‘Bear!’ Cletus yelled. ‘Get your gun, Jesse!’
The huge form crashed through the treeline in a mass of red-brown fur, a colossal creature far larger than any bear Jesse had ever seen. He was about to turn for his rifle when the animal suddenly reared up, and he realized that it was running not on four legs but two. In a terrible instant Jesse saw immense arms and muscular legs and a tall crested skull, the entire form covered in thick hair.
Gavin Coltz fired a single, deafening gunshot at point-blank range and then staggered backward as one immense shaggy arm smashed into the ranger’s head with a crunch like boots on gravel. Jesse felt bile swell in his throat as the ranger’s head was ripped from his neck in a spray of dark blood and splintered bone to spin in a gruesome arc over their heads and bounce with a dull crunch upon the rocks behind them.
The beast turned its gaze down the hillside and fixed upon Jesse, who felt as if he were staring into the eyes of Satan himself.
‘Jesse!’ Cletus yelled as he dashed past. ‘The guns!’
Jesse whirled on unsteady legs as they rushed for the two rifles lying in the bushes barely ten feet away. All at once Jesse heard a low growl and he turned, looking at the beast as it spread its arms wide. Its chest shuddered as from deep within its lungs burst a cry like nothing he’d ever heard before, rising from a guttural growl to a high-pitched wail that sent bolts of pain through his ears and soared out across the valley like the howl of a thousand wolves.
Jesse staggered backward as Cletus reached his Winchester and yanked the weapon into his shoulder, snapping the safety catch off in one fluid motion as he swung the barrel around to aim at the creature.
The gunshot burst out with a blast of smoke and flame in the half-light and Jesse felt the shockwave from the blast hammer his ears. The shot hit the creature low in the belly, and the immense beast bowed over at the waist as its thunderous cry mutated into a wail of pain.
‘Jesse!’ Cletus shouted as he fumbled in his pocket for another round. ‘Get behind me!’
Jesse stumbled backward down the hillside as Cletus shoved a second bullet into his rifle. He grabbed the Browning and then crouched down behind his brother and looked back up the hillside at the creature.
The beast’s wail of pain mutated again. Jesse heard the animal suck in air and let out a roar of fury as it charged down the hillside at them.
‘It’s coming right at us, Cleet!’
Cletus cocked the Winchester as Jesse threw his hands over his head and crouched down lower in the bushes. He heard the beast’s heavy footfalls thundering toward them as Cletus hefted the Winchester into his shoulder and squeezed the trigger.
Too late.
The beast plowed into Cletus and hurled him backward. The gunshot blasted out as Cletus’s finger snapped inside the trigger guard and fired the weapon’s final round uselessly into the sky above. Jesse smelled a blast of foul air and saw a huge mass of rippling fur plunge past him as Cletus let out a scream.
Cletus span through the air with his limbs outstretched, and then his body crashed down the hillside toward the rocks far below, one arm flailing at an impossible angle. Jesse gazed in horror as his brother tumbled to a halt near the bottom of the hillside and tried to pull himself away with his remaining good arm.
‘Shoot it, Jesse!’ he screamed up the hillside.
Jesse didn’t move. Couldn’t move. His legs trembled beneath him, the neurons in his brain frozen in a paralysis of horror as the beast lifted his brother’s screaming body off the hillside and hurled it down into the creek. Jesse saw his brother’s head smash like an eggshell against a rock and saw his neck snap like a twig. The creature crashed into the water in pursuit, snarling and wailing its terrible cries as it picked up the limp corpse and lifted it high above its head before smashing it down again across the rocks. Cletus’s bones crunched and his flesh ripped until the icy waters of the creek were stained with crimson ribbons that snaked between the rocks.
Jesse vomited into the bushes, his vision blurred with tears and his throat burning as he stumbled to his feet by automatic reflex and began running up the hillside as fast as he could, the Browning falling from his grasp.
He hit the treeline and glanced back over his shoulder. Far below lay Cletus’s mutilated, twisted body. Standing over the remains, the beast’s head turned and two blood-red eyes locked onto Jesse’s.
Nausea overwhelmed Jesse once again as he plunged into the dense forests, chased by his own keening cry of fear. The deepening night made the woods seem darker and more threatening, the mist obscuring the distant trees. Jesse ran but he could no longer feel his legs, driven now by the adrenaline seething through his veins. Raw terror, pure and undiluted. His mind was empty, devoid of anything other than the most basic of instincts. Run. Keep running.
Because it’s following you.
A tingling fear like icy fingers against the nape of his neck spread rapidly down his spine as he crashed through the forest, his hands batting foliage from his path and not feeling the thorns slicing into his skin. His legs powered him over fallen logs and tree stumps, his breath sawed in his throat and his heart hammered against the cage of his chest. He plunged from the dense tangles of trees onto a winding animal trail, his hunter’s eye catching a glimpse of flattened grass stems and churned earth where countless creatures had made their way through the woods. A tiny voice flickered like a phantasm through the freezing fog of terror clouding his mind: Stay off the easy trail, keep to the forest.
Jesse ran straight across the trail, darting left and right between trees and hurdling dense tangles of foliage. Don’t look back. Jesse’s legs began to falter, his vision blurring and twinkling with tiny pinpricks of light as his body began crashing. His labored breathing fluttered as he stumbled desperately through the darkening forest, and in a moment of hope he glanced over his shoulder.
Straight into a pair of fearsome red eyes that towered over him.
The creature was moving with incredible speed as though it were gliding through the dense woods, its huge legs adapting to the terrain with each stride.
Jesse’s cry caught in his throat and he gagged. Something huge and heavy swiped across his legs and hurled him off of his feet. He span in midair and slammed down hard onto the ground amid a flurry of fallen leaves and twigs. Jesse rolled onto his back, his arms held out defensively as he looked up into the darkened sky and saw it loom into view.
The immense bulk of the creature filled the sky above him and Jesse felt his bowels loosen and spill beneath him to soak the ground. Those terrible red eyes glared down at him and blinked once. In a moment terror seared through every fiber in his body and he saw there the face of a man upon the body of a beast.
And then Jesse’s consciousness slipped away from him into darkness.
2
‘We’ve had a what?’
Earl Carpenter’s eyes widened as he looked across his cluttered desk to where his assistant, a primly dressed spinster named Marjorie Bird, clasped one hand over the telephone. As the Riggins Police Department Sheriff, Earl was used to hearing bad news, but this was unusual.
‘A suicide,’ she repeated. ‘One of the MacCarthy kids.’
Earl puffed out his cheeks and blew a gale of air across his office as he glanced up at the official notices board in the lobby outside. The station was tiny, harbouring a handful of cells that hadn’t held a serious convict in thirty years. In a town of barely five hundred people, there weren’t many crimes a man could commit in the morning that wouldn’t be common knowledge before the sun went down.