by J L Aarne
So, he was on high alert as he followed the signs leading him through the strange neighborhood. He caught a glimpse of a furry black creature pushing a tennis ball like a dung beetle across a freshly mown lawn, but it was only a quick look out the corner of his eye and he told himself it was nothing. A squirrel or a little dog. For just a second, he thought he saw wings, but it could have a been a trick of the light. Whatever it was, it paid no attention to him and he passed by it, followed another sign and took a left.
A shriek overhead made Wyatt go rigid, his hands tightening instinctively on the steering wheel as his heart somersaulted in his chest. The diversion signs had led him to a dark road, houses and other streets on his left, nothing but blackberry tangles, shrubbery and trees on his right. He had a vague idea of where he was because he could see light from the city through the trees up ahead, but he was still lost. The shriek came again, directly above him, like a giant bird mimicking the scream of a terrified woman. Except it didn’t sound terrified, Wyatt was pretty sure he was projecting.
He was lost and alone in a strange, dark place and something was hunting him.
He told himself he was only a little way from home. Soon, about two miles up the road, there would be street lights again. Other traffic. Pedestrians. The cats would be happy to see him, the monster that lived under his bed would be happy to see him, and the next day was his day off. He had to visit his father at the hospital, but he could do that while the sun was up. For a couple of days, he would be absolutely safe, then the clocks would be turned back, and he would be safe again until next year.
That was what he was telling himself when his car started to make an odd clicking noise. The clicking turned into a louder knocking sound and the speedometer dropped as the car began to slow. It made an awful, asthmatic wheezing and the whole vehicle shuddered and jerked. No matter how hard Wyatt stepped on the gas, it continued to slow until it stopped dead in the middle of the road.
“No, no, no, no,” he said, pumping the gas. He knew all this would accomplish was to flood it, but he couldn’t think past the blind panic that seized him. “Come on, come on, don’t do this to me. You can’t do this. I just had you to the mechanic. You stupid car! You can’t do this!”
He tried to crank the car, but it wouldn’t turn over. It just made a dreadful straining, chugging noise as it tried and tried to start, and nothing happened. Wyatt hit the steering wheel in frustration, which hurt him more than the car, and twisted around in his seat to snatch up the big flashlight in the back and turn it on.
Then he sat there holding it like a lightsaber while he tried to think of what to do.
He turned on the hazard lights. They blinked, but their light was dull and not very comforting.
He felt in his jacket pocket for his cell phone and called his sister.
Kat answered on the second ring. “Hey, what’s up? You just get home?”
“No. No, Kat, I need you to come get me,” Wyatt said. He realized he was whispering and stopped. “I’m like… maybe three or four miles from home. I’m stuck in the middle of the road. My car won’t start and it’s dark and I don’t know what to do.”
“Honey, I can’t come get you. I’m in Bremerton,” Kat said. “I saw Dad this morning and they’re saying he’s going to be okay, so I’m out of town until the weekend.”
“You have to come get me!” Wyatt said, nearly shouting it. He was gripping the phone tight enough to make the plastic squeak and had to force himself to loosen his grip. “It’s dark here, Kat. It’s dark. I can’t. I’m stranded, and you are supposed to be there for me. You know I can’t. I can’t just be here in the dark. What am I supposed to do?”
“Wyatt, you are a grown man, get out of the damn car and walk,” Kat said.
Her voice was flat and impatient, not even a little sympathetic and Wyatt felt his eyes grow hot. He knew he was crazy, he knew what his family thought of him, he knew that as much as they tried to understand it they would never understand it because they couldn’t understand it. He knew that even when they were trying to be nice to him about it that deep down, at least a little tiny part of them believed he was making it all up.
Kat didn’t say that to him out loud, but Wyatt heard it loud and clear anyway.
“I’m sorry, Kat. I’m sorry,” he said. “But you don’t understand. It’s dark. There aren’t any lights anywhere. I heard something, and I can’t—”
“You are a grown man,” Kat repeated. “Little children—babies—are scared of the dark, Wyatt. Get out of the car and walk. Or hell, call Triple A.”
“You’re a grown man,” Wyatt muttered.
“I don’t even—What?” Kat said.
Wyatt sighed. There was something with a sharp nose and catlike eyes outside his door peering in at him. He told himself it was only an opossum, but it wasn’t. He was trying hard not to notice it and failing. “I don’t have Triple A,” he said.
“Then call a cab. Call a tow truck. Call Mom,” Kat said. “I can’t come get you though.”
“But Kat, I don’t—” The screen on his phone changed to show that the call had been disconnected. She had hung up on him. “Oh, no. Oh, fuck, oh, god.”
The cat-eyed thing outside the door raised a clawed hand and lightly scratched at the glass.
Wyatt ignored it and tried to call his mother, but his phone was now telling him that there was no service. No service and his battery was about to die.
“I’m doomed,” he said and put his head down on the steering wheel.
A loud thunderous banging erupted around him as something climbed up on his car. Wyatt screamed and ducked down in the seat, clutching his flashlight and aiming it at the windshield.
There was nothing more for a few moments, then something that moved so fast he barely had a chance to see that it was walking upright ran down the slope of his windshield and leapt off the hood of the Volvo. Wyatt bit his bottom lip savagely and watched out the windshield over the top of the steering wheel as the thing turned toward him into the beam of the flashlight and revealed itself to be a man.
“That’s the guy from the diner,” Wyatt said under his breath.
Chapter 3
It was the man from the diner. The man dressed in black who had asked him what was good and then ordered a Reuben sandwich. He stood in the road right in the beams of car’s headlights, his dark hair pulled back from his face, holding a long, gleaming sword.
A sword?
Wyatt automatically reached for the door, intending to go out there and confront Mr. Reuben about walking all over his car. He paused, remembering the creature waiting for him outside the car with its claws and its gleaming eyes, but when he looked for it, it wasn’t there anymore.
“Probably scared away by the lunatic with a sword,” Wyatt said.
He opened the door and got out, holding his flashlight out to light his way. “Hey, what do you think you’re doing running around in the middle of the street with a—”
The guy with the sword barely glanced at him. He had his head cocked like the RCA dog listening for something distant and faint. Without acknowledging him at all, he turned away from Wyatt and ran off the road, stepped over a ditch and disappeared into the trees.
Wyatt stood clutching his flashlight and felt the darkness closing in on him like a fist. A car driving toward him flicked its lights at him and honked and Wyatt stepped out of the way behind his car. The driver shouted something at him as the car went by, but Wyatt was squinting toward the trees, looking for the man with the sword. He wasn’t bothered by the sparse traffic or the possibility of being creamed by a semi on the road. He had spent most of his life afraid of the dark, afraid of his own mind, so he didn’t have much left to spare for mundane things like reckless drivers.
“Hey, mister?!” he called into the bushes where the man had gone. “Hey, are you…?” He trailed off, unsure what he wanted to ask him. Was he all right? He clearly was, at least physically speaking. Did he need help? The man had a sword. He
could probably take care of himself. Unless he fell on it like some kind of insane child running with scissors. Huge, sharp scissors that had been crafted and honed for battle.
“Ah… mister?!” Wyatt tried again.
There was crashing in the trees like an animal was running through them without heeding the branches in its path. It sounded big.
“Hello?!” Wyatt called into the trees.
When there was no answer that time, he went back to his car and opened the trunk to see if he had another flashlight. He had a something better, he had a headlamp. He put the headlamp on and picked up another flashlight, a heavy metal one, so he had one for each hand. Then he stepped off the road into the tall grass, into shadows that melted away from the light of his headlamp but only reluctantly, and he wondered why he was doing it the whole time. He didn’t know the stranger with the sword and really, strange men with swords were people to stay away from.
“Sir?!” he called and started in the direction he thought he’d seen the man go.
“I’m following a crazy man with a sword into the woods in the middle of the night while armed with nothing but flashlights. What could possibly go wrong?” Wyatt said under his breath.
He heard twigs snapping beneath feet walking close behind him, but when Wyatt turned around to look, there was nothing there. Except he knew there was something there, he just couldn’t see it in the total dark. He followed the sound of movement deeper into the trees, cutting a path through the forest with his lights, searching for the man with the sword.
Why did he even care about some loony with a sword? Enough to brave the tricky, sometimes malevolent shadows of the forest in search of him?
“Maybe he can help me,” Wyatt said. “Or maybe he needs help. Maybe he escaped.”
Before he could give much thought to where the man might have escaped from, Wyatt heard horrible grunting, and soft, whistling cries through the trees on his left. He slipped through the trees, cutting a path with his flashlights. He had almost decided it was someone’s dog or cat when he stepped between two saplings and stopped dead in his tracks.
A minotaur-like creature had another night creature, one of the rare ones that were almost human in appearance, bent over the back of a park bench and Wyatt couldn’t tell at first if the bull-headed man was fucking him or eating him. He stared in stunned horror as he watched the minotaur thing thrusting its hips. At the same time, the minotaur tore pieces of flesh away from the human looking creature’s naked shoulders with its teeth and ate them. It tore at the man’s sides until his skin hung in shredded rags from his gleaming red ribcage. The horror of it all was only compounded by the fact that one of them was human. Or looked human. The other was so obviously inhuman that it sapped some of Wyatt’s dismay away to watch it. He was too busy trying to convince himself that what he was seeing was real to be as shocked by the sight as he should have been.
Then the human looking one screamed and the way it echoed through the trees sent goosebumps up Wyatt’s arms and along the back of his neck. The minotaur ripped away flesh from the back of his shoulder, ate it and licked him while the blood flowed down his back. The pieces that the minotaur had ripped away had left behind gaping wounds that would have been pure agony or death for a human. Instead, the man being eaten by the minotaur seemed to enjoy it. His cries and moans were not of agony, or not entirely agony, and he didn’t protest it or try to get away. He didn’t fight back, he pushed back into the minotaur’s thrusts and tossed his head back, mouth open to moan and cry out.
Wyatt watched it, stunned and deeply disturbed. He wanted to turn and run back to his car, lock himself inside it with his flashlights until the sun rose, but he didn’t. He stood frozen like a statue and didn’t move to either run away or get closer. He could hardly believe what he was seeing, and he knew that it would be fodder for nightmares in the days ahead.
“Oh, goddamn it!”
Wyatt turned toward that voice and saw the man from the diner, the man with the sword, walking toward him out of the trees. He still had the sword, but it was in a scabbard on his back, mostly hidden by his coat.
“What have I told you?” he demanded.
Wyatt thought at first that he was talking to him before he realized the man was looking at the minotaur and his paramour.
“This is disgusting. Take it inside,” the man shouted at the minotaur.
“Hey, fuck you, Silas,” the minotaur shouted back. “We’re in love.”
“Great. Go be in love somewhere else,” the man, Silas said.
“Aww, come on,” the minotaur said.
The other one, the human looking one, didn’t say anything, but he did make a strange series of trilling bird noises which seemed to express his disagreement with Silas.
“He’s right,” the minotaur said. “You have no right to tell us where we can and cannot make love, Silas. We—”
“Herschel, I’m busy, I don’t have time for this,” Silas said, pointing at him sternly like he was scolding a dog. “You’re always doing this shit to me. You’re a couple of exhibitionists. You should be ashamed. People don’t want to see this. Look at this kid here, he looks like he’s about to swoon.”
The human looking creature that talked like a bird twittered something at him and Herschel nodded. They had stopped having sex while Silas scolded them, but they had yet to break apart. Wyatt was too distracted by the rapid way the bird man’s flesh was healing right before his eyes to notice or be embarrassed by it though.
“Ned’s right, you know,” Herschel said, pouting. “You need someone Silas. Then you’d understand.”
“I would understand the irresistible urge the two of you have to fuck in public every chance you—No, you know what? What I need right now is for the two of you to go home.”
Wyatt didn’t know what was happening, though he suspected he was losing his mind. At long last he was just losing it. But even if he wasn’t, he needed to get out of there post haste. He slowly began to edge toward the trees while Silas was arguing with the two… whatever they were.
“Fine, we’ll go home,” Herschel said.
Ned made some bird squawking sounds of annoyance, but the two creatures began to trudge off together.
Wyatt was watching them leave so he didn’t notice Silas had moved closer to him until his hand fell on his shoulder. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Wyatt made an embarrassing little sound of fear and went completely stiff and still. “I don’t… Um. Home?”
Silas eyed him thoughtfully for a moment, noting the headlamp and the flashlights with a frown. “What is this getup?”
“I don’t—here, take my wallet,” Wyatt said, feeling in his pockets for it. When he found it, he unfolded it and took out the money, which he tried to give to Silas.
“I don’t want your wallet,” Silas said, pushing it back to him. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?” Wyatt said. Then he lost his nerve and shied away from Silas. “Please don’t point that sword at me. Or hit me. Or stab me. Or rape me. You’re not a rapist, are you?” He was somewhat reassured about this one by the way Silas had acted when it came to Herschel and Ned. Also, Silas didn’t look much like a rapist, but it took all kinds.
Silas rolled his eyes and let go of Wyatt’s arm. “So, you still don’t know anything about anything, do you?”
“I still don’t know—What is that supposed to mean?” Wyatt asked. “Wait, do I know you?”
“Of course not.” Silas turned away and began making his way through the trees again. “You coming, or what?”
“I think I’m just… I’m going back to my car,” Wyatt said.
“Your car’s busted. Might as well climb into a tin can and hide,” Silas said.
He kept going, leaving Wyatt to follow him or not.
Wyatt chose not to and soon Silas was lost in the darkness again.
Wyatt had two flashlights, so he would be fine. Two flashlights and a headlamp. If he was v
igilant on the way back to his car he would be okay, and he could go about the business of forgetting this night had ever happened. Of course, two flashlights and a headlamp were not a sword, but a sword wasn’t going to get his car running either.
Wyatt walked back toward the main road where his car still sat with its lights flashing. He looked around but didn’t see anything crouching just out of sight to ambush him. There were a few strange things that melted away when he swept his flashlights over them; an impossibly tiny man with round spectacles, an orange cat with four tails and bat-like wings. They didn’t try to attack him though and Wyatt reached his car safely.
There was some juggling with the flashlights and the door handle. He got it open and let out a sigh of relief. Then before he could get into the car and lock the dark world outside of it, he heard something rustle in the leaves of the tree branches above his head.
Wyatt froze. He told himself to look up at it, that it was nothing but the wind or some stray animal. Except he couldn’t look up at it. He knew that wouldn’t confirm what he was telling himself at all. Instead of finding it to be nothing but the wind and laughing it off, he was overcome with the deep conviction that whatever was rustling the leaves was something to be afraid of. This fear was so complete, this belief so absolute, that he froze and couldn’t bring himself to look. He remembered the shrieks above his car minutes before the vehicle died and his vivid imagination supplied him with some terrifying possibilities.
“If I look, it will kill me,” Wyatt whispered softly under his breath to himself. “If it knows I see it, it will kill me. Don’t look. Don’t you dare.”
It was directly above him and heavy enough that when it shifted, the tree branches groaned.
Even as he was cursing himself for being stupid (for being curious and stupid, which was much worse than merely being stupid) he tilted his head back to look. He had to know. He had to see. The compulsion was so undeniable that even the certainty of death couldn’t stop him from looking.