Greetings, Talebones Readers!
DISCLAIMER: This is a horror tale, and therefore may contain themes and situations that are darker than my average fare.
Reader discretion is advised.
This is the sixth part of a multi-part short story.
Read Day One, or
Read Day Two, or
Read Day Three, or
Read Day Four, or
Read Day Five.
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DAY SIX
Cal could taste his panic, a tinny taste filling his mouth, as he tried to figure out what to do. The cabin had no other exits; the bathroom window was far too small to squeeze through, and the front window was in line with the porch. Pointless.
“Cal,” Richard said wearily, from outside the door. “It’s over.”
Cal felt like a prey animal, fear-blind, captured by terror. He couldn’t think. He had never bothered to learn self-defense, had never handled a weapon in his life. He didn’t know anything about Richard. He was old, but did that matter?
He could kill me, Cal thought. The old man really could kill me if he wants to.
The sense that the cabin walls were closing in on him intensified. Before he could think, the sound of the lock clicking, the crunch of a key, sent sirens of fear shooting down his spine.
“I didn’t want to have to do it this way,” Richard said, almost apologetic, as the lock turned. “Eileen keeps a master set of keys in the office. She doesn’t keep a close eye on them, though.”
The door opened, just slightly at first. Snow blew in through the gap, a frenzy of flakes falling on the entry rug.
Then, Richard shoved through the door.
In a mad response, Cal dove straight for the opening. For all his talk the old man was not prepared to be rushed. Cal shoved him back against the door, avoiding the flailing arc of the knife, and raced out into the snow, feet bare, mind numb. He ran like hell for the lodge, but the safe glow of the lights had been doused and the windows were all dark. He tried the doors, screamed for Eileen. But the lodge was locked against the night, and Eileen didn’t answer.
The car. Cal dashed for his car, but only when he reached it did he realize that he didn’t have his keys. The keys were in the cabin, and Richard’s dark shadow was standing at the head of the cabin trail, watching him, the knife glinting in his hand.
“Come back, Cal,” Richard called, his voice muffled by the snow. “It’s just you and me now. Imp can decide whom it prefers.”
The snow was piling, five or six inches already, and Cal’s feet were steadily losing feeling, pinpricks of pain lining his soles. He paused to consider his options, keeping an eye on the old man’s waiting figure.
He needed his car keys and his boots. A coat wouldn’t hurt, either, and his phone. He needed to get back to the cabin, but he didn’t trust his luck rushing Richard a second time. He honestly didn’t know what the painter was capable of.
Cal loped off across the parking lot toward the creek, reasoning that he could double back around and approach the cabin from the other side. He hoped, maybe, he could lose the old man in the woods.
The creek was a black artery in the snow, and where the water had been sluggish and quiet before it sped by, now gorged on falling flakes. The creekside trail looked foreign with everything covered in white, but the snow tamped down the ferns and bracken and hid roots and stones, which Cal stumbled over, cursing. He ignored the sharp pins and needles in his feet, pushed himself along the creek’s edge, not stopping to see whether Richard was following along behind.
He knew that if he stopped to look he would lose precious time.
He ran on, down the shoreline, trying to estimate the distance parallel with the cabin trail, though his mind was too afraid to think clearly.
He rounded a corner and realized where he was.
Ahead of him was the crown of roots, the corpse of the giant tree. Somehow untouched by the snow, as if the flakes refused to land on it. The black mouth at its center seemed wider, somehow, beckoning, and the roots seemed to reach for the clouds, eerie with their ghostly reflected light. The snowflakes flurried around the maw like the fretful moths. The sound of the creek tumbling underneath seemed to scream.
Cal whirled, turned to the woods to cut across to the cabins, and froze when he saw Richard approaching, emerging from the trees. Impossible. Knife bared.
“Easy, Cal,” Richard said. “It’s done.”
“Come on,” Cal said, immediately angry at himself for sounding so afraid, his voice a high whine. “This is stupid. Let’s talk about this.”
Richard shook his head. He didn’t even have the decency to look crazed. He seemed calm, prepared for whatever was about to happen. Fated, even. Snowflakes landed on the shoulders of his cardigan and danced around his ears.
Cal held up his hands. “Let’s end the retreat early, go back to bed, head home in the morning, forget any of this ever happened. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
Richard sighed. “It wasn’t up to either of us. I see that, now.”
Cal expected more, but it didn’t come. The old man leaped forward, self-assured, faster than Cal anticipated, and Cal scrambled backward, ankle bitten by a bare cane of blackberry, pitching him ass-first into the creek. It was cold, so cold, but his butt rested on the slimy stone floor and he pushed himself upright, only to have Richard fall upon him with a shout.
The old man’s clawed hands dug into Cal’s shoulders, forcing him down under the swirling water. The knife had slipped from Richard’s grasp in his jump but he held Cal down with one unnaturally strong hand as he scrambled in the water for the blade with the other. Cal hadn’t had time to hold his breath and he sputtered, coughed, shoved himself up but his arms were cold and the stones were so slippery.
Richard must have found the knife, because the next thing Cal knew there was a fire in his left shoulder, pain ripping along his neck and up into his skull. The pain was agony, but it was also clarity. It woke him up more than anything he had ever experienced before.
With a roar he threw himself upward, knocked Richard back and struggled to his feet in the tumbling creek. He was numb all over, nerves tingling, feeling nothing, heart pounding in time with a fluttering sound, deep within the bowels of the dead tree. War drums.
He stood over the old man, and for the first time the painter looked afraid.
But it wasn’t because of Cal. And he knew it. It was because of something that gripped Cal from behind, soft arms twining around him without warmth, no mouth to whisper, no mouth to bite or sing or laugh. Just arms, animating and filling and pulling, like a puppet master.
Cal advanced on Richard, and the old man lifted a quivering, sodden arm to shield his wide-eyed face.
All he could say—a whisper, a sob—was,
“Imp. Please.”
Cal felt his joints articulate without his permission.
Then, he watched it all happen before his horrified gaze, unable to stop it, unable to shut out the old man’s terrified screams.
*******
Cal woke with a strangled cry and sat up in bed.
He was back in the cabin, tucked under the blankets. The door was closed and locked against a purple dawning morning, the snow outside throwing unnatural brightness on the walls.
He put a hand to his left shoulder and found no pain. He pulled the duvet back and looked at his bare feet, and they seemed perfectly healthy, unscarred, still bed-warm.
A dream? It certainly seemed that way. But something within him felt uneasy. There were images in his mind lingering still, and sounds…such sounds…
He dressed quickly, putting on his boots and his coat and stepping out into the cold, clear morning.
The snow was thick and deep, sparkling. Nearly a foot, if he had to guess. He hiked through to Richard’s cabin and climbed the porch steps, peering in through the window.
The lights were off. Richard’s bed was made, untouched.
Maybe he’s up already, Cal thought.
Cal pushed on, up to the lodge. But only when he neared it did he realize that it was still very early, and Eileen hadn’t unlocked the doors yet for breakfast. Cal peered through the first-floor windows, but there was no sign of Richard.
He stood for a time, hands in his coat pockets, breath curling up and away from him into the air, before he turned to face Graft Creek. He shivered.
Cal crossed the parking lot. He was halfway searching for his own footprints in the snow, though he knew he would never see them. There had been too much snowfall overnight. He walked like a man pulled, pushed, prodded from behind. He walked like a sleepwalking man, heading toward an unknown end. The truth. The cliff.
He walked, even though he knew he wouldn’t like it. Wouldn’t like to see it.
Cal followed the creek, and it seemed to run alongside him, goading him along. A gleeful child. The land of dancing spirits.
Come see! Come see what’s happened! Come see what’s been done!
He rounded the bend and paused to peer up at the towering crown of roots with something like reverence. Something like gratitude. Because he knew what he would see when he looked down.
Cal dropped his gaze to the black pool at the base of the giant tree’s corpse. A place where offerings might be given. A place where sacrifices might be made. The moths floated there, drawn to the utter darkness of the void.
Come see! Come see!
There in the pool was Richard floating facedown, arms outstretched, his cardigan spread out from his thin frame like a pair of dusty, tattered brown wings.
I STILL HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE FINALE?!
This is a great series - I’m loving the Shining type vibes mixed with It Comes at Night