That Which Should Not Be by Brett J. Talley Read Free Book Online

in a snowstorm is no time to try and pitch a tent.”
    Tom’s point was well taken, but it was advice we didn’t need.  We had already begun the work and were well underway before the first burst of snow.  Joe was our cook, but he had a hard time getting anything together that night.  The winds and the snow were such that the fire would barely stay lit, no matter how much wood we fed it. 
    We bedded down early.  I stood at the opening of my tent and watched as the snow began to fall in ever greater quantities.  I glanced back at the dying fire and saw Joe still sat at its edge.  The waning embers did not give much light, but he had drawn near to their warmth, and the rays that remained illuminated his face.  Perhaps it was the light or the shadow or the snow, but I noticed for the first time that Joe had aged over the past few weeks.  The lines were deeper, the skin more leathery and pulled taut across his face.  His eyes were simply empty.  There was no fear, no worry, just nothing, a cold resignation that frightened me more than anything else possibly could.  That may sound strange, but I know no other way to describe it. 
    They say man is an animal, and that may be so.  But most men don’t know nature.  They are like you, my young friend.  They live in the world of the city, and when they come to the wild it is for leisure and peace.  They do not see the cold killer lurking in the darkness, the hunter red in tooth and claw.  But we saw it that night.
    The blizzard came hard and fast, falling upon us like the eagle strikes its prey.  I lay listening as the wind buffeted my tent, and the snow struck its sides like grapeshot fired from a distant cannon.  I know I slept that night, as strange and unbelievable as it might sound.  Yes, the work had exhausted me, but my senses were so heightened, my fear so deep, that sleep should never have come.  I was as a man taken by opium, and my eyes grew heavy, my mind grew cloudy, and I drifted in and out of consciousness. 
    I cannot know how much of what I remember was real or imagined.  But I heard things that night.  Not just the wind or the snow.  It started with a howl, a low and distant whine.  I wasn’t sure it was there at first, thought it might just be something from a dream.  Soon it was joined by another and another.  It was as if all the wolves in the western wood had suddenly been called to a common purpose.
    But it wasn’t the howl itself that sent a chill through my bones.  No, it was the message of that call.  It was pain and fear from an animal that rarely knew either.  At one moment the sound was all about, as if we were surrounded.  Then just as quickly it seemed to be coming from within my own mind.  And then it changed, my God, did it change.  No more the call of a wild dog.  Now it was the pitiful cry of a woman.  So deep was her anguish, so terrible.  As if the world had been taken from her, as if a child had been ripped from her bosom and slaughtered before her very eyes.  Oh, the pain in that cry.  But it was not the worst I heard, no, not at all.  Vile sounds followed, sounds that are beyond my meager education to describe, but I wager the greatest poet in the world couldn’t write a line for them.  Demon haunted the forest was that night, and in my dreams, I heard and felt the darkest and foulest beast that ever gibbered its wail from the depths of the pit. 
    There was thunder that followed lightning, the mark of a summer storm in the heart of winter.  In those flashes of light, I saw figures outlined against the thin skin of my tent, figures that danced outside my vision.  And then, even in the night, even in the darkness, a shadow fell upon me, that of a great bird, a flying beast never before seen on this earth by the eyes of man.  Its cry rent the night air, and in that moment my mind snapped, and I sunk into blessed black oblivion. 
     
    *   *   *
     
    I awoke the next morning to the brilliant,