Matt Hults - Anything Can Be Dangerous

Jacob adjusted his grip on Sadie, smiling.

“Hello,” Kate said.

The quintet closed within ten feet and came to a halt, watching Jacob and his family with unreadable eyes. None of them spoke, not even to acknowledge Kate’s greeting.

Jacob extended his hand. “I’m Jacob Strode, pleased to—”

“What are you doing here?” the closest man asked. He was older than the rest, his face a craggy landscape of wrinkles.

Jacob swallowed, wetting his throat. “We had a bit of an accident with our car,” he explained. “A deer ran into the—”

“This is sacred ground,” the man interrupted. “It is a spiritual place. You shouldn’t have come here.”

Jacob exchanged glances with Kate. “I’m sorry. We didn’t intend to trespass or anything. We’re just trying to get to town.”

“There are roads to town,” the man answered.

Jacob swallowed again. He saw Kate look to him out of the corner of his eye but kept his attention focused on the tribesman. He shifted position, trying to free himself from the snow hugging his legs.

“Like I said, we wrecked our car back there, and we haven’t seen any other traffic for hours. You see, we were on our way to a wedding, so we’re not really dressed for—”

“You are not welcome here.”

“Please,” Kate cut in. “We just need a cell phone or a radio, and we’ll—”

The elder shook his head. “Your white man’s magic will not work here.”

Jacob blinked, catching another shocked glance from Kate.

White man’s magic? Did he actually say that?

“This is a place of uneasy spirits,” the elder went on. “You have disturbed them with your presence, and for that you must die.”

Each word of the old man’s statement resounded with perfect clarity in the open air, but Jacob floundered for a response while he waited for the grin that would put them in context. In contrast, the man’s expression remained maddeningly impassive.

“We said we were sorry,” Kate said. “You don’t have to play games with us.”

“Regret means nothing,” the old man replied. “Only blood will cleanse your transgression.”

“This isn’t funny,” she shot back.

The wind howled, stirring up specters of snow that swirled around them. For a moment the distant trees become lost in a white haze, and the rest of the world vanished.

Jacob used the moment to turn to his wife and slide Sadie into her arms. When he faced the hunters again, he stripped off his gloves and dug his wallet out of his pocket.

“I have sixty dollars cash,” he said, pulling the bills out to show them. He strove to keep his voice level, as if the leader’s announcement never registered. “I know that’s not much, but if there’s a bank in town, I’d gladly pay you men one hundred dollars apiece to—”

“Five hundred,” Kate interjected. “We’ll pay you five hundred dollars apiece. It’s all we have, but we’ll give it to you if you help us. Please.”

“Trade will not save you,” the leader replied.

Jacob’s eyes flicked to each of the men. They all shared the older man’s blank gaze, not one looking even the slightest bit insincere. Their silent subservience cleaved a new wound into Jacob’s resolve.

“Look, we’re scared enough as it is,” Jacob told them. “Why are you doing this?”

No one replied. Had someone sneered or offered a comment, then at least he might have had a clue to their intentions, but their incessant silence deepened his fear that the old man wasn’t joking.

“Is it a racial thing?” Jacob pressed, searching for the source of the unspoken hostility. “Is that what the white man comment was about? Because we’re not like that.”

The leader’s stare remained constant, his expression unyielding.

Jacob crammed the money into his pocket. A flush of anger drove the cold from his cheeks.

“Forget it,” he said. “We’ll find our own way—”

“Jacob,” Kate cut in.

He turned to look at her, only to find her attention trained on five more natives who’d approached from behind. Like the first group, all of them wore hunting gear and carried handcrafted weapons.

By the time Jacob faced the leader again the other hunters had fanned out, joining with the newcomers to surround them.

“Come on, guys,” Jacob pleaded. “Enough is enough.”

Ignoring him, the leader nodded to his fellow tribesmen, and the men all readied their bows. They drew arrows.

Kate gasped, moving closer.

“Okay, stop this,” Jacob demanded. He glanced back and forth, trying to watch everyone at once. He shuffled his feet in the snow, hoping to bump into a rock or a stick, anything he could use as a weapon.

“This has gone way too far. If you’re not going to help us then just back off and—”

But his words died off in mid-sentence when he saw the hunters knock the arrows to their bowstrings and pull back. The wood creaked as the pressure compounded.

Jacob froze, his anger turning to terror.

Kate grasped his arm.

“There is no fighting it,” the old man said. “The spirits demand sacrifice.”

Jacob’s heart machinegunned inside his chest, firing adrenaline to every muscle in his body. His hands shook. His legs trembled. Sweat burned on his brow.

The valley surrounded them like a wasteland, offering no shelter, no means of escape. The deep, clinging snow assured that even the fastest lunge would prove useless, and the nearest tree seemed a world away.

But not nearly as distant as reasoning with the man standing ten feet in front of him.

Jacob met the elder’s emotionless gaze.

“Take me,” Jacob pleaded. “Let my family go.”

“Jacob, no,” Kate cried.

“Yes,” he said, stepping away from her. “I’m the one who decided to cross here. Leave them out of this. I’m begging you, don’t hurt my family.”

The old man’s eyes never blinked. His pupils appeared huge in the gloom, and what Jacob saw welling in their black depths drowned his last hope for salvation. Behind his impervious expression of detachment, Jacob saw a glimmer of revelry in the old man’s dark gaze, a sinister obedience to customs that had been forged in another age and carried out over the centuries with an unbending devotion.

“The woman first,” the old man ordered.

And with those words, Jacob realized what had been nagging him ever since the hunters arrived: no steamy exhalations issued from the man’s lips when he spoke. His chest remained as still as the frozen valley floor.

Because he’s already dead, Jacob thought. All of them are.

— This is a place of uneasy spirits—

Jacob’s mouth dropped open even as the sound of bowstrings thrummed the air. Arrows hissed past on both sides.

Half a dozen impacts issued from behind, like fists hitting a pillow.

Moving with the tarry slowness of a nightmare, Jacob swung around to see his wife falling backwards, wooden shafts jutting from her torso and legs. She collapsed with her eyelids peeled back in shock, teeth bared in a display of animalistic horror. Sadie tumbled from her grasp, landing facedown in the snow.

“No!” Jacob bellowed.

Something punched him in the back.

He glanced down to see an obsidian arrowhead poking through his coat, just over the right breast pocket. Thin wisps of steam trailed from the blood smeared across its surface.

Jacob glanced up, immobilized by shock.

He saw Sadie, still stuck in the snow, unable to move. Kate rolled toward her, reaching out, striving to help the girl in spite of her wounds.

Then his eyes caught a flash of movement from the hunters beyond his wife and child, and suddenly five arrows stabbed into his legs.

The cold stone missiles punched through his aching muscles with brutal force, ravaging his flesh. Their sharp points chipped against bone.