Death in the Darkness
Part 3
Once Noah entered the forest and began looking for the creature that was killing livestock in the valley, he realized that this “hunt” would be more difficult than he thought. He had seen these mountains every day of his life, but he had never been in them and didn’t realize how steep the mountains were. It was still Summer, and the foliage was thick. Rarely could Jonah see more than fifteen yards and often much less.
The mountain itself was covered with boulders and smaller rocks, and Noah was having problems climbing over them. As he climbed strait up the mountain, he came across a deer trail and followed it as in meandered up the mountain. When he came to the top of the mountain, he looked down at the steep side of the mountain he had just climbed with a sense of accomplishment. His clothing was soaked and his eyes burned from the sweat. It was already mid-day.
Noah looked to the direction from which he had just come from. He could see twenty miles or so across the valley where he lived. The houses and barns that dotted the valley floor looked like children’s toys. They were so small.
The top of the mountain was narrow, no more than twenty feet, and all Noah could see only trees: nothing but trees. Noah did not know how far the forest went, but he thought it might go on forever.
Noah’s father was none too happy to see his father-in-law, especially when he told him that Noah was gone. The old man was continuously talking about the glory days of his youth when he served in the Union Army during the Civil War. The old man polluted the child’s mind with fantasies of glory. He wanted to blame his father-in-law, but there was no time for that now. They needed to find Noah.
“Where do you think went?” Noah’s father asked.
“I have no idea,” Grandpa said, but he held up a rifle, an ancient muzzleloader, and said, “Don’t worry, I’m going after him.”
Noah’s father just shook his head. An eleven-year-old boy and a seventy some year-old man alone in the forest with a dangerous creature wouldn’t last long. He went into the house and came out with a double-barreled shotgun and a leather pouch with about a dozen shells loaded with buckshot. He also had a kerosene lantern. They probably wouldn’t find Noah before nightfall.
And so, the two men headed off to the mountains. Noah had most of a day’s head start on them, but he was small, and Noah’s father thought that if they moved quickly, they could catch up with him that night day. If he was still alive, but Noah’s father didn’t want to think about that. He just pressed on.
The cat sensed trouble when the young man child crested the first mountain ridge. Slowly, he raised himself from his slumber and set out to see what was happening. These intrusions into his realm were becoming annoying.
It was dark now, and Noah sat down, his back against a tree. He was cold. Never had he imagined that it could be cold during the Summer, but he had no body fat, was dehydrated, and hadn’t eaten all day. In addition to being cold, he was alone and scared. He felt the single barrel shotgun on his lap. It had provided so much courage during the day, but in the darkness, it felt like only a cold and heavy piece of steel.
Sitting against the tree, he saw, or at least he thought he saw, a flicker of light moving about the trees. He had no idea what it was, but it scared him. Could it be a ghost or something supernatural? He wasn’t sure, but he closed his eyes and held his breath wishing it would go away.
The cat was now a mere sixty feet from Noah, preparing to dispatch him, when it too saw the flickering light and smelled the stinking smell of kerosene. There were other humans in his forest, but in his pursuit of the boy, he had missed the greater danger. It was not a huge mistake. He could dispatch the men quickly and then come back for the boy afterwards. Slowly, it backed away from the boy, fading invisible into the inky blackness of the night. The boy never knew he was being watched.
Noah breathed a little easier as the as the light faded away, traveling through the woods going downhill from him. But then, just after the light faded away, he thought he heard his grandfather’s voice. For a minute, he didn’t know what to do. Then he cried out to his grandpa.
“Noah,” he heard his father call back.
Thank God, Noah thought.
Noah‘s father and grandfather moved toward him.
The cat, meanwhile, had silently circled the two men and was slowly advancing upon them from behind. More out of instinct than strategy, it decided to kill the man with the light first. The beast did not like the light. When the moment was right, he would attack and kill the man with the lantern and then kill the second man afterwards.
Noah’s father and grandfather kept moving to the sound of his voice, but it was difficult to move quickly in the dark. They had to take extra care not to trip; it would break the glass globe on the lantern rendering it useless.
When they were only about twenty yards from Noah, Noah heard a rush in the leaves and then saw a disturbance in the night. He saw the lantern go flying, and then it hit the ground and went out. He heard his father and scream.
For a few seconds, Noah sat there silently, listening to what was happening. He could hear the sounds of wrestling in the leaves and branches lying on the ground. He heard the sound of the beast and the cries of his father and grandfather. Then, Noah remembered the shotguns still cradled in his arm. He had never fired at anything larger than a squirrel before, and it was pitch black. He couldn’t see what was happening, he could only hear the struggle.
He cocked the hammer and pointed the shotgun in the direction of the sound. If he fired, he could kill his father or his grandpa, but if he did nothing, the beast would surely kill them.
He aimed a little bit high, hoping that his father and grandfather were on the ground, and pulled the trigger. He was greeted by a loud boom and, almost immediately, an unearthly cry.
Noah quickly pushed the lever on the shotgun and broke the gun open. As fast as he could, he removed the used cartridge from the chamber, inserted a new cartridge, and snapped the shotgun shut. He cocked the hammer and raised the shotgun to his shoulder for a second shot.
The cat felt a searing pain across the top of his back accompanied by a loud boom. The bullet did no serious damage, but it hurt, and the pain infuriated the great beast. He would finish these two men in a minute, but first he needed to eliminate the man child. He released Noah’s grandfather’s arm from his jaws and took a few steps toward the boy, preparing his attack. He could see the boy clearly now. He was only a short leap away.
The cat launched himself at its target. It was the same attack the cat had executed a thousand tome before. As it flew through the air, the boy nearly in his grasp, he heard another boom and felt a hard smack in his chest. He had never felt anything like it before.
In the inky darkness of the night, Noah could not see anything. There was some movement, but no discernable form to his attacker. He pointed the gun at the form and pulled the trigger a second time.
This time, in the light of the muzzle flash, he could see the great cat, but only for a flash. It was a huge cat, solid black. The bullet struck the cat when it was only about two feet away, but the bullet did what it was supposed to do. At such close range, it tore through skin and muscle before entering the chest cavity. The heavy slug tore the cat’s heart in two, bathing Noah in the blood of the dying animal.
And then the animal struck him. It was dead, but Noah didn’t know it. The animal’s 300-pound body struck him, almost at full speed. No claws or teeth tore into him, but he rolled with the cat several times down the slope until, finally, they came to rest. The cat was on top of Noah, pinning his small frame to the ground. After a few minutes, he was able to work his way out from under the cat and stood up. He felt his body and decided he was okay.
“It’s dead,” he called out, hoping he would hear something from his father and his grandpa in return.
He did hear something in return, although he wasn’t sure what, and after about 10 minutes, he saw the silhouette of his father holding onto and dragging his grandpa with him. When they got to him, his father poked the cat’s corpse with his double barrel just to make sure it was dead.
In death, the cat was as horrifying as it had been in life. Its fangs were over three inches long, and its claws were more than two inches. Its coat was as black as midnight, and they guessed it weighed at over 300 pounds, maybe more.
They started making their way down the mountain at first light, and, eventually, they made it to the doctor’s office late that night. It was another long night for the three as the doctor worked on one and then the others. Afterwards, it would be several more day, or in the case of Noah’s grandfather, several more weeks, of bedrest before they would be able to do anything. Grandma would take care of the three.
About a month after the battle with the cat, Noah, his father, and a couple of neighbors made it back to where the cat had been killed. The warm summer weather had not been kind to the decomposing carcass of the animal. Gas in the animal’s intestines had expanded until it had torn the cat wide open. Maggots hatched in the cat’s wounds as well as it eyes and mouth. The worst, however, was the smell. The odor of rotting flesh and decaying blood mixed with the smell of death. Hair slipped from the hide. The swarming insects and the smell kept everyone from approaching too close.
In the end the men dug a hole and rolled the beast into it. They then covered the hole and left. There was a lot of debate over the identity of the animal — some said it was a wampus, a mythical animal of the Appalachians. Others thought it was an unusually large panther, but it was more than twice the size of the largest panthers. And panthers were never black.
As time went on and memories faded, those who even remembered that Summer concluded that the animal was simply a normal panther transformed into something more by repeated retellings of the story.
But Noah never forget the truth.
