by Justin Bell
********
In his dreams, Strickland once again faced the monster.
He'd had the most productive mental health day since he'd awoken with no memory of his past, yet when he closed his eyes, his subconscious mind was still under attack. It was a swirling black and red whirlwind tonight, tearing apart his house and scattering debris to the wind. As he felt himself consumed by the torrential downpour and circular barrage, he could see familiar artifacts hurtling past his open eyes. The family pictures from the upstairs hallway passed before him for brief seconds, then exploded and evaporated into the surrounding debris cloud. He could only curl into a ball and hope for the storm to pass as the wind hammered at him.
It never passed, but it did get softer and quieter, and he could move slightly, forcing himself to walk forward against the onslaught. As the wind noise died down, a low growl grew louder. Deep and guttural, it was a cross between a wild animal and a low scream of rage, all too human. His skin broke out in goose flesh and he could feel the hair on his body standing up on end with every inflection in the creature's voice, as it bored deep inside of him. Walking determinedly forward, he could see the canvas punching bag ahead, and he clenched his fists as twin green slits emerged in the darkness beyond. Thin streams of liquid oozed from those faded green eyes, running down the creature's cheeks like slimy tears of puss.
Still Strickland continued walking forward.
The growl grew louder and below the green eyes, a sinister bone-white smile emerged, like the Cheshire cat from Wonderland, only deeper, wider, and angrier. It was less of a floating smile than it was a faded, blood-specked sneer. Eyes and mouth came closer and he could see the canine teeth growing more pointed, long, and jagged, towering over the other small fangs encased between the separating lips.
"What are you?" Strickland's dream-self asked, as if he expected a serious response from such a creature.
Another deep growl answered him, surprisingly forming actual words. "I am everything you know. I am everything you are and everything you have been."
Strickland walked forward again, and the disembodied eyes and teeth repeated the action. The growl was almost deafening now, overcoming Strickland and dropping his dream-self down to one knee as the monster loomed above him, blood seeping from between his sharpened fangs.
The man forced his eyes upward, though it was an immense struggle. "Did? did you take my family?"
As if yanked back by a chain, the creature stopped moving, looking almost amused. The growl shifted into an equally disturbing, rattling chuckle that nearly turned into a choke. Looming above the kneeling man, the creature reeled back, his teeth separating into a gaping cave of menace, with a thick blood-red tongue whipping back and forth inside. The growl raised in volume and trembled just slightly as it rolled over into another choking shriek and the mostly invisible monster bore down on Strickland, its teeth gnashing. Closer and closer, until all he could do was leap forward and thrust his clenched fist out at those hideous teeth not realizing that his own voice mimicked that of the monster, shrieking and growling and choking on the wet gristle of -
"RRAARGH!" Strickland screamed as he sat up, once again interrupting his much needed night's rest. He could feel his lips still twisted into a feral snarl, and a slick wet liquid rolled over his bottom lip. Pressing a finger to it, he pulled away a thin string of red. Standing and walking into the bathroom, he locked his arms on the sink and stared deep into the reflective glass. Closing his eyes, his mind fell backwards into the world he had just inhabited, and he longed to somehow find a way out.
"Rough night in there tonight," Lewis mentioned, adjusting the volume of the recording device slightly. Strickland's rude awakening from his nightmare had come through loud and clear and now, they could hear his ragged breathing in the bathroom as he tried to recover from an especially soul-jarring nightmare.
Other than that moment of vocal fear, tonight was a quiet one through the first several hours for the two men from Brooklyn Security and Protection, as if the entire section of forest had been enclosed in a three-square-mile coffin and buried deep within the earth.
Breer broke the silence that had been pressing down on him. "Have the woods always been this quiet?"
"I don't think so," replied Lewis, digging out the night vision goggles from between his feet on the floorboard of the car. Instead of pressing the goggles to his eyes and watching the house, though, he turned them in a lazy arc through the woods to their right. "Ain't nothing moving in there. Nothing."
Breer looked at his watch. It was just shy of midnight. "Only three more hours," he muttered. For some reason he couldn't quite explain, he felt spooked all of a sudden. He suspected the vicious and aggressive nightmare that Strickland had just suffered through was a large part of that. Lewis lowered the goggles he had been using to scan the forest. "Damn, I don't think I've seen it that peaceful out there."
Breer held out his hand and Lewis handed the goggles to him. He pressed them firmly against his eyes and turned slightly to his left to scan the house once again. And he stopped.
"Hey-"
"What?"
"Where did he go?"
"Strickland?" asked Lewis, a dark rock suddenly dropping deep in his guts.
"Who the hell else would it be?!" Breer desperately scanned the house with the goggles, but still could not track down a human signature. He had just been there a minute ago. A weird metallic haze filtered through the viewfinder of the goggles, but it was clear that the heat source in the house was no longer there. Or something was? blocking him?
Lewis spoke the fear that was in Breer's mind. "Think he's coming at us?"
"Grab your piece, buckwheat. Let's get outta this tin can, just in case."
The two men locked their fingers in the car door releases, and slipped pistols from their holsters. As if part of a synchronized swimming routine, they both tossed the doors open and slid out of the car with smooth fluidity, lifting their weapons all in one motion. Breer didn't dare move. He didn't know every little detail about William Strickland, but he suspected he was ex-Special Forces, probably a nasty case of PTSD and they were watching him to make sure he didn't do anything stupid.
"Breer? Anything?" a tight whisper from the other side of the car.
"Not a damn thing, Lewis. Eyes haven't even adjusted yet."
"Give me the word and we can pop the flashlights."
Breer took one last look over the road and eased the car door open, then reached his arm in the car, pulling out the night vision goggles. Yeah, they wouldn't strap to his head, but he could at least get some mileage out of them.
"Come around to this side," he said to Lewis. "I'll use the NVG. You cover me."
Lewis duck-walked around the car, his automatic pistol held in a firing position, slowly crossing the barrel of the weapon over the road to verify nothing was sneaking up on them.
"I've got your back, Breer."
He lifted the goggles to his eyes and looked back at the home again, still not getting anything concrete. Just for the hell of it, he turned left and right as well, scanning the edge of the woods on each side.
"Still dead silent. What is up with that?"
Lewis cocked his head. The silence was more than just silence. It was a black void of sound, with no insects, birds, or nocturnal sounds at all. Oppressive silence was almost a more potent assault than a barrage of noise, and the two detectives felt isolated. Deep, dark night draped over them, and this black curtain seemed to be blocking out all outside stimulation, leaving the two men very alone.
"Anything, bud?" Lewis asked as Breer slowly moved the goggles throughout the night air.
"Nothing yet. Quiet as a? holy shit--!"
"What?!" Lewis spun towards him, his pistol raising.
"Damn? something just darted through those trees over there. Something big."
"Human? Is Strickland coming up around on us?"
"Negative. Thing was running on all fours? looked like maybe a?
a bear?" Breer eased the goggles down, squinting into the trees.
Lewis relaxed slightly. "I can handle a bear."
Just as Lewis said that, the trees suddenly shook and rattled, and his heart jumped in his chest, drawing his pistol in a quick and clumsy motion.
"S?something's over here, man. Get me those goggles, would ya?" His sweaty fingers slipped on the trigger.
"Stand fast, amigo. I'm coming," said Breer and turned towards the car. His head lingered, facing the Strickland home, but as he walked back towards the car, he spun his head around and stopped cold. "Oh shit, man. Shit."
Lewis didn't like the sound of that. "What? What do you see?" he took a single worried step backwards.
Breer held the goggles with one hand and lifted his pistol with the other. "Back towards me, Lewis. Carefully?"
"What the hell do you see?!"
The deep green pulsating figure inside the goggles' viewfinder had been coiled on all fours, lying near to the ground, but had been slowly easing forward, plodding on four softly settling paws. Yes, Breer had been right, it was the size of a bear, but now that he got a look at it, the figure was not bear-shaped. It was? well, he couldn't quite tell, but bears were not that slim and angular. Hind legs pushed slowly up, raising its back in the air, and thick spiked hair rose from its spine like fins of bone. Breer could see a massive heat source throbbing in its chest and coursing throughout the entire creature, and a low, deep, guttural rumble of death emanated from where it coiled.
"Is it a fucking bear?!" Lewis asked, with not a small amount of panic in his voice.
"Slow, bud? move slow. There's something right in front of you," Breer whispered, not wanting to panic the other man any more than he already was. Lewis lowered his pistol slightly as he backpedaled.
"Am I aiming at it?"
"Little lower buddy, keep coming." The green figure turned its head straight towards Lewis, who continued to slowly back away. The pistol in his shaking hand lowered just enough and was pointed almost directly at the creature on all fours, which growled again.
"Fuck me, Breer, that doesn't sound like a fucking bear!"
"Lewis? stay calm?"
The car seemed like it was ten miles away, but Lewis didn't dare move any quicker. His entire body trembled with every menacing growl and it seemed as if the creature could be on him at any point. His arm was shaking violently now, desperately trying to hold the pistol still.
"Keep coming, Lew?"
"I? I?." Lewis stammered and sweated. As he reached behind himself for the car door, he realized how far away the car still was. "Breer? what the hell is the thing doing?!"
Breer didn't have the heart to tell his partner that the creature was still on all fours, pacing slowly towards him, its mouth opening ? into a smile? The thing was fucking smiling? Breer raised his own weapon, and Lewis saw him do it out of the corner of his eye.
"Ahh, shit, man, shit!" Lewis screamed, and Breer knew it was all over. The gun barked four quick times, shattering the silence of the night with swift orange fire and four punches of bullets breaking the sound barrier. The pistol kicked back in Lewis' sweaty hands, and perhaps that's what threw his aim off, but all Breer could see was that the creature slid swiftly to the left, didn't appear to be hit, and was then in motion.
After firing the first four shots, Lewis spun around to make a mad dash for the car, but he really had no chance. Breer spun his gun up and around towards the running figure, but had a hard time focusing with the night vision goggles and could really just see a multi-tiered green blur hurl itself from the tree line and land squarely on his partner's back as he neared the car. The creature's hind legs struck behind his knees as the front legs drove deep into each shoulder, forcing Lewis frontwards and slamming into the sedan with enough force to rock the car on its tires.
"Dammit, Lewis!!" Breer shouted as his own weapon discharged three quick times towards the green blobs, but he missed wide, as he tried too hard to avoid shooting his partner. If he had hit Lewis in the head, it would have been a gift as in the next two seconds, the beast opened its wide maw and the forceful bite nearly decapitated the security agent pinned to the car. Lewis' screams choked out almost immediately as Breer saw in sickening detail exactly what a fountain of blood looks like within the scope of an infrared viewfinder. Breer dropped the goggles to the pavement, running straight for the driver's side door. As he ran, the creature leaped up and hit the roof of the car then bore down on him.
Suddenly he was face to face with a beast straight from the bowels of Hades.
Its eyes were narrow and glistened in the dark like a coyote? it had a long, pronounced snout with two widely flaring nostrils at the end of a thick black nose. Pointed ears came down into a rough jawbone, which split with rows of what looked like hundreds of jagged, pointing fangs, now smeared red with Lewis' blood. Deep black hair covered every inch of the creature, over its shoulders, through its back, and down its arms to where Breer saw massive, horse hoof-sized paws curled into almost fists. The claws at the end of these massive paws were actually piercing the metal surface of the car's roof, and the weight of the thing had caved it in.
"Easy, boy," was the only stupid thing that came to Breer's mind. As dramatic last words go, they pretty much sucked.