It wasn’t until the very darkest hours of the night that they brought Old Song’s body back, found deep in the northern woods.
“Looks like he’d had a bellyful of drink,” someone mumbled. “Must’ve lost his footing, slipped, and got a branch run straight through his chest.”
They’d carried him out on a stretcher, his shirt soaked red, that gaping hole in his abdomen gaping and gruesome.
The man who’d given me shelter, who’d faced the bear and won, or so I’d thought. Now he was gone.
I watched as the others shook their heads, muttering about Old Song’s recklessness, about how he should’ve known better than to wander out drunk, gun in hand.
But the wound, the way it punched through his gut struck me as eerily familiar.
“That looks just like the others. The ones the bear.....ate.”
The police examined the body more closely, faces somber. “It’s similar, sure. But the others were eaten their organs missing. Old Song here, he’s got it all. Just a nasty, ugly wound.”
He patted my shoulder, voice gentle. “You don’t have to worry. By now, that bear’s long gone. Nothing stays around a scene like this for long.”
But as they loaded Old Song’s body into a black plastic bag, that familiar stench, the one I’d learned to dread rose off his corpse.
Nobody noticed.
To them, it was just the usual stink of a body left too long in the woods.
A few days later, the police finished their search, recalled the rangers, and led me out through the trees. I was exhausted, hollow-eyed, hardly able to put one foot in front of the other, but alive.
And then I saw something strange.
Up ahead, one of the rangers, a big man who’d been nothing but confident since I met him was walking......oddly.
His gait was stiff, awkward, almost clumsy, like a toddler taking its first unsteady steps
Maybe seeing that I kept looking at the person, the ranger next to me whispered to me
That is Big Joe. He works for the town. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, but crazy strong really, really strong. And he’s got a good heart. Always the first to help out, even with the worst jobs. Went up north by himself and found Old Song’s body. Can you believe it? Brought that mess all the way back on his own.”
My stomach lurched, a cold unease slithering up my spine.
Because I smelled it again, that stench, overpowering, thicker than ever, like it was right in front of me, clinging to the air, filling my nose.
Nobody else seemed to notice anything unusual. “Damn, these bodies are rotting fast in this heat,” someone grumbled, wrinkling their nose. The others just nodded, unfazed, as if the rot was natural, expected.
But I didn’t say a word.
I knew better.
The smell wasn’t coming from the bodies.
It was coming from Big Joe.
The rest of the walk out, I stayed quiet, my stomach in knots, watching the big man out of the corner of my eye. He walked differently than before, heavy, clumsy, like he’d just learned how to use his legs.
Nobody else seemed to notice, or care.
We made it to town without incident, police hustling me into the back of a cruiser.
Before I climbed in, I looked back. I had to look back.
There, in the crowd, stood Big Joe, watching me, motionless.
His clothes were drenched in Old Song’s blood, sleeves pulled all the way down to his wrists, his hands hidden under thick rubber gloves.
His face looked....wrong. At first glance, it could have just been a man with a facial deformity, but the longer I stared, the more it looked like skin that didn’t fit, stretched, wrinkled, almost like someone had pulled a loose pelt over his skull.
His eyes, jet-black, unblinking locked onto mine.
Then, slowly, deliberately, he raised his arm and waved, fingers tracing a stiff, unnatural arc through the air.
And then he smiled.
It wasn’t a human smile, too wide, too jagged, lips peeling back over teeth that didn’t quite match up.
It was the same smile I’d seen that night at the campsite, in the bear’s black, blood-slicked face.
The same smile that wasn’t a smile at all.
END
Chapter 09
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