Quicksand

Quicksand

Most of the folks who lived on the Knob didn’t stir much on the night of a full moon. They sat quiet behind locked doors and talked in hushed tones. They knew it wasn’t safe to go out on such nights. They’d learned the hard way. Boys who dawdled on the way back from the creek often didn’t make it back at all. Hunters caught out after dark were seldom seen again. Young girls, sneaking out to meet lovers, often vanished without a trace. Through the years folks on the Knob had learned to live with the threat, to deal with it in their own taciturn way. They built stout cabins with heavy hardwood shutters and doors, and locked themselves away when the moon was full.

Young children were told the stories at an early age, as much to keep then in line, as to keep them safe. They heard how Johnny Cason had snuck out to the barn to see his new colt, and how his bloody shirt had been found at the edge of the woods. They heard how Jed Rains had stayed out too late fishing. His cane pole had been found near the creek. His body had never been found. They heard how Sally Green had slipped out to meet that handsome young Hughes boy and heard how she’d disappeared like smoke. The kids heard all these stories and a dozen more just like them.

More frightening were the ghostly howls and cries that floated on the night air when the moon was full. They teased at the mind and instigated madness. At these times children huddled closer to their mothers. Mothers made the sign of the evil eye and cast worried glances toward locked and barred doors. Men found excuses to clean their guns, finding comfort in their nearness. Not that a gun would have stopped the things that howled out in the darkness or crept close to scratch at the doors and windows. Such things were supernatural by nature and couldn’t be killed by ordinary means.

Three of the Knob’s residents claimed to have actually seen the spectral denizens. Jesse Petri was one of them. According to him, he’d been over to see old Doc Watson to get a potion for his ailing son. He’d run out of daylight before he got back to his cabin. From a ridge-top he’d seen five creatures sweep down a game trail in the valley below. He said a ghost dog of immense size had been leading the pack of misfits. Its eyes had burned like glowing coals, and its body had wasted away to rotting flesh and bare bone.

Behind the hell-hound, the sordid pack was strung out single file. Jesse said they’d all been women at one time. Now they were something less than human. They ran on all fours like beasts, remnants of clothing and jewelry still clinging to their rancid remains.

Jesse said it scared him so bad that he didn’t sleep for two days nor drink for three.

There were those from the nearby town who nodded their heads wisely and made drinking motions with their hands when Jesse launched into this story. Jesse made shine. Jesse drank a lot shine. Some people figured it was just the shine talking.

Leroy Burns didn’t have any problems believing Jesse’s story. He’d had his own brush with the nightmarish creatures. He claimed a case of the runs had sent him to the outhouse before dawn one morning. He’d hardly gotten seated when he was hit by a stench worse than the one he was creating inside the outhouse. He barely had time to latch the outhouse door before there came a scratching and tugging on the door. He put his eye to a knothole and gave a cautious look-see.

There were three of them, little more than animated skeletons. He claimed they all took turns sniffing and tugging at the door before becoming discouraged and loping off into the darkness on all fours. They’d all been semi-human in appearance. Two men and a woman. Dressed in rags and rotting flesh. Leroy said he’d set in the outhouse till the sun came up, too afraid to come out.

Old lady Potter, now eighty-seven, claimed she’d seen the hell-spawn as a young woman. She’d been standing at the well drawing a bucket of water when they’d swept out of the darkening woods and raced along the tree-line for a ways. She said a big grey dog had been leading the way. A pack of mongrel sub-humans had followed close behind, bare bone shining through reeking flesh, teeth bared like feral beasts. According to the old woman they’d run on all fours and howled like the damned as they’d bounded across the clearing and entered the woods on the far side.

The old woman had told the tale for so many years that most of the town folks were tired of hearing it. Especially since the story seemed to change slightly with every telling, making it sound more like a tall tale, and less like a slice of local history with every telling. Most of the town folks just figured that she’d combined several of the old stories into one as the years passed.

Amos Locke had been raised on those old ghost stories. As a small child, the tales had scared him half to death. He’d really believed that there were monsters in the woods, just waiting to grab an unwary child.

Now, at the age of twenty, he gave little credence to the tales. He’d been raised within sight of the Knob. He’d hunted its woods and fished its streams for years and had never seen, nor heard, a single thing out of the ordinary. No ghost dogs. No animated corpses. No unearthly howls. No nothing. During the last few years he’d formed the opinion that the old stories were just that, stories. Tales told to keep wandering kids close to the house.

A grown man couldn’t be expected to believe in such nonsense.

Wanda didn’t believe in the stories either, but she was town folk. Course Wanda didn’t believe in a lot of things that folks on the Knob took for granted. Like the sanctity of marriage. Or being faithful to her husband. She pretty much did as she pleased. Everybody knew she slept around.

Everybody except her husband, Matt.

Matt wasn’t the kind of man to look kindly on any man who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Make no mistake about that. There would be a killing for shore.

Amos considered that as he slicked back his hair and pulled on his best blue shirt. Perhaps the risk was part of the appeal. It made the flames of passion burn brightly. Not that Wanda needed much of a jump start.

As for Matt, Wanda used his own habits against him. Every full moon Matt got together with his cronies and played poker all night long. On such nights it was guaranteed that he would be gone all night. Matt believed the old stories. Neither love nor money would budge him outdoors when the moon was full. Or so Wanda said. And she should know. Matt’s poker night became her night to fool around. If Matt noticed that the sheets on the bed were fresh, and the cabin spotlessly clean the following morning when he returned, he chalked it up to her having a good ‘womanly’ nature.

Amos had no illusions about his affair with Wanda. She favored him today. Tomorrow it would be someone else. Love was never mentioned. Their’s was simply a marriage of the flesh.

The moon was coming up when Amos locked the cabin door and crawled into his old Chevy truck. It was almost seven miles over to Wanda’s place. Seven miles of chuckholes and gumbo mud. He’d travel six by truck, and the seventh on foot, since he didn’t want his truck seen anywhere near Matt’s cabin.

In times past, he’d parked the old truck down near Black Water Swamp. It was a lonely place, seldom visited. A place of deep shadow and hanging moss. Of bullfrog chorus and gator calls. A place not known to maps.

Tonight the fog ruled the swamp, giving everything a surrealistic look. Amos looked out at the fog, then up at the full moon. Thoughts of the ghost hound crossed his mind, but were quickly replaced with thoughts of Wanda. After all, he’d never seen the ghost hound, but he had seen Wanda in the buff. That thought drew him out of the truck and down the narrow lane towards Wanda’s cabin.

At approximately the same moment in time, strange goings-on were starting to happen out in the swamp. Scarcely half a mile away an isolated section of dark water began to churn and boil, as if large volumes of gas were being released under pressure. A closer look would have shown that the ‘water’ wasn’t water at all. It was too thick, too soupy. It didn’t flow. It oozed.

It wasn’t water at all. It was quicksand. That aqueous bottomless pit that lies in wait for the unwary, or the ignorant. Its one of the most insidious traps that nature has ever devised. It has no bottom. No solid footing. There’s nothing to push off of. You can’t swim in it. You can’t wade out of it. Struggle is futile. The more you struggle, the faster you sink. First your knees disappear, then your waist. Panic sets in. The heart pounds. Breath comes in pants. You have to get out, but there is no way out.

Before you know it the thick soup is up to your chest. Now the panic begins in earnest. Your hands clutch at empty air. You shout but no one’s there to come to your aid. Your eyes rake the area for something, anything, that will help you get free. But there’s nothing within reach. Nothing at all.

The muck slowly creeps upward. Realization sets in about the time the stuff gets to neck level. Its all over. You’re not going to be rescued. You’re not gonna get out. Death is imminent, only a few inches away. These are the very last seconds of your life. Scant time to curse, or scream, or pray, or murmur last words to loved ones.

The seconds pass all to quickly. Now you’re struggling to keep your face above the muck. But that only hastens your demise. You just sink faster. Then your head goes under. And you can only hold your breath for about three minutes...

Quicksand is tenacious stuff. Once it captures a prize, it hates to give it up. Hates to. That’s the general rule. But there are exceptions to every rule. Things beyond the realm of what’s natural. Things that defy the senses and all the natural laws of the universe. Things...

They rose to the surface of the quicksand as the moon came up, as if caught in its tidal force. Dead they were. Dead but not buried. They answered the call of the full moon. Emerging from the muck, they staggered onto dry land, most on two legs, one on four.

The swamp had been unkind to them. Bare bone shone through the remnants of rotting flesh. Feverish eyes blazed in oozing sockets. Skin hung in tattered ribbons. Fur clung in matted tufts. Organs could be seen in some of the chest cavities, squirming and pulsing in a mad parody of life.

Out they came. A great grey dog. Four women. Half a dozen men. Treasures, each and every one. Collected over a hundred and twenty year span of time. Hoarded deep in the bottomless muck. Until called upon to rise.

Dark energies powered the lifeless bodies. Directing their actions. All traces of humanity had vanished from those who had once been human. Now they operated on something akin to feral instinct. Raised from the dead to rip and tear and shred. There was only the bloodlust to fill the remnants of their minds.

In death they moved with a grace and dexterity that they’d never displayed in life. Their movements were quick and full of energy, reminiscent of a wolf pack gathering for the hunt.

The great dog was the first to head into the woods. A few seconds later one of the men made his move. The rest of the pack followed quickly. Within moments the dark shadows under the trees swallowed them all.

Striking a game trail, the grey dog increased its speed, setting a pace that no normal human could ever hope to achieve. But these weren’t normal humans. They loped along on all fours, easily keeping pace with the great dog, more beast than human.

In life, the grey dog had been a large bluetick hound named Sonny. He’d been a working dog, giving chase to any scent that his master chose. Now he used those talents to locate game for the pack. Guided by an eerie radar, it led them straight to a doe that had taken shelter for the night in a nearby thicket. As the pack closed in the doe made one valiant effort to leap to its feet. In midair a vaguely womanish shape took it down. The rest of the pack swarmed over the struggling pair in a lethal wave. The doe had time for one terrified bleat before she was ripped to shreds.

The pack fed with the frenzy of a hungry shark, devouring the dripping flesh in great gulps, feeding until there was nothing left of the doe but raw pink bone. The meat did little to ease their hunger. After being swallowed the food simply fell down through their wasted skeletons and plopped on the ground. As such, their hunger could never sated. They needed more, always more.

As they swung back onto the game trail, the pack gave voice, sending their haunting cries into the night. The sound was enough to chill the bones. A mile away, Amos heard the sound and stopped in his tracks. He was woodsman enough to know a hunting cry when he heard one. But at this distance, it was hard to distinguish what kind of animal it was. Probably just a coon hunter with a pack of dogs, he decided at last. Not unusual for this time of year.

Yet his mind wasn’t completely satisfied with the idea. A voice in his head whispered that monsters lived in the woods. He shoved the thought from his mind. He didn’t feel comfortable with the idea. He wasn’t a kid any more. He was a grown man.

But the idea, once born, refused to go away.

Monsters.

In a moment of weakness, he almost turned and went back to his truck. Wanda wasn’t worth it. There were other women. Cassie O’Connor for one. She’d been warm for his form since the sixth grade.

Course Cassie could eat an apple through a picket fence. And she was as straight as a board. Not a promise of a curve. Calling her plain was a complement. With that wiry red hair and freckles that looked like they’d been put on with a paint sprayer, she left a lot to be desired.

Wanda, on the other hand, was everything that Cassie was not. She was curvy and soft and had lips that begged to be kissed. She made his pulse race and his heart pound. And right now, this very moment, she was waiting for him at the cabin. Ready and willing. Just waiting for him to take her into his arms.

After a couple of hesitant looks at the surrounding woods, he directed his feet towards Wanda’s cabin. His pace was quicker now. He was spooked and he knew it. He tried to tell himself that the faster he walked, the faster he got to Wanda. But inside, he knew that what he wanted wrapped around him were four stout walls.

His unease lessened when he got close enough to see the lights of Wanda’s cabin. Safety, and Wanda’s arms, were just a moment away. A wry grin crossed his face. To think that he’d almost changed his mind. Jesus, this was gonna be a night to remember for the rest of his life.

His thoughts were prophetic.

Shadows darker than the woods came bounding into the clearing surrounding the cabin. Amos caught a glimpse of them as they swept across the front yard. He couldn’t see much, but what he saw was enough to turn his knees to water. It was true. The old stories were true. A ghost dog leading a pack of human corpses. This was bad. Real bad.

Things got worse when Wanda threw open the back door and stepped out on the porch. She was obviously looking for him. He could tell by the way she scanned the dark woods. Totally unaware of the horror that raced across her front yard, she dawdled at the railing, hoping that Amos would emerge from the shadows.

Amos opened his mouth to shout a warning to her, but the cry never left his lips. He was awfully exposed here. The shout would give away his position.

He held his breath as Wanda returned to the open door and gave one last look around. Go inside, he urged silently. Go inside and lock the door. Please...

The pack swarmed around the corner of the cabin a half-second after Wanda closed the door. The grey dog skidded to a halt, and stared intently at the back door for a moment, as if it could smell Wanda’s lingering scent.

When no sound nor motion came from the cabin, the big dog turned his attention to the surrounding woods. He raised his head and sniffed the air.

And Amos almost shit his drawers. With Wanda safely indoors, the only “game’ in the area was him. That meant it was time to beat a hasty retreat. As warm and lovely as Wanda might be, she wasn’t worth getting killed over.

Hunching over to make himself less visible, he stole back down the road towards his truck. At first he moved stealthy, practically tip-toeing from shadow to shadow, but after he put a little distance between himself and Wanda’s cabin he broke into a trot. He had to get back to the truck before the pack crossed his path. If not, well, it wouldn’t be pretty.

Fear lent wings to his feet, and he ran as if his life depended on it. And perhaps it did. He could just imagine the terrible creatures picking up his scent and giving chase. The thought was almost enough to make him sob aloud. He’d never been this scared in his life. He didn’t care that his breath was starting to sound raspy and labored. He didn’t care that he was starting to get a pain in his side. He didn’t care that his legs were getting rubbery. All he cared about was getting to the relative safety of the truck. That’s all.

As for Wanda, he wished her the best, and he hoped she stayed inside where it was safe, but right now he had to think about his own safety. Sneaking around to see Wanda had been a bad idea from the beginning. He’d known there was danger involved. But he’d figured Matt as the obvious threat. Not creatures like this. Nobody figured shit like this into their plans.

Wanda was good in bed, but not good enough to die for. Right now, with those creatures running loose, celibacy was starting to look good. He’d give up sex. He’d become a monk. He’d trade places with the Pope. Something. Anything. Just let him get home safely. The thought of going down beneath those fangs and claws....

Finally he could run no more. He slowed to a staggering walk, gasping for breath. Luckily the truck wasn’t that far away. Maybe another hundred yards. It was starting to look like he was going to be OK. The ghostly pack behind him had yet to vocalize their discovery of his scent. That meant they hadn’t cut across his trail. Perhaps they’d headed north, or west. He reverently hoped so. The land lay progressively rougher in that direction. There was less chance of encountering human prey. Wouldn’t be a lot of folks out in the rough until deer season.

He thought of Wanda with a twinge of guilt. He’d left her to her own devices without even a warning. Not a very manly thing to do. What if she had gone outside again. He got a sudden image of the hellish pack feeding on a bloody, ragged bundle that had once been Wanda. The image was so vivid that it took his breath away.

The truck was the same as when he’d left, which meant that one of the rear tires was bald and the starter was still cantankerous. Amos sent a little ‘thank you’ to the Lord above, shoved the key into the ignition, and gave it a crank. The starter made a half hearted effort to engage, gave up, and began to grind angrily against the flywheel. Amos’s prayer turned to a curse. Then back to a prayer.

He tried the starter again, wincing when the starter ground noisily without engaging. The noise was loud as thunder, or so it seemed to Amos. Surely everything within ten miles had heard the starter’s mechanical protest. The thought was enough to send him into a panic. He could imagine the pack halting in mid stride, getting a fix on the sound, then leaping off in a new direction. His direction. They could be running pell-mell towards him right now.

Whimpering in terror, Amos gave the key a savage twist and held his breath as the starter debated whether it wanted to engage or not. With a screech of protest the starter made up its mind and finally engaged the teeth. The truck roared to life.

Sobbing his thanks aloud, Amos shoved the transmission into reverse and whipped the truck around in a violent arc, sending up a rooster-tail of leaves and dirt. When the front of the truck lined up with the dirt road he slammed on the brakes, banged the transmission into first gear, and slapped the gas peddle to the floor. Dirt flew as the old truck went rocketing up the road.

Amos sat hunched behind the wheel, fighting the twists and turns in the road with savage desperation. The old truck bucked and wallowed and shuddered at being abused so. But Amos refused to let up. He hammered down and let the old truck protest. He had to get out of the area as soon as possible. If the pack was headed this way he wanted to be long gone by the time they got here.

He got a half mile down the road before he was forced to slow down for a sharp bend. He slowed as much as he dared and sent the truck careening around the curve on two wheels. For one desperate moment it didn’t seem like the old truck would make the bend. It had decided on a path through the woods and seemed determined to leave the road. Amos leaned into the steering wheel and fought the old truck for the right of way, forcing it to make the turn. The truck fish-tailed out of the curve, wallowed through a dip and came bouncing out the other side, almost side-swiping an oak tree in the process. A near miss was still a miss as far as Amos was concerned. His only response was to stomp down on the accelerator with a vengeance.

As the old truck started to pick up speed, Amos caught a glimpse of movement off to the right, barely touched by the glare of the headlights. The dark form charged the truck, intent on an intercept course. Amos jerked the wheel to the left out of pure reflex. But it wasn’t enough. The apparition launched itself at the truck, striking the windshield on the passenger side, punching its way through with a rain of glass.

The truck was banking dangerously, thanks to his initial yank on the wheel. And the creature hanging in his window, stunned by the initial impact, was starting to thrash its way into the truck with him.

Amos didn’t know what the thing was, but he knew he didn’t want it in the truck with him. In the dim light he could see bare bone, and dark flesh hanging in tatters. Then it swung to face him and he could see the rotting skull and glowing eyes. It was a man, or had been at one time. Now it was a nightmare, a cruel caricature of its former human shape. It managed to get one meatless arm underneath itself for support and began to grope for Amos with the other. The talon-like remains of the hand raked across his thigh, tearing through his pants, and embedding in his flesh.

Amos screamed and struggled to get free, but his panic-time was short-lived. The truck tilted at an unhealthy angle, then seemed to dive nose first into a roll. When realization set in that the truck was going over, Amos’s mind went blank with shock. This couldn’t be happening.

But it was.

The truck slammed down on its side and slid down the road at an alarming rate. Grass and rocks tore at him through the broken window in the door, which was now beneath his left side. Above him, the dangling creature fought for control of the now useless steering wheel. Amos let it have the wheel and shrank back against the seat, getting as far away from it as he could.

The careening truck chose a tree at random and crashed right into it, bringing everything to a violent stop. The impact ripped the creature free of the punctured windshield and hurled it out into the darkness.

Amos was thrown against the dashboard with enough force to knock the wind out him. As he struggled to get his bruised lungs working again, fear exploded inside his head. He had to get out of the truck. A moment ago it had been his salvation. Now it was a deathtrap. Gasping from the effort, he struggled to his feet and began to climb up and out through the passenger-side window. The wound in his thigh pained him, and made his progress clumsy. He could feel blood coursing down his leg.

Once he emerged from the window of the truck, getting down was easy. He slipped in his own blood and fell sprawling on his face in a heap. Struggling to his feet, he pressed back against the truck, and raked the darkness with anxious eyes. That.... thing.... was out there somewhere. The wreck might have stunned it, but it would be back. That was the one thing that he could count on.

He inched his way toward the rear of the truck, expecting to be jumped at any moment. When he reached the end of the truck and was unexpectedly still alive, he paused for a moment and tried to formulate a plan. He couldn’t stay here. But where could he go. Wanda’s cabin was a mile and a half up the road. That was a long way for a man with a gash in his leg. He might could climb a tree, but he wasn’t sure that it would do any good. He had a feeling that the animated corpse-thing could climb better than he could.

That’s when he noticed the eyes, staring back at him from the brush. They glowed with unearthly light, like the twin portals of hell.

Amos moaned and inched to the far side of the truck. Obviously flight in that direction was out.

But once he had the overturned truck between himself and those burning eyes, he threw all caution to the wind, and made a run for it. He ran blindly, thrashing over underbrush, careening off of tree trunks, getting whipped by low lying branches.

An exposed section of root planted itself in his path and he fell heavily.

Wheezing like an old man, he scrambled to his feet. He could hear the rest of the pack now. They were spread out in the woods behind him. They were coming slow, but they were coming.

Amos staggered in the opposite direction as best he could.

It took Amos a couple of minutes to realize that he was being herded. They could have taken him down at any time. They were fast enough. Instead, they held back. Letting him run ahead of them. Pushing him further away from the road with every step. Herding him towards the swamp.

When he blundered into the quicksand, and felt its cloying grip, somehow he wasn’t surprised.

He managed to get turned around so that he was facing his pursuers. They were spread out in a half circle on the bank, silent, motionless, tattered sentinels come to witness his demise. Better the quicksand than those things, he decided.

He was oddly calm. The panic was gone, burnt away during the chase. Now there was only sadness.

He stared at the group of monstrosities on the bank. Had they been like him? Just existing from day to day. Sampling life’s pleasures and giving nothing in return.

Perhaps so.

Perhaps they’d sensed that he was a kindred spirit, not prey, but a brother. Just look at the way they stared at him. Almost reverently. As if witnessing the birth of a god. Or the death of unholy saint.

He was still pondering the mystery when his head slipped beneath the surface and breathing became a short-lived memory.