The blackness of the night wouldn’t allow an inch of vision past the trees surrounding him. The moon was gone, blanketed by dark puffs which had solidified its fortress impenetrable to any light that would attempt to escape. The fire Arthur had made illuminated a minuscule perimeter around him. Luckily, no drop of rain had fallen with the gathering clouds.
Arthur sat at his camp watching his now dwindling fire. His stomach sat bloated from the three cheeseburgers he had made on his camping stove. He now had time to rest and work through the questions. The question that drove him out here to escape from everything. Why didn’t his father contact him before he died? Arthur thought about his father walking down the road from their home. Did he know where he was walking to? Of course, he did. He brought his gun with him. He imagined Rex standing at their favorite spot, then ending his adventurous life. Why didn’t he say goodbye to me? As he pondered the question, a tear went down his right cheek.
The tent was set up, and all the food Arthur had brought was strung in a tree ten feet high. He decided it was time to go to sleep and crouched to fit into his tent. He was ready to embrace a slumber brought on by tackling 20 miles of Diablo’s throne. He checked his watch. It was 11:21 PM. He lay down and closed his eyes.
“Art? Art, I’m cold. Could you let me in?”
Arthur shot up from a sleep that had seemed way too short. He was groggy, confused. He had heard a voice. Someone else was in the Yukon wilderness, 5 miles off a trail. It was a familiar voice. It wasn’t until it spoke again that Arthur knew whom he was hearing. It started to rain hard.
“Art? Please let me in. I won’t last long out here. It’s trying to kill me.”
Arthur realized it was the voice of Johnny Miller the kid who lived next door to him. What would he be doing all the way out here? Was he dreaming? Arthur looked at his watch. It was 4:21 AM. He went for the zipper to open the tent but froze. His hand started shaking. In an instant, he was fully awake and able to comprehend this bizarre situation. He heard Johnny again.
“Art, I’m hurt. Do you have a first aid kit? I just had to go to the bathroom.”
What the hell is going on? Arthur thought. He became a child who shrinks into himself when he experiences something so terrifying. The tremor in his hand had made its way throughout his body. He laid back down and put the sleeping bag over his head. Arthur couldn’t make sense of this. Johnny was asking for help but wasn’t next to the tent; Arthur could tell there was some distance in his voice. What disturbed Arthur the most was the eery calmness in the kid’s tone while proclaiming there was something out there trying to kill him.
Arthur poked his head out from his sleeping back and waited to hear the voice again. After five minutes, he still didn’t hear anything. He was starting to conclude that this might have just been a lucid dreaming situation, but then he heard it again. This time it was closer.
“Art, it’s raining hard, and I’m cold.”
“I can’t, I can’t,” Arthur whispered to himself. He just wanted this thing to go away, he would do anything. He heard footsteps approaching the camp now. Oh god, he thought. The voice spoke again, but something was different.
“Art, don’t you want to help me? I thought we were friends.”
Something was wrong with Johnny’s voice. It sounded strange the closer it came to the tent. Arthur heard Johnny’s “high kid voice,” but it was layered against a lower tone, like two voices speaking the exact words simultaneously. Then he noticed the footsteps. They weren’t the soft little patter of feet that usually is produced by a ten-year-old. They were hard stomps that were coming from a large adult. The distorted child voice combined with the hulking trudge only added more to Arthur’s terror. Then it went silent, and all Arthur could hear was the pounding of water drops onto his tent. That wasn’t until he heard a voice again; this time, it was right outside his tent, and right next to his ear. It also wasn’t Johnny Miller’s voice. It was the voice of his deceased father.
“You made the right decision not to let me in Arthur.”
Arthur tried letting out a scream that refused to leave his mouth. The air was sucked out of him. True fear took him over and it caused him to grab the flashlight and explode out of his tent in a flash sprint. He didn’t dare look back, he just ran. He was barefoot and had to point the flashlight at the ground to avoid tripping and give whatever was out there one second to catch up to him. He realized he needed to try and breathe again or his chest would explode, but he couldn’t slow down. He heard the voice again, it was coming from his camp. His father’s voice, yelling after him.
“Arthur you wondered why I didn’t find you! I’m right here Arthur. Come back! Let’s spend some quality time together!” The voice from back at his camp then let out an inhuman shrieking laugh that echoed through the mountains. Arthur swore the forest shook.
It only caused Arthur to run faster, but his speed wouldn’t allow his feet to stop him as the embankment approached suddenly. Arthur then lost his footing and tumbled down the side of the embankment. His flashlight flew out of his hand and smashed into a tree, knocking the light out. Arthur rolled three more times before he ended up in a shallow river at the bottom. The cold water was a quick repellent to any thoughts to check for injuries. Arthur stood up quickly, in the dark, feeling alone, but he really wasn’t. Something horrible was out here, stalking him.
Arthur’s eyes adjusted a little and he could see the small stream. He decided to walk along it, hiding below in the embankment. For what seemed like an eternity, Arthur continued down the stream. Soon it stopped. Arthur looked up to see a wooden building. Dark, wet, and clearly abandoned. He slowly approached the building and walked up the few steps to the front door, trying not to make a sound. He opened the door without much resistance and tossed himself inside. He shut the door behind him and stood still in the black silence. The only light that Arthur could generate was from his watch. There was a button on the right side of it that illuminated the face. It was dim, but it lit the room up enough for Arthur to see a chair next to him. He grabbed the chair and shoved it under the door handle.
Arthur stood still, waiting for any sound to make out amongst the hard rain. The drops were dribbling in like a broken fire sprinkle, the old wooden structure was giving way to years of rainfalls and harsh elements. Upon not hearing anything else, he crept slowly toward a window by the front door to peer out. The dark clouds were lighting up but they were still abundant and gloomy. Arthur checked his watch. It read 4:59 AM. Thank god, it would be light soon, he thought. He took a sigh of relief. Then heard a sound. Quick taps, only five at a time. They were coming from outside, but Arthur realized that the taps were coming from something hitting the side of the building he was in. At first, it was behind him, then the sound snaked around to his right and ended up at the front.
The tapping on the front of the structure made Arthur take three steps back and crouch down behind an old table that he backed into. When he did, it made a loud noise which filled him with dread as Arthur knew that whatever was out there had surely heard the collision. He put his head down while behind the table and didn’t look. The tapping stopped. What the hell Is going on? I’m having a nightmare this isn’t real, he kept thinking. He decided that he would look again. He thought that perhaps it was just an animal. He slowly stood up and tip-toed to the window, creeping as stealthily as a navy seal.
He was almost at the window when he heard one tap. Then he heard another. It was just light enough for him to see, but when he did, nothing could’ve prepared him. Something shot across the window. At first, he didn’t understand what he had just seen, then his blood ran cold. He realized the tapping had been from something crawling along the side of the building and it had just moved along the outside all across the front of the building over the window. Whatever was chasing Arthur was scaling the outside of the building in the manner of an arachnid-like monster. He couldn’t move, he just froze and looked at the window, dreading to see it again. Something made him walk closer to the window. He didn’t want to but he did anyway.
A face moved over the window and looked at Arthur with black eyes and a horrible smile that was filled with sharp blood covered teeth. Black blood was streaming out of its mouth out as it grew its grimace wider than what was humanly possible. It was the face of his father, horribly disfigured and monstrous. It spoke to Arthur one more time.
“Wanna know why I did it, Arthur?” It then let out a deep roaring hiss that shattered the window.
Arthur jolted back and screamed. His instinct to get away took control over his legs and made them shoot himself as far back from this creature as possible. Amidst the chaos, Arthur stepped into a hole from a missing floorboard and lost his balance. He stumbled back and fell into a closet. The door slammed shut and a shelf at the top of the closet fell hitting Arthur in the head. The frame knocked him out, and the terror of trying to escape his shapeshifting stalker monetarily disintegrated into black.