Dogwood

There's something in the trees.

The car would not start. No matter how often Jon turned the key in the ignition and slammed his fist against the dash, the car would not start. It didn’t even sputter. It was simply dead.

He turned the key once more, and again, the vehicle gave no response. “F**k!” he swore through gritted teeth.

“Do you think that it’s a problem with the engine?” his wife suggested.

“No, Rachel, I don’t think it’s a problem with the f*****g engine. The whole thing’s dead.” Jon leaned forward, exasperated, and laid his head on the steering wheel.

“Can you get out and take a look?”

“I would, dear, but it’s a little cold outside, and I’m in a T-shirt, in case you hadn’t noticed.” He gestured toward the windshield, outside of which was a veritable blizzard.

“I’m just trying to figure out what to do, Jon,” Rachel retorted. “I’m not enjoying this any more than you are. At the very least, you could stop talking to me like it’s my f*****g fault.”

Jon closed his eyes and exhaled deeply. “Okay, you’re right,” he said slowly. “I’m sorry, okay? It’s just… Jesus, we’re in the middle of nowhere. I haven’t seen a car in miles. And it’s…” he checked his phone. “… one forty-seven in the morning. Beautiful. Nearly two a.m. and we’re stuck on the side of some backroad in f*****g Montana. I told you we should have found a hotel for the night.”

“And I told you that I wanted to be at my parents’ house by morning. You know that Dad doesn’t have much time left. I want to be with him as soon as I can.”

“I know, I know,” Jon said, resting his forehead in his hands. “I’m sorry, again. It’s not your fault.” He raised his head and looked around, staring for a few moments outside the driver window. “God, it’s dark. I can barely see the woods over there. And you know, there’s like, bears and werewolves in Montana. Creepy.”

A pause.

“Please don’t say stuff like that,” Rachel said softly.

“Come on, Rae, I’m joking,” Jon said, the corners of his mouth twitching. “You know that s**t’s not real.”

“Bears are real,” Rachel said defensively. “I’m more scared of bears than I am of werewolves. There was this one movie a couple of years back; a group of people get trapped inside a car while a bear circles them, won’t leave them alone. Pretty sure all of them died.”

“Spoilers,” Jon teased. “What was that movie called?”

“Um. Bear, I think.”

“Ha, go figure.”

“Still, though!” Rachel insisted. “Does that not freak you out a little bit?”

“Not really,” Jon said. “Honestly, I’m not scared of much of anything with the Lord Jesus here with me.” He patted the .45 pistol that was holstered on his belt. Engraved on the polished wood grip was a crucifix.

“You don’t even believe in Jesus, you a*s.”

“I know, but it’s the principle. If the bear resists the power of the Word of God,” he gestured to his sidearm once again. “I’ll just shoot you in the knee. First rule of the outdoors: never travel with someone you can’t outrun.”

Rachel lowered her brow in feigned disapproval. “You’re a f*****g dick, you know that?”

“I know,” Jon said. “That’s why you love me.”

“Is it? I must have forgotten.”

Jon clutched at his chest, feigning pain in his heart. “Ow,” he said dryly.

Rachel gave no reply. They two sat in silence from several minutes, wondering what to do and what to say. Jon was staring at the steering wheel, mind adrift, when Rachel suddenly clutched his right arm, digging her fingernails into his bicep.

“Jon,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, and pointed out the passenger window. “Jon, look.”

Hearing the obvious fear in Rachel’s voice, Jon turned his head slowly and smoothly in the direction she was pointing, so to not startle whatever monster the forest had surely produced. The blizzard had diminished slightly in its ferocity, and the forest was now easily visible. Scanning the edge of the trees, Jon could see nothing out of the ordinary. “Rachel, what the hell are you"s**t, what is that?” Jon jumped in his seat slightly as he finally noticed the two glowing orbs, close together, near to the ground. Eyes, glowing in the moonlight.

“What the f**k…” Jon muttered. Rachel’s eyes were wide, and Jon noticed that she was holding her breath. She was terrified.

The eyes moved forward, and the moonlight illuminated the form of a small brown bear, stocky and furry, no bigger than a Labrador. It moved slowly, almost leisurely, from the trees and towards the car.

Jon couldn’t stifle a relieved laugh. “F**k me,” he said, still laughing. “It’s just a f*****g baby bear. Oh, s**t. That freaked me out.”

Rachel’s breathing had returned. Exhaling heavily, she released the vicelike grip on his arm. “F**k,” she finally said.

A thought struck Jon. “It’s the middle of winter,” he said, puzzled. “Shouldn’t bears be, like, hibernating?”

“Jon,” Rachel said, a trace of concern in her voice. “Where’s its mom? Aren’t bears protective of their young? I’ve seen the documentaries, I watch Animal Planet, and I know that bears are vicious concerning their cubs. If this one’s here, doesn’t that mean that its mother’s probably close by?”

“F*****g hell,” Jon said, still smiling in spite of himself. “We need to leave. We need to leave, like, now.”

“Agreed.”

Jon turned the key in the ignition. The car started.

“F**k yes!” he exclaimed. Rachel echoed him, obviously relieved. Jon moved to shift into drive, but Rachel touched his hand, stopping him. Jon looked at her, confused.

“Wait,” she said. “Look, there’s… there’s something wrong with it.”

Jon looked at the bear cub once more. About three feet from the forest, had stopped moving towards the car, and was now turning its head back toward the woods. Its coat glistened in the moonlight. Some patches of fur appeared much darker than others. “Oh, damn,” Jon said. “Is that blood?”

“I think so,” Rachel replied. “Whose blood, though? It isn’t behaving as though it’s injured. It’s not leaving any sort of blood trail. Maybe it just finished eating.”

“Maybe,” Jon admitted with unease. He opened his mouth to speak more, but his words froze in his dry throat as the sound of breaking timber split the night. There was violent movement in the trees, the source of which was not visible. Jon could see the treetops rustling, and the sounds of further destruction were audible. The bear cub stood in such a rigid manner that it could have been mistaken for paralysis. It was obviously terrified out of its mind. The commotion continued for half a minute, and then stopped so abruptly that the sudden silence made the couple jump.

“What. The f**k. Jon.” Rachel’s face had gone nearly as white as the snow outside.

“I think it’s time to go,” Jon replied quietly.

He once again reached to put the car in drive, panic gripping his heart. Shifting the stick into position, his eyes snapped to the edge of the forest as an enormous mass burst from the trees, about ten feet above the ground. It arced through the air, almost gracefully, toward their vehicle. Dark liquid fell from the apparition to the ground below, leaving a sporadic trail. Jon and Rachel both watched, transfixed and horrified. The hulking thing almost seemed to move in slow motion through the air, so great was their shock. Before it made impact, they were just able to discern what had been thrown at them.

It was an enormous bear carcass.

The once-ferocious beast landed on the front end of the car, shattering the windshield, caving in the metal on the roof and hood, and splattering crimson, steaming blood over the exterior and surrounding snow. The impact caused the car to pitch forward and sideways, tilting the car almost on its nose so that the couple could briefly see the ground spinning below them through the windshield, before the vehicle slammed down once again to earth. The impact stunned them both. Jon’s only impulse was to numbly turn the key in the ignition once more. He did so.

The car did not start.

Jon and Rachel were facing the forest now. Through the cracked glass, they registered two long, white appendages protrude from the forest behind the still unmoved bear cub, like the boughs of a dogwood come to life. They hovered above the animal for a moment, then buried dagger-like fingers deep into its flesh. The cub gave a shrill cry before being pulled swiftly into the woods. The wounded animal’s screams ended seconds later.

Once more, silence reigned. Jon and Rachel sat in the now useless car, the air inside getting colder, their breath visible in the frigid air. Neither said a word. Neither moved. They simply watched and listened, unable to do anything else. They could not feel the cold. All they felt was the manic beating of their panicked hearts.

Slowly, they turned their heads to face each other. Each saw horror in the other’s eyes.

“I don’t wanna die, Jon,” Rachel whimpered to him. “Oh, please, God, don’t let me f*****g die.” A small tear escaped from her right eye. It froze on her cheek. Only now did Jon truly realize that it was deathly cold"colder than before.

Their eyes were still locked on one another. Neither dared to look toward the forest.

“Everything’s gonna be fine,” Jon said weakly. He knew Rachel didn’t believe him. He didn’t believe him, either.

“I wanna go home,” Rachel sobbed. “I wanna go home, I don’t wanna die, God, I wanna go home!” Fresh tears spilled from her eyes, each freezing near-simultaneously halfway down her face. The pain from the sudden cold made her cry out. Flinching, she rubbed her hands on her face in an effort to produce any sort of warmth. Her head was now facing forward. She lowered her hands from her eyes and screamed.

Jon snapped his head around.

A second later, he felt something warm and wet spread throughout the front of his pants. Urine.

Standing before them, approximately five yards away, was a cadaverous white figure. Its structure was human, but its features were monstrous. It wore no garments, and its skin was like wax paper pulled taught over bone. Deformedly long, spider-like limbs protruded from its body as though they were bare branches on a dead tree. Adorning the tips of its gaunt fingers were savage, scythe-like claws. The top of its misshapen head was easily ten feet from the ground. Its near-translucent skin seemed to glow in the moonlight"as did the wet blood that coated a significant portion of its body. The most terrifying aspect was its face. A black triangular pit opened in place of a nose. Inhumanly large eyes were sunk deep into its skull, reflecting solid blue from the moon, but still somehow dark as the surrounding night. Its crimson-stained maw stretched across half of the circumference of the creature’s head, lined by jagged scarlet teeth that protruded in every direction.

Jon was forcibly reminded of Renaissance depictions of a skeletal Death, come to reap the souls of unlucky peasants. An apt description; he was sure in his heart that he was about to die.

Rachel simply wept.

Jon knew that he only had seconds to act. His fight-or-flight instincts kicked in. Glancing at his wife, he realized that he had to protect her, first and foremost. He was scared, more scared than he’d ever been before, but he knew that Rachel was even more terrified. He placed his hand on the grip of his pistol.

“Rachel,” he said, his voice firm and loud enough to snap her to attention. He had to speak quickly. “Run. Don’t look back and don’t slow down. I’m gonna kill it. Just f*****g run. I love you so f*****g much.”

Jon opened his door and leaped from the car as Rachel stared at him, dumbfounded. Piecing together what her husband had said, her eyes widened, and she bolted from the door as well.

The outside air assaulted her skin like a thousand freezing needles. Rachel ignored it, and sprinted. The deep snow made it difficult to run, but it made no difference to her. She had to get away. She’d run in snow and cold before, in her occasional random jogging stints. This wasn’t that different. Just a little deeper and more than a little colder.

Rachel heard gunshots behind her. They shattered the silence of the night and nearly deafened her. She counted seven shots, and the air was still again.

Seconds later, her eardrums were pierced by an otherworldly, ungodly howl. It was not human, nor was it like any earthly beast of which she knew. It was high, and shrill, and viciously evil. It was a banshee incarnate, screaming for death. Her blood ran cold, and her breath caught in her throat. She realized that she’d stopped moving. She was practically paralyzed.

More shots brought her back to attention. Again, she ran.

She managed to sprint another hundred feet before the screams started.

Jon.

Somehow, her husband’s screams of agony were even worse than the monster’s shriek. Rachel couldn’t help herself; she turned around and beheld the sight before her. Then, immediately, she vomited.

What she saw were the black eyes of the demon, staring into her own, staring into her very shaken soul. In the half-second she maintained eye-contact, time seemed to slow, stretching the moment into an eternity. In that moment she took in every detail, etched them into her brain as though with a branding iron. Jon’s screams had diminished to a low gurgle. It, whatever It was, was grasping Jon’s head in its spindly hands. Blood poured from her lover’s eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. This wasn’t the worst of it. The abomination was in the process of tearing Jon’s head off… slowly. She looked into its eyes, and it looked into hers, neither flinching, and in that half-second Rachel saw the flesh of Jon’s neck stretch and tear, heard the crack! of vertebrae separating, saw each major vein and artery split and spray the lifeblood of the man she loved all over the tranquil snow.

Then the moment ended, the head was off, and Rachel found herself doubled over, spraying the contents of her stomach out through her mouth. Uncaring, she noted that her vomit was tinted with blood. Tragedy makes you bleed from weird places. Jesus sweat and wept blood in Gethsemane, and that didn’t do him any good, and Jesus sweat bullets when wielded by Jon but that didn’t do him any good either, and now both were dead as doornails but at least Jesus got to come back, she doubted that Jon would be rising from the grave any time soon, and oh God, oh God, she was going to f*****g die, she didn’t tell him that she loved him too before he got out of the car, she was all alone with the Devil himself and SHE WASN’T READY TO DIE OH F**K"

Something struck her in the chest and she fell backward.

Her head hit the ground, cushioned by the snow. For a moment she merely stared up into the starry sky and awaited her fate, awaited the cold hands of Death to wrap around her skull as well.

But nothing happened.

She snapped bold upright and stared ahead once more.

The monster was gone. Jon’s body was gone. The blood that had contrasted so starkly with the snow, also gone. Glancing back in the direction of the car, she saw that the mutilated bear carcass was absent as well. The only evidence that anything had happened was the damage on the front of the vehicle, although now the car’s paint gleamed unstained in the moonlight, with no trace of the gore that had covered it prior. It may as well have just hit a tree. Only after taking all of this in, did she think to look at what had struck her. Before she laid eyes upon it, even in her delirium of horror, she felt with another wave of nausea that she already knew.

Turning her head, her suspicions were confirmed.

Lying next to her in the powder was Jon’s severed head. The ragged red stump at the base of his skull did not bleed; indeed, it was glazed with ice. His whole head was, for that matter. Not unlike a freezer-burnt ham. The blood that had poured from the orifices of his face remained, staining his skin like Highland war-paint. His mouth was stretched open in a final grimace of pain and fear, and his eyes were squeezed shut. Ice crystals gleamed on his eyelashes.

Rachel picked it up and stared at it, her face blank. Her eyes retreated, far away.

She sat, for how many minutes she knew not, and gazed into his eyelids. Then without warning the head rolled from her hands and she fell backward, unconscious, the cold and shock finally having caught up with her.

She should have died.

When she suddenly found herself roused by armed police officers and stuffed forcibly into the back of a cramped patrol car, she truly wished that she had.

Author's Note

just fucking tear into me fam