At first he couldn't believe that it was actually a severed finger he was looking at. It had to be one of those rubber gag gifts you could buy at the mall, someone's sick idea of a joke. It was too pale to be actual flesh, the dried blood too dark, the stump cut too clean and even. He was sure that if he turned it over he would see Made in Taiwan stamped somewhere near the base in tiny, faded lettering . . . .
But when he touched it, he knew. He dropped the severed digit and jumped back with a gasp, as if afraid it might come to life and strike out once it hit the forest floor. Suddenly, his heart was hammering in his chest and his temples throbbed with its savage rhythm. The bitter sting of bile rose in his throat and he felt beads of sweat forming on his forehead as his stomach squeezed into a small ball.
He stared at the finger, lying there on a carpet of pine needles and dry leaves, and became fixated on the white shard of bone jutting out from the gristle. He wanted to run, to crash through the labyrinth of trees and undergrowth like a frightened deer, to put as much distance between himself and this amputated horror as he could; but his legs felt as if they had taken root in the soil, as if he were as immovable and as much a part of the landscape as the ancient oak that towered over him.
The edges of his vision began to darken and everything except the finger seemed to blur like an out of focus film. He was vaguely aware of a rocking sensation, as if he were swaying in the breeze that cooled the sheen of sweat on his forehead. His legs, which only a moment ago had felt so solid and fixed, now seemed as though all of their strength had leached into the ground; a trembling began in his thighs and coursed its way down to his calves as the ring of darkness in his vision constricted, narrowing his field of vision until it seemed like he were peeking through a peephole somewhere in the back of his mind.
When his legs collapsed under the weight of his own body, it almost felt as if someone else were falling and he just an invisible observer hovering a few feet away. Though it couldn't have been more than a fraction of a second, in his detached state the fall seemed to stretch out for an eternity, as if he had slipped into a well that tunneled into the very core of the earth.
His knee banged on the edge of a rock and the flare of pain caused him to cry out so sharply that the birds overhead took flight with a rustling of wings. In that moment, he was sucked back into his own body and he gasped, suddenly aware that he had been holding his breath this entire time. Once that they had been shocked back into functioning, his lungs demanded air and he kneeled on the forest floor panting as if he had just ran up the side of the hill.
He tore his gaze away from the severed finger and looked instead at the container he had removed it from. It was a typical geocache, just an army green ammo box with a hinged lid and black stenciling along the metal sides. But during his fall he must have kicked it over for, it was now laying on its side.
Most caches were filled with trinkets for seekers to trade: perhaps a plastic compass from a child's playset, strings of beads, an odd coin, or even a small pocket calendar. All caches contained at least a logbook in which the person who found it could note the date and time or leave a small message if they so chose. However, none of these types of items had spilled out of the ammo box when it toppled over. Instead, there was only a single piece of notebook paper folded into a perfect square with the words Read Me scrawled across its surface.
For a moment, he simply sat there, looking at the paper with, for reasons he couldn't understand, the words "You are old, Father William" going through his mind. While he no longer felt distanced from his own body, a part of him felt like this was a dream from which he was bound to wake from any moment now. This was the sort of thing you read about in novels or saw on the movie of the week: things like this just didn't happen. Not to him. Not to anyone.
He reached forward and snatched the paper away from the box. As he unfolded it, he noticed that his hands were trembling and that a chill too deep to be explained away by the breeze had sunk into the center of his being.
As he read the words written within the note, he felt the flesh on the back of his neck begin to prickle.
We are your new Gods. We control the power of life and death. We hold your
life in Our hands to do with as We please. Fail to follow Our instructions and
you will die. Try to call for help and you will die. There is nowhere you can run
where We will not find you. There is nowhere you can hide. We are everywhere
and We see all. If you value your life, you will heed these words. The finger of
Our last supplicant should be proof enough of how serious We are. At the bottom
of this note, you will find a set of coordinates. you will enter these into your gps
unit and proceed to the location. There you will find your next set of instructions.
you have one hour to complete this task. Failure to comply will result in the
immediate sacrifice of your life upon Our altar. This is not a joke and it is most
certainly not a prank. you have one hour. Your time starts now . . . .
The woods suddenly seemed much quieter than they had before. Except for the occasional, lonely cry of a whipperwil somewhere in the distance and the whisper of the wind through the pines, there was only the sound of his own labored breathing. Even the usual chirping of whirring of insects hidden with the foliage and trees was missing. Almost as if the tiny creatures knew that some monumental evil had trespassed into their domain and chose to remain hidden and safe.
He scanned the forest around him, looking for any sign of the people who had left the note. The trees were densely packed together, their limbs forming an interconnected canopy overhead through which sunlight and shadow dappled. Brush grew unchecked in some areas and tangles of thorns crept across the ground like a spreading cancer. There were a thousand places a person could hide in this wilderness, a thousand nooks and crannies where someone could lurk. Watching. Waiting.
He glanced back at the note in his hands but by now his hands were shaking so badly that he could barely make out the words.
Perhaps it really was some kind of a cruel joke. Perhaps he was getting all worked up over nothing.
"But what about the finger?" part of his mind demanded. "It was a human f****n' finger, man."
Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe the rubber was so good that it only felt like flesh. Ballistics gell, like he saw on the forensics shows on television. That he had to be it. Ballistics gell.
He looked at the finger again, laying on the ground as if it had just casually fallen out of some hiker's pocket. The tip of the finger looked manicured, the kind where just the tip is white and the rest painted red. But the polish wasn't bright. It looked old and faded, more like paint really, now that he thought about it.
His took a deep breath through his nose, smelling the musty aroma of old vegetation, the decay of trees that had once crashed to the forest floor. The breeze carried a hint of honeysuckle, as sweet and familiar to him as his girlfriend's perfume, and he felt the queasy warm feeling in his stomach beginning to subside now. He continued breathing slowly, willing his muscles to stop trembling, for his heart to slow to a normal pace.
It was a twisted trick from some degenerate low-life who had nothing better to do than scare the s**t out of people he would never meet. Just a callous act of mischief. Nothing more, nothing less.
He would lodge a complaint about this of course, warn the other cachers that there was a sick mind somewhere within their midst, and then he would . . . .
The silence of the forest was shattered as a gunshot roared like an angry beast and echoed through the hills and valleys. Birds scattered from the trees and small, unseen animals crashed through the undergrowth as the sound of the blast faded.
In the clearing, his body pitched forward and his chin slammed into the same rock his knee had struck when he fell. A rock that was now sprayed with dark splotches of human blood.
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