The Haunted Forest Tour

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Christopher sailed about five feet above the treetops, the bird’s talons digging painfully into his shoulders, which already hurt from being shot by that prick Eddie. This was definitely a “lose-lose” situation for him, or even what his mother would call (in one of her rare bad moods) a “You are in infinite trouble!” situation. He was pretty sure that the giant bird was not carrying him off to a sunny beach populated by nubile nymphomaniacs; more likely, it was going to drop him into a nest of giant baby birds that would peck him to death. Of course, lots of birds ate their prey and then regurgitated the remains into the mouths of their young, so he might even have that to look forward to.

That was the “lose” part.

Unfortunately, though his destination was unlikely to be pleasurable, he also couldn’t try to free himself from this bird, because otherwise he was going to enjoy a nice plummet to the forest floor and go splat. Sure, maybe he could grab a branch and save himself, but more likely he’d find himself impaled from rectum to cranium. Not good.

So, basically, he had to let the bird finish up its flight pattern and hope that wherever his travels took him, it wasn’t immediately fatal.

You know, you did pay for this vacation, he thought. It’s a beautiful view, and despite the agony of the whole business with the bird talons puncturing your skin, maybe you should just try to enjoy the moment. Let out an excited whoop or something. After all, how many people have ever been flown around by a giant bird? If you’re lucky, maybe somebody will snap a picture.

Christopher did not let out an excited whoop, since he knew quite well that his line of thinking was strictly intended to keep him from going completely insane. It didn’t feel like it was working.

At least I’m not airsick.

As if reading his thoughts (hell, maybe it had) the bird swooped down so that Christopher’s feet scraped the tops of several trees, then swooped up high again, making his stomach lurch.

So much for that positive element.

Just up ahead was a small clearing in the forest. Though he wasn’t high enough to get a true sense of exactly where they were, he was pretty sure that this clearing was somewhere in the middle.

A couple of minutes after the flight-o-terror began, the bird swooped down into the clearing. Instead of the dirt floor Christopher was expecting, he saw… ice.

The bird set him down, much more gently than anticipated, and then flew away.

Christopher stood there for a moment, trying to process the fact that he was now standing on a makeshift ice rink in the middle of the forest. Then he slipped and fell on his ass.

The ice floor was circular and just a little smaller than a hockey rink. The edges sloped up about eight feet into the air, effectively putting him inside a giant ice bowl. The ice had a blue tint, like the Alaskan glaciers he’d seen on television.

He placed his palm on the ice to push himself up, then quickly winced and pulled away. It was cold, much colder than standard-issue ice.

He managed to get himself back up to a standing position. In theory, the ice bowl should not have weirded him out this much. After all, an entire freakin’ forest had sprouted in the middle of a desert, and was filled with dozens (Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?) of bizarre creatures, many of whom had killed his fellow tourists. In the grand scheme of things, the ice was a minor oddity, barely worth a raised eyebrow and the word “Hmmmm.” But for some reason the ice creeped him out. It was just… unnerving somehow.

He took a step forward and ended up on his ass again. As a child, he could just barely ice-skate successfully when he was wearing regulation skates and his mother was holding his hand, and there was no reason to believe that his skills had improved.

Instead of getting up again, he scooted along the ice on his knees. His jeans didn’t do much to keep the cold out and his knees immediately went numb, but that was better than breaking his neck after falling another sixty-seven times. It wasn’t like there was anybody around to see him.

He reached the edge of the ice and stood up. Though the top of the ice bowl was low enough that he could reach it, he definitely couldn’t do it with bare hands, unless he wanted his fingers to instantly freeze and snap off, which he didn’t. He wished he’d worn long sleeves, so he could just tug down his sleeves to cover his hands, but he hadn’t expected cool weather in the New Mexico desert.

Christopher let out a small cry as he pulled off his shirt. Though his shoulders weren’t bleeding much, nor was his admittedly superficial bullet grazing, they hurt like hell. If merely removing his shirt was a painful process, pulling himself up over the edge of the ice bowl was going to really, really suck. But it was either that or stand here and freeze and/or starve to death.

He folded his shirt in half, then draped it over the top of the bowl. He reached up, letting out another cry, grabbed the edge of the ice, and tried to pull himself up.

Two seconds later, he was back on his butt.

He cursed and stood up again. After all he’d been through, he was most assuredly not going to die trapped in a giant ice bowl. Just not gonna happen. No matter how much his shoulder hurt, he was going to pull himself over the top.

He reached up and got as solid of a grip on the top of the ice as possible. He took a deep, cleansing breath, and focused all of his energy on the task at hand. Ignore the pain and pull yourself up. Don’t die here just because you have an ouchie on your shoulder. That would be stupid.

Christopher closed his eyes, exhaled, and then used every ounce of his strength to pull himself up.

So much pain ripped through his shoulders that he thought the skin might split open.

His feet slipped uselessly against the ice wall.

He pulled himself up so that he could almost see over the wall… and then he fell again, this time taking his shirt with him. Instead of landing on his ass, he landed on his back, which hurt a lot more.

He lay there for a while, thinking that dying here might not be so bad. It might even be relaxing. He could just close his eyes, start snoring, and wake up on the other side, greeted by his father and thirty-seven virgins.

Or not.

He wondered why the bird had dropped him off here. Why pluck him off the top of a tree and drop him in an ice bowl? There certainly weren’t any baby birds around. Was this a nest of some sort? Was the bird coming back, possibly with a whole flock of buddies?

Or was he trapped here awaiting something else?

Something much worse.

Christopher thought about that. Considering the way things were going in his life, “something much worse” was the most credible answer.

He got back up.

“I’m not gonna die here,” he said out loud, as if it were more convincing spoken than thought. “I’m gonna give it one more try, and even if my goddamn arms rip right out of their sockets, I’m going to get over that wall.”

He looked at the wall more carefully. Though it was a different type of skating, he’d seen kids on skateboards ride something similar to this. They’d skate along the floor, go right up the side, and then come back down. Perhaps if he got a good running start, he could slide up the wall and leap to the other side…?

Um, no. Not even if he had a skateboard.

Christopher cursed again.

Then his feet crossed beneath him and he fell yet again.

Now death was definitely starting to look like the more appealing option. Even if he went below instead of above, how bad could Hell really be? If nothing else, it would certainly be warmer.

He turned his head to the side and sighed.

Then he frowned.

“What the hell…?”

He got onto his knees and peered closely at the ice floor. It looked like there was something etched into it. He couldn’t quite make it out, but it looked like a face. A screaming face.

He rubbed his shirt on the ice as if polishing the surface, then looked again. Definitely a face, with a hand on each side, palms-up, as if somebody were trying to push through the ice.

Creepy.

Christopher looked at the ice to his right. If he got down close enough… yes, another screaming face. And another. He scooted around, looking carefully, and it appeared that the ice was filled with images of screaming faces.

At least he hoped they were just images.

He reached into his pocket and took out his car keys. It suddenly occurred to him that he could probably use the keys to chip a foothold into the ice wall, which would get him over the side. Excellent. He was saved. But first he had to see what the story was with those faces.

He gathered the keys into one unit, then struck the ice. Though he’d somehow thought it might be magic ice that was impervious to key-related damage, the ice chipped away with no more difficulty than breaking through typical frozen water.

Within a few minutes, he’d broken away a couple of inches’ worth of ice over the left eye of one of the faces.

He really hoped it was just an image of a face.

He looked into the hole. There was only a paper-thin layer of ice remaining over the eye, or the image of the eye. He gently blew on his index finger to warm it up, then stuck his finger into the hole and pushed down on the eye.

His finger cracked through the ice layer and sunk to the first knuckle in warm, wet ooze.

You have got to be kidding me.

There were real people beneath the ice.

So it was no longer a case of merely needing to get out of the ice bowl to avoid freezing to death. Now he needed to get out before these frozen people came to life, broke through the surface, and lumbered after him zombie-style, moaning and shambling and devouring flesh.

Or something like that.

He quickly wiped his finger off on his pants, leaving a white streak. He got up and started chipping away at the ice wall. Get himself a nice foothold and he’d be able to leap right over. Then everything would be fine. No more creepy faces and potential zombie intruders.

A gust of wind blew past his ear.

That was okay. He could handle spooky wind.

He continued chipping.

Something moved behind him.

Christopher spun around. Nothing there.

“Go away,” he told the nothing that was there.

He chipped some more, hoping that the ice wall would be considerate enough to simply collapse, allowing him to step over it and move on with his life.

Something else—or the same thing—moved behind him.

Still nothing there. But this was not a trick of his imagination, unless he’d gone insane. He was headed in that direction to be sure, but Christopher wasn’t quite ready for the padded walls and comfy straitjackets yet, and there was no doubt in his mind that something had moved behind him, even if the ice bowl remained empty.

He went back to work.

The goddamn thing moved again.

Christopher spun back around. This time he did not see nothing. He saw a humanoid figure, at least seven feet tall. Its flesh was dark blue, much bluer than the ice, and it was covered with scales that sparkled with frost. It had the build of a weight lifter and wore a pair of silver shorts.

The creature’s hand shot out, grabbing Christopher by the throat. Its skin was as cold as the ice.

It grinned, revealing enormous fangs that were clear, like pieces of ice in its mouth.

“Hi, Christopher.”