Operation: North Sea

THE CRYPTID FILES ^{A FREE SAMPLE}

Jessica had looked forward to this weekend for a long time, so she was getting pretty annoyed that Brian was making it so miserable. With all the work she’d been putting into college, she didn’t have a lot of time to herself, and what time she did have usually went into doing things that Brian wanted to do, things like bar crawls and keggers. Jessica wasn’t at all interested in those sorts of things, but Brian was the first real boyfriend she’d ever had. She’d been too shy and introverted in high school to attract anyone’s attention, so the fact that someone like Brian was with her now made her want to do anything at all to keep him by her side.

Now though, after a day out camping and hiking in the wilderness, she wasn’t sure how much she wanted to do with him anymore. He was a city guy to his core, but he’d seemed interested in going out into the forest and mountains with her. Soon after they’d started hiking though he’d gone straight into complaining about his feet. Now, on day two, it was obvious to her that he hadn’t bothered to prep for the trip at all and had instead expected that all they’d be doing the entire time was getting naked with each other in a tent. Not that she would have complained about that, but they could do that anywhere. Out here there were other things to do, things she couldn’t do most of the time, like fish and hike and just enjoy nature.

“Nature sucks,” Brian mumbled from behind her on the trail. It was approximately the ninth time today he’d said it, or at least the ninth time Jessica had heard it. Honestly he might have said it a lot more when she couldn’t hear, but her hearing it seemed to be the point. “Why can’t you be into something less likely to get me blisters on my feet? Something like sewing.”

“You constantly mock people who sew,” Jessica said. “And the blisters wouldn’t be there if you’d followed my advice and broken in your boots before the trip.”

“I thought we were going to be knocking boots, not keeping them on,” he muttered. Right there, in that moment, Jessica realized their relationship was going to end as soon as they got home. They were definitely not right for each other anymore, if they ever had been in the first place. Jessica knew that there was a spot up ahead on the trail where they could easily loop back around and start heading back early, and although it sucked that her time out here was going to be cut short, it was probably for the best. If she tried to keep this going for the whole weekend, it would only be more miserable for both of them.

“It looks like there’s a spot up ahead where we can rest if you want,” Jessica said. She thought about adding in what she was thinking, about turning around and ending the trip early, but she thought it would be better if they had a breather first, just in case she was tempted to just blurt out that she wanted to end other things as well. That would best wait until they weren’t in the middle of nowhere.

Brian looked around at the clearing she pointed out as though he expected a comfy chair to magically pop out of the ground, and when one didn’t, he scowled at a fallen tree. “What, am I supposed to sit on that?”

“Or you can keep standing,” Jessica said. “It’s fine by me.” She took a seat closer to the broken end of the tree and did her best to ignore him as he sat next to her and pulled off his boots. Idly inspecting the splintered portion of the tree, she realized the break was still fresh. The tree had been old and large enough that they could both sit on the trunk comfortably, so it wasn’t something that should have been able to easily break unless it was diseased or dead, but the wood inside looked healthy.

“I can’t wait to get back to somewhere civilized,” Brian said. “Some place with beer.”

“What do you think could have broken this tree like this?” Jessica asked.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Brian said. “It was probably blown over in a storm or something.”

“I don’t think so,” Jessica said. “And it doesn’t look like it was chopped down, either. It looks almost like something came along and pushed it over.”

“Like what? A bear?” Brian asked, suddenly sounding alarmed.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Jessica said. She doubted it, though. There certainly were bears in this area, but she didn’t know of any bear that would be large and strong enough to knock over a tree like this, or even why a bear would do it in the first place. Still, when she looked closer at the bark, there did appear to be fibers on it that might have been bear fur. She picked up a strand of the fur and started to examine it, but before she could look at it too closely, Brian was standing up and stumbling away from the tree as quickly as he could go.

“If there’s bears around here then I’m definitely not sticking around,” Brian said.

“Brian, where the hell are you going?” Jessica asked. “You can’t just go wandering off up here, especially without even putting your boots back on.”

But he wasn’t listening to her. With one boot left behind at the tree and the other still in his hand, he was already moving at a fast jog back the way they had come. Before Jessica could say anything more he disappeared into the bushes off the side of the path.

“Not that way!” Jessica called out after him. “You’re going to break your neck running willy-nilly through the underbrush like that.”

From somewhere deeper in the foliage, Brian made a surprised grunting sound, then went silent.

Jessica froze. Although she had no idea why, her every instinct suddenly told her she needed to be in fight-or-flight mode. “Brian?”

There was still no sound, not him complaining, not him blundering through the underbrush, not even him crying out as he stubbed his toe on something.

Go, she thought to herself. Get back down the trail as fast as possible. It was a stupid thought, she realized. That was what she would have screamed at someone to do if they were in a horror movie, but this was real life. And in real life, something didn’t just come out of the woods to kill someone. In real life, someone as incompatible with nature as Brian was much more likely to stumble off a ledge and down the steep side of the mountain. And if that were the case, then if she ran he would be as good as dead by the time she got back with help.

“Brian? If you’re playing a joke, it’s not funny,” Jessica said. “It can be dangerous out here if you goof around.”

She thought she finally heard something from the direction he had disappeared in. It sounded like something running away through the brush, something very large. Oh crap, it really is a bear, she thought, or maybe a mountain lion. Whatever it was, it seemed to be moving away from her at a very fast pace. Again she fought the urge to run, reasoning that running would only make her look like prey to something like that, and whatever it was must not be in the immediate vicinity anymore anyway. And she couldn’t leave Brian behind, especially if he might be hurt. She might be fully prepared to dump him as soon as they got back to town, but that sure as hell didn’t mean she wanted him harmed in any way.

“Brian? If you can hear me, call out to me.”

Cautiously, she followed the path he had taken into the underbrush, moving slowly and watching her footing carefully just in case there was indeed some kind of drop-off he hadn’t seen. She didn’t get far, though, before her foot squelched in something damp and squishy.

“What the fuck?” she whispered, raising her boot to see what she’d stepped in. It came up dripping red.

“Oh shit. Brian? Brian, can you hear…” She stumbled a couple of steps forward into a patch where the brush was more cleared away. That was finally where she saw the source of the blood.

The two arms lying there with blood sprayed all around them had clearly belonged to Brian. She recognized the small tattoo on his left forearm. That was all there was here, though, to show that Brian, or at least part of him, had been here. Both arms looked like they had been ripped off his body right at the shoulder joints, and the gore, bone, and muscle hanging from them implied that, whatever had removed them, it hadn’t been done with any kind of sharp blade. In fact, they looked more like they had been ripped straight off of his body.

Okay, she thought to herself with the sort of calm that could only come with sudden, inexplicable trauma. Now I can run.

Jessica turned and did exactly that. A few seconds later, something else in the forest, just as she had feared, started to give chase.