The December Incident

Neil Whitfield

December 1976, England

Aheavy snow was falling. The wind crept through the gutters and cried through the eaves, wrapping the old buildings in a shroud of grit and ice. The millstone walls looked gaunt in the listless winter light. The windows, heavy-lidded with lintels of immutable rock, looked down on the snowbound lawn with a resigned sadness. High in the main house, above the gothic lacerations of the grand architrave, a sallow face stared out into the swirling white.

“Sixty years,” the deputy headmaster took a sip of instant coffee and a drag from a cigarette. “Sixty years, man and boy, I’ve been at this school and I’ve never seen the likes of this. It’s like the end of days.”

“You’re cheerful this morning,” said Mrs. Crabtree brightly, turning the page of her newspaper.

“It’s grand Yorkshire weather, Dave,” said Mr. Vine, the head of English, “and it has its benefits. The busses from Rochdale, Skipton, and Ilkley have already telephoned the office: there’s no way they’re getting over the moors. If I were a betting man, which I am, I’d say half the boys in town will blob as well. They only need half an excuse not to walk up the hill.”

“Fine by me,” said Mrs. Crabtree.

“It sounds like there’ll be more teachers than pupils today,” said the deputy headmaster wearily, extinguishing his cigarette and turning away from the cold glass, “but that doesn’t negate our responsibility as educators. It may be the last day of term but term-time it undoubtedly still is. So that includes those of you,” his eyes to Mrs. Crabtree “who intend to allow the boys to play games or listen to the wireless,” he straightened his tie, “and I’ll thank you to address me as Mr. Sewell when we’re on school premises.” He left the room.

“Aye-aye, Captain,” said Mr. Vine as the staffroom door clicked home.

“What’s his problem?” asked Mrs. Crabtree.

“The headmaster is snowed-in at Harrogate which means Sewell is in charge. So he’s got a broomstick up his arse.”

“Clearly,” she agreed.

“And… y’know…” he added slowly, “it’s the 21st.”

The pupils began to arrive in small groups. A few walked from the nearby villages, cocooned in duffle coats and thick-knitted scarves. Some of the local farmers brought the boys up from Oerdale in batches, ten at a time, huddled on the flatbeds of Landrovers, their cargo arriving at the school gates dusted white and inches from fever.

“Nowt like a bit of Dunkirk spirit!” the drivers shouted as the half-dead teenagers shuffled miserably into the building.

Inside, the school was no more welcoming. Gone was the usual cacophony of gathering children, replaced by the echoes of too few feet in too big a hall. The boiler fought against the relentless cold, offering barely enough warmth to melt the spirals of frost from the window panes. The pipes boomed rhythmically as the pressure spiked and fell, shaking through the building like the last beats of a dying heart. The boys made their way quietly to their lessons as the school bell rang, their spirits subdued by the chill of the meltwater in their woollen blazers.

An excruciating quiet. The school felt purgatorial; uptight like an exam room with no questions. A hospital at night. The scrape of chairs; the syncopated tick of several wrong clocks. There was no chatter or excitement, no talk of Christmas just three days away. When the break bell rang at ten o’clock, a few boys ran to the snow, thrilled by the novelty and extremity of it. But most did not, deterred by the blizzard that scratched at the high windows like a ravenous animal, desperate to get in. As the last of his physics class left his room, Mr. Sewell lit a cigarette and began to prepare for his next lesson.

“Sir! Sir!” it was Perry, a fifth-year, running in from the hall, his coat and shoes crusted with thick snow, “Sir, the football pitch – you need to come now, Sir!”

The cat was dead, hanging from the goal by its neck. A group of boys stood around it, fascinated. One prodded it with a ruler.

“Is that really necessary, Harris?”

“I was seeing if it was dead, Sir.”

“Of course it’s dead, boy. The only living things stupid enough to stay out in this weather are you idiots. Please, all of you, clear off.” A moment of hesitation. “Now!” he shouted, and the boys dispersed. Mrs. Crabtree was there, a bobble-hat pulled down over her ears.

“Do you suppose it got itself trapped and froze?” she asked as Mr. Sewell pulled at the netting, working the animal loose.

“There is no such thing as an accident,” he grumbled.

“Maybe someone found it dead and hung it there to be helpful… you know… so Mr. Cruikshank would find it?”

“I don’t care to theorize, Cathrine,” he said, holding the corpse by its frozen pelt, “it makes little difference to the outcome.”

“Should I call the vet? To dispose of it?”

“That won’t be necessary,” he turned towards the school house.

“Shame,” said Mrs. Crabtree, shuffling behind him, “we should send a notice. Someone will be missing the poor thing.”

“I’ll deal with it,” he replied, “it’s my cat.”

The boiler room was in the chapel crypt at the far end of the grounds. It had been converted for the most unspiritual reasons: proximity to the water main. Even so, it remained a solemn and brooding chamber; a grim oubliette into which no one, if they could help it, ever set foot.

Fitting, he thought, carrying the cat towards the furnace. It should have been the warmest place in the school but his body shuddered with a deep, pervasive cold. The furnace door was already open, a neat rectangle of raging fire, framed by the blackness. A vision of hell. He wrapped the corpse in a hessian coal sack, then pushed it unceremoniously into the flames.

He saw something as the flesh burned. A face staring back at him, a photograph curling slowly in uncanny defiance of the fire. A face he knew: Max Breare. Mr. Sewell looked down, away. By his feet was a brown cardboard box, one flap open at the top, the other marked in pen with the words:

December Incident, 1962. Do not remove.

The ‘December Incident’. A euphemism. The box should have been locked in the office with the ledgers; what was it doing here? A hand touched his shoulder. He recoiled, turned and screamed.

“Forgive me!” said a familiar voice.

“Jesus Christ, Cruikshank!” Sewell exclaimed, “you frightened the bloody life out of me!”

“Forgive me, Sir, I’ve come down here for my flask,” the caretaker held up a battered Thermos and gestured over his shoulder into the dark at a filthy deck chair, a newspaper, and a miner’s lamp, hidden in the corner. “It’s the only place the little bastards can’t find me,” he explained.

Mr. Sewell took a deep breath and composed himself with a shake of the head. He pointed at the cardboard box.

“What’s going on here?” he asked, “Where did you get this?”

“I’m sorry, Sir?”

“This box. The furnace door was open. Why were you burning these… this… who told you to…”

“Sorry, Sir, I don’t know. I was just at the office. We’ve had a call from town: we’re to send the boys home immediately. I was just collecting my flask and…’’

“Excuse me?”

“The storm is getting worse, Sir. They worry some of the lads will be stuck here overnight.”

“We can’t have that,” said Mr. Sewell absently, his mind elsewhere.

“Johnny Bowden is going to plow the lane so I can get the old bus down, if she starts, but it means someone needs to stay here and close down. You know, for the holidays.”

It took a moment for the deputy headmaster to decode the request.

“Oh! Quite!” he said at last, “Yes. That’s fine, I can do that. No one knows the school better than me.”

“I dare say so, Sir,” said Mr. Cruikshank. The old man nodded his thanks and left with his orders, his flask tucked into the fold of his elbow. Mr. Sewell paused for a moment before closing the furnace door and picking up the box.

It was noon before the last of the teachers left. Mr. Vine drove the final car in the convoy, the vehicle swerving back and forth across the compacted snow like a sloppy drunk. Mr. Sewell watched from the staff room window. Another cigarette, another instant coffee. He tipped the last of the milk down the small sink and rinsed the bottle.

He began the final close-down in the classrooms, straightening the chairs, locking the windows, and emptying the wastebaskets. He turned off the lights and locked the doors as he worked his way systematically from room to room. He topped up the antifreeze in the heating system, cut the gas supply to the kitchens, and watered the plants in the biology lab. By three o’clock, it was already night. The storm still raged, but now instead of swirling white, the outside world was flecks of charcoal grey, tumbling into blackness like a sulphurous spew of volcanic ash. The wind howled down the chimneys and wheezed beneath the classroom doors. The snow drifted deep and buried the driveway completely. The walk home, which would already have been dangerous, would soon be impossible. The idea of being trapped here alone terrified him.

Where is your spine, boy? What are you made of? Stop crying and get on with it!

There was one last job to do, one more place to check: The old dormitory. The school hadn’t had boarders since 1965; they were an expense and a constant labour, and after ‘the December incident’ the school’s reputation had been irreparably diminished. The stairs to the dormitory spiralled upwards through the oldest part of the building like the spire of an old church, driven like a stake through the school’s medieval heart. The ascent was disorientating, unlit.

You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you? You can hear them, can’t you?

You can hear me.

His leather soles scraped on the raw stone. The steps were steep and awkwardly spaced, too short for a full stride, too high to take in pairs. He huffed with the effort, his aging lungs inflamed by the dust and the stale, cold air.

“For God’s sake!” he muttered.

You may have forgiven yourself, Sewell, but we have not.

“God is my judge, not you.”

A tragic accident – isn’t that what you told them?

The staircase ended abruptly at a red door. The old paint flaked along the grain of the wood in vertical lines; a fine dust covered the doorknob.

“I did nothing wrong,” he said indignantly, and threw open the door.

The boys stood by their beds. No mattresses, just rusted springs on old military frames. The oil lamps were lit, flickering with an unnatural blue light as plumes of ice blew in through the broken windows. The boys looked as they had the last time he saw them: young, frightened, drawn, and pale, their skin glistening with a delicate crystalline frost. They had once been such a raucous bunch; the Wormald brothers, Danny Caldwell, Andrew Collier, and the troublemaker, Max Breare.

“You brought it on yourselves!” he told them, just as he had on the morning of December 22, 1962, when he had discovered their bodies.

“You turned off the heating,” said Breare, his lips cracked and frozen, his skin hanging loose from his rotting bones.

“You refused to behave!”

“You made us run in the snow, Sir,” said Caldwell meekly, “with bare feet, in our pyjamas. We were already half-frozen when you locked us in.”

“Boys must learn discipline; all actions have consequences!”

“But what about your actions?” asked Johnny Wormald, the youngest, “what consequence awaits you, Sir?”

“What actions are those, boy? The heating malfunctioned.”

“Not in your quarters it didn’t, Sir,” said Collier.

The boy reached into him. Sewell was beset by visions of death and regret: a heart bristling with arrows, a mother dead on her birthing bed, a black sun sinking into a red sea; the flesh burning away from the face of an old friend. Black bile filled his throat and poured from his mouth, running down to his chest and soaking into his shirt. He knew the truth. He had repeated the lie so often he almost believed it. They had been the cruel ones. The name-calling, the insolence, the marijuana, and the girls, smuggled in at all hours of the night. They had been the abusers.

“It was an accident!” he insisted, “I only meant for you to be uncomfortable. A little chill, that’s all, a bad night’s sleep before a long day… to teach you a lesson… It was an accident!”

“If it was an accident, there would be nobody to blame.” Breare stepped forward into a pool of moonlight, a straight razor unfolded in his hand, “we were children.”

“Okay,” said Sewell, his hands raised.

This is all in your mind, you old fool, an imaginary blade can’t hurt you! This is a madness brought on by the cold and the dark. A paranoid delusion; guilt made real.

Breare slashed forward with the blade. It seared across the soft flesh on Sewell’s hands, splitting the skin and spilling his blood onto the dormitory floor. The pain was real.

“Wait!” he begged, “tell me what you want! I beg you, please! It was my fault, but I swear I meant no harm!” he closed his eyes in prayer, “Father forgive me for I have sinned!”

“It is not his forgiveness you need!” said Breare, “for your cruelty, for what you did, you beg to us.”

“Please!” he said, “Not one day has passed that I would not have exchanged your lives for mine!”

“And not one day will pass that you will find peace. Nor forgiveness. You will spend your eternity unresolved, in this place, just as we have.”

The razor slid across the old man’s throat. His gullet filled with blood, filled his mouth with the taste of rancid iron. He grabbed his neck to stem the bleeding but the blood flowed between his fingers. He fell forward, gasping for air, convulsing to the rhythm of the open artery.

Then suddenly it was black. He lay on the wet floorboards in the falling snow in the silence of a winter’s night. The spectres were gone, his throat was healed, the vision was over. His hands were numb and purple with the cold and he could feel the ice in his nostrils and heavy on his eyelashes. Shivering, he pulled himself to his feet and staggered to the door.

He turned the handle. It was locked, his keys were gone. Come now, syncopated tick of several wrong clocks. Come now, cold fingers of death.

Originally from the UK, Neil Whitfield is a professional writer living and working in New York City. This is his fiction debut.

 

Faces

DJ Tyrer

The town is full. There are faces looking out of every window, if you know how to catch them right. They call Maxwell a ghost town, but although devoid of life, it is crowded nonetheless.

I come here every month to look in the windows, to try to catch a glimpse of their faces.

There are no rules about coming here, no laws banning visitors to Maxwell, not like those towns in the coalfields where perpetual fires burn below the earth like an upwelling of flames from Hell. The streets are public roads that anyone can travel, though few have cause. Technically, entering a building would be trespassing, but I doubt anybody cares. Nobody has lived in them, worked in them in years.

No great disaster carried off Maxwell, no tragedy, unless you count the closure of the mills as a tragedy. Business died and the town died with it, the people moving west in search of hope, leaving their dead behind in a dead town, empty save for memories.

The sound of my car engine startles the birds that roost here every time I drive into town, a roaring beast chasing them from their perches. But, it doesn’t expel the ghosts from their stations, gazing out silently upon the town they knew in life.

I never park in the same place – there is an infinite number, it seems – but, begin my search anew each time from a different starting point, adopting a different perspective. Each time, the town appears different in subtle ways, beyond the shifting of the seasons, but never in a manner that provides answers or offers closure. I might see the faces of the ghosts looking down, impassively, at me, but never do I see theirs.

I first came to Maxwell ten years ago. In some ways, I never left. Pamela and Martin never did. They’re still here, somewhere, I know it, no matter what anyone else might say.

It was my idea, my fault: I suggested it. We were taking a trip across the state, visiting places of historical interest, antiquing. Maxwell was one of the places I found online. Not the oldest, nor the most interesting, but intriguing. I regret ever adding it to our itinerary.

The visit really should have been nothing much – it isn’t as if Maxwell is replete with sites of any interest, just the detritus of over half a century ago – just a stroll through the echoing streets.

Martin was fascinated by the town, as if it were a gigantic playground. Ignoring our calls, he ran off, eager to explore, not hearing us when we tried to call him back.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get him,” his mother said, hurrying after him, an exasperated smile playing about her lips.

I laughed. Yes, I laughed. In that moment, I, too, was caught up in his enthusiasm, in the game. My son was happy and that delighted me.

No parent can fail to find pleasure in the exuberance and energy of a young child.

It was a perfect moment – one I wish had never ended – Martin’s squeals echoing back to me along empty streets.

Then, abruptly, they ceased.

It was strange. Echoes should slowly die, decline away to nothing. But, not his happy cries, nor the sound of my wife’s hurrying footsteps.

It was a sudden silence, oppressive and deep.

“Martin? Pamela?” I shouted their names and heard them echo back to me, unanswered.

They were gone.

Not that I realised it then, accepted it.

I still don’t accept it. That is why I return every month, seeking, just as I did that day.

It was impossible for them to just be gone, to have vanished. They had to be there, somewhere, within Maxwell, trapped somehow, lost.

Not that I had heard a thing, a shriek, a shout, a crash. Nothing, save silence.

I looked everywhere I could in the immediate streets, initially on the ground floors of the shops, then upstairs as high as their attics and down into their basements, checking every room, opening every cupboard, kicking down doors if I had to. But, nothing.

That evening, I called the State Troopers.

We searched late into the night and all the next day, and the next, looked in every conceivable place they could be. Searched the entire town.

They had been taken. That is what the State Troopers eventually decided, casting their net wider.

Logical, I guess, given the lack of any evidence they were still in the town, dead or alive, and the fact I hadn’t heard anything to actually signify an accident.

Of course, I hadn’t heard any cries for help or the sound of an engine, either.

I think they even came to suspect me. Even more logical a train of thought. They questioned me several times, examined the car minutely. But, of course, they found nothing.

As their thoughts moved away from Maxwell and the energy of their search declined, I returned to the town, certain my wife and son were still there, despite the absence of any evidence.

I couldn’t give up.

It was about a month after their disappearance that I caught my first glimpse of a face at a window.

They were the first person I’d seen who wasn’t part of the search party. I’m not sure what I expected them to reveal, but I rushed inside the house to confront them. But, there was nobody there.

I thought they’d run away, but then, I spotted another face, and another, each one visible in the glass only if you got the angle exactly right.

They perplexed me. They still do, only I’ve grown used to their silent presence, watching as I explore the town. They are the dead, the memories of Maxwell, I’m certain.

In the secret inner sanctum of my heart, I know I never shall find my wife and son among the living – they’ve been gone too long. But, I hold out hope they haven’t abandoned Maxwell entirely and that, one day, I shall see them again, if only fleetingly, upon a pane of glass.

I don’t know how or why, but Pamela and Martin are trapped in Maxwell, or its shadow, unable to get back to me. It is that thought, that promise vouchsafed deep within my soul that keeps calling me back to these silent streets and empty shops.

If I cannot rescue them, perhaps, one day, I may see them, if only for one last time.

Or, maybe, I will join them, leave behind the land of the living to become a ghost caught in glass like a fly trapped in amber.

But, not today. Not today.

Today, I return to my car, watched by unseen, silent faces and startle the birds, once again, with the thrum of my engine as I leave Maxwell behind for another month, silent and empty.

A ghost town rich with ghosts.

DJ Tyrer is the person behind Atlantean Publishing and has been widely published in anthologies and magazines, including Chilling Horror Short Stories (Flame Tree), and The Horror Zine’s Book of Ghost Stories (Hellbound Books), and issues of Sirens Call, and has a novella available, The Yellow House (Dunhams Manor).

 

Past Due

Laura J. Campbell

Sidney DeGreen had promised to be home by 8:00 p.m. It was now 11:42 pm.
Chelsea cleared the table, placing the special second-anniversary dinner she had prepared for them into plastic containers. Celebration transformed into leftovers with the sealing of plastic lids. She blew out the candles she had lit for the romantic occasion that didn’t happen.

She sat on the sofa, looking at her pet, a Chilean rose tarantula, named Other. The spider sat in her habitat, looking at her benefactress as if trying to ease Chelsea’s sadness.

“I thought he was the one,” Chelsea said. “I guess I was wrong.”

She looked out of the window, the rain appropriately beginning to fall, its heavy drops splattering against the glass. “Way to break up, Sid.” She slugged back warm champagne.

She looked at Other.  “He just walked away and left his things here. Even his toothbrush. It means something when a man keeps his toothbrush in your bathroom. But maybe I read too much into that. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

The arachnid looked like she was understanding Chelsea’s words.

“At least I kept my photograph of the planet Pluto up, even when he told me it was geeky and he wanted me to take it down,” Chelsea said, nodding to the beautiful colourized image of the demoted planet that decorated her living room wall. “He put that picture of Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’ up in the hallway for our first anniversary. He said the lovers in the picture looked like me and him. I guess so. All gild and no gold.”

 “I didn’t even warrant a text to break up; just the ultimate no-show. I’m a fool. I even got a bank account with him.” She filled her champagne flute again, opening her laptop computer.

She opened the banking website, to check their mutual balance.

“And it just got worse,” she told Other. “Can you believe it? He took $2200 out of the account. He transferred it to his personal card. That leaves about $2200 in the account. I guess he was dividing it 50/50. A divorce settlement and we weren’t even married.”

The spider moved up towards the edge of the glass of its enclosure as if to comfort her.

Chelsea slept restlessly. Her cell phone’s blue light suddenly illuminated, rousing her out of her fitful sleep.

It was 4:44 a.m.

There was a text from Sid: “I’m sorry” followed by a broken heart emoji. “I’ll always love you. Good-bye.”

She had no words. Her emotions were raw.    

She put the phone face down on her nightstand.

It was 8:00 a.m. and Chelsea’s champagne headache did not appreciate the sharp rapping at her front door.

“It’s too early for a Saturday,” she complained, throwing on her robe and tying it around her waist. As she got out of bed her foot knocked over the empty champagne bottle.

She spied through the peephole in the door: if it was Sid attempting to reconcile, she was in no mood to deal with him.

It wasn’t Sid. It was a policewoman, dressed in a crisp uniform standing at Chelsea’s door.

Chelsea opened the door and let the policewoman into the house. Chelsea was confused why the police were visiting her. Half the money was Sid’s to begin with; he had every right to it. She hadn’t reported it stolen.

“It took a while to locate you,” the policewoman stated.

Chelsea started the coffee machine.

 “Why are you here?” Chelsea asked. Her head throbbed. Could you get arrested for being intoxicated in your own home? She wondered.

“We didn’t find Mr. DeGreen’s wallet until very late last night. It had been thrown quite a distance into some bushes by the impact. Your name was written on the back of photograph he carried with him of the two of you together. But it was just your first name. There are more than a few women named Chelsea in the city. We needed to make sure we were knocking on the correct door. The ATM receipt helped – we got your name and address off the account when the bank opened this morning.”

 “His wallet was where? What impact?” Chelsea poured herself a cup of coffee, offering a cup to the policewoman, who declined with professional grace.

“He was hit by a car.” The policewoman squared her shoulders. “I’m sorry. Mr. DeGreen is dead. He passed away from his injuries this morning in the hospital, at 4:30 a.m.”

“What?” Chelsea was tasting an unpleasant cocktail of emotions: confusion, anger, grief, shock. Violently shaken together. “That’s not possible.”

“He was walking through a shopping centre parking lot, last night, at around 7:00 p.m.,” the policewoman said. “From the parking lot security video feed, he was heading towards a jewellery store in the centre, checking his wallet. His head was down. Regardless, it was a hit-and-run. The car should have stopped; Mr. DeGreen had the right-of-way. He was just at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Terrible odds. He was initially admitted to emergency surgery as a John Doe. I got here as soon as I could. I would hate for you to figure it out from watching the morning news.”

“It looks like you’re the closest thing to next-of-kin he had,” the policewoman continued, handing Chelsea the wallet. Chelsea recognized it; she had given it to him as a birthday present the year before. The corner of a receipt had been partially pulled out. A jewellery store receipt: a diamond engagement ring, $2200 balance due upon pick-up.

Still nestled neatly in the billfold were twenty-two one-hundred-dollar bills.

 The policewoman handed a business card to Chelsea.  “Please call me if you need anything. I’ll let you know if we get any leads. But know that these cases are difficult. Hit-and-runs are hard to solve.” She let herself out.

 Chelsea melted into the sofa. Other scurried up, concerned about her human.

Chelsea pulled up the text Sid had somehow sent her at 4:44 a.m.

 She buried her face in her hands. “I thought he’d left me – but, no. He’d been taken from me.”

 The spider settled attentively next to the glass.

 Chelsea picked up her phone and returned to Sid’s last text; she opened the reply box to the message. “I’m sorry, too,” she typed. “I’ll always love you, as well. Good-bye.”

 She followed it with a broken heart emoji.

 As she hit ‘send,’ the sorrow in her heart erupted.

It would be hours before she could open the refrigerator and look at the remnants of the dinner they never shared.

The opportunity that now would never be.

Laura J. Campbell lives and writes in Houston, Texas. She is encouraged in her writing by her children, Alexander & Samantha. Mrs. Campbell won the 2007 James B. Baker Award for short story for her science fiction tale, 416175. She has sold over 45 short stories and two novels. Her short fiction has appeared in Pressure Suite: Digital Science Fiction Anthology 3, Under the Full Moon’s Light, Gods & Services, Haunted MTL, Luna Station Quarterly, The Weird and Whatnot, A Celebration of Storytelling, and many other publications. Many of Mrs. Campbell’s more recent works are available through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Laura-J.-Campbell/e/B07K6SZJJ9

 

Starless

Miriam H. Harrison

She had heard of stars beyond the dome of satellites. Some nights she looked to the sky with quiet hope, watching for the light of some faraway world. But every time, she looked up into the familiar scattering of satellites.

She knew their paths across the sky, the pictures they painted in their stippled light. She was connected to the Leonid network. Its satellites were as far as the sky, its transmissions as near as her thoughts. She tracked its movements, divined her fortunes. As always her constellation sat high in the sky, promising her a dim and starless future

Miriam H. Harrison studies full time, works on the side, writes when she should be doing other things, and trains the dust bunnies to fend for themselves. She is an active member of the Horror Writers Association, and her writings can be found dismembered and scattered in various dark corners.

 

The Great Owl

H.T. Grossen

Aspen trunks flitted by like white wisps of campfire smoke. Spruce log and pipe tobacco still hung gently on the couple’s flannel jackets. Michael rested his hand on her thigh and slowly took the wide, winding turns of the old mountain highway. Daphne glanced up from the pictures on her phone to smile at him. They were driving downhill in the moonlight now after spending this October afternoon watching the sun lend its brightness to the blazing Rocky Mountain aspen trees. The coin-shaped leaves had rattled and whispered secrets in the cool thin air, changing from emerald green to deep orange and golden yellow on the mountain slope opposite their fire circle.

Daphne explored the mountains with him every chance they had to get away from their jobs and the city, and Michael loved to be her guide. He had an unsurpassed knowledge of the forest which came from growing up within it. His family had owned land here seemingly since the dawn of time. He knew where there were dark caves where bears slumbered, verdant meadows where roaming elk fed, sheer cliffs where eagles made their nests, crystal waters where the rainbow trout spawned. Yet, through all the time they spent trekking through shining scrub oak and over silky streams, Michael always kept his eyes on the sky. Any time she asked him about it, he simply smiled a sad smile and said, “The Curse of the Great Owl.” At this, she would laugh and keep hiking, but always, even as she trekked on ahead of him, his gaze remained upturned.

As darkness had begun to sneak across their campsite earlier that evening, Michael took on the serious demeanour and appearance of his angular-faced tribal ancestors– and Daphne’s smile shone white through the grainy light the fire cast. He began telling stories. It was what he had been doing the first time they met years ago at a party in these very woods, and what had made her fall in love with him. Daphne loved the life he lent the folktales of his people; he wove warm colourful tapestries of emotion and wrapped you in them, you were made to feel as the people in his stories felt. He told thrilling childhood tales of first hunts and tales of long-passed relatives. But everyone’s absolute favourite story was “The Curse of The Great Owl”.

His voice took on a slow, sombre cadence as the firelight reflected in his black eyes — and he told the tale. Immediately Daphne was hypnotized, transported in her mind to the ancient woods when the land was young. The story began long ago, with a mountain shrew who came cold, tired, and hungry to a young tribesman who was hunting deep in the forest. She said if he would share his strength with her, the old woman could give him gifts of knowledge: how to build a fire, how to build a house, how to build a family. He agreed, and she began to teach him the ways.

The young man built a fire with his new knowledge to keep them warm that night. The next day, she educated him further — he built her a house with that knowledge, and cooked her food he had caught as further payment. On the final day, she directed him in the ways of love, and made him promise two things: to return in a week to check on her and bring her some food, and to find her a husband with his new training. If he could not find her a willing man from his tribe when he returned the next week, then she would become his bride as payment for the knowledge she gave him. He agreed quickly and enthusiastically — but when he left the forest and used her knowledge to woo and marry a beautiful woman, he quickly forgot about the old shrew and started his new life.

He returned to that ancient part of the woods with his family one day much later in life, venturing out to hunt and see whatever had happened to the old woman. But when they arrived they found the house was empty and the fire recently put out, coals still warm and smouldering. The man and his family wandered around the clearing, calling out for her, when a shadow blocked out the sun. They all raised their hands to their faces and looked up as a great owl descended from on high into the clearing. This awful beast screeched as it landed and hopped towards the nearest child. The bird was twice as big as the largest warrior, and three times as strong—and had the hungry soul of the vengeful shrew within it. The man dashed to put himself between the monster and his young one, but it battered him aside with a sweep of its mighty wing and gobbled up the child.

The owl sped about the clearing, devouring his children and wife; all but himself and his oldest son. The owl levelled her gaze at the two terrified men backed against the side of her house.

“You broke your word to me. Now you and your descendants will never know love.” The old shrew’s voice seemed to echo deafeningly from deep within their minds, “You will grow a family, but when you have found happiness, I will come and I will take it from you. Always.”

“More time! I just need more time!” The father yelled back.

The owl’s beak snapped shut around his screaming head and his powerful body flopped limply forward onto the pine needles soaked with his family’s blood. The eldest son escaped this grizzly fate by running away through the dense woods while his father was eaten. He hid for three days in a cave before he returned to his village– belly empty, but head full of fear and tales of this great owl. It was to be his household’s curse from that day on: the eldest son should not build a family, should not marry their soulmate; else The Great Owl would come and swallow their love in vengeance for her loneliness. As the curse had been for many generations it will be for many more unless the proud family could either slay the bird or stop falling in love. But the men of this family were just as drawn to love as the bloodthirsty owl was to its revenge.

The telling finished as the last yellow flame flickered and fell into glowing orange coals. The twilight dwindled, mirroring the level of wine left in the bottle they had shared. They clicked on flashlights and shook off the weight of the story and the alcohol as they threw their tent, chairs, and camping supplies into the back of the car. The hatch slammed shut and the engine started, signalling the end of their autumnal vacation.

Now on the wide forest road, Daphne craned her head towards the sunroof to see the bright moon glimmering down on them through the treetops and silver clouds. They were still deep in the mountains but would emerge on the eastern slope and be home in just a few short hours. Michael stole a glance at her slender neck and let the Subaru’s wheels take him around the next corner. Rounding the bend he went rigid and gasped, slamming on his brakes and putting the car into park. Daphne braced herself with both hands against the heavy dashboard, shaken, staring ahead to see what had stopped their romantic descent.

In front of them, an enormous figure crouched over the still carcass of an antlered buck in the centre of the highway. A vast and monstrous head snapped around; round eyes the size of dinner plates glinted in the headlights. It was a great owl: taller than a man and twice as wide. A cold and unnatural intelligence examined them through eyes that focused and refocused, the metallic silver-white feathers about its face expanding instinctually outwards in a gesture of intimidation.

Eyes narrowing, it released a long blood-chilling screech into the forest night; bits of deer intestine and cords of spittle sprayed from its beak and long, wavering, snake-like tongue. The couple in the car gaped in disbelief, eyes wide, Daphne unwittingly and violently shaking. The long black tongue slithered back into the beak which it clacked once, then the bird bent low to the asphalt. Brake smoke and warm exhaust swirled across the black pavement as the huge wings opened, the wingspan dwarfing the highway. With a single beat, the muscled breast propelled the bird the distance between the carrion and the station wagon. It landed with a bone-jarring thump on the hood, the tips of its claws puncturing the metal of the side panels where it clung. 

Hot reality came rushing back to both of them as Michael yelled, “Back! Get in back!” and quickly helped her between the driver and passenger seats. 

The tip of the huge beak smashed three, four, five times through different places on the windshield, sending small slivers of tempered glass flying about the front seats. Once Daphne’s tangled legs were clear of the centre console, Michael leaned across the car, opened the glovebox, and pulled out an antler-handled hunting knife. There was a loud, popping scrunch as one of the metre-wide feet of the creature plunged its claws into the windshield. With a gust of cold air, it tore the sheet of protective glass away from the car’s frame and sent it whirling into the darkness. The wild-eyed bird bobbed its head down, looked into the car, and let loose another ear-splitting shriek; moldy, coppery, breath filled the space.

Daphne was terrified to look away from the horror unfolding in front of her, but her racing mind remembered the shotgun Michael kept in the long bag in the back. She crawled halfway over the seat, throwing clothing and gear to the side, scrabbling to reach it.

“You’re not supposed to be here! Not yet! More time! I just need more time!” he yelled, echoing his own father’s words, and his grandfather’s words before him– when they were said aloud there was the dread feeling of insuppressible fate coalescing as the vicious cycle neared completion. The bird’s foot reached in repeatedly to pull him out of the car seat, and each time it was withdrawn with a fresh wound. Compared to the great bird’s slick black talons the hunting knife he held seemed hopelessly small, but he shouted and slashed at each attempt of the gargantuan bird’s scaled feet to take him away. With every lunge, there was the sound of shirt fabric and flesh tearing, and big drops of both Michael and the owl’s blood spattered each time the claws came away. 

Daphne knelt in the back seat and unzipped the gun bag as fast as her shaking fingers would allow. She turned for a moment to watch Michael lunge forward and sink his blade deep into one of the forward-facing toes that rested on the dashboard– the giant owl hopped backward with the knife stuck in its foot. Earsplitting screeches rent the night air, and turbulent flapping rocked the car. 

Daphne turned to focus, pulling out the long gun and fumbling around inside the case, spilling shotgun shells that clustered around her knees on the car seat. She focused on feeding two shells into the gun and then pumping once with a solid “CHIK-CHOK” before adding the third to the underbarrel chamber, just like Michael had taught her months before. 

Michael reached past the steering wheel to try and retrieve the blade where it protruded from the bleeding digit. But the predator’s wide skull angled down when it sensed the movement, eyes wild with fury, and in an instant, the razor-sharp beak of the raptor was upon him. 

“SNOCK!” the hellish mouth closed, and the stump of where Michael’s right hand used to be fountained blood onto the hood of the car. The pain was immense, and his vision blurred as the huge, yellow, feral orbs of the owl’s eyes lowered to look at him through the wide front opening of the car. 

“Please, I need more time!” yelled Michael again, unconsciously fulfilling the prophecy. He howled in pain and rage as the mouth opened and the slithering black tongue reached for him, but the noise was drowned out by an ear-ringing roar as a warm, wet sensation washed over him. He saw one of the owl’s great eyes explode into the night air with an iridescent splash.

Ears ringing, a piece of hot paper wadding skimmed the side of his face as the shotgun belched flame and buckshot past his head a second time. Another puff of disintegrated feathers and hot blood misted over the hood and onto his face and body. Daphne crouched in the back seat chambering the third round when the great bird launched off into the night, flapping unsteadily, whirl-winding yellow leaves, and trumpeting its screeching pain across the Rocky Mountains. Daphne clambered out of the car and aimed wildly after the fading grey shape in the black sky. The final shell kicked her shoulder backwards as she fired it and shrieked after the huge bird, adrenaline making her voice break.

Breathing heavily, Daphne tossed the shotgun into the back seat where it bounced on top of unspent shells. She pulled open the driver’s side door and helped lower Michael gently onto the ground, leaning him against the front tire. He leaned his moaning head back against the car and she could see long ugly gashes across his entire chest. A puncture in the side panel from one of the great talons mixed its steam into the cloud of his warm breath that floated upwards. Daphne wound her flannel tightly around the stump of his hand, a dark crimson slowly spreading over the fabric.

“It’s my fault,” Michael croaked.

“How! What– What was that thing?! Michael, what the hell!” Daphne stared at him through her tears as the shaking returned to her hands and body.

“The story of The Great Owl… It’s true. It’s all true. It is the curse of my family.” He reached with his good hand into his front jeans pocket, where he pulled out a black satin box. “I love you, Daphne. I didn’t want to, because I knew… I knew she’d come. But I couldn’t fight it. I wanted you too badly.”

He grimaced as they both strained to help him stand.

“It doesn’t make sense…” Michael coughed, and a small stream of blood bubbled down his chin as he put his arm around her. “I don’t… I don’t even have an eldest son.”

Michael saw Daphne’s hand drift unconsciously to her stomach, and a sob escaped him. “Oh, no…” He hung his head. “No, no, no, no…”

“Michael!” Daphne interrupted as she wiped her tears and opened the door. “We’re going to get you down this mountain. That’s what we have to do now. That’s all.”

Once he lay, pale and breathing shallowly, in the back seat, a gust of wind blew through the trees. She spun and looked into the air, picking up and loading the shotgun a second time. She kept her eyes upturned, the way Michael always had when they had explored the mountains together. Their crushed car coughed and sputtered but continued to run, so she tossed the gun into the passenger seat, climbed behind the wheel, and put the car in drive. She squinted through the icy mountain air that whipped against her face through the missing windshield and sped down the mountain. 

There was a cough, and his warm familiar voice cut into her anxiety and focus. “Daphne… It’s my fault.” He coughed again. “I loved you. I just wish… I wish I had more time.”

“Stop saying that! Please, just hang on, Michael!” She didn’t take her eyes off the road as she accelerated faster. “We’re going to get down this mountain! Together!”

She glanced up for a moment to see his pale face smiling weakly at her in the rear-view mirror– when the interior of the car suddenly darkened. The shadow of enormous wings high above was blocking out the light of the moon, keeping pace steadily over the quickly moving station wagon.

H.T. Grossen lives in Pueblo Colorado beneath the long evening shadow of the Rocky Mountains with his magical wife, his beautiful children, and several animals of varying levels of intelligence. His work has been previously published in Red Planet Magazine, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and other places.