Poisoned Soil: A Supernatural Thriller Page 8

  You know why you don’t hear about stuff like that?

  “Quiet! I’m trying to think!”

  Because the dead can’t talk, Jesse. Just ask Shane.

  Jesse let out a deep breath and then took in another one, silently regretting that he had made so much fun of the Boy Scouts when he saw them in their dorky little uniforms. And then, he faced up the slope and began to climb.

  ***

  Ozzie lay on the ground in shock, blinking. He looked up at a sea of straight pine trees that towered over him as if he was an ant surrounded by an army of erect toothpicks. Where am I...how did I get here? Mom! Ozzie’s silent questions and calls went unanswered.

  A throbbing pain from his right side diverted his attention from his surroundings to his body. He looked down, touched his side and felt blood. Ozzie’s eyes grew wide with alarm. His mind replayed the sound of the rifle shot for him to hear again, which propelled Ozzie to his feet. He grunted in pain as it all came back to him. Looking back from the hilltop to the boulder, Ozzie thought he could see the two men standing next to the spring, but at the distance everything was a blur. He waited a brief moment until he was sure that one of the hazy figures moved.

  They’re trying to kill me, like dad! Run!

  Scampering over the hill and down a steep hillside, Ozzie limped badly. His right side burned and felt as if it were pulled tighter than a drum, but the bullet had only grazed him. Enough to draw a steady trickle of blood, but not enough to kill him. Maybe not this time, he thought. They’ll keep coming until they get you.

  With the men no longer in close pursuit Ozzie stopped running and began walking, straight ahead, letting gravity assist him downhill whenever he could. Walking up hill was too arduous. After half an hour of trudging along he stopped to listen. There was nothing. No sounds other than his breathing. No birds, no scampering squirrels, no wind. No sticks breaking, no ruffling leaves. No men. Ozzie concentrated, hearing the faintest of sounds, something close to him. Something on the ground, a rhythmic terrestrial beat. He looked down. A newly fallen oak leaf was half covered in bright red blood. Ozzie watched as drops steadily dripped from his wound. In the absence of other sounds it was alarmingly loud. The only sound Ozzie could hear was his breathing and the spilling of his own blood.

  They’ll keep coming, Ozzie told himself. Keep moving.

  He was exhausted and the fact that he hadn’t seen the men recently took away some of the urgency, which allowed him to feel a little more relaxed. Left, right, left, he labored to shove his feet through wet leaves as it became difficult to pick them up. Ozzie was desperate to hear something familiar. Anything. The silence itself was more frightening than the sound of the men chasing him. He had never been alone his entire life. Even if he had to endure their chanting and their hateful screams, at least he wouldn’t be alone in the wilderness.

  In the lonely depths of the forest, light began fading quickly, but the dark was nothing new for Ozzie. Being without his mother, without his fence, was. Still he moved ahead, ever more slowly but ever onward until finally, as darkness grew closer, he heard a sound that he recognized. Faint and from his rear, in the direction from which he had come. He stopped and leaned his weary body against a tree to enjoy the sound that had comforted him many a night. Nothing but the playful yipping and howling of a pack of coyotes.

  ***

  Jesse ascended the slope and slogged through tangled vegetation. Thick, thick growth of mountain laurel and rhododendrons, saplings, and thorny vines obscured a view of the ground just as the lush canopy blocked a view of the sky. The dense forest rapidly absorbed the daylight, but the dwindling light was secondary on Jesse’s mind. What concerned him most was what might be crawling, slinking and hiding in the undergrowth that hid his view of the ground. Shane hadn’t seen that snake and it had been right beside him.

  Jesse picked up the pace. He felt safer rushing through the growth, telling himself that he could move too quickly for a snake to strike. He knew this was nonsense but he felt safer moving briskly, and of course he would reach the mountaintop faster.

  The dappled sunlight that once permeated the forest began to vanish as darkness ate its way down the mountain. Jesse looked up to see dark clouds billow in and swallow the sun. The temperature dropped ten degrees in fifteen minutes, giving Jesse a chill and intensifying his anxiety. As Jesse’s eyes fell from the cloudy sky to the forest floor he saw a hill crest fifty yards ahead. He picked up the pace and marched toward the spot where the slope leveled out. As he crested the hill he found that he stood atop a level mound that sloped away in all directions. There was no “up.”

  “What the…” He thought for a moment and then hung his head in exasperation. Of course. There are lots of slopes, ridges, and ravines in the forest. Not all the hills go to the top, some just go to other hills, he thought. Jesse surveyed his surroundings, peering through deep vegetation and towering trees as he tried to determine which direction was up. He nervously chuckled at that as he admonished himself. You don’t even know which way up is, dumb ass!

  He continued the way he had been going, reasoning that he had perhaps ascended 700 feet or so from where he began. He didn’t know for sure how high he had climbed but he knew that it was getting much colder at this altitude. “I wish I had my—”

  Jacket? Oh you’re going to need that tonight, when the storm comes and you’re all alone. Well...maybe not all alone, Jesse, but no one to help you.

  “SHUT UP! Stop thinking that way!” Jesse smacked himself in the head with the palm of his hand. At the movement of doing so, something shiny and black wriggled quickly as a legless shape scrambled in the leaves at Jesse’s feet and slithered under a downed tree. A tree in front of him that he had to cross.

  “Snake!” Jesse shrieked.

  Jesse’s heart jumped right into his throat and stayed there as it choked his breath. He couldn’t move for a moment until he realized that something, anything could be wriggling behind him, beside him, around his feet right now if he didn’t move. Jesse danced around and lifted his feet off the ground in a motion that would have suggested to an observer that he was running in place. He was afraid to leave his feet on the ground, but couldn’t keep in one place. He had to move on. He sprinted ahead and lunged for the tree, more afraid of what could be on the ground at his feet than what might be under the tree.

  The downed oak stood about waist high, but the bottom was a foot off the ground, owing to the limbs and uneven terrain that supported it. Jesse picked up the pace and prepared to leap, hoping to land on top of the tree so he could survey his surroundings. He eyed the tree from twenty feet away the way a long jumper eyes the line, and took off on a sprint, hurling his flailing legs through the air toward the downed oak. His feet planted perfectly near the crest of the tree, but he should have landed just short of that mark. Waving his arms violently, he began thrusting his upper torso and head backwards as he tried to balance himself. Gravity lassoed him over the tree and pulled him to the damp soil. He landed nearly completely prone, but fear gave him enough arm strength to remain bent over just past the tree.

  Coiled just to his left was a four-foot long Black Racer. Jesse and the snake eyed one other for a second, each petrified of the other. The snake made the first move as it slinked right across the hand that supported him. Jesse’s heart raced as he picked up his hand, shaking it and his entire body as he tried to rid the feeling of the slithering snake. Fear drove him ahead at a breakneck pace through snarling mountain laurels that hid every view. He was no longer pursuing the mountaintop; just a cove or an opening would do fine. Anything as long as he could see around him, could see what’s out there.

  Oh, you don’t want to know what’s out there, Jesse.

  “Shut—” His response to his inner voice was abruptly silenced as he tripped over a rock pile hidden in the vegetation. Jesse careened through a hedge of rhododendrons atop a bluff that overlooked a very small brook. Flailing his legs through the air, Jesse landed on one ankle wit
h a thud and tumbled into the stream.

  “Ow!” he screamed as he grabbed his ankle. The ten-foot fall was not enough to break his ankle, but landing with all his weight on the hard, uneven rocks punished him with a severe sprain. He sat for a moment in the stream grimacing with pain as he caught his breath. He knew he should move, should do something, but he just sat there and darted his eyes around to see if anything was wriggling around.

  A bright streak of light high above illuminated the forest and shook him to his core. The treetops began swaying as the storm approached and motivated him to push himself up as he screamed in agony. After a few seconds, thunder rumbled in the distance, indicating that the lighting had struck on the other side of the mountain.

  Shifting his weight to his left leg, Jesse hobbled to a nearby tree for support and to think. And to cry. He sobbed as he hadn’t for fifteen years, since he was seven years old. He had held back the tears racing through the woods even when confronted by the Black Racer. Who cares if it wasn’t venomous? He didn’t want to see another snake as long as he lived. As he cried he tried to think coherently, but fear and confusion suffocated him, like damp fog cascading over a bridge. Indeed he felt as if he were in a fog, a horrible fog laced with suffering and death. Daylight was waning and now this storm? “Third one this week!” he said, finding that talking aloud kept his thoughts more rational, leaving any irrational thoughts for—

  Me?

  Leaning against the tree, Jesse panicked and finally gave way to the fear. “HELP!” He screamed as loud as he could and listened to his frantic cry echo through a sea of serrated ravines. “HELP! HELP ME!”

  He slumped his shoulders and cried some more, knowing that no one would be able to hear him. Surrounded by sound-robbing, hilly vegetation, and drowning in isolation miles away from anyone, Jesse tried to calm himself and think his way out of his nightmare. If I can just find some shelter until the storm clears or even until the morning if I have to, I can follow this stream down the mountain, Jesse thought.

  Limping, he looked around until he found a branch he could use for a walking cane and began hobbling downstream, letting the walking stick serve as his right foot. A strong gust of wind whipped through the trees and caused them to rustle more briskly. Hopping along, he followed the stream, keeping his eyes peeled. Stay sharp and keep moving, he thought to himself.

  The dark green vegetation and black floor sucked up any light that managed to leak through the forest canopy. Jesse squinted to see, staying close to the sound of the bubbling brook, but discerned nothing. No rock overhangs, no caves...no Ramada Inns! The walls on each side of the creek slope began to steepen and the creek slowly increased its flow, a good sign, Jesse thought. But the storm approached, and as it did the wind moaned fiercely through the ravine Jesse entered. The wind howled and sounded somewhat like owls, but more and more it sounded to Jesse like—

  Hushed whispers?

  As Jesse walked something trailed softly across his cheeks. He swatted and found his head covered with tentacles, fingers...something sliding over his face and ears. He hobbled quickly through the fluttering vines that descended from trees above. “Jesus!” Jesse tried to compose himself and shake the feeling of spiderwebs and vines as his heart began to pummel his chest. Light faded to twilight as he forged ahead, able to see mere feet in front of him.

  A monumental crack of thunder arrived with a terrific flash of lighting that brightly illuminated the forest, momentarily blinding Jesse, but not before...

  “What was that?” he asked.

  What? Did you see something?

  “You know I did, just over there. What the hell was it? Something big and white!”

  Jesse tried to decide if he was now hallucinating. He felt sure that the lightning illuminated something odd in the forest, no more than sixty yards from him, high up the left slope of the ravine. Something that seemed out of place. “I know I saw something there,” he said aloud in an effort to reassure himself. In the chill of darkness he knew he’d never make it out of the woods that night. His only hope was to find shelter and make it until morning. He believed that what he thought he had seen might just be his ticket out.

  ***

  The ravenous coyote pressed his black nose to the leaf and flared his nostrils as he inhaled the intoxicating scent of fresh blood. His three pack mates yelped wildly around him. Blood, not carrion, not yet. Only fresh blood, but where there was blood there was a wound, and where there was wound there was chase and then dinner. He knew that this was no woodchuck. It would be a big dinner. A feast.

  The alpha male lifted his head from the ground and craned his neck to the skies. A prehistoric ghostly howl ascended from his soul to the heavens, inciting his lieutenants to moan a harmonious alarm to any nearby creatures in the darkening forest, especially to the one bleeding. To that injured soul it was a summons to surrender and give himself back to the mountain, to the soil.

  They each took a turn sniffing the leaf, imprinting the scent of the target as they scampered and paced around the blood, riling each other up as surely as a quarterback boisterously slams a teammate’s shoulder pads before attacking an opposing defense.

  There was no denying who had earned the alpha male role in this pack. His bushy tail was as thick as a man’s arm and resembled a furry club when held horizontal to the ground if he felt threatened or challenged. His eyes, the iris an ancient amber the shade of wet, Egyptian sand, encircled deathly black pupils the size of forest acorns. When challenged, he took on a wild appearance. He seemed able to command every mane hair to stand erect, looking like an agitated porcupine as he spread his ears, narrowed his menacing eyes, and opened his mouth to flash his most terrifying weapons. By simply opening his mouth and snarling, he invoked more fear than his counterparts did when they snapped their jaws loudly. His lower incisors, a single spear on each side of his mouth, rose like two pillars framing the entrance to hell. The razor-sharp crescent moons curved up to meet the upper incisors on each side that served as enamel nails sealing the doorframe. In preparation for battle, saliva dripped from his fangs and suspended in a thread that made him seem even more menacing, if that was possible. His scowl cinched back his upper lip, allowing a serrated row of teeth to protrude that filled the gap between his upper incisors. He was not to be tested.

  The alpha male easily picked up the trail of blood that had spilled and spattered on the occasional leaf in an unwavering line leading down the slope. He trotted in that direction as quickly as he could while remaining certain of the trail. The pack followed closely, anticipating a successful hunt.

  Three hundred yards ahead, Ozzie rested against a yellow poplar. The sun hung low in the sky and light began to wane sharply, owing in part to the ominous clouds that obscured the sun and hovered gloomily over Ozzie. He was utterly exhausted after trekking miles in the overgrown forest, up, down, over and around, all the while being chased. Now his injured body required rest as much as water. But those were not the thoughts on his mind. As he leaned against the tree, unable to fully comprehend the meaning of approaching coyotes that serenaded his subconscious, his mind focused on Isabella. There she was, with Ozzie, strolling together in the woods, eating wild blueberries, finding mushrooms, presenting her warm and loving shoulder for Ozzie to rest against. That’s where Ozzie was at that moment. In his mind he wasn’t against a tree; rather, he was against the warmth of his mother’s love and protection.

  The alpha male was getting close enough to allow a celebratory yelp that sent the others into a mood of maniacal celebration. He had detected a new smell a few moments before. Smoke. Burning. It was of no concern to him as it was beyond his target, and was a smell he detected from time to time. Ozzie, too, had picked up on the smell of smoke and burning and he was blindly heading toward it. Now he was close, very close he felt, but he could go no farther tonight. He would rest there, against his mother, and let the night rejuvenate him.

  The alpha male almost skidded to a stop atop a hill crest. In the en
tirety of the forest, with all its trees, creatures, leaves, and pine cones, he zeroed in on a singular target, bleeding and resting against a tree forty yards in front of him. A tree close to the stream that they had been following before they had stumbled upon the blood trail. There he was, down, weak and theirs for the taking. The pack charged and communicated with each other with a primordial telephony that instructed them to spread out, circle the tree and enclose the target.

  Ozzie looked up the slope. His gaze, lost in a daydream of Isabella’s face, dissolved into the forest floor as her eyes gave way to two beasts charging his way. Beasts with jaws wide open, teeth flashing and narrow, penetrating predatory eyes. Adrenaline jolted Ozzie to his feet. He stood, paralyzed; only his head seemed able to move as he looked left, then right, as a circle of beasts danced around him as surely as the moon orbits the earth. They moved in a blur, making the circle seem impenetrable.

  A flash of lightning lit up the forest and bounced off the coyote’s eyes and reflected their crazed looks to Ozzie. Thunder crashed loudly and shook the forest. The fear Ozzie hoped had receded for the night reemerged as the circle of fur moved faster and came ever closer, somehow moving concentrically and closing in. Ozzie spun around as he tried to see each and every one of them, but they were fast. So fast! And Ozzie was tired, so tired. He just wanted it to all to be over. He wanted to sleep.

  The eyes of the alpha male caught Ozzie’s eyes and held him in a trance the way Dracula hypnotizes his victims with his stare. The gaze was broken by searing pain, a sharp bite to Ozzie’s side that had opened and enlarged his wound as it spilled more blood on the dank forest floor. Ozzie jerked around. His mind was no longer in control as his body reacted helplessly and fought to survive. The coyote’s jaws were dripping with blood, Ozzie’s blood, as it raced off to rejoin the circle.

  Another bite from his rear, this time on an upper leg. Then another, always from the rear, Ozzie kept turning to ward off attacks from behind. As he did, he constantly presented a new flank to the next in line. He was weakening fast and couldn’t fend them off. Somehow he knew it. He needed time...he needed to block the rear, to keep them in front of him and in his line of sight. Sitting against the poplar and letting the tree block his rear seemed the answer.