The Disappearance of Billy Carter

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. That winter saw the biggest freeze since the snowfall of 1963, and let me tell you, there wasn’t a goddamned patch of grass all the way from Anchorage to Salt Lake City. Just white everywhere, white as far as the eye could see.

Snow like that does funny things to a person, if he or she stays out in it too long. The mind has a way of playing tricks on you after a while – snow mirage, is what the professionals call it. But those of us who have been out in the field for as long as I have, well, let’s just say that we know something different.

On a clear day, the sun’s light reflects off the snow like a sheet of aluminum, and if you aren’t careful, it’ll burn a hole straight through your irises. The Inuit were the first people to invent sunglasses, for that very reason. They cut two circles from caribou or whale bone, strap them together, and cut a slit down the middle to see through. Not pretty, but effective. Smart people, the Inuit.

The sun had already dropped off the edge of the globe and it was dark; dark enough for you to have to switch on your flashlight and hope the batteries held out till you got somewhere safe. Two days we’d been looking for the missing boy, and those of us who weren’t new to the force knew that he was already a lost cause. There wasn’t a person alive who could last out in conditions like these, improperly dressed. This was bear country. And by 4pm it was already getting too dark to carry on the search.

The light was fading fast, and it was a cold winter. It was enough to make those flickering shadows in the trees look awfully menacing, no matter how many years you spent out here. Sure, you had your fancy coat and your State Trooper badge. But deep down at the bottom of it all you were just a kid, scared of what was out there in the dark.

Scared of the monsters. Scared of being eaten.

‘Ah, quit scaring yourself, Rody,’ I said, re-slinging the old Remington over my shoulder, as if to reassure myself that I wasn’t alone.

I was about to turn back. It was a good couple of miles back to the road, and as the twilight turned into night I knew it would be difficult going. The snow was deep enough to slow you down, alright, and even a grown man had to take his time, or end up with a sprained ankle out here in the middle of nowhere.

Just a month ago, we’d found the body of a man with a broken leg, a mile from where he’d gone missing. His top half was sticking out of a snowdrift, frozen solid, and the animals had taken care of most of it. You did well to take care out here, in the wilderness. The man’s eyes had frozen, wide open, and his tongue had been bitten off, probably by the wolves.

And there were other things out here, too, things which had nothing to do with bears or wolves, or tricks of the light. Everybody in the State Troopers knew, although nobody talked much. I tried to cast that to the back of my head for now.

On the path ahead lay the old cabin. My boots crunched loudly in the hard snow, and I stopped. Two days of searching for the boy Billy Carter had taken its toll, but now I would absolutely swear upon what I was seeing; a pale light emanating from the window of that abandoned shack. Trying my best to remain quiet, I drew closer. It flickered, a pale orange sort of glow—candlelight, I realised.

The cabin had belonged to some old trapper a long time ago, years before the nearby town had even been built, when Tanana was just another stopping place along the Yukon river. Its roof had sloped in at the middle and collapsed a little, and the old wooden door had fallen off its hinges, worn by the years and the weather. It sat here undisturbed, some two-hundred yards from the stream, abandoned by time.

Slowly, I drew the Remington from my shoulder and clicked the safety off. This road was off-limits to the public; it ran towards the mountains, about half-way between Hughes, a nowhere-village with a population of 80 people, and Evansville, a couple of houses with a population of 15, give or take. There weren’t a large number of reasons why anyone would be up here, save for a death wish. I came up on the side of the shack, using the trees for cover, as I tried to run the possibilities through my head.

I thought of the boy, Billy Carter. Now I came to think about it, there was something... odd about Billy’s disappearance. I saw the kid around town of course, mostly hanging around with his dad, Mike. Mike Carter was an Iraqi war vet, who never said much to anyone. His wife, Nancy, died in an industrial accident a few years back. The strange thing about Billy was that it had taken his father twelve hours to report that Billy hadn’t showed up on Saturday morning.

‘Twelve hours,’ I’d said to Sergeant Lewis. ‘Doesn’t that seem a little strange to you, given the weather we’ve been having and all?’

Lewis shrugged. ‘Not that unusual, considering the way Mike turned up at the station. You could’ve set a match to the guy with the amount of bourbon sweating out of his pores. Says he doesn’t even remember Billy leaving the house.’

‘Sure. But twelve hours is also enough time to get rid of a body and get blind drunk for an alibi.’

‘Come on, Rody, what do you want from me?’ said Lewis. He played with the small wooden eagle on his desk, and looked at me. ‘We’ve already searched the house and the surrounding area. K9’s got squat. And then there’s that stuff in Billy’s room. Exploring the Alaskan Wilderness, Inuit Myths and Legends? You remember that stuff, right?’

I nodded. There had been all kinds of stuff in Billy’s room; maps, pages ripped out of the town library books on local history, some sort of diary. Billy Carter, it seemed, had fancied himself as an explorer.

‘Chances are, that he sees his dad passed out on the sofa and decides to get the hell out of Dodge for a while,’ said Lewis. ‘You remember that clearing we found, full of planks and loose pieces of string and crap? I’d wager good money that that was Billy’s usual hang out. So, Billy goes out, but he decides to adventure a bit too far this time, and can’t find his way back. Then the storm hits. It wouldn’t take long for a boy of his age to succumb to the temperatures out there.’

‘Yeah, it’s damn cold,’ I admitted. Still, there was something unsettling in my mind. And then there were the drawings in Billy’s room. Those drawings…

‘We’ll have to widen the search tomorrow. You take the old track north, past Herman’s place. See what you can find. Maybe the kid found a path and decided to follow it, I dunno. At least we can say we looked,’ said Lewis.

It felt like a waste of time to me; the kid was surely, beyond doubt, dead. But some of those drawings in Billy’s room had made me feel… I don’t know. Whatever had driven him to sketch those shadowy, red-eyed figures, it made me want to find the kid alive, more than anything.

As I drew nearer the shack, I stepped carefully, making sure not to disturb any dead branches or fall flat on my face in the snow. Part of me wanted to give a warning shout, so that I didn’t poke my head up through the window and receive a round of buckshot to the face, but the other, more cautious part of me thought it best to see what the score was first. I half-expected to bust down the door to see Mike Carter standing over the body of his son, hacksaw in hand and a grin plastered all over his drunken, bloodied face.

‘D’ya think they’ll give me a medal from George Dubya now, hey Rody? HAVE I SERVED MY COUNTRY ENOUGH NOW, RODY?’

I stopped and pressed my ear to the cold, wet wood. There was no noise coming from the cabin at all. Somewhere far off, I heard the lonely hoot of a snowy owl coming from the darkness of the trees. I tucked the hard stock of the Remington into my shoulder, and stepped forward.

Crack! – went the sound of the twig under my bunny boots. My heart froze for a second, and then I stepped forward and into the doorway of the lit cabin, the barrel of the shotgun coming to bear…

‘Please don’t shoot, mister!’ said the voice of Billy Carter. I knew as soon as I saw him at the other end of my gun; there could be no doubt that this boy, no older than twelve, was the one we’d been searching for. The first thing I noticed about him was how cold he was. He seemed blue, almost, sitting in a foetal position next to a couple of old wax candles. They couldn’t have been warming him much.

‘Billy?’ I said, placing the Remington gently on the table beside me. ‘Billy Carter? God damn, am I pleased to see you! Thought we’d lost you, what with the snow and all.’

I took off my coat and offered it to the boy. He reached out a hand, took it, reluctantly, and wrapped it around himself. He was too cold to shiver, and his lips were blue, I noticed, in the light. I reckon if I hadn’t got to Billy Carter right then, he would’ve died of hypothermia within the next two hours.

‘Don’t you worry. You’re safe now, Billy. My name’s Rody Marshall, I’m with the State Troopers,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a vehicle about half a mile from here, with some supplies in it. Do you think you could make it that far?’

Numbly, the boy shook his head, and I agreed with him. He was in no fit state to move, and I couldn’t carry him - not in the snow. I took out what I had from my pockets: a small flask with some coffee in it, and a chocolate bar. I poured him the coffee and held it out to him.

Billy looked at me with something in his eyes (fear?) and pulled back for a second.

‘You gotta warm up, okay Billy?’ Shit, I thought, probably the first time in this kid’s life that he’s had a cup of coffee. Well, better get used to it, son. You’ll be needing plenty of it in a couple of years.

‘O-okay,’ Billy said. He took the cup delicately and sipped it, and then I unwrapped the chocolate and gave it to him. I thought about the survival lessons we’d taken at the 16-week training course at State Trooper Academy. If it was too late to get back to the car, I had to keep us both alive for the night. I had to get Billy warm.

‘Listen, I have to get a fire going. Ain’t no good in us both freezing to death,’ I said, even though I knew Billy was in a much worse state than me. He stared blankly ahead. ‘I’m gonna go collect some firewood outside, okay?’

At this, the boy’s eyes glanced up.

‘No,’ he said. There was something unknown in his face, something unsaid…

‘I’m not going anywhere, you hear? But it’s below zero, and we need to light a fire. I saw some logs around the back of the cabin. Now, you sit there for a moment and I’ll be back with some wood. Do you understand?’

Billy said nothing.

I stepped outside and took in the surroundings. Without my coat, which I’d given to Billy inside the cabin, it was deathly cold. I could see crystals of ice in the air, shimmering in the candlelight, but there was absolutely no wind, not even a breeze. The woods were dark and foreboding, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I’d expected to hear foxes, or the scuttling of little furry animals across the forest floor, or birds. But the surrounding trees were as silent as the grave.

‘Better hurry up, Rody. There’s a kid who looks like he’s dancing on the precipice of mortality in there,’ I said to myself, and shivered.

Quickly, I made my way around to the side of the cabin, where I’d seen the stack of logs earlier. I picked up a couple in the darkness, hoping that whatever spiders and centipedes were living in there didn’t run up my arms or bite my fingers, and I brought them back to the door of the cabin. Then I went back for a couple more.

I felt the eerie sensation that something was watching me quietly from the safety of the trees. Observing.

It was those drawings. I could picture them, Billy’s little shadow-men with red eyes, watching from the comfort of the darkness – their world. Waiting.

‘You okay in there, Billy?’ I said, poking my head around the doorway. Billy was sitting exactly the same as he had been before. He nodded, feebly. ‘I just need to fetch us some kindling. We’ll have that fire going in just a second.’

As I walked back around the cabin, I sensed something flit across my field of vision. There was a shuffling within the trees, as though something had darted away, and then it was silent again. Hurriedly, I picked up a few smaller twigs and branches for the fire. I kept close to the cabin, shining my flashlight into the surrounding trees once in a while, but there was nothing there except for the dark shadows of the trees.

‘Now Billy,’ I said, after getting a small fire going on the earthy floor of the cabin. There was no risk of CO2 poisoning in here, not with the roof letting in half of the Alaskan winter. ‘Do you mind telling me how you got lost out here?’

A bit of warmth had returned to the boy’s face, and for that I was immensely glad. ‘W-well, sir,’ he said, ‘I suppose I just got lost, is all. In the woods… at the back of my pa’s house.’

‘You were playing out in the woods on your own?’

‘Yeah, I do that sometimes. My dad... he doesn’t mind, so long as I get back in time to do chores.’

‘You play in the woods a lot, Billy?’ I asked, thinking of all of the maps and books in his room. What had that book been called? Inuit Myths and Legends, that was it. The cover of that one had given me the willies.

‘S-sure, I guess so.’ Billy kept his eyes focused on the door of the cabin, I noticed.

‘And you just got lost?’

‘Yeah, I just got l-lost. I was gonna work my way back to the house, but then it got dark. And I t-thought someone was chasing me.’

‘Chasing you?’ I asked.

Billy said nothing for a moment, then looked at me. ‘Yeah, but it was probably j-just my imagination, that was all.’

‘I’ve spent a lot of years in the State Troopers, Billy, a lot of time traveling around here by myself. All of that emptiness, it can have funny effects on you. Hearing things, seeing things,’ I said. ‘I reckon it’s fair to say I’ve had a few… close encounters, in my time. But I know what is and ain’t real, and I figure you do too. Now do you think someone was chasing you, or not?’

‘I-I can’t say for sure, mister Rody,’ said Billy. ‘I didn’t see no-one, it was just like you said. I thought I heard someone running after me. Someone breathing. Maybe not a person. Maybe…’

‘Like an animal?’ I thought of the time I’d been followed three miles up Willow Creek. That had been some kind of animal, hadn’t it? No, I was a cop, and I didn't think it had. That had been something fast, clever, elusive, like a person. Only I hadn’t actually seen anyone that day. I had high-tailed it out of there as quickly as I could, my neck hairs tingling.

‘Or, maybe it was something else. Something that’d make you feel stupid telling a grown-up that you’d seen.’

The boy waited for a moment. I could see him thinking hard about what to say to me. If he clammed up again I’d never get to the bottom of it. ‘Something like a shadow, Billy? Like a man who you can never quite see because he’s dancing in and out of the corners of your eyes.’

At this, I saw the horror creep into the boy’s face. He opened up his eyes and looked at me. ‘Y-you’ve seen them too?’

‘I don’t know. All I know is, I’ve seen something before. Something which gave me the creeps,’ I said. ‘Most of us on the force have got… stories. I figure it’s some kind of unexplained phenomenon. Something which modern science hasn’t gotten around to explaining yet, but which people know exists. An echo of the past, maybe. But an echo can’t hurt you, and I don’t think whatever this is can, either.’

Billy was shaking like a leaf. Although the warmth had come back into his face, he had gone pale at the mention of the mysterious figures. He pulled up his trouser leg and beckoned me to look.

Along the side of Billy's calf was a deep cut, probably an inch deep and at least three inches wide. I could see where the blood had dried in thick, flaky patches.

‘They can,’ Billy said, clinging onto my arm tightly. ‘They can hurt you. O-one of them nearly got me last night. Once they've got the taste of b-blood...'

‘Don’t worry. You’re safe now, Billy,’ I said. But the look on his face didn’t give me any confidence that either of us actually were.

I placed another log on the fire. When I sat back down, I moved closer to Billy, facing the open doorway of the cabin. I’d picked the Remington back up, and I held it in my lap for a while.

‘I have a confession to make, Billy,’ I said, ‘When we were searching for you, we took a little look around your bedroom to see if you’d left any clues. I saw your drawings. And that book… Do you know anything about… them?’

Billy nodded. ‘The Inuit who settled here a thousand years ago called them Ijiraq. Shapeshifters. The Norse p-people had different names for them. Elves, or land-spirits. I found some old books on folklore at the library. I’ve been reading them ever since… well, ever since I saw something, in the w-woods near our house. Do you ever get the feeling like you’re being watched, or followed, when you go out on your own?’

I nodded. ‘There was this…thing, a couple of years ago. It followed me about three miles downstream near Willow Creek. I never got a look at the thing, but I could tell that something was there. Like a... presence.’

‘It’s said that the Ijiraq live in a place that exists between two worlds – our world, and the shadow world,’ Billy continued. ‘Most of the time, they leave us alone. They like to watch, from a distance. But sometimes they get interested…playful. But I thought that was all, just echoes, like you said. I w-wanted to see them up close, you know?’

‘So you went out wandering in the woods whenever you got the chance,’ I said, ‘hoping you might strike up a conversation with…with one of those things.’

The fire was cooling, and I could feel the icy air creeping into the old cabin, cold tendrils reaching their way towards us. ‘That’s right,’ Billy said, solemnly. ‘So I took a few things and I started looking for them. It didn’t take long. I could feel their gaze on me coming from the woods. That’s when I made the biggest m-mistake.’

‘I had written down a few phrases in the language of the Inuit peoples to say out loud. I thought, you know, that they would understand. That’s when they came for me, from the trees. I ran…as fast as my legs could manage. They were hunting me. I st-stumbled. Something sliced my leg up. But I kept going somehow until I reached a path, and I kept walking. Then I w-wound up here. I don’t know why they stopped coming after me. You probably think I’m crazy, don’t you?’

The livid terror in the boy’s eyes was real. Of that, there could be no doubt. ‘No, Billy, I don’t think you are. I think you’re telling the truth. Not that anyone else would believe it, mind you. We’ll have to say you got lost and scraped your leg on a loose nail, or something,’ I said.

‘Shh. It’s cold,’ Billy said. ‘Do you feel that?’

Lost in Billy’s retelling of his story, I had lost my senses a little, but now they were coming back into focus. Because wasn’t there a strange energy descending upon us, in the dead of night? And why did I feel as though it had just dropped a good few degrees inside the cabin?

As if to make a fool of me, the fire, which had cooled down to a small crackling flame, started to die. Billy grabbed my arm tightly, and I began to feel sick to my stomach.

‘Alright, alright,’ I said, regaining my cool. ‘I think we’ve just about scared each other to high hell. I figure the cold is still our worst enemy, and that fire is the only way me and you are going to survive the night. There are some more logs right outside the cabin. I’ll grab a couple and be right back.’

‘B-be careful,’ Billy said.

I decided to take the Remington with me this time. It was no more than twenty steps from the doorway to the pile of logs, but the time it took to get there felt more like twenty minutes. The forest was black and silent. I bent down and, with my free hand, picked up one of the biggest pieces of wood I could find. Then I looked up.

What I was seeing was beyond my comprehension. The outline of the trees, which had been lit by a pale moonlight before, was now gone, and the entire area surrounding the cabin had been enveloped by a thick, grey mist. It seemed to be formed in a perfect circle, about 80 feet across, and the ground surrounding the inside of the circle was dark and blackened. Beyond the mist were faint sounds, which sounded like fingers shuffling and scraping inside a wooden drawer. They were getting louder.

I dropped the log I was holding and switched both hands to the shotgun, wheeling it around at the slowly encroaching mist.

‘Mister Rody, are you okay?’ came the voice of Billy from inside the cabin.

‘I… don’t know. Stay inside, Billy,’ I said, waiting for something, although I wasn't sure what, to emerge from the fog at any moment.Amidst the shuffling sounds, I could now hear, to my horror, voices chattering in some unknown dialect. The voices were not human. They were old voices, as old as the Earth itself, chanting and whispering.

Though I didn’t think bullets would have any effect on… them, I thought that the shotgun might provide some deterrence factor at least. If these things were as old as the ancient tribes who first settled here, they might still be afraid of smoke and fire.

Come on, you sons of bitches, I whispered. Come on through, step right up and try your luck!

A shadow flew out of the fog. It moved lightning fast, flitting this way and that, a grayish blur, though I could see that it was roughly human, with leathery skin and long, thin limbs. In the center of where its head would have been were two red embers for eyes.

In what must have been less than a second it had closed the distance between us, whipping from side to side faster than my eyes could keep up.

I paused, dug my feet into the ground, and aimed.

Shooting clays was one thing, on a clear day, but years of instinct were kicking into focus. When the moment was right, I swung the barrel of the Remington into the darting shadow, and fired.

There was a flash and a burst of smoke, the sound of the shotgun shattering the air. Within the mist I could hear jittering voices, a sense of apprehension, and then the place fell silent.

The circle of mist slowly receded. Whatever had been in front of me was now gone, and some chivalric gene in my DNA, mixed in with years of police training, caused me to cry out:

‘Get away from here! I won’t let you take the boy. Leave now, or I’ll shoot!’

There were a few quiet whispers. The mist seemed to flicker, as if making a decision, and then it started to drift back from where it had come. It faded into the treeline, and I breathed a sigh of relief, suddenly remembering to eject the spent cartridge from my shotgun.

‘You okay, Billy? I think they’re g-‘ I started.

The voices began again, chanting their way to a crescendo, like a frenzied choir.

The mist flooded back in like a rushing wave. It crashed upon me and the cabin like a tsunami, flooding the place with thick fog.

I looked on in awe and fright.

In they flew through the fog, hundreds of shadows of differing sizes and shapes. I barely had time to take in what I was seeing. Some of them were shaped like caribou, wolves and other forest animals -- some of which I didn’t recognise -- and others were in the shape of great men and other unknown beasts. At the back of the mist was a hulking, enormous shape which towered upwards into the treetops.

The voices were chanting, roaring, snarling angrily. The Remington answered. I fired wildly at the shapes, smoke filling the air. Then the great shape stepped forward. It spoke to me in a dark, booming voice, in some alien language which I now understood clearly:

We have always been, the voice told me, with the authority and power of a God whose name time had forgotten.

We are as ancient as the great mountaintops, and as powerful as the sea, and our spirit lives in the soil and in the water of the rivers, and the forests are our hallowed ground, sanctified by those who have worshipped us for a thousand years.

I saw ancient tribes praying to this astronomical power, spilling its blood to pay homage, and sacrificing its sons to the trees and to the spirits which dwelled within this land.

Feebly, whatever consciousness still remained in my mind managed to say: Take me as you will, but leave the boy. He’s done you no harm!

But the voice, cold and unyielding, spoke and said:

The infant has spoken heresy, and is accursed. There can be no forgiveness. The price must be paid. And so shall yours be, Trooper. So shall yours be.

I fell into darkness.

‘Mister Rody, are you okay?’ came the boy’s voice. I opened my eyes. I was inside the cabin, and the fire was burning; Billy had placed a few new logs on the fire.

‘What happened?’ I asked. My head was pounding, and I couldn’t remember much, except the mist surrounding the cabin, and some dark dreams which were fading just before I could remember them.

‘You went outside, and there was some shooting,' Billy said. 'When I heard that, I took out the spells I had written down from the old library books, and I said them as loudly as I could. And it worked, Rody! It worked! I tried to drag you back in here, but you were half-asleep. You kept saying something about mountains and rivers, and then you blacked out, until just now.'

I sat up, rubbing my forehead. ‘You’re a good kid, Billy. Thanks.'

‘Do you think we’ll be safe now?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think everything will work out, in the end. Because that’s how it has always been. And how it shall always be.’

Billy stepped back, his face trembling and white. I stood up.

‘P-please...’ Billy said.

‘It’s a good job you’re here, Billy,’ I said. ‘This skin doesn’t suit well at all. We need something…younger.’

I pulled my mouth open, revealing rows of sharp, jagged teeth.

Billy Carter screamed. It was the last sound he would ever make.

And the Price was Paid.

It was early morning. I walked back along the road, past Herman’s place, in the direction of town. A dog barked loudly at me from a nearby garden. I wrung its neck quickly, and carried on walking into town.

Later, people would say what a miracle it was that Billy Carter survived two days in the Alaskan wilderness on his own, and what a shame it was that a good trooper had been lost, looking for him, in the wild.

Probably eaten by bears, they would say.

Behind Billy Carter’s face, I smiled.

We are the Ijiraq.

And now we are coming for you.