Prolog-1997

Prolog-1997

The knife had a shiny black handle that fit perfectly in his hand. The blade was about eight inches long and serrated along the back edge. The smooth front edge had just been honed to a sharpness that could probably spit a hair. The sharpening had calmed his nerves and now the weight of the weapon in his right hand gave him the courage to leave his tent for the second time tonight. Actually, he felt safer in the open where at least he could see it coming, whatever it was.
The scene of his friend’s tent shredded and spattered with deep dark shiny red looming in the glow of his Mag-Lite made him shudder uncontrollably, but this time he held his ground. Previously, he dove back into his tent to find the knife and hide, only to conclude that the tent would offer no protection. Now, he noticed the trail of bloody down feathers and various hiking supplies strewn towards the deep woods, uphill, on the north side of their campsite. Fear slowly turned to anger with his heart pounding, like a fist on his chest, pumping curdled plasma. He moved toward the blood trail, stumbling at first but getting steadier with each step. He was not the type to sit around and wait to be attacked, or to take the murder of his friend lightly. Besides, his friend might still be alive out there somewhere. There sure wasn't a body around the camp, just a whole lot of blood.
He was about fifty or so yards deep when he finally saw the body, or at least most of it. It was sticking out of half a sleeping bag that was dragged along by a bloodlessly pale clenched fist, hardly attached at the shoulder joint. The head was just a distorted bag of facial features that he could never recognize as his, once handsome, friend. One eyeball was hanging out of its socket by the nerves and blood vessels while the other was closed and the skull under the forehead was crushed so that pieces of bone stretched and threatened to tear through the skin. The bottom jaw was completely missing, exposing the esophagus and windpipe, and teeth were everywhere. The nose had been crushed flat and its ridge bone was protruding too far out of one nostril. He spun his flashlight back and forth through the surrounding woods. He did not want to look at the body anymore, and the responsible monster had to be nearby. The beam did not penetrate the forest very well; the darkness seemed to swallow the light. He began to shiver now, the thought of the creature being within seven feet of him and completely invisible was almost too much. Then he heard it, a kind of wet growling slurping sound in the trees just past the body. The hand with the knife flew out in front of him as he shifted back away from the noise to shine the light on it, but the darkness was too powerful for his little flashlight and he could see nothing. The disgusting noise was growing louder and getting more erratic, it was closer now. He panned the light down to his friend’s body thinking that maybe this thing had returned to feed. As the light hit his friend, his stomach dropped so far that it made his testicles ache, then his legs gave out and he fell to his knees amidst a spray of vomit. There was a loud crack as his left kneecap shattered on a pointed rock almost the size of a soft ball. Through tears of pain and with puke still dripping from his chin, he looked up into the wide open, grotesquely perfect, remaining eye of his friend. The chest was heaving slowly, blowing bubbles in the open throat and the holes in one of the lungs were sucking in air then spraying droplets of blood at him. The sound of it now was like an elephant walking through four feet of mud.
With panic crashing over him like a wave of acid he realized that his friend was not looking at him, but past him and the heaving of the chest was becoming very fast and strained. He jumped up to run but severe pain shot up from his left leg, seizing his movement and bringing him down hard. He fell on the knife and it pierced his right bicep clean though as he yelped in pain. Using his good arm, powered with fear, he started to drag himself along, but was stopped suddenly by a squeezing pressure from the back of his neck. Tears were streaming down his face as he floated up and backwards into the air. There was a large grip on his shoulder now and he closed his eyes with a scream. He felt his spine being torn away from ribs and muscle as his head and neck were pulled back away from his body. He could feel it with exact certainty, each and every nerve snapping free and he though that that wasn’t right, so he said as much, but no sound came out. He realized, rather calmly, that he was already dead. Then, everything slowly faded away into nothing…