Glastenbury

The rustling of the grass under the deer's mouth, a single birdsong cutting through the greenery, and the forest fell silent again, no other humans in sight.  It was overwhelming for a minute, only the faint sound of water far away, but he blocked the noise out.  All that mattered was the deer, all that mattered was the hunt.  He waited, waited, then raised his gun, taking aim toward the tawny flank.  He leveled the barrel and—

The silence was sliced through with a gunshot, the forest suddenly alive with wings flapping, fleeing the area, and the deer was gone in a moment.  He lowered his gun.  One of those kids had done this, some idiot who couldn't aim.  He sighed, lifting the camouflaging branches off of him and standing.  No use remaining hidden.

"Let's go," he said.  "You scared off any hope we had of catching anything for a while."

"Yeah, sure, Middie.  I almost had 'im," the perpetrator said, a youth with gangly arms and a patchy caterpillar moustache.

"Almost isn't nearly close enough," Middie replied, moving on ahead on the trail to lead the group back to camp.  "Let's get lunch."

They walked in a loose formation, no pretense of quiet now, and Middie listened silently to their banter.  The others teased the youth for his poor aim.  He was easily the youngest among them.  As they walked, Middie heard a sound, something he couldn't quite place, maybe the breaking of a twig, but that made his hair stand on end, back into that primal hunt.  He raised his hand and they all stopped dead silent.  Middie listened.  Yes, the footfall of an animal.

"I'm going after it," he breathed almost silently.  "Go back to camp."  The others nodded.

All signs of life faded down the mountain trail with the descending hunting party.  He stepped off the dirt path, creeping his way through the forest as quickly as his 74-year-old body would allow him.  He spotted it, brown fur through the leaves, and it was gone.  The pursuit took him away from the path, but he was no novice to the mountain.  He had hunted on Glastenbury at least a million times before; there was no danger of getting lost.  The forest here was like a second home.

He followed, sometimes the sounds, sometimes the signs of footfalls in the ground—broken branches, outlines in the moss—and it took him much further than normal.  The sky began to take a pinkish tint and Middie realized that lunch was long over, that the hunters would be waiting for him to return.  One deer wasn't worth the trouble.  He turned, heading down the incline, not as concerned with noiselessness this time.

His path down the slope took him straight into a creek.  Funny, he hadn't passed that on his way up.  But it was likely that a more direct route to camp would take him past the stream.  He paused, kneeling with some effort to cup his hands and drink.  As he bent down, there was the sound behind him of breaking wood, like a twig snapping magnified.  He straightened instantly, turning, his hand going to his rifle.  The forest was as still as before, green and brown, empty.  An animal.  Some kind of animal.  Middie turned back around and began to stand up, joints complaining.  As he stood, his belt suddenly poured out onto the grassy banks, bullets scattering, a few falling into the creek.  He swore, leaning down to pick up the bullets.  He got them all, he thought, but recounted and one was missing.  Oh, well.

He started to walk away when he heard the sound of footfalls behind him, mirroring his, only a split second behind his pace.  He spun around.  The noise stopped.  He saw a single gleaming silvery speck on the banks of the stream.  He let the bullet go.  Not that he didn't have any to replace it with.  The forest was emptier than usual, he suddenly noticed, the quiet almost smothering.  The footfalls were nowhere to be heard.

Middie resigned himself to dementia and moved on.  Sometimes a twig broke behind him, sometimes he almost heard breathing.  Something was following him, he concluded, after winding down the mountain for a suspiciously long time.  Shouldn't he have reached camp by now?  And why was he coming up upon another stream again?

A bit of panic began to set into his bones, glancing over his shoulder, trying to figure out where he had taken a wrong turn.  The noises behind him were deafening, every snap of a twig like a falling redwood, his hair on end.  Was he imagining it or could he feel hot breath down his neck sometimes?  He walked briskly down the stream, following the banks, his feet sometimes slipping into the water and the noise of it nearly sending him into cardiac arrest.  He suddenly remembered the tales of the Glastenbury Monster, some kind of Vermont cousin to Bigfoot.  He had laughed at them.  The green hunters, the ones waiting for him anxiously, they had told him it was true.  That the Indians thought this place was cursed.  That Bigfoot would catch you.  That settlers had seen UFOs above the mountain and avoided it.  He had laughed.

He stepped on something strange and his foot nearly slid out from under him.  He lifted his boot and saw a single, unspent silvery bullet.

He began to run.

The forest was crashing down around him, or maybe that was the monster bearing down on him, or it was just his heart racing.  The dark green of the dusky woods blurred around him as he ran, his boots pounding on the roots and dirt, tripping, never falling, shocks running up through his body from his feet.  There, he knew, if he could just go there, he would make it to camp.  He would be safe at camp.  If he just took this trail.  He was almost there, a quick turn to the left and he would be there.

He was suddenly looking out, not into forest, but into open air.  The trees were below him.  He was high up the mountain, miles from camp.  He could almost see where it would be.  The cold November air and the nearly-dark skies made the faraway lights of Bennington visible, just on the horizon.  Behind him, something moved.  He turned.

The forest was empty and cold again; nothing was alive in there.  He took a step back from it, the dark of the spaces between the trees suddenly the same shade of black as skeletal eye sockets.  He felt what little resistance there was beneath his feet give way and suddenly he was upside down, rock on every side of him.  He screamed for help, screamed for anything that could save him, but the only answer was the crash of tumbling rocks whisking him down, down into the forest below.