The Travelers, The Lodgekeeper, and The Beast

Styles

Ice bit bitterly at our nose and our cheeks. We had been walking for some time and even though we were in layers and layers of the latest in winter gear we could feel the wind inside our bones. The crunch of the snow and the wind that raged all around us made a horrible symphony of one long unbroken note.

Our snowmobile had broken down miles back and the only way to get back to our hotel was trudging through this blizzard. I could hardly see anything, not only because of the blizzard all around but because of how dark it was.

Every so often we would call out to each other “you okay?” Eventually, we couldn’t even do that. We just kind of hoped and trusted that we were still together and we were still heading in the right direction.

We came to find The Beast, which was its name. The locals called it Nimaralochus when translated essentially meant the same thing. The legend was that The Beast would not just hunt its prey but play with it for a lack of a better term. It would only hunt at night which came to no surprise and if you got it just at the right time you could capture it in a moment of weakness.

The NImaralochus was easily startled and apparently acted out the flight more than the fight. Sneaky though it was if you were not vigilant you would be its next plaything. Oftentimes the lodge keepers would find the body parts of visitors splayed around in the morning in a frozen bloody mess.

Most of the time these were people like Danny and I who came to see if the legends were true. Travelers and thrill-seekers like ourselves who just wanted to get a shot of some kind to post to the masses. Of course, you would get the skeptics and the debunk junkies but Danny and me? We were believers. Bigfoot, Mothman, Jersey Devil, you name it we believed in it without a doubt.

I could feel my body growing heavy with fatigue from the day. We had been out snowboarding and filming some videos for our social media channels. We had well over 500,000 followers and our goal was to make it to 1 million.

I never thought we would ever get this far, to be honest - we started making videos to update our families on how our gap year was going since we had done one together. Then somehow things just snowballed from there and here are making content for our fans!

I couldn’t tell if Danny was with me or not. I couldn’t hear anything apart from the whipping winds and I couldn’t feel anything apart from the thumping in my chest. At least my heart is still beating.

That’s all I could tell myself. I honestly couldn’t even tell if we were on the path to our lodge which had been clearly laid out with signs and all but not a living thing would have been able to find its way through this blizzarding hell. Talk about hell freezing over. I imagined that it would have been something like this.

Without warning my headlamp went out and suddenly the darkness felt more suffocating than the bitter cold wind. I squinted through my fogged-up eyewear to see if I could see the glow from Danny’s headlamp but I couldn’t see a thing.

I tried to call out but I realized I hadn’t actually spoken in quite some time and trying to get any noise out of my mouth felt new and foreign. Heavier and heavier I felt my legs buckle under me and the snow seemed to cover my eyes.

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Danny

I decided that I hate snow. We had been walking through this blizzard for what seemed like hours. I was done within the first thirty seconds, after snowboarding I was sore and already ready for a soak in the hot springs.

I showed Styles up like I usually do which always made our fans go crazy. A full day of snowboarding and video recording made me tired but thinking about having to edit the next day just added to the weight of it all.

This was supposed to be a vacation but really there was no rest for the wicked was there? The price we pay for internet fame am I right? I mean yes it was a vacation but we did also come to see the Nimaralochus.

For Styles, it was all about the hits we were going to get on the socials, for me? I just wanted to see a monster in real life. I believed they existed ever since I was a kid - there was something that used to stand outside my window and just stare blankly at me while I lay in bed. I tried to tell my parents but you know how adults are when kids are afraid.

That thing came back to my window every night for weeks and after we moved house I never saw it again. Since then I don’t doubt things like The Yeti or this Nimarlochus thing.

The lodgekeeper told us to be careful on our way back - through broken English I think he was trying to warn us about this storm but at the time we thought he was warning us about The Beast.

I couldn’t remember the last time I shouted out to Styles to see if he was okay. Now I was just hoping for some kind of sign that we would be back at the lodge soon. My headlamp went out and my backup torch seemed to be broken too. All I could think of was the hot springs waiting to welcome my sore body when we got back and then I would call my girlfriend and miss her all over again.

Jay was always really supportive of what I did with Styles but it was always in a way that she said it. She always said, “that’s great babe!” Then she would give me this hopeful look like it was going to be a phase that I would grow out of.

I mean the money we were making from our socials was real money. I may not have been a lawyer, doctor, or financier like she wanted - I honestly don’t know how I landed her. She was studying for the Bar exam, brilliant she was. I knew she would go farther than I ever would. I still don’t know why she loved me.

Suddenly a loud bang brought me out of my thinking. It seemed to make an angry echo all around me that made my head hurt. I couldn’t tell if I was hearing a gunshot or if I was hearing an explosion of another kind.

I ducked out of instinct and frantically looked around for nothing to be seen. The blizzard was so thick and then I felt nothing, cold, and then I saw it. The Beast.

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The Lodgekeeper

I told those young foreigners not to go out today. They just nodded and smiled at me like a bunch of idiots. They had been out all day and a blizzard was due to come. I tried to explain to them that Nimaralochus feeds in the storms but they went off anyway, bowing to me and saying “thank you, thank you!” in my language. Fools. They don’t know what they’re feeding themselves to.

They come with their cameras and gadgets and pretend like NImaralochus is going to come and pose with them like a mascot from the television shows. They are like worms who put themselves on a hook and dance around for a fish as though they will only look and not play.

After the fourth hour of the foreign boys being gone, I knew I had to report their disappearance to their embassies. It was such a nuisance to have to do this so often, it always made me seem like I was the killer. I am no killer like NImaralochus or Nim for short. Nim is ruthless and brutal. I overhear the travelers talking about Nim like they know it but they don’t know a thing.

The blizzard is raging outside and I know what I will find in the morning. I’m sure by now they have been lost for at least seven hours and they were probably separated within the first twenty minutes after their snowmobile died. It’s all so predictable and I am here trying to run a business.

Why can’t travelers just come and enjoy nice skiing, snowboarding, and hot springs? I think I find that I run a very nice lodge and for lovers there is a suite with a private hot spring. Why can’t travelers come for that? Nim has more visitors than I do and they all seem to be so in love that they are willing to sacrifice themselves to it. I just don’t understand.

So, now I will wait for morning to come. I will not find their bodies, no, but their belongings I will and when I find them I know they will be covered in frozen solid body fluids. I am a lodgekeeper and I seem to double as an undertaker - this is not what I want to do.

They will be loved and missed and for the tenth time this year I will be investigated for murder. I can hear the horrid sounds of dismay in the echoing distance and I know those foreign boys are gone. The storm has covered the lodge and the lights have gone. I can hear Nim, again making that horrid sound. Strange, though it sounds closer than I remember.