CHAPTER 1
Myers felt his arms beginning to tremble as he carried the heavy bag of road salt around inside the cabin, pouring lines of white powder in front of every window and both doors leading outside.
He was never sure how much salt was the right amount to keep them safe for another night, but he tried to be conservative in his use.
There was no telling how many more days the four of them would be stuck inside the cabin, listening through the night as the shrieking and clawing at the outside walls began and continued until dawn.
He had heard the thing's footsteps at several points, and seen its markings on the outside of the cabin on the days when he could gather the courage to step outside and work on the car, but he had no clue what it looked like, nor did he want to know.
His education in nature had been lacking, and he felt no great shame in admitting to being a city boy, but he was sure even the toughest mountaineers wanted nothing to do with an animal that could put claw marks ten feet high into the side of a cabin.
As he moved drawing the salt lines, Marcella moved around the cabin, checking and rechecking locks, muttering under her breath as she did so.
One night, Myers had asked her what she was saying so continuously, and she had gone slightly pale as she responded.
"It's the Lord's Prayer. As much as I can remember. But sometimes there's interference and I can't hear any of it."
Myers hadn't thought to ask what she meant, as busy as he had been pouring salt at the time.
The salt was one of the few things that had seemed to work in keeping them safe, that Myers knew of.
Something about it just drove the creature batshit, but kept it from just breaking through one of the windows or doors outright, which he was secretly sure it had the physical strength to do.
He finished drawing the lines just as the last edge of the sun disappeared over the horizon, and true dark began to rise up and suffocate the forest around them.
Myers felt it when the day ended, somehow knew it in his soul when true night began to come into its strength, and he went around again, going back over locks and bars that had to have been checked half a dozen times already.
When he was done, he walked into the kitchen and took hold of Marcella to stop her endless pacing, hugging his wife to his chest in a way that was probably too tight to be comfortable for her.
"Did you get them all?" She asked, resting her trembling hands against the small of his back.
"Yeah, they're covered, and I double checked all the locks. Did you put the kids in the room?"
He felt her nod against his chest, and Myers leaned down to kiss the top of her head.
She flinched away, then returned to her position, taking the gesture dutifully.
The sounds of the forest suddenly died away around them, and the roars of the creature outside began.
-
In the morning, the four of them sat on the bed in the kids' room and ate a light breakfast comprised mostly of stale bread and the few leaves and roots Marcella had proclaimed to be edible, drawing from her time as a nature scout nearly three decades before. All of them fought the urge to steal glances at the pile of rotting flesh in the corner of the room, and all of them lost.
In the dim light creeping in through the bedroom door, Marcella's face look worn and exhausted, and Myers was sure he looked worse.
Between the two of them, they had managed around two hours of sleep at most, constantly jerking awake as the creature screamed and thrashed outside, or from anticipating attacks when none were coming.
