Boneater Woods

♦ Thomas Beard ♦

Carson was the first to break through the powerful treeline, then Elly, and finally Old Raymond. Carson was tall and broad, a dark man who had lived through dark times. The fur of his patchwork coat bled like a living thing, dripping sweat and blood, but most of it was crusted over. The solid stains were like scars on the scratchy material.

“We can camp here,” Carson said, sniffing the air. After a long moment of deliberation, Elly felt the hides of a few nearby trees.

“Sprites don’t grow this deep in the cold,” Raymond grumbled.

“Better to check,” Elly said. She paused. “We’re safe.”
“Better to check, is right, Raymond,” Carson said to the old dog. “You’re never sure of anything this deep in the cold. Your words, back over at West Gorge.”
“Mmmm.” Raymond shook his head. “Stonehanger.”
“Pardon?”
“That was at Stonehanger. West Gorge was with the bats.”

“He’s right,” Elly said.

“Hmm.” Carson looked tired. “It’s a long road. Places bleed t’gether, I suppose.”
“Damn right,” Raymond said, following him and Elly into the deep trees. “Places start to bleed together.”

They set up camp in the snow.

The Same Night

The night was silent. It was too cold for bugs to be chirping, and the only sounds were the footsteps of scavengers. There was a quiet scuffling in the trees, one that slowly came closer to the three travelers as they slept. 

Elly snapped awake, her mind cracking forward like a blast out of Raymond’s shotgun. For a moment there, she just breathed, and then she got up.

Tents weren’t the style of the Sparrow Three, oh no no no. You was one of them; you slept under the dark sky. Of course, no one was around out here to mind them. And no one new had been one of them in a long, long time. Not since Briggs.

Elly shoved that thought away, her feet pressing down on the cold, snowy bed of the forest. Snow and pine needles crunched quietly, and the air smelled of evergreen and smoke. Elly, of course, smelled blood. Felt it, too, pulsing under her skin, in her throat, like raw breath in her chest. She wore thick furs, as a traveler should, along with bound leather and a flexible skirt of fur at the top of her pants. The more you wore when it was this cold, the better. But still, the freezing air swept in.

It came into her lungs, too, travelling down the flow of her blood in heaving gasps. As she walked, she saw something perched in the darkness of the forest. It was only a shadow, an urgent dark stop against the light of the full moon. As she got closer, she saw flashes of white skin, so white that it looked dead. The creature’s teeth were a similar color, and sharp. Its mouth opened like a menacing yawn, and the beast let out a strange coo, like a shivering bird. It took all of Elly’s restraint not to rush forward. Instead, she slowly approached the pale creature.

It was a boned thing, that was for sure. White skin scarred around spindly limbs, wrapped into flowy, choppy tendons. The skeleton led upwards to a pursed jaw and heavy, drooling teeth. 

It took every muscle in Elly’s body not to run. Instead, she reached for her .22 Peacemaker, pulling it forward and aiming it right between the damned thing’s teeth. The fucker didn’t even move, just smiled the way an animal does, without being happy. 

Just hungry.

One shot and Elly was a whip, crunching down the stone and fallen wood, followed by a flurry of footsteps pounded down by a soft-skinned monster that should have been full of lead.

Soft-skinned… how did she know that it was soft? Like a baby- she shut it out of her mind. But now the rushing thing was above her, coming down like the shells of the Great War. The ground broke under its weight, sending Elly spiraling down a split path.

She fell painfully, hitting the ground so hard it felt like she was spinning. Her head ached, Then everything went still. Elly breathed and looked up. White drifted peacefully in the air, snowy as Christmas night. The black sky was clouded with gray, the mark of a long winter. Up near Stonehanger, near West Gorge, right around Threetree bend, it was all just winter.

There was no sign of the beast that Elly had felt the moment she stepped into Boneater Wood, even though she didn’t know the name of the danger. No one knew the name, because the forest was a dark place and a primal place, and more importantly, no one ever came out of the damn woods alive.

Elly sucked in a hard breath, feeling her heart in her head. She raised the Peacemaker- and the creature crashed down and attacked.

Back Up the Hill

Carson woke up knowing something was wrong. Raymond woke drowsily, and only at Carson’s thwacking hand.

“The hell you-” He mumbled.

“Shut up.” The words were less malicious than cold, and coming out of Carson’s mouth, they meant death was close. Raymond shut right the hell up.

The tall line of the tree ring hung over them, centered around their three beds positioned like a ritual circle. Carson looked up.

From the trees hung white forms dripping red. Small shapes made of small shapes rolling down along the pines, head down and staring with empty eyes. Raymond saw the skeletons of wolves and birds and unlucky travelers. Carson backed away very, very slowly.

Through the gaps between the trees, the two of them saw rinds of hanging bone, skinned bodies caked in red and black, strips of dried flesh hanging from solid membrane.

“Elly said there was nothin’ here,” Raymond said, still backing away.

“Not everything is somethin’ you can see,” Carson muttered. “Sometimes it's not even somethin’ you feel.” 

There was a massive bang to his right. Carson wheeled around, pushing Raymond back in a flurry of panic. He tripped into one of the taller trees, brushing by the red-blasted corpse of a lost dog. Carson’s skin crawled like it was alive. A shiver of primal fear escaped him, his heart pumping with thick gasps of dark blood and adrenaline. He looked and breathed. The sound was only that of fallen bones. 

The shape of a person rushed through the darkness. They both saw it, and froze. The figure approached slowly, pistol in hand, and Raymond drew his own Winchester and got ready to fire. 

Elly stopped, staring down the barrel of Raymond’s weapon.
“Jesus-” 

“It’s just you.” Raymond lowered the gun. “Good.”

“The hell are you out here for?” Carson asked, “I thought we left you back at camp.”
“I-” There was a rustling in front of them. “I don’t have time to explain.”
“Why not?” Carson’s voice stood on edge.

“Just-” She was cut off by a descending form. 

The Damned Thing

Elly woke up in fits of pain. The darkness around her swallowed everything. Small streams of moonlight buzzed gently, cut off. There was neither motion nor sound, save the beating of pain on Elly’s side and the force of blood in her head, shaking coldly. She moved herself, slowly at first, climbing across the hard rock. She must have been in some kind of cave.

She remembered the other two. Standing up fitfully, legs aching, she approached Raymond’s sleeping form, the only one she saw. 

Raymond came to slowly, a gentle tension rocking him awake, a quiet panic. He gasped, settling for a couple seconds on the beat of his lungs and heart. He saw the outline of Elly’s face staring over him, but it was too dark to see anything else.

“Where-”
“Shh.” Elly breathed. The hum of blood on the edge of her fingers spread to Raymond’s twin pulse. He obeyed. Raymond had no desire to wake whatever might be sleeping in this cave. Unless, of course, it was already awake. 

“Where’s Carson?” He whispered. Elly just shook her head. Raymond felt a powerful fear in his stomach.

“Where-”
“I don’t know.” Elly said, now annoyed. Raymond fell back with relief. Carson wasn’t dead. Just missing.

Same name for Sam, the unpleasant part of him thought, staring down at the tilted darkness. “What is it?” He asked after a moment. “The thing that-”
“Dunno what it’s called.”
“I didn’t ask its name. Just what it is.”
“Somethin’ outta Hell.” Elly stood up in full now, a few inches taller than Raymond. She walked further.

And so further the cave went, a layer of scarred rock under the surface of snow and salmon-red trees. Their twin footsteps echoed across the rock, gentle heartbeats. With time, their pulses calmed. They forgot the danger that brought them there. Their walk became quiet, and calm, until Elly stopped.

Raymond thudded into Elly’s back with a powerful slam.

“Fucking-”

He stopped. Elly didn't move, didn’t respond, barely even breathed. She just stared up helplessly, pitiful, a desperate kind of reverent fear swelling in her eyes. Raymond looked up. Above them both, a woven mass of sticky white formed a strange cocoon. And face-down and limp was the bleeding head of a tired old hunter by the name of Carson Stark.

And something pale and long slowly ate him at the sides. But worse than the horrible, wet crunches of teeth on teeth on bone was the deafening, screaming silence. The silence of the pale thing stopping, and looking down, those dozen bright eyes staring back at them.

The swarm of them trampled like a dark light, breaking through the cave in a horde of motion and skin. Raymond shoved himself back, tripping over air and rock and pulling out his Winchester and firing in vain. The cracking sound was met with the chorus of a dozen violent screams. Rock fell. Another burst of noise and blood, and then it was oh so very quiet. 

Neither of them could breathe. Elly lit a match, bringing it up to the ceiling of darkness. The rock bulged. Elly looked down. There was only stone either way. The only way out was up, blocked by those dozen things. The rock bulged again. Raymond cocked his gun. 

Slowly, something emerged from a hole in the rock. It was too dark to see, at first, but it had the outline of something human shaped. Elly brought up her gun as well. Neither of them breathed as the thing came closer.

Brigg’s face broke through the darkness—the face of the man who’d been dead six months. 

Raymond lowered the gun. Elly felt for hers, blinking back tears, knowing what this had to be. Briggs approached Raymond first, reaching out a hand. Elly stared at it. The hand, the arm, looked wrong. Elly couldn’t describe it. It just did.

Raymond mumbled something full of love. He reached his hand out to meet Briggs. Elly pursed her lips.

And then she pumped a heavy bullet straight into Brigg’s wrong face, tearing it into two screaming mouths. The Briggs-thing shrieked, a scream so full of teeth and spit that it hurt, blood spraying through the darkness. It crashed on top of her, the flowing maelstrom of a mouth spreading waves of teeth, the hotness of its breath boiling on Elly’s face. She struggled, but could not help but shut her eyes.

There was another shriek.

Elly opened her eyes, suddenly released. Raymond stood above her, behind the torn meat of the toothed thing. Elly was about to speak, but she looked back and saw Raymond stare back at her with the most raw, violent, bitter hurt that she had ever seen in a man’s eyes. He pointed up to a streak of now-sunlight.

“There,” he said. He kept his eyes trained on Elly, not wavering for a second. On their side, the fallen rocks moved under the heavy pressure of a dozen clawing things.

“We can get out.”

Travelers

The snow mixed with the bitter tears in both their eyes.

Raymond sat staring in the back of the small wagon as Elly led the black stallion. She cried.

Carson. Briggs and Carson.

Places start to bleed together.

All the road ever brought was pain. 

The words he had spat at Elly in a blind, tired rage now rang as helpless echoes in his mind. You couldn’t even try to believe.

He clawed at his skin.

You couldn’t even fucking try.

He shut his eyes suddenly, painfully, breathing hard, begging the voices to stop.

It’s like you wanted him dead.

Raymond bit the inside of his mouth, quietly sobbing, begging his mind to just, please, stop. 

And a dark silence settled over him.

As they rode out further into the deep cold, Raymond felt the wraith warmth of Brigg’s mouth against the back of his neck.