heaving.
“But where should we go? I see absolutely no sign of them anywhere.”
“If we just stop, you’re friend’s as good as dead.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that he already is.”
“Then what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” Scott said softly, his voice trailing off as the wind swept it from his lips.
The two stood in silence, side by side, as the dark night closed in around them.
A loud noise boomed from somewhere, sounding as though it came from all sides at once. It was a cracking sound, like a thousand branches being snapped in half all at the same time. Fading back into the night, the silence swelled around them as they scanned the tree line that encircled them. There was another booming noise, then another, and another. It was straight across the field from them, and it was getting closer with each successive sound. The tops of the trees ahead tossled visibly, the white snow shaking off to expose the green needles beneath.
Holding their breath, they could do little but watch as fear overwhelmed every inch of their frozen flesh.
The noise grew louder and louder as the forest itself sounded as though it was being ripped apart. Trees crashed to the ground just out of their range of view, the ground shuddering beneath their feet.
It was coming closer and closer, they could feel whatever it was there with them in the darkness, laying siege to the grove of pines straight ahead of them. Wide eyed, they watched in horror as the wall of trees straight ahead imploded. The center of the trunks seemed to implode from the core, fragments of wood no larger than toothpicks flying through the air from the suddenly halved trunk. The upper reaches of the trees toppled to the side, the heavily needled branches crashing to the ground with a thud.
“Sweet Jesus,” Harry muttered, quickly covering his eyes as the fragmented, sap- drenched shards of tree trunk rained down on them.
As silence finally settled into the forest around them, the last remnants of the booming explosion of the trees echoing high in the valleys above, the two surveyed the area. The trees had been cleared in what looked to be a large path leading straight ahead of them into the hills. Jagged, pointed stumps littered the snow- covered ground in the ten-foot wide path leading up the slope into the darkness. The remains piled against the still standing trunks to either side, the green and brown masses of the fallen trees pressed together to make it look like a half pipe. Tiny yellow wooden shrapnel peppered the snow all around them in the small clearing, sticking to their clothes with the sticky yellow sap as the smell of pine all around them was almost overwhelming. At the end of the channel carved through the trees, deep within the darkness that rolled down the face of the western slope of the Rockies, there was the shadow of a man.
“We need to go,” Harry whispered, tugging on Scott’s sleeve.
“What… who is that?” Scott asked, staring at the pitch- black shade of the human form from which all of the darkness seemed to resonate.
“Now!” Harry whispered forcefully, looping his arm around Scott’s and dragging him through the clearing towards where they had come from.
Scott stared back over his shoulder at the darkened figure as Harry fought to drag him back towards the car with everything that he had. Stumbling, but unable to steer his gaze, Scott watched in awe as the figure raised its arms out to either side and held them there, the trunks of the trees suddenly bending as though they were made of rubber. A pair of amber eyes glowed like small pinpoints of sunlight from beneath the figure’s darkened brow. His eyes locking on those of the massive shadow, those eyes helplessly entranced him, everything else fading to black around him.
“Come on!” Harry shouted, his voice dissipating beneath the loud siren of the wind as it howled down through the channel from the snow- capped peaks above. The shadow of the man grew wider; the tattered and shredded fabric that dangled from his shadowy form tossing and snapping about him like long thin flags as the raging wind rocketed past.
Scott could do nothing more than stare at the shadowy figure, feeling hopelessly drawn towards it.
His barely dragging feet snagging on the twisted and ragged trunks of the mass of scrub oak, Scott slipped from Harry’s grasp, crumpling into the mess of tangled branches which cut off the view of the image with its fiery ashen eyes. His whole body seemed to grow limp, a warm, pleasant sensation washing through every inch of his formerly frozen flesh. It was as though he was laying on a beach somewhere tropical, just he and the hot equatorial sun that shined down on him alone. There was but the vaguest impression of discomfort beneath his armpits as he could feel Harry’s hands gripping tightly, dragging him through the tangled array of branches and beneath the cover of the pines. His eyes lolled back beneath his only partially closed lids as a feeling more pleasurable than any he had experienced in what he could then remember of his pained life flooded through his senses and he felt nothing but the warming tingle that buzzed electrically through his veins.
A small line of blood rolled over his upper lip from beneath his right nostril, clinging to the chapped skin momentarily before running down into his slacken mouth, pooling on his upper teeth.
“Get up and walk, damn it!” Harry shouted down at him as his aching arms and back could no longer find the will to drag him.
Harry knelt on the ground above Scott, whose eyes finally rolled back from beneath his fluttering lids enough to give him the semblance of consciousness.
“Look at me!” Harry growled, grabbing Scott’s face between his two leathery palms and shaking it atop his flimsy neck. “You need to get up right now or we are both going to die out here!”
Loud, booming footsteps echoed through the foothills as the ground shook beneath them. The thicket of scrub oak they had just passed through rattled as the branches tossed against the line of snow beyond.
Boom.
Boom.
“Wake up!” Harry shouted, smacking Scott across the face as he frantically looked up towards the origin of the sound, his tensed legs poised in anticipation of their call to flight.
Scott’s mouth slowly closed, his dry tongue smacking against his dehydrated palate. His fluttering lids opened momentarily as his eyeballs rolled back completely into his skull before reappearing again as he fought to awaken from whatever trance had gripped hold of his physical form.
Boom.
“Get up!” Harry called through a wave of panic as tears spontaneously streamed from his eyes.
Boom.
Powdered snow cascaded through the air all around them in a sparkling crystalline shower of glimmering flakes from the tops of the trees where it had been piled nearly since the start of winter.
Boom.
Harry slipped his arm beneath Scott’s armpit and heaved him into the air, his back screaming in agony from the shards of white hot pain that stabbed into his brittle back like the searing blades of so many daggers.
Boom.
Turning, Harry could feel Scott’s dangling feet fighting through whatever possessed him, lightly kicking at the ground as they fought to find some sort of traction.
Boom.
The sound was so close he could feel the vibrations from the trembling ground clear up into his thighs. His eyes fixed on his winding path through the maze of the trees as the tears froze to his bright red cheeks.
Crash.
The scrub oak peeled back behind them as whatever was the source of that booming exited the clearing, slamming into the wall of branches, which peeled back and splintered into nothingness.
Boom.
Scott’s toes danced of the ground as something vaguely reminiscent of feeling coursed through the blood. The warm glow, which had dulled his senses, was slipping out through his pores into the night, allowing the waves of coldness to creep back along his flesh, chilling the skin before stabbing like sharp icicles into the flesh
