Whispers From The Dark (2 page)

Underneath an old oak lay a crumpled up pile of what had once been a person. At this point it was impossible to tell if it had been a man or woman. The body was missing its legs, and its torso had been ripped open leaving only a few intestines trailing out of the hollow cavity that remained. The head had been gnawed on until it no longer resembled a head at all; just a round knot of gore, bald and black with blood that oozed from open wounds.

Will vomited, dropping his gun to the ground as he fell to his knees gagging. I’d done the same the first time my father took me into the woods at Pete Perkins’ property to learn what our town had lived with for decades.

“Look behind the body,” Tony urged.

The tentacle protruded out from a hole in the ground and wrapped its way around the forest floor, twenty feet long at least. It looked like a monstrous, headless snake, as big around as a basketball at the point where it exited the ground and tapering to nothing in its last few feet. It was hard to see, brown and orange and blending with the dead leaves as if it was part of the forest floor itself.

My eyes wandered across the ground until they found three more of the tentacles and a few other empty holes leading down into the darkness below the earth. 

“I see four,” Walt said matter-of-factly. “Anybody see more than that?”

Everyone responded with quiet nos.

“Everybody see those four?”

A yes from us all.

The old man looked around the woods for a moment before saying: “How about that other hiker?”

I looked through the trees but aside from us and the beast the forest was empty.

“What are they attached to?”  Will whispered. His eyes were still fixed on the tentacles lying half-hidden in the leaves.

We all looked at the boy in silence until Ralph answered him. “Nobody knows.”

“These…arms did that to that guy?”

“No,” I said. “That was probably the guy we ran into a few minutes ago. Or the one we ain’t seen yet. Once they get took over, they get…hungry, I guess.”

The kid bit his lower lip, taking in what he was looking at and hearing. After a couple of minutes he nodded his head in acceptance.  “So how do we kill it?”

Walt chuckled lightly. “We don’t.”

I saw confusion spread across Will’s face like buckshot. “What do you mean we don’t?”

I realized then that Walt hadn’t explained everything to Will. When I’d made my first trip into the woods with my dad, I knew exactly what was and wasn’t going to happen. Walt and Will’s dad Paul had apparently left out at least one part of the story.

Walt pulled a pack of smokes out of his pocket, shook one out and lit it. He took a deep draw on the cigarette and exhaled it, all the while staring at the serpentine arms splayed out before us. When he spoke, his voice had taken on the tone of a man lost in nostalgia, each word floating in the air a moment before the next joined it.

“Been a lot of folks try to get rid of these things, Will. Most of ‘em died trying to do it, too. Back before I was born, there was a fella filled up a dead pig with poison an’ threw it on one of the arms. That’s how they catch ya. Get close enough to one of them, an’ the fucker can…sense that you’re there, and it grabs ya and pulls ya under.”

Tony had started navigating the area, keeping a wide berth from the tentacles as circled them, scanning the woods for the other hiker.

Walt continued, “The pig hit the arm, alright. From what my Daddy told me it was drug under in a second flat, but the fella that threw it got snagged by another arm and’ went underneath right after it did. He came back up a little while later, filled up with whatever it is they fill ya up with.”

“My Dad told me my uncle threw a grenade down one of the holes once,” I said.

“Yep,” Walt nodded, “I remember hearing about that. An’ I was there when Chris Smith threw a wad of dynamite down one of the holes on his property, ‘bout twenty years ago. When it blew, the arms twitched around a lot, even knocked over a couple of trees . They disappeared down their holes and we thought the sumbitch had done it. Before we’d even left, they came back out like nothing had even happened.”

“So they can’t die.”  Will said.

Walt cut a quick glance towards his grandson. “Didn’t say that, boy. Just said we can’t kill ‘em. Maybe the army, or a scientist or something like that. But ain’t nobody ever gonna call them in.”

“Cause they’ll take the land,” Will said. The tone of his voice was that of an annoyed teenager repeating what he’d been told thousands of times, and probably with good reason. I was sure he’d been told that fact for as long as he could remember, just like me and Ralph and Tony and everyone else that had ever been born in Blanton.

“Yup,” Walt said. “You remember seeing on the news a few years ago about that big Indian village they dug up on some guy’s property while he was trying to flatten out a spot for a barn?”

Will nodded.

“You remember what happened?”

Another nod, coupled this time with an exasperated sigh. “The government wouldn’t let him build. They bought his land and brought in a buncha archeologists to dig there.”

“Yup. The government ain‘t out for the little man.”

“But they paid him. A lot.”

Tony spoke up, heading back towards the group. “It ain’t about the money. Not to most of us, anyways. This land’s been in my family for a century or more. Pretty much all the land around here’s handed down. Ever notice there ain’t even a real estate office in town?”

“Nobody moving here, Will.”  Ralph said.

“That’s right,” Tony continued. “There ain’t shit here but woods and a few hundred people. And it ain’t likely to change anytime soon. I don‘t really give a damn what‘s attached to those arms, or how to kill it. And I ain‘t about to risk losing what my daddy and granddaddy worked their whole lives to keep just so that somebody else that ain‘t ever even heard of this town can move in, kick me out, and study it.”

“You don’t think anybody’s ever told somebody from out of town?”  Will spat in disbelief.

Walt took a final puff of his smoke and threw it to the ground, grinding it into the dirt with his heel. “Lots of people have. Hard to convince people you’re telling the truth about something like this, though.”

“Somebody has to have believed it. What about these hikers?”

“They’re probably looking for Paradise Falls, over on the other side of the ridge,” Tony said.

“You’re right though,” I said. “Every once in a while somebody does believe the stories about the woods here.”

“And?”

“And they come here looking for a monster. These things are only in a few places, on a few pieces of property. Usually they come looking and don’t find anything at all.”

“Trespassing.”  Walt spit the word out like it was venom. “Sneaking ’round on other people’s land.”

I ignored him and continued. “If they happen to be in the right part of the woods…well…”

“They end up under the ground before they even have time to figure out they’ve found what they were looking for.”  Ralph finished for me. 

“And come back out dead. And with those things inside ‘em like that fella we just met.”  Walt added.

“So if we don’t kill it…”

“We’re only out here to clean up after it, Will. That’s the most we can do.”

Will started to reply, but before he could speak he froze and cocked his head to one side. We all stared at him expectantly. Tony had rejoined us, leaning against a tree with his gun at the ready.

Finally the youngster spoke. “You guys hear that? It’s like…scratching or something.”

Just as he finished the sentence a small patch of leaves shifted on the ground behind him and a human hand clawed its way into the daylight. None of us shouted a warning to Will; the crunching of the leaves had already done that. The kid whirled around and leveled the barrel of his gun at the hand, firing two rapid shots that sent plumes of dirt and disintegrated leaves flying into the air. Both shots missed the hand, and instead of vanishing it was joined by its companion.

As the rest of us moved forward to try and get a clear shot on the corpse climbing out of the ground, Will stumbled backwards with a burst of profanity trailing him. He’d only managed a few steps when he lost his footing a fell onto his back, gun bouncing across the ground and hitting one of the tentacles.

The grotesque arm sprang to life, whipping towards the gun in a flash. It missed the rifle completely, instead finding Will’s right arm and wrapping around it like a python suffocating its prey. The boy began to scream, panic flooding his face.

“Goddamn it, no!”  Walt screamed as we all instinctively turned our attention from the surfacing hiker to Walt and his grandson as the old man charged towards the teen.

As Ralph followed Walt towards the trapped boy, Tony fired off a round from his shotgun, tearing a grapefruit sized hole in the tentacle and coating the dead leaves with thick black blood. The arm convulsed violently for a second before it continued to retract into the ground, pulling Will with it. With the gunshot, the other arms sprang to life in an instant, whipping from side to side across the forest floor. One slammed into Walt at full force, sending the old man backwards through the air. 

Before he had even hit the ground, another of the tentacles found the old man and wrapped around his waist, retreating into its hole and dragging him through the leaves towards whatever unknown Hell the earth below held.  He screamed, cursing the thing that held him while firing his gun towards the one that had his grandson.

One of the stray bullets tore through Ralph’s knee just as he reached Will, knocking his leg from under him and dropping him to the ground in an instant. He fell without a sound, blood painting the leaves around him as the teenager he was trying to save carried on with his high-pitched, wordless wailing.

Both grandson and grandfather disappeared into the earth at the same time, screams and cries and curses twisting together and echoing up from below for a moment before vanishing into an unknown oblivion.

The remaining tentacles dropped to the ground and lay still. Ralph was silent, staring wide-eyed at one of the arms that had fallen to rest a few feet from him. Aside from raising his gun and shooting the beast that had taken Will, Tony hadn’t moved an inch during the chaos.

Neither had I. 

As soon as the beast was still and the screams had fallen silent, I could hear a wheezing, gurgling sound behind me, and I remembered in an instant what my attention had been focused on moments before.

The hiker had freed himself from the waist up and was finishing his escape from the earth, staring directly at me with white, milky, dead eyes. Dirt was caked in his hair, on what was left of his clothes, even in and around his mouth. His skin crawled.

I raised my gun and fired one shot, hitting the corpse above its eye and snapping its head backwards, shifting the cloudy gaze skywards. The body collapsed.

“Fucking shit…”  Ralph moaned the words as he crawled out of the reach of the scaled monstrosities, leaving a small trail of crimson on the leaves like a soldier wounded in some ungodly battle in some heathen land.

Tony helped Ralph stand, supporting him with his free hand while keeping the gun aimed at the closest tentacle.

The tentacles held our attention until finally Ralph broke the silence. “Now what?”

It was a simple enough question, one we all knew the answers to.

“One of us has gotta tell Walt’s wife,” I said. “And Will’s Dad.”

Tony grunted in agreement.

“What the hell do we say to ’em?”  Ralph asked.

“The truth. Goddamn arms took ’em under.”  Tony said the words quietly, eyes still fixed on the holes our two companions had vanished into. “And somebody’s gotta stay here, too. Wait for 'em.”

I was choking back tears. My entire life, I’d heard stories of people getting pulled under by the arms. I’d seen and shot those who came back from below. But this was the first time that I had ever witnessed a friend be claimed by the secret our town has kept for as long as anyone can remember.

It sat heavy on my soul.

Walt had been a family friend since my father was a kid. He’d practically helped raise me. Will…he was just a kid.

For the first time in my life, I seriously wondered just what would happen if someone important ever found out about the tentacles. About our town’s secret. About our sins.

“I can stay, wait for ‘em to come back,” Tony said flatly, interrupting my thoughts. I looked at him for a moment, studying his face. If he shared my feelings, he hid it well.

I knew the reality I was born into. No matter how many doubts I had, or how guilty I felt for hiding what lived in the woods, in the end it wasn’t just about me. Hundreds of people lived in and around Blanton. Small and secluded as it was, they all called it home. I was one of them, always would be, and would never put their homes in jeopardy.

“I’ll do it,” I said after a short silence.

“You sure?” Ralph asked.

“Yep. And I hate to mention it to ya, but we’ve still got that girl back at Tony’s to deal with. No telling when she’ll be waking up and wanting answers. I’d ten times rather stay here than go back and handle that.”

“I’ll deal with her when I get home. If Bobby ain‘t already,” Tony said.

“What are the chances Walt left the keys in his truck?”  Ralph asked.

“Pretty damn good, I’d say,” I replied.

We stood another moment, eyeing the tentacles. “Well…you guys better get a move on,” I said.

“Yeah,” Ralph said. “Don’t get near those goddamn arms while we’re gone.”

I managed a slight smile. “Ain’t gotta tell me twice.”

Tony looked me up and down before shooting a quick glance back to the beast. “You’ll be alright alone?”

I nodded.

“What about getting back to my place?”

“I’ll walk. It ain’t that far.”

“Two miles by my count. And there ain‘t no telling how long you could be up here waiting.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Tony shook his head. “I’ll be back with my truck before dark.”

That gave him five hours or so. “Alright,” I said, watching as they made their way back out through the woods the way we came.