My parents moved out to Come By Chance for some peace and quiet.
I get it. My parents were always country folk. They never really liked living in the city. Never mind the fact that St. John’s is hardly the biggest or busiest city in the world. It’s still the city, and when they retired, they decided they wanted to get away from it.
So they sold their home, bought a nice little house out in Come By Chance and they’ve been doing pretty darn good ever since. We talk on the phone every few days and they give me little updates on what’s been going on in their neck of the woods. It’s not a whole heck of a lot, but they seem pretty happy so I can’t fault them for that. Then of course, once or twice every few months I’ll make the drive up to visit them.
Come By Chance is a tiny little town with a population of around 200 about an hour and a half out of St. John’s. Aside from its unique name, that’s really all there is to it. I guess there’s an oil refinery in the area, but my parents don’t live anywhere near that. It’s a peaceful little place away from the troubles of the world, and when I get old enough, I might just retire out that way myself. The drive up there is just lovely. But I suppose you could say the same about most of Newfoundland. The vast road stretches on ahead, flanked on each side by a lush greenery underneath a hazy grey sky, that holds its own particular beauty. Some might call the view drab. Me? I adore it. I can put on some music or a podcast and let myself sort of drift away as I cruise through the countryside. Sometimes, you may see mountains looming in the distance, and if I can admire them for a while without taking my eyes off the road, I gladly will… Although like I said, I make a point not to let my eyes wander too far from the road.
You’ll see the signs fairly often. Bright yellow with stark black. They’re impossible to miss.
Be Moose Alert.
They don’t all say have that exact message, but that’s the gist of it.
Save a life. It could be yours.
Slow down. Moose around.
Sometimes, all they really need is a simple illustration of a wrecked car, with a moose standing beside it. It gets the message across.
I actually haven’t seen a whole lot of moose out in my area… Although I’m not so naive to think that means there’s none around. I’ve only ever encountered a moose on the road once, and that’s actually what I’m writing about today. Honestly, I consider myself lucky to have only ever encountered a moose on the road the one time… That’s the kind of encounter that can go south very quickly, and not in the same way that mine did.
I don’t think most people fully realize just how big a moose is. They tower over your car, massive animals on long stiltlike legs. You hit one, and you’ll knock the legs out from under it and likely get yourself crushed when it falls on your car. The signs are all there for good reason.
Anywho… As I mentioned, I’ve only ever encountered a moose on the road one time and of course, this encounter wasn’t exactly a typical one…
It was roughly around mid September a couple of years back when this all happened.
I was actually on my way up to Come By Chance to celebrate my Dad’s sixtieth birthday, and I’d been cruising along merrily when I saw it. I suppose it was sometime around 7 in the evening. The sky had taken on a dusky purple shade, not unlike a bruise and it was starting to get rather dark on the road. The road in question was just off the main highway. It winded and curved, offering me occasional glimpses of the ocean, although there was still plenty of forest on either side of me.
I hadn’t seen the moose at first, not until it stepped out in front of me, and thank God I had the time to brake before I got too close! As the moose wandered further onto the road, I simply just sat and watched it, marveling as this great beast. Or… I would have marveled at it, if there was much to marvel about.
Truth be told, this moose looked… Off… In the dim twilight, it was hard to put my finger on exactly why first. But the longer I looked, the more I saw. I’ve seen moose before, and they’re usually not so skinny. A bull moose like that should’ve been a lot bulkier. But instead, the poor thing looked like skin and bones… And speaking of bones, I wasn’t sure if I was seeing its skin pressed tight against its ribs or its actual exposed ribs. It was hard to say for sure.
The coat also looked wrong. It took me a few moments to realize that the fur was white, as opposed to the usual color. I’ve only ever heard of white moose in passing, they’re said to be exceptionally rare… But this one looked like it’d just crawled out of a pit of mud. Its coat was stained and grimy. The poor thing almost looked wounded… Was it wounded?
The moose sort of stopped in the middle of the road, lingering for a moment and looking lost. I just stared at it, knowing something was very wrong with this animal… And after a while, I noticed that it was staring back at me.
Its eyes looked sunken, and I’m still not sure to this day whether or not there were even eyes in those sockets, or if they were completely empty. In fact, I wasn’t entirely convinced I wasn’t just looking at a bare skull… Half shed velvet hung off of its horns in thick, meaty strips. The horns themselves had a pinkish, bloody hue to them.
The moose stared at me as if contemplating something. Then finally, it moved. Only instead of going off the road, like I’d been hoping… It turned towards my car.
I’m no expert on animal behavior, but my gut told me that wasn’t a good thing. My gut told me that it was getting ready to charge.
It lowered its head before coming forward, and I realized that it was absolutely coming for me. In a panic, I threw my car into reverse and tried to make a hasty U turn. But my SUV couldn’t move fast enough.
The moose hit my car hard enough to make the entire trunk crumple. The rear end of the car lifted off the ground and I remember screaming blue murder. I half hoped to see the headlights of another oncoming car, but the road around me was empty.
Nobody else was coming.
The moose pulled back, shaking its head before it trotted away, giving itself some space to ram me again. My back wheels spun, but the car didn’t move much. He’d busted something up. I still rolled along, back the way I came. Although I didn’t get far before the moose hit me a second time, making my SUV fishtail and pushing me closer to the nearby road. I was screaming now, convinced that I was about to die. The moose was already winding up for another charge, and this time, I knew he was going to hit the front of the car and I was sure he’d kill me when he did.
So I did the only thing that made sense at the time.
I got out of the car.
In hindsight… It probably wasn’t the smartest idea. My mind was racing with panic though, and since the car seemed too damaged to move in time, that seemed like the most logical way to prevent it from killing me. The moose charged a third time, ramming into my car with a deafening crash. I’d later see that his horns had poked right through the windshield and left gouges in my driver’s side headrest… Had I stayed in the car, I likely would be dead.
But I was out, and in my blind panic, the only thing I could think to do was run like heck! The only place to go was into the woods, and I didn’t hesitate. I took off as fast as my legs could carry me, almost collapsing down an incline as I darted into the trees. I only looked back to see that moose staring at me with those empty eyes it had as it ripped its horns free of my battered SUV. I didn’t see it start to follow me, but I figured it was going to.
The trees swallowed me up, shrouding me in a deep darkness. I could still see the twilight sky overhead, but in the forest, night had already fallen. I could hear heavy footsteps behind me as the moose followed me, but they didn’t sound close. Something told me it hadn’t found me just yet and I didn’t slow my pace to give it the chance.
I just kept on heading in the direction I’d last seen the water from. I didn’t really have much of a plan. I supposed I was thinking I could just jump in the water and escape the moose that way, which in hindsight was a terrible plan since I later learned that moose are excellent swimmers… This is a real fact, and I encourage you to look it up.
I don’t exactly know how long I was walking, but it was certainly for a while. My pace had slowed a little when I’d stopped hearing the moose, and while I hardly thought that I was safe, I was trying to catch my breath while I could.
I’d checked my cell phone of course, but out in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t have any reception. So really, all it was good for was a light source. At some point, I started noticing a certain smell. A rotten smell, like something had died. Truth be told my first thought was that the moose had come back. But there was no sound accompanying that smell. Just the stink of rotten meat, permeating the air.
It’d almost made me vomit at one point, and I picked a slightly different direction hoping to get away from it. It didn’t work.
Maybe it was plain bad luck, or maybe there was more than one body. But the smell just kept getting stronger. It got to the point where I covered my mouth and nose with my shirt, hoping to block out the stench.
No luck, it would seem…
I’d picked up the pace again, hoping to outrun the smell, although I guess that was also a mistake. After a few minutes where I’d sped up to almost a jog, I took a downward incline a little too fast went facefirst into a puddle of muck. The stench had reached its zenith at that point, and I consider it nothing short of a miracle that I wasn’t vomiting up the fast food I’d eaten for dinner all over the forest floor. I recall dropping my phone as I fell, but I could see the light nearby and fumbled to grab it.
Maybe that was a mistake.
See, I’d assumed I’d just fallen into some ordinary muck and that the awful stink was the same as it had been before.
This was not correct.
I’d actually fallen into the source of that awful stench.
This was significantly worse.
The first thing I saw once I had my phone back in my hand, was the rotting, desiccated carcass of another dead moose. At least this one still looked relatively fresh, but the other dead animals in that ravine… They were much older and much riper. Moose, deer, raccoons, dogs, and cats… And I was sure I even saw bits of human clothing in among the horrible mixture. I didn’t let myself look hard enough to be sure. Countless bodies, scattered around… Torn to pieces and in most cases, partially eaten. Broken bones with bits of rotten flesh on them littered the ravine I’d fallen into.
I’d held off vomiting for this long. But even I’ve got my limits. My dinner and I parted on less than amicable terms, and it got left along with the rest of the disgusting mess as I dry heaved and gripped the side of the ravine for support.
That was when I heard it again.
The distant heavy footsteps.
The moose was back.
I clamped my hands over my mouth, going dead silent as I listened to it. Looking around, I caught glimpses of its rotten, pale body slinking through the trees and my heart pounded in my chest as the horrible possibility of it finding me reared its ugly head. I am not a very big woman, and if that thing wanted to, it could’ve reduced me to pulp with those hooves… At least it probably would’ve been a quick death if that was the case.
I watched as the moose moved through the trees, and froze as it paused. It seemed to sniff the air for a moment, before huffing and carrying on. I couldn’t help but wonder if the stench of rotting meat had saved me from being discovered, and in the back of my mind I found myself wondering if maybe all these corpses had been left by the moose…
Good lord… What an awful idea…
After a while, the moose passed me by and a pregnant silence returned to the forest. I wasn’t entirely convinced that the darn thing had left me for good, but I couldn’t stay in among the rot and decay any longer.
I couldn’t have climbed out of that ravine fast enough, and once I’d put it behind me, I thanked whatever God was in the sky that I hadn’t hurt myself when I’d fallen in. I took off in the opposite direction I’d seen the moose heading and quietly hoped that my luck wouldn’t run out just yet.
I don’t know how long I spent in the woods… An hour. Less? More? It was still twilight when I finally broke through the trees, although the sun was certainly much lower in the sky. I could see the ocean before me. I was standing in some sort of bay. Puffins and gulls nested along the rocks where the land met the water, and as my eyes traced the shoreline, I could see a little white house with lights in the windows.
It wasn’t close, but I could still walk there.
Taking one last glance at the forest to make sure the Moose wasn’t still on my tail, I headed for the house, feeling like the end of my little ordeal was finally in sight! Whoever lived there would probably have a working phone or at least some way to call for help. Really, I’d take whatever I could get!
As I drew closer to the house, the sky grew darker. Soon, the only thing I could see was the light in the window and I hoped to God it wouldn’t go out. It was dark enough and I was close enough to the shore that it would’ve been all too easy to fall and dash myself against the rocks.
I broke into a jog as I reached the homestretch, running to the houses door before pounding on it, then bracing myself against its wooden wall to gasp for breath. The sounds of the waves crashing against the coast and the birds on the rocks was the only reply I got for a while, although after a few minutes, I heard movement from inside that house.
The door clicked as it unlocked, before slowly being pulled open and I was greeted by a woman in a black blouse. Her eyes were grey and intense, giving her a look of someone who had seen a lot. Her face was narrow with a prominent roman nose, thin lips and crowned with long dark curls that she wore up in a bun. Her arms were adorned with bangles and big hoop earrings hung off her ears. Staring right at you, it was hard not to envision her as a lioness, wise and when need be, calculatingly vicious.
The moment she opened the door, she fixed me in those intense eyes of hers as if she were sizing me up before she finally spoke.
“You’re out here awfully late.”
“I’m sorry to bother you.” I said, still out of breath, “But would I be able to use your phone at all? Please…? My car’s wrecked on the highway. I need to call a tow.”
“You don’t have a phone of your own?” She asked, scoffing.
“I’ve got no reception,” I said.
I left out everything about the moose attack… Dropping all of that on the poor woman right off the bat probably would’ve made her think I was crazy!
She turned away from me, opening the door fully to let me inside.
“Thank you.” I said graciously as I took her invitation.
“The phone is in the living room. Can I get you a drink?” She offered.
“Yes please… I’ve been walking for a while.” I said.
“I imagine so… The highway’s a few kilometers from here. It must’ve been quite the hike.”
“You’ve got no idea.” I said.
Sure enough, I found the phone in her living room. It was one of those wireless ones that were all the rage in the mid to late 2000s, although when I picked it up, the battery was dead. Go figure…
The woman emerged from the kitchen with two glasses of soda and offered one to me.
“Thanks.” I said, “Is there another phone, this one’s dead…”
“In the kitchen.” She said, gesturing towards it, “But you should sit first… Catch your breath.”
I took her up on the offer and took a sip of my drink. Not sure what brand of soda it was, but it was awfully bitter.
“I’m sorry, I never got around to introducing myself.” I said, “I’m Steph… You?”
“Matilda.” She replied, “So, what exactly happened to your car?” Matilda was still fixing me in those intense eyes of hers.
“Well, long story short I ran into a moose.” I said, “Saw one out on the road and I stopped to let it pass. Not sure what I did to make it mad, but it took one look at me and went all crazy… Started ramming into my car and everything!”
“It attacked you?” Matilda asked, sounding almost bored, “Interesting… Not the first time I’ve heard that story. It wasn’t a white moose by any chance, was it?”
“It was, actually.” I said, “A real sick looking one too. Has it done this sorta thing before?”
“Many, many times.” She replied, “Old Fae can be… Fickle, creatures. That one in particular, especially so. But we have something of an understanding. I allow him to take blood, and he remains loyal to me… It’s useful to have something like him on your side, you know.”
I raised an eyebrow at her.
“What the heck are you talking about?” I asked.
She chuckled.
“Well, nothing you’ll really need to concern yourself with. Although I am impressed you made it through the woods on foot. He usually catches his prey without much difficulty when I let him claim his blood…”
I stared at her, confused.
“You’re… Talkin’ about the moose, right?” I asked. My words came out a little slurred. I could’ve sworn that I almost felt a little drunk… I suddenly felt very dizzy.
Matilda gave a slow, knowing nod.
“Mikhail. Not sure why his kind tend to choose names like that… Oh well…”
I tried to stand, although my legs gave out from underneath me. I collapsed to the ground, holding onto the table for support as I gave Matilda a: ‘What the heck?’ look.
“Drugged me…” I murmured, only half conscious at this point.
“Noticed that, did we?” She asked, taking a sip of her own drink, “It really won’t do for Mikhail not to get his blood before nightfall… So I’m afraid I’ll have to put you back out there.
“You’re lazy and cliched…” I said before finally collapsing. I’m not sure why I chose that as my final words before what I thought might be my death, but those were the words I went with.
When I came to, Matilda was dragging me across the ground. My body wouldn’t move, and I still felt hazy and out of it. Looking up at the sky, I could see a sliver of orange light on the horizon. The sun was almost gone. Matilda let me drop and I felt her moving my body to prop me up against a tree. I could feel her raising my arms above my head as she bound my wrists together, and began to hoist me up.
“What’re you doin’…” I murmured.
“Finishing the ritual.” She replied plainly, giving me another annoyed look when she realized I was awake, “Hold still.”
I would’ve liked to do anything, but my body still wasn’t really responsive yet.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the massive shape of the white moose walking along the coastline, drawing nearer to us. I know that Matilda saw it, as she glanced knowingly over at it.
“I’m right here, Mikhail.” She said, “With your blood… As promised!”
She never got a chance to finish stringing me up, so she just let me drop as she presented me to the moose. I stared into its empty, hollow eye sockets as it drew closer.
“Do you see? I have honored our covenant…” She said, “As I have always honored it. I have let you take your yearly blood… And when it escaped, I returned it to you. Do you see?”
Mikhail the moose strutted closer to us, and I saw his head lower as he studied me. I stared right back at him. Not in defiance… Oh no, I truly don’t think I’d ever been more terrified of something in my life, and the looming knowledge that this creature was about to kill me left me breathless and paralyzed. I looked into the face of that creature and I knew without a doubt that these would be the final seconds of my life…
Someone would likely find my totaled car along the highway, and my parents might know I’d gotten into some sort of accident, but who could really say whether or not they’d ever find my body… As far as I knew, I was about to become a missing person.
I only hoped that it was quick…
“Noble Mikhail… Feast… And renew our covenant once more…” Matilda urged, watching Mikhail and me intently. As she did, the little sliver of orange on the horizon faded away and the night fell completely.
I stared at the moose skull, just inches from my face. Mikhail huffed, and the stink of rotten meat filled my nostrils.
Then, he lifted his head. He sniffed the air, before finally turning away from me and setting his sights on Matilda.
“Mikhail?” She asked, and for the first time since I’d met her (which was admittedly, not a very long time ago) her voice seemed to waver. She took a step back, before glancing hastily out at the horizon.
She saw the darkness, and I know she realized what it meant.
“Mikhail, I honored our covenant!” She said, shooting the moose a glare as he advanced on her, “I honored it! Surely you see that! You have your blood! Take it!”
But Mikhail didn’t listen. I could see his body tensing again and I knew he was going to charge. So did Matilda.
When the moose came for her, he was off like a shot. I saw Matilda stumble back and heard her scream in terror as Mikhail lowered his horns. Her final scream turned into a choked, strangled gasp as the sharpened tips of his left horn tore through her, ripping through her body and leaving her a twitching mess impaled atop his left horn. He let out another huff before violently shaking his head, tossing her to the ground in a tangled heap.
I could still see her twitching. I could still hear her breathing and I could see her struggling to move. Struggling to crawl as Mikhail approached her. She seemed to curl into a ball as he reached her, weakly holding up a trembling hand as if to beg him for mercy. But mercy never came.
I heard her bones crunching as he brought his hooves down onto her. I heard her final, sobbing cries for mercy. And since I could kinda move my legs again, I figured I might as well try and get out of there while I could.
In my hazy, drugged-up brain, I thought back to my vague and very stupid plan of making it to the ocean. As I forced myself to stand and shuffled towards the shoreline with my hands still bound, I didn’t think about the logistics of the very stupid thing I was about to do. I just went for it. And when I reached the edge of the shoreline, I jumped.
It was not a soft landing, and I’m very lucky the fall itself didn’t kill me.
I tumbled down a rocky incline, falling on my rear and rolling into the freezing cold water of the ocean, and a few minutes after I disappeared below the churning surface, it occurred to me that my hands were still bound and I had no way of actually swimming. Honestly, I blame whatever Matilda had drugged me with.
I tried to hold my breath, but I couldn’t. I grabbed for the rocks when I broke the surface, but my hands just slipped right off them.
Great. I’d survived the terrible undead God Moose, just to drown like an idiot… That was pretty darn pathetic.
The waves dashed me against the rocks again, nearly knocking me out. I could feel blackness tugging at the edges of my vision and from the corner of my eye, I could see Mikhail above me, slowly descending the rocks.
Okay, cool. So I was still getting eaten by the moose after all.
The waves forced me agains the rocks again, and after that… I don’t remember a thing.
I really didn’t expect to ever wake up again, but when I did, I was on dry land. My hands weren’t bound anymore, and I was still soaking wet… But I was alive.
I blinked slowly, coughing up some of the water I’d swallowed before drinking in lungful after lungful of fresh air. The sound of the birds and the waves still filled the air and I looked up to see the light from Matilda’s house close by. I was laying a few feet from her door.
I looked around, scanning the distant treeline for any sign of the moose… And I wasn’t that surprised to see him. Only he was walking away from me, heading back to the forest. I saw him pause by what the broken corpse of what used to be Matilda, as if he were checking to ensure she was dead, and then he started walking again.
A few minutes later, he’d disappeared into the trees entirely.
He never came back out.
I’ve put a lot of thought into what happened to me that night, and truth be told I still don’t fully understand all of it. I know that I became part of something… Some sort of ritual, meant to bind Mikhail to Matilda. I’d figured that part out even before I started combing through the books Matilda kept in her house.
Just what she got out of that ritual, I still don’t really know. She’d called Mikhail an ‘Old Fae.’ From what my research has turned up, that term can be used to describe some very powerful entities, so really, Matilda could’ve been using him to do anything. “It’s useful to have something like him on your side.” She’d said. Maybe the less I know what she meant by that, the better… I’m not entirely sure why Mikhail didn’t kill me when he got the chance… But sometimes I wonder if it was intentional.
Sometimes, I wonder if he was just toying with me the whole time. Chasing me just to see if I could outrun him, while he bided his time, waiting for the sun to set so that he could finally be free of whatever covenant Matilda had with him.
If that’s the case, then I really don’t blame him…
I still make the drive up to Come By Chance a few times a year. It took me a little while to work myself up to going again, but I can’t just never see my parents again. But I’m a little more diligent on those roads now, and if you’re ever up that way, you should be too.
Mikhail may be free of Matilda’s control, and he may have let me live… But I’m still not a hundred percent sure that it’s safe out there now. There were a lotta bones in that ravine of his, and I’m not entirely sure that some of them weren’t human.