The following is an experiment. I wrote Monarch several years ago, while plugging away in college. It has sat on my shelf, unpublished, for all those years, but I still think its a good story. So, I'm going to do a web series over the next couple of months, leading up to Halloween. Each Friday, I will post the next chapter. Give it a chance, and let me know what you think in the comments. Here goes.
From
the thunder, and the storm—
And
the cloud that took the form
(When
the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of
a demon in my view—
-Edgar Allan Poe
Existence
precedes imagination
-Parmenides
Prologue
He heard scratching on wood—an irritating but melodic noise that pulled him from his sleep. Harold’s eyes fluttered open to a sleepy blurriness that enveloped his vision. The sound came from outside the front door of the cabin. At first it seemed like he’d opened his eyes underwater, and they weren’t focused, but as his eyes adjusted, the blurriness faded. The scratching on the door was so soft and barely perceptible that Harold wondered why he had woken up. He wondered if the faint sounds were real, if he wasn’t just attributing something to nothing—
Something pounded on the wall of the cabin, just once, and then, the scratching continued. Harold looked around the cabin and saw that his bunkmates, his fellow hunters, were still asleep. He fingered the zipper on his sleeping bag and pulled it open. A stream of cold air enveloped his legs and body and he paused, allowing his body to adjust to the cool temperature of the room. The October cold front seemed to be early this year, especially at night. Any other time, the coolness would be refreshing, but at that moment, the thought of being exposed to the cold night air did not appeal to Harold’s shivering body. Goosebumps uncomfortably prickled his exposed skin.
Harold swung his legs around and placed them on the floor. Though calloused, the freezing boards that made up the floor seemed to bite the bottoms of his feet. Harold slid his feet into the nearby boots, but didn’t bother to lace them. He again checked the others—still asleep. The scratching persisted. Harold thought the sounds came from an animal’s nails, maybe a fox or badger. He clumped over to the window and looked outside. A thin layer of frost covered the window. Night disappeared slowly into the gloom and he saw the morning sun struggling to peek through the dark forest. Deep shadows inhibited his vision, limiting his view from the window. He pressed his nose against the glass, his breath blanketing the window with a dense fog. For a moment, the scratching stopped and Harold thought that whatever had been scratching knew that he was looking through the window. The silence lasted only several seconds before the animal skittered along the outside wall, just around the corner and out of sight. Harold craned his neck and squinted against the shadows. The sound reminded Harold of spiders—though very big—crawling across the walls of the cabin. Spiders or something with claws… something that released air from its joints as it crawled, adding to the spongy popping and cracking.
A tiny arm reached around the corner, digging its claws into the wood and climbed to the roof. The claws clutched the wood for an instant then disappeared, but Harold saw the grayish-white color, the bony structure, and the claws; all of which he realized in horror were spider like in nature. His stomach twisted and he choked as he backed away from the window, rubbing his eyes. Not real—it couldn’t be. The thing was not an animal, at least it didn’t look like any animal he had seen or could even remember seeing. The skin seemed almost white, but glistened with a dark hue. And the claws were more like something he imagined on a sea monster, not a forest critter.
Scratching
Harold jumped as the thing scratched the wood right next to the window, though it kept itself out of sight. Even so, Harold looked away, afraid of what he might see if the monster decided to peer through the glass. The scratching stopped and the skittered crawling continued up the side of the cabin until he heard the claws digging into the wooden shingles on the roof. He heard the faint thumping on the roof as the creature darted back and forth, right above his head.
It’s trying to get in, Harold thought, clouding his thoughts. Dread sank within his bowels like a bitter lump of writhing worms. It’s trying to get in… and when it does, it will kill me. Something inside him whispers about the monster and he knows that it’s trying to get in and feed. The knowledge about this monster is almost instinctual—every move it will make, every person it will kill, plays out in Harold’s mind.
He grabbed his rifle from its case and crawled back into his sleeping bag on the bottom bunk. The creature’s claws dug into the shingles, tapping—its joints popped as it twisted jerkily around the roof, and then down the side of the cabin again. Harold whimpered slightly as silence filled the air like a deadly mist. He waited. A goat-like, rancid stench filled the air. Dry and rotted, yet somehow sickly moist.
The monster snarled, a deep and gravely sound that Harold felt, just as much as heard, in his brain. Harold pressed his ear against the wall and listened for the monster. It scratched slowly, as if toying with him, directly opposite his ear, right on the other side of the wall. Harold yelped and jerked away from the sound, nearly falling off his bunk in a tangle of body parts and sleeping bag. He thrashed until he freed himself and stood up in the center of the cabin. The creature skittered on the walls, darting over the window. Harold saw the shadow—much larger than he had imagined—as it disappeared toward the entrance. He stared at the door and saw that slowly, the doorknob began to move. It jiggled the knob, twisting and turning it, though not enough to cause the deadly click that would release the door from its frame. Harold could taste his fear, a bitter and metallic lump that clogged his throat and assaulted his taste buds. The fear hurt his clenched teeth, he felt as though he were chewing aluminum foil. The stench of his dread mixed with the rotting smell of the monster mixed in the air all around him and Harold knew that it could smell his fear too. Animals can sense fear; they know when you are afraid.
The monster screeched—maybe in rage at not being able to get inside the cabin. It slammed its body into the door. The wood shuddered under the monster’s weight, sending dust into the air, of which Harold was only vaguely aware. His thoughts were of the monster bursting through the cabin and ripping through his skull—eating his brain, his adrenaline, his dread. Somehow he knew that the creature not only relished the smell of fear, but the taste as well. The thing feasted on fear, savoring the spongy mass of brain soaked in fear. And once it gets me, he thought, it will kill the others, eating their brains as well. And then my family, he thought. He saw his family cornered in their house, watching the monster deftly approach them. The monster was different in this thought—it had grown, probably because it had feasted so well on fear. We are so eager to be afraid, to be scared, to feed the monster. Fear, bitter, taste—it’s coming! It’s breaking through the door! The thing slammed against the wood again and Harold’s thoughts jerked themselves into his reality. He lost control, no longer able to process and react to the thoughts that plagued his mind.
“Help!” Harold whispered, though it sounded more like a choke than a plea. He crouched in the corner and covered his ears—protecting himself from the sounds of the monster breaking in. The monster pummeled the door again so loudly that it woke the others. The crack in the door spread bottom of the door to the top. One more hit and the monster would have access to Harold and his brain—his fear.
“It’s coming in!” Harold screamed and the other hunters sat up in their beds fully alert. The men were confused at first, wondering what was happening, and why Harold was acting so strangely. The monster threw its entire weight at the door, breaking more wood to the floor.
“What is it?” The others shouted, “Harold, what’s going on!” They jumped from their beds and grabbed their guns. Harold covered his ears and tried to back further away from the door, squeezing himself into the back wall of the cabin. The monster growled, a screaming rasp that stung their ears. One of the hunters, rifle raised, walked slowly toward the door, reaching to turn the knob. The man had wildly thick hair that stuck out in all directions. He moved sluggishly, obviously nervous but wanting to assure the others that nothing was drastically wrong.
“Its just a bear, guys.” The man said nervously, his words drowned in the vicious snarling. The monster ripped at the door with its claws. The man turned the knob slightly and the room exploded with a gunshot. The hunter at the door slammed into the door, blood spreading on his back in a dark stain. The other men spun around to face Harold, who’s gun still pointed to the area where their fellow hunter and friend had stood—thin lines of smoke wafted from the barrel. Harold lowered his gun, shaking with sobs. He covered his eyes and ears and beat his head against the back wall.
“Please,” Harold whispered, “please don’t let it get me.” He pointed to their fallen comrade, “he would have let it in.” His gun clattered to the ground and he sank to his knees. “Please help me. Don’t let it get me.”
The doorknob suddenly fell to the floor—the monster had broken off the other end and pushed it through the hole. The door swung lazily on its hinges. Harold’s cries tore through the air. A low growl floated in from outside. The claws clicked on the wood as the monster entered the cabin.
Harold’s ears exploded with the sound of gunshots—all fired at once at the ghastly monster that walked straight from his mind into their little cabin. As his comrades fell, as they screamed and flailed toward the door, trying to escape. Smoke from the gunpowder filled the air, obscuring Harold’s vision, but he saw flashes of grayish white and felt splatters of warm blood on his face and arms. One of his friends fell next to where he crouched, part of his skull missing. Harold covered his eyes, not wanting to see the realization of the horrible pictures in his head. He blocked out the screams, though they were dying down already. He heard the clicking of the monster’s claws on the floor of the cabin, the slight popping of its joints. Harold thought he heard thunder in the distance. Felt the thunder, was more like it. But it was probably just his imagination.
No comments:
Post a Comment