#died in the outbreak and that they didn't have to worry and you just stuck around. your knowledge of mycology and post-outbreak soil care

[jillsandwhichs]

Our Future Days

Joel Miller x Reader series, Chapter 1, Move in day

Masterlist

Pairing: Fem!reader x Joel Miller

Summary: You officially move from oregan to texas and get to meet your very new & handsome neighbor, Joel

WC: 3.1k

Type: SFW

Some thing's you need to know before reading: this is a series, not a one shot collection! you (the reader) already have a semi premade backstory. first off, you're originally from oregon. you studied at med school and got a job offer in texas to become a doctor, which you took. you are 23 in this but if you don't like that, imagine any age (18+) and i did make joel younger 26 (until the 20 year time jump, he'll be 46) but he does still have sarah, just pretend it's not wonky LMAO! one more thing, ya have a dog in this fic, he's a boy but imagine any breed you'd like! aside from that, this is tlou game version but i included some sides from the show! a couple more things: 1. all characters from tlou1/2 will be mentioned/featured. 2. this takes place before outbreak, then eventually outbreak day, then eventually in the apocalypse. 3. this is a slow burn romance (drabbles of it in each chapter though, esp when it progresses) and does feature a decent amount of smut. 4. JOEL NEVER DIES!!!

A/n: Hi! Hope you all enjoy. Please check out my masterlist, there's a lot of stuff there. You can get to know me, you can see the rules of my blog and then you can see all of my fanfictions. You'll be able to find the previous chapters to this fic and upcoming ones. You'll also be able to find my Wattpad & AO3. Thank you

Tapping your fingers on the steering wheel, you matched the beat of the song playing on your cars radio. It was a song by Blake Shelton. You weren't a huge fan of him but he had some classics. It has been such a long day for you. You've been driving for the past two hours, not a single break in between. You just wanted to get to your new home as soon as you could. You could tell your dog, Becker, needed to go potty as well. He'd just have to hold out.

The GPS on your phone stated you were only about ten minutes away. The center of Austin TX was busy as all hell, so that time span could get longer by the second. So many cars & people flooded the streets. "God dammit." You mumbled to yourself, rolling your eyes as you seen all the upcoming traffic ahead. This was going to be a long night. You had no clue when you'd even be able to get into bed. Then again, it was only 4:30 in the afternoon, almost evening.

Behind you, in the backseat, you could hear Becker whimpering & whining. "Don't worry boy, we're almost home, just a little bit longer." You cooed to him, reaching your right hand back and allowing him to lick you. You got Becker as a graduation gift a few weeks ago. You two have bonded ever since. You were never a cat person, dog's were more of your style. "You'll be able to go potty soon." You said to him, pulling your hand back up and holding onto the wheel.

Traffic wasn't going as slow as you intended, was traffic always going to be like this though? This ain't going to be pleasant if so. Especially working for the hospital. Imagine an emergency happens and you're needed but the roads are packed, that's going to be one helluva time. But, you wanna think positively. You missed your family too. It's going to be hard without them, especially your mom. She is your number one supporter and without her in the same home as you, it'll be a large change.

You turned the radio up, hearing the country music blast throughout your car but not loud enough to scare your dog. Dogs ears are sensitive and you didn't wanna bother him further than he already was. No doggo wants to be stuck in a car all day, especially in this heat. Despite it being early September, it was still quite warm out. That's another big change from Oregon, you imagine that back home, it's either really windy or heavily raining. The change could be nice though.

The sound of Becker panting was clear as day, it only made you feel more guilty. "Hold on baby." You muttered to him before you then rolled your window down and the window directly behind you, not a lot though, you didn't want him to jump out or something. Through your rearview mirror, you could see his slobbery tounge blowing in the wind as he stuck his head out the window. "Hah, good boy!" You giggled, turning left onto the exit, finally getting off of this miserable highway.

Finally, the road wasn't full anymore. It was a downtown rural area now, cars slowly made their way through the town. Austin is busy, yes, but this side of it, not so much. The only logical reason it was super busy on the highway and earlier roads was because people are getting/going to work. Your first day at the hospital is on Monday. You were nervous but in a great way. You have been non stop thinking about it. All of the work you've put in and you're officially where you wanted to be. Life was going good... For once...

You passed by all sorts of different places. Gas stations, fast food chains, locally owned stores & stands, it felt so honey. Back in Oregon, you lived in the center of the city, it was always so lively and never calm. Austin is like that too but not as bad, and definitely not as bad as Dallas is. You were grateful you didn't end up moving there or even somewhere that was worse. Austin was a good enough fit for you.

The GPS showed you were only a minute or two away from home, your heart was racing a bit. You've never been on your own before and you least expected it to be in a completely different state. Luckily, a week from now, you'll be going back home for the weekend. It'll be comforting. You'll definitely make sure to call your family everyday, you made sure they knew that too. They'd have to simply put up with it.

You could tell you were getting closer due to the change in scenery. There weren't any establishments around these parts, just either compact or extensive suburban homes. You actually used to make fun of those perfect American families who lived in these types of areas but look at you now. Back home, you lived in a small house, only two bedrooms but you were an only child so it was never a problem. You did wish for siblings growing up but you understand now that if you had some, things would be a whole lot different.

As you turned left, the tracker built into your phone made a dinging noise, indicating you had arrived at your destination. It wasn't wrong. Just to the left, you could see your newly purchased home. It made your heart skip a beat. Not only were you nervous but you were also so happy. You glimmered as you pulled right into the driveway and set your car in park. You could tell Becker knew this was your guy's new home, his whimpers weren't ones of boredness but rather excitement. "One second." You sighed out before getting out of the car.

Stepping out of your car, you sighed softly as you breathed in the fresh air. The smell of outside was always so welcoming. You grabbed your purse out of your car too and swung it across your shoulder. It was a brown leather purse with an embroidered strap. You then opened up the backseat so Becker could jump on out. "Stay over here buddy." You chuckled out, scratching the top of his head a few times before closing both doors. You had quite a bit of stuff in your trunk & backseat but you hired a truck to drive all of your other belongings here. It wouldn't be there for another day or so.

Becker ran off to the side of the house to go potty ; You trusted him enough to not run off. He was a good dog. You went to the back of your car and popped open your trunk. It was a mess but everything you needed for the night was in there. You even bought an air mattress, your back would die trying to sleep on a wooden floor. You grabbed the first two boxes, they weren't very big, and set them on the concrete of your driveway. They just had toiletries in them.

You grabbed out another box, this one was a bit bigger than the other two. It had all of your kitchen appliances in it. You were excited to cook your very first dinner in your very own home. You already decided on making Pesto Pasta, one of your favorites. In your trunk, there was the air mattress box. It wasn't going to be the best way to sleep but it'd have to suffice for the night, your proper bed should be in either tomorrow or on Sunday.

Whilst grabbing out the air mattress, you heard the sound of a truck driving past and pulling into the driveway across from you. They must've been your neighbors. Your neighbors back home weren't the nicest. There were the Johnson's so were beyond uppity and thought they were better than everyone else, they lived beside you. Then there was Cassandra and Cody, they were your age and pretty kind except they were literal kleptos.

You ignored the truck behind you, just trying to get everything you needed for the night. You could hear Becker barking but you didn't know what it was he was doing it at. You figured a wild animal, maybe a bunny or a stray. Becker was actually from a shelter, you'd never buy an animal from PetSmart or whatever. "Becker, quit your barking!" You shouted at him, nudging him to come over to you. Maybe he wasn't good with new environments.

You placed the last cardboard box from your trunk on top of another one, shooting your eyes to look at Becker. He was looking at the truck across the street, barking at it. "Oh boy, quit it." You spoke out to him but he didn't listen. You went to grab onto his collar but right as you did, he bolted off into their driveway. He was a friendly dog, you didn't think he'd do anything bad, he was just inquisitive, but it was still bad of him to run off like that.

"Becker!" You yelled, jogging across the street to grab him. You watched as two men got out of the black truck. The one in the driver's seat had a mullet and lighter hair than the other man, he also seemed shorter. The other one though had short dark hair, although you couldn't tell if it was purely brown or black. He was well built, along with the other man. Were they brothers? That's the only assumption that came to mind.

Once you reached their driveway, you grabbed Becker and pulled him back to you. The man getting out of the passenger seat looked back at you and had a puzzled look before letting out a chuckle beneath his breath. "Listen, I'm so sorry, he's just curious." You sighed out. Becker was now listening as he sat down right by your feet. "Sorry, we'll be out of your hair." You giggled, beginning to turn around before you heard the man's voice speak up.

"You just move in across the street?" He asked you, his voice sounded southern and it was very deep. "Oh uhm, yeah, just got here tonight actually." You said kindly, looking back at him again. "Well, welcome then, and to your dog." He snickered out. "I'm Joel, this is Tommy." Joel spoke deeply, pointing over at the other man. You let the two men know your name before asking them whether or not they were brothers, and they were. You weren't surprised, they did share similar facial features.

"Where are you from?" Joel raised, his arms crossed. His arms were huge, he definitely has a nice body. "I'm from Oregon." You said softly, placing your slender hands onto your waist. "Damn, that's a long ways out. What made you move all the way here?" "Got a job offer at the hospital." You said with a titter, his accent was thick. "Oh, you a nurse or something?" He questioned, leaning up against his truck. "No, a doctor. Recently gradated from medschool." You explained, glancing over at his brother as he walked into the house. Maybe they lived together.

"Well how bout that? I'm just a contractor." "That's nice." You added, tucking strands of your thin hair behind your ear. "Yeah, yeah, well I'll let you continue settling in. If you need any help with uh larger furniture, me and my brother can stop by, we helped the Adler's when they first moved in." Joel said with a deep voice, pointing his index to the home beside his. "That would be great, thanks, luckily I don't have to deal with the bullshit of larger furniture today, it'll be in either tomorrow or Sunday."

"Alrighty, well, you have yourself a good evening. See you." Joel said with a sly smirk, slowly inching backwards. "You too, Joel." You gave him a slight smile before patting Becker to follow behind you. You made your way across the street, allowing Becker to run around in his new yard. You took a gander back and seen Joel looked back at you before entering his home. When you saw his eyes on you, you felt a deep pit in your stomach. Nothing bad, rather just glee or something. You couldn't pin it.

Around your neck was a lanyard, it had the key to your home, you assumed it was locked. At least you hoped, you don't want any squatters inside. You unlocked the white door and opened it, stepping inside of it. The sunset beamed in through the windows throughout the house. It was still dark though, every single light was switched on. The seller said you'd have to go to the basement to switch them all on. That sounded like a fun time!

One by one, you dragged each box into the home, keeping some on the floor and placing some on the island counter. You didn't plan on unpacking any of it tonight, you were restless and just wanted to lay down for the night, despite it only being 5 PM. The more sleep you get, the easier it'll be tomorrow. You definitely had to get a lot of sleep Sunday considering on Monday, you start your first day. Even though it's just training, you wanna be as awake as possible.

You ambled towards the front door again and away from the kitchen to call Becker in. He'd have to deal with the floor for the night. He is a cuddly dog, he loves big comfy areas but without a bed or a couch, there's no way. "Becker!" You said with a rowdy voice, "C'mon baby." He came running over to you and past your legs, going into the house and treading around like a mad man. "Oh good boy." You chuckled, petting him gently.

You walked back over to the kitchen and grabbed the air mattress, you needed to get it open and blown up. It was sealed to a T, your nails were definitely not enough to get it open. Striding towards the appliances box, you opened it up and searched through it, taking out a knife to slice it open. You are quite clumsy so you were praying you wouldn't stab the mattress on accident. It didn't help that Becker felt the need to push himself up against you, seeking attention & love as if he's starved from it.

"Back off boy." You snorted, pulling the mattress out of it's box. It was all wrinkled up and looked compact. Although it was the size of a Full. You straightened it out on the living room floor, you didn't feel like carrying it all the way up the stairs. It came with a machine to blow it up and you connected it to the black cylinder hole, turning it on and hearing the loud blowing noise it was making. You didn't have any pillows, they were all packed up in that truck but luckily, you had a blanket, it was the one you let Becker use in the backseat when you were driving.

"You stay here mister." You stated out to Becker before beginning to make your way out of the front door to take the blanket out from the car. As you went outside, you noticed a bright light was on in Joel's house, just in one room though. You could also see the shadow of a smaller person's body walking through said room. Did he have a girlfriend? Or did Tommy have one? Maybe it was Tommy's. You convinced yourself of that at least.

After grabbing the blanket, you walked back inside and seen Becker already making himself a spot on the bed, despite it barley being inflated. "You little shit." You grinned, tossing the fuzzy blanket on top of him. Guess you were going to have to share.

The bed was officially ready to be slept on, you haven't been this excited to sleep in a very long time. Back home, you dreaded it. You would stay up all night, doing different stuff. Whether it was studying, painting, reading, working out, etc.. You were always doing something new. With Becker, it's been better. You're an affectionate person and he is as a dog. It may be a rough night, it always is sleeping somewhere new, but with him it may be easier.

Pulling the machine away from the bed, you turned it off and climbed underneath the blanket, feeling immediate warmth. The Texas heat also played a part in that. Back in Oregon, you had a heater beside your bed to help, you definitely didn't need one here. "Alright." You whispered to yourself, Becker lying right beside your feet, his fur was cozy. You were originally going to turn the lights on to your home but honestly, you were scared to go down there all alone, a pitch black basement? No thanks.

Trying to sleep in a new area was hard. You felt homesick. You miss your old room, the house noises, the feeling of it. You lived there your entire life, now you're thousands of miles away. Becker probably felt that way too, especially with how he connected with your father, they bonded. A week from now though, you'd be able to see them. It'd be easier. Another thing you couldn't stop thinking about was that man - Joel.

He seemed so different. He was kind & understanding, and that's just simply based on the short conversation the two of you had together. He was so willing to help you out, no one else was like that. It was a sweet welcoming. He was also very handsome. All the men back home weren't like that. That glimmer in his eyes wasn't something to ignore. It was the way he gazed at you that had you wrapped around the thought of him.

That brother of his was good looking too, definitely not as much, but either way. Were they both contractors? It appeared as though they had just left work so maybe they work together. And who was that smaller person walking throughout his house earlier? Had to be a girlfriend. A daughter? No way, the two of them looked to young to even have children. There was still a chance though, teen pregnancies aren't uncommon. You presume you'll deal with a lot of them as a Doctor.

Your eyes felt more & more heavy. Becker's deep breathing made you weary too. The pitch blackness of the room was helpful ; White sound would've been helpful too. Sleeping in complete silence was torture. All you could really hear was your dog and your own breathing. You were completely spent for the day. And you were ready to hit the hay.

Divider Creds: animatedglittergraphics-n-more

[andya-j]

It made its home in the deep forest near the village of Grommin, and all anyone ever saw of it, before the end, would be hard eyes and the dark barrel of its muzzle. The smell of piss and blood and shit and bubbles of saliva and half-eaten food. The villagers called it the Third Bear because they had killed two bears already that year. But, near the end, no one really thought of it as a bear, even though the name had stuck, changed by repetition and fear and slurring through blood-filled mouths to Theeber. Sometimes it even sounded like "seether" or "seabird." The Third Bear came to the forest in mid-summer, and soon most anyone who used the forest trail, day or night, disappeared, carried off to the creature's lair. By the time even large convoys had traveled through, they would discover two or three of their number missing. A straggling horseman, his mount cantering along, just bloodstains and bits of skin sticking to the saddle. A cobbler gone but for a shredded, bloodied hat. A few of the richest villagers hired mercenaries as guards, but when even the strongest men died, silent and alone, the convoys dried up. The village elder, a man named Horley, held a meeting to decide what to do. It was the end of summer by then. The meeting house had a chill to it, a stench of thick earth with a trace of blood and sweat curling through it. All five hundred villagers came to the meeting, from the few remaining merchants to the poorest beggar. Grommin had always been hard scrabble and tough winters, but it was also two hundred years old. It had survived the wars of barons and of kings, been razed twice, only to return. "I can't bring my goods to market," one farmer said, rising in shadow from beneath the thatch. "I can't be sure I want to send my daughter to the pen to milk the goats." Horley laughed, said, "It's worse than that. We can't bring in food from the other side. Not for sure. Not without losing men." Horley had a sudden vision from months ahead, of winter, of ice gravelly with frozen blood. It made him shudder. "What about those of us who live outside the village?" another farmer asked. "We need the pasture for grazing, but we have no protection." Horley understood the problem; he had been one of those farmers, once. The village had a wall of thick logs surrounding it, to a height of ten feet. No real defense against an army, but more than enough to keep the wolves out. Beyond that perimeter lived the farmers and the hunters and the outcasts who could not work among others. "You may have to pretend it is a time of war and live in the village and go out with a guard," Horley said. "We have plenty of able-bodied men, still." "Is it the witch woman doing this?" Clem the blacksmith asked. "No," Horley said. "I don't think it's the witch woman." What Clem and some of the others thought of as a "witch woman," Horley thought of as a crazy person who knew some herbal remedies and lived in the woods because the villagers had driven her there, blaming her for an outbreak of sickness the year before. "Why did it come?" a woman asked. "Why us?" No one could answer, least of all Horley. As Horley stared at all of those hopeful, scared, troubled faces, he realized that not all of them yet knew they were stuck in a nightmare. Clem was the village's strongest man, and after the meeting he volunteered to fight the beast. He had arms like most people's thighs. His skin was tough from years of being exposed to flame. With his full black beard he almost looked like a bear himself. "I'll go, and I'll go willingly," he told Horley. "I've not met the beast I couldn't best. I'll squeeze the ‘a' out of him." And he laughed, for he had a passable sense of humor, although most chose to ignore it. Horley looked into Clem's eyes and could not see even a speck of fear there. This worried Horley. "Be careful, Clem," Horley said. And, in a whisper, as he hugged the man: "Instruct your son in anything he might need to know, before you leave. Make sure your wife has what she needs, too." Fitted in chain mail, leathers, and a metal helmet, carrying an old sword some knight had once left in Grommin by mistake, Clem set forth in search of the Third Bear. The entire village came out to see him go. Clem was laughing and raising his sword and this lifted the spirits of those who saw him. Soon, everyone was celebrating as if the Third Bear had already been killed or defeated. "Fools," Horley's wife Rebecca said as they watched the celebration with their two young sons. Rebecca was younger than Horley by ten years and had come from a village far beyond the forest. Horley's first wife had died from a sickness that left red marks all over her body. "Perhaps, but it's the happiest anyone's been for a month," Horley said. "Let them have these moments." "All I can think of is that he's taking one of our best horses out into danger," Rebecca said. "Would you rather he took a nag?" Horley said, but absent-mindedly. His thoughts were elsewhere. The vision of winter would not leave him. Each time, it came back to Horley with greater strength, until he had trouble seeing the summer all around him. Clem left the path almost immediately, wandered through the underbrush to the heart of the forest, where the trees grew so black and thick that the only glimmer of light came from the reflection of water on leaves. The smell in that place carried a hint of offal. Clem had spent so much time beating things into shape that he had not developed a sense of fear, for he had never been beaten. But the smell in his nostrils did make him uneasy. He wandered for some time in the deep growth, where the soft loam of moss muffled the sound of his passage. It became difficult to judge direction and distance. The unease became a knot in his chest as he clutched his sword ever tighter. He had killed many bears in his time, this was true, but he had never had to hunt a man-eater. Eventually, in his circling, meandering trek, Clem came upon a hill with a cave inside. From within the cave, a green flame flickered. It beckoned like a lithe but crooked finger. A lesser man might have turned back, but not Clem. He didn't have the sense to turn back. Inside the cave, he found the Third Bear. Behind the Third Bear, arranged around the walls of the cave, it had displayed the heads of its victims. The heads had been painstakingly painted and mounted on stands. They were all in v arious stages of rot. Many bodies lay stacked neatly in the back of the cave. All of them had been defiled in some way. Some of them had been mutilated. The wavery green light came from a candle the Third Bear had placed behind the bodies, to display its handiwork. The smell of blood was so thick that Clem had to put a hand over his mouth. As Clem took it all in, the methodical nature of it, the fact that the Third Bear had not eaten any of its victims, he found something inside of him te aring and then breaking. "I…," he said, and looked into the terrible eyes of the Third Bear. "I…." Almost sadly, with a kind of ritual grace, the Third Bear pried Clem's sword from his fist, placed the weapon on a ledge, and then came back to stare at Clem once more. Clem stood there, frozen, as the Third Bear disemboweled him. The next day, Clem was found at the edge of the village, blood soaked and shit-spattered, legs gnawed away, but alive enough for awhile to, in shuddering lurches, tell those who found him what he had seen, just not coherent enough to tell them where. Later, Horley would wish that he hadn't told them anything. There was nothing left but fear in Clem's eyes by the time Horley questioned him. Horley didn't remember any of Clem's answers, had to be retold them later. He was trying to reconcile himself to looking down to stare into Clem's eyes. "I'm cold, Horley," Clem said. "I can't feel anything. Is winter coming?" "Should we bring his wife and son?" the farmer who had found Clem asked Horley at one point. Horley just stared at him, aghast. They buried Clem in the old graveyard, but the next week the Third Bear dug him up and stole his head. Apparently, the Third Bear had no use for heroes, except, possibly, as a pattern of heads. Horley tried to keep the grave robbery and what Clem had said a secret, but it leaked out anyway. By the time most villagers of Grommin learned about it, the details had become more monstrous than anything in real life. Some said Clem had been kept alive for a week in the bear's lair, while it ate away at him. Others said Clem had had his spine ripped out of his body while he was still breathing. A few even said Clem had been buried alive by mistake and the Third Bear had heard him writhing in the dirt and come for him. But one thing Horley knew that trumped every tall tale spreading through Grommin: the Third Bear hadn't had to keep Clem alive. Theeber hadn't had to place Clem, still breathing, at the edge of the village. So Seether wasn't just a bear. In the next week, four more people were killed, one on the outskirts of the village. Several villagers had risked leaving, and some of them had even made it through. But fear kept most of them in Grommin, locked into a kind of desperate fatalism or optimism that made their eyes hollow as they stared into some unknowable distance. Horley did his best to keep morale up, but even he experienced a sense of sinking. "Is there more I can do?" he asked his wife in bed at night. "Nothing," she said. "You are doing everything you can do." "Should we just leave?" "Where would we go? What would we do?" Few who left ever returned with stories of success, it was true. There was war and plague and a thousand more dangers out there beyond the forest. They'd as likely become slaves or servants or simply die, one by one, out in the wider world. Eventually, though, Horley sent a messenger to that wider world, to a far-distant baron to whom they paid fealty and a yearly amount of goods. The messenger never came back. Nor did the baron send any men. Horley spent many nights awake, wondering if the messenger had gotten through and the baron just didn't care, or if Seether had killed the messenger. "Maybe winter will bring good news," Rebecca said. Over time, Grommin sent four or five of its strongest and most clever men and women to fight the Third Bear. Horley objected to this waste, but the villagers insisted that something must be done before winter, and those who went were unable to grasp the terrible velocity of the situation. For Horley, it seemed merely a form of taking one's own life, but his objections were overruled by the majority. They never learned what happened to these people, but Horley saw them in his nightmares. One, before the end, said to the Third Bear, "If you could see the children in the village, you would stop." Another said, before fear clotted her windpipe, "We will give you all the food you need." A third, even as he watched his intestines slide out of his body, said, "Surely there is something we can do to appease you?" In Horley's dreams, the Third Bear said nothing. Its conversation was through its work, and Seether said what it wanted to say very eloquently in that regard. By now, fall had descended on Grommin. The wind had become unpredictable and the leaves of trees had begun to yellow. A far-off burning smell laced the air. The farmers had begun to prepare for winter, laying in hay and slaughtering and smoking hogs and goats. Horley became more involved in these preparations than usual, driven by his vision of the coming winter. People noted the haste, the urgency, so unnatural in Horley, and to his dismay it sometimes made them panic rather than work harder. With his wife's help, Horley convinced the farmers to contribute to a communal smoke house in the village. Ham, sausage, dried vegetables, onions, potatoes—they stored it all in Grommin now. Most of the outlying farmers realized that their future depended on the survival of the village. Sometimes, when they opened the gates to let in another farmer and his mule-drawn cart of supplies, Horley would walk out a ways and stare into the forest. It seemed more unknowable than ever, gaunt and dark, as if diminished by the change of seasons. Somewhere out there the Third Bear waited for them. One day, the crisp cold of coming winter a lingering promise, Horley and several of the men from Grommin went looking for a farmer who had not come to the village for a month. The farmer's name was John and he had a wife, five children, and three men who worked for him. John's holdings were the largest outside the village, but he had been suffering because he could not bring his extra goods to market. The farm was a half-hour's walk from Grommin. The whole way, Horley could feel a hurt in his chest, a kind of stab of premonition. Those with him held pitchforks and hammers and old spears, much of it as rust-colored as the leaves now strewn across the path. They could smell the disaster before they saw it. It coated the air like oil. On the outskirts of John's farm, they found three mule-pulled carts laden with food and supplies. Horley had never seen so much blood. It had pooled and thickened to cover a spreading area several feet in every direction. The mules had had their throats torn out and then they had been disemboweled. Their organs had been torn out and thrown onto the ground, as if Seether had been searching for something. Their eyes had been plucked from their sockets almost as an afterthought. John—they thought it was John—sat in the front of the lead cart. The wheels of the cart were greased with blood. The head was missing, as was much of the meat from the body cavity. The hands still held the reins. The same was true for the other two carts. Three dead men holding reins to dead mules. Two dead men in the back of the carts. All five missing their heads. All five eviscerated. One of Horley's protectors vomited into the grass. Another began to weep. "Jesus save us," a third man said, and kept saying it for many hours. Horley found himself curiously unmoved. His hand and heart were steady. He noted the brutal humor that had moved the Third Bear to carefully replace the reins in the men's hands. He noted the wild, savage abandon that had preceded that action. He noted, grimly, that most of the supplies in the carts had been ruined by the wealth of blood that covered them. But, for the most part, the idea of winter had so captured him that whatever came to him moment-by-moment could not compare to the crystalline nightmare of that interior vision. Horley wondered if his was a form of madness as well. "This is not the worst," he said to his men. "Not by far." At the farm itself, they found the rest of the men and what was left of John's wife, but that is not what Horley had meant. At this point, Horley felt he should go himself to find the Third Bear. It wasn't bravery that made him put on the leather jerkin and the metal shin guards. It wasn't from any sense of hope that he picked up the spear and put Clem's helmet on his head. His wife found him there, ready to walk out the door of their home. "You wouldn't come back," she told him. "Better," he said. "Still." "You're more important to us alive. Stronger men than you have tried to kill it." "I must do something," Horley said. "Winter will be here soon and things will get worse." "Then do something," Rebecca said, taking the spear from his hand. "But do something else." The villagers of Grommin met the next day. There was less talking this time. As Horley looked out over them, he thought some of them seemed resigned, almost as if the Third Bear were a plague or some other force that could not be controlled or stopped by the hand of Man. In the days that followed, there would be a frenzy of action: traps set, torches lit, poisoned meat left in the forest, but none of it came to anything. One old woman kept muttering about fate and the will of God. "John was a good man," Horley told them. "He did not deserve his death. But I was there—I saw his wounds. He died from an animal attack. It may be a clever animal. It may be very clever. But it is still an animal. We should not fear it the way we fear it." Horley said this, even though he did not believe it. "You should consult with the witch in the woods," Clem's son said. Clem's son was a huge man of twenty years, and his word held weight, given the bravery of his father. Several people began to nod in agreement. "Yes," said one. "Go to the witch. She might know what to do." The witch in the woods is just a poor, addled woman, Horley thought, but could not say it. "Just two months ago," Horley reminded them, "you were saying she might have made this happen." "And if so, what of it? If she caused it, she can undo it. If not, perhaps she can help us." This from one of the farmers displaced from outside the walls. Word of John's fate had spread quickly, and less than a handful of the bravest or most foolhardy had kept to their farms. Rancor spread amongst the gathered villagers. Some wanted to take a party of men out to the witch, wherever she might live, and kill her. Others thought this folly—what if the Third Bear found them first? Finally, Horley raised his hands to silence them. "Enough! If you want me to go to the witch in the woods, I will go to her." The relief on their faces, as he looked out at them—the relief that it was he who would take the risk and not them—it was like a balm that cleansed their worries, if only for the moment. Some fools were even smiling. Later, Horley lay in bed with his wife. He held her tight, taking comfort in the warmth of her body. "What can I do? What can I do, Rebecca? I'm scared." "I know. I know you are. Do you think I'm not scared as well? But neither of us can show it or they will panic, and once they panic, Grommin is lost." "But what do I do?" "Go see the witch woman, my love. If you go to her, it will make them calmer. And you can tell them whatever you like about what she says." "If the Third Bear doesn't kill me before I can find her." If she isn't already dead. In the deep woods, in a silence so profound that the ringing in his ears had become the roar of a river, Horley looked for the witch woman. He knew that she had been exiled to the southern part of the forest, and so he had started there and worked his way toward the center. What he was looking for, he did not know. A cottage? A tent? What he would do when he found her, Horley didn't know either. His spear, his incomplete armor—these things would not protect him if she truly was a witch. He tried to keep the vision of the terrible winter in his head as he walked, because concentrating on that more distant fear removed the current fear. "If not for me, the Third Bear might not be here," Horley had said to Rebecca before he left. It was Horley who had stopped them from burning the witch, had insisted only on exile. "That's nonsense," Rebecca had replied. "Remember that she's just an old woman, living in the woods. Remember that she can do you no real harm." It had been as if she'd read his thoughts. But now, breathing in the thick air of the forest, Horley felt less sure about the witch woman. It was true there had been sickness in the village until they had cast her out. Horley tried to focus on the spring of loam beneath his boots, the clean, dark smell of bark and earth and air. After a time, he crossed a dirt-choked stream. As if this served as a dividing line, the forest became yet darker. The sounds of wrens and finches died away. Above, he could see the distant dark shapes of hawks in the treetops, and patches of light shining down that almost looked more like bog or marsh water, so disoriented had he become. It was in this deep forest, that he found a door. Horley had stopped to catch his breath after cresting a slight incline. Hands on his thighs, he looked up and there it stood: a door. In the middle of the forest. It was made of old oak and overgrown with moss and mushrooms, and yet it seemed to flicker like glass. A kind of light or brightness hurtled through the ground, through the dead leaves and worms and beetles, around the door. It was a subtle thing, and Horley half thought he was imagining it at first. He straightened up, grip tightening on his spear. The door stood by itself. Nothing human-made surrounded it, not even the slightest ruin of a wall. Horley walked closer. The knob was made of brass or some other yellowing metal. He walked around the door. It stood firmly wedged into the ground. The back of the door was the same as the front. Horley knew that if this was the entrance to the old woman's home, then she was indeed a witch. His hand remained steady, but his heart quickened and he thought furiously of winter, of icicles and bitter cold and snow falling slowly forever. For several minutes, he circled the door, deciding what to do. For a minute more, he stood in front of the door, pondering. A door always needs opening, he thought, finally. He grasped the knob, and pushed—and the door opened. Some events have their own sense of time and their own logic. Horley knew this just from the change of seasons every year. He knew this from the growing of the crops and the birthing of children. He knew it from the forest itself, and the cycles it went through that often seemed incomprehensible and yet had their own pattern, their own calendar. From the first thawed trickle of stream water in the spring to the last hopping frog in the fall, the world held a thousand mysteries. No man could hope to know the truth of them all. When the door opened and he stood in a room very much like the room one might find in a woodman's cottage, with a fireplace and a rug and a shelf and pots and pans on the wood walls, and a rocking chair—when this happened, Horley decided in the time it took him to blink twice that he had no need for the why of it or the how of it, even. And this was, he realized later, the only reason he kept his wits about him. The witch woman sat in the rocking chair. She looked older than Horley remembered, as if much more than a year had passed since he had last seen her. Seeming made of ash and soot, her black dress lay flat against her sagging skin. She was blind, eye sockets bare, but her wrinkled face strained to look at him anyway. There was a buzzing sound. "I remember you," she said. Her voice was croak and whisper both. Her arms were mottled with age spots, her hands so thin and cruel-looking that they could have been talons. She gripped the arms of the rocking chair as if holding onto the world. There was a buzzing sound. It came, Horley finally realized, from a halo of black hornets that circled the old woman's head, their wings beating so fast they could hardly be seen. "Are you Hasghat, who used to live in Grommin?" Horley asked. "I remember you," the witch woman said again. "I am the elder of the village of Grommin." The woman spat to the side. "Those that threw poor Hasghat out." "They would have done much worse if I'd let them." "They'd have burned me if they could. And all I knew then were a few charms, a few herbs. Just because I wasn't one of them. Just because I'd seen a bit of the world." Hasghat was staring right at him and Horley knew that, eyes or no eyes, she could see him. "It was wrong," Horley said. "It was wrong," she said. "I had nothing to do with the sickness. Sickness comes from animals, from people's clothes. It clings to them and spreads through them." "And yet you are a witch?" Hasghat laughed, although it ended with coughing. "Because I have a hidden room? Because my door stands by itself?" Horley grew impatient. "Would you help us if you could? Would you help us if we let you return to the village?" Hasghat straightened up in the chair and the halo of hornets disintegrated, then reformed. The wood in the fireplace popped and crackled. Horley felt a chill in the air. "Help you? Return to the village?" She spoke as if chewing, her tongue a fat gray grub. "A creature is attacking and killing us." Hasghat laughed. When she laughed, Horley could see a strange double image in her face, a younger woman beneath the older. "Is that so? What kind of creature?" "We call it the Third Bear. I do not believe it is really a bear." Hasghat doubled over in mirth. "Not really a bear? A bear that is not a bear?" "We cannot seem to kill it. We thought that you might know how to defeat it." "It stays to the forest," the witch woman said. "It stays to the forest and it is a bear but not a bear. It kills your people when they use the forest paths. It kills your people in the farms. It even sneaks into your graveyards and takes the heads of your dead. You are full of fear and panic. You cannot kill it, but it keeps murdering you in the most terrible of ways." And that was winter, coming from her dry, stained lips. "Do you know of it then?" Horley asked, his heart fast now from hope not fear. "Ah yes, I know it," Hasghat said, nodding. "I know the Third Bear, Theeber, Seether. After all I brought it here." The spear moved in Horley's hand and it would have driven itself deep into the woman's chest if Horley had let it. "For revenge?" Horley asked. "Because we drove you out of the village?" Hasghat nodded. "Unfair. It was unfair. You should not have done it." You're right, Horley thought. I should have let them burn you. "You're right," Horley said. "We should not have done it. But we have learned our lesson." "I was once a woman of knowledge and learning," Hasghat said. "Once I had a real cottage in a village. Now I am old and the forest is cold and uncomfortable. All of this is illusion," and she gestured at the fireplace, at the walls of the cottage. "There is no cottage. No fireplace. No rocking chair. Right now, we are both dreaming beneath dead leaves among the worms and the beetles and the dirt. My back is sore and patterned by leaves. This is no place for someone as old as me." "I'm sorry," Horley said. "You can come back to the village. You can live among us. We'll pay for your food. We'll give you a house to live in." Hasghat frowned. "And some logs, I'll warrant. Some logs and some rope and some fire to go with it, too!" Horley took off his helmet, stared into Hasghat eye sockets. "I'll promise you whatever you want. No harm will come to you. If you'll help us. A man has to realize when he's beaten, when he's done wrong. You can have whatever you want. On my honor." Hasghat brushed at the hornets ringing her head. "Nothing is that easy." "Isn't it?" "I brought it from a place far distant. In my anger. I sat in the middle of the forest despairing and I called for it from across the miles, across the years. I never expected it would come to me." "So you can send it back?" Hasghat frowned, spat again, and shook her head. "No. I hardly remember how I called it. And some day it may even be my head it takes. Sometimes it is easier to summon something than to send it away." "You cannot help us at all?" "If I could, I might, but calling it weakened me. It is all I can do to survive. I dig for toads and eat them raw. I wander the woods searching for mushrooms. I talk to the deer and I talk to the squirrels. Sometimes the birds tell me things about where they've been. Someday I will die out here. All by myself. Completely mad." Horley's frustration heightened. He could feel the calm he had managed to keep leaving him. The spear twitched and jerked in his hands. What if he killed her? Might that send the Third Bear back where it had come from? "What can you tell me about the Third Bear? Can you tell me anything that might help me?" Hasghat shrugged. "It acts as to its nature. And it is far from home, so it clings to ritual even more. Where it is from, it is no more or less bloodthirsty than any other creature. There they call it ‘Mord.' But this far from home, it appears more horrible than it is. It is merely making a pattern. When the pattern is finished, it will leave and go someplace else. Maybe the pattern will even help send it home." "A pattern of heads." "Yes. A pattern with heads." "Do you know when it will be finished?" "No." "Do you know where it lives?" "Yes. It lives here." In his mind, he saw a hill. He saw a cave. He saw the Third Bear. "Do you know anything else?" "No." Hasghat grinned up at him. He drove the spear through her dry chest. There was a sound like twigs breaking. Horley woke covered in leaves, in the dirt, his body curled up next to the old woman. He jumped to his feet, picking up his spear. The old woman, dressed in a black dress and dirty shawl, was dreaming and mumbling in her sleep. Dead hornets had become entangled in her stringy hair. She clutched a dead toad in her left hand. A smell came from her, of rot, of shit. There was no sign of the door. The forest was silent and dark. Horley almost drove the spear into her chest again, but she was tiny, like a bird, and defenseless, and staring down at her he could not do it. He looked around at the trees, at the fading light. It was time to accept that there was no reason to it, no why. It was time to get out, one way or another. "A pattern of heads," he muttered to himself all the way home. "A pattern of heads." Horley did not remember much about the meeting with the villagers upon his return. They wanted to hear about a powerful witch who could help or curse them, some force greater than themselves. Some glint of hope through the trees, a light in the dark. He could not give it to them. He told them the truth as much as he dared, but also hinted that the witch had told him how to defeat the Third Bear. Did it do much good? He didn't know. He could still see winter before them. He could still see blood. And they'd brought it on themselves. That was the part he didn't tell them. That a poor old woman with the ground for a bed and dead leaves for a blanket thought she had, through her anger, brought the Third Bear down upon them. Theeber. Seether. "You must leave," he told Rebecca later. "Take a wagon. Take a mule. Load it with supplies. Don't let yourself be seen. Take our two sons. Bring that young man who helps chop firewood for us. If you can trust him." Rebecca stiffened beside him. She was quiet for a very long time. "Where will you be?" she asked. Horley was forty-seven years old. He had lived in Grommin his entire life. "I have one thing left to do, and then I will join you." "I know you will, my love." Rebecca said, holding onto him tightly, running her hands across his body as if as blind as the old witch woman, remembering, remembering. They both knew there was only one way Horley could be sure Rebecca and his sons made it out of the forest safely. Horley started from the south, just up-wind from where Rebecca had set out along an old cart trail, and curled in toward the Third Bear's home. After a long trek, Horley came to a hill that might have been a cairn made by his ancestors. A stream flowed down it and puddled at his feet. The stream was red and carried with it gristle and bits of marrow. It smelled like black pudding frying. The blood mixed with the deep green of the moss and turned it purple. Horley watched the blood ripple at the edges of his boots for a moment, and then he slowly walked up the hill. He'd been carelessly loud for a long time as he walked through the leaves. About this time, Rebecca would be more than half-way through the woods, he knew. In the cave, surrounded by all that Clem had seen and more, Horley disturbed Theeber at his work. Horley's spear had long since slipped through numb fingers. He'd pulled off his helmet because it itched and because he was sweating so much. He'd had to rip his tunic and hold the cloth against his mouth. Horley had not meant to have a conversation; he'd meant to try to kill the beast. But now that he was there, now that he saw, all he had left were words. Horley's boot crunched against half-soggy bone. Theeber didn't flinch. Theeber already knew. Theeber kept licking the fluid out of the skull in his hairy hand. Theeber did look a little like a bear. Horley could see that. But no bear was that tall or that wide or looked as much like a man as a beast. The ring of heads lined every flat space in the cave, painted blue and green and yellow and red and white and black. Even in the extremity of his situation, Horley could not deny that there was something beautiful about the pattern. "This painting," Horley began in a thin, stretched voice. "These heads. How many do you need?" Theeber turned its bloodshot, carious gaze on Horley, body swiveling as if made of air, not muscle and bone. "How do you know not to be afraid?" Horley asked. Shaking. Piss running down his leg. "Is it true you come from a long way away? Are you homesick?" Somehow, not knowing the answers to so many questions made Horley's heart sore for the many other things he would never know, never understand. Theeber approached. It stank of mud and offal and rain. It made a continual sound like the rumble of thunder mixed with a cat's purr. It had paws but it had thumbs. Horley stared up into its eyes. The two of them stood there, silent, for a long moment. Horley trying with everything he had to read some comprehension, some understanding into that face. Those eyes, oddly gentle. The muzzle wet with carrion. "We need you to leave. We need you to go somewhere else. Please." Horley could see Hasghat's door in the forest in front of him. It was opening in a swirl of dead leaves. A light was coming from inside of it. A light from very, very far away. Theeber held Horley against his chest. Horley could hear the beating of its mighty heart, as loud as the world. Rebecca and his sons would be almost past the forest by now. Seether tore Horley's head from his body. Let the rest crumple to the dirt floor. Horley's body lay there for a good long while. Winter came—as brutal as it had ever been—and the Third Bear continued in its work. With Horley gone, the villagers became ever more listless. Some few disappeared into the forest and were never heard from again. Others feared the forest so much that they ate berries and branches at the outskirts of their homes and never hunted wild game. Their supplies gave out. Their skin became ever more pale and they stopped washing themselves. They believed the words of madmen and adopted strange customs. They stopped wearing clothes. They would have relations in the street. At some point, they lost sight of reason entirely and sacrificed virgins to the Third Bear, who took them as willingly as anyone else. They took to mutilating their bodies, thinking that this is what the third bear wanted them to do. Some few in whom reason persisted had to be held down and mutilated by others. A few cannibalized those who froze to death, and others who had not died almost wished they had. No relief came. The baron never brought his men. Spring came, finally, and the streams thawed. The birds came back, the trees regained their leaves, and the frogs began to sing their mating songs. In the deep forest, an old wooden door lay half-buried in moss and dirt, leading nowhere, all light fading from it. And on an overgrown hill, there lay an empty cave with nothing but a few dead leaves and a few bones littering the dirt floor. The Third Bear had finished its pattern and moved on, but for the remaining villagers he would always be there.

It made its home in the deep forest near the village of Grommin, and all anyone ever saw of it, before the end, would be hard eyes and the dark barrel of its muzzle. The smell of piss and blood and shit and bubbles of saliva and half-eaten food. The villagers called it the Third Bear because they had killed two bears already that year. But, near the end, no one really thought of it as a bear, even though the name had stuck, changed by repetition and fear and slurring through blood-filled mouths to Theeber. Sometimes it even sounded like “seether” or “seabird.” The Third Bear came to the forest in mid-summer, and soon most anyone who used the forest trail, day or night, disappeared, carried off to the creature’s lair. By the time even large convoys had traveled through, they would discover two or three of their number missing. A straggling horseman, his mount cantering along, just bloodstains and bits of skin sticking to the saddle. A cobbler gone but for a shredded, bloodied hat. A few of the richest villagers hired mercenaries as guards, but when even the strongest men died, silent and alone, the convoys dried up. The village elder, a man named Horley, held a meeting to decide what to do. It was the end of summer by then. The meeting house had a chill to it, a stench of thick earth with a trace of blood and sweat curling through it. All five hundred villagers came to the meeting, from the few remaining merchants to the poorest beggar. Grommin had always been hard scrabble and tough winters, but it was also two hundred years old. It had survived the wars of barons and of kings, been razed twice, only to return. “I can’t bring my goods to market,” one farmer said, rising in shadow from beneath the thatch. “I can’t be sure I want to send my daughter to the pen to milk the goats.” Horley laughed, said, “It’s worse than that. We can’t bring in food from the other side. Not for sure. Not without losing men.” Horley had a sudden vision from months ahead, of winter, of ice gravelly with frozen blood. It made him shudder. “What about those of us who live outside the village?” another farmer asked. “We need the pasture for grazing, but we have no protection.” Horley understood the problem; he had been one of those farmers, once. The village had a wall of thick logs surrounding it, to a height of ten feet. No real defense against an army, but more than enough to keep the wolves out. Beyond that perimeter lived the farmers and the hunters and the outcasts who could not work among others. “You may have to pretend it is a time of war and live in the village and go out with a guard,” Horley said. “We have plenty of able-bodied men, still.” “Is it the witch woman doing this?” Clem the blacksmith asked. “No,” Horley said. “I don’t think it’s the witch woman.” What Clem and some of the others thought of as a “witch woman,” Horley thought of as a crazy person who knew some herbal remedies and lived in the woods because the villagers had driven her there, blaming her for an outbreak of sickness the year before. “Why did it come?” a woman asked. “Why us?” No one could answer, least of all Horley. As Horley stared at all of those hopeful, scared, troubled faces, he realized that not all of them yet knew they were stuck in a nightmare. Clem was the village’s strongest man, and after the meeting he volunteered to fight the beast. He had arms like most people’s thighs. His skin was tough from years of being exposed to flame. With his full black beard he almost looked like a bear himself. “I’ll go, and I’ll go willingly,” he told Horley. “I’ve not met the beast I couldn’t best. I’ll squeeze the ‘a’ out of him.” And he laughed, for he had a passable sense of humor, although most chose to ignore it. Horley looked into Clem’s eyes and could not see even a speck of fear there. This worried Horley. “Be careful, Clem,” Horley said. And, in a whisper, as he hugged the man: “Instruct your son in anything he might need to know, before you leave. Make sure your wife has what she needs, too.” Fitted in chain mail, leathers, and a metal helmet, carrying an old sword some knight had once left in Grommin by mistake, Clem set forth in search of the Third Bear. The entire village came out to see him go. Clem was laughing and raising his sword and this lifted the spirits of those who saw him. Soon, everyone was celebrating as if the Third Bear had already been killed or defeated. “Fools,” Horley’s wife Rebecca said as they watched the celebration with their two young sons. Rebecca was younger than Horley by ten years and had come from a village far beyond the forest. Horley’s first wife had died from a sickness that left red marks all over her body. “Perhaps, but it’s the happiest anyone’s been for a month,” Horley said. “Let them have these moments.” “All I can think of is that he’s taking one of our best horses out into danger,” Rebecca said. “Would you rather he took a nag?” Horley said, but absent-mindedly. His thoughts were elsewhere. The vision of winter would not leave him. Each time, it came back to Horley with greater strength, until he had trouble seeing the summer all around him. Clem left the path almost immediately, wandered through the underbrush to the heart of the forest, where the trees grew so black and thick that the only glimmer of light came from the reflection of water on leaves. The smell in that place carried a hint of offal. Clem had spent so much time beating things into shape that he had not developed a sense of fear, for he had never been beaten. But the smell in his nostrils did make him uneasy. He wandered for some time in the deep growth, where the soft loam of moss muffled the sound of his passage. It became difficult to judge direction and distance. The unease became a knot in his chest as he clutched his sword ever tighter. He had killed many bears in his time, this was true, but he had never had to hunt a man-eater. Eventually, in his circling, meandering trek, Clem came upon a hill with a cave inside. From within the cave, a green flame flickered. It beckoned like a lithe but crooked finger. A lesser man might have turned back, but not Clem. He didn’t have the sense to turn back. Inside the cave, he found the Third Bear. Behind the Third Bear, arranged around the walls of the cave, it had displayed the heads of its victims. The heads had been painstakingly painted and mounted on stands. They were all in v arious stages of rot. Many bodies lay stacked neatly in the back of the cave. All of them had been defiled in some way. Some of them had been mutilated. The wavery green light came from a candle the Third Bear had placed behind the bodies, to display its handiwork. The smell of blood was so thick that Clem had to put a hand over his mouth. As Clem took it all in, the methodical nature of it, the fact that the Third Bear had not eaten any of its victims, he found something inside of him te aring and then breaking. “I…,” he said, and looked into the terrible eyes of the Third Bear. “I….” Almost sadly, with a kind of ritual grace, the Third Bear pried Clem’s sword from his fist, placed the weapon on a ledge, and then came back to stare at Clem once more. Clem stood there, frozen, as the Third Bear disemboweled him. The next day, Clem was found at the edge of the village, blood soaked and shit-spattered, legs gnawed away, but alive enough for awhile to, in shuddering lurches, tell those who found him what he had seen, just not coherent enough to tell them where. Later, Horley would wish that he hadn’t told them anything. There was nothing left but fear in Clem’s eyes by the time Horley questioned him. Horley didn’t remember any of Clem’s answers, had to be retold them later. He was trying to reconcile himself to looking down to stare into Clem’s eyes. “I’m cold, Horley,” Clem said. “I can’t feel anything. Is winter coming?” “Should we bring his wife and son?” the farmer who had found Clem asked Horley at one point. Horley just stared at him, aghast. They buried Clem in the old graveyard, but the next week the Third Bear dug him up and stole his head. Apparently, the Third Bear had no use for heroes, except, possibly, as a pattern of heads. Horley tried to keep the grave robbery and what Clem had said a secret, but it leaked out anyway. By the time most villagers of Grommin learned about it, the details had become more monstrous than anything in real life. Some said Clem had been kept alive for a week in the bear’s lair, while it ate away at him. Others said Clem had had his spine ripped out of his body while he was still breathing. A few even said Clem had been buried alive by mistake and the Third Bear had heard him writhing in the dirt and come for him. But one thing Horley knew that trumped every tall tale spreading through Grommin: the Third Bear hadn’t had to keep Clem alive. Theeber hadn’t had to place Clem, still breathing, at the edge of the village. So Seether wasn’t just a bear. In the next week, four more people were killed, one on the outskirts of the village. Several villagers had risked leaving, and some of them had even made it through. But fear kept most of them in Grommin, locked into a kind of desperate fatalism or optimism that made their eyes hollow as they stared into some unknowable distance. Horley did his best to keep morale up, but even he experienced a sense of sinking. “Is there more I can do?” he asked his wife in bed at night. “Nothing,” she said. “You are doing everything you can do.” “Should we just leave?” “Where would we go? What would we do?” Few who left ever returned with stories of success, it was true. There was war and plague and a thousand more dangers out there beyond the forest. They’d as likely become slaves or servants or simply die, one by one, out in the wider world. Eventually, though, Horley sent a messenger to that wider world, to a far-distant baron to whom they paid fealty and a yearly amount of goods. The messenger never came back. Nor did the baron send any men. Horley spent many nights awake, wondering if the messenger had gotten through and the baron just didn’t care, or if Seether had killed the messenger. “Maybe winter will bring good news,” Rebecca said. Over time, Grommin sent four or five of its strongest and most clever men and women to fight the Third Bear. Horley objected to this waste, but the villagers insisted that something must be done before winter, and those who went were unable to grasp the terrible velocity of the situation. For Horley, it seemed merely a form of taking one’s own life, but his objections were overruled by the majority. They never learned what happened to these people, but Horley saw them in his nightmares. One, before the end, said to the Third Bear, “If you could see the children in the village, you would stop.” Another said, before fear clotted her windpipe, “We will give you all the food you need.” A third, even as he watched his intestines slide out of his body, said, “Surely there is something we can do to appease you?” In Horley’s dreams, the Third Bear said nothing. Its conversation was through its work, and Seether said what it wanted to say very eloquently in that regard. By now, fall had descended on Grommin. The wind had become unpredictable and the leaves of trees had begun to yellow. A far-off burning smell laced the air. The farmers had begun to prepare for winter, laying in hay and slaughtering and smoking hogs and goats. Horley became more involved in these preparations than usual, driven by his vision of the coming winter. People noted the haste, the urgency, so unnatural in Horley, and to his dismay it sometimes made them panic rather than work harder. With his wife’s help, Horley convinced the farmers to contribute to a communal smoke house in the village. Ham, sausage, dried vegetables, onions, potatoes—they stored it all in Grommin now. Most of the outlying farmers realized that their future depended on the survival of the village. Sometimes, when they opened the gates to let in another farmer and his mule-drawn cart of supplies, Horley would walk out a ways and stare into the forest. It seemed more unknowable than ever, gaunt and dark, as if diminished by the change of seasons. Somewhere out there the Third Bear waited for them. One day, the crisp cold of coming winter a lingering promise, Horley and several of the men from Grommin went looking for a farmer who had not come to the village for a month. The farmer’s name was John and he had a wife, five children, and three men who worked for him. John’s holdings were the largest outside the village, but he had been suffering because he could not bring his extra goods to market. The farm was a half-hour’s walk from Grommin. The whole way, Horley could feel a hurt in his chest, a kind of stab of premonition. Those with him held pitchforks and hammers and old spears, much of it as rust-colored as the leaves now strewn across the path. They could smell the disaster before they saw it. It coated the air like oil. On the outskirts of John’s farm, they found three mule-pulled carts laden with food and supplies. Horley had never seen so much blood. It had pooled and thickened to cover a spreading area several feet in every direction. The mules had had their throats torn out and then they had been disemboweled. Their organs had been torn out and thrown onto the ground, as if Seether had been searching for something. Their eyes had been plucked from their sockets almost as an afterthought. John—they thought it was John—sat in the front of the lead cart. The wheels of the cart were greased with blood. The head was missing, as was much of the meat from the body cavity. The hands still held the reins. The same was true for the other two carts. Three dead men holding reins to dead mules. Two dead men in the back of the carts. All five missing their heads. All five eviscerated. One of Horley’s protectors vomited into the grass. Another began to weep. “Jesus save us,” a third man said, and kept saying it for many hours. Horley found himself curiously unmoved. His hand and heart were steady. He noted the brutal humor that had moved the Third Bear to carefully replace the reins in the men’s hands. He noted the wild, savage abandon that had preceded that action. He noted, grimly, that most of the supplies in the carts had been ruined by the wealth of blood that covered them. But, for the most part, the idea of winter had so captured him that whatever came to him moment-by-moment could not compare to the crystalline nightmare of that interior vision. Horley wondered if his was a form of madness as well. “This is not the worst,” he said to his men. “Not by far.” At the farm itself, they found the rest of the men and what was left of John’s wife, but that is not what Horley had meant. At this point, Horley felt he should go himself to find the Third Bear. It wasn’t bravery that made him put on the leather jerkin and the metal shin guards. It wasn’t from any sense of hope that he picked up the spear and put Clem’s helmet on his head. His wife found him there, ready to walk out the door of their home. “You wouldn’t come back,” she told him. “Better,” he said. “Still.” “You’re more important to us alive. Stronger men than you have tried to kill it.” “I must do something,” Horley said. “Winter will be here soon and things will get worse.” “Then do something,” Rebecca said, taking the spear from his hand. “But do something else.” The villagers of Grommin met the next day. There was less talking this time. As Horley looked out over them, he thought some of them seemed resigned, almost as if the Third Bear were a plague or some other force that could not be controlled or stopped by the hand of Man. In the days that followed, there would be a frenzy of action: traps set, torches lit, poisoned meat left in the forest, but none of it came to anything. One old woman kept muttering about fate and the will of God. “John was a good man,” Horley told them. “He did not deserve his death. But I was there—I saw his wounds. He died from an animal attack. It may be a clever animal. It may be very clever. But it is still an animal. We should not fear it the way we fear it.” Horley said this, even though he did not believe it. “You should consult with the witch in the woods,” Clem’s son said. Clem’s son was a huge man of twenty years, and his word held weight, given the bravery of his father. Several people began to nod in agreement. “Yes,” said one. “Go to the witch. She might know what to do.” The witch in the woods is just a poor, addled woman, Horley thought, but could not say it. “Just two months ago,” Horley reminded them, “you were saying she might have made this happen.” “And if so, what of it? If she caused it, she can undo it. If not, perhaps she can help us.” This from one of the farmers displaced from outside the walls. Word of John’s fate had spread quickly, and less than a handful of the bravest or most foolhardy had kept to their farms. Rancor spread amongst the gathered villagers. Some wanted to take a party of men out to the witch, wherever she might live, and kill her. Others thought this folly—what if the Third Bear found them first? Finally, Horley raised his hands to silence them. “Enough! If you want me to go to the witch in the woods, I will go to her.” The relief on their faces, as he looked out at them—the relief that it was he who would take the risk and not them—it was like a balm that cleansed their worries, if only for the moment. Some fools were even smiling. Later, Horley lay in bed with his wife. He held her tight, taking comfort in the warmth of her body. “What can I do? What can I do, Rebecca? I’m scared.” “I know. I know you are. Do you think I’m not scared as well? But neither of us can show it or they will panic, and once they panic, Grommin is lost.” “But what do I do?” “Go see the witch woman, my love. If you go to her, it will make them calmer. And you can tell them whatever you like about what she says.” “If the Third Bear doesn’t kill me before I can find her.” If she isn’t already dead. In the deep woods, in a silence so profound that the ringing in his ears had become the roar of a river, Horley looked for the witch woman. He knew that she had been exiled to the southern part of the forest, and so he had started there and worked his way toward the center. What he was looking for, he did not know. A cottage? A tent? What he would do when he found her, Horley didn’t know either. His spear, his incomplete armor—these things would not protect him if she truly was a witch. He tried to keep the vision of the terrible winter in his head as he walked, because concentrating on that more distant fear removed the current fear. “If not for me, the Third Bear might not be here,” Horley had said to Rebecca before he left. It was Horley who had stopped them from burning the witch, had insisted only on exile. “That’s nonsense,” Rebecca had replied. “Remember that she’s just an old woman, living in the woods. Remember that she can do you no real harm.” It had been as if she’d read his thoughts. But now, breathing in the thick air of the forest, Horley felt less sure about the witch woman. It was true there had been sickness in the village until they had cast her out. Horley tried to focus on the spring of loam beneath his boots, the clean, dark smell of bark and earth and air. After a time, he crossed a dirt-choked stream. As if this served as a dividing line, the forest became yet darker. The sounds of wrens and finches died away. Above, he could see the distant dark shapes of hawks in the treetops, and patches of light shining down that almost looked more like bog or marsh water, so disoriented had he become. It was in this deep forest, that he found a door. Horley had stopped to catch his breath after cresting a slight incline. Hands on his thighs, he looked up and there it stood: a door. In the middle of the forest. It was made of old oak and overgrown with moss and mushrooms, and yet it seemed to flicker like glass. A kind of light or brightness hurtled through the ground, through the dead leaves and worms and beetles, around the door. It was a subtle thing, and Horley half thought he was imagining it at first. He straightened up, grip tightening on his spear. The door stood by itself. Nothing human-made surrounded it, not even the slightest ruin of a wall. Horley walked closer. The knob was made of brass or some other yellowing metal. He walked around the door. It stood firmly wedged into the ground. The back of the door was the same as the front. Horley knew that if this was the entrance to the old woman’s home, then she was indeed a witch. His hand remained steady, but his heart quickened and he thought furiously of winter, of icicles and bitter cold and snow falling slowly forever. For several minutes, he circled the door, deciding what to do. For a minute more, he stood in front of the door, pondering. A door always needs opening, he thought, finally. He grasped the knob, and pushed—and the door opened. Some events have their own sense of time and their own logic. Horley knew this just from the change of seasons every year. He knew this from the growing of the crops and the birthing of children. He knew it from the forest itself, and the cycles it went through that often seemed incomprehensible and yet had their own pattern, their own calendar. From the first thawed trickle of stream water in the spring to the last hopping frog in the fall, the world held a thousand mysteries. No man could hope to know the truth of them all. When the door opened and he stood in a room very much like the room one might find in a woodman’s cottage, with a fireplace and a rug and a shelf and pots and pans on the wood walls, and a rocking chair—when this happened, Horley decided in the time it took him to blink twice that he had no need for the why of it or the how of it, even. And this was, he realized later, the only reason he kept his wits about him. The witch woman sat in the rocking chair. She looked older than Horley remembered, as if much more than a year had passed since he had last seen her. Seeming made of ash and soot, her black dress lay flat against her sagging skin. She was blind, eye sockets bare, but her wrinkled face strained to look at him anyway. There was a buzzing sound. “I remember you,” she said. Her voice was croak and whisper both. Her arms were mottled with age spots, her hands so thin and cruel-looking that they could have been talons. She gripped the arms of the rocking chair as if holding onto the world. There was a buzzing sound. It came, Horley finally realized, from a halo of black hornets that circled the old woman’s head, their wings beating so fast they could hardly be seen. “Are you Hasghat, who used to live in Grommin?” Horley asked. “I remember you,” the witch woman said again. “I am the elder of the village of Grommin.” The woman spat to the side. “Those that threw poor Hasghat out.” “They would have done much worse if I’d let them.” “They’d have burned me if they could. And all I knew then were a few charms, a few herbs. Just because I wasn’t one of them. Just because I’d seen a bit of the world.” Hasghat was staring right at him and Horley knew that, eyes or no eyes, she could see him. “It was wrong,” Horley said. “It was wrong,” she said. “I had nothing to do with the sickness. Sickness comes from animals, from people’s clothes. It clings to them and spreads through them.” “And yet you are a witch?” Hasghat laughed, although it ended with coughing. “Because I have a hidden room? Because my door stands by itself?” Horley grew impatient. “Would you help us if you could? Would you help us if we let you return to the village?” Hasghat straightened up in the chair and the halo of hornets disintegrated, then reformed. The wood in the fireplace popped and crackled. Horley felt a chill in the air. “Help you? Return to the village?” She spoke as if chewing, her tongue a fat gray grub. “A creature is attacking and killing us.” Hasghat laughed. When she laughed, Horley could see a strange double image in her face, a younger woman beneath the older. “Is that so? What kind of creature?” “We call it the Third Bear. I do not believe it is really a bear.” Hasghat doubled over in mirth. “Not really a bear? A bear that is not a bear?” “We cannot seem to kill it. We thought that you might know how to defeat it.” “It stays to the forest,” the witch woman said. “It stays to the forest and it is a bear but not a bear. It kills your people when they use the forest paths. It kills your people in the farms. It even sneaks into your graveyards and takes the heads of your dead. You are full of fear and panic. You cannot kill it, but it keeps murdering you in the most terrible of ways.” And that was winter, coming from her dry, stained lips. “Do you know of it then?” Horley asked, his heart fast now from hope not fear. “Ah yes, I know it,” Hasghat said, nodding. “I know the Third Bear, Theeber, Seether. After all I brought it here.” The spear moved in Horley’s hand and it would have driven itself deep into the woman’s chest if Horley had let it. “For revenge?” Horley asked. “Because we drove you out of the village?” Hasghat nodded. “Unfair. It was unfair. You should not have done it.” You’re right, Horley thought. I should have let them burn you. “You’re right,” Horley said. “We should not have done it. But we have learned our lesson.” “I was once a woman of knowledge and learning,” Hasghat said. “Once I had a real cottage in a village. Now I am old and the forest is cold and uncomfortable. All of this is illusion,” and she gestured at the fireplace, at the walls of the cottage. “There is no cottage. No fireplace. No rocking chair. Right now, we are both dreaming beneath dead leaves among the worms and the beetles and the dirt. My back is sore and patterned by leaves. This is no place for someone as old as me.” “I’m sorry,” Horley said. “You can come back to the village. You can live among us. We’ll pay for your food. We’ll give you a house to live in.” Hasghat frowned. “And some logs, I’ll warrant. Some logs and some rope and some fire to go with it, too!” Horley took off his helmet, stared into Hasghat eye sockets. “I’ll promise you whatever you want. No harm will come to you. If you’ll help us. A man has to realize when he’s beaten, when he’s done wrong. You can have whatever you want. On my honor.” Hasghat brushed at the hornets ringing her head. “Nothing is that easy.” “Isn’t it?” “I brought it from a place far distant. In my anger. I sat in the middle of the forest despairing and I called for it from across the miles, across the years. I never expected it would come to me.” “So you can send it back?” Hasghat frowned, spat again, and shook her head. “No. I hardly remember how I called it. And some day it may even be my head it takes. Sometimes it is easier to summon something than to send it away.” “You cannot help us at all?” “If I could, I might, but calling it weakened me. It is all I can do to survive. I dig for toads and eat them raw. I wander the woods searching for mushrooms. I talk to the deer and I talk to the squirrels. Sometimes the birds tell me things about where they’ve been. Someday I will die out here. All by myself. Completely mad.” Horley’s frustration heightened. He could feel the calm he had managed to keep leaving him. The spear twitched and jerked in his hands. What if he killed her? Might that send the Third Bear back where it had come from? “What can you tell me about the Third Bear? Can you tell me anything that might help me?” Hasghat shrugged. “It acts as to its nature. And it is far from home, so it clings to ritual even more. Where it is from, it is no more or less bloodthirsty than any other creature. There they call it ‘Mord.’ But this far from home, it appears more horrible than it is. It is merely making a pattern. When the pattern is finished, it will leave and go someplace else. Maybe the pattern will even help send it home.” “A pattern of heads.” “Yes. A pattern with heads.” “Do you know when it will be finished?” “No.” “Do you know where it lives?” “Yes. It lives here.” In his mind, he saw a hill. He saw a cave. He saw the Third Bear. “Do you know anything else?” “No.” Hasghat grinned up at him. He drove the spear through her dry chest. There was a sound like twigs breaking. Horley woke covered in leaves, in the dirt, his body curled up next to the old woman. He jumped to his feet, picking up his spear. The old woman, dressed in a black dress and dirty shawl, was dreaming and mumbling in her sleep. Dead hornets had become entangled in her stringy hair. She clutched a dead toad in her left hand. A smell came from her, of rot, of shit. There was no sign of the door. The forest was silent and dark. Horley almost drove the spear into her chest again, but she was tiny, like a bird, and defenseless, and staring down at her he could not do it. He looked around at the trees, at the fading light. It was time to accept that there was no reason to it, no why. It was time to get out, one way or another. “A pattern of heads,” he muttered to himself all the way home. “A pattern of heads.” Horley did not remember much about the meeting with the villagers upon his return. They wanted to hear about a powerful witch who could help or curse them, some force greater than themselves. Some glint of hope through the trees, a light in the dark. He could not give it to them. He told them the truth as much as he dared, but also hinted that the witch had told him how to defeat the Third Bear. Did it do much good? He didn’t know. He could still see winter before them. He could still see blood. And they’d brought it on themselves. That was the part he didn’t tell them. That a poor old woman with the ground for a bed and dead leaves for a blanket thought she had, through her anger, brought the Third Bear down upon them. Theeber. Seether. “You must leave,” he told Rebecca later. “Take a wagon. Take a mule. Load it with supplies. Don’t let yourself be seen. Take our two sons. Bring that young man who helps chop firewood for us. If you can trust him.” Rebecca stiffened beside him. She was quiet for a very long time. “Where will you be?” she asked. Horley was forty-seven years old. He had lived in Grommin his entire life. “I have one thing left to do, and then I will join you.” “I know you will, my love.” Rebecca said, holding onto him tightly, running her hands across his body as if as blind as the old witch woman, remembering, remembering. They both knew there was only one way Horley could be sure Rebecca and his sons made it out of the forest safely. Horley started from the south, just up-wind from where Rebecca had set out along an old cart trail, and curled in toward the Third Bear’s home. After a long trek, Horley came to a hill that might have been a cairn made by his ancestors. A stream flowed down it and puddled at his feet. The stream was red and carried with it gristle and bits of marrow. It smelled like black pudding frying. The blood mixed with the deep green of the moss and turned it purple. Horley watched the blood ripple at the edges of his boots for a moment, and then he slowly walked up the hill. He’d been carelessly loud for a long time as he walked through the leaves. About this time, Rebecca would be more than half-way through the woods, he knew. In the cave, surrounded by all that Clem had seen and more, Horley disturbed Theeber at his work. Horley’s spear had long since slipped through numb fingers. He’d pulled off his helmet because it itched and because he was sweating so much. He’d had to rip his tunic and hold the cloth against his mouth. Horley had not meant to have a conversation; he’d meant to try to kill the beast. But now that he was there, now that he saw, all he had left were words. Horley’s boot crunched against half-soggy bone. Theeber didn’t flinch. Theeber already knew. Theeber kept licking the fluid out of the skull in his hairy hand. Theeber did look a little like a bear. Horley could see that. But no bear was that tall or that wide or looked as much like a man as a beast. The ring of heads lined every flat space in the cave, painted blue and green and yellow and red and white and black. Even in the extremity of his situation, Horley could not deny that there was something beautiful about the pattern. “This painting,” Horley began in a thin, stretched voice. “These heads. How many do you need?” Theeber turned its bloodshot, carious gaze on Horley, body swiveling as if made of air, not muscle and bone. “How do you know not to be afraid?” Horley asked. Shaking. Piss running down his leg. “Is it true you come from a long way away? Are you homesick?” Somehow, not knowing the answers to so many questions made Horley’s heart sore for the many other things he would never know, never understand. Theeber approached. It stank of mud and offal and rain. It made a continual sound like the rumble of thunder mixed with a cat’s purr. It had paws but it had thumbs. Horley stared up into its eyes. The two of them stood there, silent, for a long moment. Horley trying with everything he had to read some comprehension, some understanding into that face. Those eyes, oddly gentle. The muzzle wet with carrion. “We need you to leave. We need you to go somewhere else. Please.” Horley could see Hasghat’s door in the forest in front of him. It was opening in a swirl of dead leaves. A light was coming from inside of it. A light from very, very far away. Theeber held Horley against his chest. Horley could hear the beating of its mighty heart, as loud as the world. Rebecca and his sons would be almost past the forest by now. Seether tore Horley’s head from his body. Let the rest crumple to the dirt floor. Horley’s body lay there for a good long while. Winter came—as brutal as it had ever been—and the Third Bear continued in its work. With Horley gone, the villagers became ever more listless. Some few disappeared into the forest and were never heard from again. Others feared the forest so much that they ate berries and branches at the outskirts of their homes and never hunted wild game. Their supplies gave out. Their skin became ever more pale and they stopped washing themselves. They believed the words of madmen and adopted strange customs. They stopped wearing clothes. They would have relations in the street. At some point, they lost sight of reason entirely and sacrificed virgins to the Third Bear, who took them as willingly as anyone else. They took to mutilating their bodies, thinking that this is what the third bear wanted them to do. Some few in whom reason persisted had to be held down and mutilated by others. A few cannibalized those who froze to death, and others who had not died almost wished they had. No relief came. The baron never brought his men. Spring came, finally, and the streams thawed. The birds came back, the trees regained their leaves, and the frogs began to sing their mating songs. In the deep forest, an old wooden door lay half-buried in moss and dirt, leading nowhere, all light fading from it. And on an overgrown hill, there lay an empty cave with nothing but a few dead leaves and a few bones littering the dirt floor. The Third Bear had finished its pattern and moved on, but for the remaining villagers he would always be there.

From Horror photos & videos June 16, 2018 at 08:00PM