Warren strolled into the campsite arms loaded with firewood.
“Look who’s back.” I said. “We can start now.”
“Start what?” he asked, placing a few branches into the blaze.
“Everyone’s favorite game, 10 word poetry.” replied Hanna.
“Pfft. Not my favorite.”
“Who starts first?” Hannah asked.
I raised my drink. “This one’s kind of cheating, one of my grandpa’s favorites. I think it goes; No matter what you eat, your shit looks the same.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Gross.” said Hannah.
Warren chuckled. “A modern philosopher.”
“Oh, I just got one.” Wesley lit up. Putting his can aside. “Alright everybody shut up shut up shut up. Okay, here I go.”
He cleared his throat.
“Warren’s wives are like the tides, they came, and went.”
“Woooooooahhhhh!!!!”
Hanna elbowed me. “Oh my god you Asshole!”
“That’s so mean!” Elizabeth chimed in.
Wesley laughed.
Warren spoke up. “Okay, okay, I got one. I got one, be quiet.”
He cleared his throat.
“I watched you talk, fearfully, buck teeth looking like guillotines.”
I howled with laughter.
Wesley snickered through his toothy smile. “So we’re going clockwise,” he said.
“I’m next then,” said Hannah. “Let me think…Look left, right, up, down, common sense is scarcely found. That’s ten right?”
“Oh nice one.”
“Wow, that actually sounded like poetry.” I chuckled.
“Alright your turn Liz.”
She looked preoccupied with something on her phone when Wesley called her.
“I’ll pass.” she said. “Look guys, it’s been a while now,” she said. “I don’t mean to be a party pooper, but Betty’s not even answering her phone. I just called her and it went straight to voicemail. I’m starting to think something happened.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to talk while taking a shit.” said Wesley.
“Wesley’s skull’s like balloons. Tough to stuff, emptied so soon.”
Hannah and I laughed.
“Hey! I didn’t even go again yet!”
“You forfeit your turn by being dumb, this clearly isn’t normal.”
“They’re right, we should probably go looking.” I said moving to my feet.
“Her phone might’ve died, she could be lost.”
“I’ll come with,” said Hannah.
“Same.” said Elizabeth.
“No no no, you stay here.” Warren interjected.
“What why?”
“Uh, cause you have asthma.” I mumbled.
Hanna elbowed me. “Ow!”
“We need at least one person tending the fire at all times.”
“What? But It’s an inferno!”
“Doesn’t matter, I’ve seen fires bigger than this snuffed by the hand of god. There’s no telling what can happen. And someone needs to be here if she comes back before us.”
She opened her mouth to protest then resigned to her post.
“Okay, I’ll stay.” she muttered.
“I’ll stay back too,” said Wesley.
Her head snapped towards him.
“Joking! I was just joking, Jesus.”
We grabbed our flashlights and headed out the direction Betty left. We spread ourselves apart to cover more ground, but stayed in at least one other person’s field of view. We called out her name over and over, as our lights danced from tree, to bush, to tree. We were met with nothing but a roaring silence.
“This is ridiculous. We’ve been marching like a fucking platoon for five minutes straight. How could she’ve gotten this lost? All you have to do is walk ten paces from camp, shit in a bush, turn around and come back.” Wesley fumed.
“Deafening, putrid wind blows, or was that Wesley? Who knows.” Warren chanted.
Hannah laughed.
“Oh we’re still playing?”
“When did you get so good at this?” I asked.
“When he made it personal.”
“I’ve got one.” Wesley said.
I stopped dead in my tracks, a lump formed in my throat.
“Warren, aka King Kong. The loner lover boy strung along.”
Hannah groaned. “Guys, seriously, can we do this back at camp? Kind of in the middle of something.”
For the first time my foot met not with the crunch of leaves, the snap of a twig, or unyielding stone. But with something…else. Something quiet, firm yet squishy.
I took a step back.
“What?”
I bent down to the ground and pointed my flashlight at it.
“What is it?” Warren called.
My stomach tightened. I could feel beads of sweat forming over my brow.
I picked up the piece of scalp from the ground. Long dark brown strands of hair hung loosely from it.
“Betty.” I mumbled in a trance.
“What is that?” He asked, standing over me, voice trembling.
I charged forward into the darkness, flickering the light across the ground like a mad man searching for some trail of blood or kicked up dirt. They called after me in pursuit but I ignored them. I needed to find her now. Right now.
I was panting like a dog, not from any exertion but the pure, distilled, panic washing over me. By the time I picked up on the blood trail I nearly tripped over her. There in the mud lay the brutalized corpse of Betty Morrison.
I couldn’t make a sound.
My god. How do I describe what was done to my friend? She’d been ravaged. Claw marks all over, her chest completely caved in, head crushed, pants torn off, shirt in tatters, arm hanging on by a thread. Legs bent all the wrong ways. And her neck, it was barely there.
I just stared at where her face should’ve been. All I could think about was that beautiful smile of hers that could just light up your world. It was gone forever.
“AAAAAHHH!” Warren screamed.
He dropped down onto his knees, hands hovering over her as if to fix the damage, before retracting to cover his face. He combed his hair back in a wide eyed frenzy over and over, chest sinking and falling as he rocked back and forth to calm himself.
Hannah fared no better screaming into her hands at the ungodly sight.
“What the fuck!” Wesley wailed. “What-, who-,” the questions on all our minds lodged in his throat.
I started scanning the tree line.
“It was a bear.” Warren said between gasps.
“Only a bear could-, it ambushed her.” he groaned. Struggling to his feet.
“Oh that’s great!” Wesley snapped. “Oh that’s real fucking great Warren. Y-y-you take us out here, we go camping right next to yogi fucking bear! He kills Betty! We carry her pieces home in a b-body bag! Real fucking great!”
“No, no, no! They’re not supposed to be here.” He cried, shaking his head as if to deny reality.
“They’re not supposed to be around here I-, I promise I-, I checked over and over.”
“Tell that to the fucking animal that tore her apart!” he screamed into his ear.
“This isn’t his fault!” Hannah stepped in between shoving Wesley back. “Stop blaming him for a wild animal attack, it’s beyond control!”
“Yeah!? Beyond control, Okay. Let’s play a game. Who wanted to go camping? Who said ‘I know a place’? Who chose the area we set up camp? Was that all the Bear’s doing!?”
Wesley laughed.
“What do we do if we find it?” I whispered.
Warren wasn’t responding.
“Hey!” I shoved him.
“Huh?” he says.
“What do we do if we find it, do we run in a zig zag or hit its nose or..”
“Uh, we uh, we stand our ground. Don’t go swimming, don’t climb a tree. Don’t fight. Fighting’s the last resort. It’ll-, it’ll kill you. We need to intimidate it. Make noise, stand tall, waive our hands-”
“Do you hear that?” Hannah but in.
She flicked the light every which way.
We all held our breath. And listened as intently as possible.
For a moment, a blissfully long moment, I couldn’t hear a thing. Nothing but my beating heart and shallow breaths. But then my ears honed in on something in our environment. Honed in on it.
I heard breathing, long and hard. It was difficult to pinpoint the direction it came from with the way sound’s scattered in the woods. But by my estimate it came from somewhere off to our left. I exhaled all the air from my body and prepared to cast my light over it.
“One more thing. Don’t make eye contact.”
Wesley beat me to it.
“Hooooo!!!!” he cried. For a brief moment I could see great big eyes that shone with a bloodlust boring into us.
Wesley turned round and took off for the campsite screaming.
“Hey! What are you doing!” Warren shouted.
That’s when it growled and charged the three of us.
We screamed back at it waving our arms. To scare it. Then it reared up on its hind legs. 2 out of 6 legs. The fifth around its stomach twitched and swatted at the air, the sixth off to its side reared back to strike.
I leapt out of the way as it came crashing down where I stood. A head snapped after me a second smaller head.
I grabbed a rock and whipped it into its face before bolting for the shrubbery. I heard a blood chilling beastly bellow radiate out from behind as I zigzagged as hard and fast as I could in a sporadic butterfly path. Left, left, right, left, right. I looked back but couldn’t see any motion. I dove behind a tree and froze, my lungs about ready to explode. I listened for any gnarly sound coming after me. But there was nothing. I looked back again but couldn’t find it. Oh no. I thought. No, no. It wasn’t chasing me.
“Fuck!”
I rose into a crouch and began weaving my way through the trees back for the camp. It was running everyone else down. As if to confirm my exact thought. I heard Hannah’s ear splitting scream not too far up ahead.
I sprinted after the noise flash light fixed before me. It wasn’t long till I spotted a flickering light off to my left. She was running for camp. I opened my mouth to call Hannah, but thought better than to make needless noise. So I slowly made my way to her. She jumped at the sound of my oncoming footsteps.
“Aaahhhh!!”
“Shhh! Shhhh! Hey! It’s me, it’s just me.” I hissed, squeezing her shoulder.
“Oh my god.” She sighed.
“Let’s go.”
We didn’t utter a single word on our rapid trek back. It felt like I was holding my breath up until we spotted our red and green tents set up in the distance. We stopped to recuperate by the fire. Looking around us there was nobody, and no thing in sight. Worst. Case. Scenario. No Liz, and no Warren, the two we all drove here with.
“Hannah, what happened?”
“He’s dead! It chased us and it killed him because I slowed him down, it dragged him off into the trees and I just kept running! It’s my fault!”
“It’s okay.”
“No it’s not!”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. What Warren did or didn’t do was his decision.”
She shook her head.
“No, look at me. That was his choice. He could’ve ditched us but he didn’t. Right? Right?”
“Yeah,” she said.
We hugged.
“So get him off your back. Thinking about that won’t help us right now.”
She nodded.
“Did you see where Liz went? Or Wesley, did you catch sight of him?”
“No, he took off like a bat out of hell. He must’ve beaten us here and…shit. He ran off with Liz to the car! They’re gonna leave us here!”
“They can fucking try. Let’s go.”
We took our coats off and bolted as fast as we could downslope towards a clearing about 15 meters squared. Every snap of a twig, every little bump in the night almost made me shit out my entrails. But quickly a new emotion pushed its way from the trunk of my mind to the driver’s seat. An unbridled rage at the mere thought of being ditched in this wilderness with that demon. Of being hounded in the dark until my last breath and brutalized like Betty, while so called friends live on in a world that forgets me. If there was anything I could do to stop that. Well, just you wait, I thought. Just you wait. The trees started to grow sparse. And before long I could see lights beyond their limbs dead ahead.
“See that,” I called back to her.
“Yeah!”
We picked up the pace and broke out into the clearing. Two cars still sat in the distance, where we last parked them. One silver, one black. A figure stepped out of the former.
“Holy shit!” Wesley cooed. “You guys made it!?”
“No thanks to you.” I snapped.
He pursed his lips.
“Where’s Liz?”
He didn’t respond. I stared into his eyes. His gaze fled for the ground.
“She didn’t make it.”
“Well you got her keys.” I said.
He swallowed hard.
“Oh, Ooooooooh!” I said. “You just took it from her! You little shit!”
I whipped my fist into his face, his knees buckled as he rocked violently to the left.
I pulled him back up. His hands hovered over his face in a measly defence. I started gut punching him over and over.
“Not enough to ditch three friends huh!”
“Dennis, stop it, we have to leave.” Hannah said.
I threw him to the dirt.
“Let’s go.” I slid into the driver seat.
“We’re not gonna-“
“Come on Hanna! Let’s get out of here!”
The keys were still in the ignition. I revved the engine. But she didn’t budge.
“We can’t just leave him.”
“Sure we can! He left you five minutes ago! Remember! When Warren fucking died! He was gonna ask you out you know. Right before we went back home, because Warren’s a cheesy idiot!”
“Stop it Dennis.”
“He wanted to marry you one day!”
“Stop!”
“And then this fuck ran away when he said stand your ground! He runs to Lizzy, takes her fucking keys, leaves her in the dust and hops in her car! Why can’t we leave him!?”
“So you’re just gonna kill him?”
“I’m not gonna do anything.”
“Of course, the bear will get him right. So why are you mad at Wesley!? The bear killed them, didn’t it?”
I laughed.
“You sound crazy Dennis!”
“Why are you so dead set on defending him? He was gonna leave us!”
“But he didn’t. He stayed for us! You’re sitting in that car because he stayed! YOU’RE gonna leave HIM!”
I shook my head. Tears welling up in my eyes.
“Aaaaarghh! Fine!” I unlocked all the doors and stepped out of the car. “Merry fucking christmas Wes.”
I swung open the back and lifted his unconscious body half way in. Just then Hannah screamed.
My head snapped over my shoulder only to see a charging, growling mass 20 meters from us eating up the gap.
Hannah jumped in the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut as I dragged Wesley inside. I tried to swing the door shut with my foot. But I kicked it open further. “Fuuuuck!!!”
It’s maw clamped down on my leg to the sound of my bones muffled snap. “AAAAHHH!”
“Dennis!” Hannah cried.
Its razor sharp teeth sliced into my flesh as it tried to yank me out of the car. My feet dangled helplessly out of the vehicle. It pawed and groped at my thigh with those 8 inch long daggers. I screamed in agony. “Drive! Drive the fucking car!”
Hannah frantically fiddled with the stick shift and pulled it into reverse. She slammed her foot into the gas. We lurched backwards away from the beast. The sudden movement dragged my mutilated foot from its mouth, and me farther outside. It would’ve torn me right out were it not for my vice grip on the driver’s seat. I scrambled with my other leg to get back in the car the moment we came to a stop. It ran for the open door once more but this time I managed to get it shut right as it slammed its body into the car. The impact rocked it back and forth, fracturing the glass. Hannah adjusted the stick shift and we lurched forward. She swerved the car around 180 degrees to face the trail out of this hell hole, and cast in the glow of the headlights we were able to get one last solid look at this…thing. I leaned in scarcely believing what my own two eyes saw.
A giant bear with six main legs. Two at the front, two at the back, one underneath and the sixth to the right. A bellowing moose head hung from its left side beneath the upper fifth of a quivering doe, sprouting from its back. A wolf head at the front, left of the bear, gnashed its teeth in a rabid fury. Rabbits’ and squirrels’ and several other little rodents’ upper and lower halves burst out from the main body thrashing and squealing. Bird wings flapped haphazardly all about it. Deer legs all over its back and sides kicked and twitched at random.
I don’t know how Hannah could even think to drive after seeing the mind numbing madness that was this creature, in all its ‘glory’. But she put the pedal to the floor and swerved around it, nearly flipping the vehicle.
Barreling out of those woods, my body flaring with the pain, all I could think was; the devil is alive. He’s alive, and doing very, very fucking well, because we found his pet.