THE LURE (2026)

We did it. We'd finally shot one. The biggest in the county. Jonesy and I had been squeezing our eyes through those sights all day, until it jumped in front of us. A white-tailed buck. Built all the way through with fat and muscle, easier to hit and with plenty for the kids.
There was a scramble to be the first to wake and pull the trigger, but I'm proud to say I was the one who nabbed the poor sonafabitch right through the brain.
His antler was lying on the ground when we went to grab him. The left one. Seems the bullet cracked clean through. I thought it would make a good gift for Christmas but Jonesy threw a fit when I tried to take it. Spitting something about being proper, only getting them when they shed he says. It's real bad luck he says. He's an old chicken who quacks a lot of bull, but I left it there. It did feel improper. Even shooting the thing, the two of us now straining to carry its weight back to the rover, feeling it's tough hide. Warm blood soaking our hands. It's like we killed a unicorn. I'm glad the kids aren't old enough to want to tag along, there'd be crying all the way home.
Jonesy and I always go deeper than we expect, so the hike back up the pine-slopes was making my forehead a wet sponge. And the buck was real heavy. As we keep hiking, I don't know if was my arms or my legs, but I felt something begin to crack. And I felt the body get heavier as it stiffened up and bloated, as we struggled up the mountain and the sun went down faster and faster.
And soon it's dark, too dark to see your nose. And with the thousands of branches blocking the stars overhead, we needed a flashlight. When we set the deer down, the sweat wouldn't stop down my forehead and my arms and back. As I bent over, some crack finally gave way, and something popped in my head. I hollered and fell back.
I was laying on the slope, dead deer pinning down my knees, sucking all the air I could, stuck. And Jonesy walks over to me in all his wisdom and asks,
"Ya need help?"
I took a deep breath and wheezed,"I- I can't get up Jonesy." I said between puffs.
"Shit." He muttered and crouched over to me, holding the flashlight from our pack. He slapped the thing on and blinded me right in the eyes.
"Jesus." He muttered again, moving the light away. "Sorry. Your face is red like the devil. Can you breathe, boy?"
I nodded. It was kind of true.
Jonesy groaned and pulled the deer off my legs. I couldn't feel a thing. Two-hundred and twenty-five pounds and I couldn't feel a thing. My breathing got harder. This is it, I remember thinking. Here it comes. Hot tears were fogging my eyes and I was thinking of all the people whose faces I'd like to have around my deathbed, and how out of everyone, it was only Jonesy around to see me croak. Not gorgeous, loving Isabel, or little Rocky and Sarah who we'd just had.
I remember praying for myself, the first time in a long time, to Jesus and all twelve disciples please oh lord just keep me alive through this horrible night. As Jonesy tapped parts of my leg with the flashlight and asked if I could feel it.
After a good while and a lot of tapping and asking me if I was breathing ok, I began to see moonlight clearer. My legs were still pinned stiff. Stiff like the dead deer lying next to me. But I could breathe normal, and my face wasn't looking so strange as Jonesy was saying.
"Well I can't carry the both of ya to the truck...was hard enough getting the damn thing up this far..." He said, thumbing the porcupine spines on his chin. "Better light a fire and call it a night."
I breathed out heavy. Just like my father. Men from that generation waved off heart attacks and strokes, looking away whenever their left arms would stop up all numb. And the best medicine was only a warm towel on the forehead and a good night from your mother.
"Jonesy." I said.
"What." He asked.
"Why don't you just carry ME up to the truck?" I said, louder.
"Hell, I'm too old for that." He waved me off and sat down across from me, looking for stones to pile into a campfire. It was terrible, watching the peaceful old man hum his sappy songs while I was trapped, only able to crawl if I needed to. Crawl and scream and hope someone would save me if a wolf pack or a bear came along, because it sure wouldn't be Jonesy.
I was ready to give him a good piece of mind about going alone and calling a ranger, but it's useless trying to separate Jonesy from me. Not after what happened to my father. We were staying here tonight whether my life depended on it. And I wasn't scaring any wolves or bears sitting here all by myself.
The old man had a fire going in no time, when it came to making a home of the woods, Jonesy still had it in him better than the rest. He took out a long hunting knife, it threw little bits of light everywhere around the dark pines. I looked up to the sky. He'd moved us to a clearing where the moon could get to us, and finally I could see those stars. The ones you drive far from the city to see. My breathing calmed, my heart beat slower.
"What bits can I carve ya?" Jonesy asked, pointing the knife down the buck's corpse.
"What about the family?" I said.
"Hell, the thing'll be sour when we finally get it uphill. Might as well enjoy it, now or never."
I nodded, "Give me a bit off the thigh."
"Always liked the darker bits, didn't ya boy." He said, grinning, reaching over with the knife. It took a bit to carve through the skin but he finally pushed through, slicing us both pieces of meat. We roasted on a stone grill, had a little brandy from a flask. We salted, peppered, then chewed the meat. It was tough like jerky and thin, even when cooked right. But I still felt a little strength coming to me. I tried wiggling my toes and kicking my knees but it did no good. The breathing started to come back heavier, so I did my best not to worry about it and listen to Jonesy.
Whenever he got drunk, which was all day, you could always be sure he'd tell the story about the old Victrola my father brought home for my mother. The wedding gift from long before I was alive. Every time he tells it, no matter how many bottles down, it's always the same. The same stained marble wood. The same Woody Herman and Artie Shaw records. The same tears of joy from my mother, sobbing at finally hearing music in her house.
The first time Jonesy told it I cried like a baby too. Now I only want to go back in time and chop the damn thing to bits, throw it in the campfire so I don't have to hear about it anymore. But I smiled like I always do with the old man, and he raved about the Victrola and the color of the wood and the music and my gorgeous mother and he threw his wrinkled face in his hands, wiping tears.
All I said was a bunch of nothing. I'd said all there was to say decades ago. Tuning out his crying, I focused on the crickets. They were nicer and talked less. Finally the old man blew his nose dry and stared at the fire. We both sat in silence.
I listened all around us. The wind was picking up, blowing whistles through the trees. They sounded like the whistles of a dying man. Behind my neck I felt a pair of eyes open, suddenly watching me. My hairs immediately fired, it was like someone's breath was floating out between the trunks. Gently pricking them. I told myself there had to be no one. Had to be. Or I would've hollered and jumped so high, and my legs would start working again. Ever since I was a kid I'd always shut the window to my bedroom. I hated that noise, the howling, the breath. My mother told me a story about a princess in a white dress who flies through the wind, taking boys to live with her in the woods after her twins drowned. Well that did it. After that, every space between the trunks was filled with big, wide eyes and thin women in white robes. Watching me sleep from the edge of the forest. Hoping I'd get curious one night and run out, like boys do. So I kept the window shut. I even pinned the curtains because in the wind, the black pines looked like waving witch hands. And when I slept, I pulled the covers over tight so she couldn't see me.
Jonesy saw I was staring into nowhere again. A sly grin ran over his lips.
"Think you'll see one of the moonlight children?" He teased.
"Shut it Jonesy."
"You know that's why all those Bradley boys you used to play with went missing? Lady got 'em at the edge of the woods one night. Got a few of Bradley's horses too, no one knows why. They're somewhere out here, still runnin' around."
"I know Jonesy. You say it every time we come here you darn old fool." I spat, not in the mood. But he only smiled more and took a swig from his flask, ready to go on.
"Sometimes you can even hear 'em laughing on the wind."
"That's enough!"
"Come play with us, Arnie...come play..." He widened his eyes and raised his hands.
"Bastard! I said quiet!" I whispered.
"Why boy, or they might hear us?" He laughed, I could tell my face was all kinds of worried and it was funny to him. "Hell, I'd be crying for joy if a lady came out of those trunks over there!"
As he pointed behind me to the trees I couldn't help but turn, he knew I would. That I had to make sure there really wasn't any woman staring, watching from the darkness. I almost expected to see her face when I looked over, and I almost shouted until I saw it was dark empty space like always. No eyes. No breath. When I turned back, Jonesy was too pleased with himself.
"I hope one of those kids comes riding on a horse and kicks you in the head." I said.
We both laughed this time, and I stretched my arms to get a drink of brandy. He leaned over the fire to hand me the flask, and when he looked at me, he stopped.
And that's when his eyes really went wide.
I thought my face was red again but no, he wasn't staring at me. He was staring past me. At something behind me.
"Jonesy, what is it?" I asked.
All he did was point and whisper, "Help."
My neck felt a different air, a new, hot type of air. Something else's breath.
"Help...help..." He continued to point and shake. I wanted him to snap out of it, say he was joking. But the hot air still breathed and I knew now that all my nightmares had come from the dark to finally get me.
Jonesy yelled and rushed back, keeping his finger on whatever was driving him wild. He was reaching for the gun. I felt spit on my shoulders. The footsteps behind me were slow and sunk heavy in the dirt. It had to be an animal, it sounded too big to be a woman. An animal, like a bear.
Every muscle in my body was tight. There was nothing to do but turn and look, yet my mind wouldn't let me. It was trying to protect me. The old man was up in arms, pointing the rifle, cursing, shouting. He wouldn't say what it was. Maybe I couldn't understand, but the barrel was shaking. In the firelight I could see his face was draining quick. It stretched top to bottom with a look of terror I'd never seen before in a man.
I had to look. Jonesy was a good shot, he was going to shoot and kill the thing. I had to look. So I turned. I turned and I came face to face with the thing.
What I saw, I can never really tell. As the flames made the shadows move, the thing's face changed from what looked like something of a face, to something else entirely, each time wind blowed and we were left in a second of darkness. We met eye to eye. They were the most human looking part of it. They stuck out at the sides like a horse, but they had bags underneath and were bloodshot all around, as if the thing never slept.
I could scream, in those deep eyes I saw thinking. It was terrible to look at. It looked like seeing your face stretched long in a bad mirror, with white skin and long black hair sticking out a long, thick neck. Its face was so long it was hard to see the mouth, tucked at the bottom of the chin, under two big holes for what I guessed was a nose. It was a deer skull made of flesh, come to life, ready to bite my face off. But as I stared, I didn't see the empty eyes of a killer. There was something here that was trying to make sense of me. Understand me.
"Arnold, God's sakes boy, get the hell away from the thing!" Jonesy shouted, his voice was all scratched up.
I wanted to get away, but I couldn't move. And I wanted to stop staring, but I couldn't turn anywhere else. Soon I was brave enough to glance at the body. It was the same rough, white skin, stretched over a powerful barrel of a chest. Two giant legs, like the buck but with less fat, easily within reach if it wanted to beat me with a foot. And it was all so tall that it had to crane its neck down to meet me.
We didn't see arms, and we both guessed why. We were staring at a monster of a horse. Twisted in the firelight. Looking half-stuffed in the massive body of a man, its head pushing under whatever used to be human, stretching it out like a balloon, until the red eyes spread to the sides and the mouth drooped down to the ground.
All it did was breathe and stare.
Jonesy quivered with the gun for a long time. I'll never forget that hot, ugly breath. Trapped in my nose forever. Blowing over me, scraping years of spit and mud off its teeth and putting it on my tongue.
And I'll never forget when it finally opened its jaw to speak.
We both shot back. Jonesy hollered and dropped the gun and ran himself against a trunk. I leaned as far as I could towards the fire, trying to grab my rifle. Ready to fire like the devil.
"Aeee-loooo...aeee-loooo..."
It was horrible on the ears, rough and high like a bad door, even though it was whispering. And there was a whistle with every noise, like the thing's lungs were cut through and shrinking. Before it said anything else it took a deep, rough breath. I swear I saw a tear come down its eye, as if breathing itself hurt.

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