1
The air was thick and balmy as Heston’s mule clicked and clacked through the shady woods. Cool air brushed through his thick mustache as he rode along atop the trailer. Reins in hand and a briar pipe stuck in his mouth, perfuming his face with the peppery smoke of perique as he went along. He tried to keep his mind away from what the townsfolk had told him in his last supply stop. Dismissing as much as he could about their warnings.
“Only a damned fool would go up there” the barman had said. “Only death waits up there” another told him. Just superstitious he told himself. Surely, he thought, whatever they heard about up there is just a bear, or wolves maybe.
Heston steered his mind to the few jingling coins left in his pocket. A small remnant left over from a pocket of gold he’d panned out of a territory in northern Indiana. He’d have gotten a lot more out of it if the company hadn’t moved in on him. Heston was a rough man, plenty tough and good with a gun, but he knew his limits. He knew he wouldn’t have been able to cut down the seven men that rode in on the first day, let alone the twenty that arrived the day after, and even if he was some sort of bullet savant, he wouldn’t have been able to shake his tail of them once they gave chase. He’d figured it was best to take the little he’d gotten, sell off his take, and head to new ground. Somewhere remote, where his earnings wouldn’t be so easily stolen or spoiled or muscled in on.
He’s always heard of a remote spot north of the border. Nestled in the woods by a raging river. The stuff of myth as he’d been told. Untouched land teeming with fat veins of gold, but guarded by something fierce and brutal that no one could ever put a name or a face to. Some clever old prospector tale meant to scare off any competition Heston believed. If not an outright lie, I mean if the land is so dangerous, who found it? And where did the stories come from?
Heston hoped it wasn’t all a myth, not after dragging his cart and mule all the way through the foggy woods, after spending what little money he’d gotten on rations for the journey. His mind wondered again though as he scanned the trees from beneath his wide brimmed hat. It wasn’t the stories themselves that caused him to worry, but the quantity he’d received in warning, even from people not at all related to the prospector trade.
“What’s a barkeep know about prospecting anyway?” He remembered asking as he sipped at his rye.
“That valley is cursed my friend.” The barkeep replied. “The few that’ve been up there,” he looked up from the bottle he was recorking to meet Heston’s eyes directly. “They don’t come back with gold because they say that all they can find is bones.”
“The trees scream in the night”
“The river washes butchered heads onto the shore”
Heston had heard this from all manner of postman, housemaid, barkeep, anyone at all that’d learned where he was going. “He is going to headless valley” He’d once overheard between two drinking ranchers. The one who’d heard the whisper raised his glass in silent salute to Heston.
Prospector legends meant to keep the competition away. That’s all it is.
His tired eyes still skimmed through the trees though. As he made his way farther and farther north towards the valley, he couldn’t ignore the eerie, mossy silence of the space around him. Even when he’d stopped for lunch, his wagon still and the mule busy grazing, Heston couldn’t hear any birdsong, no chatter of squirrels or rustle of rabbits, not even a breeze to shake the leaves and branches of the towering oaks and pines.
At last, as if a godly line had been drawn into the ground, the trees stopped and opened his horizon to a vast grassy plain leading down to a gleaming river. Maybe it was as simple as the sun in the sky, or the sheer pristine nature of the land itself, but Heston drew a breathe of relief as he directed his mule to its resting place by the river. The place ain’t so scary. He thought, removing a woven basket from his wagon and loosely securing its top before nestling it into the water between two rocks.
The basket was only meant for catching minnows and small fish. The kind he could use as bait while he dug for worms and crickets. Once he’d wrangled a large catch from the river, he could finally break from canned beans and stale bread. He spent the rest of the day fishing and smoking as he set up a small canvas tent, watching the sun move past the horizon painting the sky in deep hues of orange and purple.
Heston woke up the next morning to the sound of his tent flapping in the wind. He stood stiffly as the cool morning air greeted his lungs and made his way to rekindle his fire, grabbing his coffee pot along the way. He stooped down to a knee to collect the leftover coals into a new pile and reached for his kindling sack. Halfway through the movement, he froze completely. He’d been on his own for years now, but he’d never felt as isolated as he did now noticing a ring of human teeth had been laid in a circle around his campfire.
2
Heston squatted silently beside the ashen pile of last night's campfire. His eyes fixed on the white dots that circled around it. There were thirty-six in total. He didn’t know why he’d thought to count them, but with a sign so grim found directly next to where he’d been sleeping, he’d figured no detail could afford to be ignored. He stood slowly, casting his eyes around the tall grass that surrounded his campsite. No footprints could be seen to approach or retreat, and not a single piece of his gear had been disturbed. The thirty-six human teeth seemed to have simply appeared.
Heston blew a sharp exhale from his nostrils as he shook his head, turning about to fetch his pouch of tobacco to pack his pipe. He knew what was going on here. He’d seen it before. Painted horse skulls had been left for him once in a dark Dakota mine. Smeared with green ochre and crimson candles left burning to melt over their tops like bloody crowns. The skulls had been a hell of a startle for Heston and the other miners at the time. They’d gone into the mine earlier that day only to come out later and find them strung to the wooden supports with barbed wire. It didn’t take a lot of detective work to figure out what was going on though. After the initial shock of finding them glowing and dripping red in the midst of the black mineshaft, deep tracks of boots could be followed out and led to the horse hitches. A rival band was trying to frighten them out of the area, a tactic usually used by small groups that couldn’t have pushed them out by force. Whether by lack of men, bullets, or will, fright was the weapon they employed instead. Their painted skulls gave Heston’s crew a scare for sure, but not as much of a scare as when Heston himself pressed the barrel of his revolver into the forehead of the rival leader, warning him that if they didn’t clear off of their patch, it’d be their own skulls painted and adorned with candles.
It was the same thing going on here. Heston had no clue where the teeth could’ve come from, but he quietly applauded the originality. He was more concerned with the lack of tracks and the ability to sneak right past him without waking him or even disturbing his mule. The question that puzzled him most though was if they wanted him off the land so bad, why not just kill him there and then if they were able to get so close?
He shook his head again as if to shake off the confusion as he placed the pipe in his mouth. He struck a match, stoked his pipe and snatched up his shovel and pan to move down the riverside. As he plodded his way through the tall grass blades, his eyes picked through the trees. Afar on the other side of the riverbank, across the vast green plain he searched for shadows among the trunks, and though he couldn’t detect any movement, he couldn’t shake the knowledge that someone was out there. The brilliant sun was hardly comforting in the knowledge that somewhere out there were eyes on him.
Again and again he’d plunge the shovel into the ground, heave a load of black soil into the pan, and down to the river he’d go to filter out the pan, inspecting the pan closely for any gleaming flecks. For hours he kept at it, etching a dotted tapestry of mottled ground around his campsite. He’d spy two flecks in one spot, three flecks farther down, then pull his pan to find nothing at all, forcing him to retrace his steps to find the pocket once again.
He’d lost count of how many holes he’d dug, cursing himself for stopping at midday to fish. Hungry as he might have been, it was time lost that should’ve been spent narrowing down the pocket. He grew even angrier when the sun began to creep behind the treetops. Damn it to hell. He thought. A whole day wasted diggin’ holes. I’d better find that son of a bitch tomorrow.
As the sun edged beyond the horizon, his campfire was now back to a gentle flame. He stood with his back to it, surveying the area with his mind working up a plan. He didn’t know what direction they’d come from, so he’d have to be as strategic as he could with his placement. He collected a bundle of still green twigs, whittled them down into barbed spikes with a taper at the end to burrow into the ground. The aim wasn’t to kill the intruders. He wanted to hear them scream by placing a foot into his tension laid sprigs, triggering the twig to spring up to drive a nail into their leg. His pistol would do the rest of the work. He counted his paces as he set them into the ground in a semi-circular pattern around the rear of his camp, mindful to remember their exact placement so as to not trip them himself.
As he pushed the second to last trap into the ground, a hollow whistle could be heard on the wind. His eyes shot up to the treeline, his hands and arms, diligently working before, were now frozen in place. The deep resonance of the sound seemed to rattle into his ribs. His eyes grew wide as he focused on a point in the shadowed trees. He spotted two small, bright lights just beneath the highest boughs of the treetop. Like the eyes of a giant spotting him over the distance. He stared as he remained in place, unblinking as he faced the lights. For only a few seconds that felt eternal, the valley was silent save for the harrowing whistle, which stopped only when the lights seemed to snuff themselves out like candles. Heston kept his position for another moment. Straining his sight as hard as he could to see if there was any movement in the distance. If he had seen them, then they had most certainly seen him first. With the whistle gone the valley fell impossibly quiet. Heston could nearly hear his own heart beating faster than he’d ever have admitted for the absence of any other sound.
He fell onto his back, jolted with fear as a blaring shriek streamed through the open air. Shrill, sharp, and guttural it ripped through the peace and pushed him. It only lasted a few seconds but by the time it ended Heston had finally recovered to his feet. He stared down to his trembling hands, now clinging tightly to the trap. He turned on his heels and walked at a quick pace towards the safety of his fire. He set the two remaining traps in front of his tent, placed his pistol beneath his pillow, and slid his rifle into the crease between his tent and the ground, right at his back if he needed it. He laid awake for hours until the running river finally managed to lull him to sleep.
The next morning he woke to an itch on his cheek. Half asleep he waved a hand up to scratch and pulled a length of twine off of his face. He looked up to the roof of his tent to see if it was fraying but it wasn’t. He rolled over to find the two traps outside his tent had been disarmed and the sticks had been laid neatly in the grass where they had been set the night before. Heston sat up like a spring, pulling his pistol from his pillow by instinct before moving to his feet. He took a few steps towards the ashen firepit, wary of what he might find this time. There was nothing by the fire, but his mule was missing. Bastards! He gritted his teeth as he swore. God damned bastards! He swung his head around to the open valley behind him, knowing they had to have left tracks this time. He found a line of trampled grass leading to the middle of the field, halfway to the wall of trees. He could tell, even before leaving his campsite, that in the middle of the field a post had been placed. He only had to make it a quarter of the way there before his walk turned into a full, panicked sprint. The trail ended right where the post was, no further tracks radiated from it, as if whoever placed it there had flown into the air. It was a thick tree branch drilled straight into the ground. At its base was the same bundle of green twigs Heston had used for his traps the night before. At its top, impaled into place, was the head of his mule with each trap nail hammered into it.
3.
Grass blades crunched beneath Heston’s feet as he marched back to his campsite. Competitors be damned, he thought. He clenched his teeth and balled his fists as he tried to focus his rage. Fear tactics to clear a plot of land was one thing, but now they’d stolen away his mule, his livelihood. Any chance he had of moving a large haul out of the valley was now bleeding from a post.
He darted into his tent, ripping away his blankets to snatch up his lever action rifle. He loaded it rapidly and affixed his pistol to his belt, making sure he had enough ammo bagged with him for whatever, or whoever he found. He trudged back through the field, the tall grass slapping against his boots with each stomp, but as he reached the great wall of trees he found himself directionless.
Heston slung the rifle over his shoulder and pulled out his pistol. Cocking the hammer back as he raised it up into the canopy of trees. He pulled the trigger and the silence of the forest muteness snapped away at the crack of his gunshot. He stood still with his pistol outstretched in front of him as the smoke cleared and the blanket quietness settled itself back over the woods. He didn’t detect any movement around him, and if he hadn’t known different, he could have sworn he was alone. After a moment he holstered his pistol. He cast his eyes into the tree tops, searching for blinds, stands, or any evidence of movement, but none could be found.
“I know you’re out there!” He shouted, swinging his gaze side to side as he called out. “Bunch of cowards is what ya are!” He waited again for a moment, still hearing nothing save for his own voice fading into the tree bark. “Trifling with a man under the cover of night! God damned cowards all of you! Step on out! Let me see ya!” Heston grit his teeth hard enough to feel the skin tighten around his face as he was again only greeted with the sound of the wind in his ears. “I’ll burn this fuckin’ forest down with all of you in it!” He thundered. “And when you’re screamin’, and hollerin’, with your hair on fire and smoke in your lungs” he paused, noticing a shudder on his breath that grew with each word. He could feel his hands starting to tremble and could feel it, somewhere in the deep recesses of his instinct. He wasn’t sure if it was fear or wrath that had shaken him, but he could feel them watching him. “I’ll bash your fuckin’ brains with the butt of this rifle!” he finished as he thrust the rifle into the air, clenching it tight as if his squeezing grasp were the reason it was shaking. He drew his hunting knife and stomped to a nearby tree. Refusing to give in to the faceless panic drawing up within him, he dug the knife into the bark, carving away shavings. “Take a look at this here!” He called as he worked away at the bark. “Come down to my camp again tonight, and I know you will,” The shavings fell at his feet as he could feel himself trying to carve faster and faster, as if to be finished before something caught him. “And this what the hell you’re gonna get from me!” He stepped back from the tree revealing a crudely carved skull and crossbones. “I’ll be waiting for you tonight you damn cowardly sons of bitches! So you best come ready!”
He turned and stomped back out of the forest, nostrils flared and knuckles white around his rifle. He was about ten steps beyond the tree wall when he heard a quick secession of light running steps through the leaves. He swung around, his rifle socketing into his shoulder as he spun to see nothing. There he waited for minutes that drew on like hours. “God damned cowards.” He muttered as he slowly lowered the rifle back down. He spit onto the grass as he took backwards steps from the woods. When he finally felt that he was at a safe enough distance he turned back around and made his way to camp.
The previous day Heston had narrowed down a vague lane where he predicted the gold vein might lie. He took up his shovel again, heaving a load of dirt into his pan to trickle through the water. After seven trips to and from the river, he’d felt he was on the right track and resorted to pick a spot and dig. For hours he drilled into the ground. When he’d reached waist deep into the hole, he gathered up two buckets of water to keep in the hole with him, this way he could spot check his digging direction and avoid wasting time by going the wrong way. He continued to dig and filter until the sun began to sink low over the horizon, every now and again, peeking his head over the top to peek at the trees. As the sun sent its last orange and indigo hues across the sky, he finally climbed out of the now shoulder deep hole.
He arranged double the amount of logs as he normally would. Within the tinder he’d placed cotton stuffing, pasted over with tallow to insure a bright, roaring blaze on the riverside. He pulled two small apothecary bottles from his satchel along with his coffee grounds. He’d brought the bottles along expecting a hard slog by the end of his dig, and while he hadn’t always agreed with the use of cocaine tinctures when they were handed out by the company, he knew they’d be imperative tonight. The rifle sat proudly by as he set his coffee pot over the fire, resting back onto his heels as he moved his eyes towards the treeline, his back to the river so as to never have his eyes off of it.
There they were again. Two lights shining from the topmost branches. His teeth gnashed together as he uncorked the first bottle, swigging it down in one determined gulp. ‘Come on you bastards’, he thought. He munched on smoked beef scraps and stale bread as the moon slowly crawled along the sky. The lights never moved, but rather they’d periodically disappear and reappear somewhere else, as if they were trying to position themselves out of Heston’s view.
By the time the moon was at its highest, Heston began to feel his eyes were tricking him. Had he tired his eyes focusing on the faraway lights, or did it seem now that the trees themselves were moving? He continued to feed the flames with tallow cotton balls and straw, keeping the fire as bright and big as he could, casting light in a far reaching circle around his camp. The gentle orange glow reflecting brilliantly from the brass fixtures of his rifle. He’d placed the third pot of coffee onto the fire when the wind picked up, and the familiar whistle could be heard on the breeze.
Heston shot his head to the left, convinced he’d seen a shift in the grass. It wasn’t like that of a squirrel or a raccoon sneaking through the blades, but as though a patch of grass itself had shifted. His hand slowly reached for the gun, eyes trained on the spot of empty land, when he heard a shushing noise in his ear, and a splash of water behind him. He jerked the gun up, working the lever as he whirled around towards the river. He didn’t have to train his eye to the ironsight to see the headless body of his mule splayed across the opposite riverbank. His heart pounded as his mind raced. His eyes searched the riverbank and treeline wildly. “Shit!” He barked out as he spun himself back around, panic beginning to rocket through him as he noticed the mule was a diversion. He aimed the barrel up and ran to the outer ring of the firelight to better see the field. Where the post had stood was now a man, standing tall and basking in the moonlight, wearing the mule's head atop his shoulders as his own. Heston tried to stuff his fear away as he shakily peeped through the sight, trying desperately to calm his breath as he drew a bead on the figure. As Heston began pressing onto the trigger, the figure raised its arms out to its sides, and shook violently as a bitter shriek battered into Heston’s ears. Heston squeezed his eyes shut from the pain of what sounded like a chorus of dread drilled into his temples. He squeezed the trigger back and let loose a thunderous boom from his rifle. The scream faded away a moment later and Heston at last uncramped his face, opening his eyes to see the figure gone. His head pounded now, feeling as though his eyes would burst right from their sockets. His trembling hands worked the lever again while his legs stood frozen in place.
His mind flashed to a lesson his father had once taught him. When Heston was only a boy, his father had conscripted him to join him in the coal mines. Terrified of the pitch dark of the mine, the knowledge that a single spark could incinerate every man in it, or at any moment the entire thing could collapse and crush every breath from his lungs petrified the young Heston. His father, a hard, but wise man, slid a shot of whiskey across the table to the boy and told him that fear is a wild animal, you have to face it head on and sometimes you have to kill it outright.
With his feet planted unmoving into the ground, his back feeling numb and his mind a swirl of fear and confusion, Heston repeated the words back to himself. “You’ve got to kill it outright boy.” He whispered to himself in shuddering breaths. “You’ve got to kill it outright.” He refocused his mind on the figure, he couldn’t guarantee that he’d shot it with his eyes closed, but he knew his barrel was trained directly on it when the shriek came. He looked back at his camp, weighing his options. Does he confirm the kill, leaving his camp, or does he stay put, potentially letting it get away? The safety of the camp was an illusion he knew, and anything he could find on the body might lead him to whatever others were involved. He clenched his teeth and blew a hard breath from his nose before launching into a full bore run out to the spot he’d seen it.
As he ran he dared another look at the top branches of the treeline, completely lit in a string of lights. Nearing the spot he slowed his pace and shouldered the rifle and jutted his barrel down to the ground where the body should have been. Heston’s eyes widened madly, he’d left his camp unguarded. He swiveled his head around to see the distant glow of the fire for only a moment before it blinked out of life, billowing a smoky plume into the sky. He flexed to push his heels into the ground letting off to sprint his way back when he felt a hand around his ankle, holding his foot to the ground. Heston hit the ground with a hard thud, rolled to recover but felt something bash across his face. He heard the crunch of his nose and cheeks cracking beneath the mighty blow, but again fought, trying to sit up and gather his legs beneath him to stand when he felt another hit across the other side of his head, spurting warm blood across his tongue from shattering teeth. He laid his head back into the grass, accepting that his death would taste like iron and he too would be a part of the legend he’d dismissed too easily. He laid in the grass and let his eyes close and his mind fall painfully to sleep.
In a few hours, the sun rose again over the valley. The cool breeze shaking the leaves of the towering trees and waving the grassy plain between the treeline and the river. Heston opened his eyes to an earthworm crawling through the palm of his hand. The smell of his blood-caked mustache accented the excruciating pain in his jaw. He slowly rolled his body over, spitting blood and fragments of teeth into the dirt as he did so. Both his rifle and pistol had been looted from his body. He forced his legs beneath him to stand up and take weak, dragging steps to his campsite.
Everything was gone. His tent, satchel, ration bag, ammunition, his shovels and pans and buckets were all missing. Where the fire had been was now an ashen mud pile. He took a look across the river to where the mule’s body remained, and he noted something he couldn’t see in the darkness of the night before. Carved into the side of the corpse was a skull and crossbones.
4
As the wind blew as bitter and hollow as his own heart. Heston was poised on his hands and knees by the riverside. To an ignorant onlooker, it would have looked as though he were praying to some bygone God, or praying for mercy from whatever river spirit would have him. In reality, he’d dunked his head into the freezing waters three times now to numb the pain in his jaw. Each time he submerged himself, with the world muting itself in the sound of the rushing water, his mind washed with the sight of his ravaged campsite before weighing the option of throwing himself completely in and seeing where the current would take him. He ultimately decided against it. At this rate, he’d figured he’d likely end up just as likely toppling over a waterfall, or goring himself on a branch, or floating facefirst into an unsuspecting moose that would then mercilessly trample his lifeless corpse indistinguishable from the mud. He sat there with his hair dripping in strings across the grassy riverbed, face half swollen and purple. The only sound aside from the trickling river was a growing congregation of flies around his mule's mutilated body.
As he finally rocked his body back to land on his rear, he tried to reorder his thoughts. ‘Three days and nights in this god damned valley. Nothing but blood and pain and loss to show for it. Not even a single nugget dug from the ground.’ He slowly turned his head toward the deep hole he’d left in the ground the day before, mulling over how shameless and desperate a man might have to be to go digging into the ground with his bare hands. ‘I couldn’t have been that far from the vein.’ He thought while he tongued at a small hole in his cheek. ‘Couldn’t have been.’
His boots made a deep thud into the earth when he jumped into the hole. He was treated to the sight of his pickaxe and bucket still lying at the bottom of the pit. ‘God damned heathens’ He thought. ‘Smart enough to best me in an open field, dumb enough to not look in the damn hole.’He snatched up the pickaxe and with the raw ire of a wildman he tore into a narrow chasm that he’d only chiseled out yesterday, scraping away at the dirt with the pickaxe. Handful after handful he tossed the dirt over the side of the pit, losing sense of self, of dignity, of purpose, eyes crazed and lips trembling as he rampaged through the soil. He lost all sense of patience and chucked the pickaxe to the ground beside him, weyleying into the chasm with his bare hands.
“Ah fuck!” He cried. A wild jab of his left hand skidded into hard rock, nearly shearing his fingernail off. He gritted his teeth and the pain in his jaw and hand only fueled his rage. He throttled up the pickaxe and gave a mighty heave into the hole where he heard the angelic ring of it colliding with hard rock. He spat into his hand and wiped at the stone viciously, again and again reawakening the wounds in his mouth, spitting blood into his palms to smear against the rock. A slender yellow line could be detected beneath his own crimson swaths. Heston grunted in wrathful satisfaction as he tore into the dirt again, digging all around the stone hoping to set it free. He wasn’t focused on a large haul anymore, that was outside of his reality. He wasn’t even interested in the gold anymore. He wanted the rock itself.
He wrestled free a boulder, about two and a half feet wide by a foot deep and heavy as hell. He hefted it over the dirt wall and onto the grass above. After scrambling himself out of the hole he swung down at the boulder with his pickaxe, knocking a hairline down the center of it. Two more swings and the rock fell open into thirds, golden veins softly traipsing like marble through the insides of each one. Two days ago he’d have been overjoyed at the sight, but now the golden laces meant nothing to him. He smashed again at the thirds breaking them down even smaller. He took a moment to inspect the pieces, each of them still fairly large. One third of the boulder he’d left untouched, but he’d managed to break the others into fist sized stones, exactly what he needed.
He shifted his grip to the very end of his pickaxe, swung it madly around his head and brought it crashing down onto the large piece of boulder forcing a crack in the middle of his handle. He then rested the pick on the stone, shifted his stance to the side of it, and drove his bootheel through the handle, breaking it off completely. He peeled off his shirt and gathered all of the fist sized rocks into it, securing it at the top to fashion a bindle, and then tied it to the blunt end of the short handlepiece. He gave his new bludgeoning weapon a few test swings to make sure it would stay secure before grabbing up the other end of the pickaxe, a now shorthandled version of its former self. He swung it around a few times to insure its viability as a weapon. It wasn’t perfect, but as long as he held it by the joint of the pick at the center of the handle, it would suffice.
He stepped over to the scorched patch where his fire once burned and dragged his hand through the soot before staining his face black with the stain of ash and mud. He didn’t care about the gold anymore, didn’t care about old miner’s tricks, or territories or whatever witchcraft or trickery the tree people had in store for him. His only goals now were to survive, make his way back to civilization, and kill any unfortunate bastard that crossed his path in the meantime. He grasped the pickhead tightly in his right hand, slung the heavy stone bindle over his left shoulder and marched towards the treeline.
He remembered well the path he had driven his mule to get out to the valley, he would only have to rough himself through a few miles of untamed forest before finding a dirt trail that would lead him many miles back to town, but Heston was well aware that his trouble didn’t lie with the long hike back to the world, it was the brief, terrible slog through these hellish woods that would push his spirit to its limit.
As he crossed the field, halfway to the tree wall, he heard a clink of glass against the toe of his boot. Looking down he found one of his unused tinctures of cocaine. After a quick stoop he stuffed it into his pocket, a sly grin pulling across his face as he did so. He crossed the tree line, jaw set and eyes peeled watching the trees as the sun began to sink low.
He drove his pick into several trees to peel the bark away, snapping what limbs he could and collecting kindling as he prepared to make camp. He found two twigs and pulled the lace from his boot to create a bow-drill. Within an hour he had secured a small fire. He kept his back to a tree trunk as he kept the flame low, his stone bindle and pick each within arms length as he fiddled the tincture in his hands. He watched as the glowing flames reflected off the glass while the sun sunk behind the towering trees. Heston wondered what the lights would look like from underneath, if he could see them at all.
As night set in the forest grew unnervingly quiet. The only sound Heston could hear aside from the light crackle of his fire was the occasional rustle of the leaves in the wind. “Come on you sons of bitches” he mumbled to himself, waiting for that evil whistle that came with the midnight air. The time whittled on, but clouds covered the moon. Heston pondered its position in the sky when he heard the snap of a twig to his front left, just outside the glow of his makeshift camp. His eyes were open wide now, taking in every bit of light they could and working to cast his vision forward to penetrate the dark. As he stared into the opaque gaps between trees he noticed a strange detail. One of the trees he’d picked bark from was no longer showing signs of his scraping, as though he’d never touched it. He focused on the tree trunk with a harsh intensity, barely illuminated at the edge of his light when he saw the bark shift only the smallest amount, as if the trunk had taken a shallow breath.
Heston shot from his seat, roaring as he swung up the pick. A man emerged from the bark of the tree, his camouflage so seamless in its grain that it looked as though the tree itself were rushing towards Heston now. Heston drove his left foot forward slamming it into the tree man’s chest. He felt a deep crunch in the sole of his boot as he sent the attacker rocketing backwards against the tree trunk. The pick swung with lightning speed through the air, burying its digging end through the assailant's neck and piercing through the other side of his gullet. Heston switched his grasp to the short handle and yanked hard, ripping the pick through the pierced flesh and opening his opponents throat completely, splattering himself in hot blood. Just then a loud commotion rattled through the trees directly above Heston, and another body dropped down behind him, a second enemy landing on his feet and brandishing a club with a hard rock tethered at the end like a crude tomahawk.
The second enemy swung his club towards Heston, but was deflected when Heston twirled his stone bindle, knocking his opponents strike off of its trajectory and nearly disarming him in one move. Heston whirled the pick by the handle once more, sinking the blade with a sickening crunch through the foe’s knee. His enemy bellowed in pain and Heston howled in delight as he yanked again at the pick, snatching the second man's legs from beneath him and sending him to the ground. Heston wound the stone bindle over his head and crashed it down with a powerful blow onto the man's face. Heston wheezed out a devilish laugh as he pulled the bindle from the crater that was once a head, dripping blood and skull fragments as he heaved it back over his shoulder.
He could hear rapid footsteps surrounding his camp now, but Heston, now with the iron scent of blood in his nose, and his veins pumping raw hatred, smiled into the abyss. He began to whistle a low, long, and hollow whistle as he slowly stepped back towards his fire. He traced the sounds of running footfalls just outside his vision, dropped the pick and grabbed up the Cocaine tincture. As he stood up he felt a hand reach from behind him, grabbing at his shoulder in hopes of thrusting him into the unforgiving dark. He dropped his stone bindle and reached up to grab a fistfull of his new victim's hair. Whipping them around, he felt the scalp tear under his grasp as he torqued them forward. He flicked his foot beneath them forcing them to trip and tumble onto the dirt in front of him. Heston’s growl grew into a throaty roar deep from the fire in his own belly as he slung the tincture bottle at the flailing body in front of him. The glass shattered and the air was immediately perfumed with the acrid smell of grain alcohol. Driving a foot through his own fire, he rained embers and sparks onto the new target, erupting the flailing body into a screaming frame of fire and sizzling skin.
As if snapping him back into his mortal form, Heston ducked at the sound of his own rifle firing from somewhere in the darkness. With the knowledge that his own gun was aimed on him, his wrath was renewed. He howled again at the trees as the flaming man sprinted blindly through the forest, betraying the positions of other would be surprise attackers. Heston took up his bindle and pick again and dug his heels into the dirt to pursue the flaming figure. The silhouette of his rifle, protruding from the shadow of a tree trunk caught his eye as he ran behind. Heston leaped through the air winding the pick behind his head as he left the ground. He brought it careening down, aiming only with the fleeting light of the flaming man, he missed his target only by inches burying the pick into the hard wood of the tree trunk. As his feet landed he felt the rifle slam into his ribs. Heston barely had time to let out a feeble grunt when he heard the rifle whooshing through the air once more. He let go of the pick handle in time to block the shot with his forearm, feeling his bones crack and splinter from the blow. A brief yelp of pain escaped him before he felt a massive fist pound into his chest, stumbling him back and slamming him into a tree. He could barely make out the silhouette, raising the rifle over its head, preparing to swing down and split Heston’s head in two. Heston weaved to his left, leaving the rifle to thwack hard into his shoulder. He gritted his teeth hard, blood pumping from his fractured jaw and seething from his mouth as he dropped his bindle and reached over to wrap his hand around the rifle. He jutted the stock forward, stabbing the barrel into the figure. Heston flexed his knee up and into the groin of his attacker. He felt his opponents grip let loose of the gun and topple backwards, freeing him to shoulder the weapon, and with a renewed invigoration at feeling his gun back in his hands, he worked the lever with barely more than the twitch of his hand, firing two bullets in succession, halting the black shadow writhing on the ground in front of him.
As the thunderous pops of the rifle faded through the forest, Heston could still hear the wails and shrieks of the man he’d burned emanating from somewhere out in the darkness. He charged the lever again and held the rifle in one hand while he pried the pick out of the tree trunk. His heart was pumping fast enough that he thought it might explode in his chest. HIs head thumped and ached as he retreated back to the barely glowing embers of his fire. He was still actionable for now, but he knew that if he cooled down, between his jaw, arm, chest, and shoulder, he’d be in far too much pain to even stand let alone fight. Heston’s answer then was to not slow down.
He kept the gun drawn and pick by his side as he passed the fire by, stalking the blackness. Bloody, broken, but unyielding, he whistled into the forest abyss.
5
In the still quietness of morning, when the stirrings of mice, chitterings of insects and critters, and even the slow churn of the Earth were all muted under a blanket of cool dew, a languid drag across the forest floor could be heard. Aching knuckles, crusted with blood, wrapped themselves ever tightly around the aged wood furniture of a lever action rifle, swaying back and forth over Heston’s arrhythmic footsteps. The other hung lazily behind, clutching at the frayed and splintered end of a shorthandled pickaxe. His chest tweaked and stabbed more pain into his chest with every wheezing step. He wasn’t even cognisant of his own movement. His legs were like two machine pistons numbly pushing his body forward down the packed dirt trail. His eyes were barely open beyond minor slits as they detected the stabbing glints of the sun’s piercing brightness as they bounced from dew glazed bark. His feet, now clodding along in drunken steps, had nearly failed to register the transition from the untamed forest floor from the wiry brush to the beaten dirt path that he’d been searching all night for.
While Heston’s body worked in thoughtless autonomy, his mind was as though it was fortified within itself. Divorced from the world and lost in questions both plain and abstract. Heston wondered as he thought on the noiselessness of his left ear, the blood that once ran warm and fearsome down the side of his face, the jagged bones that now pinned the top of his trousers to the skin of his waist, now and again if he stepped too wide, the chips and splinters would grate inward against his hipbone. He traced the night backward as he trudged on retracing the last few hours as if they would flee screaming from his mind if he didn’t recount them, if he didn’t hold them tight and true.
He remembered the fire, how he ripped his pickaxe through the throat of one, shattered the knee of another before caving his head in with a heavy bindle of stone. He remembered the sick joy of setting a third aflame and jabbing his rifle into a fourth before putting two bullets into a shadow body as he howled at the moon. It was after he retook his pickaxe and set out into the morbid and treacherous misery that were these woods that he slowly pieced the rest together in his tired memory.
After he’d left the smouldering remnants of his little fire, engulfed in darkness, he could hear them scurrying around him. Stalking predators beneath the grim moonlight, undoubtedly wounded from losing four of their own in mere minutes, they waited on every side as Heston stomped heartily through the wood. Heston whistled a low note, chilling and ominous as he reflected fear back into his enemies. They would scurry and whisper, sometimes they would knock across the trees to be answered in replying knocks from somewhere farther out in the dark. Heston continued his march. Whispers turned to chesty grunts and growls, some sounding as if the person who made the noise was walking only feet behind him. He’d hear the throaty rumble of one to his left be immediately answered by a shrill cat-like screech from far on his right. A heavy thud just in front of him once got the response of a shrill cackle from above him, circling within the trees. They kept at this for hours. The night grew to feel endless as shadows moaned and squealed and coughed and screamed all around him. Undeterred, and absolute in his unwillingness to show any sign of the fear welling in his chest, Heston pressed on. He was determined to escape, determined to survive.
His foot slid at one point over what felt like smooth rock or maybe sand. Hopes of having found the road flooded his mind, even with the sounds of these devils around him, to know he was still going in the right direction made his heart feel lighter. He bent his knees in a slow squat, rested his pickaxe against the tree trunk and creeped his hand away to feel the ground. He winced in pain as he singed his fingers on a coal. He patted the ground in what felt like warm powder. He sniffed at the air and detected the brightest tinge of alcohol still burnt and bitter into the trees. Heston dropped his head in defeat. Hours of screams, moans, cackles, and knocks had led him back to the smoking ashpile of his fire.
As he raised his head he gritted his teeth, fighting to summon up what resolve could be left in his spirit. He could hear quickening foot beats behind him, approaching fast. On an instinctive whim Heston braced himself against a tree, listening to the footfalls grow louder as they approached, a shimmering glass sound swishing in waves to his opposite side. As he felt the running figure closing onto his position, he jutted the butt of his rifle into the air behind him. He caught the stomach of his attacker, knocking a wheezing moan from them as he shoved the rifle stock up and under the attackers ribcage doubling them over and onto the ground. Heston reset his rifle in his hands and drove the stock down again to stave in the skull of his enemy. As he raised the gun back up to his chest, flipping it over to place the bloody stock into his shoulder, heard a jingling swish through the air to his left, he wheeled his body around, but he was too slow. A stinging pain wrapped itself around Heston’s waist. Heston barked in pain as he felt a pinch like nails driving into his side and lower back. Heston cried out again when he felt it tug at him. Whatever had been latched into his side was all connected to a handle. Heston pictured in his mind the multi-tailed whip, peppered with broken glass and wood splinters that had now burrowed into his right side, pulling him over the still warm coals of his fire. He could feel blood slowly crawling down his side and pant leg as he took forced steps through the dark. He reached his right hand back in a desperate wave to grab his pick from the tree trunk and snatched it up, but he felt the clasp of another hand at the same time, pulling him in the opposite direction.
The whip tore itself from his hip, crackling and twisting as it went. Heston bellowed a sour mix of rage and pain. He turned behind him, still holding tight to the pickaxe. He set his right foot in the ground and raised his left to drive it hard in front of him, catching an unseen body in the sternum. He felt the jerk of his pickaxe as they fell before they released it back to him, but Heston didn’t have time to turn around when he felt the whip wrap itself around his head, burying the needle pricks of glass, bone, and splinter across his face and neck. He felt it pull again, a massive searing torque across his face as he felt his skin tear and his ear shred from his head. The scent of iron filled his nose as he felt the warm wave of blood wash down the side of his head. Heston dropped to his knees, his stomach lurching from pain as he fought back an urge to vomit. He heard scuffling in front of him. The figure he’d kicked was now regaining their footing. He raised his rifle off the ground, lifted his body up and straightened his back. He raised the gun out into the air and blindly fired into the night, answered by a shocked grunt followed by a thud in the leaves.
As Heston’s blood pulsed hard and hot over his neck and face, he could hear again the swishing jingle of the bone whip behind him, rearing up for another tear at his flesh. He ground his teeth hard in anticipation and shifted into a kneeling position, his left foot placed beneath him. Heston blew a stout huff as he sprung himself backwards to collide with the whipbearer. They both clattered to the forest floor with the whip shimmering away from its owner. Heston cast aside his rifle and pickaxe, climbing over the top of his attacker and wrenching a fistful of hair into his left hand as he pummeled with his right. After seven blows the body went limp beneath Heston, but he continued to crash his fist down into the crater that was once a face. When his lungs burned and his hand was numb with cracked knuckles marred with the shards of cheek bone, Heston finally relented.
He sat back onto his heels and raised a trembling hand up to his head feeling the spot his ear once was. He squeezed his eyes shut in a wince when he accidentally touched the piece of frayed skin at the side of his head. When they reopened he looked up at the sky. The first soft indigo lights flew across the forest canopy as Heston whispered a silent prayer to himself to push on until his body had at last stopped. He had killed seven of them. Seven of the monsters that had tormented him for days.
He slowly stood from the bludgeoned corpse beneath him, knees buckling and straining as he raised himself. He lazily grabbed the gun, tilted the broken pickaxe handle up and dragged it behind him as he slowly limped again through the forest.
Heston didn’t hear any more howling or knocking or cackling. No more scuffles in the shrouded brush as he forced himself along, the sun slowly illuminating the treetops over him. Time was no longer something Heston bothered to measure. He knew he wouldn’t make it out. He could only hear from one ear, could barely see through the blood crusted around his eyes. He had only grunted a low rumble to himself when he happened upon the dirt road. It was meaningless to have hope now, to measure anything other than defiant steps until his life had finally left him.
In the muted air of the dew blanketed morning, Heston dragged his pickaxe behind him, recounting the nights of horror, but as the sun streamed its first yellow spears through the tree branches, Heston’s heart once again jolted to panic. As he walked and dragged along the dirt road, unknown hours, unknown miles. He heard again that low and steady whistle. Heston stopped in his tracks Time to finish this off he thought as he pried his eyes wider. He heard calm footsteps approaching from the woods to his left. He slowly turned his head, grimacing in pain as he moved to see a cloaked figure emerge onto the road.
It stopped in the middle of the road ten feet ahead, towering over him and cloaked in a black fur draped across its frame. Atop its shoulders sat a human skull with four antlers reaching high like clamoring branches. Heston closed his eyes and agreed to accept what happened next. He neither had the strength to swing the pickaxe, nor aim the rifle. No speed left in his exhausted legs or fight in his shattered knuckles. He closed his eyes and slowed his breath, not knowing what anguish to expect as he heard the creature step toward. He could hear its heavy fur cloak sweep across the ground as it glided its way to him, he could feel it drawing nearer until he sensed it only inches away. Heston heard the soft chitter of a rattle before he felt the soft fur graze across either side of his face. Something cold and light had been placed around his neck. He waited. He waited for death to take him, but all he received was the slow retreating sound of the black cloak sweeping away and back into the forest.
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The sweet smell of sizzling bacon and eggs perfumed the air of the small trading town. Watson’s Spring it was called, and the work started early as feed bags moved on and off of trucks, pelts were counted and traded, cured meats were sold and packed to be shipped away to hunting grounds. It was a depot town at the edge of the northern frontier. It had barely grown enough to justify a small saloon and a monthly visit from a regional apothecary, but small as it was, Watson’s Spring was a vital resupply point for fur traders, miners, farmers and contractors. Life was quiet for the few families that had made a home of Watson’s Spring. Quiet, dull even, but pleasant in its routines. The trading post had no real need of a Sheriff throughout most of the year, but had elected one just as well to handle those seldom occasions where a drifting trader may make themselves a touch too comfortable in their quaint saloon. A small jail was erected for just such wayward wanderers to sleep off their mistakes before being allowed to leave town.
Sheriff Gerry Taylor had no formal history in law enforcement, but was seen as a wise and steady hand over the smattering of families and tradesfolk that called Watson’s Spring home. Sheriff Taylor sat at the desk of his office this morning, as he did most, enjoying a steaming cup of coffee and a puff of his briar pipe. On the table in front of him he had splayed out playing cards in a serene game of solitaire as the warm morning sun glowed through his window.
He dropped his cup of coffee, shattering it on the floor as he jumped in fright from a horrific scream outside. Sheriff Taylor burst through the door and leaped over the three steps of the porch of his office as the screams continued. Bloodcurdling shrieks in one breath after the other steeping the air in terror. It only took seconds for Sheriff Taylor to find a woman frozen in the street, her entire body seizing in horrified quakes, her eyes fixed on one direction.
“Hey! Whoa ma’am what’s the matter here?” Sheriff Taylor yelled as he jogged towards her. The woman didn’t answer save for ragged breaths as she raised a quivering hand and pointed down the northbound road. Sheriff Taylor twisted his neck to see what had scared the woman, and felt his own blood run cold at the sight.
Hobbling down the road towards him was a figure, six feet tall by Sheriff Taylor’s estimation, painted in blood red and splattered with mud. The figure looked like something that had crawled from hell itself as it lumbered towards the town. Its eyes were black, face torn to ribbons with a massive gouge in the side of its head and something shined from its neck. It carried a rifle in one hand, and drew a line in the dirt behind it with a broken pickaxe.
Sheriff Gerry moved his hand to his holster as he took slow, contemplative steps towards the thing. When he’d gotten within ten meters of it, he finally noticed this was a man clinging to life, wheezing his way into Watson’s Spring.
“S-Sir?” Sheriff Taylor squeaked. “What’s happened to you?”
“Help. . .Help me.” The man choked back. As the stranger moved closer, the Sheriff noticed that what shined from him was a necklace of teeth, bones, black feathers and gold. Pieces of rock and splinter were embedded in the man’s face and side, his right ear was completely missing, and his eyes, crusted with dried blood, were black as hell. “Help me please.” The man whispered as he drew ever closer to the sheriff, dropping is pickaxe and gun as he came near.
“Sir? Sir, what happened? Sir, what's your name?” The sheriff reached a hand out to steady the stranger as he came to arms length, grabbing him at the shoulder. The moment the Sheriff’s hand touched him the man recoiled, losing his balance on the way and toppling over onto the ground.
“Help! I need some help here!” Cried Sheriff Taylor as he tried to shake the man awake.
The woman who screamed in fear at the stranger was sitting in the street now sobbing into her hands while three others who’d risen to the commotion bustled to find the nearest thing to a doctor that Watson’s Spring had to offer. Within several minutes a litter was brought and the man was loaded up and taken to the bunkhouse, the Sheriff following at the litter’s side for every step.
