Bump
by S.J. Finch
Copyright 2011 by S.J. Finch
Smashwords Edition
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Abraham Lincoln
Chapter 1
Pine. Dampness. Dirt. If there was one aspect of camping that came anywhere close to redeeming all the others, it was the crisp scent of the mountains. The air was cleaner here, free from car exhaust, cheap cologne, cooking grease, and all the other smells that Ryan associated with the city. He inhaled again.
On either side of the narrow path loomed the forest. The trees were packed so densely that branches collided and interlocked into one giant wall of green.
Ryan peered through the trees and from the darkness, a strange roar erupted. It took him only a moment to realize however that this was not the hunting cry of some ferocious animal about to attack, it was something much worse.
Diesel.
He craned his neck to see past the trunk of a large tree. In this small sliver, he saw the unnatural gleam of an eighteen wheeler as it roared about its business on the highway that ran occasionally parallel to the forest path. The footpath and the highway were less than a hundred yards apart and Ryan smiled inwardly as he remembered one of the goals for this trip: getting back to nature.
He readjusted the waist strap on his old-fashioned, external-frame hiking backpack. The shift took some of the burden from his shoulders to his waist, but it did nothing to ease his other pains. His legs were sore and blisters were forming quickly on both feet, but the worst pain came from a cross-bar in the frame which dug right into the small of Ryan’s back.
His father was cheap. “Practical” was probably a better term, but Ryan wasn’t in a generous mood at the moment. This would be the first and last backpacking trip for the men of the Fisher family, and Ryan’s father knew it. The other fathers had gone out and far overspent on brand new backpacks they had fooled themselves into thinking they’d ever use again. Ryan’s father however had gone straight to the thrift store, and returned with a pair of ancient canvas monstrosities that Ryan was certain had once belonged to Colonel Kurtz.
The roaring truck was gone, and Ryan tried in vain to recapture the sense of peace and isolation he had felt before. It was no use.
“You all right, buddy?”
A booming, genial voice sounded from the trail bend ahead.
Mr. Lowery worked in public relations at Ryan’s father’s office, and the excursion had been his idea. Lowery had seen no flaw in the logic that, if three fathers were friends at work, their three sons would become instant friends when dragged along on a weekend camping trip. Still, Ryan liked the man. He was large and loud and very pleasant.
“I’m fine.” Ryan replied. “Just enjoying the scenery.”
“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” Lowery replied with a red-faced smile.
Ryan wasn’t very good at small talk, especially with adults in white-collar jobs that held no interest to him. Fortunately, Lowery enjoyed small talk enough for the both of them, so Ryan barely had to say a word beyond the occasional affirmation or semi-forced laugh.
They trudged along the path and enjoyed the changing landscape while trying to avoid the roots and rocks that poked out of the ground at odd angles.
Ryan’s sneakers were out of their element, but they had served him faithfully enough so far. Now however, the terrain had changed from dry and level to slippery and inclined.
He gingerly took his first step into a shallow ditch that had been carved out by a low, narrow stream. The side of the ditch was muddy, and against the worn rubber sole of Ryan’s sneaker, it provided no traction.
The step went bad and Ryan’s foot twisted in a way it was not meant to. He pitched forward and couldn’t bring his other foot up in time to right himself, so Ryan landed face-down in the stream with a thudding splash.
The landing itself wasn’t bad. The fifty-pound backpack that landed on top of him was. Lowery rushed to his side.
“Whoa whoa, easy.You okay?”
Ryan pushed himself out of the stream and nodded. He was embarrassed and he was soaking, but he hadn’t broken anything. His ankle, however, throbbed angrily.
“Nothing major, just twisted my ankle.”
“I can imagine. Spill like that, you’re lucky it was just a twist. Good thing this happened so close to camp, it could’ve been a lot worse. Stay here, I’ll run ahead and get Carl and your dad.”
The last thing Ryan wanted was everyone staring down at him while he was helpless in the mud. On the other hand, the first thing he wanted was the Ace bandage out of Carl’s first aid kit, so he was willing to endure the embarrassment.
Lowery shrugged off his pack and set off huffing down the trail as he yelled for the rest of the group to stop.
A moment later, the man returned with Carl Burris and Ryan’s father. Joseph Fisher didn’t much care for Burris, and Ryan had heard many a complaint about the man over the family dinner table. Nevertheless, Ryan had been able to piece together that Burris had some clout within the office, so declining his invitation for a weekend excursion would not have been a wise move. Ryan didn’t care much about the wild world of inter-office politics; only when they forced him into a backpacking trip.
“You okay, Ryan?” Joseph asked his son as Burris wrapped the ankle.
“Never better.”
Ryan’s father pulled him out of the stream bed and helped him hobble the last half mile to the place they were to make camp. Lowery, Burris, and their sons had gone on ahead, and a fire was already crackling in the stillness of the twilight. Its small flames cast flickering shadows on Burris who was busy cursing at his brand new, “easy-assemble” tent. Night was falling quickly.
Ryan eased himself into a canvas camp chair and began to count the hours until he could go home.
He had tried to do right by his father and play nice. He had introduced himself to Nick Burris, who had grunted an unintelligible reply without looking up from his phone. Then Ryan had tried to strike up a conversation with Eddie Lowery, who had pointedly put in earphones. Ryan had done his best, but he wasn’t sure what he was expecting to happen. The boys all went to different schools and lived in different neighborhoods; having fathers who worked together wasn’t fodder for riveting conversation. Ryan had resigned himself to a rather lonely weekend, and had instead begun focusing on the fact that the trip was almost over. He’d be going to bed soon and, with a little luck, his ankle would be well enough to hike out early the next morning.
Their camp was at the edge of a large meadow, one of the few clearings Ryan had seen in the dense forest. The setting sun muted the natural colors of his surroundings and substituted its own vibrant yellows and oranges. The patches of pale grass at Ryan’s feet turned a nearly-transparent, flaming red in the dying sunlight and they cast long, spiked shadows across the dirt. Through the trees on one side, Ryan could just make out the shimmering reflection of the sun on a small lake. He knew that opposite the lake was the highway, but even the thin stand of trees between them was enough to hide the blacktop from Ryan’s view. On either side of the meadow rose the forest, thick and dark even at midday, but now as the sun continued to set, Ryan couldn’t distinguish shape from shadow more than a few feet beyond the tree line.
He felt a gentle breeze pick up, and he could just make out the sound of it whistling through the countless branches. Much more audible were the sounds of Burris’ mild profanities, the crackling fire, and Ryan’s father constructing their small pup tent behind him.
Even these sounds however, became muffled whenever a car roared past them on the nearby road. Ryan smiled.
Joseph Fisher had their tent up in a matter of minutes, and he helped Ryan crawl inside.
“Having fun yet?” His father asked with a smirk. “I think we’re going to play some capture-the-flag. Are you okay for me to leave?”
Ryan smiled. “Yeah, I’m really fine. Go do your thing, show Mr. Burris who was CTF champ at Camp Maplewood four years running.”
Joseph Fisher grinned back. “And here I thought you never listened to any of my old camp stories.”
***
Out in the woods, “night” meant something very different than it did in the city. Stars shone through the murky canopy like countless pinholes in a black sheet. The moon seemed bigger out here, and its bluish light fell softly on Ryan and the dying fire.
He had gotten bored of staring off into the nylon of his tent, and had decided to hobble out and take his seat next to the fire pit. He poked and prodded at the embers, but Lowery hadn’t gotten nearly enough firewood to last them the night, so Ryan had occupied himself watching the flames burn slowly down to coals.
It was chilly, the first real bite of autumn, and Ryan hugged himself more closely, debating just how many body parts he’d give up to be back home.
Apart from the aromas, the other advantage of the woods was the silence. Traffic on the highway had stopped almost completely, and with none of the other campers around, Ryan reveled in the quiet. He leaned his head back in the canvas chair and closed his eyes, listening.
He let the silence wash over him, and despite the cold, even allowed himself to doze off for a moment. Then however, something came to him on the breeze: the faintest whisper out of the woods. Ryan’s eyes shot open and he strained his hearing for a second sound that never came. The first had sounded almost like a man’s scream: too ghastly and pained to be a flag-capturer’s cry of victory. After a moment however, Ryan dismissed what he had heard entirely. He had been half asleep at the time,and the forest at night was home to all kinds of mysterious sounds that, nonetheless, posed no real threat. Still, the split-second event had planted in Ryan’s imagination the possibility that there was a serial killer roaming the shadowy woods with a large hatchet. The silence was slightly less comforting now.
Ryan crawled back inside the tent and dug around in his pack. He pulled out a small paperback that he knew he’d never finish. It had been recommended to him by his mother, whose taste he generally trusted, but Ryan knew that as soon as he was back in the real world, the siren song of movies, TV, and video games would lure him away from literature. It always did. He liked to give recreational reading the old college try every few weeks, just to make himself feel better, but he rarely stuck with it faithfully enough to finish more than one book every couple months.
He had delved half a chapter in when the batteries in his flashlight began to fade. Ryan hadn’t found himself enthralled by the pages anyway, so he put away the book and crawled into his sleeping bag to begin the arduous battle of falling asleep in a tent.
Chapter 2
Ryan awoke with a start. The moonlight diffused through the wall of the tent cast a dull glow on his backpack and sleeping bag. He didn’t have a clue what time it was, or how long he had been asleep. He hadn’t wanted to worry about losing or breaking a wristwatch, so he hadn’t worn one, and his phone was where he had forgotten it in the car at the trail head.
He knew that at least a few hours had passed, since his father was now snoring soundly in the bag next to him. What Ryan wanted more than anything was to fall back to sleep. The sooner he fell asleep, the sooner it would be morning and the sooner he could leave; get back to civilized life and the real world.
Trying to get more comfortable, Ryan shifted and squirmed in his sleeping bag and discovered why he had woken up: a large rock was positioned directly beneath his bag. All night long it had been digging into the exact same spot on his back as the cross bar on his cheap backpack. No matter which way he turned, the rock was still there and his back was still sore.
After a few more futile minutes of tossing and turning, Ryan gave up. He sat up in his sleeping bag and stretched out his back as best he could in the small tent. He remained that way for a long time: awake and bored.
As quietly as he could, Ryan unzipped his sleeping bag and threw it off his lower half. He lifted his injured foot and gently unraveled the bandage. When it was off, Ryan was surprised by how much mobility he had. It no longer hurt so much to move. He decided to work it a bit, to put some weight on it and see how it felt. Ryan pulled on his shoes and awkwardly crawled over his father. He unzipped the door, slowly as to not make too much noise, and clambered out.
The night was cold, much colder than Ryan had expected. His shivering breath came out in dense white clouds and he clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. This made his warm sleeping bag, rock or no rock, seem all the more inviting. Still, he knew sleep was a lost cause for the moment, so first he zipped up the tent and then he zipped up his sweatshirt.
His foot seemed to be fine to stand on, so he took a few cautious steps. At first it was painful and stiff, but the more he walked, the easier it became.
Ryan looked up and once again peered into the woods. The blue light of the big round moon illuminated the entire meadow, but the light couldn’t penetrate the murky blackness of the trees. Even so, as Ryan peered into the forest, he no longer felt any fear. He felt at home in the meadow now, as though he had been here long enough that he was no longer so out of place.
By extension, the forest also seemed less intimidating. Ryan felt at peace with his surroundings and he was sure that in a place as beautiful and serene as this, nothing was going to harm him. A few hours in a nylon tent made Ryan feel as if Nature had accepted him as one of her own, and she didn’t harm her own.
As if to prove this point to himself, Ryan began to walk towards the forest. He had no clear indication of where to go, or why for that matter, so he chose to travel directly away from the highway and off to one side of the lake: the largest patch of the densest forest he could find.
It took Ryan long enough to reach the edge of the meadow that by the time he got there, he was already questioning his decision. The peaceful feeling was fading fast. Perhaps it was because he was waking up, and reason was quickly returning to his brain, or perhaps because looking at the forest from the middle of a clear, safe meadow was a much different experience than standing four feet from its gaping maw. Still, Ryan hadn’t forgotten the sense of peace and isolation he had experienced earlier that afternoon, and it was such an uncommon feeling in suburban life that he wanted to feel it at least once more before he left in the morning.
As he crossed the dark threshold into the woods, Ryan was all too aware of how ironic it would be if he did run into a hatchet-wielding killer. He had seen the movies: it was always the teenager who can’t run and wanders off alone that gets killed first. He smiled in the darkness.
Though the moonlight had served him well this far, the thick forest canopy now darkened his path considerably. Ryan fished into his sweatshirt pocket and produced his dying flashlight. He clicked it on and swept the weak beam in front of him. He picked his way through the brush, carefully but steadily.
Ryan didn’t know how far into the woods he needed to go, or even how he would know when he was far enough, but he did know that getting out of sight of the meadow and especially the highway was the first step.
Another breeze wound its way through the trees and pushed all the branches into a single, unified swaying motion. Everything in the forest, save Ryan, was moving in the same pattern. The familiar feeling began to creep back into his gut: that he shouldn’t be here, that he wasn’t welcome. Camping for one night in a tent didn’t mean he now belonged here, it meant he was still an outsider who had no right to stomp through this world.
As he moved through the forest, Ryan once or twice thought he saw something else that moved against the swaying pattern of the foliage. It was on the very periphery of his vision however, and the movement was so quick that Ryan could not be sure he had seen anything at all. As he continued on, he thought he saw the movement again, but without any sound of twigs snapping or underbrush being pushed aside, Ryan was sure it was nothing more than the breeze.
He continued on, making sure to keep the highway behind him so he would know how to get back. Soon he came to a small clearing in the trees, no more than twenty feet across. He looked over his shoulder and happily realized that the only thing he could see was the forest, with no sign of the meadow or the camp. He walked to the middle of the clearing and took a long look around as he inhaled deeply. Ryan sat down on a fallen log and closed his eyes. He listened to the sound of his own breathing, the wind rustling the leaves, the swishing noises of his clothes when he made even the tiniest movement. The smells of wet soil and fresh pine came to him on the chilly night air. The silence was so deep, so engulfing, the chill so constant, Ryan may as well have been at the bottom of the ocean or the vast expanse of space. He took another long breath through his nose and held it for a moment before letting it slowly out through his mouth. The white mist of exhaled breath hung in the air then dispersed in a thousand different directions. So focused was Ryan on his breathing, on the smells that each breath brought him, and on the sound that the cool air made as it rushed through his nostrils, that he didn’t notice at first when all the other sounds around him faded away into an uneasy nothingness.
It was as though someone had turned down the volume on a television and all sound had seeped out of the clearing at the same moment. Everything seemed to stop. There were no chirps of insects, no rustling of birds or squirrels, not even the wind made a sound. Instead the breeze swirled around Ryan and slid silently through the underbrush like a ghost.
His breathing was shallow, his heartbeat had quickened, and Ryan didn’t know why. Nothing seemed to have changed, but still he knew that everything was very, very different.
Suddenly, on some primal level in a way he had never felt before, the answer came to him: he was no longer alone. It was as though he was aware of his presence in this place, and in the next instant, he was aware of another presence as well. On the same primal level, where millions of years of evolution and animal instinct were contained, a conclusion was formed. This change in environment pointed his animal mind in one direction: with a chill shuddering through him colder than anything the night air could ever muster, Ryan realized he wasn’t the only outsider in these woods.
His reaction was not what he expected. He didn’t immediately run for the camp, in fact he didn’t do anything at all. Ryan was afraid, that much was certain, but the instincts that screamed at him to run were being beaten back by his own, very human curiosity. The animal in him was ready to fight or flee, but Ryan knew he couldn’t make that decision until he had more information. In the back of his mind, far from his conscious brain, Ryan knew that neither option was going to help him. His ankle wouldn’t let him run anywhere fast enough to escape, and he certainly wasn’t going to be able to fight any creature of these woods that was big enough to consider him prey. Elsewhere in his brain, he was inwardly chuckling at himself; a defeated, masochistic laugh as that tiny part of him realized the irony of it all. The injured teenager in the middle of the woods. Can’t run. Can’t fight. First to die.
In the next instant, contrary to what Ryan had often heard, time did not slow down. Rather, his brain sped up. Things happened in the blink of an eye, but Ryan’s brain was alert and ready to process all of it. Without warning, without any sound, Ryan felt something huge crash into him from behind.
He didn’t just feel the impact however. Ryan’s adrenaline-drenched brain fed him more data than he could process: the body heat of his attacker, the sinewy muscles rippling beneath coarse fur, the hot, musty breath on the back of his neck, and the large claws that ripped through his sweatshirt and raked searing pain into his side. It all happened in an instant, in less time than it took for a bolt of lightning to streak through the sky, then it was all gone. Gone, except for the blinding pain in his side and the feeling of hot blood pumping out of the wound.
Ryan pushed the pain out of his mind long enough to realize that he was on the ground, and that the wind had been knocked out of him. As he gulped for air that never seemed to reach his lungs, his eyes fell to the four identical slashes on his right side: each one at least six inches in length. He lifted his head as high as he could and looked around at his blurring landscape. He saw nothing. The animal in him had come to the same decision as his human mind: this was not a fight he could win. His lungs returned to normal and he inhaled noisy gulps of air. His breathing steadied, though still quick and shallow from the terror. Ryan lay there waiting for a second attack that he knew would come at any moment, the attack that he knew would likely be the last thing he’d ever feel.
The hushed seconds ticked by…no attack came. Ryan strained, over the sound of the blood pounding in his ears, to hear any sort of noise that might signal his attacker’s return. He knew of course, that whatever it was didn’t make noise. The first attack had come in utter silence, and the next one would be the same way. With another gasp of breath, Ryan blinked the tears out of his eyes and summoned all the strength he could to roll himself onto his stomach. The twigs and fallen pine needles poked into his skin as he forced himself up on all fours. He took a few more deep breaths and pushed away from the ground, shakily clambering to his feet. As he clutched his side with one hand and his aching stomach with the other, Ryan stumbled off into the woods in a direction he could only pray was the right one. His internal sense of direction had been erased by terror, and he had no way of knowing which way he had come.
Now that he was on his feet, Ryan’s adrenaline pumped faster than it ever had before. It dulled the pain in his side to a distant roar, and the protests of his ankle were drowned out completely. Even so, the foot was still injured. Ryan hadn’t made it more than ten feet outside the clearing when he buckled again. His ankle pitched him forward and Ryan landed on his hands and knees in the wet underbrush. His hands stung from the impact and Ryan felt as though he had used the last of his strength getting to his feet the first time. He doubted he had it in him to get back upright. Then the second attack came.
Just as suddenly as before, Ryan was hit again. It was the same freight train impact slamming into his left side, opposite the slash wounds. He heard two of his ribs break a split-second before he felt them. Then he felt them.
The impact sent Ryan sprawling with his arms and legs twisted about and forced at odd angles. He landed with a sickening thump in the dirt nearly six feet from where he had been hit. His eyes instinctively shot open to brace for another attack, but there wasn’t one. He saw nothing. There was no sign of his attacker: no hulking figure emerging from the shadows, no rustle of underbrush. Ryan couldn’t even spot a single branch that had been disturbed or even one dead, fallen leaf that had been kicked up and misplaced. It was as though the shadows themselves were rising up to attack him, then fading away just as quickly. The only evidence that anything had happened at all was Ryan’s own, broken body. That and the stillness.
He didn’t know how long he lay there, crumpled in dirt that was becoming soaked with his blood. The pain made time meaningless. The pain was all he knew, as if it was all he had ever known. He couldn’t think of a time in his life that he hadn’t been lying in this forest in excruciating pain.
Then something strange began to creep back from the recesses of his mind, some last spark of human will or instinctual self-preservation. Something gave him the idea that he could get up, that he could keep going. Ryan would have preferred to stay there and die.
He tried to, in fact. He wept silently into the damp earth and begged his mind, his body, to let him die. However, that same spark would not comply and after a moment Ryan felt as though his body were being run by remote. He hadn’t told his body to push itself up against a fallen tree. He hadn’t told it to inch up, little by little, until he was lying across the large log, almost standing. He hadn’t told his body to gingerly put weight on both feet, then stagger away from the support of the log. He certainly hadn’t told his body to take off at a slow, hobbling run. Ryan’s body however, had taken over. His mind and body had flipped on the autopilot and started feeding even more adrenaline into his system to give Ryan a will he never knew he had.
He was bent nearly double and both arms clutched his sides, but he was moving. He was breathing. He was living.
Low-hanging branches scraped his exposed face and arms and left shallow cuts all over him, but he didn’t feel them. In fact, Ryan couldn’t feel much of anything. His every thought, every action, was consumed by one goal: to keep moving. There was no room for pain, no room for fear. The forest floor was just as treacherous as it had always been; exposed roots and large rocks were everywhere, but Ryan was moving in a way he never had before. Every step in front of him was immediately analyzed: where best to step, what needed to be avoided, where it would make the next step fall. Just as immediately, he took the step and analyzed the next one. He knew, mind and body, that the only way he was going to stand a chance of escaping with his life was to keep running. And so he did.
Ryan was discovering the energy and reflexes that only manifested to those whose lives hung in the balance; he was discovering the very limits of human potential. His pursuer however, was not human. Ryan leapt over a mossy log and, just as he landed, he was hit a third time. This time the attack came from behind, and it was more than a collision.
As it hit, the thing sunk its teeth into Ryan’s arm directly between the elbow and the shoulder. Twin rows of white-hot knives were driven into his arm with searing pain and he felt the hot breath and sticky saliva.
Just as suddenly as the teeth had stabbed into flesh, they were ripped out and Ryan was again alone. He lay there, driven into the ground for a third time. While his arm burned with pain, something else occurred to Ryan: whatever this thing was, it could have killed him at any time. This creature was faster, stronger, and more at home in the forest than Ryan could ever be. He couldn’t help but wonder why he was still alive. If he was being hunted for food, why hadn’t he been eaten? If he was being hunted for sport, what kind of animal would do such a thing? Ryan was being toyed with, but he didn’t know why. The number of minutes that made up the rest of his life, the number of breaths he would ever breathe, were now up to some wild animal that Ryan knew he would probably never even see, let alone stop. Panting on the ground, his breath unsteady and ragged, all strength was gone from him. Ryan gave up.
The pain in his ankle had returned with a vengeance and was shooting up and down the length of his leg. The blood seeping from the gashes in his side had slowed not because it was clotting, but because Ryan didn’t have much blood left in him to bleed. Every time he inhaled, he wasn’t sure if he would live long enough to exhale. He could pass out at any time, a broken rib could puncture a lung at any moment, and the searing hot pain from the bite in his arm made it feel as if the giant teeth were still in there.
His strength had left him long ago, but the residual adrenaline and that tiny spark of will had not. Standing was out of the question, so Ryan began to crawl.
He began to squirm through the underbrush even though he didn’t have a clue where he was going. Even if he had, Ryan knew it wouldn’t matter. Even if the campsite was ten feet away and even if his shadowy murderer didn’t return, he’d never make it out alive. Ten feet might as well have been ten miles, and he knew that any minute the thing was going to drop down onto him and finish him off. It had had its fun, Ryan was beaten, dying. All that was left was the killing blow, and Ryan found himself relishing the thought of a quick death.
Still, he kept pushing, kept crawling. Dirt worked its way into his nose and mouth, into his open wounds. He pushed and pushed, slithering between trees and rocks until suddenly the forest opened up and there were no more trees in front of him. He had reached the blacktop of the highway and for the briefest of moments Ryan allowed a faint glimmer of hope to worm its way back into his mind. He’d be found here, rescued. A truck driver who used to work as an army medic would find him here on the road and pull him into his cab. He’d give Ryan a shot of morphine and rush him to the hospital. They’d save his life and Ryan would wake up warm in freshly-laundered sheets. He’d see college, he’d see a wife, kids, grandkids. The truck driver was just around that next corner, he was sure of it. Ryan could almost hear the rumbling of the engine.
The treetops no longer obscured the moon and it shone brightly on Ryan and reflected dully off the pavement. He squinted at it through tear-soaked, mud-stained eyes until his surroundings suddenly darkened. An impossibly large shadow had fallen over him. It had come between Ryan and the moon, smothering him in darkness.
The creature approached slowly; it had won and it knew it. The hunt was over, the prey was beaten. Ryan opened his eyes a fraction more as the thing stepped fully onto the highway, and Ryan got his first look at his killer.
It was not, as he had first thought, a grizzly. It was not, for that matter, like anything Ryan had ever seen before. It was covered from head to toe in coarse brown fur, and it walked on four legs, but it looked as if it had been designed to walk on two. All four of its limbs seemed to be the same length, but the hind legs looked as though they were perpetually bent at the knees. Its forelegs, now that Ryan really looked at them, weren’t legs at all, but arms. In fact, its entire upper body was strangely humanoid, with a near-human torso and long muscular arms that ended in five-fingered hands. Each long, powerful finger, however, ended in a wicked claw that Ryan knew firsthand was razor sharp. Strange as it seemed, even to Ryan, the head was the least bizarre: it was that of a wolf.
The creature sauntered closer. Its brown fur rippled in the breeze as it padded onto the blacktop in complete silence. The moon shone into the creature’s terrifying yellow eyes and Ryan saw something, despite everything else he had seen tonight, that he was not expecting: intelligence. In a way he couldn’t explain and didn’t understand, Ryan knew these were not the eyes of some savage beast. These eyes were thinking, calculating, feeling. Feeling perhaps a murderous bloodlust or uncontrollable, carnivorous excitement, but feeling nonetheless.
It had closed the final gap and stopped, looming over his frozen form. It lowered its long snout and inhaled the dying boy’s scent. Ryan smelled the beast's wet fur and felt its hot, putrid breath. It reared back onto two legs and rose to its full height of at least seven feet. The thing flattened its ears and opened its jaws wide, ready to close them around Ryan’s neck. It savored the moment as its lips drew back to reveal long yellow fangs that glinted in the pale light. The head hung there for a moment, as if frozen, but in a split second more, with the same blinding speed, it plunged its head down upon him.
As Ryan’s conscious mind braced for impact and the inevitable end, his instincts once again took over. His hand closed around a large rock that sat on the side of the road, just within his reach. Weak fingers closed around the rock and with all the strength he had left, Ryan wrenched his arm upward and brought the stone smashing into the creature’s skull. The rock made contact with a dull thud and the creature’s head snapped to one side. It emitted a low snarl of surprise, but Ryan’s last hope had proven fatally ineffective. The beast was stunned for only a moment, and then it let out another fierce snarl as it lunged down upon him once again.
Ryan closed his eyes and waited for the final bite to come. He waited to feel the jaws around his neck, waited for the dozens of tiny puncture wounds that would be followed closely by his jugular being ripped from his throat.
Through his closed eyelids, Ryan saw a spreading redness that he knew was a light. The redness grew and intensified but Ryan refused to open his eyes. He didn’t want to watch the creature kill him, not if he had a choice.
Blood continued to pour from his wounds and stain the asphalt beneath him. Ryan knew that after this thing was done with his corpse, those stains would be all that was left of him; the only physical evidence that Ryan Fisher had ever existed. He felt himself losing consciousness. He welcomed it. The pain was nearly over. Even brighter redness, then, blackness.
Chapter 3
Plastic. Latex. Iodine. If this was what the afterlife smelled like, Ryan wasn’t so sure he wanted to be here. He was still too groggy to force his eyes open, but his other senses filled in the gaps. He heard the faint, steady beeping of his heart monitor, the rustle of feet back and forth on linoleum in a nearby hallway, and a soft snoring somewhere to his left.
The redness beating against his closed eyelids gave way to blinding whiteness when he finally mustered the strength to peel them apart. He opened his eyes a millimeter at a time to give his retinas time to adjust. As soon as they did, Ryan’s suspicions were confirmed: hospital room, heart monitor, snoring father.
The bright light of day shone around the edges of the light-blocking blinds, though which day it actually was, Ryan had no idea. The shafts of sunlight that made it past the blinds’ defenses fell onto gray-flecked linoleum and white hospital bed sheets. High on the wall across from him, Ryan saw an outdated television. To his right, across from the window, was a large wooden door slightly ajar, which led to a tiny bathroom. Next to it was another door, through which Ryan had heard the sound of pattering feet. A sliver of light was visible at the bottom of the door and the beam was occasionally interrupted by shadow as doctors and nurses rushed back and forth.
Ryan turned his head to look at his father. Moving his head in this way was one of the few movements Ryan could make that wouldn’t cause pain to shoot through his entire body. Some of the pain was dull and pounding, some of it was sharp and bracing. None of it was pleasant.
He looked past the canopy of IV bags and glowing monitors. His father’s clothes were different than the ones he had brought camping, but they were just as wrinkled and unwashed. Joseph’s thinning, dirty-blonde hair was ruffled and sticking out at odd angles, as if he had slept against a number of hard surfaces for a number of nights. His square jaw was covered in a sparse beard, and Ryan could tell his father had been here, probably in that exact chair, for at least a few days.
Trying not to disturb his father, Ryan occupied himself by examining the monitors and readouts that were within his limited field of vision. He had seen enough reruns of ER to guess at what most of the acronyms meant, but pop culture had failed to teach him about the attached numbers, and whether they meant he was getting better or worse.
As Ryan became more awake, he became less interested in where he was and more interested in how he had gotten here. He spotted the nurse call button laying on the bed next to him, but his left hand may just as well been made of stone. The creature’s stinging bite had been to his left arm, and the pain there was worst of all. Ryan took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to send some of the pounding pain out with it. He was bracing himself for the agony of reaching with his other hand, until a sudden noise froze him where he was.
He heard the soft click of the door being opened carefully. Ryan’s heart leapt in his chest and the monitors began to beep to an urgent crescendo. He may not have known how he had gotten to the hospital or how he was even still alive, but Ryan hadn’t forgotten the woods or the creature, not a single detail. In that instant, he was certain the thing had come back for him, that it had found him again and that it was going to kill him here and now. The light from under the door expanded for a moment, then receded as it was closed again. His mother entered with a large cup of coffee in one hand and eight-year-old Ethan Fisher’s hand in the other.
His brother was first to notice that Ryan was awake.
“Mom” Ethan whispered, nodding to Ryan as he tugged on her hand.
“Ryan! You’re awake!”
“Either that or people were really, really wrong about what happens when you die.” He replied, his throat scratchy from lack of fluids and under-use.
Karen Fisher set her coffee down on the first surface she could find and attacked with an instinctive hug.
“Knock that off! You don’t get to joke about Death when you’ve been on his doorstep for the last two days!” She scolded unconvincingly.
“I’ll tell you, it’s a doorstep that gets a bad rep. Really well-landscaped, you’d appreciate what he can do with just a few begonias.”
She pulled back from the hug with a hand on each of his shoulders. She looked at him with a mask of frustration, but her worry and relief showed through.
“Can’t you be serious for two seconds?” She pleaded.
“I was a few minutes ago. For a whole two seconds. I counted.”
The truth was, Ryan didn’t know why he was making jokes. It wasn’t unusual at all, in fact it was par for the course, but if there were ever a time for him to break down and sob in his mother’s arms, he figured this was probably it. It took him only a moment however, to realize that sobbing may not have been the right response. He was alive. He was, for the most part, in one piece. His family was here around him and, more importantly, he was still around to be with his family. Ryan was still terrified about what had happened and he couldn’t explain what he had seen or how he had gotten here, but all those fears and doubts were momentarily replaced by a sense of contentment that washed over him. He was making jokes because he was happy, odd as those jokes may have been.
Karen contented herself to perch on the edge of his bed and smooth his covers automatically with her hand.
“How are you feeling?” She asked.
“It hurts.” Ryan replied.
“What does?”
“Yes.”
“Aw sweetie, I’m so sorry. Okay,” she replied as she stood up. “You sit there, don’t move. Or move. Whatever hurts the least. I’ll go get the nurse and we’ll have her up the painkillers.”
It was as blissful a suggestion as any Ryan had ever heard, and there was only one thing on earth he wanted more: answers
“No, wait, Mom!” But she was already out the door.
The commotion had woken Ryan’s father. The man’s eyes had dark circles and puffy bags beneath them.
“Hey Ry.” He said. Joseph’s demeanor was characteristically subdued, but Ryan could see a mixture of anxiety and relief twinkling from behind the man’s deep blue eyes. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks…though nobody has told me what happened.” Ryan’s voice was starting to feel less scratchy the more he used it.
“You probably know more than we do.” His father replied. “All I know is what the doctors told us: some young family brought you in. Said they were driving down the highway, through the mountains in the middle of the night, on a road trip somewhere, and they saw you lying in the road being attacked by a bear. I guess their car scared the thing off, but you were already hurt pretty bad.”
It wasn’t a bear. He knew that much. It couldn’t have been. He wanted out of the hospital though, and Ryan knew that ranting about giant wolf-creatures wasn’t the way to get out of a hospital. Quite the opposite.
“But how did you find me?” He interrupted.
“Well, the family was afraid to move you. Said you were bleeding from all kinds of places and they didn’t want to cause any more damage. They called 911 and got the paramedics to fly you in here. The sound of the helicopter woke us. When we couldn’t find you anywhere around the camp, I called Mom to pick me up. It’s a good thing we found you here too, we were about two minutes from calling in search and rescue and you would’ve been here under ‘John Doe’ the whole time.”
“When was that? I mean, how long have I been here?” Ryan asked.
“Two days. It’s Monday morning…almost afternoon.”
“Well thanks for finding me, I could never afford this place without your insurance.”
His father smiled and the hints of small tears gathered at the corners of his weary eyes. He put a hand on Ryan’s arm and left it there.
A kind-eyed, matronly nurse had come into the room and was going about the business of giving Ryan more morphine. The pain had been slowly building the more Ryan exerted himself and he was content enough with his father’s story not to ask any more questions at the moment. He felt his brain go fuzzy and his eyelids began to droop almost instantly. Ryan was in a deep, medicated sleep before his eyes were even fully closed.
***
When he awoke again, not much had changed. The chair his father had been in was now occupied by his mother, who had her nose in the latest bestselling paperback.
“Hey” he muttered, still feeling the effects of the morphine.
His mother’s head snapped up from her book.
“Hi sweetheart. How are you feeling?”
“Morphine…a-ok in my book.” He replied as the dull, thudding pain started returning to his body. “What time is it?”
“It’s a little after three…in the afternoon.” She added hastily.
“Still Monday?” Ryan asked.
“Still Monday. Feel like sitting up?”
He didn’t, but he needed water now more than ever. And some food.
“Yeah, sure.” He began to move into a sitting position, but his mother stopped him.
“No, no. Check it out.” She pressed a button on a side panel of Ryan’s bed and he heard the faint sound of a small electric motor. The top half of the bed rose to prop Ryan up with almost no effort on his part.
“Very cool.” Ryan remarked. “Could you get me a glass of water?”
“Ethan will be thrilled that you’re awake.” She said as she rose from the chair and went to the small sink to fill a plastic cup. “He’s been waiting to play with this thing for days.”
Ryan smiled.
She handed him the water and he drank in noisy gulps. His mother crossed the room and tugged open the blinds. There was a tree outside his window, but that was all Ryan could see from where he was sitting. The movement of the blinds startled the birds sitting on the branch near the window, two sparrows and a larger black bird, and they all flew off excitedly. The room looked better bathed in sunlight: the linoleum seemed more polished, the pastel green upholstery of the chairs, brighter.
“Your friends came by again this afternoon. Yesterday too.” His mother explained as she ducked into the small bathroom and produced a large bouquet of brightly colored balloons. “They were getting in the nurse’s way, so we put them in here until you woke up.”
Ryan hadn’t even thought about his friends until now, and he felt warmth and gratitude bubbling up inside him. Amidst the regular balloons, Ryan saw a single silvery mylar. It slowly rotated, by the hand of some unknown force, to face him. Ryan read It’s a Boy! and chuckled aloud to himself. The huge collection of balloons had undoubtedly been Vanessa’s idea, but the mylar was clearly Eli’s contribution.
“The doctor said to let him know as soon as you were awake again. I think he has some questions for you.” She said. Under her breath, as she walked out the door, she continued to herself “I hope one of them is ‘how on earth could three grown men allow a teenager to…”. Then she was gone. Ryan knew she had made up her mind never to let him leave the house again. School would be done online. Friends would have to go through a full decontamination shower every time they came over. A giant plastic bubble would no doubt be erected over the entire house by the time he was discharged from the hospital.
His mother returned a moment later with a man in a white coat. He was young, too young, Ryan thought, to be a real doctor, and he looked more like a movie star than an MD. He looked like one of the TV doctors on the shows that had taught Ryan so much about acronyms.
The man’s jaw was strong and held just enough stubble for it to be fashionable. His eyes were the same khaki brown as his immaculately-pressed pants, and they were set deep behind high cheekbones that seemed to be made for laughing and smiling. His cheeks themselves had a flushed, almost ruddy hue that only served to make him look more cheerful. His hair was a light brown, almost dirty blonde like Ryan’s, though this man’s hair was a few shades lighter. His hair contrasted with his skin, which looked as if it bore years of natural tan. Underneath his lab coat he wore a white shirt and around his neck was an expensive-looking blue and yellow tie.
He extended his hand to Ryan.
“Ryan, my name is Doctor Webster. I’m the one that put you back together after Mr. and Mrs. Coyle found what was left of you out on the highway.” He smiled warmly and Ryan couldn’t help the sense of comfort and ease he felt as he shook the man’s hand.
“Ah, well, thanks for that.” Ryan replied.
“My pleasure.”
“One question though.” Ryan began.
“Sure.”
“Robot body parts. Has that ship sailed, in a medical sense, or can I still get in on that?”
The doctor chuckled. “I can definitely put you on the waiting list. Fair enough? Now, I’d like to hear your side of what happened, if you feel up to it.”
As a general rule, Ryan didn’t much like doctors. Having to go to one was never a good sign, and for some reason, they were legally allowed to put their hands in places nobody should ever put hands. Still, Ryan was finding it difficult not to like this man.
“I can only tell you what I remember.”
Ryan recounted, for what he knew would be the first of a hundred more times to come, the sequence of events. He told the truth, making sure to emphasize that it was no one’s fault but his own. The midnight hike, the clearing, the attack, the running, all of it. The only thing he lied about was what exactly had attacked him.
“I guess it was probably a bear, I mean I never actually got a good look. It could have been anything: bear, mountain lion…” Ryan hesitated “…wolf.”
“Even when it was right up on you, you still weren’t sure?” Dr. Webster asked.
“Not really, I was just kinda flailing around.”
The doctor hesitated. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. Ryan wasn’t sure if Webster had noticed a hole in his story or if he was just processing the details. He asked the same question again.
“And that’s all you saw? You don’t know if it was a bear or cougar or…?” Webster’s brown eyes were locked onto Ryan’s as his voice intentionally trailed off, leaving the question open. His movie star face was a mask of concern and interest. Ryan wondered if he was just being paranoid about the man.
“I really couldn’t say. That’s all I saw.” he replied simply.
Apparently satisfied, Dr. Webster’s face cracked into a dazzling smile.
“Okay then. I’ll get this all down in my report. Call me if you need anything, and I’m serious about that. If the pain gets worse or if it changes, or if you start experiencing any new symptoms, let me know.” He turned to leave.
“Doctor” Ryan’s mother asked, “when will we be able to take him home?”
“I want to keep an eye on him for another couple days; make sure all the stitches and everything hold, but after that I think we can discharge him.”
“Thank you.”
“Yeah, thanks for everything.” Ryan added.
Webster nodded, smiled warmly, and pulled the door shut behind him.
Ryan turned to his mother. “So?”
“So what?” she asked.
“So I’m waiting for your big lecture about wilderness safety and the buddy system. I’m sure you’ve been working on it furiously for days. Is that, are those note cards in your purse? Two words Mom: PowerPoint.”
His mother rolled her eyes and then gave a grudging smile. “I think I liked it better when you were asleep.”
Ryan grinned.
“Vanessa sent me a text a while ago,” she continued. “I think she and Eli were on their way. Want me to see if they’re here yet?”
Ryan was not entirely comfortable with his mother and his friends texting each other, but at the moment, if it meant he got to see his friends, he could live with it.
“Yeah, I’d love to see them.”
His mother patted his hand and left the room.
Five minutes later, Ryan heard two pairs of footsteps squeaking down the linoleum hallway outside his door. One pair of feet bore the unmistakable sound of flip flops, Eli’s signature footwear, and the other, much less audible pair of worn canvas sneakers belonged to Vanessa. The door to his room flew open and Vanessa burst in, a whirling tornado of equal parts anger and concern. Eli entered a few steps behind her, not wanting to get caught in Vanessa’s emotional crosshairs.
She crossed the small room in an instant, and she reached Ryan’s bedside without breaking stride. Ryan didn’t know whether she was going to punch him or hug him; she seemed equally ready to do both. Vanessa came to a skittering stop and threw her slender arms around his neck. She didn’t care if she hurt him and at that point, neither did Ryan. Her long blonde hair cascaded around them both as she held him tightly.
Ryan hugged her back and inhaled. She smelled good. Really good. Much better than the hospital. Lavender, or maybe lilac. Ryan could never keep those two straight. It was a scent that seemed to emanate from her very skin: not artificial or overpowering like the body lotions or lip balms that most girls wore, but a subtle, pure aroma. Ryan had known Vanessa for years and she had always smelled the same way. Her skin smelled like it, her clothes smelled like it, her bedroom smelled like it. Ryan had never once asked how she did it, what she used. Perhaps he wanted to maintain the illusion that she had just been born smelling heavenly and that it was completely natural. Perhaps it was.
She pulled back, and suddenly there was a finger hovering menacingly between Ryan’s eyes. “Pull crap like that again, and I’ll kill you myself.” She growled, in an attempt to sound fearsome. It didn’t work.
Vanessa’s face wasn’t designed for scowling, it was soft and curving and made for smiling. She had full, perky cheeks that sat like cushions beneath her large doe-eyes, the color of a June sky. Her nose was petite, with a slight up-turn at the end that sat above a small pink mouth that split wide when she smiled. Her face was usually framed by slender lengths of hair that fell on either side of her cheeks, having escaped from the loose ponytail she often wore. Today however, her hair was down and brushed into a dazzling natural sheen that caught the sunlight that streamed through the window and outshone even the stark brightness of the hospital walls. Her hair fell onto her shoulders and down her back like water from a mountain brook and it rippled hypnotically when she laughed.
Eli waltzed around the room, opening the bathroom door, then the small closet, then dropped down to look under the bed.
“If they weren’t outside, they’re not going to be in here.” Vanessa said.
“What’s he looking for?” Ryan asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Candy stripers.”
“They’ve got to be here somewhere.” Eli replied as he pushed himself back onto his feet.
“Maybe someone called ahead and told them you were coming, so they all hid.” Vanessa quipped.
He ignored her. “Have you seen them?” He asked, finally turning his attention to Ryan.
“You mean since I regained consciousness for the first time in two days?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Ugh!” Eli exclaimed. “Where are they?”
“Have you tried 1954?” Ryan asked.
Eli smiled. “Good to see the famous Fisher wit escaped unscathed.”
“That’s about the only thing.” Ryan replied.
“Is there anything we can do-” Vanessa began, but a loud beep had interrupted her.
Eli was fiddling with the nurse call button, and a moment later a dark-haired nurse Ryan had never seen hurried into the room.
“What’s the matter?” She asked.
“Yes, can you tell me where-” Eli started, but Vanessa cut him off.
“Nothing, sorry, he sat on the button. Total accident.” She smiled sweetly.
The nurse pursed her lips and left.
“You want to get us thrown out of here? Just like you did at Roller World?” Vanessa hissed.
“Roller Wor-in fifth grade?! You’re still mad about that? Besides, they can’t throw Ryan out, he’s hooked up to all these…tubes.”
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(Pages 1-25 show above.)