Spirits of the Moonlit Snow

(Warning: contains depictions of blood, violence, mental health, substances and suicide. Discretion is advised.)

They stood at the trailhead, a weathered ex-soldier and a carefree hippy with a contagious laugh. They were an odd pair. Because of a few too many joints, they had gotten a late start. Making them scramble, to catch up with the sun.

“Alright,” Rick’s husky voice held a hint of nervous energy, “let’s do this.”

Shivering, he pulled his worn Army jacket tighter around his hunched shoulders. The early spring air, that chill afternoon in the Cascades, still held the bite of winter. As cold as I am now, came the bitter thought, I will regret wearing this thing before we even get halfway. He felt the pull of the forest call out to him, instilling a mix of fear and fascination. Bob simply grinned, happy for the adventure and the company. His goatee hung down to his chest, making it look like a squirrel lived on his face. With its tail hanging down, legs straddling his chin, arms framing the mouth and paws clasping under his nose.

“To the top!” some birds took wing from the trees, startled by cheerful echoes that disturbed the quiet forest.

The playful hippy reached a hand out, attempting to push Rick into the crystal waters that flowed along the trail. Always aware, he simply did a reverse march. Pivoting in mid-step, the warrior was then facing backwards and a little ahead. Bob hung suspended over the creek, supported by Rick’s raised arm. Only cold, rushing water and sharp rocks, ready to receive him. Despite different backgrounds, they shared a deep bond. Rick, a loner who was actually afraid to be alone, spent most of his life inside a shell. Every now and then, a bright soul would appear. Drawing him out of his self-imposed purgatory. Like this perfectly silly individual. Who, without even trying or intending to, volunteered for the job.

The hill they needed to climb, to get to the Wraith Ridge viewpoint, was steep and required the gravel trail to switchback. Rising at shallower angles, parallel to the hill. Before turning back on itself, to continue up the other way. By the time they had done three of those, Rick’s camouflaged coat was tied about his waist. Revealing a plain, white T-shirt with sweat stained pits. Knew it would happen, he silently laughed. After about two hours of Bob wandering blissfully along, while the pack-a-day smoker stubbornly followed, they reached something neither of them expected to see. The snow line. Before them was a place, existing out of time and space. On their side, at the lower elevation, it was early spring. The other was experiencing late winter.

Still, Rick begrudgingly admitted to himself, we’ve come this far. No point in going back, now. For a time, the pair were content to wander and admire the final coat of winter. As it slowly melted from the trees and trail. Rick didn’t realize anyone was trying to talk to him, until Bob impatiently waved a hand in his stubble covered face.

“Do you know what they say, about Wraith Ridge?” Bob spoke in a spooky voice, when the skeptic indicated that he had not, “They say it’s haunted by a tragic figure, and a maniacal demon.”

Rick had heard most of this tail from the media, when he was a kid. It was national news, after all. High-school sweethearts, married too soon. Despite her childhood promise to “Be one with him for all eternity,” she proved to be unfaithful. He proved to be insane. The former football star kidnapped the cheerleader, murdering her lover in the bargain. Then, he brought her along on a killing spree. Rick knew the chase, which began in their home state of Texas, had finished somewhere in the Pacific Northwest and even that it ended on a ridge. Hid did not know, it was this ridge. When all was said and done, boy shot girl and then took a refreshing dip into the valley.

Bob, trying to be scary, shook his hands next to his face. Eyes bulging and squirrel tail flapping in the wind, as he ominously concluded “She’s said to haunt the cliffs and anyone who lays eyes upon her, must face the jealous demon that hunts the forest below.”

“Oooh!” Rick’s tone matched his board expression, causing Bob to slump in defeat.

Cresting the ridge, a breathtaking vista unfolded before them. An emerald sea of trees spanned the valley below. Framing the golden orb of the setting sun, that bathed the earth and sky with a crimson light. Bob, eager for a better look, took a single step onto the frozen stone of the snow-covered ridge. Rick, seeing the ice and gentle slope towards the edge of nothing, quickly threw his coat around a nearby sapling. Setting it as his anchor, he slid down to his but. Just as Bob’s feet decided to worship the sky, the trained soldier instinctively reached out, saving the hippy. There was a momentary sense of falling. Thinking he would rather die, than return to that state of loneliness, Rick heaved the lanky frame of his friend to safety.

“Bob,” he rolled to his back and puffed out, “I’m not high enough, to be this high. Take that as you will.”

With breathless cheer, “That just means, you’re not high enough.” Bob grinned.

Nervous laughter rang out, heralding the sun’s descent. Its final rays casting long, eerie shadows. Shaken by their near-death experience, they decided to return home. We will have to blindly descend the ridge, Rick feared. Instead, the light of the full moon broke through the canopy and reflected off the pure snow. Every frozen and blanketed surface was producing a soft, pale blue glow. Bathing the very atmosphere, with serenity. Making the uncovered surfaces look like black holes, in that radiant fabric. This magical wonder of nature was so distracting, they managed to drift apart without noticing. Rick was about to compare it to a ghost world, when he realized Bob was gone.

The old fear returned. Memories of solitude, isolation and loneliness. His own, private hell. You belong here, the thought was terrifying. Panic was almost breaking his usual discipline. Then, there she was. Her white garb and pale skin, blending into the ambient surroundings. He blinked, and she was gone. Yet, in that moment when their piercing blue eyes met, the two shared a hunger for each other. His cheek tingled. Was it a caress, or just the breeze? Bob’s voice, calling out Rick’s name, returned him to the now. Running towards the sound of his friend, he burst from the trees.

Shouting, “You’ll never believe what I saw!” with all the excitement of a child. His words, as he described the encounter, ran together.

“Seriously,” Bob’s expression was blank, “that’s the best you’ve got?” he finished flatly, shaking his head in disappointment.

He thinks I’m trying to get back at him, came the stunning realization. He’ll never believe me. Rick played it off as a harmless prank, letting the subject drop. Continuing their descent, he could not shake the image of the woman from his mind. When they reached the edge of the snowline, the canopy of trees continued to thicken and the moonlit world gave way to the inky blackness of the forest at night. Wanting a last glimpse of the ever shrinking world of light, he turned back and stopped cold. She stood at the edge of winter, a reflection of the moonlit snow. Watching him with a knowing gaze, filling his heart with a mixture of fear and anticipation.

The darkness was absolute, a void that swallowed all light. Rick and Bob, their senses heightened by caution, stumbled through the shadowed forest. Silence broken by the crunching of gravel beneath their boots, indicating they were still on the trail. Bob’s crunching, suddenly picked up the pace.

“Cougar,” his chirped warning was hushed, “I saw its eyes glinting. I think we’re being hunted.” The last words squeaked, with barely contained panic.

Catching Bob’s shoulder with a comforting grip, “Only prey runs,” came Rick’s firm caution.

Then, he scrambled along the edge of the trail. Bob’s fear returned, almost overwhelming him, when the seasoned hiker thrust a long stick into his hands. Followed by instructions to “aim for the nose and eyes.” Slowly, they made their cautious way down the hill. Both men caught glimpses of the creature, with a flicker of reflective eyes here and rusting bushes there. However, something felt off about how it moved. As much up and down, as around. It was hours, Rick knew not how many, before they reached the turn he estimated was the final switchback. He could even hear the stream that Bob had tried to push him into, somewhere through the darkness.

“I think we’re safe,” Bob’s voice sounded reassuring, “He must’ve found something else to eat.” Rick could envision relief, on the man’s face.

It lunged from the darkness. Claws sinking into flesh. A sickening crunch echoed through the forest. Rick watched in horror, as his friend was yanked into the black nothingness. The creature, only teeth and claws visible through the shadows, could be heard chewing through his friend’s anguished screams. Whatever it was, it was not a cougar. He could deal with a cougar. In a desperate attempt to escape, Rick fled into the darkness. Blindly dodging through the trees. Bob’s screams, already fading with distance, were cut mercifully short. The darkness enveloped Rick in a cold, suffocating embrace. The lone survivor, in a world of horrors.

Stumbling through the forest, mind racing, he replayed the horrific scene in his head. Not knowing where he was and having left his best friend for dead, the traumatized warrior almost gave in to despair. This is punishment, he condemned himself, for the sins of your past. This was always going to be your fate. The fate of monsters. To live and die slowly, brutally and alone. A flicker of light appeared in the distance. It was the woman of the ridge. Standing as if the shadows meant nothing, so clearly could he see her. She beckoned, crystalline eyes filled with a mesmerizing allure. Rick was drawn, deeper into the dark. Such a shiny bauble, she was.

Mindlessly, he followed her light. The crunching of the gravelly trail, replaced by that of twigs and leaves. Climbing over rocks and fallen trees, seeming unaware, he almost ran into the ghostly figure. She had stopped, sadly gesturing for Rick to enter the clearing beyond. He looked up, seeing the faint glow of the falling moonlight on the snow. Then, he looked down and fell to his knees. Before him, laying broken in the dirt beneath Wraith Ridge, was Rick and Bob. The memory flooded back. Rick holding bob’s arm, grip slipping. He would lose him. Would have to go back to being alone. Bob fell and Rick, unable to face it, let go of his coat and slid out into empty space. Following his friend.

Rick’s body was still clinging to life, breath rattling through his lungs. Bob had expired recently. Probably around the time the monster got him, he numbly calculated. The soft earth had spared them a quick death.

“You will be one with me,” the hunger in her sinister voice echoed through Rick’s mind, “for all eternity.” When she placed a loving hand upon his bare arm, he suddenly knew the truth of her.

Girl had left good-boy, for a bad-boy. Claiming her high-school sweetheart was too boring. She changed her mind, when the “Good-Boy” killed her bad-boy. Crushing his skull with a cinder block. It was her idea, the killing spree. Making it seem like she would leave him, if he did not kill on command. All the while, playing the innocent captive. When they were cornered on the ridge, after fleeing through the forest, they got into a heated argument. She knew she could have gotten away with it, because the police did not know how involved she was. Her psychotic lover came to the same conclusion, and was not happy about it. She pushed him onto the frozen cliff and he shot her in the face, just before he slid over. Both of them dying, in the pale light of the moon.

If Rick had looked upon the woman, with the glamour fading in the moonlight, he would have beheld a horror. Her mummy-like flesh was dry, cracked and frosted. The formerly auburn hair, thinned to white cobwebs. Infinite black pits, framed by an expression of eternal hunger, replaced the sapphire of her eyes. Worst of all, was the hole through her once beautiful smile. Splitting her lower jaw down the middle, each half seeming to move independently. Giving her qualities of a bug. Rick could have looked through her head, following the path of the large caliber round that had passed through it.

Behind them, scrambling from the shadowy trees, was a pitiful sight. Flesh rotting, glassy eyes and a body shattered by his fall. Forced to use his broken limbs and ribs to skitter about, the way a spider does. Belly up but head on backwards, resulting in it looking correct.

His unpleasantly buzzing voice informed and inquired, “I’ve finished my meal. How ‘bout you, babe?”

This is how they’ve existed, the disgusted thought rose in Rick’s throat, since their deaths. Feeding off each other, the same way they did in life.

“Be one with me,” the witch droned again, “for all eternity.”

The promise she always made, he smirked knowingly, to anyone she could use. Always intended as the eater, never the eaten. However, one should be wary of tempting the universe with promises. Lest they be forced to keep them. There are always other paths, towards the same end. Rick placed a steady hand upon her clammy claw. His body, in the world of the living, pulled in an unsteady breath.

“You two are pathetic!” his calm and pleasant tone failed to match the meaning of his words, through an impossibly wide smile.

His burning eyes reflected the growing rage inside him. The grip, once so gentle, became an unbreakable shackle. The body shuddered, one last instinctive struggle against the inevitable.

“You,” tongues of blue flame burst from the witch, as Rick continued, “manipulating souls into wanting to give everything for your sake.” Her screams filled the night and the shadows were banished, by azure light.

“Failing to realize,” he politely scolded her, “all fears, are fears of death.” Gesturing at the corpses at his feet, “It looks like I’ve already crossed that threshold.” he chuckled, evilly.

“What then,” the grin went well beyond the bounds of natural, “is left to fear? You? Children who couldn’t grow up, even in death? You dare call yourselves MONSTERS!?” The ghostly fire completely engulfed her spirit, as Rick’s body finally released its last breath.

“I have walked battlefields,” he concluded, face contorting with an even more exaggerated expression of rage, “slaughtering dozens. Not all of them, deserving. Let me show you… A real monster.”

As the last of the witch’s soul burned away, the remnants could be seen drifting into Rick. Like smoke, he appeared to just breath her in. Those consumed by his rage, would forever be part of him. They had become one, for all eternity. Opportunistic Fate. Orange flames began to rise from the underbrush, the sticks and leaves crackling with the sound of real fire. Not the silent blue of ghost fire. The forest was actually burning. Slowly, the titan turned towards the petrified horror behind him.

“And then, there was YOU!” Ricks tone had become lethal, “You ate my friend.” His mass was increasing, in proportion to the spreading flames.

“Here kitty, kitty, KITTY!”

The deadly emphasis, on each syllable, broke the wretch from his paralysis. The former man-baby, was little more than a ghoul, born of jealousy. This was a beast, born of anonymous hate. The only thing the fool could think to do, was run. He did not get far. In the shadow of Wraith Ridge, under the waning moonlight, the forest erupted into an inferno. It became the worst forest fire, in the history of the region. Burning for weeks and claiming more than two-hundred souls, before it was finally extinguished.

The valley below the ridge, became known for the occasional spring wildfire. Birthing many legends. All agreed on one point; when the early spring moon shines full upon the snow-covered ridge, the valley below will burn. Consuming the souls of any who are caught by the firestorm. Forever becoming part of the infernal warrior. Filling his ranks and ensuring that he would never again, have to face existence alone.

Moonlight, on the snow

Waiting spirits stand benign

Please, friend, do not go

Death’s fingers run up the spine

Anger trumps fear, every time

(Note: While the supernatural elements are fictional, as I am still alive, this story is based on a trip a friend and I took to Raptor Ridge. It did get dark, the moonlit snow was beautiful and the trip down was in pitch black. The creature was a cougar, but it did not attack. We are both fine. So is the cat, as far as I know.)