What’s an easy way to explain this. I guess if you’re reading this you are more mentally prepared than most to hear some batshit nonsense so let’s get into it. Most in the know call people like me hunters. Of what I hear you asking. Well, monsters. Y’know beasties and green ghouls and whatnot. The bad guys if you will. At least that’s what we hunters are taught. “Shoot the big scary shifting mass and you’ll be okay kid” is what my pa always told me.
Living on a farm in Tennessee you tend see an awful lot of ‘shifting masses’ in the deep dark of the night. We were far away from any major city so more often than not it was some kind of livestock rather than any people. Every now and again we’d get a stranger wandering by, but even less often than that was something worse.
One night while I was out looking at the stars in the summer sky I didn’t quite see a plant-like tendril wrap around my foot. It pulled me with some force toward the dark of the woods but luckily my yelling woke my father. He grabbed a sword off the mantle that I had always thought was decoration and ran out to me. The blade shone in the moonlight brighter than any steel I had yet seen.
The creature in the woods saw this and began frantically trying to throw more tendrils to make a cage around me. I could feel thorns digging into my ankle when my father chopped the tendril wrapping my leg and shouted for me to get the rifle from the basement and ‘shoot the damn thing’.
I was frozen in horror at the sight of this thing. I was staring into where it’s eyes ought to have been when I began hearing whispers itch at the back of my mind. My dad must’ve seen this and shoulder checked me out of my trance. He yelled again to get a gun. So I did. I ran to the house, flung open the storm doors and nearly fell down the uneven cement stairs into the basement.
I could hardly see in the dark but I knew where the gun cabinet was. The key to the cabinet was just left on top of it, pops had done a good job of making sure I knew not to play with guns. I unlocked the cabinet to see a handful of rifles and pistols. I didn’t know which one to grab but one stood out to me: a lever action rifle that looked rather ornate. It was a polished mahogany with silver and gold furniture, or at least played in silver and gold. On is side was inscribed ‘The Eschaton’ and there were a few bullets attached to the side of the stock. They looked beefier than any bullets I had shot before and they were pure chrome. I loaded a few into the side of the rifle and ran back upstairs, nearly tripping again.
As I regained my footing the once hot summer air was very cold. The sky was a deep blue rather than the black of night and wind began to howl. Now there were 2 writhing masses wiggling out of the tree line. My dad was still tangling with one and was looking concerned at the other looming over. I took aim at the second one, expecting to have to focus on the iron sights of the gun but they seemed to glow faintly and even guide my hand to aiming at the monster.
Without thinking I pulled the trigger. A white flash lit up the night and a thunderous boom cracked the air. As the bullet made contact with the beast it tore a hole clean through. It sheared a path about a foot in diameter like a lantern through fog. I chambered the next round, feeling a rush of adrenaline. I aimed for the beast’s head and fired, cleaving it clean off with a horrible high pitched cry.
Chambering yet another round I spun the rifle to the original monstrosity attacking my father. I fired another round but this time being careful of the person I didn’t want to shoot. As a result the bullet flew into the forest landing in a tree. I heard a few branches fall to the forest floor. I can only imagine what it did to the tree. With the last bullet in the tube I took aim at the writhing mass’ head, held my breath, and fired.
The air around me became hot once more, returning to a normal temperature of a summer night in Tennessee. The sky darkened once more and the wind died down. Somehow these things must have been summoning some kind of awful storm. I regrouped with my dad, hugging him tightly. He was bleeding slightly and just the is when my mother ran out with some bandages. Had they done this before I wondered?
As my mom was tending to his wounds, my father explained to me what had just happened. There are certain thing that feed of the emotions of humans. Few know about these things and even fewer have encountered them. Usually they keep to themselves, typically preferring not to even exist in our realm. Sometimes though, things break through. That’s what he and his order stands against. They protect this world and it’s people from these unknowable threats. He explained that the gun I had picked up to fight with, The Eschaton, has been used by the family for generations and now, it was mine.
That all was a good 20 years ago now. My father died of largely natural causes not too long ago and I’m carrying the family business. Now that that’s all out of the way, I’ll be writing again soon about a certain critter that may not be so evil after all. Still scary as all hell though.