Chapter 4: Primal

Chapter 4: Primal

The monster’s scream of his name was a key turning a lock deep inside Jamie. The part of him that was a quiet shopkeeper, a grieving friend, a scared man lost in the woods—it all vaporized. In its place, something ancient and savage ignited. The terror didn't vanish; it was transmuted, forged in the furnace of his grief and rage into a single, incandescent point of will: survive.

As the creature’s lanky form ate up the distance, its horrifying, jerky sprint a nightmare in motion, time seemed to slow. He saw the glint of the headlights on its jagged claws, the way the pale, bark-like skin stretched over its straining muscles. He wasn't going to die here. Not on this forgotten road, not on the night his sister needed him most. He was not going to be another victim of the woods.

He didn't run. There was nowhere to run. Instead, he dove sideways, a desperate, rolling scrabble across the dirt and gravel. The creature’s claws scythed through the air where his throat had been a split-second before, the sound a sharp whoosh of displaced air. He felt a searing pain across his shoulder as one of the claws caught his shirt, tearing through the fabric and the flesh beneath.

He came up on one knee, his back to the fallen oak. The air was electric with the thing’s frustrated hiss. It was already turning, its movements unnaturally fast, its glowing eyes fixed on him with a hungry, hateful intelligence. There was no time to think, only to act. His hand, searching for purchase on the ground, closed around something solid and rough. A piece of the oak. A branch, thick as his forearm and heavy with heartwood, shattered in the fall.

The creature charged again, its wide mouth opening to let out another piercing shriek. This time, Jamie was ready. He met the charge head-on, swinging the makeshift club with all the force his grief- and adrenaline-fueled body could muster. The impact was sickening, a wet, dense thud as wood met pale flesh. The creature’s head snapped to the side with a crack that echoed in the silent woods.

It stumbled, its advance broken, a look of what might have been shock in its glowing pits for eyes. A thin, black fluid, viscous as tar, oozed from the side of its head. It let out a gurgling screech, a sound of pain and fury, and swiped at him wildly. Jamie scrambled back, the branch held before him like a shield. The claws scraped against the wood, gouging deep furrows and sending splinters flying into his face.

This was no animal. It was a killer, and it was wounded. He saw his chance.

A red haze descended over Jamie’s vision. The stoic man who wiped down counters and worried about dwindling inventory was gone. In his place was a predator. He roared, a sound torn from his own throat that was almost as inhuman as the creature’s, and he attacked.

He brought the club down again and again. On its too-long limbs, on its narrow chest, on its horrifying face. Each blow was punctuated by a wet crunch or a dry snap. The creature fought back, its claws tearing at him, but its movements were slower now, more clumsy. It was rage against rage, beast against a man who had discovered the beast within himself.

He knocked it to the ground. It tried to scramble back up, its long fingers clawing at the dirt, and he was on it, straddling its writhing torso. He raised the heavy branch high above his head and brought it down on the creature’s skull. Once. Twice. He didn't stop. He beat it long after it had stopped moving, long after its pale head was a ruined pulp of white flesh and black fluid. He was screaming, sobbing, the name “Jason” a broken mantra on his lips with every brutal, final blow.

And then, it was over.

The only sound was his own ragged, desperate gasping for air. He was on his knees, the bloody club still clutched in his white-knuckled fists. Below him lay the still, broken form of the monster. Its limbs were bent at unnatural angles, its head was a shapeless ruin. It was done. It was dead.

The red haze receded, leaving him cold and shaking in its wake. Nausea roiled in his gut. What had he just done? He looked at his hands, covered in the creature’s foul, black blood and splinters from his weapon. He felt a profound sense of revulsion, not just for the creature, but for himself. For the savage violence he had been capable of.

He staggered to his feet, dropping the branch as if it were burning hot. He needed to get away from the body, away from the scene of his own primal brutality. He stumbled backward, away from the glare of the headlights, his eyes fixed on the mangled corpse. One step. Two. His heel caught on something, a raised lip of earth he didn't see in the dark.

His arms pinwheeled, and with a startled cry, he fell backward. The ground wasn't there. It simply gave way into cold, empty space. He tumbled into darkness, landing with a thick, wet splash in something soft and yielding.

The impact knocked the wind out of him. For a moment, he lay there, stunned, the world a dizzying mess of pain and confusion. The air was thick with the overpowering stench of rot, of stagnant water and deep, ancient decay. He was in some kind of pit, hidden by the overgrown edge of the road.

He pushed himself up, his hands sinking into cold, thick mud. His fingers brushed against something hard and smooth beneath the sludge. A rock, he thought. He gripped it, trying to pull himself up, but it came loose in his hand. It was too light to be a rock. Too curved.

Even in the near-total darkness of the pit, he could make out its shape. It had holes, sockets.

It was a human skull.

His blood turned to ice. A new, more profound horror washed over him, eclipsing the violence he had just committed. He scrambled frantically in the muck, his hands brushing against more hard, smooth shapes. A long, slender bone that could only be a femur. The delicate, curved lattice of a rib cage. The pit was full of them. Dozens. Maybe more. They were tangled with roots and covered in slime, a mass grave hidden just feet from the road.

He wasn't the first.

This trap, this road, this monster—it was a process. A slaughterhouse. His momentary, brutal victory felt utterly meaningless now. He hadn't won anything. He had just survived one turn of a wheel that had been grinding people into this pit for God knows how long. Shaking, covered in mud and blood and the rot of the dead, Jamie Thorne looked up from the grave at the uncaring beams of his headlights, a man who had fought a monster only to discover he was in hell.