He blinked a few times and squeezed his eyes shut as he tried
to clear the miasma that lingered from the night before. The heavy fog outside
the deer blind that early morning rivaled that which engulfed his mind.
His hands tightened around the rifle, although it was
unloaded and he’d brought no ammunition with him. This deer blind on his ranch
was a place of solitude for him, a place to reflect and shed the after effects
from the fraternity reunion the night before. He and his frat brothers still
got together regularly and although several decades removed from college, they
partied like they were still 18. He shook his head ruefully. He might just be
getting too old for that.
He peered through the small rectangular opening on the north
side of the blind, and although ten feet off the ground in this simple wooden
box of a blind, could see nothing but the fog, that blasted fog everywhere. His
head throbbed on both sides, with Jim Beam sledgehammering his left temple and
Pearl Beer driving her pickax through the right.
He raised the rifle to his shoulder and steadied his gaze
through the scope. A slight ripple in the fog just to the west made him
instinctively hold his breath. He heard a slight rustling and then the
distinctive, methodical pushing of branches that was a clear signal something
was headed towards him.
He was not here to shoot this morning, just to watch, and
now he wished he’d brought a camera, because he judged from the approaching
sounds that this was a buck of size. It stopped near the blind, just outside of
the small area clear of fog around the blind. He could hear it breathe, but what
slowly penetrated his slow thought processes was this wasn’t the small
controlled breaths of an unaware deer. These were heavier, deeper. Perhaps this
wasn’t a deer at all, but a feral hog, or a javelina.
Whatever it was had noticed the blind. It scraped closer to
the bottom posts and he caught a glimpse of fur. A light brownish gray, it was
not a hog, javelina, or any other animal he’d ever seen in South Texas. It disappeared
from his sight and was now directly under the blind.
An unearthly shriek that penetrated the thin plywood floor
and into his very soul paralyzed him. The blind vibrated. This..this…thing, this
creature, this fog being, was pulling on one of the support posts under him.
His rational mind fought for logic. Maybe he was having a
hallucination, brought on by last night. Maybe this was not happening at all,
and he was dreaming. Maybe…
A sudden jerk so hard that it made him drop his rifle
confirmed his reality, though. He could not jump because that would throw him
right into the grasp of…what? What was this?
A hard thump on the side of the blind loosed a panic inside
him that oozed from his control. The thing was climbing up the blind. His
breathing pushed out in audible yips and he almost cried as he prayed a long
forgotten prayer. Another thump and it was now on the roof of the blind,
pounding a staccato beat.
That piercing shriek came again, immediately followed by a
sight he would never forget, one that seared so deeply it was probably all the
way down in his DNA. There at the small opening was a red face, one so hideously red and
ugly it didn’t seem real. The next happened so quickly it was hard to patch
together the disjointed images. In the red were dark eyes, and then a mouth
that screamed again, and teeth, fangs…
He tumbled headfirst out of the blind, landing on his side
and rolling, not even caring he didn't have his rifle. He didn’t quit running until he got to his truck, jammed the keys
into the ignition and floored the accelerator. He screeched to a stop at the
small convenience store seven miles away. He was already sure of his course of
action by the time he turned the engine off.
Two men in the store watched as the truck careened into the
back corner of the parking lot. They raised their eyebrows as a disheveled man
quickly jumped out of the truck and pulled two bottles of whiskey out of the cab
of the truck, opened them, and poured them out onto the ground. They continued
to watch as he opened beer can after beer can and poured all of those out onto
the ground, as well.
The grizzled owner looked at the customer and shrugged. “To
each his own, I guess…”
The customer shook his head as he handed the owner a flier. “That
was just plain weird.” He laughed a little. “I do appreciate you posting this
for me, though.”
The owner looked carefully at the picture on the flier,
advertising a reward for the return of an escaped snow monkey from a nearby
exotic game refuge. “Those things sure are ugly- those red faces and big teeth
make ‘em look like something out of a horror movie.”
“They really are beautiful animals,” the customer replied, “but
if you’ve never run into one before, it can be kind of startling to see for
the first time.”
