Shades: Eight Tales of Terror (10 page)

Carl slipped, staggered, and fought his way through the dark, dodging around tree trunks and pushing through brush and whipping branches. He bounced off one tree, rebounded forward, and twisted to try and dash through a bewildering thicket of branches. He didn’t make it. One thicker limb caught him across the eyes and knocked him to the dirt, causing him to scramble blindly forward on all fours.

He struggled to regain his feet, then slipped and fell forward with a strangled cry.

A mighty howl from directly behind told him this race had just reached its inevitable conclusion—the one he pretty much expected when he sent the deputy on his way. The laws in force tonight were old ones, and they respected neither badges nor men. They were primordial edicts, as immutable as time itself, and they were relentlessly unforgiving in their verdicts. In their eyes the old elk had wandered away from the herd and lost one too many steps. And the sentence for that crime never varied.

Now the greatest of all wolves closed in for the kill.

A powerful grip closed on Carl’s shoulder with crushing force.  The exhausted man cried out as the thing jerked him up and backwards out of the tangle. It hurt…bad. His one attempt to struggle only made matters worse. The titan’s grasp tightened, squeezing the bones in his shoulder to the snapping point as it hauled him off his feet.

A second later he hung before the great antlered head, dangling like a ragdoll in the apparitions grasp. This close, the things stench was almost unbearable. Carl gagged and tried to focus on its face. But even at this distance it remained a silhouette of the deepest black imaginable.

Yet somehow he knew, maybe by the tilt of its head, it now opened a great ebony maw in preparation of ripping his throat out. It was the final act in the great ancient dance called the hunt.

Curtains time.

“Except I’m not a damned elk,” Sheriff Gartner snarled. He drew his pistol and started firing it directly into the horror’s head.

The .357 Magnum roared, belching bright gou
ts of fire that stabbed straight into the entity’s face. Not even the flashes of light revealed its features, but the effect was instantaneous.

The thing gave an ear shattering shriek and clawed at its face. At the same time, it hurled the man away from it with unbelievable force.

Carl hurtled into the blackness of the woods. Live or die, this was going to hurt. He curled his battered body into a ball and hoped for the best. He ricocheted off a limb then smashed through a thicket of brush, before hitting the ground hard. His limbs flailed as he tumbled and rolled over stones and roots. It felt like he hit every hard surface on the island before he finally came to a stop.

F
ace down in the water.

The water.

Carl jerked his head up with a gasp, and shook it to clear his eyes. It didn’t help much.

Stars crowded the vision in his ringing head. He hurt in so many places he couldn’t even begin to count them. Jagged fire flashed up one knee when he moved it, and his shoulder hurt in a way that suggested real damage had been sustained there as well. The sheriff suspected a full account of his injuries would be impressive. But that would have to wait, because the howling shrieks back up the hill informed him this still wasn’t over. He groaned and cleared his eyes to take stock of his situation.

He lay at the edge of the new lake.

While darkness still shrouded the temporary shoreline around him, the trees ahead opened up ahead to reveal the fog covered waters. After having his eyes get so used to the murk under the trees, the light coming from the lake almost blinded him. The rising moon flooded the scene, transforming the low mist into a brilliant carpet of white under the night sky. It looked cold and forbidding, but compared to what screamed up the hill it was a thing of beauty.

Carl suppressed a groan and pulled himself forward into the lake. The icy water bit into his skin, adding another layer of misery to his assorted hurts. He made slow progress, but walking didn’t even enter the equation. His leg wouldn’t support him, and the sloshing would only attract the attention of the supernatural killer nearby.

Its
cries were already changing from shrieks of pain to screams of pure rage. It didn’t take a genius to figure out it would be wanting to settle scores in a minute or two.

The lake didn’t offer much in the way of escape ei
ther. Carl held no hope of swimming for the far shore, but anywhere away from the monster behind him counted as an improvement. If it came down to it, he would far rather drown than die in that thing’s stinking jaws. At this point he would consider himself lucky if he even got the choice.

The water finally deepened enough to provide a little buoyancy, making it easier for the injured man to pull himself along.  At the same time, he could hear the thunderous approach of the wendigo. It took every fiber of his will not to try and get up to run into deeper water. Only the knowledge it would guarantee the death he just escaped prevented him…assuming it wasn’t guaranteed
anyway.

Carl eased himself past the
moonlit trunk of the final tree and pulled himself into the lake proper. The mist hugging the water made it hard for him to see more than a few feet ahead, forcing him to navigate by simply moving in the direction away from the sound of the terror hunting for him. At the same time, the bottom began to fall away a little more which allowed him to bring his good leg into play and push himself forward.

A triumphant roar to
the rear announced the predator had found his trail.

Careful not to splash, Carl pushed harder with his legs and moved deeper into the lake. The low fog almost completely blinded him, but it didn’t matter now. Actually, he hoped it meant his head would not be visible to the shore…especially since the sound of the wendigo storming into the water reached his ears.

Carl closed his eyes and moved onwards, praying the monster hadn’t spotted him. Hopefully it had just charged blindly into the water after finding the place he went in. It sounded like it did that very thing. The problem was he had pretty much headed straight out from shore, and if his pursuer did the same then the odds were good it would get close enough to spot him.

He could hear it thrashing its way through the water in his direction. At least the act of wading seemed to be slowing the thing down some as well. The c
reature grunted with each slosh and he could hear it draw nearer. It sounded like it moved with purpose, determined to finish this thing once and for all.

And then he heard the gunshot.

A bright beam of light stabbed though the night overhead, and he heard the horror howl in rage and confusion. Another gunshot rang out…and then another. The thing roared again, and the thrashing sounds increased. Two more shots echoed across the water, followed by another massive bellow and more thrashing.

Then, to
Carl’s surprise, everything went quiet.

Nothing. No sound at all.

The sheriff pushed forward a few more steps, then stopped and tried to make sense of the sudden silence. He couldn’t see anything in the low mist, other than a bright spot of light through the fog and its beam lancing overhead. He settled for straining his ears to make out what was happening. It took almost a full minute, but his patience finally bore fruit.

“Sheriiiiffffff!!! Where are you!”

It was Pete. And he sounded fairly close.

He wasn’t exactly shouting, more like yelling in a soft voice. It sounded like a man not sure of the situation, nor confident in what to do. Carl tried to figure out what the hell could be going on, and whether the threat had ended or not. He hated not knowing, but at the same time reasoned if Pete found it safe to yell for him, it must be okay for him to answer.

“Over here!” he called back, discovering his own inner qualms caused him to have the same tone of voice as Pete. What the hell was going on out there?

“Okay, good” the rookie answered, He sounded relieved but scared at the same time. “Look Sheriff, I’m a little nervous about coming in any closer, so if it’s possible for you to come this way it would be a whole lot better. Trust me on this one, okay?”

Something in Pete’s voice told the sheriff it would be a good idea to do things the deputy’s way. Somehow the kid may have just saved his bacon, so it didn’t bother him to trust his judgment on this one. He oriented himself toward the bright spot of light and started moving in that direction. Caution still forced him to move quietly, but now he moved swifter than before.

In almost no time he reached the craft, and used his good arm to take Pete’s outstretched hand. It hurt like hell, but he fought through his injuries and managed to finally lever himself over the side and into the floor of the boat. For a moment he just lay there gasping, then realized the deputy still had the spotlight pointed
toward the island with a tight look on his face.

Carl struggled to his knees and looked out across the fog layered water to see what the deputy stared at.

It was the wendigo, and it stood thigh deep in the water about sixty feet away.

“What the hell?” Carl whispered, “What is it doing?”

“I don’t know. It was coming at me, then it just stopped. Since then it’s just been staring at me like it wants me for lunch, but it hasn’t come any closer.”

With the foggy lake as a background, the stygian giant stood out sharper than ever. Its shoulders hunched under the great spread of antlers, and its chest heaved as it glared in their direction. Even at this distance, the thing seemed massive. And it radiated malevolence in their direction like a palpable breeze.

Carl gazed in both fear and wonder at the monstrosity, and felt it see him as well. Predator and prey gazed across the distance at each other one final time. And as the sheriff met the phantasm’s stare he understood the hunt was finally over. He had won.

He was the one that got away.

“I don’t think he can come any closer, Pete. I think it’s standing at the edge of the mound, or burial ground, or whatever the hell Deerhunter Hill really is.”

“Huh?”

“It’s still a ghost…whatever the hell else it is…and it can’t leave its hauntin’ grounds.”

Pete looked at the sheriff in disbelief then stared back out at the towering black form in the lake.

The black apparition raised its head to the sky and gave one last, long, earth-shaking howl. It rose in pitch as it continued—a long wailing note of frustration and fury. And as it went on, the monster itself seemed to blur against the white background. Its edges appeared to fade as if the thing were evaporating right before their eyes.

Shreds of black floated off the shape and drifted up into the sky. The once sharp outline of the predator began to round, then lost all semblance of its former shape as more and more of it dissipated into the night. The howl faded along with it, becoming fainter and fainter as it disappeared.

Thirty seconds later it vanished.

Silence returned, leaving the two men staring at an empty spot on the fog shrouded lake.

“Holy hell,” Pete muttered in awe, “It really was a ghost. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

“Yeah, how ‘bout that,” the sheriff agreed weakly then slumped back into the floor of the boat. “How ‘bout that.”

The world began to spin and Carl fought to keep from passing out. Fainting now would be just one indignity too many. And the thought of maintaining some shred of appearances brought one more thought to mind.

“Hey Pete, you might want to think hard before telling Les what happened here tonight. I’m not quite sure how he would take giant, man-eating ghosts.”

The deputy seemed to chew that over for a second, then shrugged.

“Not my problem, Sheriff.”

Carl looked in surprise at the young man as he bent to start the outboard motor.

“Not your problem?”

“No, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” the deputy grunted as he gave the motor cord the first of several yanks, “as soon as I get back to the shore…I quit. I just decided to listen to my mother and be a plumber.”

***

Two weeks later Sheriff Carl Gartner leaned on the door of his squad car and gazed out across the choppy waters of the newly filled Lake Hallisboro. The recent rains had accelerated the rise of the waters, and now the lake stretched unbroken from shore to shore. Carl found it a beautiful sight.

“Moonshiners, huh.”

The sheriff sighed and glanced over at Les, who leaned on the other door and returned his look with a calculating expression.

“You read the reports,” Carl shrugged, then winced at the pain it caused his shoulder. They couldn’t put a cast on a cracked scapula, so he was forced to simply wear a sling and not use it much. At least his knee turned out not to be broken, just badly sprained.

“Yeah, I read them. Those were quite a work of art.”

Carl chuckled at his deputy’s skepticism.

He knew Les had probably found about a hundred different holes in his report about a surprise encounter with moonshiners, then an accident prone retreat through the woods after a short gunfight. The deputy was just too sharp not to smell the fish in that story. But he would be damned if he would start blabbing about ghosts, wendigos, and haunted mounds. He doubted Les would want to hear that kind of story either.