Chapter 5: The Price of Disbelief

Chapter 5: The Price of Disbelief

The world narrowed to the clearing, a brutal arena under the indifferent gaze of the sky. The creature stood before them, a nine-foot-tall monument to their foolishness, its very presence warping the air around it. The scent that rolled off it was of damp grave soil, crushed pine, and something metallic and ancient, like blood left on a stone altar for a thousand years.

Fear, cold and absolute, should have paralyzed Leo. But beneath it, a desperate, frantic survival instinct caught fire. This was it. The ultimate proof, the ultimate cryptid, and it was going to tear them limb from limb. His blog, his theories, his intellectual arrogance—all of it was meaningless ash in the face of this walking nightmare. All he had left was his ‘cheat code.’

His hand, shaking violently, clawed at the small of his back, his fingers closing around the familiar checkered grip of the 9mm pistol. He ripped it from its holster, the click of the safety being disengaged deafeningly loud in the sudden silence.

“Leo, what are you doing?” Isaac yelled, his voice strained as he backed away, keeping the sharpened point of his spear leveled at the creature’s chest.

“What I should have done in the first place!” Leo screamed back, his voice a ragged tear in his throat. He raised the pistol with both hands, trying to steady his aim on the creature’s torso, a target impossible to miss. He wasn’t aiming to document anymore. He was aiming to kill.

He squeezed the trigger.

The CRACK of the first shot was a pathetic popgun sound against the primeval backdrop. The second and third followed in quick succession. He saw the bullets strike home, not with the satisfying impact of lead hitting flesh, but with a series of wet, pulpy thumps. Small, dark holes appeared in the creature’s bark-like hide, and from them oozed not red blood, but the same thick, black, oily ichor that had coated his arrow. The substance didn't drip; it clung and congealed, seeming to choke the wounds closed almost as soon as they were made.

The creature didn't even flinch. It tilted its skull head, the crimson points of light in its sockets fixed on the pistol in Leo’s hands with an expression of what could only be described as contemptuous curiosity. It took a slow, deliberate step forward.

Panic shredded the last of Leo’s composure. He emptied the clip, the gun bucking in his hands, brass casings spinning through the air. Each bullet hit, each one swallowed by the unholy flesh, each one utterly, uselessly absorbed. The slide locked back on an empty chamber with a final, hollow click.

His cheat code had failed. His modern, man-made answer to the horrors of the world was nothing more than a toy.

The creature’s patience was at an end. In a movement so fast it defied physics, it lunged. It didn't run; it simply crossed the twenty feet of clearing in a single, fluid blur of motion. The air displaced by its charge hit Leo like a physical blow, knocking the breath from his lungs.

A long, spindly arm, corded with unnatural muscle, shot out. Claws like obsidian razors wrapped around Leo's chest, lifting him effortlessly off his feet. The pistol clattered uselessly to the forest floor. The world spun, a sickening vortex of green and brown, and then his back slammed into the earth with a force that drove the air from his body in a choked gasp.

He was pinned. The creature’s immense weight was on him, its clawed hand a cage of bone and sinew around his ribs. He stared up, past the gnarled, emaciated torso, into the empty sockets of the deer skull. The two points of crimson light burned down at him, not with animalistic rage, but with a cold, hateful intelligence that was infinitely more terrifying. He could see his own terrified reflection warped in their fiery depths.

This was it. The end. Killed by the very thing he had obsessively sought. The irony was a bitter acid in his throat.

The creature leaned in closer, the foul stench of its presence overwhelming him. A low, grinding sound, like stones grating together deep underground, began to emanate from the lipless maw beneath the skull. The sound formed itself, twisting the air into unnatural shapes, coalescing into something that was almost, horrifyingly, speech. The voice was a layered chorus of rustling leaves, snapping bone, and the faint, terrible echo of a human scream. It scraped against Leo’s eardrums, a violation of sound itself.

And then it spoke its first and final words to him.

“I… warned… you.”

The words were not a threat. They were a judgment. A sentence passed. This creature, this ancient spirit, knew. It knew he was the one who fired the first arrow. The returned arrow, the severed bowstring—it had been a message, a chance to retreat, a warning from a territorial god to a mortal trespasser. A warning he had been too arrogant and too foolish to heed.

The creature’s other hand rose, its claws extended, ready to tear his face from his skull. Leo closed his eyes, a single, hot tear of regret and terror escaping to trace a path through the grime on his cheek.

“GET OFF HIM, YOU BASTARD!”

Isaac’s roar of pure, primal fury cut through the air. There was the sound of pounding feet, a desperate grunt of exertion, and then a sickening, wet CRUNCH.

Leo’s eyes snapped open. The clawed hand, inches from his face, froze. The immense pressure on his chest lessened. The creature’s skull head jerked violently to the side.

Protruding from the right eye socket, driven clean through the bone with unimaginable force, was the polished steel head of Isaac’s hunting spear. The wooden shaft vibrated with the force of the impact. Black ichor, thick as tar, poured from the wound, sizzling as it dripped onto the forest floor.

Isaac stood there, his entire body thrown into the blow, his hands still gripping the spear shaft, his face a mask of savage desperation. He had put all his strength, all his fear, and all his protective loyalty into that single, desperate thrust.

But the fight was not over. It had just become a brutal, desperate struggle to kill a god.

With a shriek that was no longer human but a pure distillation of pain and rage, the creature swatted at the spear shaft embedded in its head. It backhanded Isaac with its free arm, a casual, contemptuous blow that sent him flying through the air to crash against the trunk of a pine tree ten feet away. He slumped to the ground, momentarily stunned.

The monster staggered to its feet, ripping the spear from its own skull with a hideous tearing sound. Bone splintered. More black blood gushed forth. The crimson light in the punctured socket was extinguished, but the other burned brighter than ever, a lone star of pure hatred fixed on the two broken men. It held the spear in its claws, snapping the thick wooden shaft in two as if it were a matchstick.

It was wounded. It was furious. And it was coming to finish the job.