The Nightmare Tree
The tree was squat, its gnarled branches spreading out into a kind of canopy, low-slung and burdened with clusters of hard, black berries. On the west side of the sierra it would hardly have seemed like a shrub, he thought. In this landscape it was the only relief, a bump against the sea of rabbitbrush and sage.
Not much shelter. But not much to be had. To the south, if he squinted, he could make out the clouds boiling over the horizon, backlit by lightning. Still too far for thunder, but they’d catch up soon.
He tied up his horse to one of the tree’s knotted limbs, working by touch in the failing light. The animal knickered softly and stepped back, tossing its head from side to side, the tree limb creaking faintly as the rope came taut. He pulled two blankets from the saddlebag and crawled under the canopy, matting down a nest of brush as he went. Reclined, back against the trunk, and craned his neck to look under the branches.
The herd had stayed near him, pressed together in a tight cluster. He could see their silhouettes against the sky, a ring of them nearly unmoving on the outside, calves and new mothers milling about behind them. Maybe it was the new landscape, the vast, open sweep of desert and the night-song of the grasshoppers and jerusalem crickets. Or had they scented something?
Under the blankets, he brought his hand to the navy revolver on his hip. Caressed it, fingers tracing the hexagonal barrel, the nub of the iron sight. He pulled his bedding up, tighter, until he could feel the scratchy army surplus wool on his chin.
No matter. They’d be easier to collect in the morning this way. He shut his eyes, and soon felt the darkness outside swirl and merge with that internal darkness, slumber...
...and woke up, groggy and thick-headed, a ray of tree-filtered sunshine illuminating the ground in front of his nose.
His vision was blurry, and the scent of pine sap and stale musk clogged his nose. How long had he slept for? Weeks? Months? His limbs felt leaden, tingling as sensation dripped back into them. He pawed aside a tangle of tree roots and, slowly, crawled up out of the burrow, into the sun.
As his vision cleared, he could see the forest floor before him, the ground patchy with snow, the orange ponderosa pines swaying in the breeze. He got to his feet and shook himself, sending up a spray of needles and diaphanous ice.
He had been doing something before, had been something himself. But now, with a season’s worth of slumber drifting through his head like fog, he could no longer recall exactly what that was. In those early moments of consciousness the world might well have been newborn, fresh and mewling.
Slowly, he became aware of a pain deep in his gut, a hard emptiness around which his stomach clenched and gurgled. He was very, very hungry. Before he could do anything else, he’d need to find food. He lifted his nose and sniffed the air, cataloguing each scent: fir and pine, running water, the rotten-sweet funk of some small creature’s scat.
And then, as the wind shifted, meat. Faint, but unmistakable. Automatically, he turned and padded off along the curve of the slope, drawn almost magnetically toward the source of the smell.
He meandered north, his footsteps crunching rhythmically in the snow. Beyond that, the forest was silent. He smelled his own kind, here and there, males and females and newborns. They were sleeping, somewhere beneath the deadfall and dirt and snow.
That scent of meat again, growing stronger. Sometimes at this time of year he’d find winter-killed carcasses, frail old deer and fawns thawing out as the ice melted. But this smelled different, richer and bloodier, tinged with smoke. His mouth salivated; with a long tongue, he licked his chops.
He found the meat roasting over a fire by the side of a creek. He could see that it was a porcupine now, skinned and spineless, crackling as its fat dripped and sizzled in the flames. There were other scents too, hiding behind the smoke and the hot juices, but he ignored them. He was starving, he realized as he approached the fire, hungry beyond reason.
As he reached out his paw to grab it, the fire popped loudly, and he felt a sharp sting in his left flank. Startled, he backed away from the meat. Another pop. His belly exploded in pain, and his legs almost buckled beneath him.
Movement. Far to the left, the trees’ branches began to shake, sloughing off snow in wet lumps. The creature that emerged was tall and impossibly thin. Slowly, it began to approach, then stopped. He growled, low and guttural, warning it to keep its distance, then turned and began to lope back towards the porcupine.
Then another pop came, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. This time, his legs did fail; He collapsed in the snow, his head bouncing sharply off the frozen earth beneath, and lay there, wheezing. His chest pulsed with pain, and he smelled blood.
The creature was getting closer now. He could hear the crunch of the snow beneath its feet, its raspy breathing. He struggled to haul himself up, but his legs felt heavy and numb, and his knees collapsed beneath him.
It was standing behind him now, so close he could smell its breath. He sensed it leaning in, getting closer and closer to him. Straining against the pain, he lifted his head and looked up.
When he saw the thing’s face, looming over him, he began to scream. He curled up, wide-eyed and sobbing, until the fog dissipated, and he understood that he was awake now, and back under the tree. From a few feet away, his horse watched him, ears pricked up in alarm.
He forced himself to breathe, drawing long, slow draughts, until his pulse had stopped pounding in his ears. He pulled his blanket back over him and lay down again on his side. Nearby, he heard one of the cattle low. He opened his eyes again and rolled onto his back.
It must have rained while he had been sleeping: Beneath him, the earth felt damp and malleable, and the scent of wet sage hung in the air. For a long while, he lay there, staring up at the latticework of branches above his head. With the moonlight seeping through, they almost seemed to glow.
He never did get back to sleep.
--Dan DrizlÂ
Written for The Assignment Notebook's #DrivingNorth flash fiction assignment.