Things With Tusks

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. You watched from a distance the singular ribbon of light dancing in the darkness. You frowned.

The warden had been sure to mark the cabin on your map that afternoon. “Used to be a research station for them scientists sent by Fish & Wildlife,” he said disdainfully. “Fancy college-type folks.”

“What is it now?” you asked.

His eyes flickered across your expression, as if you had just uttered some forbidden phrase of passage. He shook his head. “Ain’t nothing there now,” the warden said, and continued to mark other important points for you on the map.

Whatever the warden seemed to think was there, you started towards the cabin, still a distance away. You had hunted these woods before, mostly for turkey or the occasional deer. Ted had been the one to suggest hunting boar. “They’re practically a pest,” he had said. “Eat everything they can fit their mouths around, and the females have a dozen pigs or more easy each year.” He showed you a thermal vision scope that cost more than your mortgage payment. “We take this out, the warden’ll practically thank us for hunting ‘em.”

Of course, that was before Ted called to tell you about the city kid in a yolk-yellow Charger who had come into the shop five minutes before closing with a flat tire and a wallet about as fat as his head was empty. “You go on without me,” he insisted. Then he added with a chuckle, “Just be sure to save some of them tusked suckers for me.”

Hunting alone wasn’t unusual, sure, but hunting alone at night? Not illegal by any means, but not strictly encouraged, either. But you did it. You drove to the range and you found an outlook over a nice, large clearing and you sighted Ted’s scope in. Funnily enough, the warden hadn’t mentioned the clearing when he was marking spots with recent activity on your map. The clearing was thick with acorns and wild radish, and the various other roots and wild fruits on which boars subsisted. So you had waited, first patiently, then impatiently, as the night curled by, minute by minute by silent, desolate minute. You had spent the past few hours playing with Ted’s scope, watching the landscape alternate in various shades of blue and purple. It was through the thermal scope where you first spotted the tiny ribbon of heat dancing in the darkness.

You continued in the direction of the light. After hours sitting in the dark alone without the slightest trace of life, the light seemed vivacious, almost mystical. Your eyes strained in the darkness to make out the shape of the cabin. The damp night air made you feel heavy and strange, like an infant first learning the shapes of their body. Something hadn’t settled right with you in the way the warden had avoided your question. “Ain’t nothing there now.” Then why had he looked at you like you just asked something you weren’t supposed to?

Something crackled behind you. You jumped and flashed the scope towards the sound in a single, reflexive motion. It was probably just a deer, but in the night silence, it was like someone had set off a firecracker. For an instant, you saw a flash of yellow-orange heat before it disappeared behind a tree. “Probably just a deer,” you assured yourself, the tremble in your breath betraying your confidence. “Just a deer.”

You quickened your pace the last hundred yards or so until you came upon the cabin. In the dark, the building’s hard, human edges looked almost alien. The hair on the back of your neck prickled. Was it colder here than it was just a moment before? You shined your flashlight against the cabin, not entirely sure what you were looking for. Moss had claimed much of the outer building, and time had claimed the rest. It seemed the roof had given out at some point, leaving the south side of the building collapsed inward like a rotted pumpkin. The other three walls remained standing, though dubiously so. The only window into the cabin was the one in which the candle stood. The window pane was a filthy brown color that had been shattered from the center, leaving shards of jagged glass jutting from the frame like a set of carnivorous fangs. Finally your flashlight came upon the entrance to the cabin. Someone had boarded the doorway with a thick beam, but this, too, had long-since rotted from the passage of time, the most patient and gentle of all nature’s forces. In fact the door itself could barely be considered by its namesake, hanging limply from its frame and splintering in several places. You almost didn’t recognize the marks of red against the door as writing, the paint had peeled and cracked so badly. But once you saw the message scrawled hastily into the door, your blood froze.

Though their speech is charming, do not believe them, for their throat is an open grave.

“Hello?”

You spun on your heels, whipping the thermal scope in the direction of the lone, female voice. It took everything to keep the scope steady in your trembling hands.

“Can you help me? I’m lost…”

Your mind began to race through all the possibilities. Was she another hunter? But surely even the most novice hunter would know to identify yourself when you call out. And the warden hadn’t mentioned anyone else hunting the land tonight. Maybe a lost hiker? Certainly possible, though you were miles away from the nearest hiking trail, and only someone with a death wish would go hiking on hunting ground. You should have called out then, asked her to identify herself, but the words refused to leave your throat. Instead you adjusted your sights and zoomed in the direction of the voice.

“Is anyone there?”

You gasped when you spotted her. It was a reflexive sound. She appeared in the scope as a green and cyan shape, hunched over on all fours like an animal. In fact you might have mistaken her for one if you hadn’t just gone the better part of four hours without encountering a single other living thing. Again, you had the opportunity to call out to her, but you didn’t. You simply could not will the words to come out of you.

She moved with awkward, jerking motions, still on all fours, her head sweeping back and forth like she was looking for something. Even though you were separated by several hundred yards of forest, you didn’t dare move. Was she naked? Her long hair spilled over her shoulders like fur. It felt almost rude watching her dig at the ground and sniff the foliage. She was impossibly thin, practically made of bone. But she didn’t move like a starving hiker who was lost in the woods. She was actually quite nimble on all fours, moving with an almost doe-like grace. You watched in silence, transfixed, as she moved from tree to tree, inspecting the bark at the trunk of each and sometimes craning her neck to see into its branches. Somehow, in the back of your mind, maybe, or in the most primal corners of your soul, you knew what she was doing:

She was looking for you.

You started to move then, slowly, always keeping the scope trained on her. Could she smell you? Were your footprints pointing her right to you? It was only a matter of time until she found what she was looking for, and you didn’t want to be there when she did. Your legs ached as you forced them to move. You had been locked in a crouch for several minutes while you watched her, you realized. Yet those minutes had felt like mere moments. What time was it, again?

A loud snap erupted from under the weight of your foot. A branch, now split in two. It was, you were sure, the loudest sound you had ever heard.

“There you are!”

You gave up on stealth and broke into a dead sprint in the direction you had left your truck a mile or so back. You were running in complete darkness, low-hanging branches whipping your face and thorny brush tugging at your legs. The forest itself was trying to suck you in, you thought, to pin you in its emerald web like you were nothing more than a gnat. You felt the cuff of your trousers tear as you ripped yourself free. Behind you, at a distance closer than you expected, came a high-pitched caterwaul which might be mistaken for laughter. Your cheeks burned with heat as the blood thundered through your heart. Your chest heaved beneath the thick fabric of your hunting jacket. Was that the road you spotted in the distance? You were running faster than you had ever run before. You were running like an animal runs from fire. You…

were…

flying…

Thwump! The cold clay earth slammed against you. For a moment you were too stunned to move. A soft gasp of pain escaped from somewhere within you. The laughter behind you swelled.

“Where are you going?"

You rolled over onto your back, the taste of earth and blood stinging your gums. “Leave me alone!” you screamed hoarsely into the darkness. “I-I have a gun!” Your rifle had launched a few feet ahead of where you fell. You groveled for it blindly.

“I need to go home…”

The cool stock of the barrel found your hand. You pulled yourself upright and pointed the thermal scope back in the direction of her voice. A mess of blue and purple tones skittered and jumped in the viewfinder. Shit. Ted was going to kill you when he found out you broke his scope. That is, if you lived long enough for Ted to kill you…

What would be worse in that moment—to see your pursuer galloping towards you on all fours, teeth, sharper than razors, bared? Or would it be worse to see nothing at all, to face your final moments alone, in darkness, as vulnerable to the world as the day you were born, until, in a single moment of pain, pain more excruciating than any you have felt before, you were gone?

Though the viewfinder was busted, you could still see clearly through the darkness what was there. She was no more than fifty yards away—how had she closed the distance between you so quickly? As if waiting to be sure you were watching, she stood unmoving among the trees. Then, slowly, like the sail of some infernal ship unfurling, she rose onto two feet, and you could understand even from this distance how inhuman she really was. She stood easily seven feet tall, maybe more. Her massive shoulder filled your vision and blotted out the meager moonlight filtering through the trees. Her arms, short and rough, ended with blunt, hoofed shapes caked in black mud. As you mustered the courage to look into the face of this creature, you realized her slender, human features had stretched and twisted into a pointed snout, crowned at the ends with two curved, yellow tusks protruding from her lower jaw. In the viewfinder, her eyes were two indigo chasms, void of warmth—and fixed straight on you. She pointed a hoofed hand in the direction of the cabin, towards the singular slit of dancing orange light.

“I can’t go home…”

You shifted the weight of the rifle in your hands. Only aim your weapon at what you intend to kill. That was the first thing they taught you in any gun safety class. Hell, that was basic human instinct. Could you do it? Could you fire a shot at this...creature, if you had to? Your body felt heavy, warm, and foreign. You held your rifle with a death grip.

Fight or flight—it was basic human instinct, after all. You could barely feel your legs moving under you as you sprinted the remaining distance to your truck. You chucked your gear into the bed, no longer caring whether Ted’s precious scope was damaged or not. The engine roared to life. The drive back to the game warden’s office was short and silent. You didn’t dare look into the rearview mirror. As you drove, the last moments of darkness gave way to the light of a new morning, and you prayed to God for the distance to forget what you had seen.