Predators

Word count 2049


The sharp report of the thirty ought six echoed across the hollow. A blue jay took to the sky in startled flight, squawking in an angry voice, as it settled on another perch. The deer vanished into the gloomy depths of the forest, waving its white tail as it fled, crashing through the underbrush in a blind panic.

“You missed,” his father sighed with visible disappointment.

Michael didn't hear him. In the darkness behind his eyes he could still see that shadowy figure lurking behind a tree at the edge of his telescopic sight. Watching him with dulled eyes gazing over the rotted flesh of a skeletal hand. He shivered as a chill caressed his neck.

He hesitantly brought the scope back up to his eye and scanned the forest where he’d first seen the apparition. The gnarled branches of a twisted tree came into focus, the bark gray with age, the spindly fingers of its branches caressing one another in the slanted brawl of a dead fall. Must have been his imagination he sought to convince himself.

“There be strange things in Rodman's Hollow,” his Grandfather’s raspy voice whispered in his mind, “don't get caught out there at night.”

As a child Michael had spent endless hours with his Grandfather, watching him while he whittled, listening as he spoke of places and things far beyond his young mind’s comprehension. Grandpa never made anything with his whittling just turned big pieces of wood into mounds of slivers that would vanish into the cast iron stove at the back of the barn.

“What kinds of things Grandpa?” He’d asked.

“Why there be odd beasts in the hollow that have never seen the light of day. Some say the hollow is cursed. And the Indians used to call it Tehetoko, land of evil. It’s been said that even the ghosts of the dead avoid Rodman’s Hollow.”

“Even Grandma?” Michael had asked breathlessly, his young mind imagining his frail grandmother’s ghost skirting the edge of the hollow as she hobbled through the forest with the aid of her walker.

“Yes,” his Grandfather replied as he reached down to fondly tousle his hair with one calloused hand, “even grandma.  I want you to promise me you'll never go out there at night, never ever, do you understand?”

“Yes, Grandpa,” he replied solemnly.

“Hey, earth to Mikey, earth to Mikey!”  His father’s voice intruded into his thoughts. Washing away the memory of that day with his Grandfather. He hated it when his father called him Mikey.

“Huh?”  Michael looked up into his father's round face. He'd promised his grandfather he wouldn't come here at night, and now it was starting to get dark. Beyond the bare branches of the trees reaching for the sky, a single star glittered with a hard light against the purple dusk.

“You ready to go?”

“Yeah sure.”  He looked around at the gloomy forest. They were out there, the thought intruded; he could feel their presence.

“Let's get our things together.”  His father stooped down to pick up the backpack and stopped. Slowly he dropped to one knee as he massaged his chest.

“Are you all right?” Michael asked.

“Yeah, I'll be okay,” he grunted.

Clutching his chest his father fell onto the platform that had been built into the vee of the spreading branches of an ancient oak tree.

“Ohmygodammititalltohell,” his father spat out as he drew himself into a tight ball.

Michael dropped his backpack and knelt down beside him. He rolled him over onto his back and looked into his pain filled eyes.

“What's wrong?”

“My heart!”  His nostrils dilated as he struggled to breath. He tried to sit up.

“We have to get out of here, now. It's getting dark” His father moaned through clenched teeth.

His father's eyes cleared for a moment and in them Michael could see a wild terror. He knew of the legends of Rodman's Hollow, of course everyone in town knew of the legends, and the whispered warnings relayed from one generation to the next.

Everyone had heard of how Doctor Andrew Thomson was found one morning wandering through the forest, his eyes searching wildly for things that were not there. Babbling endlessly about the creatures that emerged after dark. Overnight his black hair had gone snow white. He was now a resident of the state, locked up at a place called Walnut Bottom down on the Eastern shore, far from the gloomy depths of the hollow.

Nearly every man in the town, his father included, had been involved in the search for Bobby Jenkins who rode his bike into the hollow one evening and never
returned. All they ever found was one bloodied sneaker lying next to the mangled wreckage of his bike.

But his father knew something more than the others. Almost as if his father could read the questions on his face he began to talk, struggling to breathe, one hand massaging his chest.

“Do you remember the old home place?”

Michael searched his memory but all he could find were faded images of a small house sitting on the edge of a forest. He shook his head.

“We used to live right next to the hollow, you know the old haunted house on Silver lane?”

Michael nodded.
“That's where we used to live, your mother and I, as well as your older brother.”

“I had an older brother?”  The sound of movement came from the forest and Michael looked up quickly. He scanned the gloomy depths, night was enveloping the forest, a black emptiness filled the spaces between the closest trees.

How were they ever going to get out of here? He wondered.

“You mother and I decided to keep it a secret from you, you see, your brother, David, vanished in the hollow.

“I had an older brother?” Michael whispered again as he searched his mind for any memory of an older brother. How could they have kept something like that secret from him? What about pictures? Surely they kept at least one.

“Do you have any pictures?”

“Just one, in my wallet.”  Michael could remember going through his father’s wallet on several occasions, he couldn't recall any pictures, except the one. Old and faded, its edges cracked from age, showing a smiling young man standing next to a sleek car. Michael wasn't all that familiar with older cars so he didn't know what kind it was. But it looked fast and powerful. He’d always assumed the photo was that of his father in his younger years.

He spotted movement and zeroed in. Something black and sinuous moved among the trees lightly disturbing the snow-covered ground.

“They're coming, I can feel them.” His father whispered in a ragged voice.

“Who? What?”

“About a week after your brother disappeared, he came back, only he wasn't your brother any more.  Something else inhabited his body, something older than time itself, had used him to enter the world of the living.”

From under the tree stand came the sound of someone, or something- Michael pushed the thought away- walking around the base of the tree.

“He came back for you.”  Michael looked down at his father. He couldn’t see his face clearly in the gathering darkness, but he could sense the growing insanity emanating from him in nauseous waves.

“He knew your mother was pregnant.  I don't know how, we didn't find out until a week after he visited that she was carrying.”

“He wanted me, why?”

“I don't know, I didn't want to know.”  A branch snapped to their left and both strained to peer into the thickening darkness.

“He's out there now, watching, waiting.”

“Michael,” a soft voice whispered from the darkness.

“It was that damned book, I knew I should never have let him buy it.”

“What book? What are you talking about?”

“I'm waiting for you Michael.”

“David was different from the other kids. He didn't collect baseball cards, or talk that much about cars, even when he was sixteen he had no interest that we could see in girls.”

“Michael, the time has come, the stars are right.”

“I bought him the car in the picture, I guess I was hoping it would help to make him popular, it didn't. He was still interested in the occult. We figured it was just a phase he was going through, that he'd outgrow it. He didn't.”

”Are you filling Michael with lies father?”  A booted foot scraped over the rung of the ladder they'd used to climb into the tree stand.

“Come with me Michael, there's so much to see, so much to learn.”  the voice was directly under the platform. Michael stood up, slipped the butt of the rifle into the crook of his shoulder, and aimed at the floor of the platform.

“I've got a gun,” he called out, trying to sound unafraid, his voice betraying his fear.

“Is that any way to greet your long lost brother.”

“I'm warning you, whoever, or whatever, you are.”

“And in the great testament of the time before man, when gods warred for the universe, let no arrow pierce your flesh. No swords cleave your skull. No weapon, nor other device of death, sway you from your quest.”

Michael squeezed the trigger. The report was muffled, swallowed by the thick darkness all around them. He felt as if he had cotton stuffed into his ears. At the point where he’d aimed, glowing starkly against the gray wood, a white gash marked the point of impact.

Michael gazed in disbelief as an ebony shadow flowed through the hole, spreading like a growing pool of water, a knighted abyss of eternal emptiness. From the forest around them a multitude of voices whispered. His brother’s voice called out to them from the forest depths.

“You've unleashed their hunger.”

The shadows spread out in a widening pool of emptiness that soon enveloped his father’s booted foot. His father screamed in a high-pitched voice.

“Get them off of me, oh god no, get them off of me! Save me!”

The shadows engulfed his feet and made their sinuous way up his legs, blanketing his prone body with a burial shroud of deepest ebony.

“Dad.” Michael stood rooted in place as the shadows slowly enveloped his father. He felt he should do something, anything, but instinct kept him from reaching out. Somehow he just knew that touching his father would be the worst possible thing he could do right now. All he could do was watch helplessly as the shadows slowly enveloped his body.

His father’s eyes glimmered with the light of encroaching insanity.

“Save me,” he pleaded, “let me die before they take me.”  His eyes dropped to the rifle in Michael’s hands.

“No,” Michael was shocked, “I can't.”

“Please.”  The shadows have encircled his father waist. From their ebony depths Michael could hear the faint crackling of an electric anticipation. Like a million voices crying out for sustenance. A long finger of emptiness moved across the platform towards him, Michael backed to the edge of the platform as it approached.

“No!”  David's voice boomed through the night stopping the shadows approach.
“He is mine.”

“Please let me die.”  His father screamed as the shadows formed a beard of emptiness around his fat jowls. Then he spoke no more as they covered his mouth. Only his eyes remained, full of a capering insanity.

“Please daddy, no.”

Michael lifted the rifle to his shoulder and zeroed in on his fathers forehead. He tried to squeeze the trigger, but couldn’t as the last light of sanity in his fathers eyes faded from view.

“You want me!” He screamed into the night as his head swiveling in every direction.

“There be strange things in Rodman's Hollow,” his Grandfather’s voice whispered from the emptiness behind him.

“Grandpa?” Michaels asked.

“Stay out of this old man! Go back from whence you came.” David’s voice echoed through the emptiness, dripping venom from every syllable.

“There be strange things in Rodman's Hollow,” the voice was closer now, ignoring David’s fury, offering Michael a faint glimmer of hope.