tone and pitch that said it was some other woman, some nameless, faceless voice in the night. But there for a second… for a second, my world was over, and I realized belatedly that I’d shifted my weight, ready to run into the trees like a madman. Not good.
Cole’s voice was uneasy when he spoke. “We have to get out of here before they get us surrounded.”
“Pretty sure we’re already too late for that, little brother. Marty, you ready to make a run for it?”
“Yeah. I’m good.”
Mockingly, the random phrases echoed around us. “And it’s fourth and goal!”
“So I said she could just stuff it, if that’s how she was gonna be.”
“Daaaaadeeeeeee! I’m scared!”
Cole cursed softly under his breath. “Christ… that’s a child.” Even Marty winced, and I don’t think it was his ankle. It was the father in all of us, that place that responded to a frightened child even if it wasn’t ours.
“No. No, it’s not. It’s them, somehow.” Somehow, those things that weren’t supposed to have voices were having quite a nice chat out there. I couldn’t even count them all and if I listened too hard, my head started swimming again, my senses drifting. “Marty, take Duke. Cole, take Marty. Let’s get this circus on the road.” I wanted my hands free, my sword free.
“You wanna take point?”
I snorted. “Are you kidding? I have no freakin’ clue where we are. It’s all you, little brother.” I couldn’t be sure in the darkness, but I think Cole rolled his eyes at me.
Making our way back to the cabin was easier said than done, even with Cole’s uncanny directional sense to guide us. Marty was limping worse than I’d realized, and face it, the guy was short but he sure wasn’t light. It was a struggle for him to hold on to Duke and lean heavily on my brother at the same time. Cole kept his flashlight trained ahead of us, and I brought up the rear, watching for the ambush I just knew had to come.
Why haven’t they attacked yet? The eerie, nonsensical calls came from all around us, and every one of them tugged at some place just in front of my spine, a place in my gut that churned with nausea. The worst ones were the children’s voices, and one of them kept wailing out “I’m a little teapot” over and over and over again. It might have been funny, in another time, another place, but here in the near pitch darkness, there was a wheedle to it that was simply horrifying. It was a tiny urge, a subtle entreaty to go galloping off into the wilderness, just like Marty had. I bit my lip as hard as I could without drawing blood and kept moving.
Now, I was no navigational expert, but it seemed to me that we were drifting conspicuously uphill in our path, and I didn’t recall coming that way on my blind rush into the trees. The more I thought about it, the less certain I was that Cole was leading us in the right direction. Before I could comment on it, I nearly stumbled into the trio when they stopped abruptly. “What’s up, guys?”
Since I’d been walking pretty much backward, I dared a glance back to see Cole shaking his head, trying to clear it. “It’s like they’re in there, in my head. I’m getting a little muzzy.”
“How muzzy, little brother?” Face it, I was never a Boy Scout. If Cole couldn’t find our way back, we were well and truly humped.
He hesitated a moment, then said, “I think we’re good.”
About ten yards and an eternity later as we worked our way around deadfalls and thorny vines, Cole brought them to a stop again. “No, no, we’re not good. Shit, I have no idea which way we’re headed. My head’s reeling.”
Oh hell no. I was not gonna die out here, probably within yelling distance of safety. More importantly, I wasn’t going to let either of those two idiots die either. I couldn’t.
I moved to grab a handful of Cole’s short hair and yanked his head up to make him look me in the eyes. The flashlight beam cast his face in dark shadows, hollowing out his eyes and cheeks into a skeletal mockery of his actual face. My face, too, we looked that much alike.
Up close like that, he reeked of fear sweat, that particularly pungent aroma brought on by massive doses of adrenaline. We all did. Except maybe Duke. He just smelled like dog. “Listen, little brother. You are gonna get your shit together, and you’re gonna get us out of here. And you’re gonna do it with a smile on your face and a spring in your step, you got me?” It took him a moment, but he finally swallowed and nodded. “That’s my boy.” I butted our foreheads together lightly, just enough to give us both a good thump.
Only then did I realize the voices had fallen silent, and I had approximately two seconds to wonder why. That was the moment they chose to spring, of course, with all of us sufficiently distracted. And they took out the most dangerous of us first.
The thing must have been just above our heads the whole time, waiting in the branches like some kind of gruesome spider, and it dropped down onto Duke’s back like one of those monkeys at the rodeo. The dog whirled with a savage snarl, trying to get at the tormentor clinging to his shoulders, and nearly knocked Marty sprawling in the process. Mastiff and minion went brawling into the brush and out of sight.
“Duke!” Marty lunged to go after his pet, and Cole and I both grabbed for his shoulders to stop him.
“Duke can take care of himself. We have to get out of here.” Even as Cole said it, another of the creatures darted out of the bushes, slamming into my brother’s right arm. The flashlight strobed as it went spinning into the darkness, and the creature vanished into the night again. The third one clipped Marty in the back of the knees, but the solid bastard was just too stubborn to fall. The minion bounced off those tree trunk legs and into the bushes again in a crackle of brush. Somewhere a few yards distant, Duke was still going at it with his new special friend. From the sounds of the snarling, the dog was winning.
“Shit… Backs together, boys.” The three of us took up positions, shoulders pressed together as we waited to see where they’d come from next. But really, what were we going to do? I was the only one armed, and Marty was half gimped.
One darted forward, almost at Cole’s feet, then retreated when my brother lashed out with a vicious kick. “What they hell are they doing? Why aren’t they just attacking?”
The next one dropped out of the branches above us again, and only the snapping of twigs warned us in time for Marty to lurch to the side. The thing landed on all fours on the forest floor and paused to hiss at us before leaping back into the brush. Damn, it was fast. I couldn’t even get a decent swipe at it with my katana.
“Pack tactics.” Marty got back into position, closing the gap in our circle. “Like a wolf pack harrying an elk. They’re trying to wear us down.”
“They’re smarter… unh!… than they look!” Cole paused in midsentence to kick at another one that darted in and out of the trees in front of him, taunting.
“They’re not. It’s him.” The Yeti was dancing his little puppets on their strings, trying to scare us into recklessness, trying to tire us out. And it wasn’t lost on me that the nasty things hadn’t made a single lunge toward me. That pretty much told me all I needed to know. The Yeti didn’t want me dead. He wanted something much worse.
What he wanted, I could use against him.
“Hey! Hey, ugly!” My voice bounced up and down the hillside, echoing. Ugly! Ugly! Ugly! The forest fell silent, even Duke’s unseen battle dying down. After a moment, the mastiff’s big square head poked out of the bushes, and he limped back to Marty, favoring his right hind leg but otherwise all right. “C’mon, stinky! Show yourself!”
“Jess, what are you doing?” I shushed Cole with a wave of my hand. Believe it or not, I knew what I was doing. Pretty sure. Maybe.
After a long moment of waiting, a branch above us creaked, and we looked up to find one of the minions hanging upside down from it, like a wingless bat. It was the female, the one with the missing hand. Her clawed toes and remaining fingers sunk into the bark to give her purchase, and her head twisted at a bizarre angle to look at us right side up, the blackness of her eyes glowing from within. Tendons in her neck creaked audibly in protest at the unnatural position.
“Hey there, ugly. You in there?” He was. I could feel him watching.
The thing’s mouth opened, but her lips didn’t move. Instead, the voice emerged from her throat, like through a loudspeaker. “I see you.” It was his voice, the Yeti’s voice. I would never forget that guttural rumble, coated with oil-slick taint.
“I just bet you do.” I stepped forward, separating myself from the guys, ignoring Cole and Marty’s whispered protests. “Shame on you, skirting around the rules like this. You’ll never get what you want this way.”
The minion’s head twisted almost full circle the other direction, still focusing those eerie black eyes on me. “And what do I want?”
