Dark Spirits of the Forest

by Michael Weinberger

  Jett held up a hand to stop the young man, “Can you describe it?”

  “Scary son of a bitch, like a human skeleton, only with a thin loose skin hanging over its bones. It didn’t have eyes, only empty eye-sockets, but it seemed as though it could see just fine.”

  “What about clothes?” Ursula asked, “Or was it naked?”

  “No, it was covered in some kind of fabric, but frayed and torn as if it had been wearing it for a very long time.”

  “Any distinguishing features that might have given you a clue about where it came from? Maybe the type of clothes or hair… Did it have hair?” she continued.

  “Yes, sparse and wavy hair. Kind of long like a woman’s but I definitely got the impression the thing was male.”

  “How so?” Jett chimed in.

  The young man shook his head, “Can’t say really. Just a feeling, I guess.”

  “Okay, then what happened?” he said.

  “We were all just kinda stunned, standing there watching it as it glared down at our guide. Then it moved very fast, and I realized it had reached behind itself with one hand while raising a bow with the other.”

  “The ghost had a bow?” Ursula asked surprised, “Like a bow and arrow?”

  “I know it’s crazy, right? Now you get why I asked you to make me that promise, before I started talking.”

  “So, the ghost was an Indian?” Jett hated the term, but he used it to see if it was a term the hunter would react to in any prejudicial way.

  The young man thought about it, even closing his eyes as if to picture the ghost in his head before answering, “I can’t say for sure. It was really just skin and bones without any identifiable features that would scream ‘Indian’. What I can say is the bow looked primitive, like it was made from a tree branch as opposed to a man-made modern recurved or compound bow.”

  Jett felt the creeping of imaginary spiders ascending his spine as a stray thought wormed its way into his head, while the young man continued with his tale, “Its arm reared back as if it drew back the bowstring and it was going to fire, but I couldn’t see any arrow.”

  Now Jett’s stomach dropped, as if he were flying down the declining side of a rollercoaster, and he had to put one hand on his abdomen, just to steady himself as Ursula asked, “So what happened then?”

  “As soon as the thing drew back on the bow our guide started shooting, which made us start shooting.”

  “Did you hit it?”

  “Several times, I’m sure. It even fell part of the way to the ground.”

  “Part of the way?” Jett asked.

  The young man nodded, “About halfway down it seemed to recover and just stopped falling in mid-air. We all turned and ran after that.”

  “Your guide, too?” Ursula asked.

  “Yes, he was the one screaming for us to run, and he was right behind us for what I’d guess was maybe a hundred yards.”

  “And then?”

  “Then he just pulled up short and started talking crazy,” John sighed.

  Jett rubbed his arms, trying to rid himself of the gooseflesh rising from his skin. He thought he knew what was coming, but he asked anyway, “What did he say?”

  “He was talking about being dead already, that the thing had targeted him or something like that, and how he was going to hold it off to give the rest of us a chance.”

  Ursula sounded skeptical for the first time, “Very noble of him.”

  The hunter didn’t miss the change in her voice, “I swear. He just stopped running and wouldn’t go any further no matter how much we begged him to keep going. Instead he told us to get to the road, and that we’d be safe back in town.”

  “Why would you be safe back in town?”

  “I don’t know, but it was like he remembered something, knew what the thing was, and that we’d be safe once we were out of the forest.”

  “So, the three of you left him behind?”

  Silence filled the space as the young man looked down at his shoes, and his voice cracked slightly as he answered, “We didn’t want to, but when the others showed up…”

  “Others?!” Jett suddenly came to life.

  “Yes, there were two more of them that came running out of the forest.”

  “Did they have bows, too?” Ursula still had that skeptical inflection in her tone, and the young man had just opened his mouth to protest, when Jett interrupted.

  “They had clubs,” Jett said softly and cryptically, leaving both Ursula and the young hunter staring at him wide-eyed in surprise.

  “How…How did you know that?” the hunter asked.

  Jett stood and walked to the door, “I think I know what those things are.” He let out a breath, and to Ursula said, “I need a minute. Get the rest of it, okay?”

  Ursula, who had stood when Jett had, sat back in her chair, and said to him, “Okay”.

  “Wait!” The young hunter, was suddenly animated, “you believe me?”

  “Yes,” Jett abruptly replied.

  “My God! I didn’t think anyone…” His voice trailed off and he looked right at Jett, “What the hell are those things?”

  Jett looked sympathetically at the young man, and then said simply, “Ghost is as good a term as any, but they’re actually much, much worse.”

  Chapter 11

  The dogs were dead. The animal trainer who had led the charge into the forest was lying on the ground with his head split open and eyes staring sightlessly at the treetops and the stars above. Ashland’s police officers had only caught glimpses of the figures, which had rushed out of the shadows and quickly taken out both the dogs and their trainer, before disappearing back into the trees. Now they stood back to back, as if ready for another attack to come. They pulled their flashlights from their belts while the sun finished falling behind the mountains to create an ever-darkening forest.

  “What the hell was that?” one asked.

  Another responded, “Junkies, hopped up on Angel Dust or something?”

  “You ever see a junkie move like that?”

  “No, but I heard stories about the Angel Dust.”

  “Quiet,” Chief of Police Lawrence Tull commanded, and his officers all went silent as he looked around at what could still be seen in the waning light with the forest growing darker and darker by the minute. Then he shook his head, with his decision made, “This is no good. We stayed out too long, and we relied too much on the dogs. Can’t see a damn thing now.”

  “What’s the plan, Chief?” asked several men.

  “We work our way back to the vehicles. Stay together. Cover each other’s backs and we’ll make it out of here.”

  A particularly nervous officer said shakily, “Sure of that, Chief?”

  “They’re using clubs, we have guns. We keep our guard up, we’ll be fine.”

  “What about Patrick?” one of the officers asked and shined his flashlight beam down on the still form of the dog trainer.

  “Hate to do it, but we have to leave him for now,” Chief Tull responded.

  “We can’t just leave him here,” one of his men said.

  Chief Tull whispered angrily, “There’s no helping the dead. We’ve been caught flat-footed and we need to back out with our lives. We can come back for him later when we can see.”

  No one protested any further, and the Chief was about to start calling out orders to begin the retreat when a red glow, like the reflective shine of animal eyes, appeared in the distant dark of the forest.

  “There,” the Chief hissed.

  All heads and weapons swiveled to the spot the Chief was indicating as the two red circles moved sideways to their position, circling them. The group of officers began moving in a similar direction to prevent whatever they were from completing the circle.

  “Jacob. Roger. Keep a lookout behind us and make sure nothing else…”

  Almost as soon as the Chief had spoken the officer named Jacob fired his shotgun into the dark behind the group and left the rest of the officers c
ringing as they went momentarily deaf from the explosion of the round. Heads and weapons spun to the opposite direction only to have the Chief see the two red orbs that had just been circling them charging toward them in the moment their attention was drawn away from it. The Chief raised his shotgun and tracked the eye shine, before letting out a gasp as the red orbs suddenly rose off the ground and arced into the air. The creature became visible less than twenty feet away as it descended from its leap. It screeched as it held its club over its head, ready to cave in another skull.

  The Chief let out a shout of his own, raising his shotgun in time to squeeze off a round. The double ought buckshot slammed into the creature, but instead of blood erupting from the body, dust billowed from the thing’s chest, before physics resumed control and jolted the creature backward from the impact of the lead.

  The Chief yelled into the darkness, “Didn’t like that, did ya?!” before another of his officers fired into the night.

  The group shifted again and they were heading back in the direction they had just come from.

  “Wait!” The Chief shouted over the din caused by the shots. “We need to head toward the road.”

  The rest of the policemen either didn’t listen, or were engrossed in tracking the red glow of eye-shine that darted around them.

  “How many do you count?” a patrolman asked.

  “I think there are still only three of them,” another answered.

  “Can’t still be three,” the Chief frowned, “I just emptied a double-O into one of them.”

  Something shrieked from behind and the group shifted again, “Definitely still three.”

  And the chatter from his officers began again

  “Where are they?”

  “Anyone see them?”

  “Damn, what are we…”

  The voice of the officer stopped mid-sentence, and there was the sound of a body hitting the ground followed by a groan.

  “Roger? You ok?”

  “Slipped on something.” There was a pause as the officer’s flashlight shined down on the ground, “Oh God, I slipped in blood.”

  “Blood?” Someone called back nervously, “Yours?”

  “No, I’m okay. I…what the hell? Quiet! Everyone be quiet!” Roger said.

  Silence spread throughout the forest as every eye search for any sign of their attackers.

  “Do you hear that?” he asked.

  “Hear what?”

  “Yeah, I hear it. It sounds like…”

  “Tapping?”

  “Yeah, who’s doing that?”

  No one responded.

  “Well someone’s doing it.”

  “Knock it off already!” Chief Tull snapped.

  “Uh, guys?” The officer named Roger was shining his flashlight down on his hand and watching as blood droplets fell from the sky and burst in his open palm on impact.

  Nervously the officer slowly turned his flashlight from his hand up to the sky and yelped, as the light revealed the body of what appeared to be a man, trussed up and hanging by the ankles from the branches above them.

  “Shine a light on his face, see if you can tell who it is,” the Chief commanded.

  “Christ! That’s the guide!”

  “LaRose?” he asked.

  “I’ve been hunting with him a few times and yep, that’s him.”

  “He alive?”

  “Can’t tell.”

  The Chief chimed in, “Jacob and I will watch the perimeter. The rest of you see if there’s a way to get him down.”

  “How is it we can take the Injun’ but not take Patrick back?” another asked.

  Chief Tull nearly clocked the officer who had spoken, but managed to restrain himself, “If he’s dead we’ll leave him, otherwise he gets out of here with the rest of us. Any objections?”

  No one objected, including the officer who had spoken up. After a brief moment of searching, they found the length of rope that had been used to tie and lever the guide off of the ground where it had been secured to the trunk of another tree.

  The officers cut the line, then slowly and carefully lowered the limp form of Stephen LaRose to the ground. Covered in blood, dirt and dried leaves he looked as though whoever had done this to him had tried to camouflage the body to a degree.

  When the body was finally on the ground the Chief asked, “You got a heartbeat?”

  The officer might have looked just a little disappointed when he answered, “Yep, but it’s weak and fast”.

  “He’s in shock?”

  “Probably.”

  “Wonderful. Any other injuries far as you can tell?”

  “Lot of blood around his chest,” the officer pulled the guide’s shirt down and wiped at the mess of clotted blood, “but I don’t see anything open or bleeding right now.”

  “All right,” the Chief said with conviction, “we don’t have a choice, we carry him out in shifts.” Then, wanting to set an example for some of his officers who might object, he said, “I’ll go first.”

  The other officers watched with some surprise, as the Chief handed his shotgun to his nearest officer, leaned over and levered the smaller, unconscious man onto his shoulders in one smooth movement.

  Noticing the other officers watching him, the Chief said with some disgust in his voice, “I’m not that old. Let’s go.”

  A new determination seemed to flow through the group and they all circled the Chief as he began walking.

  They hadn’t taken more than a few steps when three sets of illuminated red eyes appeared from the shadows in front of them, causing all of the officers to stop and raise their weapons. They held their fire as the horrible red illuminations just watched them, making no attempt to attack or circle around as they had before.

  “They’re not attacking.”

  “No,” the Chief said quickly, “but they are blocking our path out of here.” The officers waited, but the owners of the eye-shine never approached or retreated.

  “Do we move?”

  “We have to,” the Chief said as he was racking his brain trying to remember why something was bothering him about the way the guide’s body had been hung up in the tree, “Let’s see if we can move around them.”

  The instant the group shifted to the side the eyes were shifting with them, blocking their new path. One even made a quick charge forward before backing off to resume watching from a distance.

  “What the hell are they doing?”

  The Chief inclined his head slightly to the man he carried on his back, “They don’t want us to leave. They corralled us here where they had left…”

  A howl of erupted through the night air and every officer jumped at the sheer volume and ferocity in the sound. It hadn’t come from any bear or wolf they knew, and was of a tone that was completely foreign to their woods. Unnatural and evil, the howl shredded through the courage of the group, sending most of the officers into a panic. Shots were fired in the direction of the red eyes, but they gave no reaction and just hung motionless and stoic as ever.

  The Chief gently set the guide back down and held his hand out for his shotgun. Once back in his hands he checked the safety, making sure it was off, replaced the cartridge he had used and then held the stock to his shoulder, ready to fire.

  The howl broke through the night air again, but this time it was even louder, closer and the Chief’s eyes shot down to the guide before opening wide with understanding.

  “Damn! Forget those things in the shadows! Huddle up on me and form a circle. Quickly!”

  The officers, still in the early stages of panic, responded to the authoritative voice of their leader, who had given them some measure of reassurance by the surety in his voice.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Bait.” The Chief said before inclining his head at the guide lying motionless on the ground, “They were using the guide as hanging bait for whatever’s coming next. Get ready, safety’s off!”

  “Jesus Christ,” one officer cursed and the fear in
his voice was obvious, “bait for what?!”

  Something was moving in the bushes around them.

  “Quiet!” The Chief ordered and the entire group listened as the natural sounds of the forest slowly became hushed. There was a stagnant moment when nothing stirred. No chirping of bugs or even rustling of leaves in the wind. No one noticed the three sets of red eye-shine that had been watching them slowly rising off the ground before disappearing high into the treetops, as the rest of the forest went completely silent.

  And then it came for them.

  Bursting out of the shadows, huge and so fast that none of the officers could even catch a blur of its movement in their flashlight beams, it tore into them. There was the sound of heavy footfalls, followed by a ripping impact and one of the officers started gurgling as blood erupted from his neck. The officer was dead before his body hit the ground as chaos erupted among the officers. The shape made another charge, this time right through a flashlight beam, before a second officer was lifted off his feet by its impact, and sent hurtling through the air with his scream cutting off before he landed with the left side of his head removed in what impossibly appeared to be an enormous, gaping bite that had sundered flesh, brain and bone with ease.

  One of the officers fired in fear and accidently shot another in the shoulder. The man went down screaming in pain.

  “Dammit! Check your fire!” Tull ordered.

  The shooter, realizing his mistake tried to move to help the man he had shot, but the blur whizzed past him and grabbed the wounded man, who was suddenly being effortlessly dragged into the darkness of the forest by one leg and screaming while desperately scrambling for a hand hold with his good arm in order to stop from being dragged away.

  “Jeffery!” The shooter shouted after his fellow officer as he was disappearing into the blackness of the woods, with only his screams of pain and desperation still to be heard. The other officers raised their weapons, but hesitated to charge into the dark when Officer Jeffery’s screams suddenly stopped.

  Then an unholy growl rumbled through the branches.

  “OH MY GOD!” Officer Jeffery shouted, then his screams became the unintelligible cries of agony and terror that could only come from something being ripped apart and eaten alive.