Therion 3 - The Hunt Begins

 

Long, drawn-out howls echoed through the deep forest, ricocheting off trees. Fear flooded his senses as the sound—like an air raid siren, a primal warning—reverberated to his core.

Run. It was all he could think of, all he could do.

“Aah,” he held his hand over the stinging pain in his side, then felt the handle of the blade sticking out. He looked at his shaking hand, dripping in bright red blood…

“Ben, wake up. You're dreaming.”  

He rolled his head over and gazed at Emma, his beautiful wife. Exhaling, he crunched up his face as another sharp pain shot through his abdomen.

She caressed his hand, "You need to try not to tense up, baby.

“I know, I know. It’s just… like I was still there,” he replied.

“If you need to talk about things, you can talk to me, or you know, the department provides a therapist.”

Ben rolled his eyes at the word ‘therapist’ and took his hand back.

“There’s something out there, Em and the kids, they’re still going missing. That old man took maybe one or two kids, and I think they were just lost in the woods. Something else is happening here.”

“You’re not on the job right now; you’re in the hospital. Promise me you won’t worry about this until you are cleared for duty.” Emma gathered her coat and purse as he watched her, knowing he couldn’t promise what she asked. She knew it too.

She peered at him for a moment, “See you tomorrow, babe. Try to get some rest.”

She kissed him on the forehead.

“I will, love you.”

A sliver of light shone through the opening in the hospital door. Ben was once again alone with his thoughts.

He scrolled through his phone searching old stories from the area, hoping for any lead he could find.  Child traffickers were more prevalent before the war, but chatter indicated they were on the rise. It would explain the cases of missing children, 15 so far, all north of the town of Heather. In this area, traffickers were called ‘nomads’ as they were like traveling gypsies, never in one place for too long.

“Hard to catch. Clever villains.”

Why are they up here in these woods, and what else lurked in the forest? He couldn’t shake the feeling that the two were connected.

Ben spent the next half week in the hospital, healing and researching. Hours passed like minutes as he pored over eyewitness testimonies concerning creatures. Things once dismissed as myth and legend were now very much real, if one were to believe popular conspiracy theories.

One story caught his eye: “Local Man Escapes Within Inches of His Life,” the headline read.

May 25, 2158 - A local man went alone on a camping trip near Riverpine Preserve. He claims he traveled down a road until finding a campsite near a small town, when, during the evening, he was attacked. Creatures, he claimed, tormented him all night, ripping and tearing at his tent, screaming at him from the edges of the light. He built his fire as large as he could.  

“These things wouldn’t come near the light,” says the 40-year-old Stillmere native.

The man persevered until daylight, then fled to his car. The beasts followed him, skirting just inside the darkness of the thick forest…

"Holy crap,” Ben whispered as the dull cold of PTSD crept up his neck.

He continued his research at home for several more days in between the waning yawn of pill-induced fatigue. His mind and body grew sharper every hour.

He had taken some old case files from the precinct, which revealed a particular area where these kids, as well as creature sightings, were happening more frequently.

“I wonder if this is the place where the man in the article was attacked, too?”

Ben pulled up the satellite map on his computer and began searching the terrain for anomalies or anything he could find. There was a road near the same location the man described, but it appeared to vanish into nothing more than a trail evaporating into the forest.

This woodland, more than a hundred years ago, was a merging of two worlds, biologically speaking. Rolling hills, laden with a multitude of deciduous tree species, were interspersed with rocky ground and outcroppings that jutted above a canopy of northern evergreens and birch. The forest had become a beautiful and lush temperate rainforest, deep and mysterious. Much could be hidden in a place like this.

Much could be hidden; thoughts intruded on his mind. Much could be hidden.

The nomads were an evil network of people. People in every area of society, people who worked in IT and could alter images. These were only images on a computer screen.

I need to go there. I need to actually find out what is in that forest.

Ben made a plan, gathered his gear, and headed out the next morning.

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