The Wilds

To read chapter 1 click here!

With Layla and himself piled into the truck, Jasper drove them to the kill site. His half-eaten sandwich and fries were sitting on the center console of the truck, the mug of coffee jammed into a cupholder and surrounded by old coffee stains. He offered her some before grabbing a french fry, “It isn’t wolves. Maybe a grizzly bear…”

Even as he said it Jasper had doubts. Even the hungriest bears weren’t likely to shred metal, and the claw marks had been much larger than a grizzly. Outside the frozen Rockies slid past. They drove on a two-lane highway, hugging the rough mountainside on the left with a forest of tall pines on the right. High banks of snow threatened to cover the road on both sides. Occasionally the view would open up more to reveal a fast-flowing river, partially frozen over in some spots. The river bed was wide and rocky. Perched in the passenger seat Layla looked out the window, “Old man Anders called it in, I had his son send us the photo.”

Her eyes briefly flicked to the now ruined photo drying on the dashboard of the truck, “It was a full moon last night too, like the other bodies. Do you think the body you found this morning are connected? They are awfully close together to just to be a coincidence.”

Jasper said nothing. Layla had proposed the full moon theory—it was true that the body Jasper found this morning was the fifth in as many months. The kill sites of the other bodies had been rather grizzly with almost nothing left of the actual person remaining except for a spinal column and a crushed skull. The blood splatter fanning out far beyond the remains themselves with the exception of the fifth body, fully frozen and intact inside the car.

The first one had been an old trapline hunter. Nobody around to care if he had gone missing except for the company owners he traded fur and meat with and even they didn’t seem to notice much. The second had been a man out ice fishing.

The third was a teenage girl of the local first nations community, making the case a high priority. Lastly, the fourth was a young mother who had presumably gone missing while walking her dog. The dog hadn’t been found. The only real connection being that each of them had been out in the surrounding woods, isolated and alone.

It was the same with the occasional elk, moose, or other unfortunate animals. Including a couple of bighorn sheep that had come down from the surrounding mountain ranges. The curled horns cracked in half—that took some extreme force when dealing with a ram. Their horns weighed more than their entire skeleton combined. Passing the spot on the highway where Jasper had found the car that morning they took the next turn a few kilometers down the road, pulling up to old man Ander’s house.

Backing the snowmobile off the back of Jaspers truck Layla and him followed Ander’s son, Thomas out to the kill site. When the roar of the snowmobiles died everything felt incredibly still with the exception of his breath blooming around his face. They had followed a snowmobile track across the property to a seemingly endless forest that stretched up into the mountains. The odd patch of young trees peppered the forest along with old deciduous trees. Despite it being peak daylight hours, the forest floor was shaded and slightly cooler. The kill site wasn’t very far from the trail, blood-soaked snow easily visible between the trunks of old pines.

A broad patch of blood-soaked snow surrounded a crushed skull and a chunk of a spinal column lightly dusted with snowflakes. High up in the branches of a decaying birch tree a set of antlers rested. Bits of hair, flesh, and bone coated the trees and some of the ground. Most of the body simply wasn’t there, presumably eaten by something Jasper couldn’t quite imagine. It almost looked as if the animal had exploded, same as the other kill sites they had found. He wondered how many others they hadn’t and might not ever find.

Thanking Thomas for the directions Layla waved him off, the whine of his snowmobile quickly becoming swallowed by the forest. Jasper walked around the site, eyes to the ground as he tried to puzzle out the tracks in the snow. Mainly elk as expected, but also something larger that Jasper couldn’t guess at. He bent to inspect a large crisp track, it was longer and narrower than an aluminum snowshoe, almost Y-shaped. Jasper cursed, “What are we looking at here? A god damn dinosaur? Bigfoot?”

He rubbed at his beard, looking over the scene again and trying to review the sequence of events like a movie in his mind. His father had always taught him there was a logical explanation for everything no matter how mysterious the circumstances. Layla pursed her lips, “Aliens?”

She was joking of course but it almost sounded like the most logical explanation at this point. It wasn’t easy dealing with winter in the Rockies. Missing people, depression, threats of suicide, alcoholism, and other issues were regular occurrences. This went way beyond all of that. Jaspers phone buzzed in his pocket. Frowning he pulled it out, putting it on speakerphone, “What’s up doc?”

His stepmother answered with a characteristic hesitation in her voice, “Ah, Jay, this body you brought in has some rather unusual puncture wounds.”

Jasper held the phone out in a gloved hand, his breath fogging the screen, “Cause of death?”

“Well, I haven’t thawed him out completely yet, but I don’t think it was the storm that killed him,” she said, then her voice shifted in tone, less whispy and more concerned, “Be careful out there. Come by the house tonight and let your father know what you find.”

“Yeah, okay, doc. I gotta go,” Jasper replied, hanging up on the coroner and one of the only doctors in town.

Layla raised her brows, carefully stepping around more tracks in the snow, “So… the car, didn’t you find it just across the river? And doesn’t this snowmobile track lead right to Ander’s rustic tourist getaway?”

“Let's take a look,” Jasper agreed, straddling the snowmobile. They drove next to the set of tracks, pausing for a closer look at them on occasion. They seemed to be changing, shrinking to something slightly more human right up to the open door of the cabin. A snowdrift was gathered there. Pulling out their sidearms Jasper had Layla go around the back while he stepped in the front, calling out to anyone that may be inside. He climbed the creaking stairs to a loft-style bedroom.

Feathers littered the floor, sticking to his wet boots as he inspected the area, looking over the banister at the living room and kitchen below. Some of the feathers from the loft had drifted down over the banister to land on a couch that had been flipped over. As for the loft, it consisted of a mattress on the floor with many blankets strewn about. The feathers had come from two pillows that had been slashed open. The sloped ceiling was so low that Jasper couldn’t stand upright. Tucking away his weapon and pulling a small flashlight from his belt he crouched lower, flipping a blanket aside to find a smashed laptop computer, the normally white apple symbol on the top almost completely missing.

“Found a computer!” Jasper shouted, moving back down the creaky stairs to inspect some markings by the door. Claw marks—smaller than the ones found on the car but similar in pattern. The ranger let out a low whistle as the beam of his flashlight settled on a splatter of blood. Surrounding the flipped couch were various documents and photographs. Taped on the wall were a series of photos, some of them blurry or slightly grainy. Probably taken from a great distance and developed the old-fashioned way in a dark room. Eight men, seemingly ordinary in appearance were lined up. Beside a few of them were hairy humanoid figures with wolf features. Jasper cursed in disbelief, “I guess now we know we aren’t hunting dinosaurs.”

Layla, having checked all but one of the rooms looked over Jaspers shoulder, “Um… could still be aliens? But looks more like werewolves.”

He couldn’t deny it, “All clear?”

“All but one room, the door is locked.”

The two of them stood to either side, Layla nodding before Jasper kicked in the door. The force of it ruffled photos hanging on strings—it was a makeshift darkroom, tubs of liquid resting on what looked to be a bench intended for processing game. Jasper’s flashlight slid across the room, everything looked to be neat and orderly in here. A sound made Jasper pull his weapon again as he gave Layla a questioning look.

“I checked all the rooms,” she insisted as Jasper went to the bedroom and shone his flashlight under the bunk beds.

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Written by Kelsey Reich on March 1/2021 in Ontario, Canada.