Buried

Leaves crunching beneath his shoes, knuckles white on his rifle’s grip, Wyatt said to the man on his left, “You’ve got to remember not to hesitate. He’ll probably try to beg, and that’s when he’s the most dangerous.” The other hand held firm onto the bloodhound’s leash. Wyatt heard the shaking in his younger brother, Josh’s voice as he said, “I know. I know. We’re going to kill it, and this whole thing will be over with.” Once again, he slid back the rusted bolt of his rifle to make sure a bullet was chambered, and closed it again. “Where should I aim, if we get the jump on it?” He had to keep up next to his brother, as he held the lantern, but struggled to stay in stride with his brother’s long legs.

“Nobody’s gotten a good look at it,” Wyatt said. “I’d say center of mass; it’s where all the organs should be.” Josh saw the indicators in Wyatt’s posture that showed his raw nerves: his slightly hunched shoulders that made him appear even more large than he already was, twitchy finger an inch away from that trigger, flexing and unflexing wrist as he clenched the wooden rifle stock. Despite Wyatt’s popularity in town, Josh was the only person actually close enough to Wyatt to be able to read those types of signs. Otherwise, the townsfolk never would have nominated him to go on the hunt.

Even sitting in the bar, surrounded by heady alcohol and jovial friends, Josh heard Wyatt’s fear in his on edge tone, and could see it in the way he only sipped his whiskey instead of downing it all at once. Every time his brother dragged him to the bar, Josh sat in the corner and nursed his drink while watching the crowd, but even across the room, he saw the guilt written across Wyatt’s face, along with the tension. Nobody knew but Josh, but Wyatt had started dating the last girl that had been taken, Portia.

It had been the previous night. Josh did his best to look out for his older brother, and some paranoia had pulled him out of his bed and into the backyard belonging to his brother’s girlfriend. Her little one story shack sat on the edge of town, leaning slightly. Wyatt had told him how, if he married her, he wanted to give her a huge house, and children to fill it with. Josh had just convinced himself that he should be sleeping instead of watching Portia sleep, and was hurrying back toward his own home, when he heard her shriek. Cursing himself for not bringing some weapon, Josh sprinted back for the shack, but by the time he got there, the only signs of activity were the disheveled bedclothes through her shattered window, and eight lines gouged into the soft wooden floor.

He reported the attack, and at the Town Council meeting the next day, they elected Wyatt, who had become famous for killing a bear attacking a child, to go and bring her back. Josh had been there, sitting in the back corner of the huge assembly room and listening. A fire burned in his gut, two parts anger and one part fear, anger at the Council for his brother being chosen over him, anger at himself for letting Portia be taken, and fear under it all, fear that this would all result in the worst possible news.

The daughter of the best baker in town had been kidnapped first, a pudgy girl by the name of Lauren with dimples in her cheeks. She brought Josh pie whenever she saw him in his brooding moods, with a dimpled smile and a lean forward that Josh always assumed was unintentional. Knowing that rhubarb comforted Josh the best, she asked her mother to make it four days out of five, and convinced her half the time to give him a discount.

When his brother came to him, asking to accompany him, Josh swore that, if he found Lauren alive, he’d finally give her what she was due. What that was he wasn’t sure. Still, the oath pushed him forward through the woods when every part of his being urged him to go screaming back. Branches tugging at his unkempt, dirty black hair, Josh asked once more, “What is your plan, Wyatt?”

“How many times have I told you?” he asked with a dry laugh. “Follow the bloodhound, sic him on the bastard, and fill him with lead while he’s distracted. Don’t worry about it; it can’t take on the both of us, and it hasn’t got a gun. At least, I don’t think so.” He laughed again, and his brother’s cockiness seared Josh’s gut like the flaming oil in the lantern he held high. Nobody had seen the thing, it’d been able to take four able bodied women in the night with hardly a second thought, not leaving a single drop of blood, and Wyatt felt sure that they’d kill the monster. Josh knew that Wyatt lied for his sake, but resentment still took hold in him. Portia had even told Josh that she would keep a knife under her pillow, so there should have been some blood.

The bloodhound lifted his nose from the ground and growled. “What is it, boy?” Wyatt asked him, kneeling next to the dog as Josh stepped forward, holding the lantern higher.

“There’s a cabin,” Josh said, pointing forward. Between the trees, shafts of light fell out of clean windows set in the walls of a well built cabin. Josh saw a chimney sticking up from the roof, but couldn’t tell if smoke tumbled from it or not. “We should have brought more people,” Josh said, letting Wyatt take the lead again. He started shaking again, and reminded himself of the oath, but it did nothing to strengthen his resolve.

“We should have seen it already, through the trees,” Wyatt said. He stopped and turned to Josh, handing him the leash for the lantern. “Here,” he said. “I’ll break in, and chase it outside. Then you sic Gabe here on it, and shoot, got it? I’ll be getting it in the back at the same time.” Josh took the leash, hand shaking wildly and mouth gibbering. Wyatt attached the lantern to his belt and grabbed his brother by the shoulder. He gave him an intense look and said, “Josh, I asked to bring you with me for a reason. You watch my back. We’re brothers. You’ve got more reason than anyone in town to hate this creature.” He gave him a smile, one of false confidence mixed with pride, and, most jarring of all to Josh, trust. “I trust you. You’re my best friend. For Lori, right?”

For Lauren, Josh thought. Somehow, his butchering of the pie girl’s name motivated him more than everything else. He nodded. “For Portia, too.”

They picked their way toward the house through the dark underbrush, staying silent, and Josh seething all the while. He tripped a couple times, and, about fifty yards away, Wyatt split off from him, leaving him alone with Gabe the bloodhound. As soon as Wyatt broke away, moving quickly and extinguishing the lantern, Gabe let out a keening whine. “Shut it,” Josh hissed at him, tugging the leash to get the stubborn, stationary dog to come with him. In response, Gabe sprinted in the opposite direction, tearing the leash from Josh’s grip and pulling him over. He pushed himself back to his feet, muttering curses repeatedly under his breath as the dog vanished into the darkness.

He reminded himself that he still had a job to do, took a breath, and started running to the cabin, keeping low. The building had sank slightly into the ground in the middle of a clearing, and Josh took cover behind rotting tree stumps periodically, glancing at the windows and seeing nothing. Shaking, Josh repeated his oath. For Lauren, for Lauren, for Lauren, he mouthed, and opened his eyes. His head snapped to attention as heavy footsteps thumped against the wood floor inside. Josh pressed his back up against the vine covered, wooden wall of the cabin, holding his breath and making sure the safety on his rifle was disengaged. Unintelligible words leaked through the walls of the cabin, and Josh couldn’t be sure if the beast spoke a foreign language or if the cabin’s muffling kept the information from him.

The heavy, familiar report of his brother’s hunting rifle jolted Josh upright, and he kept his legs from running long enough to glance in the window. The rifle reported again as Josh, his mouth agape, helplessly watched the eight feet tall, broad, coarse brown hair covered monstrosity turn its back to him. Now, now! some voice shouted in his head, and Josh, unthinking, braced the rifle against his shoulder. Gunpowder sang its deafening song in his ear, shoving into his shoulder with what would have been bruising force if he hadn’t braced properly. Lead fragmented inside its body. The beast stumbled forward away from him, Josh’s ears barely registering the reports of two more bullets from his brother’s gun. Pull, chamber, fire, pull, chamber, fire, went Josh’s barely conscious mind, the window shattered now, and the beast turning into a bloody mass of hair on the ground as it collapsed. Bullets moved it several more times even after its death twitches stopped.

Josh stared at the thing’s corpse on the floor of its cabin for what didn’t seem like any length of time at all. The details of that room stuck in his mind like needles in a dartboard. The fragments of hair and shattered glass on the floor. The blood covered double bed beneath the window. The door jamb, too tall, cracked, and bent from when the thing fell into it. The empty doorway and the bullet casings on the hall’s floor from his brother’s gun. His trance snapped when he felt a hand on his shoulder and he spun around as his brother’s voice said, “I’m sorry, Josh,” muffled by the ringing in his ears.

“You’re what?” Josh asked, dazed, hardly noticing the blood spray staining his brother’s face and clothes. As his hearing slid back into place, so did Josh’s irrational fears and anger.

“I’m sorry, Josh,” Wyatt repeated, looking into his brother’s blue eyes with wide, wide brown ones. It occurred to Josh, for an instant, how rare it is for two brothers to have such different eye colors.

“You found them, then?” Josh asked, only half registering reality.

“Yes,” Wyatt whispered, unable to say it out loud.

“I need to see. And say goodbye.”

“No, you don’t,” Wyatt said, taking the lantern from his belt and lighting it again. Rage boiled beneath Josh’s facade. Wyatt mistook his shaking for residual fear and adrenaline. “There are some things that should just, just stay buried.”

“No, don’t!” Josh shouted, reaching out with a hand, but Wyatt’s arm was already in motion. The lamp shattered on the floor of the bedroom, the oil fire easily catching on the old wood. “Goddammit!” Josh shouted, turning toward his brother. “I’m never going to see her again! Who’s going to deliver the news to her mother?” His arms hung out to his sides and his voice rose with every word. “Huh? What did she look like? What did that thing do to her?!”

“Calm down, Josh,” Wyatt said through gritted teeth. “You don’t want to know. And it’s best that you don’t.” He started trudging back toward the town. “Did you lose Gabe?” Before Josh had a chance to answer, Wyatt sighed and muttered, “Of course you did.” Josh moved just enough to keep up with his brother. “It’s better for you not to know. You’re my baby brother. I have to protect you, because you couldn’t handle that. Better for it to stay buried, you know?”

“Yeah,” Josh said, stopping. “I know.” Wyatt heard him stop and stopped in turn, ten steps ahead. He turned his head to the left to look back at his brother, his mouth open slightly, so the bullet entered through the backside of his left temple and came out his right ear. The body crumpled, and Josh recoiled slightly from the half missing head as he walked over to examine.

Josh looped his rifle’s strap back over his shoulder before starting to move the corpse. You got fat, Wyatt, he thought, throwing his brother over his shoulder and carrying him toward the now blazing cabin. Blood dripped down his back, but Josh barely felt it beneath the searing pain of lactic acid in his muscles. One of the corners of the porch wasn’t burning yet. Josh laid Wyatt’s body down on it, wincing from the heat, the fire in the cabin raging hotter even as Josh’s inner fire started to cool. Sick hit his gut, and he forced himself to start moving toward home. Getting a little farther away from the smoke, his stomach quieted a little bit. He started up a running pace, but almost as soon as he started, a foot snagged on something elastic, sending him sprawling.

Standing up, he saw what he’d tripped on: a blood stained, blue-grey jacket. He picked it up and balled it up in his hands again. Lauren. It’s Lauren’s, a memory reminded him in the back of his mind. She’d worn it the first time he met her, flapping around her in the Autumnal wind while they waited in some line or other, for what he’d forgotten. He remembered laughing when she produced a little, tin foil wrapped piece of pie from her purse and gave it to him, denying payment.

A few decaying leaves had fallen on the jacket, but balled up, he could still smell the pie crust, just faintly, beneath all the signs of death. He inhaled again, and shivered as he exhaled, despite the warm night.

Josh started moving, and almost before he realized where his feet were taking him, the burning cabin loomed a few yards in front of him. Wyatt’s pant leg had just begun to catch fire, and he laid still in a natural position, but Josh couldn’t convince himself that he was just sleeping, as not all of his face remained. “You’re right, Wyatt,” he said, his voice catching. He wound up, and threw the jacket into the fire. “Some things should stay buried.”