The bear was standing there, breath steaming in the increasingly cold night. Carl raised his rifle and took aim as Steve drew his bow, but there was something peculiar about the behaviour of the animal. Bears can be viciously aggressive when wounded, and since the men had been on the chase for almost three hours they knew the wound wasn’t fatal, but the bear just stood in the middle of the clearing. It was facing away from them, swaying back and forth like a baby being rocked to sleep. It didn’t acknowledge them at all.
“What’s it doing?” Steve asked in a whisper.
“Beats me. Maybe it’s delirious from the loss of blood? Who knows, and I don’t care. Easy kill.”
Steve’s eyes focused on a shape next to the bear that he hadn’t noticed before. It was a six-foot-tall formation of piled stones. He didn’t see the exact details, but the structure gave an impression of being deliberately created. It was there for a reason, and someone had constructed it. It was wider at the base, narrowing as it went. It was like a man-made stalagmite.
“What’s that?”
Carl looked up to see what Steve was pointing at. He lowered his rifle and looked at the pile of stones. The bear was rubbing its injured shoulder against the mound, coloring them with its blood. It was a surprise that the structure took the bear’s weight. The bear must have touched a sensitive spot, because it let out a booming wail of pain as it jerked away from the stones. Still huffing it turned around, dropping its swaying head as it scented the forest floor.
“Shit!”
The bear had gained focus, and it knew they were close. Its head shot up, and it rose to its hind legs. Popping its jaw it moaned and wuffed, clearly unhappy. There were about forty feet between the men and the animal, but that was nothing to a charging bear. It lunged forward, its front legs still in the air, as it moved towards its attackers.
Carl fired from the hip while raising the rifle to a proper aim position. The bullet penetrated the bear’s left ear, shredding it to pieces, but the charging animal didn’t slow down. It roared, gaining speed as its front legs touched the ground.
Steve released an arrow. The bow made a quiet thang as it propelled the carbon projectile towards its target.
The rifle was propped at Carl’s shoulder, when the arrow hit. The jagged, hardened steel tip entered the bear’s eye, effectively popping it. The tip pierced its skull, exiting from the back of its head, but the bear kept charging. A heartbeat later the bear’s trajectory suddenly wavered, the brain no longer giving information to the legs.
Carl fired, but the spot between the shoulder blade and the neck he was aiming for wasn’t there anymore as the massive animal hit the ground. The bullet swished just over the falling bear’s back, ringing against the stone structure and ricocheting off of it with a sharp twang.
The forest fell completely silent. The night ambient faded away, no wind to be heard, not a single bird call or any other sound.
“What...the...fuck?” Steve’s words sounded like they were coming from inside his head. The sound didn’t carry further than a couple of inches. He lowered his bow, and he felt like they were in a sensory deprivation chamber.
He tried to hail Carl, but he couldn’t seem to hear him. Finally Carl turned to him and shouted something, but Steve couldn’t hear what.
He looked up and noticed that the clouds weren’t moving. In fact, as he looked at the forest surrounding the clearing he realized that nothing was. Branches weren’t swaying, the water wasn’t dripping from the needles and the entire landscape had become a still image.
Steve made it to Carl and tried to talk to him, but he could barely hear Carl even when they were standing a foot from each other.
“What’s happening?!” Steve shouted, sounding like he was screaming underwater.
“I don’t know! Everything just went...off?” Carl shouted back.
In the confusion Steve was relieved, since he had initially thought it was the tumor that was affecting his hearing as it pressed against his brain. At least now he knew they were both experiencing this weirdness.
A low-pitched hum started to rise, emanating from the stone structure. The sound was barely audible, but it felt tangible. It crawled along the ground, over the bear’s carcass and making the fur stand on end. It continued towards the poachers, the sound making the ground vibrate ever so slightly.
Steve picked up something in his peripheral vision, movement in the shade of the trees. Something was circling the clearing, something that was able to move despite the entire forest seeming to be in stasis. Carl saw it too. He prepared his rifle, and Steve put an arrow at the ready but didn’t draw.
The shadows under the trees stirred. There was another figure speeding in the shade where the moonlight didn’t quite reach, and this one was smaller than the one Steve saw. There was something uncanny about the second figure, but Steve couldn’t put his finger on it
Seeing the shadows suddenly move made Steve feel unspeakable dread bubbling inside him. It slithered on the surface of his organs, constricting them, coiling its cold fingers around his bones and squeezing tight.
The surrounding forest sighed.
Carl followed the second figure through his sight, but he screamed when he looked at the bear.
It had risen to its hind legs without either him or Steve noticing it. The bear’s face was a crimson mask; the black hole where Steve’s arrow had pierced the eye looked at them with a blank, accusatory stare. The gore from the arrow’s exit wound decorated the neck, and there is no way the animal should be alive.
“Holy fuck!” Carl
