Chapter 3 Monsters in the Woods #2
The car swayed with the weight of the animal as it swung its muzzle toward the windshield and the cowering man within.
Metal groaned.
Green let out a choked cry as he fought for air and thought. He tasted blood. Something was on the hood, but he couldn’t make sense of it. There was black, oil-smooth motion and a flash of pale rigidity like weathered concrete.
He clutched his nose with one hand and reached to turn on the headlights with the other.
The sudden flood of light dazzled Green, but the creature on the hood didn’t react at all.
It was lupine and liquid, like a thick-limbed timber wolf with soft, undulating edges that gleamed wet.
It had waves of moving flesh, black and midnight blue in constant, senseless motion.
Its inky musculature traveled with viscous grace, but there was never enough of it to fully hide the creature’s skeleton.
Here, a glimpse of bleached skull. There, a rib. Two vertebrae. The sharp blade of a scapula. The orchid-white curve of a pelvis.
Green froze, terror pinning him to his seat.
He couldn’t scream.
The creature tilted its broad head and the inky flesh retreated fully, leaving a skull with living eyes peering into the dark car.
It was a wolf’s skull, but too big. A monster from a comic book.
Thoughts of wolves died as Green noticed the S-curved horn rising from the canid snout, a weapon of sharp bone.
He locked eyes with the thing. A mental pit opened and he was falling deep beneath the earth.
Around him the air pulsed with perfect, shared understanding.
He was locked in hateful connection to the intelligence behind the bone-rimmed eyes.
There was nowhere to run, not even within his own thoughts.
Yes, I see you cowering there, the eyes said. No, glass is neither a mystery nor an obstacle to me. We both know this.
He wanted to look away. He couldn’t.
But my business is not with you. Unless…
The monster was still, a ten-ton boulder balanced on a pinnacle, a thing of terrible potential energy, a snarling chain saw poised above something soft and breathing.
Leaning in with deliberate slowness, it pressed its horned muzzle through the windshield. The surface whined and shattered. The tempered safety glass divided into a topographical map of cracks and fell away in blunt cuboid chunks. The huge predator’s head didn’t slow as it moved toward Green.
Black flesh flowed over the skull until an oil slick that was half grizzly and half dire wolf filled his vision.
His arms shot forward, trying to push away from that terrible head. He fought for inches, straining against the steering wheel, trying to force his seat backward. The car horn screamed a sustained note, breaking the unnatural silence left in the thing’s wake.
The flesh of the wolf’s skull receded again, flowing away like a tide. The digital display lights gave the skull a green undersea glow. Teeth longer than his fingers, teeth that should only exist in a museum display of megafauna hunting megafauna, hung inches from his eyes.
The wolf sniffed deeply. Again and again. Closer and closer, a tide of stygian muscle ebbing and flowing over the skull. The sharp edge of its nasal cavity caught on Green’s chin and opened a gash. Blood ran down his throat, soaking his shirt collar.
He was there in the dark water with Dylan, but the hungry thing was no longer hypothetical. It wasn’t mercifully “out there.”
It was here. It was right here.
All the while, he could still feel that alien understanding speaking directly into his mind. He could hear the thing’s thoughts as words, but the words made no sense.
No, you’re not a clay-walker. Not changed by the Knothole Man or riddle kissed. Not one of the motherless. Not one of the Duke’s people or one of the twilight movers breaking your own laws. But not a man.
A tongue as hard and dark as wet asphalt touched Green’s chin, tasting his blood. The creature’s breath smelled so strongly of pine it made Green’s eyes water.
Frustrating. Unwise to leave it alive? Unwise to simply eat it? No time for this.
Green couldn’t answer.
He couldn’t think.
An ancient part of his hardware screamed run again and again.
The wolf paused. Its mind silent.
With a sound like tearing cardboard, it extracted itself from the destroyed windshield. Glass clinked on the hood like hailstones.
It stared through the ragged hole. The lower half of Green’s face was bearded with smeared blood. His death grip on the steering wheel still goaded the horn’s ceaseless scream.
Black flesh rippled, ears sprouting up like mushrooms, and the wolf cocked its head.
My prey is gaining distance. There will be other nights for whatever you are. We will meet again, not-man. Be silent.
Green’s hands fell to his sides and the horn died.
The wolf’s spine rose into view like a sea serpent and sank again beneath the rolling darkness. It raised its nose skyward, sniffing the air, then leapt off in the direction of the glowing deer. The car rocked so hard two of its tires left the ground.
The creature was gone, lost from sight three feet from the vehicle.
There was no sound of snapping twigs or shifting leaf litter.
The Prius was still.
A moment later, the few insects still braving the late night’s chill returned to their song. One of their final performances as real autumn cold came to the mountains. They were so much louder with a shattered windshield.
The cool air flooded in.
Green jabbed a shaking finger at the door locks. They were already locked.
He was trembling.
A laugh-sob bubbled out of him and he snapped his teeth shut to end it, fearing if he didn’t he might never stop.
He rubbed his face and his hand came away sticky with blood from his battered nose and cut chin.
Fishing out a wad of fast-food napkins from the console to stanch the bleeding, he pressed the radio button and found a weak, staticky version of Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” whispering from the speakers, distant as the ice age.
The singing felt like a threat, so he turned off the ignition to stop all sound.
How long had he blasted the car horn? It struck him that no one had come to investigate and, with a confidence as certain as gravity, he knew no one would come.
He brushed pebbles of safety glass off his lap.
I’ll just drive away. I’ll make it back to a town. Any town. A hospital. Rent an apartment. Drop the acorn down a storm drain.
In his mind, he was already reaching for the ignition.
He was backing out of his campsite.
He was moving down that ridiculous woven tunnel of a road, a blood cell in a dark capillary.
Gravel crunched. Headlights cut down the dark.
Dancer loomed up, watching him leave with her raven-black eyes.
He was already passing that odd pink gas station.
Alf and Jerome watched him go.
He was back on a real highway, back on his way to a place where people were supposed to be.
Consciousness betrayed him and snuck out the back without warning, leaving him slumped and bleeding with only the dream of escape to protect him in the last hour before light.