The Hunger

The Hunger

Laura’s body was there in the darkness, a pale outline in the dirt. My eyes overflowed with tears as I wrung my hands, wanting to touch her, wanting to speak to her. I looked up to the night sky and prayed for an answer. I scanned the darkness of the haunted hills where we had decided to camp out for the weekend and cursed the ranks of trees and the violet line of the horizon. It was supposed to be our get away, a risky trek through so-called haunted hills. A place full of ghosts. She had read about this place one night while I sat up in bed next to her. We had agreed to a break from our busy routine of work and bills. Laura had gasped that night and shoved her phone screen in my face. It was a sprawling landscape of rolling hills and crystalline streams. As I stood there staring down at Laura’s lifeless, ruined body I remembered our first night. I remembered the screaming. We had a great first day, swimming and kayaking down a part of the Colorado river that was secluded and harder to access than most of the other places people put in. Laura’s eyes sparkled like the sunshine off the blue-green water, and we both seemed to let our day-to-day worries slip off our back as we followed the river. We found a suitable place to camp and began to set up in a small clearing near a shallow creek that gurgled on as we settled in. After the tent was set up and the fire was smoldering, Laura and I wandered down to the creek. The fading sunlight shimmered off the river that moved at its own easy pace. She turned to me and I swear she was the most beautiful I’d ever seen, standing there as the afternoon light outlined her in oranges and golds. Later, when we were done stargazing, we bedded down and were asleep minutes after the hours long hike. I woke up to Laura shaking me, her hand like a vice on my forearm. She said she heard something. I reminded her that we were in the woods and there was a litany of things, both living and otherwise that could create sounds we weren’t used to hearing. There was a period of silence in the darkness of our tent. I assumed her face was scrunched up the way it does when she is annoyed or doesn’t think I am taking her seriously. I told her I would check it out and began to put my jacket on to face the biting night air. I was reaching for the zipper of our tent when we heard it. It was a monstrous yowling that came from somewhere behind and above us where the hills climbed into the sky in great slopes. I unzipped the tent and peered out. I felt Lauras hand tugging at my back but shrugged her off as I stepped out into the dark. I heard Laura whispering for me to come back. I waited to hear another cry and heard animal noises coming from the dense woods around our small clearing. Crickets and owls played their hits amongst the shadows of the trees. I had no way of knowing just how close the person was and if they needed help. I tried to push the more insidious feeling I had had away, but it sat there in the doorway to the room of my mind, waiting to bite me with sharp fangs. Something deep inside of me, something older gave me the impression that what I heard was a warning. Like a dog with its hackles up in some dark corner, waiting to leap out and tear flesh from bone. I waited underneath the moonlight glow for another cry that never came. We eventually fell asleep again and after we had eaten breakfast the next morning, we had forgotten all but what we had heard. That next day we had pushed further into the hills where the landscape became rockier and less forgiving. We hiked and sweated under the glaring sun and said little. Eventually, as dusk rapidly approached and the sky was painted in shades of magenta and burnt orange we sat down against two boulders for a final rest before making camp. Laura was in an upbeat mood as usual, her eternal optimist.

“What do you think that was last night?”

“Probably just a coyote.”

We both stared out at the sprawling hill country landscape down below us, the river snaking through the green carpet of oak, cypress, and juniper. The view that kept people coming back to this place. Kept them coming back and leaving with strange stories.

“Trent.”

I looked at her then and saw the worry etched into her face.

“Since camp last night and even hiking further up today something feels…different. What if all the stories are true?”

We made camp that night after hiking up a bit further until we came to a copse of sturdy oaks that we felt comfortable with. We were both dog tired after moving up the hills that felt more and more like El Capitan with each new marker we passed. Sleep came easy but it didn’t last. It was me who woke first to the sounds of sharp yelping noises that sounded as if they were coming from just outside our tent. I unzipped the opening and rushed out, anger and fatigue consuming me as I prepared to tear apart whatever had woken us up. When I emerged from the tent the yelping seemed to trail off as whoever or whatever it was, began to retreat from the area as silence pervaded the night again. After doing a quick search of the area and shining the torch through the perimeter of our wooded hilltop camp, I got back into my sleeping bag and told Laura to do the same. I could tell that she was bothered but, in the end, sleep won out and we both passed out a short time later. Whispering like dead leaves sliding across concrete woke me just a couple hours later around 4am. It sounded as if a group of people were standing over our tent and conversing in anxious, hushed voices. I heard what sounded like footsteps pounding the rocky earth around us. If I was mad before, now I was seething. I jumped up and unzipped the tent, this time with my hand axe ready to cut down whatever was waiting for me. The whispers dissipated before like a ghost in the wind, and I was frantic as I searched, walking further into the woods this time to find some shred of evidence. When I found nothing save for the usual insect chatter and a small rabbit who gave me a quick glance then bounded away, I walked back to the tent, deflated and exhausted. The adrenaline was receding and my lack of sleep was taking its toll. I climbed back into my sleeping bag next to Laura who moaned and groaned but never fully woke, and then I slept like the dead.

We slept in past 9am that morning and it did us some good. We took our time cooking breakfast over a small fire and drinking our coffee that I thanked God for after the strange night. I was unsettled to say the least, but had it in my mind that what I experienced the night before and the stories that we had read were part of the experience and something we would be able to tell our friends and family about when we got back home. And anyway, I had Laura and with our busy schedules, any time alone like this was something to cherish. We set out and moved up the hillside into an area known as the jagged ridge for the trees and rocks that jutted out, forming a snaggle toothed lip on the northern face of the hill. We had our typical lunch of sandwiches and water but our spirits had recovered from the past two nights as we knew we would most likely reach the top of the hill in the morning and the end of our hike. We joked and talked about the future and took pictures of the large rocks and bent trees that were immortally poised to leap off of the hill. I wondered what they would be trying to get away from. We read and listened to music by the firelight before getting into our tent for the night. We made love and then turned our heads around and put our heads outside the tent to stare up at the stars like glittering specs in a wide pool of deep violet sky. I woke up in a state of raw terror, Lauras screams trailing away from our campsite as I rushed out of the tent, nearly ripping it apart in my mad rush to get to her. I ran through the pitch darkness, hearing her screams turn into bleating moans before stopping abruptly after a wet thunk sound echoed like a curse against the stillness of the night. I ran and ran in the dark until I tripped on a wide log and fell onto the rocky earth hard. I ignored the searing pain and was getting up when I saw her. She was lying there on the cold hard packed earth with a small pool of blood by her head. I cried there in the darkness, my sobs turning into angry screaming until my throat was raw and my voice was ragged. Then they revealed themselves to me, walking out of the darkness and leering at me. Their bodies are pale and elongated with large eyes and sharp teeth that they show me before they close in on me. I jump up and they don’t see the rock in my hand. I swing madly, with only malice and revenge left. One of them takes it beneath the lily-white jaw and something akin to blood sprays the earth. I pray it died a painful death. There are too many of them and the last thing I see is a long pole with a spherical stone attached to the end hurtling towards my face. I try to duck but I can’t because I am lying on the ground. They have pushed me down, too many long fingers groping, grabbing, holding me down. The world is extinguished.

When I woke, I found myself staring up into the strange, elongated face of one of my captors who grinned back at me with a blackened mouth. Then his mouth formed a small O and from his throat came a rhythmic clicking that chilled my blood. My anger came back to me as I lunged forward or rather, tried to. My hands and ankles were bound in rusty chains. I strained against them to no avail and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I realized I was surrounded. They had taken me back to their village tucked away, forgotten in the hills that had born so many stories. I began to make out huge mounds of brush and tree limbs, with dried leaves and moss that served as padding within monstrous nests, some large enough to sleep a family of five. I wondered if I had gone mad. If I had lost my mind after that first night by the cliffside. There must have been at least sixty of them there. They began beating the ground with rocks. They beat the ground in rhythm as if they shared a hive mind. It was clear that their striking the ground was a means to an end although I couldn’t fathom what. Then through the fog of my grief and anger I knew. It was a ritual. They yelped, whooped, and made clicking noises that came from deep within. Calling, calling out into the night for someone or something. I felt the ground begin to shake as they came an enormous rumbling as if the earth itself was shifting. The creatures danced alone and with one another while they yelped as they began to move out of my direct line of vision, sinking to the left and right of me. It was then that I knew my mind was truly fracturing because it was then that I saw the rock rupturing in front of me. The hills were…alive somehow and were birthing something. As the earth opened, I saw it for the first time. A creature so immense, so powerful. It was alien, with yellow tusks and many dark gleaming eyes that searched for its sustenance above. Then I saw one of the creatures lugging a sack and my heart sank. It was in Laura’s sleeping bag. It was her. Two of the pale abominations swung the sack into the middle of the rock which was now a deep hole where the huge beast was waiting with innumerable sharp teeth and fetid, sour breath. I saw them throw her into the creature’s mouth, and I couldn’t stifle my scream any longer. I screamed and screamed until one of the creatures grabbed me by the neck and slammed my head into the ground. My mind had splintered by that point; the sound of Laura’s body being ripped to shreds and eaten was too much. They unchained me and stood me up, so I was on the precipice of the ledge which hung mere feet from the terrible creatures pulsating mouth of row upon row of deadly fangs dripping with Lauras blood. Their yelps and sickening clicks slowly subsided as thoughts raced through my mind. These things must have been here. Been here for eons. Maybe they were a race that predated human beings and had hunkered down in the crevices of the world where they served their gods who hungered for human flesh and wielded ancient power. A forgotten race that only the earth remembered. Then I thought of Laura and how witnessing her smile was like peeking into heaven. I knew I would see her soon. The pale things pushed me headlong into the hole that was death and I welcomed it.