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Something mauled a kid.
I don’t know what it was, still don’t to be honest with you. What I do know is I’ll be dealing with this until the day I die.
I got the call a few months ago in the fall. I’m a park ranger and while the brighter side of the job has you talking to happy families and helping to send the wildlife back to areas safe from harm, there’s a lot to this career that can take a toll on you. This was one of them.
I pulled into a clearing of a forest in New Hampshire. White pines and firs as far as the eye can see. Autumn made the hue of leaves turn to a carnival of colors as red maples glowed in the sunlight of mid-day. Walks like these were what made me take this job in the first place. I even wanted to be a Park ranger when I was a child. Back when I thought all you did was get lost in the woods, hanging out with bears stealing baskets. Taking in the view had a way of making you forget it all. Almost made me forget what I headed towards.
The crime scene was at the end of a rocky ravine. Trickles of water spattered on the ground, a back drop to the poor kid covered in a bloody tarp. I saw the photos sent for the report, even saw the boy myself.
Whatever did this ate its fair share. Everything not consumed had been torn with ill intent, scattering his remains in the woods. The animal must have taken its time shredding him to pieces. If there is a god I hope that boy died quickly. The more I read from the coroner’s report however, the less I think it’s so.
The parents were there to identify the body. The mother’s screams seeing her child like this could be heard for miles. It sounded like gutting her alive was preferable to the pain she suffered now. Ugly crying with snot dripping as a dutiful husband stood by. Him using whatever strength he had left to hold her up, pulling her back from the pieces of her boy.
Federal officers came in to assist. All of us there doing the best we could to ignore her screams of agony and get to work. Photos, collecting evidence and the like. Believe it or not people think we don’t care. Most of us do. Seeing the boy’s face ripped on the ground, it can keep you up at night. The thing you learn is that the parents crying would be far more distraught if they saw you weeping to. So you bite your lip, smoke, have a quick cry in the car when no one’s looking. Otherwise, you just get back to work.
In the middle of the commotion, I saw my old boss. He’s an older man, stone cut face from the wind over years of hiking. A stocky build with broad shoulders, yet held by the hunched, curving spine of a man who could say he was too old for this. The pot belly earned from long hours looking over files at the local diner hung over his trousers. Longer hours spent drinking a fifth in his car to keep the nightmares away. He looked over the scene with that gravelly face deep in thought.
“O’Connell.” I waved him down, stepping around the photographers and family to reach him.
“Jameson, good to see you.” He gave me a nod and turned away from the scene. I followed after, it being clear he had something to tell me, away from the mourning couple. There was something to show me as well. He pulled a Manila folder from his wool lined jacket and handed it to me. “Looks like your moving up in the world, this your jurisdiction now?”
“Yep just moved me over to Hillsborough. What are you doing over here, I though you worked back in Concord?” I took the folder from his hand. I had a hunch of what was in it and I wasn't looking until he asked me to.
“I do. A long time ago this was where I started. Back when you could have a beer at lunch and nobody would bat an eye. I got a call about the situation and knew I had to come. This isn’t the first time a kid has been taken.” I opened the folder and sure enough there it was. Black and white photos of missing children in the woods. Ripped to pieces, entrails strung among the trees. Viscera, which even in faded ink was enough to make you sick.
My old boss continued. “We’ve taken trips to find it. No one has gotten a confirmed sight of the thing, let alone a kill. Sent thirty men, fifty yards apart with enough ammo to put down an elephant. All we got was two casualties and a scream that still gives me nightmares. The old folks thought it was some kind of demon. A curse on the white man for what our ancestors did to the natives. Back when we sent them on the trail of tears. Can’t say I blame them. I’ve seen how they live out west. We ship blankets full of small pox and slaughter, they send a monster in return.”
“You sound like you believe it.” I tried to joke, yet any humor fell flat on the stone face that glared with a knowing tired.
He stepped closer, pointing at the photos, staring into my soul unblinking. “I had to bury those children. Put on the rubber gloves to pick up the bits. Parents didn’t have the stomach for it and couldn’t afford a coffin. The fear in those dead eyes haunt me in my dreams. Now if you don’t want to do the same, here’s what I recommend.”
He gave me a list of instructions, the mother sobbing behind us now turning to an exhausted whimper.
-
My pickup drove through deep woods in the wake of a setting sun. The camper shell and some tie downs kept in the load I was hauling. Even then it bounced all over on that beaten trail. The farther in the less it looked like a road at all. First a lane, then a foot path, then no trail at all. I hopped out of my vehicle as the sky turned from crimson to a cool blue. The last vestiges of light shimmering in the trees. I thought I was lost despite following his directions with certainty.
“Fifty miles off the highway you follow the runners trail. When it ends, take a look around. If the woods are ready for you, they’ll make room.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. Anyone else would have written him off as a loon. He trained me well however. Back when I was fresh out of high school kicking myself over a girl. He showed me the trails, taught me all the rules, even showed me how to shoot. My father died in the desert back in Iraq. This old man was closest thing to a dad I had. All in all, I owed him a little faith.
I looked back at the gifts he left in my front seat. A pack of smokes and a flask with a small note unfolded. Reading it over again I felt the mix of pride and pity emanating from his words.
~I’d go with you kid but I'm too old. Seen too many corpses of my own. Just do exactly as I told you and you’ll be alright. Help yourself to these when your done. Congratulations kid, you’re going to need them.~
I looked around, playing with the pack of smokes. I flipped the lucky cigarette upside down like my uncle showed me when I was young. Third from the left. We all know smoking is terrible for you. Even so, it’s funny the things that old men leave to those behind.
About to head back thinking this was for nothing when sure enough I found what he was after. The thicket in front of me, a wall of saplings and branches now had a break. It started slow yet as the sun set and wind began to swell, the branches creaked, giving way with all manner of twists and turns. It started slow. Slow enough you would have mistaken it for the wind. In seconds however the way was clear. The very grass and weeds lay down along the path, inviting me further in.
I hopped back in my truck and drove slowly, barely pressing the gas as the clearing squeaked me inside. I always heard the forest was alive. A great organism among the cells of bark and pine. I thought him drunk, yet the old man was right. The woods made way to let me in.
At the end of the path, I found a clearing hid from civilization. There in my high beams was a cement flight of stairs. No debris from a house undone. No foundation to explain it being there. A lone flight of stone steps railed with an iron banister, curling into the night above. The steps ended sharp as they reached into the sky. Broken beams of iron pointing like curled fingers to the stars glimmering high above.
The air had a dire quality to it, like stepping before an ancient temple. My hands shook as I stood before the stairway. Nothing prepared me for what I’d gotten into. And yet keeping my composure I walked around to open up the back of the truck. A corpse of a whole pig lay stretched across the bed. Its stomach hung open, gutted as its blood seeped onto the tarp below. With all the strength I could muster I pulled on the tarp as it slid across the bed of my vehicle. It took five minutes before my efforts answered with the heavy thump of the carcass landing in the woods. Thank God the stink was minimal, the heat from the vehicle only beginning to let it turn.
I dragged it still further before the steps, those stairs drawing me in with a strange magnetism. Pulling my gaze as the contrast of that cold stone was so stark against the woods. Without thinking my hands even reached for it, yet the old man’s words echoed in my head back from when I started. He was half drunk on a night watch for poachers back then, me too green to find it odd or even care. When he drank, the demons would come to haunt him, or maybe they haunted him still. The man only drawing from his flask to numb their fingers on his shoulders. In one of his rants he told me plain, “If you ever see a flight of steps here, don’t even think of touching them. You’ll never leave the woods alive.”
He pulled deep from the very flask now sitting in my car muttering to himself. “I’m sorry Phil. I shouldn’t have left you there to die.”
I never questioned it then. Now I saw everything with a cold certainty. I snapped back to my senses, pulling my extended hand away. I climbed into my truck, headlights glaring over the pig carcass before stairs that felt more like an ancient altar. I should have left like I was told. “Leave the pig in front and don’t come back till winter.” Those were my instructions. And yet, that dead kid was still inside my mind. The sad look in my friends face as remorse weighed on his soul. I wanted to give those parents peace, every one of them. My hands gripped firm the weight of a cold iron. A black and gold revolver, with caliber large enough to kill a bear. I waited for that predator to snap at my bait, certain I would be the one to put him down.
I turned off my engine, quiet to lure him. For an hour I rolled my thumb along the chamber of that gun. Waiting for the reckoning I would take for all the murders it left behind. So sure of myself I would be their avenger. Certain that my act was one of justice and not of pride. It’s funny, I only ever shot that thing at cans.
The loudest scream I ever heard shattered the glass around me.
My alarm blared filling those woods with chaos now ensued. I cried out in shock, covered in the broken bits of my windshield. But I did not run away. I did not cower. Terrified my actions were of pure adrenaline. Stepping out of the safety of my vehicle I screamed into the night, drowning my terror with my own voice. Raising my firearm, blind and deaf, I fired that pistol into those woods. Over and over I shot in the dark until the canon in my hands gave only the dry snap of a hammer hitting metal.
Smoke from the burning powder filled my nostrils. Flash from a hot barrel blinding as echo and recoil had me stumbling in the night. My ears rang as the blasts mixed with the siren now behind me. I fired until my chamber held nothing but smoke and the heat of an empty barrel, and that was when it hit me.
An open hand of black ripped across my face. Its claw wisped like smoke and shadow. Color making even the night look bright in its comparison. The heavy thump of its strike knocked me down as though I’d been a child. My skull cracked against the ground and all faded to black around me.
-
When I awoke there was blood across my eyes. Everything hurt as the world spun in my concussion. I reached for my face out of instinct as its painful sting awoke me. My fingers felt wet meat, dripping over crusted blood. I sat up unsure why I could not see. One eye was full of haze and other I could not open. It wasn't long till I discovered I had no eye at all.
The carcass was gone. Whatever that thing was had spared me, yet did not leave me unharmed. A warning to remember my hubris came in the surgery room, hours after crawling into my ride, finding my way home. Four long fingers on an open claw cut across the left side of my face. The index took my eye as its smallest left a scar across my neck. The last missing the vein that surely would have killed me. Forever I will be ugly. The scars from the flesh it tore unable to heal little more than the four canyon scrapes grinning like a Glasgow smile.
Lost in the haze of my own blood, I crawled toward my truck to leave for civilization. Fumbling with the keys, I drove like a drunk through a thicket spread wide to let me go, as though the woods itself had held the door.
I reached the road and the second I did I was greeted by an ambulance. The EMT explained they’d received an anonymous tip that there was a man on the brink of death out here. What was left of my face betrayed a smile. I had a strong feeling that the voice on that line was familiar. An old man, tired and full of guilt.
I still work. Still walk through those woods. Still even make that drive once every season to that forbidden staircase. Dragging a pig or deer onto the dead grass that lay before it. Now I treat the place with the reverence it deserves. Leaving whatever roams these woods to its eternity. Ever since there hasn’t been a single mauling. Just as there wasn't one in the years before. Some might call it sacrifice. Some ritual to appease an ancient God.
Me?
I don’t know what to think.
I just don’t want to see anymore dead kids.