#TYPE: Flip | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

safarigirlsp · 2 months ago

Text

Never Whistle in the Woods

Flip Zimmerman x OC

Word Count: 7.5k

Warnings: NSFW. Smut. Horror. Violence. Monster Action. Cryptids. Creepy things that happen in the woods. Backcountry flavor. Just a nice getaway with Flip. Those never go according to plan. I’m willing to continue this and write more if people like it!

Note: Going forward, I'm going to write characters from now on instead of Readers just because it's really annoying trying to switch back and forth for the non-fic writing I do. However, the female characters will be totally physically vague aside from having a name, so they can still easily be read as an insert by anyone who chooses to insert themselves.

Based on two requests I combined then butchered from rynwritestuff and @lumberjack00fantasies

AO3 Link

One of Flip’s favorite things was spending a secluded weekend out at his cabin, nestled in the forested mountains, away from the noise and mayhem of town. And away from people. Nothing cured a man’s love of humanity better than working with them. He enjoyed having a beer and a burger with his friends after work and he enjoyed taking his girl out to dinner. But he liked it a helluva lot more to take her with him into the mountains and not see or hear from another person for a couple days. Actually, it had become his favorite thing.

Knowing this, his girl, Kate, had booked him a nice getaway right up his alley. A solid week squirreled away in a truly remote cabin about as far away from humanity as he could get. It had taken a little online spelunking for her to land on the small town of Kitwanga, British Columbia, but its selling points of having a population of less than five-hundred, being a prime location for hunting and fishing, and being a true gateway to the wilderness with scarcely an outpost North between the little town and the Yukon, had sealed the deal. Besides, for the shrewd outdoorsman who wanted a less touristy experience with a friendlier populace for about a third of the money, British Columbia was a superior option to Alaska with all the same appeal.

Over-the-counter hunting licenses were available for all sorts of game that required a lottery draw or exorbitant fee in the States. Flip laughed when he read in the game regulations that it was strictly prohibited to shoot Bigfoot and that, should a sportsman encounter him, he was to be considered a protected species.

“How many big, hairy Canadians do you reckon had to get shot in the ass before they added that regulation?” He grinned at Kate, sitting with her legs curled under her on the seat of his rented truck as they bounced down the terrible excuse for a dirt road, sloshing in the mud and hitting potholes by the hundreds. Flip had twice hit his head on the bolt of the rifle secured in the headache rack above his head on the ceiling of the truck’s cab. He would have left the rifle inside their cabin, but they had been stringently warned not to take a step outside without it. Bears were a real threat and the animals here had little experience with humans, which meant little fear of them.

“Sounds like you better watch your own ass if you’re out wandering around in low light,” she teased back. “You’re big and lumbering enough to be mistaken for Bigfoot.”

“Yeah, but I’m a lot better lookin,’” he winked at her as he pulled into the only gas station in the tiny town. He filled up every day on their return in case the owner decided to take a day off. Electric pumps were a novelty that hadn’t reached this far north, it seemed. He was in a teasing mood, returning from a day of hiking and, as he put it, takin’ pictures of every goddamn thing in Canada.

“Depends on who you ask,” Kate laughed warmly. “I’ve waged a losing battle for quite a while trying to convince my friends you’re handsome. They tell me I’m blind or brainwashed.”

Five businesses in the tiny town were booming, frequented by most if not all of its citizens on a regular basis: the grocery store, post office, church, bar, and the gas station. Actually, Kitwanga boasted two bars. Flip figured this was a good insight as to the favorite pastime of the locals, especially since it doubled the churchgoers. There were no restaurants, but the bars had all the haute cuisine a man could want, so long as what he wanted was a cheeseburger or a sandwich or some chicken fried steak. However, one bar generously offered to cook anything a person brought in, provided the thing was somewhere between alive and kicking and starting to turn, and provided that gastronome paid in cash. Flip had already taken the owner and bartender up on this offer and handed over several trout he had caught that day to the owner’s wife and cook to fry for dinner. He had to admit it was some of the best fried fish he had ever had, and it paired wonderfully with the potent Moose Knuckle stout beer on tap.

The sign at the gas station read, Headed north? Need gas? It’s now or never. Two lonely gas pumps sat on a rectangle of cement on the otherwise muddy ground – the kind of pumps a person usually only saw on postcards from the fifties, with the rounded tops and numbers for cost and gallons that ticked by on a dial like an old one-armed-bandit style slot machine. A hand-scrawled sign in the window listed the hours vaguely as open from dawn ‘til dusk. An uninformed observer could easily mistake the business for being abandoned, or even condemned, a relic lingering in a ghost town. But for the metropolis of Kitwanga, it was a thriving business. There was even another vehicle at the pumps, a ’79 Ford truck with a lift and a winch on its bumper and a fat man in overalls leaning against the bed, pumping gas.

Flip stepped out of his truck and lifted the nozzle of the gas pump with a rusty squeal. He admired the view of his girl as she trotted into the gas station to forage for supplies. A brisk wind rustled his hair, tinged with chilled moisture. Above, low clouds in a grayscale palette churned in the sky. The snowy tops of the mountains were hidden inside the clouds and rain slashed across their facades in a grey haze. The rain hadn’t yet reached the foothills where the town and Flip’s rented cabin were nestled, but fog was creeping in from the base of the mountains and off a nearby river. Between the thunderclouds and the fog, it was as if the world was slowly closing in, like the vignette on a Bogart movie narrowing in on the dramatic eyes of a starlet.

Tilting his face up into the chilly air, Flip smiled. He loved rain and thunderstorms, and found peace in their chaos. Mainly, he loved holding his girl while a storm raged outside, or having a drink with her while they sat on the porch and felt the electricity in the air, and making love to her and feeling her shudder thunderously beneath him. His smile widened as he anticipated the evening ahead.

“Storm’s comin,’” the man at the pump said to Flip as he spat a string of brown tobacco into the mud. “You here for huntin’ or fishin?’”

“I’m mostly just here to take a break from everyday bullshit,” Flip replied in a friendly tone. “But I have tags for fishing and tags for bear and moose in case one happens to wander in front of me.”

“Storms are bad for fishin,’” the man said, nodding knowingly. “But they can be good for huntin.’ Storms bring the animals down from the big mountains. Moose especially like the mist and bears like to hunt in the rain when their prey can’t hear and see ‘em as good.”

“Good to know.” Flip smiled as he replaced the nozzle and turned to go inside and pay his tab.

“That your girl?” the man asked with a suggestive nod toward the gas station.

“That she is.” Flip turned to face the man, wondering if he’d end up getting in a fist fight while on vacation.

Not taking the hint, the man whistled appreciatively.

Flip decided the rube meant it as a compliment, so he simply agreed with a “Yup,” and went into the gas station. Kate had been suspiciously long inside anyway, something that nagged at the part of his mind that was always an officer on duty.

Inside the dingy little gas station, Flip saw his girl leaning against the counter engaged in an affable conversation with the attendant behind the counter, a squat older man with a heavily lined face and long silver hair in a braid hanging over his shoulder down to his gut. Flip wandered through the store, grabbing a few items that struck his fancy, some beef jerky, chips, candy bars, and other assorted junk food. At the back of the store, a menagerie of terrible taxidermy watched him with glassy eyes. Above the beverage coolers that lined the wall hung several deer and caribou and two enormous moose. A life-size grizzly bear stood on its hind feet in a corner, frozen mid-snarl, its head a solid three feet above Flip’s. He looked at its paws that were larger than his head and vicious curling claws, longer and thicker than his fingers. Facing such a beast, the gun he had in his truck now seemed very feeble. He grabbed a six-pack of stout beer bottles and an over-sized bottle of cheap wine and took his loot to the counter to pile it alongside Kate’s items.

“Have you heard about the wendigo?” Kate asked Flip when he joined her at the counter. The lilt in her voice told him she was highly amused. “My new friend was just telling me about it.”

“Yeah, wasn’t that the name of that stripper I arrested last year for blackmailing the mayor?” Flip smirked. “Wendy-Go?”

“He’s an idiot, I’m sorry,” Kate apologized to the man behind the counter, simultaneously elbowing Flip in the ribs. “Please ignore him and continue.”

The attendant gave Flip a sideways look and continued talking to Kate in a slow, backcountry drawl, “It is said the wendigo were people once, but now they are cursed. A wendigo is born during times of famine or in the harshest winter. When men are starving to death in the cold. When a man is weak, and he chooses the black path of cannibalism over death, butchering his fellows to save himself. When a man eats the flesh of another, he takes a curse upon himself. The wendigo lives in constant starvation, its body emaciated and rotting, only growing hungrier the more it eats. Its hunger can never be sated and it becomes a crazed beast with an insatiable bloodlust.”

“Is this insatiable bloodlust specific to tourists?” Flip asked sarcastically.

“Sometimes,” the man shrugged, unbothered. “It looks to punish those with greed in their hearts. Or, depending on which stories you believe, it seeks people who are like-minded to itself to build its own tribe.” He eyed Flip narrowly. “So, if a tourist is out greedily mining or wantonly slaughtering game, then yes, the wendigo will come for him.”

“Slaughtering is one of the few things I never do wantonly,” Flip deadpanned and slapped some cash down on the counter.

“You should be careful, son,” the old man told Flip seriously. “There are many ways a man can be greedy. He can be greedy for his woman and covetous of her.” Then he shrugged again. “But these are nothing more than old tales.”

“So, you don’t believe in the wendigo?” Kate asked.

“Oh, there’s no doubt in my mind he’s real. I’ve seen a wendigo twice. He has antlers taller than a caribou and wider than a moose, teeth like a wolf, and only skull sockets for eyes. But they glow. It’s the glow I remember most,” the man said genuinely as he counted out change. “I just don’t know if he was once a man, or something that was never human at all. Maybe the people who first came here created a myth to explain the monster rather than created a mythical monster themselves.”

“Maybe it’s a convenient way to scare pretty, gullible girls.” Flip smirked at Kate. Then he returned his attention to the cashier. “Let me guess, there’s something that wards off the wendigo? A silver crucifix or whatever? I bet we can buy it right here.”

“Nothing wards off the wendigo,” the man scoffed. “And he is far older than your crucifix. Why would a forest god bow to a stranger on a cross? Fire can stall him, maybe even frighten him, but it can only buy you time.” He looked outside the window at the building storm. “Not good weather for making a fire if you need it.”

“Damn shame.” Flip shook his head and began collecting their provisions in his arms. There were no courtesy bags.

“We do have flares,” the man suggested innocently. “They burn in any kind of weather, even underwater. All the bush pilots carry them.”

“Probably inside their emergency monster-hunting kit alongside the stakes for vampires and silver bullets for werewolves,” Flip laughed. “Go ahead. Load us up with some flares. Consider it a tip for a good campfire story.”

“It’s always smart to be prepared,” the man agreed as he placed two bundles of six red flares apiece on the counter and rang them up. They looked like bundles of dynamite.

Kate took the flares because Flip’s arms were already overfilled. She thanked the attendant and turned to leave.

The old man grabbed her by the elbow, stopping her and causing Flip’s hackles to rise. He spoke seriously, “Don’t whistle when you’re out in the woods. Whistling will summon the wendigo. Sometimes people hear whistling too, before it comes for them.”

“And these people who hear the whistling before it gets them,” Flip said as he edged his body between Kate and the counter and nudged her toward the exit. “They walk out of the woods to tell their story, huh?”

*******************************************************************************************

Their log cabin for the week was almost an hour’s drive from the gas station. It wasn’t that far as the crow flies, but the road was serpentine with switchbacks as it climbed the foot of the mountains and made even slower by soupy mud. It was set deep in the forest, surrounded by old-growth trees with trunks as thick as the truck’s bed. The sun set on their drive back. As it dipped below the mountainous horizon, the landscape glowed a shade of hazy purple only seen in the alpine. The clouds were the color of gunpowder and the rainy vapor was periwinkle. The spruce turned into an army of nearly black silhouettes with a light mist writhing among them as moisture rose from the damp ground as well as drizzled gently from the sky. The drifting mist made everything look as though it were moving. It gave the illusion of eldritch shapes in the trees creeping along the edges of vision and tree limbs grasping like clawed fingers as they swayed in the breeze.

Flip hit the brakes suddenly, slamming Kate forward in her seat and knocking her out of the reverie the gloaming forest had cast over her. A black shape froze in the muddy road a few yards ahead of them. Its eyes sparked cold white in the headlights and the fur on its back was raised aggressively.

“A wolf!” Flip said excitedly. “I’ve never seen one this close.”

The huge animal was coal black, its amber eyes reflecting white in the headlights in the way wolves eyes do. It stood frozen, staring down the vehicle, acting like the truck was a new creature intruding into the wolf’s territory. Something was wrong with its silhouette. Something with its mouth. It took several seconds for Kate to realize what it was. The wolf turned its head uncertainly, deciding whether it should continue on its way across the road or turn around from the metal beast with offense headlights. A dead rabbit dangled from its jaws, its legs swinging lifelessly and ears flopping limply. Its lifeless eyes glinted a dull red.

The simple reminder of nature’s brutality unnerved Kate unexpectedly and her hands felt suddenly cold. She gripped Flip’s hand, digging her nails into his palm with irrational harshness.

“Nature, red in tooth and claw,” he teased and grinned at her, but he laced his fingers through hers and squeezed her hand reassuringly. “Some redneck at the gas station told me that predators liked to hunt in the rain. Guess he was right.”

Night had veiled the forest with its velvety black cloak by the time they parked next to the porch of their cabin. It was silent enough to hear all the noises of the forest, from the chattering birds to the subtle rustling of deer browsing in the brush to moisture pattering lightly on the ground. A great horned owl as large as a man’s torso sat perched in a tree branch hanging near the roof of the cabin, its yellow eyes glittering like moonlight as it hooted an eerie cadence. It followed them with its yellow eyes as they unloaded the truck and carried their loot inside, its head turned almost fully backward like a creature possessed.

There was no light pollution and on a clear night, the moon and stars lit the forest bright enough to see easily. On a rainy night, moisture in the air brought out all the smells of the forest, the crisp spruce, the earthy soil, the embers in the fireplace. The cabin had no electric lines and was powered by a temperamental generator and a wood stove. A woodpile was stacked against the back of the cabin, complete with a large timber axe embedded in a nearby stump. Cell service was laughable. Flip loved everything about all of that. He was pleased it had running water, however, mainly because it would have greatly impacted his sex life if it didn’t.

Flip grilled steaks outside that night before the rain hit and they had dinner on the porch, counting lightning bolts. Then they tangled around each other in front of the fireplace, making love as the flames crackled and danced and the thunder rolled. Between dinner and fooling around several times, they finished the bottle of wine and opened another. Night fell early this far north in the autumn and the nights were long. The cabin was equipped with a tv, but it was one of those terrible old boxy things with a tiny screen and antennas. The antennas were only for show since there was no service. Instead, there was a vcr and a selection of campy nineties movies and some even campier porn. It seemed to defeat the purpose of being there to even bother with the tv. They hadn’t turned it on once.

“I’m wide awake,” Kate mused, propped up on Flip’s bare chest, looking down at him. “Let’s do something.”

“I have plenty of ideas,” Flip said huskily. “They’re all sure to wear you out.”

“We’ve tried your ideas. Several times. And I’m still far from worn out.” She smiled. “We’re here in a cabin, basically having a sleepover. Let’s play some sleepover games, the kind you play as idiot teenagers or in sororities in college.”

“I think girls have a lot wilder sleepovers than boys. And my experience with sororities is limited to sneaking in and out of them, so you’ll have to be more specific.” He ran his fingertips along her spine and kissed her throat, doing his best to interest her in another round.

“Later, you animal,” she laughed and shoved his face away while pushing herself up and off him. “You know what I mean. Sleepover games. Like Bloody Mary, or playing a Ouija Board, or the Midnight Game.”

“Packed a Ouija Board, did you?” he teased. “That would explain why your suitcase weighs fifty fuckin’ pounds.”

“I don’t think ghosts care whether or not you use a name brand.” She pinched his chest, making him flinch.

“What ghosts are you gonna find out here?” He squinted as he rubbed his chest. “The Donner Party?”

“Don’t you think they’d be fun to talk to? We can try Bloody Mary. I don’t think she has a centralized location,” she teased and pulled on her discarded pair of pajama pants and a hoodie. She threw Flip’s grey sweatpants at him. “Put that thing away or it might scare off the ghosts.”

Flip grumbled more protests under his breath, but he dressed in his sweats and a thermal henley. “How about we each stand in front of the bathroom mirror with the lights off. I’ll ask for Candyman. You ask for Bloody Mary. And we’ll have a Celebrity Death Match between vengeful ghosts?”

“You know the ghosts always get the cynics and the cocky shitheads first, right?” She shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest in a faux reprimand.

“Is that a rule?” Flip grinned. “I think the ghosts go for the morally corrupt woman who can’t keep her legs closed first. You’re in trouble, sugar.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” she said with finality.

“How about we play a fun game, like spin the bottle or truth or dare?” He winked at her. “I always pick dare. Do your worst.”

“I can’t imagine where a game of truth or dare with you would lead.” She rolled her eyes sarcastically.

Flip puffed his chest and stepped closer to her until their bodies were almost touching. “I have a better idea. You have some pretty big balls for a pretty little girl. Let’s see how big they really are.”

“Oh my god, Flip, if this is another ploy to explore that region further…” she laughed.

“Everything I do is some kinda means to that end.” He smirked. “But we’ll get to that later. Now, let’s go outside and whistle at the wendigo. There should be some of those sonsabitches around these parts.”

Flip went to the door and stepped into his muddy boots. He leaned against the doorframe, casually cocky, and raised an eyebrow at her in a challenge. “How ‘bout it, hot stuff?”

“I think we’d be better off trying to summon Bloody Mary than a wendigo,” Kate said hesitantly. “Plus, it will be cold out there.”

“I’ll keep you warm,” he teased. “How do you figure that trying to summon a ghost through our bathroom mirror would be safer than trying to call in a wendigo? At least a wendigo will stay outside. Besides, I know how psycho you’d get if I let another woman into our bedroom. Dead or alive. Don’t try to set me up, sweetheart.”

Rolling her eyes again, Kate pulled her coat on and slipped her phone into its pocket, feeling the bundle of flares she had absently pocketed at the gas station. There was no service, but its flashlight might come in handy outside. Grinning, Flip picked up the rifle that was leaning against the doorframe and slung it over his shoulder. Cocky though he was, he took the advice serious about the threat of bears and always having a gun on him out here in the wilderness. He held the door open for Kate and ushered her outside.

The air was thick with humidity but the rain had stopped for the moment, leaving the moisture on the air to chill their skin and turn their breath into ghostly thick fog. The porch was covered in slushy frost as bright as diamonds. Their boot prints left skeletal black outlines on the otherwise pristine frosty canvas as they descended the steps and walked into the forest that awaited them only yards away.

Flip offered Kate his arm and led her into the trees. The old growth forest felt like being inside a fairytale, surrounded by enormous tree trunks and relatively open ground at their bases. The roots of those great trees were so thirsty, they leeched most of the nutrients and left little for brush and scrub to encroach. After the rain, the ground was muddy and slick, with frost growing denser by the minute as the temperature dropped through the night.

Filling his lungs, Flip began whistling a terribly off-key tune as he walked through the woods. His casual swagger was the same as if he were taking his girl out for a stroll in the park. Kate winced when he struck a particularly loathsome note, and squinted her eyes at him, “What in the hell are you whistling?”

“Season of the Witch,” he replied, acting offended. “I thought you’d appreciate it.”

“I like the song, I don’t appreciate what you’re doing to it,” she laughed. “We’re not going to find any wendigo if you scare them all off with that horrendous noise.”

“I don’t hear you doing any better,” he scoffed.

Mainly in an attempt to save her ears from his screeching, Kate started whistling. She teased Flip first with her best wolf whistle. Smells were heightened in the damp air but sounds were muffled. In the silence of the forest, the whistle sounded unnaturally loud. Now that Flip wasn’t making noise himself, he found himself focusing more on his surroundings. He didn’t feel right, something he couldn’t put his finger on tugged at the back of his mind. It wasn’t just that noises were muffled by the dampness in the air, but something else that he found indefinable in that moment. He told himself it was just the product of being in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by unfamiliar vegetation that he found unsettling. The size of trees still seemed monstrous to him, and the smell of spruce instead of the familiar smell of pine must have been unsettling to his subconscious. And it probably didn’t help that he had cultivated a little buzz drinking wine for the past few hours.

A light gust of wind blew into his face and all of his senses sparked with alarm. He froze in place, seizing Kate’s arm to silence her whistling. The unmistakable scent of a wet animal hit his nose with the force of a slap in the face. Quickly evaluating his surroundings, he unslung the rifle from his shoulder and held it across his chest in high port. It would take him less than a second to aim and fire. But the forest was close around them, visibility limited to fifteen feet or so in any direction. If the animal was a predator, a bear or a mountain lion, it could cover that distance in less than a heartbeat if it wanted. He could still see the faint glow of the cabin’s lights. They hadn’t gone far, but there was no chance of outrunning an animal back to safety.

A heavy footfall sounded inside the trees ahead of them, muffled on the wet ground but distinctive. Straining his ears, Flip thought he heard a branch being brushed aside by something passing by it. Whatever it was, it was very close ahead of them. Flip’s thoughts raced, less cohesive and more a rush of images of nightmare scenarios that he weighed in an instant. He could hide himself and Kate behind one of the huge tree trunks and hope the animal passed them by. But whatever it was had to already know of their presence. If his feeble senses could hear and smell the animal, it had no doubt smelled and heard him much sooner. In that case, he decided it was best to hold his ground and meet whatever it was head on, straight down the barrel of his rifle. That would give them the best chance. Flip would have to make his shot count, and he’d probably only get one, but it was a decent chance.

Stepping in front of Kate, Flip raised his rifle to his shoulder. He kept both eyes open, not limiting his focus to only what was past the end of his barrel, but trying to expand his senses to the full spectrum of forest in front of him. He heard a heavy breath, something panting. Closer now. Flip clicked off the safety and tightened his finger on the trigger. The hardest skill for a hunter to learn, especially when hunting game that hunted him back, is to wait long enough for a good shot but not so long as to let it get him. He wouldn’t waste his shot until he saw his target clearly and could be sure of putting the bullet where it would matter most. His hold on the gun was rock steady, his breath stalled, his eyes unblinking.

The panting grew in volume until it seemed to drum in his ears. Odd for a stalking predator. Before Flip could reconcile that, a bear burst from the trees only feet in front of him. A huge grizzly bear lumbering toward him on all fours, the top of its humped shoulders taller than Flip’s head. His finger tensed, less than a millimeter of movement was required to fire. But something was off with the bear. It was panting heavily, saliva dripping from its open mouth and fog snorting in bursts from its wet nose. The bear stopped short at the sight of the man with a gun right in front of it, clearly surprised, very unlike a predator who had been stalking the man. Flip hesitated. If he didn’t kill the bear immediately with one shot – drop it right in its tracks – it would maul them both before it died. If the bear wasn’t hunting him, it was a foolish risk to take. Grizzlies were not commonly hunting predators; they were scavengers and fishers. Most people who were mauled by grizzlies had either gotten between a mother and her cubs or a bear and its food, or they had startled it like waking a grumpy old man.

Sniffing the air, the bear looked at Flip. He was so close he could see the small particles of moisture the bear blew out of its nose along with steam when it snorted. The bear’s little round ears flicked, one turning backward to listen behind it. The bear’s eyes were wide, showing white, in a nervous gesture that was common to both man and beast. The bear looked back over its shoulder and then broke into a gallop. Flip’s rational mind told him to shoot, but his instinct prevented him. The bear altered course enough to avoid running straight into Flip. It paid him no further mind at all, instead running right by him. Flip followed it with the barrel of his rifle as it passed by him so close that a string of white saliva landed on the rifle’s blue-black barrel.

Turning around about face, Flip followed the bear with his sights until it was well past them and showed no signs of turning back around. He looked back toward the place the bear had come from, still holding the rifle to his shoulder. He didn’t look at Kate when he told her, “Walk back to the cabin. Don’t run, but go now.”

“You want me to follow the bear?” she hissed. “He ran toward the cabin. I don’t want to get near him again.”

“Follow the bear,” Flip gritted. “If a bear’s runnin’ from something, we’d best do the same. He didn’t care about us anyway. Now, move.”

Uncertainly, Kate turned and retreated toward the cabin. They hadn’t gone that far, after all. Flip backed after her, keeping his rifle aimed into the black forest from which the bear had run. A shrill scream splintered the silence, starker than a bolt of lightning. Kate shuddered and Flip ducked, hunching his shoulders like he had taken a punch. The scream shrilled for several seconds, wavering on a blood-curdling note before trailing away. It echoed around them, seeming to float on the mist.

“That’s just an elk bugling,” Flip said, trying to calm Kate. Maybe it was in fact an elk, a sickly, ravenous elk. “Keep moving, slowly.”

“I’ve never heard an elk that sounded like that.” Kate shivered against more than the chilled air. “This is starting to scare the hell out of me.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take your mind off of it when we get back,” Flip tried to joke but he couldn’t muster the required lewdness, his mouth was too dry.

The howling scream burst again through the forest. It was something like an elk bugle, but more howling and rasping, with a sort of growling mingled in at the end as it trailed away. It was closer now. Flip felt as much as heard it reverberate inside his skull.

“Whatever that is, it’s not an elk.” Kate had her arms wrapped around her body, trying to prevent herself from being overtaken by tremors.

“Sure, it is,” Flip lied. “They probably just grow ‘em bigger up here.”

Kate blew out a shuddering breath, fighting to keep her steps slow and steady.

“Pick up the pace a little, darlin,’” Flip rasped.

“You said not to run,” Kate hissed.

“I didn’t say to crawl either!” Flip gritted. “This is one hell of a time for you to start listening to me.”

Instead of moving faster, Kate stopped short. So suddenly, Flip bumped into her as he walked backward. A branch snapped somewhere inside the forest. It was strangely loud. Flip realized then that the snap only sounded harsh because the forest had gone utterly silent. The hundreds of small noises from birds and insects were gone. Even the drops of water falling from tree branches seemed to have stopped. The forest felt like a living thing around them, possessed of a presence all its own. Now that presence was altered into something darker and ominous.

“What the hell are you doing?” Flip’s voice had dropped to a whisper without his conscious approval. “I said keep moving. We’re not far from the cabin.”

“Turn around.” Kate’s voice trembled.

Dropping the rifle for a moment, Flip looked back over his shoulder. His nerves must be playing tricks on his eyes. He turned fully around, holding the rifle at high port across his chest. The view of the forest that met him was foreign. It wasn’t the same forest they had walked through only minutes before. The trees were more skeletal, their grasping branches more cloying. Moss hung from the branches like the lank hair of a corpse, and the ground was spongy underfoot, as if the forest was rotting around them. Even the air smelled stale and moldy. Thunder boomed overhead and lightning illuminated the forest in patches like a stop-motion movie. Most unsettling of all, the comforting glow of the cabin lights that could be seen through the trees had vanished or been snuffed out.

“What the fuck…” Flip’s voice trailed away as he took in the strangeness of their surroundings. A burst of lightning brought the forest into focus for a gleaming second. Bizarre shapes hung in the trees like a macabre abomination of Christmas tree ornaments, figures made from twigs lashed together with sinew to form pentagrams and humanoid shapes and horned beings. Flip swallowed thickly and ignored them. “We couldn’t have gotten turned around so fast.”

“We didn’t.” Kate looked around frantically. “I could see the cabin lights, then I heard that horrible bugle and looked around for it. And then the lights were gone. They couldn’t have all gone out, not all at once.”

“Lightning must have struck the cabin,” Flip lied again. Nothing about the forest looked familiar to him now and everything about it felt wrong. “Must have shorted out the lights.” There was no reason to scare Kate more than she already was. “It’s alright, we don’t need lights for what I have in mind when we get back.”

The scent of wet dog hit Flip again on a gust of wind, yanking his attention in the direction of the odor. He saw a heap of dark fur, glistening from the spotty rain and aimed his rifle at the creature. It didn’t move. Steam rose from the furry mass. Flip noted another smell on the air, something with a coppery aftertaste that coated the roof of his mouth. He edged forward, looking at the steaming animal down the barrel of his rifle, his finger resting on the trigger, ready to fire. He recognized the beast when another bolt of lightning revealed the horror to him.

“Don’t look,” he said to Kate, but it was too late. She clasped a hand over her mouth to keep her scream from escaping.

The huge grizzly bear they had encountered minutes before lay on its side in a broken heap of matted fur. Steam spiraled into the air from its torn-open belly, its entrails protruding from the mangled tissue like uncooked sausage. The gaping wound was only minutes old. The bear’s body temperature would plummet rapidly in the frigid air and it was still warm now. Even as they stared, the steam began to abate. Hanging in the branches of the tree nearest the bear carcass were several more bizarre figures crafted from twigs.

The screeching growling bugle erupted again, very close this time. Flip nudged Kate ahead, keeping his rifle at the ready, but not knowing where to aim it.

“Which way do we go?” Her breath came in shuddering puffs of fog.

“I don’t know,” Flip admitted. “Away from here.”

Amid a stand of spruce to his side, bare tree branches swayed in the wind, their spiky fingers waving ominously. Flip hadn’t noticed the wind pick up. Looking at the oddly swaying branches, he realized there was no wind. The air had gone as still as the inside of a crypt. The strange branches were bare, glistening wet and pointed upward, still swaying.

A flash of lightning illuminated the creature and Flip flinched so hard he almost fired accidentally.

What he had taken for bare branches was a set of enormous antlers, shaped somewhere between a moose and a caribou and as large as an Irish elk, with wide paddles and long spiked tines spurting out non-typically like broken fingers. It had a dark mane like an elk with a tawny, painfully emaciated body. Flat tines of several spinal processes protruded through the hide at the top of its high withers and one hip bone showed through the skin. But its head was the most terrible of all. Its face was in an advanced stage of rot, dregs of sagging flesh barely clinging to the skull. White skull bone gleamed in exposed patches, and its sharp, lupine teeth were long in the exposed jawbone and ragged. Its nasal cavity was bare, the fleshy nose rotten away, leaving only the pointed bones and a black hollow. It had no eyes that Flip could see, but there was an evil gleam inside its sockets, like embers inside a pile of ash. The monster shook its head, slinging water from its great spiked antlers. Then it leveled its head like a bull about to charge and fixed its glowing eyes on Flip.

“Shoot it,” Kate whispered, her eyes wide with terror.

“I don’t think it’ll do any good.” Flip looked down the barrel at the rotting flesh covering the walking skeleton and white bone peeking from beneath. The monster’s glowing eyes were not something found among the living. Without lowering his rifle, he looked at Kate and met her eyes. “It’ll come for me first. I’ll make sure of that, and I’ll stall it as much as I can. Get to the truck, darlin.’ The keys are in it. Run like hell.”

“I’m not leaving you!” she said vehemently, her voice losing some fervor when the creature took an ominous step closer, its enormous antlers swaying with its gait.

She felt for her phone, hoping there might be service. Not that another human could even reach them in less than an hour, making any idea of help hopeless. Her hand closed around the lumpy bundle of flares. With an excited breath, she freed a flare from the bundle and fumbled with lighting it.

The monster bugled angrily, a sound so shrill it felt like it grated along their spines. It rushed toward them through the trees, its teeth bared and eyes aflame. Flip fired, sending a bullet right between those glowing eyes. He even saw the bullet strike and tear away more rotting flesh, leaving a pearly white hole in the skull. It didn’t slow the monster or even make it flinch. He bolted another round into the chamber on instinct, staring down the barrel at the demonic eyes that were fixed upon him.

Kate popped the cap off the flare. The cap had an abrasive tip like a matchhead and she struck it to the end of the flare, holding it high as it burst to life. With their eyes accustomed to the darkness, the flare seemed as bright as sunlight, searing black pulsing spots into their vision. The monster squealed again, shaking its head with pain or irritation. Its antlers caught in the tree branches, stalling its advance. The flare burned and popped, hot on Kate’s face even at arm’s length and blindingly bright.

The landscape around them crackled and wavered, like a tv signal trying to come in through static. The trees looked less skeletal and more normal, like they had been before, and the strange twig figures vanished. The cabin lights glowed through the trees, yellow and warm, not far from them.

“It’s in our heads!” Kate shouted. “It’s making us hallucinate, but I can see the cabin and the truck now.”

“The light bothers it,” Flip said as he reached into her coat pocket, grabbing three flares and leaving her the remaining two. The monster wrenched its antlers free of the branches where it was tangled and lurched toward them in a shambling gait.

Shouldering his rifle that was of no more use than a club against the monster, Flip bit the cap off a flare with his teeth and struck the head. He rammed the end into the muddy ground at his feet, leaving the tip burning. The beast reared, shrieking with rage and clawing the air with its cloven hooves as Flip backed away. He could see the glow of the cabin lights now too. It was hard to resist the urge to run to the light.

Flip lit the next flare. Kate was a few yards ahead of him, gaining ground toward the truck. It would take whoever reached it first a minute to start it. Flip had a good throwing arm and even better aim. The monster lunged at him, rage overriding whatever else had been driving it to pursue them so far. Flip drew back his arm, took a second to aim at the gaping black jaws, and threw the lit flare as hard as he could. The flaming tip cartwheeled through the air like a throwing knife before the fiery head struck the monster right where its nose should have been. But it had no nose, its nasal cavity was exposed in its partially skeletal head. Robin Hood could not have struck a finer bullseye. The flaming tip sank deep into the nasal cavity, embedding itself there.

Screaming terribly, the wendigo shook its head and stomped its hooves, rearing and bucking like a horse that had stepped on a hornet’s nest. It couldn’t shake the flare free from its skull. The flames spread, shooting out through holes in the rancid flesh of its cheeks and jaws. It looked as though it breathed fire when it screeched, belching flare fumes and flames out of its hacking mouth.

“We’re not gonna get a better chance than this!” Flip roared at Kate as he burst into a run toward her. She had a few paces head start on him and sprinted ahead toward the truck.

Kate reached the truck first, yanking the driver’s door open and jumping inside. Flip could bitch about her driving all he wanted, but she dared not spare the extra second or two for him to take the wheel. Not with the eldritch monster galloping toward them, bugling terribly, flames bellowing from its mouth and nose. Flip had his one remaining flare in hand when he reached the truck. The engine roared to life.

Instead of joining Kate inside the cab, Flip vaulted into the truck bed and shouted for her to drive. Kate slammed the truck into gear, throwing Flip against the side of the bed. Regaining his balance, he dropped to his knees and planted his back against the rear window, making himself as steady as he could. Kate was speeding as fast as she dared down the muddy, winding road, and it wasn’t fast enough. The wendigo pursued them, galloping after the truck and gaining ground. Striking the tip of his flare, Flip held the flaming tip aloft, casting the entire truck in a halo of searing red fire. The wendigo allowed more distance between them, smart enough to keep outside of throwing range of another flare.

Kate took a slippery curve too fast, the truck fishtailing as she recovered control, slinging Flip from one side of the bed to the other. The flare was nearly whipped from his hand, but he clenched his fist tight to keep his hold. Gritting his teeth, he composed himself, using all his strength to keep his balance and keep his arm held high. He couldn’t afford to lose a flare. They only had three flares left, and it was going to take every last burning second of each one to reach town.

*******************************************************************************************