The Pines

light. Beyond the bright island in front of the car lay only a void. Like the end of the world. Not limping, though her leg ached, she headed into the trees. “Steven?” Her shadow hurtled on ahead of her, startling her as it leaped from trunk to trunk. “Matthew?”

Hot wind gritted across the sand, and she listened to the night keening as it passed over her.

It knows. She switched off the flashlight and clipped it to her belt. It’s waiting. Moonlight clawed through the trees, ran up the barrel of the rifle. In a few moments, her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, and she moved on.

She heard birds calling in agitation…and other noises now, tiny sounds, as though dozens of small slinking beasts scurried through the brush. Things crunched underfoot. Please, be all right. Her hand went numb, and she relaxed her grip on the rifle, felt the blood tingle back into her fingers.

A ticking of leaves and twigs became a heavy crunching.

“Steven?”

It grew louder.

She aimed the rifle at nothing she could see.

It growled.

She fired and ran, blinded, her shoulder aching from the recoil. No dream. Behind her, bulk shifted and rattled through the pines. It’s not a dream. She spun around, fleetingly aware of an area of moving darkness.

Again, the gun rocked and roared, and she breathed the tang of gunpowder.

It grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back.

She felt its talons, felt her scalp burn as hair ripped out. Crystals of pain tore through her skull, and her mouth pulled open, a gravid choke bursting in her throat. Whirling, she struck with the rifle butt, the blow containing all the terror-born fury of a thousand nightmares.

The dark shape staggered.

The gun wrenched from her grasp to go crashing into the dark.

She ran. Pain jolted in her leg as she broke through thick bracken. She could hear the thing crashing through the underbrush close behind her, and she stumbled, the flashlight on her belt banging against her thigh. She groped for the flashlight, pulled it loose. Switching it on, she cast it as far as she could into the pines. Instantly, she bolted in the opposite direction.

The pounding in her chest squeezed the breath from her until she could hear nothing but her own gasps. Sinking to the ground, she curled her body into a ball, found a bush to crawl beneath.

The night came in with wave after wave of terror; she felt it close above her head like a black foam. Don’t move. Ragged tendrils of the dark wrapped themselves around her, and she hid herself in them. Don’t make a sound. Wind hissed in her ears, and she felt safe, one with the night.

Where’s the moon? When she opened her eyes, she could no longer see the stars. Her hands traveled over herself, feeling for blood, for gaping wounds. Her sides ached, and she trembled with a shock reaction from the pain in her scalp.

Something swirled in her vision, off in the trees, dim movement.

Mist shrouded the glow of the flashlight. But I threw it farther than that, and I ran. How could…? The splaying beam swung through the trees. Steve? She stayed crouched, and her chest heaved.

In refracted brightness, she could almost see what held the flashlight, could almost make out the misshapen arm. It’s coming this way!

The beam struck her eyes, and her night vision blanked out. An unvoiced scream rattling in her brain, she turned her head until the beam passed on. She blinked. Dark and squat in the diffuse moonlight, something loomed behind her in the reeds.

A shack! Lurching to her feet, she almost pitched forward, and her leg exploded in pain. Gritting her teeth to keep herself silent, she hobbled toward the hut, looking back with every step.

The patch of brightness had stopped moving, still a good distance away, and she staggered on, gaining speed as the leg responded to her panicked demands. It’s back there. Way back there. Peering over her shoulder, she noticed the light still had not moved…that it seemed curiously low to the ground.

The thing had thrown it away. It could be anywhere now. Pain loosened its grip on her side, and she limped rapidly toward the hut. Could be right behind me!

Off its hinges, the door leaned against a tree. No shelter here. Nowhere to run. Drying mud flats stretched all around in the faint moonlight.

A weapon—there could be something inside. She had to press against the wall and step across a bent sapling, and even as she entered, she realized this movement reminded her of something. Matty at the shed that rainy morning, that pantomime he did. She tried not to breathe through her nose, but a stench coated the roof of her mouth, gagging her. Mouth open, she peered back through the doorway. Is it following?

She stepped on something soft.

No. Moonlight leaked through the doorway, and the reeking shack swam about her. Run! Slowly, her eyes adjusted. Get away from here! She looked down at something like a black pudding stuffed into a dress and became aware that other things sprawled around her, vague shapes, some in advanced states of liquefaction. Something rustled.

Her eyes tracked across the moonlit floor.

From a dark corner inside the shack came a blubbering mockery of words. She backed away, slipped on a mound, fell, and a lump of something slimy as wet clay came away in her hand. She rolled. There was movement in the bulk she tumbled over, and she recoiled with a silent shriek.

“’Th-thena…” It spoke and reached for her.

“Steve!” She knelt by him, felt the wetness of his shirtfront. “You’re hurt? Did you crawl in here? No, don’t try to talk.” She watched the doorway. “It’s out there.” She searched his pockets for matches, struck one, and the sulfurous stink found her throat. In the glow, his shirt glistened.

She looked around at hell, at madness.

The occupants of the shack lay in positions of abandon. Most had clothing peeled back to expose rotting carcasses. Pocked faces grinned pus yellow and mold green in the light of the tiny flame. Nearby, what appeared to be a male hunched on its face, coarsening gray buttocks exposed, and against the wall, a skeleton grin that fell away in maggots was no less obscene than the legs spread wide beneath a tattered skirt. Puddling flesh left the leg bones bare in spots.

The match went out, and she inhaled the horrible intimacy of the dark, the air so corrupt even it could probably kill. She pressed Steve’s handkerchief to his throat, tried to stop the blood that gurgled there. “You’ll be all right, Steve. I’ll get you out of here.” She lit another match but couldn’t bring herself to look at his slashed belly. Tightening her jaw against the rising flow of nausea, she closed her eyes against the force of her mind’s rejection. She couldn’t move.

A distant flash of pain forced her eyes open. The match had gone out. With burned fingertips, she fumbled for another.

“Something under me…hurts…” Squirming, he shivered convulsively, and his arms jerked toward her.

“Don’t try to move.”

But he pulled her toward him. “…get out…”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“’Thena, run.” His grip tightened. “Don’t you know…where we…?”

“We’re in its…lair.” Striking another match, she spoke softly. “My leg hurts. I can’t run anymore.”

A howl shook the walls.

She clutched him in terror. The sounds that emerged from his throat ceased to be words.

A weapon. Pulse throbbing in her head, she turned from him. Find a weapon. She forced herself to look beyond the ravaged bodies, the inflated faces.

Strange objects littered the shack. Damp sticks that might once have been furniture were heaped in the corners, and things twisted and partially devoured sprawled upon them, coated with a scum that seemed faintly to