Chapter 6: The Bone Pit

The smell hit Liam before he'd gone fifty yards into the woods.

It rose from the earth like a physical presence, thick and cloying, the sweet-sick stench of decay mixed with something else—something metallic and wrong that made his sinuses burn. He'd been following what looked like a path through the underbrush, though calling it a path was generous. It was more like a corridor of trampled vegetation, branches broken at shoulder height, leaves crushed into the muddy ground by something heavy being dragged repeatedly through the darkness.

The beam of his flashlight cut weakly through the October gloom, revealing glimpses of disturbed earth and scattered debris that he didn't want to examine too closely. Every few steps, he found scraps of that same butcher paper Neil had been using in the freezer, torn and stained with substances that glistened wetly in the artificial light.

Behind him, the house blazed like a beacon, every window lit as if Neil was trying to signal something in the darkness. Or summon something. The thought made Liam's skin crawl, but he forced himself to keep moving deeper into the trees. Whatever his brother was hiding out here, whatever feeding ground he'd been maintaining, Liam had to see it for himself.

The path wound through stands of oak and maple that should have been beautiful in their autumn glory, but the leaves hung limp and colorless, as if the very life had been drained from them. Branches drooped at unnatural angles, and the bark on many of the trees bore deep scratches that looked disturbingly familiar. The same desperate clawing marks he'd seen on the pantry door, but these were higher up, as if something much larger had been trying to climb, to escape, to tear its way free from whatever hunted it through these woods.

The smell grew stronger with each step, layering itself in his throat until he had to breathe through his mouth to keep from gagging. It was the smell from the kitchen garbage magnified a hundredfold, the same organic wrongness that had been haunting the house since his arrival. But here in the woods, away from the masking odors of cleaning products and Neil's grotesque feast, the true nature of the stench became clear.

Death. Old death and fresh death, layer upon layer of it soaking into the soil like a grotesque fertilizer. And underneath it all, that same metallic tang that reminded him uncomfortably of the taste of blood.

The path ended in a clearing that had been hidden from view by a dense screen of thorny undergrowth. Liam pushed through the natural barrier, feeling branches catch at his clothes and skin, and emerged into a space that made his stomach lurch with revulsion.

The clearing was roughly circular, maybe twenty feet across, with bare earth that looked like it had been churned by some massive disturbance. But it wasn't the scarred ground that made him want to run screaming back to the house. It was what the ground contained.

Bones. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, jutting from the dark soil like pale fingers reaching for the sky. Ribs and leg bones, skulls and vertebrae, scattered across the clearing in patterns that spoke of repeated, violent feeding. The flashlight beam revealed the gleam of white calcium phosphate mixed with darker stains, and everywhere—threaded through the bone field like silver wire—were those same long, wavy grey hairs.

Not human hair, Liam realized as he crept closer to the edge of the pit. The texture was wrong, too coarse, too long. Animal hair, but from what kind of animal he couldn't say. It clung to the bones like cobwebs, wrapping around femurs and ribs as if it had been deliberately woven through the remains.

He played the flashlight beam across the carnage, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Most of the bones looked like they came from deer—the right size and shape for the white-tails that populated these woods. But there were others mixed in, smaller bones that might have been from raccoons or possums, larger ones that could have come from bears or maybe even cattle.

All of them were picked completely clean, polished to a gleaming white that suggested they'd been gnawed and sucked until every scrap of meat, every fragment of marrow, had been extracted. The precision was inhuman, too perfect to be the work of normal scavengers. Whatever had been feeding here possessed an appetite and efficiency that bordered on the supernatural.

At the center of the pit, where the bone concentration was thickest, the earth was stained almost black. The soil had a wet, greasy quality that suggested regular feeding, as if fresh meat was still being brought here on a regular basis. Recent feeding. Maybe as recent as today.

Liam circled the clearing, his light picking out details that made the picture even more disturbing. Drag marks led into the pit from multiple directions, suggesting a well-established routine. Something was bringing prey here from all over the surrounding woods, dragging it through the underbrush to this central feeding ground where it could consume its kills in private.

But what really made his blood freeze were the tracks.

They were pressed deep into the muddy soil around the pit's perimeter—footprints that started out looking human but gradually became something else. The early prints showed the clear outline of bare human feet, complete with toe marks and arch impressions. But as the trail continued around the clearing, the prints began to change. The toes became longer, more claw-like. The arch flattened and spread. The heel marks disappeared entirely, replaced by what looked like the pads of some large predator.

The transformation was gradual but unmistakable, as if he was watching something shed its human disguise step by step, revealing its true nature with each impression in the mud. By the time the track completed its circuit of the clearing, the prints bore no resemblance to human feet at all. They were the marks of something with claws, something that walked on legs jointed differently than any human limb.

Something that had been coming here to feed for a very long time.

A stick cracked in the underbrush behind him, and Liam spun around, his heart hammering against his ribs. The flashlight beam swept across the tree line, revealing nothing but shadows and hanging branches. But he could feel something watching him, tracking his movement with predatory patience.

"Neil?" His voice came out as a whisper, barely audible over the sound of his own ragged breathing. "Is that you?"

No answer. But the feeling of being observed intensified, as if whatever lurked in the darkness had moved closer, drawn by the sound of his voice. Liam backed toward the center of the clearing, trying to keep his light moving, trying to spot the source of his growing terror before it could strike.

Another sound, closer this time. Not a footstep exactly, but something being dragged through the leaves. Something heavy and wet that left a trail as it moved. The smell in the clearing grew stronger, more concentrated, as if the source of the stench was approaching.

Liam's foot caught on something buried in the bone pile, and he looked down to see a skull staring up at him with empty sockets. But this wasn't like the other animal remains scattered through the pit. This skull was different—larger, more complex, with eye sockets positioned for forward-facing vision and teeth that were wrong in ways that made his mind reject what he was seeing.

It looked almost human. But the proportions were off, the cranium too elongated, the jaw too heavy. And the teeth... Christ, the teeth were like nothing he'd ever seen. Too many of them, too sharp, arranged in rows like a shark's mouth but adapted for tearing rather than cutting.

More skulls emerged as he swept his light across the bone field—dozens of them, maybe hundreds, all bearing the same disturbing characteristics. They looked like evolutionary experiments, human features twisted and distorted into something designed for hunting and feeding. The eye sockets were too large, the nasal cavities too wide, the entire structure suggesting a creature that relied on enhanced senses to track its prey through the darkness.

But what really made him want to scream was the recognition. Despite their inhuman characteristics, despite the predatory adaptations, there was something familiar about the bone structure. Something that reminded him of faces he'd seen before, features that had been passed down through generations of his family like a genetic curse.

They looked like Thornes. Distorted, evolved, perfected for killing, but unmistakably bearing the family resemblance that had marked his bloodline for God knew how many generations.

The dragging sound was getting closer, accompanied now by a wet, rhythmic breathing that seemed to come from multiple directions at once. Whatever was approaching the clearing was big, and it wasn't trying to hide its presence anymore. It wanted him to know it was coming.

Liam fumbled for his truck keys, his hands shaking so badly he could barely maintain his grip on the flashlight. The beam wavered wildly as he tried to navigate his way back through the bone field, stepping carefully to avoid the skull-studded ground that seemed to reach for his ankles with every step.

A low growl echoed through the trees—not quite animal, not quite human, but something caught between the two. It was answered by another growl from a different direction, then another, until the clearing was surrounded by the sound of inhuman voices communicating in a language older than words.

They were hunting him. Pack hunters, coordinating their approach with the patience of predators who knew their prey had nowhere to run. And somewhere among those voices, barely recognizable but unmistakably familiar, was the sound that might have been Neil's voice, transformed into something that could never again pass for human.

Liam ran.

He crashed through the underbrush with no regard for stealth, branches tearing at his clothes and face as he fled toward the distant lights of the house. Behind him, the growling had become howls—triumphant, hungry sounds that spoke of prey finally flushed from cover. The sounds of pursuit followed him through the darkness, heavy bodies crashing through the undergrowth, claws scrambling for purchase on tree bark and stone.

The house lights seemed impossibly far away, wavering through the trees like stars seen through storm clouds. His lungs burned with the effort of running, and his legs felt like they might give out at any moment. But the sounds behind him were getting closer, and he could hear something that might have been laughter mixed in with the predatory howls.

When he finally burst from the tree line into the overgrown yard, his truck seemed like salvation itself. He fumbled with the keys, dropping them twice before managing to get the door open and throw himself behind the wheel. The engine turned over on the second try, and he gunned it toward the road without bothering to look back.

But in the rearview mirror, just for a moment, he caught a glimpse of shapes emerging from the woods. Tall, elongated figures that moved with fluid grace across the open ground, their proportions wrong in ways that hurt to observe directly. And leading them, its face partially illuminated by the truck's taillights, was something that might once have been Neil but had become something else entirely.

Its mouth was too wide, filled with too many teeth, and its eyes reflected the light like mirrors. But it was still recognizably his brother, transformed into the perfect predator their family line had been evolving toward for generations.

As Liam fled down the dark country road, one thought burned in his mind with crystal clarity: the bone pit wasn't just a feeding ground. It was a graveyard, a monument to every victim the Thorne family had claimed over the decades. And now that he'd seen it, now that he knew their secret, he'd become the next name on a list that stretched back further than he dared imagine.

The creatures his family had become were still hungry.

And they were coming for him next.