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There’s a road.
An honest-to-God road, stretching out in the distance like the Holy Fucking Grail. Luke can’t see either end of it. Just a beautiful, unbroken ribbon of asphalt cutting through the wilderness, like a megawatt neon sign blaring “Civilization was here!”
This had better not be another bloody mirage. Or vision, or whatever the hell was happening to him back in the forest, with those little pieces of time and space carved up and transported where they had no right to be. Dangled before him like bait. He’ll never close his eyes again without seeing those harsh overhead lights, without feeling the cold useless weight of the vodka bottle in his hand. The bottle Robert died for.
As he stumbles toward the road with the graceless, inexorable march of a robot, he wonders, not for the first time, how in God’s name that—that monster, that thing—
(we do not say its name)
—managed to get inside his head. How it knew. How it was able to regurgitate the memory of that miserable night with perfect clarity. Not only the physical atmosphere, the flickering lights and row after row of glistening liquor bottles, but the mental part of it. The sickening lurch of fear. The disbelief. The horror.
The guilt.
Somehow, the monster knew. Somehow, it reached deeper inside his own brain than even he was willing to go, and it pulled out the very worst of him.
If it could do that, how easy would it be to create a vision of a road? Of salvation?
“No,” he chokes out. He keeps stumbling forward. One foot in front of the other. The road is real, and he’s going to reach it. He has to. For Hutch, for Phil. For Dom.
He’s going to flag down a car, have the driver take him straight to the nearest airport, and put this godforsaken country as far behind him as he can. Going back home to his tiny flat in London may not be far enough. Right now, he’s willing to fly across the bloody ocean and relocate to Hawai’i if that’s what it takes.
The road’s getting closer. That’s a good sign, he thinks. Then he catches sight of his fists, balled and swinging by his sides, and sees the blood caked over his knuckles. The awkward angle of his broken thumb. The mud and the gore streaked across his sleeves.
For God’s sake. He must look like a madman. A psycho stumbling out of the woods, scarlet-spattered, unable to speak a bloody word of Swedish. What he wouldn’t give for even an ounce of Hutch’s preparation right now—Hutch, who packed the map and the compass and the most nutritious protein bars, and who took care to learn enough Swedish to get by. Enough, at least, to ask “where’s the loo?” and “how far to the nearest pub?”
Luke has a sudden mental glimpse of how this trip should have ended: the four of them in a pub before a roaring fire, tossing back ale until they’re green at the gills, toasting and laughing, flushed with the triumph of making it through the trek and coming out whole on the other side. It’s so clear, and so impossible, that a sudden spike of grief shoots through him like a nail through soft wood, and his legs buckle.
He almost drops to his knees. He catches himself at the last moment.
He won’t kneel. That’s what it wants—wanted.
He keeps going.
After everything that’s gone as wrong as it could possibly go and then some, it’s almost a shock when he reaches the road just as a car is approaching. He stumbles straight into its path, both hands upraised. Whether it’s a signal to stop or a plea to just keep going, to run straight over him, he’s not sure.
No. He’s survived this. He’s going to keep surviving. The car’s driver must see it in his eyes, because they slam on the brakes and pull over.
“Police,” he mutters as soon as the car’s occupants jump out, eyes wide, mouths agape. “Please. I need the police. My friends—my friends are dead. In the forest.”
His knees buckle again, and this time he lets himself slump against the car, pain and grief and exhaustion crashing down on him with a weight he's never felt before. He’d thought, after Rob’s death, that was the worst it could get. What a naive fool he’d been.
Coward, the monster whispers in his head.
-
It was an animal, he tells the police. A huge, dangerous animal. Yes, it killed all of his friends. Carried them off and hung them in trees. No, he didn’t see what exactly it was. It was dark, he was tired and hungry and in shock—
He’s pretty sure they don’t believe him. He probably wouldn’t either, in their position. But what the hell else can he tell them? The truth?
That’s right, officers, we were just a bunch of blokes on a hiking holiday here in your lovely country when we decided to cut through this forest where a huge moose-like monster with a whole bloody cult of worshipers killed my friends and also the cult captured me and held me prisoner. And I had to fight my way out and I burned the whole place down behind me. Can you put me on a plane back home now?
Yeah, sure. Being committed to a mental asylum in a foreign country isn't exactly how he’d like to wrap up this disaster of a holiday.
“Listen, I know how it looks,” he tells the investigator who sits across the table, squinting skeptically at him. “I’m your number one suspect. I know. Man comes stumbling out of the woods covered in blood and all his mates are missing? Pretty obvious conclusion, right?” He stops, breathes in deep, balls his fists on the table. They put his thumb in a splint, yet it still aches with a deep, persistent throb.
“But if you go into the woods,” he continues, “and find the bodies, you’ll see. Two of them are up in the trees. One is on the ground. Hutch, he—he was the first. We went up in the tree and took him down. Put a load of brush and branches over him. God.” He’s going to pass out. The memory of Hutch’s shocked, sightless eyes comes back to him in a rush. There’d been so much blood around the base of the tree that he and Phil had barely been able to get enough purchase to make the climb. Dom had stayed on the ground, clutching his knee. Hyperventilating.
“You’ll see,” Luke repeats, desperation edging into his voice. “There’s no way one man would be strong enough to—just—you’ll see. It was huge. Inhuman. You’re going to need a lot of people, all right? Soldiers or something. With guns. And torches. It can come out of nowhere. It—it makes you see things that aren’t really there.”
The investigator gives him a look, mutters something in Swedish, and leaves the room. Luke braces his hands on the table’s edge, rests his forehead on the cold, hard surface.
All he can do is wait.
-
They never do tell him exactly what they found in the woods, but they must realize the truth in his words: no one person would be physically able to impale a grown man on a tree branch up as high as Phil and Dom’s bodies are. Unless that person was a bodybuilder of Goliath proportions, which Luke certainly isn’t.
He exits the police station, shellshocked and blinking like a man seeing the sun for the first time. His plane ticket is in his hand and three more funerals are in his future. He stumbles past a legion of cameras, ignoring reporters peppering him with questions. About his friends, about the “animal.” About how he survived. About how it all went wrong.
“No comment,” is all he can rasp. “No comment.”
How can he tell them anything, when he can barely even process it, himself?
-
He’s never been so happy to cloister himself within the confines of his overpriced, cramped flat with the noisy wankers for neighbors. Everything is how he left it: three bottles of beer in the fridge, wadded up trousers in the corner of his bedroom, strange musty smell wafting from the vents. He’s never succeeded in getting the landlord to deal with that.
Luke steps slowly into the bedroom and closes the door behind him with the gentlest push. It has a tendency to bang shut if not handled with care, and he’s not sure he can handle any sudden loud noises right now. Possibly ever. He’s already examined all the dark corners of the flat, few as they are. It’s a ridiculous and juvenile thing to do, he knows. Like a child afraid of the dark.
And yet…is it really so ridiculous, when he’s just learned, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that monsters are very, very real?
When he’s satisfied that he’s alone in the flat, he lets himself lie down on the bed and stare up at the ceiling. Behind his head, voices batter against the wall, barely muffled, laced with venom. His neighbors arguing about inconsequential shit again. It’s always annoyed the piss out of him, but now, it’s almost comforting. A reminder that he’s not alone in the world. Not trapped in a Swedish forest darker than pitch, hunted, surrounded by the dead both fresh and ancient.
He blinks at the ceiling, blankly. The voices behind him fade into nothing.
What now?
It takes him a moment to realize he hasn’t the faintest bloody clue. Is he supposed to get up tomorrow and go to work, fall back into normal life like nothing’s changed? Discuss the latest Bake Off episode around the water cooler? Does he even still have a job, after being held in Sweden for days longer than planned as the police investigated?
His broken thumb twinges at his side. The pain takes him back to that wooden shed, to the ropes that kept him tied down. Him and Dom.
Forcing himself to sit up, he turns his head to look at himself in the mirror. A hollow-eyed ghoul stares back, exhausted, bruised, wearing days’ worth of stubble. At least the blood is gone.
He can’t do much about the bruises or the exhaustion—sleep has been elusive since he stumbled out of the forest—but he can at least shave.
He isn’t sure what will come next, but there’s one thing he knows he has to do. A promise that needs keeping.
-
It occurs to him, just before he reaches the house, that he probably should have called or texted first. Even though he’s been back in London for a day, it’s still taking an abnormally long time to get re-adjusted to the existence of technology. It’s an odd thing, when he thinks about it. The smartphone that’s like an extra limb in his normal life, impossible to live without, did fuck-all to help him in his moments of crisis. Both in the liquor store and in the forest.
He realizes he’s stalling, and grinds his teeth. Takes one long step, reluctant yet resolute, in the direction of the front door.
It’s not a mansion, but it’s a large, grand house in a posh neighborhood, the sort of property Luke couldn’t dream of owning in a thousand years. Cream-colored siding, dark cranberry shutters, immaculate lawn. Two luxury cars parked in the driveway. He averts his eyes and swallows as he mounts the porch steps and rings the doorbell. Half-hoping for a response, half-hoping the door will remain closed, and then he can turn around and go back to his flat, burrow beneath the covers and not come out for a good day or two.
He’s halfway through the thought when the door swings open. Luke lifts his gaze and meet’s Gayle’s eyes. Dom’s wife. Dom’s widow.
She looks nearly as awful as Luke does.
For a moment they both stand, just looking at one another, the silence almost as thick and unnatural as it was back in the woods. Then Gayle breaks it with a short, wispy sigh.
“I thought you might show up,” she says, stepping back from the door. “Come inside.”
He follows her to the kitchen and sits, heart in his throat, as she puts on a pot of tea. When it’s done, she pours a mug and sets it in front of him, and he curls his shaking fingers around the sides. The warmth is a comfort, yet he doesn’t risk taking a sip. Too likely it would just come right back up.
Gayle slips into the chair across from him. Her movements are slow, deliberate, like she’s afraid she’ll shatter if she doesn’t take care.
“What happened?” she asks.
Luke takes a deep breath, lets it out long and slow. He’s suddenly never been so desperate for a cigarette in his life. “I don’t know how much the police told you—”
“It doesn’t matter what they told me,” Gayle interrupts. “I want to hear it from you. All of it.”
Still, he hesitates. If he tells her the whole truth, how might she react? Will she sneer at him, scoff in disbelief? Call the cops and tell them he’s a crazy man, that they need to look deeper into the case because the lone witness obviously can’t be trusted? Will she snap, scream curses at him, throw boiling tea at his head? Nothing can be ruled out. Grief has a powerful impact on the mind.
He knows that as well as anyone.
He starts at the beginning, recounts it as best he can, though leaves out the part about Dom twisting his knee. Telling a new widow her husband—and two other men, also husbands, also fathers—might still be alive if not for the freak chance of Dom spraining his knee? It’s too much. He can barely stomach it, himself.
(Worse yet is the alternative: that it wasn’t an accident at all, that the monster somehow caused Dom to trip, exerting its influence from afar…but that can’t be. He can’t allow himself to start down that path. If he does, he might never return.)
Gayle watches him as he speaks, her expression never changing. Luke doesn’t know her well, but she’s always struck him as a woman of fortitude. (She’d have to be, to be married to Dom.) Still, he doesn’t tell her about Dom’s nightmare in the house, and he skirts around the issue of the monster, referring to it only as a creature or an animal. Maybe that makes him a coward—
Coward, growls the monster’s voice in his head again.
“Fucking coward!” adds the memory of Dom in the forest, when they’d come to blows over that night in the liquor store.
No, Luke thinks. He stops talking. His fists ball beneath the table, tighter and tighter until his injured thumb cries out for mercy.
“Are you all right?” Gayle asks, watching him with furrowed brows.
“I’m sorry,” Luke says. “I just need a moment.”
He’s not a coward. He’s here, isn’t he? Having this supremely uncomfortable conversation? Recounting the kind of trauma that would have left most people dead or worse?
That counts for something. It has to.
“So we were tied up in this house,” he goes on. “Me and Dom. Captured by these people who worshiped the—the creature. And Dom, he was more courageous than I ever thought he could be, to be honest. He made me promise to get out alive, to make it back home so I could tell you how brave he was. And that he tried everything he could to get back to you.”
Gayle makes a soft, wordless sound. Her fingers, wrapped around her mug, are white at the knuckles.
“They put him out in the yard,” Luke says. “At the front of the house. And the creature took him.”
And I couldn’t do anything, he tries not to think. This time I had no choice.
“I tried everything I could to save him,” he says. “Broke my thumb to get out of the restraints. I just…didn’t have enough time. I’m so sorry.”
Gayle doesn’t do any of the things he feared. She doesn’t snap, scream at him, or throw tea in his face. Yet in her quiet grief, he senses a current running deeper, a question she doesn’t need to speak aloud.
Why you? her face says, creased and brittle. Why did you, overgrown man-child, survive when my husband died?
And that’s almost worse than if she had screamed.
-
After he leaves Dom and Gayle’s house, Luke takes the train back to the city. He picks the most isolated seat possible and slumps against the window, letting the world whip past. Sometimes he thinks he sees those symbols again—the ones carved on the trees, the warnings they ignored—but when he looks back, heart in his throat, they’re gone.
So is this it, then? he thinks. Survive an ancient monster in the woods only to lose my mind on the train?
Well, he’s already lost all his friends. Why not his mind, too?
A bitter laugh sticks deep in his throat, and he’s suddenly tempted to just close his eyes, ride the train as far as it goes, and forget everything. Or forget as much as he can.
Yet when his stop comes up, he opens his eyes. Looks out the window, and doesn’t see any strange visions or symbols. Just people, milling about London’s busy streets.
Exhaustion has settled bone-deep, but Luke pushes himself up, walks to the door, disembarks the train. He stands in the middle of the sidewalk, pedestrians flowing around him like water pushing past a rock.
Then he takes a step forward, and another. His gait is slow and stiff, but steady. It makes him remember the first moments beyond the forest, with the monster at his back and the road ahead. Then his mind reaches back further still, to when he came eye to eye with the ancient god, when he pulled himself upright, staring it full in its hideous face. Refusing to kneel. Refusing to die.
He’d defied it, and he kept going. One step at a time. And maybe that’s all he can ask for: to pick himself up and keep going. Keep living.
What could be braver than that?
Another step, and he looks up. There’s a McDonald’s, of all things, just ahead of him. And he suddenly remembers that moment just before they saw the disemboweled elk hanging in the tree, the moment before everything changed, when they were still just four blokes on a hiking holiday, discussing what they most wanted to eat.
He can’t even remember what his own meal of choice had been, but he can recall what Dom said with perfect clarity.
Big Mac. Plastic tray. By myself.
A smile cracks Luke’s lips.
“Here’s to you, Dom,” he murmurs as he approaches the restaurant’s doors. “To all you mates.”
And he pushes through.