Stiff Things by Cheryl Mullenax

Author:Cheryl Mullenax
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Comet Press
Published: 2020-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

HUNTER’S MOON

S.C. Hayden

* * *

The horse pranced sideways, stamping the loamy earth. Samuel tugged the reins and placed a hand on her neck. Her muscles trembled beneath his palm, but she stilled just the same.

He knew what spooked her. He could smell it too, a rank foul stench neither human nor animal yet somehow both.

The wind was coming from the east. That put the creature out by James McNamara’s farm. James had two girls, Sarah and Gillian, seven and eight.

Blood would spill tonight, one way or the other.

***

Samuel brought the horse to the tree line, unhitched his rifle and slipped to the ground, quiet as the dead. “Go on home,” he whispered, stroking the thoroughbred’s black smoky muzzle. “You know the way.”

He didn’t relish leaving her but she’d be no good to him in the trees and he would not hobble her. Not with the beast so close.

In the field behind him, the near full Hunter’s moon bled enough light to read by, but once he entered the forest, everything was swallowed in shadow.

Despite the gloom, he moved as though he belonged there, eyes adjusting to the darkness with each careful step.

By sight, sense, and smell, moving with stealth and silence, careful to stay downwind, he closed on his unseen mark.

The wolf was faster and stronger, a natural hunter adept in its element, but it feared Samuel’s rifle. Samuel had given it good reason to. He’d come close to taking it. It had come close to taking him. Still, they both walked the earth. But tonight, Samuel thought, things would be different. He could feel it.

A shadow loped between the trees. It moved low to the ground, using the rise and fall of the land for cover. A silhouette cut from the night itself, it paused then disappeared behind a ridge.

Samuel guessed it would double back. That’s how it liked to hunt. It circled, like a shark, drawing ever closer, impossibly swift, you’d see it only in glimpses until it was right on top of you, and then it would be too late.

When he reached the ridge, he unslung his rifle. He hadn’t seen or heard anything in particular but his gut told him to do it and when his gut spoke he listened. He scanned the slope beyond the ridge, then turned and scanned the periphery behind him. His eyes were drawn to a depression in the ground a few paces to his side. A dark shape huddled within the shadow.

Two things happened at once. Samuel brought the rifle to his shoulder and the shadow exploded into the air, yellow eyes flashing. Samuel almost squeezed the trigger but didn’t. If he had, he wouldn’t have heard the beast land behind him and he’d have been dead before he turned. As it was, he spun and fired. As soon as the 30-06 thundered, he knew the shot was no good. The beast moved to the side like smoke on wind.

The wolf had never hidden itself before, had never waited for him to come to it.

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