The pack yelped and barked louder than ever, loud enough to awaken any souls that had ever cursed this land. Another boom of thunder, then another in succession as the storm closed in on Ozzie. Collapsing at the base of the tree, Ozzie plopped down as the alpha male stood before him, charging and snapping at his feet. Retreating and charging. The others circled the tree and ran to the leader at the top of the circle before reversing direction and circling the other way, but so far the tree protected—
Sharp pain emerged from Ozzie’s left shoulder as a starving coyote reached around the tree and inflicted a serious, bone crushing bite. He tried to get up as he realized that the tree had failed him, but he couldn’t rise. There was too much fatigue, too much thirst, too little breath, and too little resolve to mount another defense. The seconds seemed an eternity to Ozzie as he faded, his head bobbing and no longer able to see the forest or the predators. Now he saw only Eduardo’s eyes, his father lying dead in the mud, calling to him. Come with me son. Let go of your pain.
Ozzie felt a wave wash away his pain as a final thunderous clap exploded right before him. The jolt pried his leaden eyelids open once more to see his hunter, the alpha male, staring into his eyes as a thread of saliva suspended from his fangs. Then, the coyote’s legs collapsed as he crashed motionless to the ground at Ozzie’s feet. Ozzie’s eyelids sank again and he drifted away.
***
Jesse used his makeshift walking cane to press away from the creek, and began hobbling up the hill to the target he thought he had seen. “Sixty yards. I can make it,” he said, encouraging himself to press on with each slow and torturous step. The wind had calmed momentarily. There was nothing other than the sound of his left foot planting followed by his cane swishing through the leaves. Each step about half a yard, over one hundred steps to go. Plant and swish, plant and swish. The beat was slow, but constant. Jesse stared only right in front of him. There was no need to look elsewhere, as the darkness gave him a circle of no more than ten feet to discern his surroundings.
He planted his left foot and prepared to move his cane, but a deep depression was right where his cane would have planted. He held the cane off the ground but, to his shock, he heard the sound of a walking stick swish through leaves anyway. It wasn’t his stick. The sound came from above, just to his left. His heart stopped, his skin grew cold and clammy. He needed to calm himself...of course he hadn’t heard that.
But, you did.
Jesse didn’t answer and was scared to make a sound in the darkness. “Just find shelter,” he mumbled to himself.
He planted the cane to the side of the depression and stepped forward, stopping only to listen. Nothing, save the sound he himself had made. He took two steps this time, trying to increase the pace on the second step and then stop suddenly so he could listen intently. Nothing, other than his heartbeat thumping loudly. Five steps this time at a steady pace, then a sixth step that ended with a support tree to Jesse’s left, allowing him to stop abruptly there without lowering his cane. A half swish from his left, maybe twenty feet away, followed a second later by the snapping of a small twig, as if someone’s feet were repositioned.
“Shit!” Jesse said to himself, his mouth drier than an August cotton field in drought.
The wind growled and crept out of the mountain’s ghastly soul as it crossed the slope from his left. And the whispers came again, ghostly whispers saying something, saying nothing. As if every language ever spoken on this land had morphed into a forest opera of hushed voices speaking at once, commingling their words into a haunted stew.
Leave us, suffer, D-E-A-T-H—that’s what I heard.
Jesse took the next step, his cane trembling violently as he moved and planted it. He tried to ignore the whispers and the howls as he moved his cane forward.
A brilliant flash of lightning jolted Jesse. Fear thrust his eyes wide open, turned his head left toward the footsteps he was sure he had heard. He saw nothing but—
He turned his head in front of him, catching the last of the lightning reflect off the target he pursued only a dozen yards away. It was bright white. An erect structure of some kind, tall, like a building in the woods. Definitely something that didn’t belong. His head jerked back left toward—what was it he had seen? There was no one there, he was sure of that, a realization that allowed an audible sigh. But he had seen something.
Did you see that hideous walking stick leaning against the tree? The one with the gnarly root spikes on top?
Jesse’s mouth opened, his breath stopped. He HAD seen it, a thick walking stick leaning against the tree with a spiky head. But, it couldn’t have been...there was no one there. There couldn’t be anyone there. He shook his head, prayed silently and aloud, using the words of the Lord’s prayer to silence the ghostly sounds. Step, swish.
“Our Father, who art in heaven.”
Step, Swish. Step, swish. The cadence of the beat increased until Jesse was within feet of his destination. He still couldn’t make it out, but it was indeed white, the brightest beacon in the forest and at least twice his height. Maybe three times. He walked to it and placed his hands upon its smooth surface. Clank, clank, Jesse knocked gently on the object. “Metal? Here, in the forest. Metal?” Cloud-to-cloud lightning ignited the sky, allowing enough light to filter through the opening in the canopy above for Jesse to make it out.
“What the...an airplane? How the hell did...”
Jesse felt his way around the airplane, the image of its orientation imprinted firmly in his mind’s eye due to the brief illumination, like a freshly snapped Polaroid developing slowly. It was nose down, tail up, and wings extending from underneath the fuselage were still intact, somehow, spreading out at about the height of his chest. He made his way to the passenger side and found that the door was spread wide open. The plane wasn’t perfectly vertical. Rather, it was closer to a forty-five-degree angle and rested against a large tree that supported it from behind.
“Just get inside and close the door,” Jesse told himself. Jesse stumbled around the front, unable to see anything in the blackness. His hands moved slowly over the twisted propeller and trembled as they rounded the nose. He limped through the brush, following his hands until his hip crashed into the support arm of the passenger side wing. Jesse reached up for the passenger door.
And then he heard it.
Jesse froze, his spine stiffening tightly as he heard the most terrifying sound he had ever heard, that anyone had ever heard. A chilling, screaming cry from the depths below him that sounded just like a woman screaming. No, a child crying...something in between. And it was so close, down the slope near the stream where he had first seen the plane.
“Jesus! What the hell was that? Oh Jesus!”
You don’t know what that is? Why that’s nothing but a panther.
Jesse’s voice trembled as he argued with the voice. “Isn’t! There are not any panthers around here.”
Well that thing that’s not a panther, it’s coming this way, Jesse.
Jesse grabbed the trailing edge of the right wing and struggled to pull himself up to the door. Again, a bloodcurdling scream that sounded humanlike, but not human. Wind howled too menacingly for Jesse to hear anything else. He pulled himself up on the support and threw his legs over the fixed landing gear that was interwoven with a tree limb, trying not to put weight on his right foot. His cane fell to the ground, but that was the least of his concerns.
The wind quieted, the sound replaced by thrashing leaves being scattered by footfalls, something rising up from the stream headed his way. The thing that was not a panther. Jesse grabbed the inside of the plane and pulled himself up and in. He scurried to the back seat, using the back of the front seats as his floorboard, and pushed back with his good leg as far removed from the forest floor as he could get. The wind howled again, but only the wind. No voices and no screams. Jesse sat, unflinching, afraid to move and afraid to breath. A loud creaking sound moaned from Jesse’s right, the sound of the tree limb wrestling with the landing gear, forming a bridge between the fuselage and the tree.