04

Leya knows she is hearing things, perhaps even seeing things out of the corner of her eye, for her power of observation developing fully in the woods is triggered by stimuli so slight as to be subliminal, nagging her nerve endings, forcing her to clutch the rifle even tighter in her cold, trembling hands.

The snow is heavy, pounding on her drenched head like a hammer, beating down her clothes, trailing down her face and into her eyes. 

She blinks and purses her lips while slowly swiveling around; the rifle’s stock rests firmly on her shoulder, her clammy cheek pressing stiffly on the bolt handle. Leya trudges through shallow puddles of melted snow and rain, the wind a sadistic, menacing force that whips at her face with delight. Her boots step over wet leaves and crunching snow, and she uses the rifle’s muzzle to nudge aside low hanging leaves and branches that obscure her vision. 

Mustard, she wishes to call but the fear wrenches her throat tight, making it too difficult to speak, let alone breathe. 

The night’s absolute darkness is muted, ravaged by thick clouds that prowl the skies like nature’s own beasts. Leya’s eyes scan her surroundings, following similar paths her cat would have taken on any other mundane day. Cautiously within the tumult, she circles the cabin to the back garden, indifferent to her boots sinking in her nearly-harvested herbs. With no sight of the tabby, she then moves towards the woods, glancing over her shoulder every now and then to ascertain herself that the cabin had not moved.

Should anything happen, she could always whirl around and sprint back.

“But nothing will happen,” Leya murmurs softly. 

Thunder booms overhead, causing her belly to tense, but she trudges on.

Mustard.

Aside from the house, there is only one other place the feline would be hiding. 

A slight confidence affirms each step at the lack of any sinister interruption and the fear that had gathered in her belly simmers for a deceitful moment as the small carpentry shed comes to view. The wind howls in her ears, sounding more like a roar. Nudging the door open with the rifle’s muzzle, Leya fishes for her phone in her pocket and turns on the flashlight.

The white light arcs into the room like an offering: half-curved chairs, a long sawing table, machinery oiled and hanging meticulously on the walls. 

But no cat.

“Shoot,” she mutters.

Lightning flashes hotly behind her and Leya turns a little too fast, bumping her shoulder on the door. She stands there a moment, gazing out into the cavernous forest, conscious of the cold trailing rivers of water down her face.

Just until the wood’s clearing, Leya murmurs while moving forward, slinking back into the woods.

The deeper she stalks, the sharper her senses become.

An intrinsic urge to hurry licks at her feet, something so strong yet undefinable that it amounts to a subconscious command--

Go back.

Leya’s footsteps falter as the trees begin to scatter, the vast clearing coming to view. She stops for a moment, eyes slanting left and right, conscious of the faint buzzing sounds of her malfunctioning hearing aids. 

The view before her is swallowed by absolute darkness, only to brighten as hot white lightning streaks across the sky. 

And that’s when she sees it.

At the centre of the field is a tall pole, something she had never seen before in her dozens of times of leisurely exploring. But that isn’t what garners her cold attention - a naked girl is chained to the pole, lengths of rope wrapped around her neck, torso and feet. Her chin rests on her chest, a curtain of dark, wet hair obscuring the face.

Leya doesn’t realize how long she stands there, staring in numb shock. She blinks the water away from her eyes and peers left, then right, somehow expecting someone to appear and free the girl… or claim it’s a joke. An apparition amidst the swirling chorus of rain. 

No one does.

Cautiously, she steps out of the woods and towards the girl, her finger hovering over the trigger of her gun. As the distance between them subsides, Leya notices the subtle familiarities of each feature, slowly piecing it together until the name that rises to her tongue tastes raw.

“Anna?” 

The girl does not stir.

Heart juddering wildly, Leya nudges the rifle’s muzzle on the girl’s temple, lolling her head sideways. Her stomach swoops low at the sight of Anna’s bruised, bloodied face; she had been roughed up hard, and possibly knocked out with a perfect punch to her jaw, now eerily swollen and at an odd angle.

“Anna,” she hisses, unable to smother the tremble of her voice. 

She looked… dead.

Fumbling with her rifle, Leya hurriedly reaches her free hand towards the girl’s etiolated, clammy face. Her fingertips brush over her ear, lowering to the curve of her jaw and pressing just beneath. Her pulse, though faint, washes relief through Leya and her eyes slip shut as she sighs outwardly, unaware that the girl’s had opened in that moment.

“No!” 

The sudden bucking of her body startles Leya back. Wild, dilated eyes lift to hers, lips twisting into something that screams rage and terror. “Get away from me!”

Leya gropes for the rifle and, for a long and increasingly panicky moment, cannot find it. When she does, she squeezes the trigger without thinking, just as a man drowning in the ocean will squeeze a thrown lifebuoy; if the safety hadn’t been on, she would have fired it. Possibly at the girl. 

The chains rattle maddeningly loud, Anna’s stricken eyes darting from Leya and to the forest. “Where-Where are we?” she gasps, chest rapidly rising and lowering in an arrhythmic rhythm. Her eyes snap back to Leya’s, bolting her feet to the slushed snow beneath her. “Where are we?”

A gust of frosty wind shudders across their bodies; Anna trembles violently, as though just realizing that she is nude. Goosebumps marble on her flesh, nipples distending like brittled glass. “Where are we?” she cries. “My dad- where’s… dad-”

“Anna-”

“My dad-” She is gasping, sputters of rain falling from her mouth. Suddenly, her head jerks, eyes circuiting with Leya’s. A dull flicker of recognition sparks beneath the growing terror and she jerks forward, rattling the chains. “Leya! You have to get... m... here! Please Leya, I-”

Leya tries and fails to keep up with the rapid movements of her lips, the short circuiting of her hearing aids only muffling the sounds further, water flooding her ears. “Calm down,” she attempts to soothe but her voice only mirrors the same tone of terror. 

“No!” Her head shakes vehemently, almost like a dog trying to rid its fur of water. Her lips move but the hearing aids fade in and out. “You don’t… the council…”

The council?

Leya stills, studying her face closely, paying attention to the feverish motion of her mouth in hopes of understanding the words that disintegrate in the storm. Her blood thins in an instant, slipping like icy sheets in her veins.

“Anna, wh-what are you saying?” she questions, her grip on the rifle slowly loosening from the frost that collects on her trembling hands. “I don’t understand. The council? What do they have to do with-”

“Just please!” the girl suddenly begs, clouds shifting restlessly before the moon as if tossing and turning in turbulent sleeps, dreaming nothing but chaos in the skies. “Please, please, please- just… out of these chains and I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you everything, please… dad is safe.” 

Shadows drift over Anna’s face, sinister shapes cast down as Leya is pelted with rain. Then, almost clumsily, she drops the gun and nods. 

“Hurry,” Anna breathes warily. 

Her hands reach for the chains that encircle the girl’s bruised and bloody wrists, pulled tight against her pale skin. Quivering, Leya struggles to control her thoughts and breathing as she wrenches at the chains but they are too thick and frozen for her to make any difference. Fingers slipping through the loops, she almost lets out a cry of frustration from her efforts of pulling, the burning ice scalding her palms.

“Leya, please, it’s-”

All of a sudden, the ice is no longer on her hands; it is in her blood, in her bones, seeping cruelly through the threads of her skin.

The pair stiffen at the foreign sound before them; a low, deep, throaty growl that is guttural and distinct enough for her to hear despite the buzzing of her aids. 

The veil of clouds draws to a still and turns an inexplicably ominous shade of grey. The wind, which had been whipping against her left cheek, dies away altogether. Leya blinks at the radical drop in the air pressure and slowly lifts her gaze to meet Anna’s.

The girl’s face is blanched, her eyes huge, floating saucers. 

She is staring at someone- something- over her shoulder.

Leya knows she should turn - instinct urges her to do so - but a certain terror roots her feet to the snow, perhaps deceiving her that if she didn’t see what was behind, then it would not exist altogether.

The sound that resonates once more is a low, thunderous rumble. The ground beneath her feet trembles with the force of such a sound, rattling up her bones. 

“Leya…” Anna whispers, eyes still fixed on the thing behind her.

The Beast.

“Leya-” Her voice cracks like something terrible, eyes glazing over with hot tears. “What’s… what is…” Words do not leave her in complete coherent sentences, leaving Leya to struggle and decipher what she is saying. “It’s… oh my god…”

Her feet begin to turn on their own accord at the next predatorial growl - a sound she had never had the fear of hearing, one so menacing and vicious that it permeates past her malfunctioning hearing aids and rattles the bones of her mid-ear. 

The darkness seems to shift as a pair of unblinking red eyes waver at belly-height. For a moment, Leya thinks that the creature is something small - the fear in her mind trying to diminish what stands before them, but then it begins to rise, standing past their heights and towering beyond the trees around, as if it would scrape the stars, tear a hole in the earth’s crust.

Anna gasps somewhere beside her but Leya cannot breathe, it felt as though all the air had been sucked from her lungs, crushing them inwards like a rotted log. 

The creature stands there in the darkness, its lambent stare fixated on Anna then her. It makes no move to approach, just staring, and perhaps that’s what terrifies Leya the most.

“Is that-” Anna chokes on her words, gagging on the fear. 

Her vision obscures slightly from the rainwater, and she blinks once more, still clutching the chains in one hand. They wait while standing before the creature, gauging some sort of reaction. Leya’s eyes flicker towards the rifle casually lying by her feet then back at the creature. 

Slowly, cautiously, she begins to crouch low, blindly patting the ground for the gun, fingers curling around the stock and rising once more. 

“Why isn’t it attacking us?”

Leya vaguely wondered the same thing until she realized that most predators acted in such a manner. A cold hand reaches past her ribcage and fists her heart; it was playing with its meal.

“Hurry,” Anna trembles in her bind, her eyes still fixated on it. “Hurry Leya-”

Still gripping the rifle, Leya lifts the stock and aims for the solid lock. She casts the creature a furtive glance then strikes the lock, hard. The impact is loud, startling both of them.

The creature sways sideways in the darkness; red eyes the only indication that it is moving. 

Leya strikes the lock again, this time more urgently.

“It’s moving… it’s moving… Leya-” The girl begins to tug at her chains viciously, moving the lock from its position and making it harder to aim. “Shoot it!” Water splatters on her face as the girl turns to face her, eyes wild. “The gun- use it!”

Leya continues pounding at the lock, conscious of the creature’s steady brilliant eyes on her, watching. “Hold still,” she says, whirling the rifle around and aiming it at the lock. She pulls the trigger once and Anna flinches.

The Beast lets out another guttural growl. They hear it’s large paws sinking into the earth as it moves behind trees, its red eyes disappearing for a fraction of a second before reappearing. 

“My cabin isn’t far off-” Leya whispers, already mentally calculating the distance between. She raises the gun and aims once more, hands trembling. “... when it’s free, run, okay?”

“Yes yes-”

Bang

 The lock jerks sideways violently and gives way at last. The relief that surges through her is muffled by another growl, hurriedly working the padlock undone, Leya jerks it off and begins to speak when Anna takes off in the direction of her home.

Without thinking, her legs do the same. Barreling through the woods at neck-break speed, Leya squints through the rainwater drizzling down her numb face. Anna’s pale body contrasts sharply in the dark night, her behind jiggling, legs pulled taut as muscles tense beneath the strain. 

Don’t look back, Leya chants inwardly as her lungs contract and shiver, forcing themselves to take in oxygen. Don’t look back. 

But she does anyway.

Glancing over her shoulder, her stomach swoops low at the sight of the dark creature still standing stoic. It’s height surpassing ten feet, the crown of its head grazing the top branches. Its shoulders are defined even in the black, rippling with layers of thickened muscles, midnight black fur sleek and dripping. The creature flexes its front limbs, curling claws that resemble prehistoric predators.

Suddenly, it stirs and lowers itself onto four limbs, its shoulder blades spread wide, ears twitching forward, bloodied muzzle drawn back revealing canines as long as her forearms, thickly dripping ropes of saliva. 

The beast draws back, as though gathering a certain amount of energy, and she does not realize what it is about to do- not until it lowers his head to the ground and barrels towards them in a blur of darkness. 

The ground trembles beneath their feet, the weight of its pounding paws causing Anna to stumble sideways and fall. 

Terror rips through Leya at that moment. 

Without a second thought she whirls around and cocks her rifle, firing endlessly at the large movement heading straight for them. Bullet casings tinkle around her feet, the rifle grows hot in her hands, flashes of white nearly blind her as she blindly shoots at the space before them.

The light darkens as something hard swipes at her gun. The impact spins her halfway around when a large paw presses against her back, slamming her onto the dirt. 

Air vacates her lungs in a shattering gasp. The paw that presses on her spine is large enough to cover the expanse of her back, claws dangerously digging past the material of her jacket, piercing her skin.

Leya stiffens as the beast shifts above her, it’s weight causing a piercing strain on her ribcage. She feels its guttural growl directly above her face, hot ropes of drool dripping like acid on her cheek, her hair, viscously trailing down her jawline and neck.

This is it, her heart slams like a jackhammer against the earth, the truest moment of peril.

Its wet muzzle grazes her face as the beast lowers itself just briefly to press the tip of its snout into her hair, the mucous-like snarl reverberating from its chest as the nose moves from her scalp to her ear then cheek. Leya feels the canine graze her jaw, so sharp her skin gives way at the subtlest touch. 

Stiff as board beneath it, she waits with her eyes pressed shut, conscious of every movement, somehow hoping to play dead.

When it does not move, her eye peers open in the slightest only to circuit with a red unblinking eye, hovering a hairsbreadth from her face. 

Leya blinks.

Its eye flashes a bright, hazel color for a dull moment before the beast shifts above her once more-

Jaws yawning wide open with a creak and hiss, teeth poised over her skull.