Sigrid & Her Axe

Sigrid rests her hand on the wooden handle of the axe. She slows her breathing and remains calm but unmoving, while lying on her back listening. She keeps her eyes fixed on the skylight of the tent. The branches of the beech trees hypnotically sway in the breeze. The full moon’s haunting light briefly accentuates the canopy of leaves between openings of dense sweeping clouds on this chilly October night.

She listens intently for the animal or human that cautiously creeps around her campsite. Whatever it is, it is stealth in its movements, and confuses Sigrid. She thought she heard the gait of a four-legged animal, but then it would sound like two feet being carefully placed, while maneuvering through the crisp foliage scattered about the ground.

Sigrid comes from a long line of Norwegians who camp, hunt, forage, and hike through uncharted forests of Norway. She often camps alone. It’s where she feels most at home compared to her life in the city. Sigrid feels deeply connected with the animals, trees, and waterways. Every unsettling song sung by wolves, foxes, moose, or elk Sigrid finds hauntingly beautiful. She can identify tracks and guess with precision what animal makes its way through the trees and foliage by the depth of noise they create.

But tonight, Sigrid is alert and quite unsettled with the strange and subtle noise of someone or something walking on four feet then two feet. She wonders if a human is alternating between crawling on their hands and knees then standing, while moving around the outer edge of the campsite.

Three more hours remain until dawn, and Sigrid will hike back to her vehicle. She decides to leave early because of how uncomfortable she has become. Some time has passed, and the sound of the wind blowing through the forest is the only sound Sigrid can hear, so she decides to get some sleep.

Sigrid suddenly wakes from a deep sleep. A rancid stench permeates the air. She covers her face with the long sleeves of her thermal top to keep from retching. She hears the crunch of leaves from the ground just outside the tent behind her. She hears a soft scraping sound and looks to the front of her to see what looks like three claws slowly pressing into the body of the tent, scraping all the way down to the base.

Sigrid moves swiftly out of her sleeping bag and grabs her axe. She never walks in the woods without it. The axe has been passed down through the family from an ancestor, a mariner from the late 1600s. The solid wood handle is rough with grooves and nicks that seem to heal over time. Faded leather is wrapped around the knob of the handle and holds a tassel of braided leather. The blade is a dulled silver adorned with dots punched into the metal along the edges of the enlarged blade. It is thin towards the bit of the blade with the edges fanned outward with a slight curve ending in a sharp point.

The unknown being pushes into the tent with its head touching Sigrid’s back. She swivels around, shocked at how it got to the other side so quickly, and jabs the eye of the axe at the head. A strange noise comes from the being as if the pain from shock was locked in its throat, like tape covering a mouth. The impression of the head looks human, but the sounds the being makes are not human at all.

“I can fight and have weapons! Leave my camp now!” Sigrid sternly said. Sigrid listens intently. The wind has picked up, and tiny raindrops start to splat on top of the tent. She turns around and puts on her hiking boots, jeans, coat, and her father’s old crossbody bag with a loop attached to the front strap for the axe. As she is about to slip a leather protector over the blade, she hears heavy alternating dragging steps, as if on all fours, scurry to the front of the tent. It slams into the tent, falling onto Sigrid, then rolls off. The tent recovers its shape. Sigrid looks up through the skylight to see a sickly, blanched, man-like face staring back at her. But could it see her? There were no eyes, only hollow, grainy, goopy, black-ooze in the sockets. Skin stretches over the bony structure where a mouth would be. The creature is hairless and without ears and a nose. The humanoid creature claws rapaciously at the tent, and Sigrid screams the longest ancestral war cry and strikes it in the shoulder, ripping a gaping hole in the tent. The creature wails within and falls back.

Sigrid turns on the two LED lights clipped to her coat, one near each shoulder, and runs from the tent with her axe in hand. A golden glow starts to creep into the forest. Sigrid knows she has to reach the lake fast before the sun gets too high in the sky. The mass of untouched trees will act like a canopy, and the forest will become dark and dangerous.

She runs as fast as she can, forcing her way through thick brush, trees, and over uneven ground. The trees and brush seem to grab and slap at her legs while the rough land challenges her feet. She can hear the creature move at inhumane speeds through the thick brush. She keeps looking back, catching glimpses of the emaciated ghostly white figure, either running in a crouched position behind her or running like a hunched-over human just a few steps ahead on her right or left side. Then, it would suddenly crouch down and disappear, only to appear in another spot too close to her.

As Sigrid runs, she has a flash memory of her grandparents talking of such a thing living in the woods. The story is passed down from her relative whose axe she holds. She always thought it was a tall tale since she had never been scared by anything unexplainable on the excursions into the woods. Sigrid keeps running as best she can to the lake. The lake will have more clearing, so she can run faster to her car or jump in the lake and swim away from the being if she needs to. The tale told to her as a young girl was that it toys with its prey and then slowly rips apart the limbs and flesh of the victim to eat. Sigrid grips the handle of her axe so tight her knuckles turn white as she continues onward. She tells herself she will not die in the forest she feels most at peace with.

Suddenly, claws scrape the top of Sigrid’s head, and strands of hair are ripped out. Her knees almost buckled from the shock of pain. She loses her footing and slams into a large tree. She swings the axe back over her head and hits the creature. She turns to see a deep cut on its head, black ooze seeping out of the wound as slow as tree sap. She swung her axe at the creature's throat. It seems to calculate her move and jumps back into the air to a thick tree trunk about 8 feet away. It lands with its back to the tree, its knees bent, and feet pressed flat against the wood, arms folded back to the sides of the tree with its claws embedded in the wood. It makes a muffled sound as it stretches its lower jaw towards its chest. The skin thins and rips where the mouth should be. Sigrid’s body shakes as she wildly stares at the creature in disbelief. She breathes in a mass amount of crisp air and screams at a piercing high pitch with rage in her eyes. It scurries around the backside of the trunk, keeping its back to the wood of the great pine tree. She hears it fall into the nearby brush, and she runs for the lake.

The trees become less dense, revealing golden hues of the sun that begin to glow upon the woods. Sigrid knows she is close to the stone ridge that lines the lake. She hears the being getting close behind her. She looks back again and sees it running on all fours a few feet behind her. Sigrid’s body slams forward towards the ground, hitting her head on a large, smooth rock. She feels the skin near her eyebrow split open, and blood trickles down past her eye. She jerks her boot from the two rocks her boot wedged between and crawls to the edge, pulling herself over the ridge and sliding down patches of wet moss on the rock wall. She strikes a gap between rocks with the blade of her axe to slow her descent. A searing pain shoots through her other arm that holds on to a crack in the wall. The creature’s claws scrape Sigrid’s forearm as it tries desperately to hold on to her and lift her up, but she resists. Sigrid lifts a knee towards her chest, positioning the tip of her boot against the rock surface, and pushes herself off the ridge. Her body falls eight feet to the ground. She lands on her back and gasps for air as she rolls over, frantically looking for her axe. She crawls towards the axe, grabs the leather braid, and runs along the edge of the lake to the path that leads to the road.

She keeps looking back but doesn’t see the being. She reaches the sloped path naturally made over the years by locals walking down to the lake from the roadside. She struggles up the muddied, rocky soil to the top but eventually makes it. She runs through the clearing towards the road. She can see her '97 Bronco parked on the opposite side of the road in a small gravel space next to a rocky hillside. She looks back one more time and sees nothing but clearing and trees.

She throws her bag in the passenger seat and places the axe on her lap. As she turns the vehicle around, she hears a thud against the back of the SUV. She slams on the gas, and in the rear-view mirror is the skeletal, ghastly creature running upright at 60 mph. Sigrid looks back to the road, concentrating on the curves up ahead. She loses traction of the back wheels on a bend in the road and recovers. She speeds up to 75 mph. The creature is closing in on the distance. Sigrid hits the brakes as she enters two sharp curves in the road between the forest and the mountainside. On the last turn, the back tires hit gravel, causing Sigrid to lose control of the Bronco. The vehicle crashes into a small guard rail and falls down a ravine. The Bronco hits trees on the way down, busting out the passenger and back window. The SUV crashes into two great pine trees perfectly spaced, holding the vehicle from falling further down the ravine.

Sigrid looks up, her eyesight slightly blurry from hitting her head. She gazes through the cracks in the windshield up towards the road. There it stands, perfectly still, arms resting limply by its sides with its head cocked to one side, staring down at her with empty black cavities for eyes. She feels around the floor for her axe, not taking her eyes off this thing. Sigrid holds the axe at an angle in front of her. The vehicle slightly jolts and slips backward, just inches between the trees. Sigrid hears a faint scratch coming up the side of the passenger door. The creature still stood at the roadside, motionless. She slowly turns her head to the right to see two hands, bony, blanched fingers, with claws slowly moving into the opening of the passenger window. Fear shoots through Sigrid’s gut as it raises its head. Black sockets for eyes appear in the busted-out window of the door. The wound on its head was still oozing. Ripped flesh flutters from its breath as it stretches over the gaping jaw. Sigrid strikes one swift blow to the being’s head, killing it instantly. As its body slumps over the door of the vehicle, Sigrid looks up towards the road to see the other being looking at something down the road. In a blur, the creature is gone. Through gaps in the trees, Sigrid sees a truck coming around the bend of the road. She frantically honks the horn, and the vehicle comes to a stop. A man walks to the damaged guard rail and looks down. “What the hell is that?” the man yelled in shock. Sigrid smashes the windshield out with the eye of her axe. The man yells to Sigrid, “I’m getting a rope!” Sigrid crawls out to the hood of the Bronco and waits for the man to return. To her right, she catches something white moving amongst some trees in the distance. She grips her axe tightly and stares into the forest. The being steps out from behind a tree and looks at her. Sigrid triumphantly grins back at the creature and holds up her middle finger.