I Know What I Am

Walls of the mineshaft, on the verge of crumbling, tremble in a final warning to all miners. Foreman Jeffrey McDermott yells to his men who are all still inside. His voice echoes down throughout the dusty shaft, “Hurry up lads, the walls are buckling, leave the picks and hammers, and be careful with the charges!”

“One last look,” whispers the man furthest behind, his name is Reginald.

His last minute search for anything simmering in the rock ends in a find not of the kind he'd hoped for. At the foot of a heap of rubble lies a thick bundle of paper bound in a leather wrapping. He grabs it, tucks it away in his waistband, and heads towards the light of the opening, hastily climbing the ladder to the top, and just in time.

By the time he lifts his foot tremors beneath them leaves him rocking and unbalanced, unable to make the run towards a safer distance. Jeffery snatches his arm and yanks him forward, helping Reggie to escape a calamitous injury from large rocks plunging off the mountain.

Jeffery steadies him, and helps him to sure-up his feet, “In the misty rain and damp terrain, unsure footing and mining don't go hand-in-hand Reginald.”

Reggie keeps the unusual find to himself. In single file, the crew of twelve marches back to camp to spend the night in tents, before making the full trekk down the mountain. They hunker down in batches of three to a shelter.

They allow the fires to go out in mild autumn sprinkles, crewmen grumble at the skies over the veiling of their full moon and interruption of a not so warm, but dry slumber. Nevertheless, by midnight the sprinkles stall out, and skies clear out. All but one are sound asleep.

Reginald picks up a flashlight, he doesn't switch it on. Instead he exits the tent under pale light of the full moon, clutching the leather scroll, and hides behind a massive boulder protruding out of the side of the slope. He crouches behind it, slowly unwrapping and opening the scroll, the flashlight follows words on the scroll from left to right, and Reggie relives this frightful experience, chronicled by someone or something of days gone by, and here it is:

“To protect my family, I will only tell you that I know what I am. It took me ten years, ten long years of shuttling blocks of granite stone half a mile across these mountains, a one man job undertaken in secret. 

I sweat, I bleed, and I tire like everyone else. These vaults I've chosen have all the markings of an abandoned mining operation.

I've tested the granite boulders with dynamite and they've held firm, still, I'm not sure if when the time comes they'll do what they must.

In the past I've shackled my feet to anchor stones and plunged myself into the frigid and deadly Bering Sea.

I've set myself on fire, as I've done to many defeated vampires in the past who've crossed paths with me, and done so with the most volatile substances known to man. I believe for the sake of men I've destroyed the last of the vampires, and so it is time.

Whenever I try to end my wretched existence the devil himself vomits me out of the ocean, and hellish flames continuously forges my skin into a thicker, stronger hide. I will not burn, I will not drown, I will not die.

Hence I have entombed myself within a mountain of stone. I will seal the entrance, detonating eight hundred pounds of dynamite from the outside, because the full moon is nigh. Tonight, I will be sealed off from this world for all eternity, and sleep, finally.

Day two:

 I survived the night, although I hardly remember it. In the darkness my pupils dilate the way an animal's would, and I can see the contrast of scratches on the blocks of stone sealing the entrance.

My fingertips bleed, the nails are twisted and tattered and my skin, and clothes torn. I am counting from the first full moon since my self imposed incarceration.

Day three:

My fingers are miraculously healed. Overnight the old butchered nails fell out, with the new growth extending out to the tips of my fingers, and there are no more scrapes or scratches on my skin.

Day thirty:

I haven't eaten in a month, nor have I lost any pounds to show for it. I am as mighty a man as this mountain in which I reside. This is the saddest day of my incarceration as I must now endure my second full moon. I should prepare mentally, hoping these walls are engineered to last an eternity.

Day thirty one:

More scratches on the walls, they are getting deeper and higher.

I am completely naked, bruises on my feet and toes suggest I'm gaining altitude on the leap. Remarkably nail marks stretch to the upper limits of dripping, slimy cavern walls.

I have a broken right incisor, with a sore jaw. Anything bitten last night must still be inside my stomach. Whatever it is will likely take hundreds of years to digest since the only things in here are made of solid stone. 

All I hear are the echoes of water droplets dripping down the stalactites into puddles. I will stop drinking it, since water might be the only thing keeping me alive.

Day sixty:

I have mentally prepared for this night. Not a single drop of water or morsel of food, I hope, will make tonight a less enthusiastic fight. For good measure I've broken the bones in my right leg, having gritted my teeth before cracking a ten pound rock onto the tibia and now the bones are separated at the point of impact. My tolerance for pain is quite high, things like this don't bother me anymore. 

On my ass, hungry, thirsty, and with a broken leg, I should be able to weather the night.

Day sixty one:

If my prayers are still heard, I pray that whatever or whoever created me will see that I've fulfilled my purpose to rid the world of blood -sucking vermin, and end my suffering.

My leg wounds and broken bones have healed. They are sore but healed. I can walk, jump, skip and run. On the upper most parts of the cavern, gouges in the stone have gotten thicker and wider. Chunks have fallen out. My biceps, triceps, deltoids, glutes and abs have toned, and my strength, if anything, has only increased dramatically.

My understanding of my situation now is that the more injury and punishment I inflict upon myself the stronger and fitter I become. I must therefore return to the old ways of trying to have a normal existence, even inside this prison, I hope. 

I had my first sip of water in several weeks, lapping it out of the puddle like a dog. My nature has morphed into wildlife. I am a wild dog, naked, cold, bearded, scarred. 

Day ninety:

Naked, lying on my back with my hands forming a pillow behind my head, cold, chiming the clockwork of water droplets every hour, zooming in on thinner, and thinner ceilings, I know I will eventually dig my way out of this mountain. Will it be tonight? Or will it take a hundred years?

Day ninety one:

It appears I've abandoned my vertical endeavours to escape, and shifted focus back to the very entrance I sealed with granite and dynamite. The rock barrier is much thinner than the ceiling but for now, they hold.

The one thing I haven't tried is decapitation, I simply don't know how to do it in these circumstances. With twenty nine days to go I might be able to carve for myself a tool sharp enough to see itself through cervical matters, even those as hardy as mine.

Day one hundred and nineteen:

Nothing works. Any jugular I open reseals after a short, lava-like bleed, and every neck bone or muscle I tear through heals. I know by tomorrow any further attempt at decapitation will make these sinews of mine that much stronger. I won't bother.

Day one hundred and twenty:

I am reminded of old wounds again, I can feel them. This is beyond my understanding. Usually as time goes by my flesh and bones are completely restored to a pristine condition. 

Whatever is to be will be…unless…the blocks of granite, I sense, bear a quantity of silver in them, if they do, I pray it will wear me down eventually.

Day one hundred and twenty five:

My inference about the silver content of the granite is correct. By now my broken and twisted finger and toenails would've healed. They must be struggling against the ore, same for all the other bruises, and for once I'm happy.

Day one hundred and thirty one:

With every passing day, silver from the ore at the entrance seeps into my flesh, I grow weaker everyday spent near it and hope that by the next full moon, I’ll neither have the strength or will to protest.

Day one hundred and thirty five:

 Upon further examination of the prison walls, it appears I missed something in my desperation to find a suitable barrier between me and the rest of the world. The cavern appears to have the same mineral component of silver ore as of the blocks I used to barricade the entrance, albeit less of it. It is an old abandoned silver ore mine. This might work after all.

I hope in time even if I don't die, I will become weary enough to fall into perpetual slumber.

Day one hundred and forty:

My strength is waning as I imagine the moon does, drifting across the starry sky. I dream more and the fewer mares are less daunting. If this is what it feels like to drift, then my song is this: “Drift you poor soul, drift into the bosom of your Lord, and let the devil have his undying flesh. Let him find the fire, or the anchor to destroy it. Let him have the abomination he calls creation, for my soul searches, it yearns for redemption, and I myself have tried to separate it from iron bones,”

Day one hundred and fifty:

I can hardly find the strength to write anymore. In total darkness, my eyes strain more and more. I know tonight will be different. This wolf is broken in spirit. His fight has left him. The transformation is hours away, yet I feel its power fading. All I can do now with the strength I have is countdown to midnight by means of this pen and the dripping of water.

Everything fades away, doesn't it? The grasses sprout and seed and in the dry season they wither and burn. It is my dry season now, I feel it in dry cracked, and bleeding lips. 

My hands shake, I am weary. I breathe slower. I sleep for longer, days on end I think. I am at peace. The one thing that makes me uncomfortable are rumblings of frequent tremors coming from the other side of the mountain. On the positive side of things they might help this cause better than I ever could, and seal this vault forever,”

Reggie is breathing heavily, having read himself into night sweats. He slowly rolls up the scroll, binding it tighter in its leather robe than the way in which he found it. His hands tremble, much in the way of the author's when he penned the last of his words. 

He can't run, the stony, slippery mountain terrain will guarantee a precipitous tumble all the way back to camp. He can't stand, if there is anything out there that is set loose out of the mountain now, standing will get its attention. He can't sit. Sitting means waiting for anything out there that's already seen him. He can't scream for help either. If there's nothing to be afraid of he'll be laughed at for the rest of his life. 

He takes courage in a sliver of hope, the possibility of this being an old wife’s tale for which he can be rewarded handsomely for its discovery.

It is a sliver of hope fading away with the sound of a panting, bear-like breathing throwing steam and blotches of a thick, warm, slimy fluid onto the nape of his neck. It smells like rotting corpses. It is warm and with every panting breath more of it is heaped and piled on top of the rest.

Reggie has no choice but to stand, and manages to find the strength to do so. Urine is pasting his denim trousers to his leg all the way down to the ankle. The moon is full and bright. Wet stones shimmer all around him. It highlights the landscape of fogged out gorges and valleys below, and jagged mountain peaks all around and capped with snow.

He pivots in a flash to find…nothing, and throws out of his body a gasp of terror, “What the hell is it?” 

He spins, constantly searching for it. His eyes narrow in on every rock and stone in the distance, trying to glimpse anything that moves and then he sees it, a terrifying beast perched atop a knife's edge of a stone under the full moon right across the valley. 

It is not a wolf. It stands on its hind legs, and is about as big as a grizzly bear. It's not a bear either.

A nightmarish silhouette reveals the head of an Alsatian dog, with elongated canines. The hair on its back is pointed and long. It has the fluffy tail of a wolf dog. When it turns its head towards you, you can see straight through its eyes into the white moon.

 It doesn't bark or growl or snarl. It simply arches its back, rises towards the sky, howls at the full moon, and then it's gone! 

In the tents flashlights come on, revealing panic inside.

Sleeping miners are awakened to the presence of wolves. It is a matter taken seriously by the foreman.

They come out with rifles and form a circle, aiming fruitlessly into the distance. Through their scopes they locate Reggie perched on the stone he hid behind earlier to avoid them, “stop mucking around. You almost got yourself shot, “Jeffery shouts.

The others laugh hysterically, wondering why no one else drummed up a prank like this before, the only people who are still not laughing are Jeffrey and Reggie. 

One of the miners, Boyd shouts, “Reggie, it is a hunter's moon tonight. Give it a run will you. Let's see which one of us is the better shot,” and the others are bowled over in laughter, including Jeffery this time.

Even this isn't enough to settle Reggie's mind.  

He is frozen, torn between the grim truth and the escape of pareidolia. Either way, having the weight of evidence in the palm of his shaking hand, there is something of the make of a wolf on the loose, and in his heart Reggie knows what they have done!

THE END