Hunting Grounds
Slade stood still a few feet from the mangled body, giving himself time to be amused. Outside, the winds drawled a hum so distinct along the eaves that it was like the voice of a woman beginning to sing some classic from the eighties. But of course, he only heard the slow drip of blood as it formed a pool at his feet… thinking, even as he stood there, that it looked glazed over like red stained glass and his own reflection pretty smug in it.
The stranger was dead.
Slade dropped his knife and wiped his bloody hands with a coverlet. He then closed the door behind him and sat down with the others as if nothing had happened.
They were in a battered winter cabin in the middle of the woods. They came here — to Hunter’s Elbow — once every year to hunt deer. And that was Slade, Harp, Mike, and Russ. They usually spent a week or two in the dreadful trails — this was their reunion, this was how they got along.
Slade sat cross-legged on the couch and thought with his eyes closed. The stranger had come to them out of the hazy end of a blizzard, crawling half-comatose on the velvety snow, his skin blistered and reddish-blue with frostbite. There was a huge patch of it blotched on either of his cheeks, like someone had puked on his face. They took him in and kept him warm — the stranger who talked of nothing but shadows, the shadows in the woods, the shadows that followed him here, the shadows that everyone saw, everyone eventually saw.
Wait, you’re making a mistake! Don’t listen to the shadows. Please… PLEASE don’t!
But Slade did. He did, and now the stranger was dead.
He looked over toward where his friends were sitting at the table, unmindful, sharing a bottle of frozen beer. Beyond them past the window, scrims of snow were falling in a continuous heap. And something else… something that was stark against the haze, something that had darkness written all over it; Slade turned his eyes away out of fear, but got himself to look back at it again.
Is that a shadow?
Yes, it was.
It was the shadow of a deer, faint but visible, cast across on the screen of trees that stood bark-to-bark against each other. He supposed it was the largest buck he had ever seen. Its antlers were so huge that it took him a moment to tell them apart from the gnarled branches of the trees. Perhaps the last lights of the afternoon slanted down at an angle that made the shadow look almost like a colossus, but he doubted it.
Slade stood up from the couch, went to the far end of the wall, and retrieved his rifle from a cabinet. Before anybody could ask anything, he opened the door and stepped outside into the snow. “Slade!” someone called behind him, but he had already closed the door.
…keep walking, keep swinging, dance to the sounds of the woods singing…
A wave of cold crept down his neck and laid its bare hands on his spine. He walked cautiously to the side of the cabin where he had seen the shadow of the buck. He couldn’t see clearly through the snow, but for each step he took he got more curious — the dark outline of the shadow loomed large in the midst of the trees, looking at him with red, challenging eyes. Come closer, it seemed to say.
He cocked his rifle and turned it toward the shadow. A strong gust of wind shook the trees, and he felt something — surely, he wasn’t dreaming — whoosh past him. He shuddered and turned around to see what it was, and saw the dark tail of the buck burning a shadowy line into the snow as it went off in a sprint.
He took off after it, running as fast as he could.
He ran past pine trees that seemed to emerge out of the thick curtains of snow without warning. Bare branches struck him as he moved at an almost futile pace — the line was disappearing fast beneath the snow, and the shadow itself was nowhere in sight. But he could still sense it somehow… in some mystical way and in a part of his mind that was still warm, he knew he was going the right way; just as he knew the phantom eyes that watched him as he limbered through the snow were lying in wait at the end.
Come, why don’t you.
There were these ominous sounds all around him— like bottled whispers shattering on invisible walls. Some of it seemed to come from right behind his ears… the faint clicking of laughter for one, which sounded like the buzzing of a voice breaking into the low drone of a chainsaw. It made him groggy. His fingers had become a dull red and his eyes were heavy and swollen. What he saw and felt came through a treacherous pixel of light, which was somehow worse than being completely blind and feeling with outstretched arms.
At some point, he figured, he had dropped his gun. It just was not in his hands anymore. The cold air was heavy enough for him to think he had something cradled in his arms — his elbows even buckled, sore all the way through. But (listen, pal, he told himself) what good was a bullet against… a shadow? He stole a look over his shoulder to find out if there was any way he could trace his way back, but no, there was just the hazy white which covered his footprints faster than he could even move.
He stuck his hands inside his armpits and continued without stopping.
He walked and walked until the pine trees eventually ran out and there was only the listless white all around. The blizzard hadn’t abated still. The darkness of the evening trickled in faster than the last lights had winked out, as if a switch had been flicked somewhere. The cold took a steep, sub-zero dive, lacing itself with razor-sharp winds.
It all seemed to point to an end, one that was fast approaching. In his mind, he saw strange things that made no sense. They were like flashes from dreams he had had before, nightmares from sleepless nights, only they were now more dreadful than ever. He saw a field that was on fire. And then a while later: sticking out of this field was a pair of twisted legs that were lit up like beacons, being burnt to a crisp. His legs.
He had no idea what this vision was or why he had no control over it. But it was not all dream — it was real enough for him to hurt, and he watched helplessly as the ghost of the burning pain came out of nowhere and settled in the middle of his legs. There was laughter again — the low, metallic cackle of someone or something that wanted to end it all while things were still funny. And he thought he heard footsteps shuffling around him, veiled by shadows, dancing to the undertones of his legs kicking wildly, twitching, shoveling up snow.
He fell down hard on his side and curled himself into a ball. Although for a fraction of a second the pain felt good as it warmed up his blood, it was somehow final and he knew it. Fresh snow slushed against his chest as he tried to crawl. He could feel the snow everywhere except in his legs — his legs that were burning in another realm, far from help.
But it wasn’t until he knew for sure he was going to die (good night, gang, don’t save the beer) that it came to him he was going to die in the middle of nowhere. He didn’t know how far he had come from his cabin — and out here in the woods no one was going to stumble upon him, either. He couldn’t even keep his neck craned up, let alone crawl on his belly. He buried his face in the ground and now — shadows or not — all he could see behind his closed eyes were just the gray shapes that floated around.
What was that?
…keep fuming, keep falling, sleep to the sounds of the woods calling…
There was darkness.
The guy in the orange hunter’s jacket was asking if he’d like to have something to drink, or perhaps eat, but Slade didn’t think he could do either. He looked around him and realized that he was in a cabin, and pale, concerned faces were looking down at him morbidly. He wanted to speak to them but didn’t know if he could, until a wordless whisper slipped automatically out of his mouth.
“We gave you a warm bath,” the guy said. “You survived.”
Slade looked below him and saw that he was bundled in several thick blankets. The ends of his fingers and the lower part of his legs were throbbing — but it was good, pain was okay. His cheeks were lit up in a kind of burning itch, but, in a way, he felt like he had begun to thaw. Whatever had happened out there was either a bad dream, or something he had made up himself to deal with the fact that he had killed someone. And why did he kill someone? Maybe he was crazy after all, but that was a question for when he got better.
He slept unsurprisingly through the cold night, the painkillers they gave him easing the pain in his muscles. They told him when he woke up that there was no way of making contact and that they’d take him out to the city hospital when the blizzard abated. Which wasn’t going to be until the next day. Some of his fingers and toes had to be amputated, one of them said, but Slade couldn’t have cared less. He slept again.
He slept until afternoon when one of the hunters entered his room and closed the door behind him.
The snow had considerably lessened, but it was still thumping against the roof. The shadow of the closet standing in the corner fell on him in a rectangle, and overlapping this was the shadow of the man. The edges of the room oozed a kind of black liquid, but he knew he was only making it up — there was no liquid, only honest-to-God shadows. Suddenly, the room was full of them, and they seemed to be reaching out for him, long criss-cross lines like a net cast out for a prey.
“Don’t listen to the shadows,” Slade said. “Please… please, don’t.”
The man had a knife in his hand. It looked like a kitchen knife, but Slade wondered if his thawing skin wouldn’t be cut through like butter when it came to it. He looked into the man’s eyes, which were big and brown like bulging marbles. Slade had seen those eyes before and knew they had no earthly business on a man’s face. He had hunted more than his share of deer, but what he never forgot was how the eyes looked — sad and innocent but still knowing. Knowing beyond what you might account it for.
Right at that moment, all he could think about was a new realization: this was another lost soul in Hunter’s Elbow.
