The Beast

Fifteen bus journeys into the sticks, thick mud and green pastures. Fifteen bus journeys and all Isaac had for company was a light backpack and his CD Walkman, fully loaded with whatever. The Jesus and Mary Chain scratched at his eardrums, and the cows laying in the field next to the road looked like tiny toys from the second deck of the bus. He started to wonder what was stopping them from walking into oncoming traffic, or why the Dairylea cow was red. None of it really mattered.

Isaac had been living in London for most of his life, and that’s all he can remember. He was thirteen years old when his father left. Having no real reason to stay, both Isaac and his mother moved to the Capital to start a brand-new life. Years passed, his mother quickly and tragically lost the fight against ovarian cancer. Her son was left parentless, and the inheritance wasn’t enough to shake the feeling of loneliness. Soon enough, he received a certain letter in the mail. That’s why he’s sat on this bus. That’s why he’s going to find him.

Sprawling woods loom ominously along the way, their darkened treetops form twisted silhouettes. Shrouded in the perpetual dampness of the pale sky, is the small town of Brackenbrook.

Isaac grabs the ice-cold railing running past his seat and reluctantly pulls himself to his feet. The aching pain shoots through rigid and taut leg muscles as he finds the front of the bus. The doors close behind him, and he’s left in the chilling, drifting fog that seems to roll in from the woods. Gently, he lifts the headphones from his ears, His senses are strangely heightened. Listening to the faint echoes of footsteps or the occasional barking of a distant dog, he draws in the scent of the earthy mildew that carries a faint, metallic tang that’s unsettlingly hard to place. The headphones find their place on his scalp once again, The Psychedelic Furs.

With the hour becoming late, the journey had taken longer than Isaac expected. It wasn’t long before he stumbled across Rosemary’s Lodge. Pretty, prolific flowers drooped from hanging pots by a bed and breakfast sign in the window, a blinding contrast to the soulless surrounds. He finds the dainty iron latch, lifting and pushing the wooden door ajar.

“Come in.” A faint and croaky voice squeaks from somewhere inside. Isaac bumbles in, awkwardly wiping his wet and leafy trainers on the mint ‘Welcome’ mat. Briefly, the room had been decorated with fine pottery and ceramic animals on shelves. Meticulously placed the exact distance apart from the last. A tiny, elderly lady waddles around the corner of the next room, struggling with a box of yarn much bigger than her. Isaac, by instinct, helps her place the box on a well-polished an antique table.

“Well,” She exclaimed. “What a kind young man.”

“Is there space here for me to stay tonight?” He questions, scooping up a few balls that fell to the Tudor aged floor. “I’m visiting for a little while.”

“Why, of course you can.” The lady reaches her wrinkled and vascular hand toward him. “My name is Rosemary, Rose is fine.”

“Hi Rose, I’m Isaac.” He coyly smiles, gently shaking her warm hand. She smiles, turning away from him quickly.

“It’s fifteen pounds per night, breakfast included. Well, follow me and I’ll show you where the scratcher is.”

“The scratcher?” He tails behind at a snail’s pace.

“Your bed.” She laughs. “This building – in fact most buildings in Brackenbrook are over five-hundred years old. Tudor mattresses were filled with straw and would scratch at your back. Hence why that name stuck.”

“Ah, right…” He mumbles apprehensively, following further into the cramped hallway.

“Bathroom is right there.” She points to a wooden door. “Outhouse is right through the back.”

Rose finally brings him to his room. It was well furnished and cosy, just perfect for a place to crash. “If you need me, I’ll be in the living room, knitting most likely.”

“Thanks Rose.”

Oliver slumps his backpack to the ground, falling onto the bed like a child. His eyes find the dusty light fixture that is evidently out of reach for his host. Slowly, it burned, the ringing in his brain from the silence around him. There was no traffic, no trains, or planes in the sky. No drunkards were yelling obscenities into the night, and it was cold here. It was too much for him, and the CD player was dug out once again. Five blissful minutes go by, Fiction Factory put him to sleep.

Eyes snap open, the disc had ended for some time. Oliver gets up, wondering what time it is. Through the curtain, he can see a building lit up with people inside, polluting the darkness around. In his groggy haze, he leaves his room and the lodge, making his way down the road. A grand sign above the entrance presents ‘The White Crow Inn’ boldly with a rough font. Oliver presses the heavy door open and slips his way through to the bar.

“I’ll have a pint of bitter,” Oliver scans the shelf behind the barman. “And a bag of nuts.”

“Alright.” He turns, taking a grim pint glass and pumping it elegantly with beer. “Haven’t seen you before, have I?”

Amid this stagnant atmosphere may be the best place to start looking for him, wherever he may be. “I’m here for my dad.” Oliver stutters. “His name is… or was Malcolm Thorne.”

“I know him well.” The barman mumbles quietly and cryptically. “He’s been gone for some time now though, may have moved. A lot of people move.”

“Any idea of where he’s gone to?”

“No. I’m sorry.” He sighs, dusting off a wine glass.

Oliver sits for a while, drinking the stale beer and munching mouthfuls of salted nuts.

“You looking for Malcolm?” A gentleman smoking behind him coughs. “I can tell you where he is.”

“You see that forest over the way?” He points out the door. “That’s where he is. You’ll have to walk a stony path up the embankment.”

“What, is he camping or something?”

“You could say that.” He takes a comically large pull from his cigarette before leaning in. “He’s part of a hunt.”

“Hunting what exactly?” Oliver probes.

“The big cats. Government brought in a Dangerous Wild Animals Act in nineteen-seventy-six, people who had great exotic pets like black panthers and such had to give them back. But not all of them. Some people just let them run free in the wild, let them shag our precious little house cats and had feral hybrid offspring.”

“No way.”

A smile grows on the man’s hairy face, and he laughs maniacally. “I was ‘aving you on, lad. Foxes sound like murdered women, you know?”

Oliver very awkwardly laughs before managing to slip away toward the door. “Bring your daddy something to drink, a nip of scotch won’t hurt.”

The thought stuck with him on the way to Rosemary’s Lodge. The feeling of dread hung around him like a scarf. In bed, the feeling of imagined straw on his back and the deafening silence pierced his synapses once again until he fell asleep.

In the morning, Rose made eggs and bacon, Oliver pushed them around the plate. He found a shop that only opened for three hours a day and bought a bottle of local booze which was allegedly one-hundred and twenty proof. His backpack glugged and swished as the concrete beneath him soon became dirt. The unfamiliarity of Brackenbrook was lost to the fog, and the sky-piercing pines swayed a creaked. Out of sight, the sun should have been overhead somewhere. The jacket Oliver wore didn’t offer much warmth, but the bark-bearing giants held back the brisk wind that gently laced into his skin.

After walking for what seemed like an hour, the darkness gained light, and a clearing appeared up ahead. Chunky, bleeding fungi sprout from the side of rogue birch trees, and stepping-stone sized toadstools spread in circles. The natural mystique soon wears off, as the unnatural carvings of symbols are seen etched on the sides of debarked oaks. The more he looks, the more he can see. Up high, on the floor, crosses and stars. It doesn’t deter him, yet. Past a game path and some large boulders, a strong and fishy scent filled his nostrils, he holds his breath. What looked to be an old bonfire had been left charred and disintegrated. Next to this, Oliver witnessed something that will burn into his retina forever. A large stone slab, dried blood, and the crudely defiled carcass of a mutilated deer, half decomposed into mushy fur and bone. Most maggots had become chrysalides, still wriggling in the warm pulsation. Oliver vomited. He contemplated turning back, soon realising that he wasn’t quite sure where ‘back’ was.

Pressing on, trying to scrub the occult from his mind, he treads heavily through dead leaves and shrubbery. The once obvious path had diminished, and soon enough, he had completely lost his bearings. A branch cracks beneath his foot, the sound that of a gunshot rolling for miles around. Pausing for a short moment as if waiting for a repercussion, the same sound travels back to him, and he follows the emanation. Sheltered by felled trees, a small cabin can be seen nestled ahead. Oliver apprehensively approaches, trying to avoid planting his foot on any more sticks. The shack was ruinous, broken glass and sheet metal all over the place. Steadily, he shifts to the door, gingerly pushing it open.

“Oliver.”

He spins round to see a familiar face. The face of a man who he saw himself in, and the reason for all of this. Oliver gulps, looking him up and down, a mirrored image of himself.

“Dad.”

“You didn’t go into that cabin, did you?”

Malcolm steps closer, his face stern yet strangely calm. Oliver shakes his head.

"I was just about to... What’s in there?"

Malcolm’s expression darkens. A presence Oliver has never seen on a human face before.

"You don’t want to know. Stay away from it." He looks at the dilapidated structure.

Oliver, unsettled, swallows hard and tries to regain his composure. He’s been waiting for this moment for years.

“What’s going on?” he steps closer, desperate. “Why did you disappear? Why didn’t you tell me where you were?”

Malcolm sighs, running a hand through his dishevelled hair.

“I didn’t disappear, Oliver... I was hiding. From everyone.” He points toward the woods, his eyes wild and intense.

"It’s not safe for me. It’s not safe for you. I brought you here and it was a mistake."

Oliver’s heart pounds in his chest. This wasn’t just a wild goose chase for his father. He’s walked straight into something far darker than he could ever imagine.

“What’s going on?” Oliver blurts out. “We should leave.”

Malcolm shakes his head slowly, his gaze dropping.

“I tried that. It’s not that simple. The forest, the town – they’re all involved. There’s only one way to stop it.”

Oliver steps back, confused. “What do you mean, ‘stop it’?”

At that moment, a nearby thumping and the rattling of chains can be heard from inside the shack. Malcolm’s eyes dart toward the windows, his face tensing with urgency.

"You need to kill them," he says sharply, grabbing Oliver's arm and pushing him back the way he came. “Run, now!"

Malcolm’s physiology begins to alter; his cranium changing shape and his face protruding. Taller, muscular, curving spine.

Oliver, bewildered, turns and sprints through the trees. The cracking and snapping of bone and cartilage can be heard from where his father stood. He kept going. Running until the molten lactic acid flooded his cramping muscles, then he ran some more. Whilst climbing back down the embankment, a rock gives way beneath his foot, send him barrelling toward a tree.

Cold, wet face. Searing headache. Oliver opens his eyes to realise that he wasn’t outside anymore, but in the old cabin. Silver tools, weapons and traps hang from the decrepit walls with glooming, hanging lanterns. There, shackled to the floor, he lies with an audience. Mysterious figures with leather hats and capes surround him.

“Welcome back, beast.” One of them utters. “What do you think to this, then?”

He, and the others move out of the way to reveal the bloodied corpse of a ginormous wolf. Thick, black fur, damp with blood. Pearlescent teeth and long claws.

“Recognise it?” The man hisses, giving it a hard kick. “That’s your backstabbing father.”

“What… is that thing?” Oliver mumbles, squinting under the faint lantern light.

“We are the Huntsmen.” The man removes his hat and bows theatrically. “We are God’s chosen purifiers for the wicked and the cursed. We are here to cleanse the Earth of filth like you and your father.”

“What have we done to you?”

“It isn’t what you’ve done…” He pauses briefly. “Well, your father did butcher two of us before, but it’s more of what you are that irks us deeply. You are a Lycanthrope.”

“You’re mental!” Oliver exclaims, looking around frantically. “Where’s Dad?”

“I wouldn’t feel a thing for him if I were you, he sold you out to us.” He continues. “We forced him to write that letter, to bring you here. In exchange for his freedom.”

One of the cultists to the far left starts rummaging through Oliver’s bag, wrenching out the bottle of alcohol. “Much obliged.” He takes a swig, immediately spitting it out again. “You bastard - I asked for scotch!”

The penny drops for Oliver, that these are indeed patrons of The White Crow Inn.

“Why, look at the time.” The Leader glances out of the window. “It’s your birthday today! Eighteenth, isn’t it?”

Oliver’s eyes go to where his have been, above the height of the trees, a star-studded sky and the radiant full moon. They drag him outside; he starts to feel his body change. Bones cracking and shifting painfully, muscles swelling and contorting beneath his skin. His senses go into overdrive, and a wild, primal instinct starts to take over his mind. At first, he fights it, trying to hold on to his humanity, but the transformation is inevitable. His skin ripples, sprouting coarse, dark fur, and his nails elongate into sharp claws.

Two of the Huntsmen rush to pin Oliver down, securing his cruel bindings. The Leader unsheathes a silver sword from his belt, brandishing and observing its exquisite edge. Slowly, he lowers the sharp blade, pushing the tip into his captive’s abdomen. A sizzling and popping wound forms, Oliver roars, and his face distorts, forming into an elongated snout of a wolf.

“Yes!” The Leader laughs in jubilation. “Bring forth The Beast that Satan has given unto us!” The wolf flails around with immense strength, the men struggle to keep themselves on the ground.

"I, Abraham, do hereby proclaim thy doom! By blood and by fire, I shall purge thee from this realm and cast thy soul to the void eternal!" The Leader brings the silver sword up by its hilt. Sparks fly as the rusted shackles burst, and a shaggy, muscular arm send the two Huntsmen metres into the air. Abraham brings the sword down, only to be kicked and disembowelled by the razor-pointed claws of a canine foot. He gargles blood, dribbling down his chin, and viscera spills onto the dirty forest floor.

The Beast finally stands, towering a mighty eight feet. Upon the cultists falls a ravenous gaze. Daggered fangs, long, wicked tongue and macabre smile. Flexing its muscles and stretching open a wide jaw, a guttural roaring of such ferocity shakes the ground. The unmoved Huntsmen proceed with swords of their own, swinging wildly to no avail. An overhead swipe of the wolf’s hand connects with a clavicle, removing it and a few other ribs, diagonally peeling a man in half from shoulder to hip.

A blade chops into The Beast’s side, greatly wounding it. Giant appendages wrap around the attacker in retaliation and hold him in place as all forty-two teeth snap on his skull, tearing it away from the neck.

The last cloaked man retreats to the cabin, retrieving a steel repeating compound crossbow. The Beast drops the headless corpse and rushes him at great speed, a multitude of thumps crack loudly as four silver bolts penetrate its chest, slowing but not ceasing the assault. The jagged elbow finds the Huntsman, barging him through the cabin door into a lantern. That, the crossbow, along with the bottle of booze crash to the ground inside, starting a fire across the rotting wood. The cultist stands his ground for a short while, though one straight punch severs the cervical spine. The head flops back posterior to the body as it falls, the drooping head between the scapulae like an unworn hood.

The Beast bleeds, slowly succumbing to its wounds and dropping to the ground. As the flames bellow and crackle up the walls and burst from the windows, Oliver returns to his humanly state. Pale and afraid, he crawls toward the door, burning his skin as he struggles. With the last remnants of strength in his possession, he hooks his red hands around the door frame and pulls himself free of the inferno. As the cabin collapses behind him, he comes across his unzipped bag. Inside, he plucks out the portable CD player and headphones. Echo & The Bunnymen.

The pain subsides, replaced by a numbing stillness, and in that moment, he knows that the fight is over. Oliver takes one final look at the moon, slipping beyond the reach of the world.