Don't Look Back - Chapter One

Cooper's heart beat frantically in her ears as she struggled to catch her breath with her back pressed against the rough bark of a pine tree. The sound of it was so loud, she was sure it could be heard for miles. Her knees rebelled against the weight of keeping her on her feet, and they buckled, planting Cooper on her ass, but she was far past complaining about the cold and damp seeping into the seat of her jeans. After all, she wasn't sure she was going to make it through the night, why would wet jeans bother her? Her breath came out in small pants, louder in her mind, so she clasped a trembling hand over her mouth with a whimper. Iris was silent in her mother's arms, her small legs wrapped around Cooper's waist and arms clasped around her neck in vice-like grip. The only thing Cooper could hear past her own breathing was her daughter's, as panicked as Cooper’s.

Calm down. Take deep breaths. Deep breaths, Coop. She heard Papa's voice in her ear, faintly, reminding her of simpler times, and for a brief moment, she forgot about the danger they were in just long enough to feel the stab of grief that his loss left in her soul. But, brief it was. She remembered Papa's words, remembered how many times she'd reminded herself of them before, and forced her lungs to obey. With a deep, shaky inhale, she sucked in a lungful of air and pushed it out slowly after a two-beat pause. The pulse in her ears eased some, the panic overwhelming her senses dissipating just enough for her to regain some composure.

Okay, she thought, You can do this, Cooper. Remember the cougar? Remember what Papa said. This is your territory, not theirs. You can do this. And she did remember. It felt like a lifetime ago, back when she was just fifteen. A cougar had killed the Forrester's mule, and the Fish Wildlife & Parks department had asked Papa to bring in some hounds to track it down and kill it. So long as they weren't hunting for sport, they could do stuff like that. The regulations at the time had said a game warden had to accompany on the hunt, but it was a small community, and those regulations were more like recommendations. The warden had given Papa the time and place for them to 'meet up', and two days later, he and Cooper had gone up some miles north of the Forrester's place to hunt down that cougar. They'd tracked it two miles North before it had circled back down, getting itself treed right near where they'd first started out. It was Cooper's first cougar. And she'd been scared. Her aim had been off, and the cougar came down, but it wasn't dead, so when it bared its teeth with a yowl and came at her, she froze. If it weren't for Blue, she'd have been mauled by the big cat, but Blue jumped in before it could get her. Papa never really got over losing his best hunting dog, and Cooper never forgot the mistake she'd made. Calm down, now. You learned your lesson. You'll never freeze up again, will you? She couldn't fault Papa the harshness of his words at the time; He was right. And in all the hunts she'd been on after that, she never hesitated again. But this was different. She'd never been hunted before, and they probably figured that. Hunters banked on a prey's panic, after all, and hunters didn't usually become prey.

Rising to her feet, Cooper took another deep breath. She didn't have a lot of time to execute her plan, so she had to move quickly. Pushing herself off the tree and gripping Iris tighter in her arms, she trudged forward, leaving clear but hopefully not overly obvious boot prints in the mud of the forest floor. For another few hundred yards, the woods sloped downward toward the edge of the lake, and Cooper moved at a half-run to increase the distance between her prints. She ran right up to the edge of the water, standing in the shallowest part she could, and looking desperately behind her into the woods, she stripped off her boots and shoes one-handedly. She kept the lake to her back, listening for the sounds of the hunters, but it was quiet, and once she'd walked roughly a hundred yards from where she'd left her trail of prints, Cooper circled back into the woods, tugging her socks and boots as she did. Hopefully it was enough distance that the dogs wouldn't catch her scent off the original path, but if they did, she had every intention of being far enough away to not have to worry about it. This time, climbing the slope, she was far more careful with her prints, sticking to the foliage she knew wouldn't snap underneath her but would still prevent a print from sticking. It was right on the cusp of Winter, so the night air around her fogged her breath, but the forest hadn't frozen yet, and the moss was still clinging to every available surface, thanks to the previous week of heavy rainfall.

Suddenly, a hound's baying rang out from deep in the trees to the Northwest of them, and Cooper froze, her heart stuttering as Iris' arms tightened around her neck.

"Mommy," Iris whimpered on a breath, "I'm scared."

Cooper pressed her lips against Iris' ear, rocking her comfortingly. "Hush, baby, I know. I've got you, okay? Just hold on tight, and be as quiet as you can." Iris nodded her understanding against Cooper's neck. A wave of love, pride and overwhelming fear gripped her as she kept moving, keeping her ears even more open to the sounds around her. She maintained cautious steps, even though every instinct in her urged her to run, but if the hounds caught her scent this direction, she'd never outrun them. Another bay sounded, Northeast this time, which meant the dogs had reached her prints at the lake's edge. Shit. Cooper was running out of time. Darting to her right, she hurried through the foliage, keeping her eyes peeled between the forest around her and the ground, looking for any sign of the hunters in her nearest vicinity and for the trail she'd left earlier. Mud squelched quietly under her feet, only broken by the moss and ferns littering the ground, but otherwise, the trees around her were eerily silent. She gave a triumphant whoop of victory in her mind when she saw the boot prints and paw prints crossing her path, all following the ones she'd left before, heading East, in the direction of the lake. Just as she turned to follow them back down to the water, hoping to lead the dogs in a circle that gave her an advantage of time, a hound bayed from the Southeast. They'd picked up her return trail, and that meant if she was going to lose the hunters, she had to do it now. Cooper's urgency got the better of her. She sprinted through the brush as quickly as she could with her daughter's added weight to her own, trying to soften her footfalls to avoid being heard. Close--too close--she heard the barks and bays of the hounds, and this time, the faint sound of the men hunting them talking in urgent tones, and Cooper pressed her back into the side of tree. She waited. She breathed, the air shuddering as it left her lungs. She waited to see if they'd pass, continue West following her second trail, or if the dogs would pick up her fresh scent, and turn in her direction. Every second felt like ten minutes as the sound of the dogs and their masters slowly faded West, and the breath of relief that tore from her lungs left her lightheaded. As soon as they were out of her earshot, Cooper turned and again sprinted toward the lake, feeling the terrain sloping beneath her.

Just a little further, she begged her legs to push harder as her lungs burned. Come on, Coop. The edge of the water came into view, the moon glinting off the soft waves. She almost smiled. As soon as they reached the water, she'd turn West and run along the bank as far as she could. Eventually, the edge of the lake, which ran North, would turn East, and then she’d soon run into the highway. It might take them a full day, but they’d get out of this, Cooper was certain. Hopefully then, the nightmare would end. If she could just reach the water.

As soon as Cooper breached the line of trees onto the bank, she gasped with relief, stumbling into the water and turning to the left instead of the right as she’d done last time. But as soon as she did, she froze, gripped with pure terror as a figure, shrouded in black, blocked her path. The scream in her throat wouldn’t come out.

The figure was tall, unusually so, with raven-black hair and tan skin. He looked ethereal, or otherworldly, and yet, utterly familiar, wearing just a t-shirt and jeans despite the cold temperature. Cooper’s throat closed as she stared at the stranger, barely illuminated by the pale moonlight, but it was the complete blackness of his eyes that made Cooper think she wasn’t dealing with a human, as crazy as that sounded. She was barely able to take two steps, as though the animal inside her knew she couldn’t win against this one, and the only choice was to run. The stranger’s eyes never left Cooper’s, cold, inhumane, assessing. Cooper turned to run. Something gripped her ankle. When she looked down, terror ran like ice through her veins at the image of the small, child-like creature that had its hands wrapped around her ankle. It looked like a toddler in size and stature, but that was where the similarities ended. The thing looked up at Cooper with equally black eyes as the stranger. White skin, speckled with flecks of green, like algae, made it look like a corpse, but when it smiled at her, there was a full set of pointed teeth, rows of razor-sharp white bone that reminded her of a shark’s. And that did make Cooper scream.

“Mommy, stop it,” Iris cried as Cooper threw a hand over her own mouth and tried to back away. Whatever the thing was, it was strong, and Cooper couldn’t shake it off. Suddenly, more popped up from the water.

“Oh, God,” Cooper wailed. “This isn’t real!”

“Mama.” Iris sobbed into her mother’s neck.

All around her, the little water monsters grabbed Cooper’s legs, and she was frozen to the spot where she stood, ankle deep in the lake’s water.

“Who are you?” Cooper meant to make her voice fierce, but she knew it came out weak and frightened.

The stranger didn’t answer, he simply watched her until something at her back drew his eyes. Cooper couldn’t help but turn, and she saw the five men hunting her and the two hounds they had with them breaking out of the tree line. At seeing the stranger, they sank to their knees and bowed with their heads touching the sandy ground. What is this? Cooper couldn’t help but think desperately, trying fruitlessly again to shake off the little water creatures.

One of the hunters rose to his feet first, and the others followed, all ignoring her entirely as they stared at the stranger.

“Is this a satisfactory offering?”

The stranger bowed his head. “Yes.” His voice was deep and gruff, and accented heavily, but with which language, she didn't know.

“What would you like us to do with the woman?” Asked a different one.

The black-haired man looked to Cooper again, absorbed the horror on her face.

“Leave her be.”

“But she could tell someone.”

The stranger… snarled. It was a growl, entirely animalistic, and it made the hairs on the back of Cooper’s neck stand on end. Iris’ arms tightened again before they loosened and she twisted her torso in her mother’s arms so she look at the man who seemed for more animal than human. Even at four years old, she could recognize that. She met his eyes with her light blue ones, shrinking into mother when he took long strides toward them, sending ripples of water across Cooper's legs.

“I said leave her be,” he told the hunters with a voice so deadly, each word enunciated slowly. Cooper whimpered, and watched as the hunters bowed their heads in contrition, as the hounds sank to their bellies with a low whine. The stranger stopped when he was a hair’s breadth from where Cooper and Iris stood frozen to the water by the creatures at her legs. Cooper didn’t move, couldn’t breathe, but a soon as he reached out to grab Iris from her, she growled herself, tightening her grip.

“Don’t touch her,” she hissed, but the stranger paid her no mind. He grabbed Iris’ arms, and Iris screamed as she was pulled from her mother effortlessly.

“Mommy!”

“Please, please, don’t do this. Please, stop, NO!”

“Mom!” Iris screamed as her mother tried to lunge forward and pull Iris back.

“Stop!” Tears streamed down Cooper’s cheeks, all thoughts of her safety abandoned. She turned to look at hunters. “Help me!” she wailed, but they all focused solely on the stranger who was speaking to Iris in low tones, in a language she couldn’t understand. Iris looked back at her mother in fright.

“Mommy,” she whimpered.

“Iris. Please, don’t let him do this,” she begged the retreating hunters.

“Mom.”

The stranger walked them into deeper water, and once he was up to his chest, Iris’ too, he turned, and inclined his head to the water creatures. They released Cooper without a second thought, following the man sinking deeper into the water. Cooper lunged forward, following them with desperation.

“Iris! Please, please, please, give her back,” she wailed.

He didn’t stop, and Iris screamed as the water went up to their necks.

“Mommy!”

Cooper sobbed, trudging through the water as fast as she could. “Iris.”

“Mom! Mo-“

Iris’ words were cut off as the water closed over her mouth, and her tiny head disappeared under the water.

“Mom.” It echoed around her. “Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.”

The lake started to fade. Cooper began to swim. The creatures all sank into the water.

“Mom.”

Mom.

“Ma’am?”

Cooper woke with a start, almost headbutting the poor stewardess in front of her. The woman’s face was etched with concern. “Are you alright?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Cooper’s skin was clammy, and her hands shook. “It was just a nightmare. I’m fine, thank you.” She hoped the expression on her face was a smile, but the small grimace on the stewardess’ face said Cooper failed.

She walked away, and Cooper took a shaky breath as she looked out the window at the view of the green mountains below her.

Nightmare, indeed. After all, Cooper’s worst nightmares were born of memories.