James Moore - The Haunted Forest Tour

The massive tree toppled, falling in what seemed like slow motion before bouncing off another trunk and rolling to the side, instead of crushing them all into the ground.

Before Tommy could worry about how close he came to dying—the tree had missed him by less than three feet—the thing that had knocked the tree aside seared itself into his mind.

Every nightmare he had ever had was moving behind that tree. The shape was massive, so big that his mind wouldn’t allow him to see it completely. The skin of the thing was mottled in shades of gray and black, with pale splotches that wanted to draw his eyes, because they moved and there appeared to be screaming faces within them. There was too much skin on the nightmare monster, it moved in ways that made no sense, and parts of it stretched toward him, hungering and shrieking in high, piping voices. Did he see eyes? Yes, oh yes, far too many. Did he see mouths? Yes, more than he could count, each filled with teeth that wanted to tear his flesh away from his bones and chew him into tiny pieces. Were there limbs? He thought so, but none of them looked like anything he’d seen before.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

Becca ran, her breaths blowing past him, her legs lifting and falling without any rhythm or comforting pattern. She screamed each time she exhaled and her hands, clutched at his back, hooked into claws as if she were afraid she would drop him if she didn’t sink her nails into his tender skin. He felt her nails cutting but didn’t dare protest. She might drop him if he did, and then he would be dead.

His face was pointed at the nightmare, but his eyes remained closed. He heard the wet, meaty sound of the others dying but did not see it. Tommy knew deep in his heart that if he dared look, he would never, ever be able to forget what he saw.

Becca let out a scream. Not the high, whiny sounds she’d made before, but a yowl of pain, and Tommy couldn’t help but open his eyes again.

Some part of that hideous, mottled thing had reached Becca and touched her. Where it touched, her skin was distorted, pushed out of place as more of the gray thing pushed forward and deeper into her skin. Her eyes rolled almost blindly, and her face twisted into the ugliest mask he had ever seen, purple and red and filling with blood like the blister he got once when he pinched his skin in a door hinge.

Still, Becca saved him. She bent forward and lowered him almost to the ground, even as he tried to catch her hands in his because he knew what was going to happen.

Becca straightened up and threw Tommy as hard as she could. Tommy’s fingers lost their grip, and the nails in his back let loose of him, sending him arcing away from her.

Tommy saw Becca’s body torn apart. Whatever was within her sloughed away her skin and drew in the muscles and blood and bone that had been inside of her. Even as he saw her die, his body rolled over the top of the sprawled tree that had been his shelter only a few minutes before. He hit the heavy bark and rolled across the top of it, scraping his legs and hands and face in the process, and then he was over the side and falling, trying to grab with his hands, trying not to fall too fast.

The ground punched him hard, stole his breath away, and bloodied his lips.

Tommy gasped on the floor of the Haunted Forest, his mouth tasting of blood and dirt and dead leaves, and then he started to cry.

On the other side of the fallen tree, something screamed with a thousand voices. At least one of those voices sounded like Becca’s.

Lee moved quietly and slowly, fully aware of the man staggering along beside him. He didn’t know his name and didn’t want to take the time to ask it in case there might be something listening for human voices.

Not far away, he heard the deep groan of a tree falling. The impact was enough to shake the ground under his feet.

He should have been petrified, and certainly he was very scared, but he was also remarkably calm, all things considered. Despite the death and violence, he still felt exhilarated. Every few minutes he would pause to reassess where they were, and every time he did so the thrill came back into him. A lifetime of skepticism had been dispelled in a minute, and the wonders around him, deadly as they obviously were, still made him punch drunk.

Or, maybe he’d just gone mad.

The man behind him groaned again and stumbled. Lee caught him by the chest and eased him to the ground as best he could.

“Can you keep walking?” he whispered, hoping that the other sounds around him would keep anything from actually hearing him.

Brad nodded his head. “Brad. My name is Brad. Yeah, I think so, just give me a minute.”

“Well, Brad, I’m Lee.” He looked Brad over and shook his head. “Listen, your arms are dislocated, and I think I can get them back where they belong. I might need to, because if we have to climb over any obstacles, I’m just not strong enough to carry you. Do you understand?”

Brad’s eyes rolled in his head for a moment and then closed. Lee thought the man might have passed out, but finally he nodded his head and opened his eyes again.

“Yeah. I understand.”

“Okay, now for the tough part. This is going to hurt, probably a lot. And I need you to be quiet and suck it up. Can you do that?”

Brad worried his bottom lip and shrugged. “Is there something I can bite down on?”

Lee thought about it for a few seconds and then pulled his wallet from his right rear pocket. “It’s leather,” he explained. “Soft enough that you won’t break your teeth.”

He helped Brad wedge the old, battered billfold in between his teeth, and then considered the best way to proceed. After a moment’s debate with himself, he moved over to Brad’s right side and gently worked his fingers around the gap between the man’s heavy arm and his shoulder. He moved Brad’s arm and heard the man groan.

There had been a time, when he was much younger, that Lee had managed to do similar damage to his left arm. A medic in Vietnam had placed his shoulder back into its socket by pulling on the arm and wiggling it around until the joint reconnected itself. Lee had let out several loud screams before the pain made him pass out. He couldn’t afford screams right now.

Not far off, something let out a wail that would have shamed an air raid siren, and Lee took advantage of the noise, roughly pulling Brad’s arm with as much strength as he could manage and twisting the limb at the same time. Brad bit down hard enough on the wallet that his teeth suddenly seemed to vanish within the leather, and howled in agony. His body thrashed as he tried to get away from the pain. The sound was muted but still loud. Fortunately, the thing in the distance was much louder.

A moment later, Brad’s fits calmed down and left the poor bastard whimpering around the spittle-drenched wallet in his mouth.

Lee ran his hands delicately around the swollen joint and felt the lack of a gap between the bones. It was the best he could do for Brad, and it was definitely better than nothing.

Before the man could recover enough to protest, Lee went to work on his other shoulder, once again wrenching the arm around until it finally slipped back into its socket with a meaty popping noise. Brad let out one high-pitched grunt and then slumped back loosely, unconscious.

“Damn!” Lee looked around and shook his head. The last thing he could afford to do right now was watch over an unconscious man. The best thing he could do to keep his sorry ass alive would be to leave the man where he was and head on his way.

He sighed and settled down next to Brad, because he didn’t have it in him to leave the stranger defenseless in a forest filled with monsters.

Shit.