“Coffee?”

Barb didn’t answer that, her gaze lost on a figure on the wall of Dhaul, god of fur trade and protector of winter crossings. It was a cold and dark day in the southern town of Evening Snow, and inside the sheriff’s office it was small and enclosed, photos of the sheriff and his many hunting escapades adorning the walls, alongside religious imagery of the Sheriffs favoured deities and a sexy bikini calendar, the girl of the current season smiling the viewer with some boredom. One of the cells close to the door of the office was holding the town's only current offender, a drunk who was snoring loudly. In the radio, the sound of Avery’s enthusiastic commentary on one of the current fights going on in the leagues of Monte Callado, added to the muffled cacophony. In front of her sat sheriff Colman, who shrugged in response and went to fetch a cup. It was early in the morning, barely a light in the sky when she arrived at the town. And as soon as she was found she was taken to the station to be interrogated about what had happened.

“Wanna start talking about it? About last night?” She understood the words that were coming out of the sheriff’s mouth, but she could barely formulate a response. How could she talk about what had happened? Even she couldn’t believe it, in her head everything was only a hazy nightmare, but the smell of the blood on her hair and the feeling of her damp clothes returned her to reality. Yeah, that’s what happened. She was alone and she had to talk, she had to warn them. 

“Last night we went to the woods,” she started. As it all had started months ago, when they began to find the disfigured corpses of animals in the forest. At first, the people in the town believed it was a wild animal, perhaps a giant bear, or something similar migrating from the southern border. But when they found the remains of a giant bear, far north than where they are usually found, blown up from the inside and barely eaten, rumors started about it being something else. Soon, things began to escalate, then it was people that started appearing mangled or disappearing altogether. A lumberjack here, a hunter there, then it was the second in charge at the station, who went looking after the missing and never came back. Colman considered himself lucky he hadn’t gone, even though he didn’t say it out loud. They had already sent a request for back up to the higher ups at the state level, but nothing really came of it, it was ruled a ‘local issue’ and they were left to handle it on their own. After all, no citizen had been killed in the town, only freemen. Far as the state was concerned, they were on their own.

Barbara looked at Colman straight, and had a hard time visualizing her saying what came next. It wasn’t her speaking, the words started coming out on their own. Her tone was dispassionate and she went on uninterruptedly. She told him everything, about her, Chica, Toni, Marcos and John sneaking out their houses to check out the forest and look out for Toni’s father, who was one of the disappearing huntsmen, and about lucky Calhoun who missed the expedition. They took flashlights and radios to communicate between them, and even one of Toni’s father’s rifles with them. They irrumped into the forest by midnight, when everyone else in the town was trying to sleep. 

The forest was silent, no owls or squirrels could be heard. Animals, big and small appeared to have migrated away from the place, hiding from whatever it was that was killing them. They went at a steady pace, looking around carefully, searching for any clues. They advanced until they reached the base of the mountains and there… “We found a cabin.” It was a cabin for hunters to spend the night in the forest, the lights were out, but smoke was coming out of the chimney. At that moment, Chica wanted to return to the town, telling the group the parents would realize if they kept going. No one paid her any mind, as they used to do. Instead, Marcos and John closed up on the cabin, Toni coming up behind them with the rifle. They knocked on the door, but no one answered. Then, they decided to go in. 

“What was inside?” The sheriff asked, intrigued. 

Before she could answer, the sound of the door of the office opening made her turn with a scream, but it was only officer Tom entering. He apologized for the surprise with an uncomfortable smile on his face, and went to prepare himself a coffee. Colman tried to calm the girl down to continue the story, but she needed a few moments to start back again. She wanted to take a shower, to sleep and to embrace her parents, to apologize to her friends… but for now she just continued. 

It was dark, the only thing you could see was the fire coming from the hearth. They all got in except Chica, who preferred to wait outside. As soon as she crossed the door frame, Barbara’s sense of smell was invaded with the powerful scent of humidity and decomposing flesh, then she noticed the floor was wet, and once she looked down, she noticed that what she was stepping on was fresh blood. They stood inside the cabin for a few moments, deciding on their next move. John and Marcos suggested they return to the town and let the sheriff know, so they could return tomorrow with the help of the town’s law and find out what was really going on. Barb agreed with them, and started in the direction of the door, when Toni interrupted her and the others by pointing out the identifications of several people nailed to the walls, his father being one of them. He said he would wait until the one responsible returned to the cabin… when they heard Chica’s scream coming from outside. 

At that moment they all hurried outside to see what had happened, where they found Chica’s mangled corpse being lifted up by the neck by something that looked vaguely human, her lower half barely attached to her torso by bloody tendrils. The thing hurled Chika at the group, hitting Marcos who, alongside John, was running at it. The force of the impact with the body tore Marcos’ shoulders and head apart. John stopped for a second the watch in horror, when the thing came up to him. Barbara tried to stop it by attacking it with a kick, when she was shoved inside the cabin, a burning sensation left where she thought she was touched. She didn’t see what happened with John, only hearing the sounds of fists tearing through flesh, and the splatter of blood. Once she got her bearings, she realized she was inside the cabin once more, bloodied and bruised, Toni was behind her pointing the shotgun at something. She followed the barrel of the gun to the open door of the cabin, where that thing was blocking the way. Its eyes were yellow and they shone in the night like a cat’s. Once she saw that thing move towards them, she came to and started to drag herself through the wetness of the floor towards Toni. Shot it! she screamed back then, or so she remembered. The thing went past her and after Toni, and then she heard the noise of the shotgun going bang. The thing was standing up still, right in front of Toni, clutching his father’s shotgun when Barb stood up and laboriously tried to reach them, but the thing looking over its shoulder and at her stopped her dead in her tracks. Then she heard another shot fire, and an ancient instinct in her fired off, sending her running. She just ran and ran, out of the cabin, into the woods. It was run or die, and she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t even stop to look back, she ran past bodies and blood and grief, the sound of screams mixing with the ones of her steps. She didn’t know when it was that she stopped running and began to stumble towards the town where she was found and taken to the station where she was now retelling the events of the past night.

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Both Colman and Tom were engrossed in the story, looking at her without even blinking. Even the drunken detainee was perking his ears to hear the tale from his cell. Cold hit her suddenly, she didn’t know why. She was shaking violently and she felt over her shoulders a blanket being placed gently. She closed her eyes as she heard the men speaking amongst themselves, she only heard that and the sound of the radio running an ad, mingling until it became an indistinguishable, droning sound… Then she heard the first screams coming from outside. “What the hell is that…? Tom, go check that out,” said the sheriff and Tom followed the order.

The screaming was coming from the other end of the small town, all the way from Joe’s Restaurant. Barbara stood up, letting the blanket fall on the ground. She ran to the door of the station to see what was happening, Colman came behind her, weirded out by the noise. From the door, they could see Tom come up to the door of the restaurant that still had its lights flickering on and off. They saw him stumble back after coming head to head with whatever was on the door of the shop, and take out his gun. He started pointing at something that was poking out from the door frame, but they couldn’t see quite what it was… Then the figure unnaturally extended from beyond the frame and quickly grabbed onto Tom’s shoulder, dragging him inside. “It followed me,” she whispered, her voice going out. 

She wanted to scream, but couldn’t. She only stood supporting herself with the frame of the door of the station while the sheriff ran inside to scream at his radio, demanding reinforcements. She kept her sight on the street, dreading the moment the sight of that thing appeared again. But it didn’t appear, at least not from the front door of the restaurant. She heard screaming coming from behind the shop, so she slowly started closing up on the noise to see, Colman now decidedly out of her sight. She wanted to enter the restaurant, but that ancient instinct kicked off once more, screaming at her to stop. She didn’t dare contradict them. It was then that she heard a familiar voice, “Barb? Barb, what happened? What’s going on?” It was lucky Calhoun who had stayed behind last night because something had come up. He was speaking from the street behind her, his voice somehow drowning every other sound. 

“Calhoun! Stay where you are! Something terrible has happened!” She yelled, finding new strength in her voice. But Calhoun didn’t stop, he didn’t seem to be able to hear her. He started to cross the street when he was suddenly hit by a police car, its siren only being heard for a second the moment the car appeared in front of Barb's eyes. The car continued over until hitting a wall at the end of the street, Barbara slowly walked over the site of the crash without even being sure why, she was shell shocked, and when she got close enough to the car, the sirens slowly started registering loudly in her head. At the crash site, Calhoun was in complete silence, his hip crushed between the car and the wall, and inside the car Barbara could see what she could only assume used to be the sheriff Colman, opened up from the torso and upwards. She could barely tell apart what was where inside the car, as it was covered in viscera and blood, so she looked in the direction the car had came from and found herself at a lost for breath when she saw it, the thing from the cabin standing in the middle of the street, so far away she could almost mistake it for a human. But she knew better. As soon as she could react, she opened the door to the car and reached inside, profound nausea interrupted her motions for a moment, but after looking through the rear windshield of the car and seeing it moving towards her she was overpowered by a sense of urgency and returned to her search, there was something she needed beyond the guts and the fluids. She went beyond the outwards pointing ribcage holding in her urge to vomit, and saw what she was looking for beside the corpse. It was the standard issue revolver the sheriff took everywhere and, just like in life, he still held on to it fiercely with his closed hand. She struggled a lot to open the grip and release the gun, the hurry hindering her movements.

It’s a small town, she thought. it won’t be long until it finds them, I have to get them out. She was thinking about her parents. When she finally was able to release the weapon from the deceased sheriff’s hand, the feeling of steel against her hands calmed her some, but then the urgency returned. She went out of the car running in the direction of her house. She took out her phone and tried to call them to prepare the car and when her mother picked up the phone, she told her they were all in danger, that they had to leave now. When she ended the call, she noticed several people coming out of their houses to start their morning routine, and immediately they saw the thing making its way across the street. “Don’t go near it!” She managed to shout at them, but no one listened and getting her parents out of the town was the most important thing. She closed her eyes tightly and kept running, tears wetting her cheeks. To silence the screams of her neighbors she had spent all her life with, she screamed herself.

When she got to her house, she found them both outside and noticed much to her chagrin that the car wasn’t started. “What the fuck are you doing?! We have to get out of here yesterday!” She yelled at them.

Her father, long of hair and pronounced of nose, was in a bathrobe. And her mother was in pajamas, Barbara had inherited her intense eyes. “Whoa, there, lady. Language,” her father told her. By that point, Barbara’s shouting had become indistinguishable from gibberish. Her father tried to calm her down and ask her what was happening. She was sobbing and stumbling over her words, trying to tell them nothing mattered over getting out of Evening Snow now. While her pleading to her parents became more and more desperate, both of them noticed in the middle of trying to console her daughter that something had arrived at their porch. She noticed his fathers eyes change when he looked at it and feared the worst, her father’s eyes didn’t change like that even during his hardest fights. Sh turned around to see what she already knew was there, and was somehow still shocked when she saw it just standing there. Blood covered its features, but its eyes still shone bright in the middle of the dark dawn. 

Her parents tried to get a response out of it for a few moments as it was heading towards them, but something inside told them communication wouldn’t be possible. “Go inside, look for a weapon,” said the father to the mother, while grabbing onto his daughter’s shoulders and placing her behind him. The mother ran back inside the house. Barb tried to make his father back down and run away, but his stance was firm, and he was far stronger than her. It was him that had teached karate to her and several of her friends before they enrolled at the town’s dojo. She tried to plead to him, shout at him, but no sound seemed to reach his ears. He had already decided he was going to stop the thing then and there, took a combat stance and waited for it.

The thing eerily advanced towards them until it stopped a meter away from them, Barbara tried to point her gun at it, but her father was in the way. There was a moment of silence, and then they both moved. Her father went for a seiken, and the thing went for a simple, formless kick. The exchange was quick, Barbara couldn’t tell what happened, as her father shot at her, knocking her inside the house. When she was struck, the gun in her hand fired off.

Inside the house the radio could be heard still, the same fight from earlier was still on, now reaching its conclusion. She tried to get her father off of her, but her strength was giving out, and her father wasn’t moving either. While her mind drifted off, she could see the thing slowly creeping inside the house, and even though she knew it would soon come across her mother, she couldn’t even consider the implications of that. The only thing in her mind was that monster and its yellow eyes glowing like lanterns. Then a thought came across her mind, and came out of her lips as she lost consciousness. 

“...A… Battler…”

The radio continued for a moment, now Avery was interviewing the winner, who went on and on about his determination, and about the truth that could only be revealed with one’s fists. Shortly after gunshots were heard coming from inside Barbara’s house and, then, only silence.