I remember looking over at Megan and thinking, it’s hard to imagine the abyss is just on the other side of her.
We had escaped the humid bayous and casual murders of Houston and high tailed it Colorado. It had become something an annual tradition, a weed pilgrimage to Mecca in the mountains.
Our yearly foray into real wintry cold had always revived the life within us. Even the gorgeous red of her Irish hair seemed to glint brighter in the deafeningly quiet white world.
I didn’t deserve her. No false humility here. She was truly better than I was on a cellular level.
Megan had been through unimaginable horrors, hellish trials that left traumatic scars she only showed those lucky enough to bask in her glow.
And yet, somehow, it’s like she was able to just rebound the cruelty of the world right off her, sending her own kindness reverbing along with it. The angrier you got, the calmer she grew. Gnash your teeth in a temper tantrum and she’d find a deeper level of kindness. It wasn’t that plastic falsity so many people possess with their feeble masks, it always rang true.
Not me. I absorbed every blow the world dealt me. It warped and twisted and blackened me. I was the very definition of rot. But dying flowers still seek out sunshine, and that was Megan.
I’m not a good man.
Bungling the timing had been a far worse mistake than I anticipated. I was winding my crappy Chevy in constant circles, forever rising on the mountain in the pitch black as snow cloaked the poor excuse for a road. I just had to push the envelope and have us stay on top of a damn mountain.
I was half stoned and completely terrified, but the feel of Megan’s hand on my thigh gave me a boost of confidence. I always kept fighting through the fear, exhaustion, and endless losses for her.
One harrowing journey later, I finally exhaled as we crested into glacial valley atop the mountain. A few dozen missed turns through the endless wood later, we’d arrived.
The cabin was as picturesque in reality as it had been on the website. It all seemed too good to be true. Looking back, I should have realized, if it smells like rotting, there’s probably a corpse in there.
I was an ardent bargain hunter but this deal was mind blowing. I should have been suspicious - the price, the quality, the nearly barren website with the obscure URL - but I remembered something about gift horses and teeth.
What they don’t tell you is to watch for the horse flipping the script kicking you in the teeth.
The idyllic scene laid out before us would have sent Robert Frost to his pen, and I had sneakily stocked up on a surprise for Megan at our last grocery stop.
I was going to surprise her with my famous potato salad. I loved to cook for her, but really any surprise would do, like springing this trip on her. I always had a surprise for her, for better or worse. Megan squealed at the prospect.
After noshing on the glutinous snack for half an hour, we shared a blunt and put on some some ancient country on law and danced slowly, alone in the world.
Or so we believed.
The first crash against the cabin door made me regret being the only Texan to never carry a strap. It was like thunder had hopped on the back of a linebacker and rocketed into the door. The hinges squealed and the small cabin shook as if rightfully fearful.
I was at the window while Megan ducked behind the bed. I saw the the covered porch, the clearing for parking, maybe twenty yards long, and the tree line. The dark in the cold corners swallows the world whole and spits it back out without any real light. I felt truly blind.
Still, no movement. I turned to Megan. Just as our eyes caught in mutual confusion, a second smash rocketed against the door, sending small splinters flying.
Megan screamed and that was enough for me.
I charged out the door blindly, a moron in love. I screamed some jumble of obscenities, threats, and nonsense, an amalgam of fear and anger, emotional stepsisters with an unhealthy attachment.
I let myself feel my heavy breaths slow, each exhale sending white waves dancing through the air. My right hand slowly unclenched and the blood drained from my knuckles.
And then I saw it.
Out of the woods slowly trotted what I thought was a massive wild dog. Terror and logic are not great bunkmates. As it approached, I realized it was a fox. A male.
I had caught a few nighttime drunken glimpses of tiny red foxes in West Texas when I was in college, but they were no bigger than an overfed house cat. This creature towered, looked like a sinister cat and golden dog had been smashed together by some inebriated pagan god of old.
Its trot was lackadaisical as if he were merely out window shopping but he kept his eyes fixed on me, stopping five yards short of my frozen figure.
The fox was the size of a rottweiler and dropped on its hind legs and cocked its head quizzically. It began a low, short whine and wore a visage that said “I don’t want to rip you apart, but it wouldn’t be that hard.”
I slowly backed up. When I saw the fox didn’t move and I was close enough, I made a run for it. Luckily Megan and I were sympatico enough for her to throw the door open and slam it just in time.
We both sunk to the floor with our backs to the door.
“What the f-“
The words hadn’t even escaped my lips before we both were sent flying by a crash against the door.
Diving behind the bed, we watched as the door cartoonishly stretched with each attack, never giving away, like an unbreakable barrier holding back the night. Between each crash, the fox’s whine grew louder.
“I’m gonna try something” I whispered to Megan.
“Pappy, no, no” Megan begged, trying futiley to grab my hand and hold me in place. Somewhere inside I think she knew I was forever destined to plunge ahead stupidly.
Snatching the pot full of the remaining potato salad, I tore the door open and flung the food out.
“HERE, EAT, YOU FUCKING INTERLOPER.”
I thought maybe I’d set it back on its heels, but the fox wandered into view, cocked it’s head further, and sent chills down my spine.
It examined the pot and began voraciously eating. It stopped eating abruptly and bounded off in a blur into the forest and out of sight.
We decided to risk bears and and the other denizens of the night and left the potato salad outside and hunkered down.
The slamming stopped and everything was quiet once more.
Megan and I cuddled in bed, her downing some shrooms and blazing through a blunt to calm her nerves, me downing a few beers, both of us debating whether a fox could have done all that. And why didn’t the door give?
Cuddled under so many warm blankets, we both passed out. I was on my feet at the first crash..
Peering from the window, I saw the massive male fox trotting from the tree line. My jaw nearly dropped and I called a silently sobbing Megan over.
I offered some comfort but something inside me said she had to see what I’m seeing, like I was privy to something supernatural, secluded to this fixed point of space and time. I wanted to share it with the one I love.
Megan gasped when she joined me at the window. “He brought his girlfriend! Your potato salad really is that good.” There were a few giggles among he tears and sobs.
Seeming to almost levitate as she swayed, a vixen half his size followed in tow toward the pot. She shimmered silver light with each lithe sashay. I don’t have the words to describe how lovely she was. It hurt to look at her, but I couldn’t look away.
She was elegant and dainty but exuded something powerful and ethereal. She didn’t need quizzical looks and size to make me afraid.
We stood safely behind the window, hand in hand, watching the lovers feast on my potato salad. When they were sated, they slowly wandered back to the woods. The male turned back, I swear with a rueful and pitying look on his face.
The vixen never looked back.
The door immediately began smashing without cessation, sending a shrieking Megan diving.
A hundred, a thousand, a million times louder, with more force and violence than before.
In my panic, I just stood paralyzed, feeling the blood drain from my face as I tried to understand the horror before me.
A beast was flailing and roaring in circles a few feet from the door. Ten feet tall, the head and antlers of a deer adorned what looked like the skeleton of a bear. Flesh and fur and sinew hung randomly from ribcage, arm, and leg, and long, boney hooked claws dragged and sparked against the hard earth. The abomination wailed up at the moon.
It looked at me with enormous, empty black eyes and slammed against the door impossibly fast.
Megan was praying Mary and Joseph and all that gang and I just rocked back and forth on the floor of what was supposed to be a little slice of paradise.
Suddenly, silence. I just caught the curved spine of the freakish nightmare slip into the trees.
I went and comforted a hysterical Megan.
Our phones refused to find service, no matter how hard we begged, and being children of the city, we had come ill prepared. I have no intention of painting myself an calmer. My insides were liquid and my heart was somewhere in my shoe. I was simply too afraid to make noise. The left leg of my pants felt warm and wet.
Embarrassment had begun to set in when the slamming started again. This time it wasn’t as hard, but more like a rapid machine gun fire, hitting different points on the door.
Something…human-ish stood at the tree line. It looked like the naked body of a man but there was only a bloody, brutal mess where the genitals should be. Stark naked and wearing the skull of some massive creature, the man was lifting a gnarled stick and screaming nonsense, each word punctuated with a slam against the door.
It was only then in the deep dark that I realized what was hitting the door. The porch was littered with the obliterated corpses of starlings, swallows, hawks, and two dozen other birds I couldn’t identify.
Each swoosh of the staff, every pagan utterance, sent a kamikaze bird to its doom in rapid cessation.
Finally, the frenetic casting stopped. Ripping off the skull mask, I could see a bearded man beneath it. His nose and eyes were missing and blood and puss dripped and flowed indiscriminately. Like a petulant child, he leaned forward, put his hands behind him, and screamed “HUNGRY!” over and over and over before swiftly stalking into the woods.
I spent the next thirty minutes convincing Megan this was all real and not the manifestation of a shroom trip gone terribly awry. Honestly, I could hardly convince myself.
My attempts were disrupted by a slam against the door, a pause for a few seconds and, a similar but smaller slam, like someone bouncing two differently sized basketballs against the door. The adrenaline was beginning to burn into me and steal away my energy. I felt like passing out and began only thinking of my own fears
I dragged myself to the window as Megan buried herself under covers and tried to force the world away.
Out of the woods wandered a bear that had to be at least eight feet tall. Next to him was a woodsman, decked out as though he was starting his shift felling lumber a hundred years ago.
The bear laid in front of the man. With a rusted saw, the lumberjack began sawing the bears head off, meeting no resistance or protestation. When his wicked work was done, he tucked the bears head under his arm and knelt down.
My knees began snapping together, like old bones dancing a 90’s kid’s Halloween CD, as the headless corpse of the bear rose and used its claws to cut through the back of the lumberjack’s neck, severing and separating his head.
The headless corpses rose in sick unison, sauntered over to the door, and took turns throwing each other’s respective head against the door.
BANG.
A pause.
Smaller BANG.
Over and over and over.
I rocked and smelled urine and tried not to beg for my mother as I listened to the heads rebound time and time against the door.
It was only when the equally eerie silence came that I realized Megan was unconscious. I snapped back to reality and prayed to anyone who would listen she hadn’t killed herself. I mostly didn’t want to be alone.
An Ambien bottle was next to her. I wasn’t sure how many she brought but it didn’t seem like many were missing. She breathed comfortably and snored. I wasn’t sure, I wasn’t sure of anything, but I crossed my fingers that she had just taken enough to knock herself out from this hellscape.
I didn’t wait for the smashing to return. I walked into the frigid air, feeling the piss in my jeans freeze, and called to the tree line “WHO THE FUCK ARE YALL? WHAT THE FUCK DO YALL WANT?”
Without warning, at least fifty people, all wearing black robes, various animal skulls for masks, appeared at the edge of the clearing. Some were adorned with antlers, some were painted in what looked like blood. Some were covered in what looked like mud, or shit, or both.
So many had their robes open, flowing in the wind, revealing mutilated bodies, missing and bloodied genitalia. Strange symbols of animals and the forest carved on foreheads and legs.
None moved. Among them I caught glimpses of the hulking skeletal creature, the man with the staff, the headless lumberjack and bear.
The only movement and sound was the mournful howl of the wind.
Then they came.
-———————————————————————————————
I was nearly to Amarillo before he spoke.
“Wife.”
“What?” I asked, ensuring I kept a respectful tone.
“Not my girlfriend. My wife.”
“Oh. Sorry,” I muttered with as much sincerity as I could muster.
My mind was elsewhere.
All I could think about was them trotting out of the trees and seeing every sick knee bend and twisted head bow.
I remembered seeing him and change and the conversation, finding out what they wanted, learning it had to be given. Certain lines, physical otherwise, in this world can’t be crossed by those who don’t belong in it.
I remember striking a deal.
Fear got the best of me.
I’m not a good man.
I remembered feeling the bile in my stomach rise as I dragged Megan’s half conscious body out of bed. Watching her come out of a haze and realize the dark truth, hearing her beg me, profess her love.
I remembered dragging her out into the clearing and throwing her to them to save myself.
I remember watching her body flailing and hearing her screams grow quieter as he dragged her deep into the woods, with the whole lot of freaks following behind.
What I remember the most was the vixen and I being alone, watching a smile grow across her maw, and watching her bare her teeth and lick them before bounding off into the forest, off to find her acolytes
I got in the car and waited for my dark passenger.
“Thanks for the help, Pappy.
We needed to set up elsewhere, to expand and grow our special little family, and you’ve just been a peach.
We’ll have to fetch, as I said, my wife. After she feasts, of course. She needs a new body to inhabit before she travels. One given willingly by a lover. I got mine. Time for the queen’s.”
The fox who was no longer a fox sighed with contentment.
“Oh, by the way, she truly did love your potato salad. Top notch. But I suspect she will prefer your Megan.”