Joel

Near Cutter's Bend, Maine, 2022

Memory was strangely sharp in the woods. As if shadows and shade and blended sunlight allowed what had once been to rise to the surface and become real again. Why that particular memory should be the one to play so often in my mind now as I roamed the woods, trekking over its hidden pathways as quietly as any soft-pawed forest animal, I wasn't sure. The events of the now were not exactly concurrent to the memory.

Death was consistent throughout, yes. But not the same kind of death.

My father had died in his sleep, unexpectedly but peacefully, when I was five. Seanmháthair had moved me out of town and into her "house" in the woods after that, and I'd spent the next thirteen years learning about herbs and plants, weather and moon phases, wild things and secret ways of the wood. A few people complained she'd turned me feral, bewitched me, or traded me to the faeries. But as I still showed up to school promptly and, to the chagrin of my teachers, learned everything quicker than all my fellow students, there wasn't much people could do about the witch hiding her grandchild out in the woods.

A fact I'd appreciated long before I hit my teens.

When Seanmháthair had heard Cernunnos beckon her into the next life a year ago, just after my eighteenth birthday, it had been harder in its way than losing my dad. Seanmháthair was the last of my family and the one who'd shown me the most about life. When she'd gone I'd realized I needed more than a part-time job and there was no way I'd be able to keep paying the property taxes on the bit of land Seanmháthair had owned.

Six months later, I'd sold everything, moved into a studio in town, and was constantly stealing away to the woods every chance I got in a desperate attempt to dodge that most unnatural part of life called people. People were… fine. I just didn't relate to them well. The woods were better. Animals were better. The peace and quiet and untrammeled parts of the world were better. If I hadn't had to work to feed myself, I would have just stayed in the woods.

Hell, if I was just a little more experienced of a woodsman, enough to survive the winter without store bought supplies, I'd just say fuck it and disappear into the woods…

A short huff of breath came out of me at the thought. It wasn't the first time I'd had it and it wouldn't be the last. Saying fuck it was my ultimate goal. Much to the annoyance of several teachers who seemed to think I should go to a fancy college.

In a city.

Where there were people.

A lot of people.

Yeah, fuck no.

I shook off this line of thought that had been repeating in my head for months now, and returned to my previous consideration. Why the memory of my father's funeral kept playing in my head when I slunk into the woods. Death was the common denominator, however, that did not seem to align the disparities in my mind.

Quiet as a hunting animal, I slipped forward through some underbrush and crouched at the edge of a wide depression that dipped the forest's ground down like a shallow bowl. Scattered but tall trees grew on the low ground and twilight lingered, despite the sun being high overhead. Rocks and scant brush littered the depression, but most of it was open ground under the shading branches, which would be a good several feet above my head if I stood straight.

The area should not have aroused disquiet or whispered to me of caution. It was as much a familiar part of the woods as any other within sixty miles of Cutter's Bend, but my nostrils flared at a scent I didn't like and a niggling sense I'd long learned not to ignore woke in the back of my consciousness. Not right, something not right, and I had a sickening suspicion I knew what it was.

Death.

And not the kind that played through memories of my father or Seanmháthair.

Cernunnos had called his own and taken my family softly to the Summerlands. There was nothing soft or kind about what was lurking in my woods. Stalking my woods.

Too many times now, it's been too many.

Once would have been too many, but creeping out over the lip of the depression and picking my way towards its center I suspected this would be proof of the seventh instance of death in my woods. The dread the certainty of that suspicion lodged in my gut was as grossly sweet as the smell of rot.

Death had a smell that had nothing to do with what you could physically detect and it was strumming the unnamed instinct warning me of wrongness and danger in the back of my head.

Moving around a boulder taller than I was, I recalled it'd been this way the first time, too, before I'd ever gone into the woods looking for what others couldn't find. I'd just been out, trying to get away from Cutter's Bend and my job and life without Seanmháthair, and the sense of imminent attack and danger had flooded me out of nowhere. Like the scent of death had been lingering and I'd stepped into it unaware.

I still couldn't get the sight of what I'd found that first time out of my head. I'd seen dead things before, seen prey animals torn apart by predators. But predators didn't hunt like that. Only things capable of wanting trophies did things like what I'd found seven weeks ago.

Seven weeks, seven bodies.

Only… no one had found the seventh body yet. If the emerging pattern kept on as it was, there should have been a fresh kill left in my woods yesterday. The small police force Cutter's Bend boasted, plus the additional cops donated to the taskforce from several neighboring towns, and the single FBI agent sent to investigate what was brewing in my woods had been out searching what I considered the outer fringes of my territory, but hadn't turned up anything.

Which was likely the only reason Malcore had let me loose to conduct my own hunt. He didn't want to, but was a smart enough man to know when he needed the help of someone with my specialties. I'd been the one to find the first body, not to mention the third, by accident. I knew this ground like no one else.

And whoever was doing this was going to pay.

I was going to make sure of it.

They would pay, not just for the pain and fear and misery they were spreading like a contagion. But for the disgust and sickness they were cultivating in my woods.

I could feel it like a fog seeping out of the places they left death to rot amid the trees. A dishonorable thing. A poisonous thing.

Wrong.

Dangerous.

Unnatural.

I had to shake those descriptors out of my head the way a deer tried to shake a tick from its ear. None of them were accurate or apt enough to carry the meaning of what I felt instinctively. An animal could sense the unrightness of a situation or a place against all logic and reason. A human could sense it too, if they actually cared to listen. And I had spent three quarters of my life in the woods learning to listen.

Whoever was doing this was upsetting the balance, and I intended to put it right, even the scales.

Which meant walking into that scent of death hanging on the air of reality and instinct. Prowling forward against all impulse to go back, to retreat and seek safety.

I wasn't prone to giving up, even knowing what I was walking into. Which was likely why I slowly edged up to the next boulder in my path and slipped around it, despite knowing what I'd find on the other side.

Open ground and tree litter trailed toward the largest of the trees growing in the depression. Its trunk was thick and its branches waved overhead in a restless breeze that did nothing to stir the unhealthy air of this place. A thin clitter and clatter accompanied the moving twigs and rustling leaves. A sound that locked my teeth together in an expressionless grimace, my sharp gaze taking in every nuance of what was in front of me.

Linkin Farron's glazed eyes stared blandly at nothing, his face mutely expressionless in a way vastly different than my lock-jawed features. I was bitterly furious. Linkin looked more like he was minutely surprised or caught off guard. As if he'd seen death coming for a split second but hadn't realized what it was and so had gone to it rather tamely.

And perhaps that was a blessing.

Despite Linkin's state now he hadn't felt much while he was still alive. His dying had been quick. His state of death was far different.

Linkin's torso sat upright, supported by cords strung to the tree. His legs were folded in what was almost a lotus position. If it weren't for the fact his head and arms had been severed and were suspended above the rest of his body in a puppet parody of animation it almost would have been a serene arrangement.

But there was nothing serene about Linkin's arms being divided at every joint and hung like a swaying wind chime above him.

There was a thin trickle of brown running from Linkin's lips that had been blood before it'd dried and begun to flake, but there was surprisingly little evidence of other blood. As with the Ritualist's other kills, Linkin had been murdered elsewhere, quickly, and dismembered after his blood had congealed enough not to make a mess.

Or… less of a mess than if he'd been alive at the time.

I was glad he hadn't been alive at the time.

Linkin and I had never really been friends, but we'd gone to school together and eyed the same boys together. We'd at least known of each other, and he hadn't deserved to end up like this.

Whoever is doing this is going to pay.