Bloodlust - Part 3

By Kim Bannerman

I reclined on the blanket to watch the branches overhead.

Time passes differently in the heart of the forest. A moment lingers forever, an hour passes in the twitching of a toe. With no conversation to mark the minutes, I grew tired of watching the trees and instead counted the wind tossed clouds as they crossed the sliver of visible sky.

A fallen pinecone crunched underfoot.

Expecting to see Crey, I turned instead to an empty expanse of green.

The hairs on the back of my arms rose. I held the camera a little closer and knocked the lens cap to the ground.

"Crey?"

On the opposite side of the meadow came a swish like grass skirts. I turned sharply to see the flash of cream fur against a darker pelt of brown. Another elk, vanishing into the woods? Holding the camera close and scrambling to my feet, I slipped from behind the screen and sprinted across the open expanse.

It was huge but agile, and the lighter ruff below the tail held my attention as we moved through the dappled shadows. I couldn't see the elk in its entirety, but between the thick underbrush I saw the curve of a horn, like the arc of a yew branch, or a glimpse of a matted coat, tattered like dried leaves. It remained a few tantalizing steps from view. We pushed through the thick brakes of salal, and I was gaining on it, for now I could see the bouncing branches as it passed and hear the ka-thum of its heavy hooves on soft earth.

A photo of a bull elk, swimming in waxy waves of salal, would be amazing. Crey would be thrilled! I held my breath in my throat and the camera to my chest.

I followed it over the ridge towards the north. One rise in the land. Not far.

Not far at all.

The forest again opened to a line of cobalt sky. Blinking in the bright afternoon sun, I saw a wide, placid expanse of stagnant water, punctuated with bundles of bulrushes and sparse outcroppings of reeds. This was not Dees River. This murky mud waste was too shallow and placid, and I stood on its spongy bank, bewildered.

A shuffling through the leaves caught my ears. I turned and gripped the camera more tightly. No one followed me through the trees. I couldn't see a hint of an elk, though with the swamp before me the woods had been opened wide and I had a clear view in all directions.

The air here was too close, too thick. I heard my heart galloping in my chest and the awkward rhythm of my breath. No birds sang. The water made no sound as it tumbled over stones. Even the breeze had died.

This stagnant place smelt of mould. With my nose wrinkled, I moved away, up to higher ground under the canopy of the evergreens, and began to pick my way back to the meadow.

Everything seemed different. These woods were older, the ancient trees standing like sentinels between sparse, naked expanses of loam, and the creaking cedars were wide at the base with branches that began far above my head. The ground was littered with rotted nurse logs. An animal's track, no more than a divot in the earth, meandered between and under the fallen giants.

"I didn't go very far..." I muttered, looking over my shoulder. The swamp was gone. The cavernous forests stretched out in all directions, full of shifting shadows.

I took one step back, then forward, then stopped. I had no idea of orientation. I saw no ridge or rise. The canopy knit above my head and blocked all view of the sun.

"Fuck," I spat.

Crey would be disappointed. I'd been hiking with him for years, and he'd warned me against leaving the trails blazed in the bush, but I'd always been careful and stayed in sight. I'd heard it was easy to get lost, but I didn't think it was THIS easy.

Now he was going to think I was some stupid ass kid who can't find her way out of a paper bag. He was going to tease me about this. The rest of the family would hear about how Ellie, in her infinite adolescent wisdom, ran willynilly into the woods and couldn't find her way out.

fuckfuckfuck

I felt eyes upon my back before I heard the snap of twigs and I breathed a sigh of relief. "Crey?" I called, "Look, I knew the way--"

The perfume of rot-soft meat filled the air.

I stared at the trees and knew, like a tingling in my bones, that something stared back. Frost crept through my limbs, my stomach lurched.

Almost invisible, I caught a movement to my right. A wisp of witchhair moss fluttered in the breeze, then drew away from the branch, followed by the glittering globe of a wicked silver eye.

The breath hitched in my chest.

She was older than the trees, with brick-coloured skin and a mouth full of jagged oyster shells. That gleaming eye dominated her features, marred by only the faintest ghost of a pupil. Her face was illuminated by a desperate hunger, and as I watched, her fascination with me radiated from her expression as if infusing the forest around us. Her arms, sinewy and speckled, snaked over the trunk, a pair of pendulous breasts swaying between them. Her serpentine body was freckled and discoloured, her stomach bloated and mudspattered. The exposed hair between her thighs streamed down to the ground, entangled with pitch and pine needles.

On gaunt spidery legs she slid towards me, leaning against a tree to study me with that wicked eye, then her spine curled forward and her scabbed knuckles cut furrows across the forest floor. A distant rumbling thundered from deep in her sallow belly. Her body shifted from foot to foot with delighted impatience. I could clearly see the ribs move under her leathery skin as she stretched towards me, quivering slightly in anticipation, and my own shaking knees refused to bend.

"What -- what do you want?" I stuttered, clutching the camera tighter.

She held out one hand and curled an impossibly long finger, once twice thrice, for me to follow, daring me to come closer. A greasy grey tongue ran over her crackled lips, and with that single gesture, I knew exactly what she wanted.

The smile widened, stretching impossibly from earlobe to earlobe, cleaving her devil's face in two.

I turned to flee but she was faster. A hand as unyielding as stone grabbed my shoulder and wheeled me to the ground, and though I fought with all my strength, she pinned me to the earth with her right arm while her ropy legs straddled my waist. The matted merkin draped across my knees, sticky and prickling.

The scent of her breath was murder itself. Every fibre of her body lusted for blood. Her head reeled back and, with jaws agape, her teeth came down to latch over my face and tear it like an orange peel from my skull.

I barely thought. I only acted.

I flung the heavy camera between us, and the jagged teeth sunk into the back of my hand as the flash exploded in an arc of violet light. For a moment, every pore of her face was illuminated in white and black. She reared away, pearls of blood flying from her lips, and she clawed at her single eye as I wriggled from her grip and scrambled to my feet. I didn't look back as I tore over the ground on numb legs. An ugly tempest of shrieks rose behind me, and deep underneath the notes of her voice, I heard the unmistakable palimpsest of other children, other scared and screaming unfortunates, who'd been lured from safety but not been so lucky as I.

Like a drowning swimmer frantic for the shore, I tumbled out of the woods and burst into the sunlit field.

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Bloodlust - Part 3

By Kim Bannerman