Jorogumo (part 1 of 4)

CHAPTER 1: SUSAN

"I love you Daddy!"

Matt Curtell read aloud the words of his daughter, Susan, that were written on construction paper. Underneath these words was a picture, drawn with colored pencil, of a dead deer beside a smiling man with a gun.

He continued reading. "Happy opening day! Hope you get a big buck!"

A tear rolled down Matt's face. He hadn't seen his daughter, now nine years old, for a little over a year. She was eight when she made the card. Of all of the devastation, pain, and loss that came with the divorce; his heart ached the most for his loving daughter. Sitting alone in his rusty '98 Chevy truck, Matt examined the card some more. He remembered asking his daughter why the deer was white, and why her rendition of him was drawn entirely in red. His eyelids clenched shut as he drifted away for several minutes reminiscing in the conversation the two of them once shared.

....Her long white-blond hair fell down around her soft face, with a couple renegade strands blocking the sparkle of her beautiful emerald eyes. She lifted her head to gaze up at her father. "Cause white deer are the prettiest" she said with a smile that would melt the heart of anyone with a soul; a smile that would become both the imprint of any remaining meaning in Matt's life-as well as the memory that would haunt him the most.

"So it's an albino deer?" Matt knew little Susan didn't know the term.

"What's that?" She asked.

It's when an animal is entirely white. It's very rare.

"Oh, I knew that!" Susan replied. "That's why I made him white. He's the king of the forest!" What a little liar she was. An adorable, innocent, perfect little liar.

Matt chuckled. "Alright...well, them why am I red. Aren't I the king?"

"Oh, that's 'cause you look best in red, Daddy! It fits you best."

He paused for a moment, contemplating if there was a deeper meaning embedded in that statement than she knew. "Well, sweetheart, I love it sooo much." He gave her a drawn out kiss on her forehead; the kind accompanied by many odd and cute noises that triggered that infectious smile and giggles. "But I think it's a little past your bedtime-isn't it?”

Susan's smile faded fast. But Matt knew how to conjure it to return.

"Plus, Daddy's got to get up at the butt crack of dawn if he wants to kill this white king of the forest." (Whenever he had to wake up in the morning, Matt referred to that time as the "butt crack of dawn". It always made his daughter laugh uncontrollably. Despite his many flaws, no one could deny how good a father he was to his daughter. Their relationship was one of laughter, fun, and trust. His ex-wife, on the other hand, almost never found him funny anymore).

And Susan did begin to laugh hysterically at the silly term, like always.

After about ten more minutes of successful distraction on the part of little Susan, followed by the always teeth-extractingly painful event of trying to get her to brush her teeth, and many more kisses, she reluctantly made her way into her bed and fell asleep.

....Matt opened his eyes.

His '98 Chevy was still running. It gurgled and sputtered as if it was begging to be put out of its misery. Just as Matt turned the keys, like a merciful blast of a bullet through the head that quieted the broken truck, sunlight shot over the horizon. Matt glanced over the dashboard. Much like the very first light stroke of the artist's brush that graces the lifeless canvas, a pale yellow crept around the trees and reflected off of the few leaves that remained grasping to bare branches. He had wanted to get a decent head start into the woods before daybreak, but that plan failed. Figured. All of Matt's plans had seemed to have come crashing down since the death of his step-father.

Matt had always been an avid hunter. He would go every year with his step-father, Grant, and his two best friends, Ian and Leonard. This was the first year in Matt's life that he was hunting alone without their companionship . Two years ago, the cancer that had been commandeering Grant's body for over a decade finally took control and claimed his life. Matt remembered being extremely angry when he found out that Grant had known about the cancer long before telling anybody.

"Great" he thought. "Good job, Matt." He put on his woolly hat and grabbed his Remington bolt-action rifle from the back seat along with his backpack. It seemed like this old gun was the only friend that didn't desert him; the only friend he had left. Inside his backpack were three ammo boxes of hollow points, a few hunting knives of various sizes and functions, some extra clothes, and two 750ml bottles of spiced rum. Matt was always partial to rum, even more so than usual considering recent events.

Matt looked down at his hands. They were tightly clenched into fists. Before exiting his truck, he twisted off the cap of one of the rum bottles and took a great big gulp. He put the bottle back into his bag. Whenever his mind wandered to thoughts of the divorce...his ex wife... his daughter...or Grant...it made his hands involuntarily ball-up into a fist. Though it was only temporary, the alcohol was the only thing that seemed to numb the intolerable pain and relax him.

Ironic.

He stepped out of his truck and onto the cold ground. It was still mostly dark out, but he could now see faint ribbons of sunlight streaking through the forest ahead of him. Matt looked around. He heard nothing. He didn’t see any animals. There were no other vehicles parked on the forest's edge. Matt was the only hunter here, and there was much reason for that.

Matt snickered. "Haunted my ass."

There was an urban legend in this small hunting town. The forest up on Jorgenson Hill was said to be stalked by a ghost who preyed on any men who entered. It was also well-known that no deer occupy these woods, which just fed into the eerie lure and tales of Jorgenson Hill. The past words of so many townspeople below bounced around his head: "Never go into Jorgenson Hill Forest alone!", "No man has ever entered and returned to tell the tale", "The Mistress will suck you into her abyss!"

Matt hesitated. He just stared into the bleakly painted woods, with an expression that was neither confident nor defiant. In fact, it seemed desperate; accepting of whatever was to come.

This year, Matt would hunt alone. He needed to escape everyone else; all his mistakes. With a heavy heart, two bottles of spiced rum, and a mind dripping with regret and anger, Matt gripped his rifle and stepped onto the frostbitten leaves scattered across the shadow-lit ground of Jorgeson Hill Forest.

A chill ran through his body as he took the first few steps into the forest. It felt almost like the temperature dropped a couple of degrees at that very moment. Matt followed a narrow opening through the brush for a while, searching for a good spot or for any deer signs. There was a feeling of death in the chilly air that surrounded him, with the only sense of life in the darkened area being the movement of the skeleton tree branches from the occasional gust of wind. Matt walked deeper into the forest. In the back of his mind was the echoes of all the other hunters he knew: "no deer occupy those woods". Matt never really believed that statement, but his mind volleyed with its truth the further he walked. There were no signs of life anywhere; no footprints, no droppings, no buck rubs...not even bird calls!

Matt continued on for quite some time, stopping occasionally to indulge in drowning his thoughts in spiced rum. It seemed as though hours had elapsed. He took out his phone from his pocket. There were no messages, but that could have been because he had barely any service since entering the woods. Or perhaps it could have been because he just doesn't get many text messages anymore these days. He also noticed that the battery life was draining quickly. It was fully charged when he left his truck, but it was now at 23%. He had walked into the woods around 7am. He looked at the top of the screen for the time; it read 7:31am....

"There's no way I have only been in these woods for 31 minutes" he thought. But he continued on. As he walked, the voices of his ex-wife, Elaine, along with his old hunting buddies followed him. They constantly nagged him. Being here was supposed to let him escape. But it seemed like his past had followed him in.

After a long while more Matt stopped beside a large tree on an incline to quench his thirst. He unzipped his cameo backpack and pulled out one of his bottles of rum. Sweet, satisfying, perfect liquid. Taking the bottle to his lips, he chugged down nearly a fourth of it. Matt looked around and let the smooth rum settle in. A feeling of calm brewed within him simultaneous to the warming of the alcohol. He closed his eyes.

....BEZZZZZZT. Matt's cell phone rang from across the floor. He must have passed out on the floor of his studio apartment. An empty bottle of Captain Morgan still lay in his hand. He groaned and went over to pick up his phone. It was on nine percent battery, and there was a missed call from his best friend Ian. He called the number back.

After one ring, Ian's voice spoke first. "Matt...where the hell have you been?!" Lennie and I have been trying to get a hold of you, dude."

After a moment of silence, Matt cleared his throat and replied in a slightly slurred speech "I've just been really busy...what with finalizing everything and all."

"Matt. Leonard and I are really worried about you. Kathy told us that you stopped going to the A.A. meetings. Dude...what are doing?"

"I'm fine, Ian. Really. I'm just really tired so I might take a nap. I'll talk to you later, alright?"

"It's 8:30 in the morning, Matt..."

Silence.

Ian spoke again. "Matt you need to pull yourself together. This is like the dozenth time you've ignored one of our arranged plans to get out in the woods. We are both really worried about you."

Matt's voice grew aggressive and coarse. "Well don't be! How about that?!"

Ian's tone accelerated as well. "You think that Grant would like to see you this way?! He'd want you back out in those woods, living your life."

"Don't you bring him up. You never knew him like I did." Matt attacked back.

"What are you talking about? Lennie and I were always around you and Grant. Even when we weren't hunting. Look, dude, there was nothing any of us could have done. Cancer is a real bitch. You need to stop destroying your damn life!"

CLICK. Matt ended the call abruptly. The call would have ended sooner, but in his state it took Matt a few tries to hit the end button on his phone. Any mention of his beloved step-father, Grant, was met with the same abrupt shut down. Matt picked up the bottle of Captain and stared at it. Then, with a loud, rumbling outburst, threw the bottle as hard as he could against the white wall. As the glass shattered into many pieces, Matt fell backwards back onto the floor and immediately fell back asleep.

….When Matt opened his eyes, a flash of white far down the hill gripped his attention. This movement was different than the clatter of wind-driven branches. Staying as silent as he could be, he carefully raised his gun toward the movement and remained steady. Excitement flooded him. "Could there be deer in these woods after all?!" he thought to himself.

After a few moments Matt's question was answered, as a deer walked out from behind the group of trees. Matt experienced two degrees of shock; the first being that this life form he encountered was the thought-to-be extinct deer of Jorgenson Hill, and the second being that this deer was completely white in color. That second level of shock shook him with a sense of uneasiness and confusion.

"An albino deer?!" He thought out loud. The image of his daughter flashed in front of him, coloring the deer she drew on the card she gave him a year ago. "That's not possible....what is going on?"

He thought that maybe he was just seeing things. With his phone dead and the fact that the time of day in these woods never seemed to pass 7am... it was entirely possible that he was experiencing delirium. Matt looked down at the empty bottle of Rum. He had never hallucinated while drunk... "Maybe that was a bad batch." His eyes returned to the deer in the distance. There it still remained. It was real, and it was moving his way.

Matt felt the cold stock of his gun as he raised it and pressed his chin against it. Being upwind, Matt thought he could quietly re-position himself for a good shot. In doing so, however, the deer perked it's head up. Through the dimly-lit forest Matt could make out at least 10 points. This was massive, too. It had so much bulk. If this was real, this would be the pinnacle of his hunting career.

But the once-in-a-lifetime encounter would not be a quick one, as the deer sensed him up on the hill and darted off through the trees. In his drunken excitement, Matt shot wildly, knocking himself off balance and sending him down the steep incline from where he was perched. Painfully he bounced for quite a ways and landed with a mighty THUD onto a large rock. His riffle landed about 20 yards from him in the mud. The impact rendered him unconscious. He would remain like this for several minutes.

When he gained his senses back, he walked over and regained his gun. His head throbbed as he tried to rub off the mud. There was a spider walking along the barrel of his gun. With a smack, Matt crushed the ugly demon looking creature. "Freaking spiders" he said out loud. Matt had always hated spiders. This was his gravest fear and pet peeve of going out hunting; encountering spiders. This is why he usually would pass on bowhunting and wait until gun season which was hopefully after those damned things froze to death.

...Suddenly Matt heard a loud CRUNCH behind him. His eyes shot open and he spun around to see what snuck up on him. In one motion, he had turned around as well as grabbed and raised his rifle into firing position. But what his eyes rested on was not a deer.

It was a women. A beautiful one, at that.