Chapter 3: Encroaching Shadow

Dominion kept a low profile for the next several days, wanting to see the results of his fun. He sent his minions out into the town to observe how the people acted, seeing and hearing through them like drones. Invisible to mortal eyes, the unholy beasts were forbidden from interacting with the humans, all of them slaves to Dominion’s will. Word had spread of something unholy in the woods, a demon that violated and killed. During the day, small groups of people would gather behind buildings and in enclosed areas to discuss it with hushed voices, asking the same questions over and over again: What was it? What happened to the hunting party? What should they do?

The men of the hunting party were not the same people they were before they entered the woods. They were all gaunt, their eyes devoid of all light and courage, with their hair whitening at a terrifying rate. Tim’s mother wailed and wept for her missing son, while the mayor spent each day cooped up in his office, working on nothing but bottle after bottle of liquor.

Try as they might, the adults couldn’t keep it secret. Small details leaked to the children, becoming fuel for new games. When they played tag, whoever was ‘it’ became the monster in the woods. Stories would be made up, about how it would sneak into homes and children who didn’t say a special chant. They would huddle together at the edge of the woods, daring each other to go in. They had always been forbidden from entering the wilderness, their parents afraid of them falling victim to the lawless hill folk. Plenty of children had foolishly entered the woods on their own, never to be seen again, likely dead or enslaved. Now they had a new boogeyman to fear. The children would mark trees, seeing who had the courage to set the next record. When the parents found out, the children would be brutally punished, spanked and screamed at until they cried and even after. But it was terror, not anger, that fueled the parents’ reactions.

To Dominion, what was most entertaining was how the townspeople acted when night fell. The autumn sun fell earlier and earlier each day, with people rushing home as soon as it approached the horizon. No one dared be outside once the darkness arrived. Inside, every light, whether fire or electric, was active to immerse the inhabitants in illumination, while the shutters and curtains would be tightly closed, as if to keep the night itself out. Doors were bolted and locked, every gun and bible in town always within reach. Evening prayers were doubled, every grace fervent and desperate.

For the wild folk, it was life as usual. They were used to isolation, hiding from the world and trusting only a handful of people outside their own families. With so little human contact, few people actually knew about the murders. For the rest, they were either ignorant or already dead.

“Harold?” his wife asked, knocking on the door of his office.

There was no reply. There was never a reply. She waited until she heard the clinking of glass before opening the door. She found him in his chair, the shades drawn but the sunlight still managing to slip in and gleam off the bottles scattered across the floor around him. His hair had turned white, but sleepless nights and constant drinking had darkened the skin under his eyes. His desk was cluttered with unattended work, the most attention it received just being shoved to the side.

“Harold, you have to get out of this room,” she said as she drew the blinds, finally drawing a reaction as his bloodshot eyes burned from the light of the sun.

She stood over him, looking at the pitiful creature her husband had become. When he first killed a man, a marauder from the forest, she remembered seeing him in the same state. He was just thirteen, but she had managed to pull him through the trauma. The problem was that this was something far worse. She knew that simply from his sickly appearance, and the fact that he wouldn’t tell her, no matter how much she pleaded. “There’s something in the woods, something evil.” Those words were all he told her.

With no other solutions, she decided to take drastic measures. With a powerful swing, she smacked him across the face. “Wake up, already!” He looked up at in her in shock. “I’m scared! The kids are scared! The town is scared! We need you to get off your ass and do your damn job! I don’t know what you found, but unless it ripped your balls off, there is no reason to be this pathetic! Take a shower, shave, put on some clean clothes, and get out of this damn office!”

“Ok! Ok!” he exclaimed. It had been days since he’d spoken to her. He rubbed his eyes and groaned in pain, seeming to finally come out of his stupor. Luckily, his wife had a cup of coffee in her hand. “Ugh, you know me too damn well,” he said as he gratefully took the hot brew.

She finally smiled. “After all these years, I should. By the way, that’s the last cup. Wilson is supposed to come by this afternoon, so we’ve been getting the shipment ready. I think you should definitely greet him.”

“Yeah, sure.” Harold tried to get to his feet but immediately fell back into his chair. “Jesus, how long has it been since I ate?”

Hours later, a moving truck rolled up the long dirt road connecting Senner to the outside world. It was slow going, that truck usually being the only traffic that went through the area. The road could barely even be called that, mostly a dumping site for the stones in farmers’ fields. However, the driver was used to the terrain, and managed to enter the town with little difficulty. He pulled up to the center, where several townspeople were waiting next to a pile of crates.

A jolly man stepped out, large with wiry hair and glasses. He looked more like an archeologist from some southwestern university than a merchant. Two other men also climbed out, both far more muscular then the first, and lacking the sunny disposition. They each had a rifle over their shoulder and two sidearms. They served as the first man’s security and labor. Ex-military, that much was obvious just from their hair and the way they walked.

“Harold! How’ve you been?” the driver asked that while getting out of the truck, but upon actually laying his eyes on the mayor, his smile vanished. He looked terribly emaciated, like he had just been liberated from a concentration camp. “My God, are you ok?”

Harold looked away, same with the rest of the townspeople. They weren’t sure if they wanted outsiders to know what was going on. But regardless, he tried to keep his tone upbeat. “I’m ... I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, Wilson. We’ve had a good harvest, so quit hogging your loot.”

“If you say so. Boys?” Wilson twirled his finger towards the truck and they went to work unloading it.

They brought out crates of special food and ingredients, ammo, medical supplies, batteries, and just about anything else that the town needed to thrive. Wilson was one of the town’s links to the outside world, a merchant on the modern-day Silk Road. He came often, as he only used one truck for deliveries. Any more would risk attack by marauders still operating in the rural areas of the country. His two hired guns were skilled and armed well enough to protect his merchandise.

Once they were done, they began loading the goods from the town. Senner had limited means of production and few natural resources to harness, but they managed to get by. Their main export was crops, moonshine, and marijuana. Most of the federal towns and cities had strict anti-pot and moonshine laws, along with other draconian restrictions, brought on by both the surge in evangelicalism after the apocalypse and the government’s desire to flex its muscles and prove it could maintain order. However, that just meant that small city-states like Senner had an exploitable market.

As Wilson’s crew and the people of the town exchanged crates, Harold pulled him aside, out of earshot. “Listen, Wilson, I need a big favor.”

“What, you need some Viagra or something?”

“No! This is serious. I need you to pass a message on to the governor. I think Senner might have to join the federal system.”

His friend was taken back, having never expected to hear those words, especially from out of the blue like that. For Harold to ask something like this, the situation must have been beyond dire.

“What’s going on? Some kind of viral outbreak? Are the woodsmen giving you trouble?”

“No, it’s a lot more serious than that. We need the National Guard out here, the army, anything. We need big guns and big tanks. Wilson...” Harold grabbed him by the shoulders, forcing him to stare into his bloodshot eyes. “There is something in those woods. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It might be something from the war, but it’s far, far worse. It’s been slaughtering the people in the woods nonstop, and just last week, it came to town and killed an entire family and a priest. There is no telling when it’ll come back and wipe us all out.”

His friend’s white hair suddenly made sense. Whatever he had seen must have scared him to within an inch of death. Wilson couldn’t help but wonder what Harold had seen, while also knowing it was better not to ask further. This was bad news. The town of Senner was a valuable customer to his business, and joining the country would mean he’d be obsolete. But if there really was something from the undead war roaming those woods, then his inactivity could let the flames of horror once more ignite and scorch the world. Senner could be the breeding ground in which the undead make their return.

“All right, I’ll head to the capital immediately. Just stay alive.”

“God bless you, Wilson.”

With the exchange made, Wilson and his men departed, having arrived with a full truck and now leaving with one. Harold stayed in the town square, watching him leave, his only hope scooting away and bouncing on the unpaved road. His wife stood next to him, switching her gaze from the truck to her husband. She knew what Harold had done. She knew it the moment she saw him pull Wilson away for a private word. They didn’t talk business, Harold would always discuss that in the open or in his office if the weather was bad. He had told Wilson about what happened in the woods, perhaps even asking him to get help from the government.

Despite the dire situation, many would condemn him for that choice. They’d say he’d sold them out, surrendering their freedom to beat one boogeyman he claimed to see in the forest. But those people hadn’t been in the hunting party. They didn’t see the bodies, see the black hand drag Tim into the bog, didn’t see the specter and look into its eyes. Hopefully, they would continue to hate him, ignorant of the horror just outside their borders, for the only way they would ever truly know its wickedness was for it to enter the town and make itself truly known. If that happened, it wouldn’t be a matter of how many people it killed, but how few it left alive.

On the bumpy road leaving Senner, Wilson’s guards couldn’t help but notice the tense look on his face. Normally, he’d be happier than a kid coming home after trick or treating, but he said nothing about the great deal he’d made or future prospects. He was biting his lip and looking around nervously, his knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel. Had the mayor maybe warned him that the wild folk might try to attack them? Perhaps he was anticipating an ambush.

“Boss, are you all right? What’s going on?”

“I just want to get out of this forest as quickly as I can. There’s been a change of plan, boys. We’re heading straight to the capital. Just don’t ask questions and I’ll pay you double.”

The two men looked at each other, having never seen him like this, certainly not this charitable. They instinctively gripped their weapons, getting the sense that it would be wise to keep a lookout on their surroundings. The one sitting in the middle of the cab looked ahead and exclaimed, “What the Hell?”

About a hundred yards down the road, a man stood, dressed in a black overcoat with long black hair. He had his arms crossed behind his back and a stoic look on his face, but they all knew he bore more than ill will.

“Shit, speed up!” the guard yelled as Wilson automatically put his foot on the break. “No matter what, do not slow down! Run him over if you have to!”

Wilson did as told, putting the pedal to the metal and running the truck as fast as he could down the bumpy road. Both guards readied their weapons, one keeping his gaze on the stranger and the other scanning the surrounding woods for any marauders. Despite the truck thundering towards him, Dominion didn’t step off the road or show the slightest expression. He was taking a break from his role as the unseen specter, giving up madness and theatricality and focusing only on business.

The truck was almost upon him, yet it spontaneously shut down, the engine falling silent and all the dashboard displays and radio becoming lifeless. It came to a halt and the men all swallowed the lump of fear in their throats. For the truck to suddenly stop, it had to have been tampered with. Was it when they were in town? Had the people of Senner set them up? This was a classic ambush tactic: have one guy play decoy, disable the transportation, and then his friends attack from the sides.

The guard in the middle climbed over Wilson towards the door. “Take my seat and get ready to run if I tell you!” He and his partner opened the doors and aimed their rifles at Dominion. “Show us your hands or we’ll drop you!”

Dominion obeyed, holding his hands out to his sides to show he held nothing, but he didn’t need a weapon. Both men jerked as they felt an invisible force wrap around them, lifting them into the air like puppets on strings. They screamed in terror at this unbelievable experience, but instinct took over and they aimed their rifles at Dominion and opened fire. Their guns exploded in their hands with the firing of the first bullets. Their barrels had been bent and twisted by the same force that bound them, causing a catastrophic jam. Both men were blasted with shrapnel and powder, leaving them peppered with cuts, but alive. It would have been better for them if they weren’t.

They turned their attention back to Dominion, and the blood drained from their faces. Something black was pouring from his overcoat like crude oil. It hit the ground but immediately rose back up into the air, floating like the men. The tar-like black mass doubled in size each second, changing also in its consistency. It seemed to be solidifying, turning into some kind of liquid muscle. It completed its transformation, becoming what could only be compared to as a massive head like that of a blue whale, made of jet-black flesh and missing its eyes. It was fused with Dominion, an extension of its body. It opened its mouth, revealing triangular teeth like the heads of shovels. The two men, robbed of their weapons and their courage, screamed at the top of their lungs as they realized what awaited them. The telekinetic force holding them tossed them through the air and into the giant mouth.

The jaws snapped shut and they were mashed, the crunching of their bones audible even to the petrified Wilson. The blood of the men leaked out of its mouth, the crimson clashing with the jet-black skin, but it extended a fat tongue to lick its lips clean. The head then shrank and was absorbed back into Dominion, and he turned his attention to the survivor. With a flick of his wrist, the windshield was shattered and the front of the truck ripped open as if by a giant can opener. Wilson was pulled to Dominion with the same invisible force, floating helplessly before him. The poor man was beyond afraid, practically foaming at the mouth as he awaited his gruesome death.

“I understand that you’re a man that knows how to get things. I have a job for you. I need a mirror, a silver mirror that’s as large and old as possible. Anything backed by aluminum is worthless. Do you understand? Nod if you do.” It took a moment for Wilson to process the situation, but he frantically nodded. “Good, then I’ll be leaving one of my pets to look after you.”

Wilson looked down, his eyes drawn to Dominion’s shadow. It was darkening, actually taking physical form. His shadow became a puddle of the same black liquid that had formed the giant head. The puddle slid over to Wilson’s shadow and he saw the gleam of two red, glowing eyes in the surface, like a reflection, then it faded away. “You have two weeks to find me the mirror. Should you fail or tell anyone of what transpired here, my pet will peel the flesh from your bones and return to me with your soul in tow. Am I understood?” Wilson nodded again. “Very good.” Dominion flicked his wrist and Wilson was returned to the truck. The destroyed windshield was reassembled, while the bent and torn steel of the front of the truck repaired itself, becoming good as new with no sign of the damage done. “Now get going. Your life depends on it.”

The next day started out normally, at least, normal in terms of this new dark chapter. Most of the townspeople were farmers, so they had to get up before dawn to get to work. However, now it was stalled, no one daring to go out without the sun protecting them. The animals would just have to wait a bit before being fed and let out of their pens, but it wouldn’t kill them. Once the light came, everyone got busy. Shops and businesses opened and daily routines began, with most of the activity happening in town square, around a statue from the old world. It depicted a soldier from the Civil War. Senner, his name was, and this town was rebuilt around him with that name. It was a part of the town, as much as the baker, sheriff, mechanic, or principal. So natural was it, that rarely did anyone actually pay attention to it, offering even the slightest glance. But someone did, and a scream followed that movement of the eye.

No one had noticed it in the early morning, when the town square was still in the shadow of the nearby mountain, but once the sun shined upon it with its full radiance, the bronze caught the light and gleamed, despite age having tarnished its exterior. That was because it had been glazed with fresh blood, kept from drying by the cold and the frost. The blood was coming from Boyd’s corpse. He had been impaled on the statue, the soldier’s bayonet going through his lower jaw like a meat hook. He had been mostly drained of blood, but there was still enough to leave a gruesome mess on the metal.

His office right next to the statue, Harold burst out at the sound of the scream. He saw the woman who had sounded off, still unable to contain her voice. She was pointing to the statue, and when his eyes fell to it, his stomach dropped. Not only did the horror and audacity of such an act destroy any confidence he had, he cursed himself for not seeing it earlier. He had been so preoccupied on his way to the office that he had somehow missed the dead body strung up in the center of town.

“Jeb! Jeb, get out here!” Harold shouted as he ran towards the statue. He kept shouting until his friend came out of the nearby sheriff station. He and his deputies gazed at the statue and prayed for salvation.

The mayor’s voice immediately shook him from his stupor and they ran over to help him hoist Boyd off the statue. Four men were struggling to climb up onto the frosted bronze as a crowd gathered around them. Harold and the others tried not to look down at the horrified faces, tried to ignore the gasps and screams. No children were in the crowd, and the school was down the street, thank God, but they had to get rid of this horror show before it was too late.

One of the deputies fell and nearly cracked his head open in the process, but they were able to lift Boyd off the bayonet and drop him to the ground. A man in the crowd pulled off his coat and draped it over the pale face, sparing the crowd from seeing the cavernous hole where his eye had been. The three men climbed down, and despite all being out of breath, they hoisted up Boyd and carried him off towards the sheriff station.

“They’re all gone,” the elderly doctor muttered as he pulled the sheet over Boyd’s face.

The mayor, the sheriff, and the doctor were gathered in the coroner office of the sheriff department. Dr. Michaels was one of the founding members of Senner, but while he had kept the ravages of age at bay for the most part, right now, his hair had never looked whiter, his hands trembled, and his face seemed to have twice as many wrinkles. Performing the autopsy had done a number on him.

“What’s gone?” Jeb asked.

“All of his internal organs. His entire chest cavity is empty, not to mention he’s been bled dry.”

“Good God, you mean something carved him open and stole his innards?” the sheriff asked while gagging.

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen a coyote do. Though this sure as hell wasn’t any coyote,” said Harold.

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

“But we know it’s not a coyote.”

“No, you’re wrong about him being carved open. There isn’t a single scar or wound on the torso that could explain this. His chest was emptied without even being opened.”

“How is that possible?”

“It’s not. Other than his missing eye and a broken hand, he doesn’t have any injuries. I have no idea how this could have happened.”

As the sheriff cursed in utter bafflement, the mayor stared at Boyd while feeling like his own body was even colder than his dead counterpart’s. The broken hand, he hadn’t suffered that injury because of the creature in the woods. When he and the rest of the hunting party looked into its eyes, they sensed death, not a violent death, like being shot or mauled by an animal, and not a peaceful death, like dying in one’s sleep. They sensed an unholy abyss, a meatgrinder that would tear up their souls and drown them darkness. The fear that overtook them was beyond words, and all the men had run for their lives.

Harold and Boyd had been down in the mud, trying to help Tim escape, and when they ran, they first had to scramble up the bank. Boyd had gotten ahead of Harold, occupying the only section that could be climbed, and he was moving far too slow. Harold did what he had to. He dragged Boyd back down, and when he tried to fight back, he stomped on his hand. He climbed up the bank and left Boyd to die, to be used as bait to distract that avatar of evil.

Looking at Boyd, covered in that sheet, he felt his stomach twisted into knots. He had condemned a good man to death. He had thrown him under the bus so that he could get away. The guilt made him feel sick. But there was also fear bubbling inside him. Had he not sabotaged Boyd, he probably would have ended up on this table instead. Death scared him, but dying at the hands of that thing was worlds beyond scary.

He was shaken from his thoughts by one of the deputies rushing in. “It’s Phillis Marvel, she had a heart attack. Her daughter is bringing her in.”

“Ben Marvel was in the hunting party. He’d had a heart attack and died in the woods,” Jeb muttered. “We can’t even collect the body.”

“That’s what caused her heart attack. She found him, sitting in his favorite chair.” The young man struggled to swallow the lump in his throat. “He had been dismembered.”

Both Harold and Jeb had steeled themselves for what they expected to see, but still, it was revolting. They were in the Marvel home, looking at the corpse of one of their friends. They had both been invited over for dinner countless times in the past. After eating, when Phillis and their daughter would go up to bed, the three friends would talk in the parlor over glasses of moonshine. Ben would always take the easy chair, it was his favorite place in the world.

Now he was in it once again, but in pieces. They had been arranged, making it look like he was sitting in the chair, but the separations were obvious at a glance, just from the visible gore alone.

“This is inhuman,” Jeb muttered.

“It’s fucking with us. It picked this chair on purpose. It somehow knew he loved it and it’s doing this just to fuck with us. Jesus Christ, it was in this house last night. Imagine if it did to Becky what it did to Julia Clive.”

“Boyd and Frank never made it out of the woods, Ben, Thomas, and James had heart attacks, and Tim was taken. That means there are probably four more bodies around Senner.”

In towns like Senner, there were no phones, cellular or landline, so all communication had to go through CB radios. Calls came in throughout the morning, the bodies of the dead showing up, placed intentionally in certain places. Frank was found by his son out on their farm. The scarecrow had been taken down, replaced with him, nailed to a cross. Luckily, he was already dead before the demon of the woods could move him.

Thomas, the town butcher, had been chopped into pieces and hung on meat hooks in his shop. Not since he died had any of his friends or family had the courage to go in there. Were it not for this search, there was no telling how long it would be until he was found. James had been skinned and hung from a tree near his house.

By noon, Harold was in his office with Jeb, the two of them drowning their sorrows in moonshine. Harold’s CB was on the desk, and they were waiting for one of the deputies to call in and say they had found young Tim. They didn’t have the strength to keep searching. The sight of their friends, desecrated so horribly, made them sick, as if years had been shaved off their life spans.

“I told Wilson to tell the governor that we needed help and were willing to join the country.”

After countless minutes of silence, Harold just came out with it. He wasn’t sure why he did it. Maybe he did it to remind himself what it felt like to have hope for something. Maybe he did it to give his friend some of that hope. Maybe he wanted to be honest and get yelled at; it’d make a great distraction from their current predicament.

Staring down at his glass, Jeb flicked his gaze up and grunted in reply. In any other situation, he would have torn into his friend for hours, lamenting on the years of freedom and independence that would be given up, all the sacrifices made pointless. But like Harold, he welcomed anything that let him feel a glimmer of hope. In the face of this horror, things like freedom and independence weren’t worth much. What mattered was survival.

“Sheriff, it’s Dawson. We found Tim.” The voice crackled on the CB and both men gave a sigh of exhaustion.

“I’m guessing with a machete shoved up his ass or something?” Jeb groaned through the mic.

“He was in the dumpster behind the school. Oh shit! Sheriff, you’re not going to believe this, but he’s alive! Tim is alive!” Both men stared at each other in shock, feeling like this was a cruel joke. They all saw it, every man in the hunting party, they all saw Tim disappear into that mud like he was dragged down to Hell. There was no way he was alive. Even if that specter didn’t kill him itself, he should have drowned. “Sir, you’d better get over here! He’s lost his mind!”

“Evacuate the school! We’re on our way!”

They rushed outside and began sprinting down the sidewalk, though considering how much they had been drinking, it took great effort. It was probably better that they run instead of drive. Luckily, in a small town like this, all the important buildings were just a stone’s throw away from the Town Hall.

They heard the commotion before they saw it, heard Tim screaming like a spooked horse. The school was one small building, where only the young children learned how to read, write, and do basic math. Once they reached adolescence, almost all learning was done outside, all hands-on experience. They were fortunate, it made evacuation easy. Harold and Jeb ran past the fleeing children and went around back. Tim was there, the two deputies cornering him against the back of the school. Hearing the ruckus, people were starting to gather, and upon seeing Tim alive, the words “oh my God” were spoken in both relief and terror.

The young man was on his feet, pacing back and forth. The problem was that his ankle was broken, his foot twisted a full 360º and bent to the side. He wasn’t so much standing on it as he was the stump of his leg, where the tips of his shin bones were starting to tear through his flesh and dig into the soil. He was absolutely filthy from the marsh, and the skin underneath that muck was deathly pale. He looked like a corpse that had been fished out of the water.

There was a gruesome black crater on the side of his head, like a spoonful of gunpowder had been ignited on his scalp. He still had his shotgun, but it was caked in mud. With both severe frostbite and gangrene occurring in his fingertips, it was unlikely he could even pull the trigger, but the two deputies still kept their hands on their holstered sidearms.

“Ashes to ashes! Dust to dust!” he moaned, barely managing to stay upright.

“Whoa, Tim! Relax! We’re here to help!” Harold called out. He and Jeb joined the perimeter around him, trying to keep his attention away from the gathering crowd.

“1000... 993... 986... 979... 972!”

“Tim, just take a deep breath and tell us what happened!”

Finally, the boy looked at him. Though it would be more accurate to say he faced him. His eyes were rolling around like cue balls, moving completely independent of each other. “He told me things! He showed me things! Is this real? Are you real? You’d better he real!” he shouted while pointing his shotgun at the mayor.