"Something Got At Them"

Part 8

So that about covers it.

A thorough search of the eastern side of the cottage under sunlight convinced me that nothing had been close. Mike had been shooting because of something in his head, triggered by a moonbeam or a hooting owl. I thought that a winding down, hallucinating man would be unlikely to get out to an authority, let alone lead that authority back to me ... but I wouldn't sleep if there was any chance.

I buried Hugo in the hard ground to the cottage's west, up a slope looking down at this tiny lake where we had taken a few good fish these last few weeks. I didn't look at the wound to the chest, focusing on the greying face, that one gold tooth he'd always had. He'd still be identifiable in forty years, new bones for a new legend. A crazy murderer in the woods, dumping bodies in the hills? A maniac taking advantage of the lockdown, me taking credit for Paul's crazy signs and anything else he'd put out here? Might be a good campfire story.

I drank to commemorate the founder of Prent's bar once the hard soil was over him, not quite six feet deep, drinking wine from a vineyard down in St. Croix that was assuredly clean. And all that day I felt wonderful, physically. No swarming brown motes, no muscle seizures, nothing to bother me. If there was a problem, I could just keep drinking. Mike and I had talked these last few weeks, and he'd said that some prion diseases were slow, taking years or even decades to show signs. Doctors didn't know why. They barely knew a thing, so nothing was off the table. If mosquitos did most of the infecting, and I even had any prions in me, my dosage had to be much lower than other people's.

If I became an embarrassing lush I might delay the wasting disease, assuming I even had it. I took my medicine, and loaded more on an ATV, with food and guns. I had trails and shacks to check out.

Snow came in late November, before I did my final move out. I went back and forth for weeks, getting food and drink and guns out in stages, making caches, finding new places on the map. Days blurred together, but I remember the snow. And vomiting on the fresh snow, overdoing the drinking because I was alone and starting to calm down and sober up and actually think this was crazy, so beer would fix that problem. Not local beer, of course, but German beer.

It should take a while to get over there.

I also remember finding the three deer, one buck and two does, dead and frozen under the first layer of snow. Their tongues were out, and surprisingly long, with frozen bubbles. They had gashed themselves open on rocks and trees, and maybe each other, itching and rubbing and disemboweling each other, such that two of them were in a crazy heap that made me think in a flash of a huge, terrible spider lying in the snow, tensed and waiting.

For the first week in December I had a tool shed next to a rectangle of broken foundations, completing the exit from McCausland's cottage, worried that I'd come back for one last harvest to find cops waiting with scopes aimed into the trees. This shed was big enough for one cot, and I kept the beer cold by leaving it outside. I gave myself a walk, a little patrol that turned into all-day excursions for new leftovers from poor crazy Paul, more animal corpses, and any signs of discovery. The snow came down thick, and a man who is drunk a lot does not feel the cold properly. Two of my toes are probably dead now, but I had to run down on beer to notice that.

When sobriety came mid-December in long stretches, the fear got worse. I was scanning everything, looking for motes, or for that extra crazy thought: the patient zero monster from the caves, something I had almost put out of my mind. Playing the memories of that early morning when someone shot Hugo, I didn't like any version of it. I didn't trust my mind to come up with an answer, and I didn't have nearly enough beer and wine to make it through this winter. I'd have to raid, add to the legend of the madman in the woods.

The spider-like corpses of the deer disappeared in one night. They had been a landmark for weeks, and then they were gone. There were new prints, and they startled me, but I can't quite remember that part. I started breathing hard, and panting, in the grip of the panic attack which I hoped was just a panic attack. But I began seeing motes again, and I ran away from there. I got my pack with all the food, no beer, barely thinking, and made my final retreat.

If they're entering the wood and clearing out bodies they'll know about the cottage. A map in the cottage has the shed, but nothing tells them about this final icefishing shack, out here in the winter. It has a portable stove and a big knife for bait.

Snow is falling again, tiny white motes in the darkness. Almost out of paper here, just me and the naked ladies in this calendar. Ms. August is my favorite. She and I are reading and rereading, and I'm rubbing my chin.

Red on my chin. More drink, don't have any. Motes inside the shack with me, flowing up, covering my eyes. Need more drink, need to calm down.

Trying to remember the prints where the three deer had been, where they had been taken away. That made me rush and panic and forget my Colt and my bullets in the shed, but now I just can't remember.

Still got the knife. I should use it soon. It's not outside, I know now. But ...

Write as long as I can. Tried to organize mind, ran out of story, got back here, back to the end. Ms. August is too thin, suddenly they all are too thin, too much like that deer. Brown flies covering everything, dancing, too small for me to brush away. Running off of everything like falling sand, everywhere.

Looking out. Snow has stopped. Big swarm of motes in the trees, like a school of fish underwater, snaking between the trunks. Not any one shape. Mote-man, mote-deer, all brown and hazy, out of focus.

Stopping, turning this way. It is the patient zero monster from the caves, what Mike must have seen. It can come apart and get together and go through glass. The motes make it hard but I see it. It's looking at me, black eyes with nothing. It's big, two legs below with a bunch more up top, deer legs and human arms sticking out like twigs, like a pile of dead spiders with all those limbs sticking out. Getting bigger, wants me for the pile. There's Spike's head, Mike's head, a mouth with a gold tooth. Crunching snow like broken glass, coming this way. Its prints are a shape so awful I can't remember them, it break apart in my mind, but I think it was a face, each footprint a dead faceprint. Awful. But I've got the knife.

I'm going to jump out and try.

I hope it's there! I hope the monster is real!

THE END