like ghosts through the trees. Bird song filled the air, but the only sound that registered in Jack’s brain was the memory—if it was, indeed, a memory and not the echo—of that high-pitched scream that had filled the night and followed him as he ran. It reverberated inside his head, mingling with the memory of the stench of death and rot, and the cold, hard touch of rotting bone.
Jack kept running even though every muscle in his body was past the point of endurance, burning with exhaustion. A thick, salty taste flooded the back of his throat, gagging him. Several times his stomach clenched, and his mouth filling with hot, sour vomit. He didn’t even bother to spit it out. He swallowed
it and let what remained dribble from his mouth and down onto his heaving chest.
As the day brightened and the mist dissipated, exhaustion finally took its toll, and Jack began to falter. He stumbled over a rotting deadfall and, when he hit the ground face-first, he no longer had the strength to get up. Placing both hands on the ground in front of him, he tried to push himself up, but he collapsed forward again, his nose smashing into the ground. A wash of fresh hot blood filled his mouth, mingling with the sour aftertaste of vomit. But Jack was only distantly aware of this or anything else as he sank down ... deeper ... deeper into unconsciousness.
It wasn’t until many hours later, long past noon, that a small group of hikers—two men and two women—came across him, lying facedown in the brush alongside the path.
* * *
“What the hell happened to you?” a voice said.
Jack couldn’t distinguish if it was a man or a woman speaking, but those were the first words he understood as he drifted slowly out of the dense weight of unconsciousness. He had been hearing voices for some time, but they had been faint and indistinct, incomprehensible. Only now did they make sense, and he had no idea who was speaking. The voices reminded him of the voice he had heard last night, when he was dreaming with his head on the mound of earth that covered Jed Harpe’s skull.
Jack had no idea if he was lying flat on his back or sitting up as he tried to wedge open his eyes, but even the slightest bit of sunlight made him wince and cry out in pain. Whenever he moved, even if it was only a finger, a searing rush of pain made him grunt and cry out.
“I ... I ...” was all he could manage to say.
His throat was swollen shut, and he was strangling. The first few times he consciously tried to take a breath, his chest felt like someone was slipping razor blades between his ribs.
“We have to get you back to town,” said the voice that had spoken before. This time, Jack could tell it was a man, and the sound of his voice brought Jack closer to the horrible memory of what had happened last night. A sense of total unreality swept over him, threatening to pull him back under. For all he knew, he might have been sprawled on the ground half-dead for days. It certainly felt like it. His body was iron-stiff.
As he became more fully aware, the memory of what he had seen, of what had happened last night, came back in a horrible, roaring rush. It was too much to take, and Jack wished fervently that he could sink back into unconsciousness and stay there.
But he couldn’t.
Whoever had found him, whatever time or day it was, wherever he was, he couldn’t escape the memory.
“Here. Have a drink,” the man said. “Not too much, though.”
It pained him to move, but Jack could feel someone raising his head and holding the cool, metal rim of a canteen to his lips. He opened his mouth and almost choked when the canteen tipped back, and water gushed into his mouth. He forced himself to swallow a few drops and let the soothing coolness of the water trickle down his throat. Incrementally, it relieved the parched dryness.
“You sure had us worried for a while there,” the man said as he eased Jack’s head back onto the ground.
Once again, Jack wedged his eyes open. He realized he was sitting on the ground. His legs were splayed out in front of him, and his pack rested on the ground near his feet. He was leaning back against a tree … or a rock … hard to tell without looking. Regardless, he was grateful for its solid reality. It helped ground him.
Through the watery blur of his vision, against the explosion of bright green trees and perfectly blue sky, he could see the man who was tending to him. Beyond him, standing in a close semicircle, but not too close, were three other people. They were nothing but indistinct smears against the brilliant dazzle of the forest.
“I ... I’m … alive,” Jack whispered, even though his throat felt like it had been sand-blasted.
“Just barely, pard’ner,” the man said with a tight chuckle. “But—yeah. You’re alive.”
Jack squinted, trying to see the man’s face more clearly, but a broad-brimmed hat shaded his features.
“‘Nother sip of water?” the man asked.
Even though it hurt like hell, Jack nodded and rasped, “Yeah.” After another cooling gulp, he found the strength to raise his right arm and wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. His vision was still blurry, but he saw that his hand and wrist were smeared with mud and blood from numerous scrapes and gashes.
“Thanks,” he said, happy to hear a slight measure of strength returning to his voice.
“Goddamn!” the man said. “You are some beat up. We thought you were dead, for sure when we first found you. What the hell happened?”
“I ... I had to get away,” Jack said, groaning as he leaned forward and vigorously rubbed his eyes with both hands. “It was ... Jesus! I can’t believe it really happened! I mean ...”
“Did someone jump you and leave you for dead?” the man asked.
“No, no.” Jack groaned again as he shook his head. “I was ... We were ... Did you find him? ... Did you see him?”
“Find who?” the man asked.
“Ryan. My friend ... I was hiking with my friend Ryan, and last night ... we were ... someone—”
Before he could continue, his voice choked off, and he had to take another, longer sip of water before he could continue. In spite of the pain, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he said, “We set up camp under the oak tree by Outlaw’s Cave.”
“Ohh, that place. It’s ‘spozed to be haunted,” said one of the women.
Jack couldn’t see her face against the glare of the sun, but he couldn’t help but sniff with laughter.
“You don’t know the half of it,” he said, licking his lips. “Someone else was out there last night, too, and they ... they killed my friend.”
“You’re shitting me,” the man tending to him said. He cast a wary glance over his shoulder at his friends and then looked back at Jack.
“Yeah. They ... I don’t know how,” Jack said, “but sometime during the night ... when we were sleeping, someone ... killed my friend … cut off his head.”
“Jesus,” said the man kneeling in front of him, his voice barely a whisper. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I—I saw it, but I can’t believe it really happened. It can’t be true, but I ... I saw it! I saw his head! It was lying there in his sleeping bag, not connected to his shoulders anymore, and I ... I panicked and ran.”
“Can’t say as I blame you,” the other man in the group said.
“I didn’t know what I was doing or where I was going. All I knew was I had to get away, so I ran. You understand, don’t you? I had to get away!”
“Yeah … sure. Of course I understand,” the man tending him said, but Jack thought from his tone of voice that he might be patronizing him.
The man looked away from Jack, and Jack noticed that his gaze shifted to where his backpack was lying on the ground by his feet. A quizzical look crossed the man’s face as he leaned forward and gingerly touched the corner of the backpack.
Jack looked down, and in a frozen instant realized what had drawn the man’s attention. The bottom of his backpack was saturated with … something dark … as if something inside had spilled and was seeping through the green nylon, turning it black.
A cold spike of terror drove through Jack as he watched the man slowly extend his hand and grasp the edge of the flap. The other man and the two women standing behind him moved in closer, their heads craning forward as they watched in hushed silence.
The tearing of Velcro was the only sound as the man slowly opened the backpack.
Jack couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t swallow.
He couldn’t even blink.
The man’s face was flat, expressionless until the pack gaped open, and he looked inside.
Then he made a low, strangled gurgling sound in his throat as he pushed himself away. He scrambled across the ground to get away from the pack as if it co
ntained a rattlesnake. As he did, his foot kicked the backpack and knocked it over. It gaped open like a hungry mouth, and the morning sunlight was angled just right to illuminate what was inside the pack.
The sight froze Jack where he sat.
“Oh my God! Oh, my sweet loving Jesus!” the man said, his voice rising steadily until it twisted off to nothing. “Why’d you do it? Why’d you bring it with you?”
Before he could say anything more, he leaned forward and vomited between his legs.
Jack tried to tear his gaze away from the backpack, but he couldn’t do it.
Nestled like a huge, horrible egg inside a nest was his friend Ryan’s severed head. The skin, drained of blood, was sallow and pale, like old parchment. The dark, heavy eyelids were closed, but as Jack watched in fascinated horror, Ryan’s eyes slowly opened. Then his bloodless lips peeled back into a wide, sickening grin, and before Jack could find the strength to block his ears, Ryan opened his lifeless lips and began to scream … and scream.
Colt. 24
Diary entry one: approximately 10:00 AM. Valentine's Day—How ironic.
If you've ever spent any time in academic circles, you've no doubt heard the expression "Publish or perish." Simply put, it means that if you want to keep your teaching position, at least at any decent college or university, you've got to publish occasionally in academic journals. I suppose this is to prove that you've been doing important research, but it also contributes to the prestige of your school.
My experience, at least in the English Department here at the University of Southern Maine, is that the more obscure and unread the periodical, the more prestige is involved. I mean, if you don't write novels or stories that pretend to "art"—well, then, you can kiss your chances for tenure good-bye.
Bob Howard, a good friend of mine here, did just that. He wrote and sold dozens of stories and two novels … to major publishers; but because his work was viewed by the tenure committee as "commercial" fiction, he didn't keep his job. After he was denied tenure a few years back, he and I used to joke over drinks about how he had published and perished.