Entry One
The howls were little more than sighs of the wind, thin with distance. Elsewise, the wilderness was silent. The approach of winter dawn glowed through the boughs of birch and fir.
I was terrified and alive. Alive above all, though the snot froze in my nose and every gasp throttled me with cold. I could no longer run, but I shambled along what I prayed was still the path. I could no longer curse, but I snarled and spat when my feet broke through the ice crusting the snow and I sank calf-deep. I could no longer think, but memories of blood and knives and roaring waters flickered through my mind.
I was mad with exhaustion, and yet I had never felt so sane.
The howls had not faded. Still they echoed. Still they raged. Perhaps they always would.
All I could do was crawl now, but I would not give up, I had to get back. The lonely few birds who stayed for winter cheered me on. I could no longer feel the cuts and the bruises: my whole body was numb. A distant corner of my brain worried about this. A hoarse laugh escaped my lips, I was safe now, the beast wouldn't dare show its face in the daylight. I had come to this place to retreat from the world, so much for that. I didn't think I would ever go camping again.
I came upon a large spruce tree I remembered from my trek up, and I leaned against it to rest. Not for long, just a few minutes, I told myself. I gulped down the crisp morning air, and looked myself over. Ragged did not even begin to describe it. When the beast came I had been sleeping, so now I was dressed in mangled blue thermal underwear. Layers, after all, were key. A park ranger had told me that. My fingernails were split and broken, full of dirt. I couldn't will myself to look upon my wounds, then I might feel them. My eyelids slid shut, and I began to drift. Just a few minutes...
Thankfully, before I fell asleep and froze to death, something jolted me awake. A familiar sort of whooshing sound. A car; a road. I was closer than I realized. With newfound strength I pulled myself up, and I stumbled towards where I thought the road was. After a minute I could see it, I could actually see it. It wasn't a mirage, or a hallucination. My journey was over.
Sauntering down the road, I prayed for traffic. And sure enough, my prayer was answered in the form of a dark green honda civic. I flailed my arms at it, and tried to call out. But it ignored my groans and disappeared around the bend. I fell to my knees on the pavement. That was it then, -now- it was time to give up. I splayed myself out in the middle of the road. Either someone would see me and I would be rescued, they wouldn't see me, and I'd be crushed under their tires, or I would lie here and die of exposure. Win-win-lose. I'd heard of worse odds.
I awoke in a drably decorated bedroom. The first thing I noticed was that I could feel again. I stroked the bed spread I was under, and relished the texture of the linens. My right foot was still numb, but I was sure it would come back eventually.
“Hello?” I called, “is anyone there?” I could hear something clattering to the floor in another room, somebody had knocked it over in surprise. After a moment the orange door to my room creaked open, revealing a tired, but kindly looking man. He wore an old burgundy suit, and spoke softly.
“Um, hello. I'm Doctor Locklear, but you can call me Richard, everybody does... This is my house you're in. Our little town doesn't have a hospital you see... How are you feeling? And, um, what's your name?”
“Horrible... And thirsty.” I replied. “And it's Mark, Mark Peters.”
“Yes, yes of course.” Richard vanished through the door and returned in a blink with a mug that said 'KBKR: Selawik community radio' on it, and was filled three quarters full with lukewarm water. He set it on the bedside table. “Technically you can leave anytime you like, but as a doctor I'd recomend at least a few days more bedrest. And there's the matter of your, um...”
“My what?”
“We had to, er, amputate a few of your toes. Frostbite. You're lucky it was just them, to be honest, the state you were in...”
“Oh.” It was all I could really say, shock and painkillers slowed my thoughts. “Do you have a phone?” Richard replied by handing me an old flip-phone from his back pocket.
“I'll be in the living room, just holler if you need anything.”
I nodded and smiled faintly, as I dialed the number. “Hey-o, you're speaking with Don Drake, who is this?”
“Mark.”
“Oh. Hey Mark. What's up?”
“It followed me to Alaska, Don. I need your help.”
“Oh, I see. And you're sure it's the same one?”
“Positive. The way it howls and screams... What did you call it?”
“A Hound of Czernobog. It following you confirms it.”
“A hound! Yes, exactly! Listen, I need you to get up here A.S.A.P, alright? I don't think I can survive another attack. Even if I mange to get away again, the howling, Don, it's in my fucking head!”
“I hate to, uh, rain on your parade here, but.. There's not really much you or I can do about a Hound of Czernobog. I'm sorry man, but if that thing's got its eyes on you? All you can do is pray... Lucky you survived the first time, if you ask me...”
“Goddamnit Don! You -owe- me! Everybody's telling me how fucking lucky I am...” I took a few deep breaths to calm myself. “You're telling me there's nothing you can do?”
“Look, I'll hit the books, but... Try to stick with the group. Those things hate all the smells and noises a crowd makes. Might slow 'em down.” The line went dead. I drank the water Richard had left for me and sighed. Shit.
Don had said they didn't like people, too bad I was in Selawik Alaska, wherever that was. I had to get out. Maybe there was an airstrip, I could get to Anchorage, then maybe New York. I could hide in a big city. I inquired about it when I next talked to Richard, and he said that there was indeed an airstrip, and a pilot probably willing to take me if I had the cash. Unfortunately I did not have -any- cash. Not on me anyway. Everything I had was still at that godforsaken campsite, and there was no way in hell I was going back there.
I'd just have to make the pilot see things my way. I could make him a rich man when I got back to civilization. Well, relatively rich. I owed Richard something nice as well, perhaps a fancy watch or something? Maybe not, a watch wasn't quite worth a life. A debt then, but there was on more thing I needed from him. “Um, hey Richard?” I called out into the living room, and in a moment he appeared in front of me.
“Yes?”
“Do you have some, er, clothes I could borrow?”
“Of course, of course, certainly. What's mine is your's.” He stepped out, and I heard footsteps down the hallway. What a peculiar sort of man, helpful and selfless without asking questions. Maybe small town Alaska wasn't so bad. Richard came back with folded clothing in hand. A flannel shirt (red plaid, of course), some well-worn blue jeans, hiking boots, and what looked like homemade wool socks. He set them on the bed next to me and smiled.
“Hey, man, thanks a lot.”
“Don't mention it.”
“Oh, and what'd you say that pilot's name was again?”
“Charlie Hanson's your man. I suppose you're feeling well enough to fly, then?”
“Hopefully. Don't really have a choice.”
“Mm... I'll, uh, give you some privacy then.”
“Thanks again.” He left, smile lingering. As I slipped on the clothes, I realized how stiff and sore my body really was. But it felt good to be dressed. I started on the socks, so soft and orange, that I hardly noticed the doctor had not been lying. There were a few inlets in the gauze where there shouldn't be. But I could deal with the harsh trauma of losing part of myself later, in the moment, it felt good just to stand. Everything fit surprisingly well, even if the boots were a little stiff, almost as if they had never been worn. Curious. I laced them up and took my first step into the outside world.
Richard was sitting on a modest couch, watching a fuzzy broadcast of some sitcom I had never heard of. Something about a young doctor from New York, and a town called Cicely. “Thanks for everything,” I said quite sincerely. “I'll find a way to pay you back someday.”
“Don't worry about it,” said Richard with a dismissive gesture, his eyes glued to the screen.
“I guess it's goodbye, then. Gonna go find Hanson, get back to the city.” I turned the doorknob.
“'Til next time.” He waved. The door shut behind me.
What had he meant by that? Needlessly ominous, that's what it was. Richard didn't live very far from the town center, where I would find Hanson. But that wasn't really saying much in a town of 800+. I trudged through the snow, shivering, and estimated it was probably around noon. It had to be, the sun was still up. Snow gathered on my head and shoulders, but I was almost there. Richard had told me that when Hanson wasn't flying, he was drinking at the local watering hole: a grey brick cube with a neon sign that identified itself as open, and being called 'The Poor Man's Igloo'. Because of course it was. I stepped inside, and was welcomed by the sounds of drinks pouring and meat sizzling. There were a lot more people in here than I had expected, almost every table was filled. I approached the bar and flagged down its tender: a vacant young man with long black hair. “Excuse me, could you point me in the direction of a mister Charlie Hanson?” He kept his mouth shut and pointed at a blonde haired fellow eating alone at a corner table. “Thanks.”
I had to wade through a sea of people to get to him, but it wasn't like he was busy or anything. Just eating french fry after french fry, and reading a frayed copy of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. How I wished we could have traded places. Although, who had mutton chops in this day and age? “You Charlie Hanson?” I asked, having to raise my voice to overcome the crowd.
“Yup,” he replied, mouth full of potatoes.
“Can you get me to Anchorage?”
“You got cash?”
“No, but get me there tonight and I'll pay double.” I could practically hear Charlie's inner gears grinding as he considered the offer.
“Alright. You be ready in an hour?”
“I'm ready now.”
Charlie wasn't though, and neither was the plane, apparently. When he had finished lunch we headed over to the airstrip, and the garage he kept his little plane in. Charlie went to work while my stomach growled. I went through the plan in my head. Anchorage, then bank, pay Charlie, buy food, New York, safety. I could only hope for that last one.
At last the plane was ready, Charlie was ready, and I was ready, all at the same time. Charlie began his safety speech to his only passenger as we boarded the plane. “Is gonna be bumpy, alright? Keep yer seatbelt on, an' don't throw up.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples as we began to pick up speed. But I couldn't really relax until we were off the ground. A place I was sure the hound could not follow.
The view was stunning, or it was for the few minutes we had until the sun went down completely. Charlie was right, the flight was bumpy, but no worry could penetrate the wave of relief I felt. I was off the ground, on my way to Anchorage, everything was going according to plan, it would all work out. I indulged in a sigh of relief.
What seemed like only a few seconds later, Charlie woke me from my doze by informing me we were halfway there. The sky was completely black now, and Charlie kept checking his instruments. A flash of white, a pause, then rolling thunder. “Um, that's not-- I mean we're not in the middle of a...” I inquired.
“Shit. How did I miss the storm? Came outta nowhere...”
Flash.
“We're gonna-- we're gonna be okay, right?”
Thunder.
“-You're- not,” said Charlie, his voice had changed, it was warped and slithering. I looked at him and my eyes could not focus, his form was fuzzy and blurred.
“Oh god. No, it can't be.” But there was no denying it when the thing that had been Charlie started to howl. An inky blackness seeped out of its skin, cloaking it in dark. It moved towards me, grinning.
“You thought you were safe. You were wrong, Mark. There is nowhere Czernobog cannot reach you.” I scrambled out of my seat, looking for a weapon, a parachute, anything, anything to take my eyes off of the beast. My fingers found what my eyes could not: an emergency flare under my seat. I tried desperately to light it, in an instant that -thing- would be upon me. It dug its fingers into my eyes and filled them with filth. I could not see, and the pain was almost unbearable. It was like somebody had injected spiders into my brain, and they were eating it from the inside out.
For a moment I thought I could see a flicker of red light pierce the darkness. “Why me?” I asked, a mistake immediately relevant. I gagged on sickly sweet oil as it filled my mouth.
“It has always been you. It -will- always be you. You are the anti, the alternate, the undoer. You volunteered.” Its speech was coming from inside my head, I was in its heart, and it was all around me. The rushing of the wind, the howling, the echoes, it was all too much. I dug at my forehead with my fingernails, trying to dig it out of my head. Now it was in my bloodstream. I was it, and it was me. And suddenly I knew. I knew everything.
Three seconds later we crashed into a mountain.