The Spirit

What looked like a mountain detached itself from the river bank downstream and surged up against the current toward him, plowing great wings of water around its chest. The beast’s arms opened wide to embrace Jason.

Jason struck for shore. The Bigfoot surged up between him and the river bank and kept coming. Jason splashed water at it. Ludicrous gesture. He threw the flashlight, still clutched in his hand, then the empty pistol. Both bounced thickly off bone.

Jason balled up and sank underwater in freezing pitch-­blackness. He pushed against the riverbed, hoping his momentum and the current would carry him past the beast.

A snake of fur, sticky despite the water, closed around his chest. With the relentless force of a steam shovel, Jason was hauled out of the water, lifted high over the beast’s head, and flung in again, with such force that he felt as though he were hitting a brick floor. For one brief instant before the water closed over him, Jason saw its face.

The Indian walked like a cat, wary of bulges signifying more traps. He found the shepherd’s head on the ground. The dog bustled up, his courage restored, avoiding the dead snake. Both heard the furious splashing in the river.

He heard a loud shout of pain from the river, then the frantic slosh of a body surging toward the shore. The battle had ended.

The dog looked at him. The Indian stroked its fur. “He is well,” he said. After this there was no question that the spirit would be hungry.

Dazed by the snake poison and the paralyzing vision of the thing’s face, Jason lay limp as he was propelled downward head first. The water burst into bubbles and chunks of mud as his head was pushed into the muck at the bottom.

He kicked his legs into the thing’s chest as it closed those clamping arms around them and pushed him deeper. Jason grabbed at the trunklike legs sunk deep in the muck by his chest, but they were like hardwood. His ears and nose filled with mud. If he opened his mouth he would choke.

The hatchet.

The thing had limped. The trap had injured its foot. Jason touched the steel hatchet strapped to his waist. The movement caused the thing to savagely rotate his body, sending up mud-­streaked air bubbles.

How had it limped? Right? Left? Right! Jason’s right hand fumbled the hatchet from its case. It nearly slid out of his hands. He fumbled his fingers over the thing’s legs. Right leg, right leg! He found the knee.

Water resistance slowed his swing, but the blade was sharp; it had been sharpened yesterday, when he bought it. The blade struck the knee a harmless touch, and Jason slid it down the thing’s leg toward the foot buried in muck.

The water exploded before the blade reached its mark. Simultaneously, Jason kicked and felt his boot toe strike its chest. The current gripped him and tore him out of the beast’s grasp.

His head, slimy with mud, broke the surface, and he tore in great chunks of air. The arms reached for him. He dove under water again and caught its foot with his hatchet as it took a step. The blade missed, but the wide edge grazed the foot, and that was enough.

The thing shouted, the cry coming from behind the bangs of hair covering its face, and lunged again. Jason was swept by the current down toward the lake. His last view of the monster was of its arms held above water as it walked to the opposite shore. The devil was gone. Burning bright in the forest of the night.

The river shallowed over stones just before spreading into the delta of still water around the lake. The frigid water sent convulsive tremblings through Jason’s body. He rolled clear into the reeds and lay still, shocked to the depths of his soul.

Deformed—Kimberly did not know how right he was! That face burned away everything else in Jason’s memory. He had always believed such faces to be imaginary, the kind of silly debris to be swept from one’s mind in order to build rational foundations.

The face was conical, as though funneling out through a delicate chin. The hair on its head was long and stringy, covering the thing’s cheeks down to his jaws. The mouth was thin and narrow, but large teeth protruding forward pushed the outer edges of the lips into a perpetual grin.

The eyes were narrow and gloating. Just above them on the outer edge of the brow were two small horns. A perpetual grin and horns.

It was not a gorilla’s face. It was the face of Satan, deli­cate and long, stamped onto an ape’s skull. The picture of the devil as inscribed in hundreds of thousands of medieval paintings.

Jason did not remember getting to his feet. His body functioned even though his mind did not. His legs carried him past the lake, through more brush, and planted him firmly on the road. He realized too late that he was walking away from his car.

Gradually the animals came alive again. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of frogs, beavers, and birds, but to Jason they coalesced into one night creature that swirled around, waiting to tear him to pieces and drag him underground.