Greeves

‘The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.’

Well, at least that’s how the stories went, come every winter before the solstice.

Horseshit, right?

Well, let me tell you, there’ve been stories of strange sounds coming from the wooded valley between the tall canines of Jagtooth Ridge. Even stranger still is the fog that shrouds it, seemingly pouring out from the maw of the gap, hiding it, reaching out through the stretch of woods leading up to it. The clouds that’d roll over the peaks of the surrounding mountains would spill out and run down as fog, had it been a regular cold night of winter. But not so on this night. This small whisper of warning, telling of the solstice, would yield a strange event where the night, as peerless as the creeks and streams that ran from the valley with an aversion to it, would taste the fog that rolled out, born from the dark void.

Needless to say, imaginations run wild with these sorts of things. Many tongues wag at places not stepped or things not seen. Stories inflate with the passage of time, building and changing shape when told at hunters’ bars or ranger stations.

I never paid too much mind to the tall tales, especially when they always stunk of liquor. I never been one to pay attention to any of it, really. Ghost stories, bigfoot, angels and demons. Was baptized once as a babe, never set foot in a church ever after. That and all the stories were made of the same stuff as any UFO sighting;

‘Now, I couldn’t tell you what it was or what it looked like, but the shadow done scared the hell out of me.’, Or ‘There’s a cabin in them woods you couldn’t pay me to go near.’, and so it went, always ending the same way;

‘I’ll never set foot in them woods again.’

All of them just pussyfooting after hearing stories. But, I will admit, it was the stories of the old timers that always got to me, at least more than any of the drunkards’ pisspant telling ever would. The way the stories danced from what they remembered from stories their oldtimers spun and what they experienced time and time again walking in or near them woods. They all ended the same way too, sparing this time they were left hanging round the neck of the man they called Long Shadow.

‘Go ask Long Shadow, he’ll know it better’n all.’

Long Shadow was the last of his tribe, the Crow. There were more like him, but when a river narrows to a creek, then a stream, then other veins pour in, it’s not the same river. He was one of the last veins of the river that held its own. Long Shadow was a tall man who, with time and like leather, started to shrink under the sun, save his wingspan that stayed lanky and true. Never said much to anyone, drank alone, and watched the town move through his one good eye. The other one was scarred over, but not enough to hide the grin of pinkish white beneath. Nobody much talked to him either, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask him about the woods.

Well, I figured.

The second I finished my sentence, he stood up as if the words shook him awake and were enough to shoot him up from his roots. He didn’t answer. In fact, he got up to leave. Now, I was just about to call out to him had he not turned around to beckon me follow.

We walked and he told me of his people. How his kin were mountain and river folk. They moved from the east, looking to settle the savage lands. After spreading out like toes on a crow, they held their own against all that nature threw at them. What they weren’t prepared for was the pale man that followed.

We walked on until stopping in the plains, a half mile shy of the woods. He started a fire where the grass had ended in a great circle, right in the center of drawn rocks, and stacks of stones in a circle that I mistook for seats until I was hissed at by Long Shadow. I knelt in the grass and let Long Shadow tell the story, with outspread arms.

His people would stick to the water of the woods, to the tall grass of the plains, or the shadow of the mountains, in hopes of never being found by anyone save their own. There was no hiding from the sun however. You were always bound to get burned, by your own or by newcomers. The newcomers, however, were like a plague rather than a week of ill and a few lives traded between tribes. They killed on sight. Long Shadow hadn’t known why until he listened in on the older white mens’ telling of his people, the ones that seemed to burst out like shadows against sun. Soon as they shone themselves, that was the last thing you’d see. He huffed. Asked me what came first, day or night?

Every other moon, there would be a standoff. Blood was shed. Crows would lose a few too many to the barrel fire of the white man. Made Crow hearts turn black, made their wrath more… deliberate. Such was the case with a family of four that made their way across the plains. A family Long Shadow named, with a shudder;

‘Greeves.’

The head of the family was a Wilhelm Greeves. Word around town was they’d made their way for the woods but came up short out in the plains, so they set up camp for the night. In fact, they set up right where me and Long Shadow set now. Right on top of sacred Crow ground. The wind picked up in that moment and pushed hard against us, towards the woods yonder. The fire wavered and Long Shadow spread his arms wider and called out birdlike.

The call was carried on the wind, waking Wilhelm from his sleep and bringing him out of the tent. He looked out to the horizon, but the dying fire only made out a faint shadow. A man with outspread arms like wings. Now, I’d defy any man not to do what Greeves done in that moment; shoot first, ask later. I reckon I’d do the same, seeing a great bird-man out in the dark. The shot was aimless, seeing as he couldn’t make out more than a few yards ahead of him. So, he made his way up to make sure this time he’d hit, but the dark got the better of him. Then the lone Crow stood ahead of a team of Crow that burst from the tall grass, yipping and cawing as they took hold of Greeves on either side. All of them black as the night, spare the leader, pale as a ghost in the faint moonlight, approaching slowly as the other four made for the tent. Wilhelm fought hard against the deliberate approach of the ghost Crow who held his tomahawk at the base, fixin’ to scalp. He fought enough that the other two Crows doubled back, each one tackling Wilhelm, pressing down on him with all their weight and might, wrangling his head up in offering to their leader. He fought harder still to no avail, leaving the only sound, save his own animal grunting, being the jowls and caws, turned screams and panic, turned cries and anguish. Then, as an answer to the helpless cries of Wilhelm, to whispers on the wind turned chants that set alight a fire in him. A fire that changed him from the inside out, making his grunts, his strength, his skin and bones, something else. The leader made quick to dispatch with this, something else, only to have his weapon ripped free, along with his arm. The only thing left was to watch. Watch as the skin that stretched, tower over, as the arms that thickened, render and tear to pieces the Crows he once saw whole. The sound of spill and slaughter and what squeals of pain could still be made overpowered any thrashing going on in the tent. When the Crows came out, all they saw was a figure drenched in blood and their leader, short an arm, fleeing. It was all they needed to see.

Wilhelm had sprung forth into the tent and was immediately brought down at the sight.

They took trophies. Making his family, something else.

He gathered what was left of his family in the cloth of the tent and made for the woods, hellbent on getting his family home. He found the place in a clearing at the base of the two hills, staking his claim with the remains of his family. There, with his new found strength and new found tool, he built his cabin with his two hands. By the word of Long Shadow, it’s still there and so is he, nearly two hundred years later, the fire still burning.

Then he told me of the debt of his people. The vengeance still owed that kept Greeves, and the screams that kept the Crow awake at night, very much alive. Their crime so egregious, that sacrifice was owed. So every solstice, the blood of that night, that intermingled and soaked the soil, still calls out to him and any Crow in their sleep, only fading away with the giving of flesh. A finger, a hand, an eye, a pint of blood, would be the only way to satiate and be granted sleep. But, there was only so much that one could give until one finally gave in.

Now, mind you, my only thought should have been what a crock of shit this all was. But something in the way Long Shadow’s voice rattled warning, or how he sold the story at the cost of his eye, tickled a part of me I hadn’t known I had. A part that should have been wound tight to caution, but only stroked a loose curiosity.

So, I tell Long Shadow that I didn’t mean to swear on his lost eye, but that I wasn’t too sure I believed it. His outstretched arms folded inward, crossing something fickle, as he stood hard and only uttered;

‘Then go. I’ll wait for you here.’

So, to stick it to ol’ Long Shadow, I did.

Folks, believe you me, there is a power in nonbelief. I do believe that’s what allowed me to make it to the cabin. I also believe that’s what got me out of the forest. But, I’m jumping around a bit. Where was I? Right! The power of nonbelief.

The wind brushed through the trees, the fog started to run through them like slow running water. The closer I got, the thicker the fog had grown. It came with the faint scent of cinder, becoming more pungent as smoke the deeper that I went, until it nearly choked me. Beyond the small breeze that waved the smoke through the trees, the faint crackle of a distant fire came to me in the form of faint confusion, making me turn about, twisting in circles, looking for the thing cracking branches and the source of the voice that came to me as whispers. Until I was stopped in my tracks by a distant light. And I thought;

Well I’ll be damned, there it is. There’s the cabin. There’s the candle. And not a soul around save my own.

Or, at least I figured.

I made my way up without a hitch. No fear, no doubt. Whoever started the fire probably did so to fight back the cold. Nothing else. Nothing out of the ordinary, seeing as it only got colder the deeper you went into them woods. That was until I saw the door. Barely hanging onto its hinge, its handle not there, only a chunk of door missing to pull it open. Took some difficulty on my part to pry it free, as it was buried in the dirt on one side.

What once was a cabin was now, something else. More like a nest of scrap wood and flayed cushions, their feather down gone awry, floating around the air. And the smell, had it not been for the burning wax and blazing fire covering up, would’ve been enough to turn vultures away. I got a look around and got hung up on the one place still in one piece. The hearth, like an altar, was littered with a collection of bones on the mantle, and strung up bones and parts tied with plain grass twine, like Christmas lights. All of it framing the bone tomahawk buried hard in the center of the mantle.

Don’t know what possessed me to grab the tomahawk, but soon as I did, I felt a sudden gust of wind blow in from behind me, snuffing out the candle and smoldering the fire, dimming the place to a faint dark. The room filled with the reek of sour sweat and rancid death, something animal.

And I got that sickly feeling that someone was behind me. I gripped the tomahawk as I felt the hot breath pour over my shoulder. The whispers filled the room and built up into a hiss, or had it been Greeves, I didn’t know, but I took a page out of his book and without aim, I swung the tomahawk around. I hesitated, half hoping it was Long Shadow or someone else. Now, I couldn’t much see him, but I knew it was Greeves, had he been all teeth and, something else. Any swing I put in would’ve registered no effect on the taut stretched skin and thing of all teeth and claws. Claws that came down hard on me with my only defense being to recoil. I threw my left hand to cover my head and with a sickly rip, like sharp shears through cloth, he freed my pinky and ring finger as he unzipped my hand down the middle. I had nothing left but to slip through the gap of his legs and make for the door.

And I ran, and I ran, and I ran but no matter what, I could hear the hiss all around me, could feel the teeth just inches from my neck, and what ground I gained came with the immediate shock and realization that it wasn’t Greeves losing speed, rather he was leaving room for the pounce. In that moment, I threw myself down, as far forward as I could get, the edge of the woods in sight.

Everything went black.

Everything went quiet.

I thought I was dead at this point. I laid there, facedown, waiting to be chewed up and spit out. Nothing. I picked myself up, my hand, or what was left of it, throbbing and leaking, and pressed on dizzily. Then, I heard the hard sway of trees, but I didn’t feel no wind. So, I looked up and around, the limbs of the trees looking too familiar to that of Greeves. Just as I got to the edge of the forest, I turned around, ready to sprint, when I was stopped dead in my tracks by the gangly shadow of claws and teeth ready to filet me. I fell on my back and pushed away as Greeves made his way up to me, deliberately. I heard the whispers turn to screams and remembered what Long Shadow said.

I reached for the tomahawk.

Chop. Chop. Chop.

I freed my left hand from the wrist down and with anguished hope, I pushed it toward Greeves. At first, it paid no mind to the limp slab of leftovers, only focused on the larger prize before him. Just as he bore his teeth towards me, I closed my eyes to spare myself the sight of the thresher. He let off a grunt, giving me the smell of my death, but didn’t lunge. As I peeked, he had taken his index claw and put it through my hand like a Jesus Christ kebab and accepted the gesture. He made his way back into the woods, the fog folding over him.

That’s all I could really remember. Don’t know how I got back, don’t know how much of it was real. I’m just glad I got out with my skin, albeit short a hand.

All I know is that I can still smell the smoke. I can still feel my hand now and again. And I can still hear the screams some nights.

Now, I tell you what, I’ll never set foot in them woods again.