Especially if the stories were true.
It made him feel terrible, but he was going to have to leave the body where it was. He wasn't strong enough to lug a full-grown man out of the woods, certainly not a dead one, and even if he could it would slow him down and leave him vulnerable to? whatever was out here. As soon as he got home he would have Dad call the police and they would handle it. That was the only sensible course of action at this point.
He untied Barney, and the dog immediately went to sniff at the corpse so Christian had to pull him away. They headed back down the incline, back in the direction they came, but when they reached the bottom nothing looked familiar. The shock of the discovery must have turned them around, and not wanting to backtrack up the hill to that grisly scene, Christian led them the long way around, to the place he was certain they stepped off the trail. Only when they got there, he was no longer certain of anything. Nothing looked right anymore.
After twenty minutes of walking through unfamiliar forest, Christian was forced to admit they were lost. Barney wasn't much help either; his hounding instincts were more focused on catching a fresh scent than heading them home. As they charged on blindly the hazy, pink sky gave hint to a full, glowing moon, and Christian felt a panic tighten in his chest.
It got so dark that Christian didn't notice the cliff until Barney nearly bumbled off of it, nose-down. After yanking the dog back and catching his breath, he could see that were standing at the edge of a high rocky ridge that tapered down a fifty-foot decline into a scrub of forest. Beyond that were thick, dark woods that grew darker with every passing moment.
He heeled the dog close and the two of them started down the decline, following the slope of the ridge. The grade wasn't too steep but in the waning light the going was treacherous; one bad step could result in a twisted ankle or worse. All he needed now was to be caught out in these woods with a bum leg and a beagle more interested in squirrels than saving his master.
They reached the scrubby bottom and Christian breathed a sigh of relief -
That was cut short by a bloodcurdling howl.
Both boy and dog froze at the sound and the last of the day's birdsong was silenced. Barney raised his nose, twitching and wet, and answered with a howl of his own. If Christian could have clamped his hand over the dog's mouth he would have.
The howl came again, closer, directly in front. Barney strained at his leash, wanting to charge, and Christian held him back, scolding, "No!" But the dog wasn't having it. He fought his master, lunging forward with scrabbling paws and braying in angry defiance. The sound echoed off the cliffs like a hollow challenge, and Christian felt his brain slipping into panic mode. He yanked hard on the leash, causing the dog to yelp which in turn made Christian feel guilty. But when he heard a snarling approaching from the shadowy woods beyond the scrub, the guilt was washed away by ice-cold terror.
The beast was coming for them.
Wolf sightings in the Fellsway were rare but not unheard of, making a wolf the obvious candidate for their stalker. But that howl was unlike any animal sound Christian was familiar with; it had a rich, throaty quality and the distinctive pang of human anguish. The thought that naturally followed gave him a bitter chuckle. He may have been on the cusp of adolescence, but he wasn't enough of a kid to believe in werewolves. Still, as his eyes scanned the shadows, he half expected to see a hulking, humanoid form emerge, long ears twitching, muzzle pulled back in a snarl. And if he sat there waiting any longer, he would have.
Instead, he dragged the resisting dog back up the incline of the ridge. But fear made his footing far less assured, and he slipped on a rock that was sitting loose in the soil. He fell on his ass, losing his grip on the leash in the process, and Barney tore away from him and into the scrub.
"Barney! No!" The dog did not heed him, just scrambled headlong into danger. Christian got up and raced after him, forgetting both his fear and pain.
Unexpectedly, Barney did not run into the woods, instead banked right towards the rocky base of the cliffs. All Christian could guess was that the dog was distracted by some rock-dwelling creature, a chuck or other rodent hiding somewhere in the crevices. He followed the white tip of Barney's bobbing tail, a wagging beacon always ahead of him by several impossible yards. Until suddenly, it wasn't. Christian stopped in his tracks, scanning the rocky terrain of signs of his dog. It took him almost a minute before he noticed the entrance to the cliff side cave.
Christian stepped towards the cave opening, the creep of dread returning. Inside the yawning blackness he could hear the clicking of paws on stone, and he knew Barney was inside. Gone into the pitch black cave. Where anything could jump out at him at any moment.
Great, Christian thought. This just keeps getting better and better. He stepped into the cave.
To his surprise, after passing through the initial awning of rock, there was more visibility than he expected. The cave was large, a great section of cliff side hollowed out by the shifting of tectonic plates some countless millennia ago. Christian's eyes traveled up the craggy, grey slate walls to find the source of light - a hole in the cave's roof that allowed moonlight to spill in. It was like a natural skylight built right into the ceiling, and if Christian wasn't so scared he would have found it beautiful. A cave dweller's window into starlit heavens.
The floor of the cave was pitted and uneven, sections rising in small mesas that gave the appearance of natural stone altars. Slabs of bedrock jutted from the walls in ragged balconies, some with naturally formed steps leading to them in unintended staircases. It was almost as if someone had carved out this cavern by design, though Christian knew that was impossible. Still, to the eyes of a boy raised on fantasy films, it looked like the set of a movie, something out of Temple of Doom or Dragonslayer.
It would be the perfect lair for a survivalist cannibal. Perfect for the Tippy Dewey of legend.
The sight of Barney's bobbing tail zipping in between a set of stalagmites reminded Christian of why he had come in here. "Barney!" he shouted, his voice slapping back against the hard cavern walls. The dog did not heed his call. "Get over here, dammit!" Still the dog wouldn't come. Christian sighed and set out after him, feeling like a child trying to catch up with a free-flying kite. One that was headed into a tangle of power lines.
Barney arrived at the foot of one of the natural staircases, sniffing pointedly, but when he attempted to take the steps they proved too high and unevenly spaced for his canine legs. He stumbled back to the cave floor, righted himself quickly and stood at the foot of the stair, nose pointing upward to the balcony-like outcropping.
Christian knew what that pose meant. Something was up there and Barney had caught on its scent. As of by way of confirmation, a soft moan drifted down from above, light and high, a woman's voice. The sound of someone clearly in pain.
Barney whined at the sound and nudged Christian's leg with his nose. The moan came again, more agonized, desperate. Barney looked up at his master with brown, guilt-tripping eyes.
"Alright alright, I get the hint," Christian answered the dog quietly. "I'll go."
Summoning his courage and limited rock-climbing skills, he ascended the pre-historic steps one at a time. The last thing he needed now was to fall and break his leg - or worse - so he kept his hand to the cavern wall and his eyes on his slow-moving feet. A minute later he was at the top of the "staircase", finding that it opened out into a small alcove, no bigger than his bathroom back home. On one side of the alcove, the side that opened into the cavern, was a high shoulder of bedrock that formed a natural railing. The whole thing was oddly cozy; an ideal bedroom for a woods-dwelling maniac. Something stirred in the alcove floor and for a horrified moment Christian was sure it was Tippy.
A leg in torn Lycra moved, too slender and feminine to belong to a cannibal woodsman. Attached was a girl, a woman with short dark hair, clad in exercise gear. No doubt she was the companion to the mountain biker, spoken of in his last dying breaths. What was her name? Amy?
r /> "Hey," Christian offered, voice squeaking. "Are you OK?"
Dazed eyes focused on him, then jolted wide with fear. But upon seeing his young face, the fear gave way to confusion. "Andrew?" she gasped.
Now was probably not the time to tell her that Andrew was dead and disemboweled. "No," Christian answered. "You don't know me. I'm just a kid."
"The beast!" The woman's eyes darted around the alcove, icy with panic. "The beast is coming! We've got to go!"
She grabbed his shoulder, tried to lift herself up, but the effort caused her to bellow in pain. It didn't take a doctor to see that she was broken up pretty badly - one of her legs was bent at a weird angle and her shoulder was sticking too far out of its socket. Christian felt his stomach lurch again with nausea. "Lady, you really ought to take it easy - "
"AAAAAAAAAAARRROOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
The howl froze Christian's blood, dispelling the nausea. It echoed off the cavern walls, distorting like an image replayed through a hallway of mirrors. The animal element was there, but beneath it rode a current of human rage. The indignation of finding an intruder in the house.
"Oh god," Amy gasped. "It's here."
Before Christian could contemplate the full ramification of her words, he heard Barney settling into a low growl in the cave