Wild Frontier

American Grimoire

Story by Seth Johnson

Illustration by Cory Mendenhall

Nathan Hudson’s vision began to darken as he was choked.

He slapped a hand down on a man’s thigh and scratched at his fringed leather pants, tapping quickly, the boyhood signal for you win. The man’s grip sadistically tightened and Nathan’s vision became a tunnel, closing in with every beat of his slowing heart. Somewhere in the distance of his fading reality, he heard the roar of the men in the tavern, some applauding and the majority hollering for the man to let off. As Nathan lost the last bead of conscious light, he felt the grip loosen and his lungs sucked in a bellow of air filled with dirt and dust from the floor. He coughed, spit and rasped as he regained his vision. He sat up, his head pounding while someone handed him his raccoon pelt cap.

“Son of the Frontier, my ass,” the man he wrestled shouted at him. “More like tulip o’ the forest. You should call those writers back and have them change that title.”

Jed Hawkins gave a beaming, checkered grin and held his hand out to Nathan who pulled his cap onto his head and let the man help him up.

“Jed, you need to stop losing teeth, you look like a jack-o-lantern.”

Jed pushed his tongue through a couple of the spaces in his mouth and shrugged. “You don’t look good either, old man. That stomach of yours looks like it belongs on a dead buffalo,” Jed said.

“Ambushing someone as they come through a door doesn’t really add up to a proper greeting, or a fair fight, don’t you?” Nathan said. “Besides. I’m old now, I’m told. My back aches.”

Jed slapped him on the back a touch too hard and put his arm around him and gave him a crushing hug as a greeting.

“Nothin’ in life is fair, Tulip. Seems you got soft up there in New York City attending those fancy soirees and drinking caviar with big whigs. How long have you been gone? A year?”

“Just about – and you eat it.”

“Eat what?”

“Caviar. It’s fish eggs. You eat it. You don’t drink it. Champagne is what rich folks drink.”

Jed screwed his face up and raked his tongue across peg teeth and shook his head.

“You can have it,” he said. “I’d rather chew the paws off a dead dog. So what were you doing up in the North, embellishing your legend a little more?”

The pair sat down to an applause of arthritic pops from years of fighting, hunting and camping on the cold, hard ground. Jed pulled the cork out of a clay jug and poured two glasses of whiskey.

“I wouldn’t say it was embellishing, really,” said Nathan. “You know how that fella wrote all those stories about me a number of years back? Seems they wanted to make plays out of them. Folks are enamored with the wild years that are already gone by. Those city streets and bustle make them long to break out of their lives and they can’t even see it.” Nathan took a sip and then smiled slightly. “I really have missed good Tennessee whiskey,” he said with a sigh. He was lost in thought for a moment. “Well. The trip was worth it. I got paid handsomely enough to not really have to drag my tired old ass around anymore. I’ll pretend to be anyone for enough money.”

Jed laughed and knocked his glass back and topped them both off. “What did you do up there? Sprinkle bullshit on the audience like a farmer planting seeds?”

Nathan swirled his whiskey in his cup and held it up as a salute with a wink. “I reckon that’s about the whole of it. They gave me some gussied up duds to wear. Decorated buckskins and a terrible coon skin hat. Some city boy’s vision of a trail blazer I suppose,” he took a sip and laid a hand on his bulging stomach as he relaxed into the chair. “So out I’d come on stage at the beginning of the show, telling folks how all the facts and accounts were true. I’d leave and the actors would do their show and afterward I’d come out and take a bow – thanking them for their attendance.”

Jed lit his pipe with a taper at the table and blew a gap-toothed smoke ring over the candle, across the table and into Nathan’s face. “Did you tell them about the time you fought your way out of the custody of them Frenchmen? You know, if you weren’t such a little princess, I’d think you almost pass for a pretty tough son of a bitch.”

Nathan nodded and scratched his beard. “Told them about most everything. You know, once you get to be an old man, you start to realize it ain’t really worth keeping secrets from folks. Secrets are for the young and ambitious.”

“Secrets, huh?” Jed said. “Known you nearly thirty years. You ain’t got much secret from me. Seen ya in your birthday suit one too many times. Hell. One time is too many now that I’m thinking about it.”

“I got stories,” Nathan said.

“Bullshit you do, you stupid liar. I know them all. Even the not-true ones. I’ve had to hear that voice of yours drone on for years, worse than any skeeter buzzin’ round your ear on a hot summer night.”

Nathan waved Jed off. “The funny thing is – the most wild story I haven’t really told anyone. Not even you,” he said while he raised his eyebrows. “Sometimes real things are so strange, no matter what you say, people think you’re trying to pull one over on them.”

Jed leaned back and the joints of the chair groaned. In the distance a glass broke on the floor and two men began to shout at each other.

“Ok, ya pain in the ass. I’ll take your bait. So this some story you’ve never told me before?”

Nathan looked away and leaned into the table so his face caught the amber light of the flame.

“What I never told no one was about when I killed a monster and got this,” Nathan said has he pulled down his shirt to reveal a jagged a scar that stretched across his chest.

“Oh quit it, Nathan. You told me that was a tomahawk that did that,” Jed said.

“Cause no one will believe the truth of it. You wanna know what really happened?

Our home – well – you know my childhood home. It’s at the base of the mountain there and we were more or less on the periphery of civilization, to put it in a New York fashion. I had roved a fair bit, but you know – the forests around here were different in those times. They were more wild. There were still places that man just didn’t go. Places the brave natives wouldn’t tread. Places they said held the spirit of a forest. A place of power.

Some of these places, even the wildlife wouldn’t go. It’s one of these places where I earned this scar.

I wasn’t more than fourteen at the time and getting anxious to see what was out in the world. I told my Pa that I was going to go squirrel hunting and brought the scattershot gun with me. Now – I was a bit of a wild one and prone to not coming home exactly when I said I would. I took a haversack and filled it with some hardtack and cornbread and off I went, so it wouldn’t and shouldn’t surprise you when you hear that I didn’t come home for four days.

I set my eyes at the top of the mountain and I just kept on heading west. Down the other side through fern filled valleys and thick forests. It was the second day – that’s when the trip started to go a little strange for me.

I had been walking all morning and the day and it was nearing mid-day. I remember that place like it was yesterday. In fact – I tried going back when I was older. Seems a storm of some kind came through at some point, as they do, and knocked a lot of the trees down. I came down the side of this hill and the whole way down it looked like I was approaching a swamp, so I kept skirting my way to the edge to try and make my way around it. It wasn’t until I got to the bottom that I realized this wasn’t what I thought it was.

The forest…it. It looked like it had gone bad somehow.

The evergreens were a dark grey. The soil was the darkest you’ve ever seen. The trunks of the trees were dark like they’d been resting in bog water. The sap oozing from the trees was the color of tar. Dripping onto the ground in sticky pools. When I saw this – well. I had never seen anything like it. Curiosity and youth got the better of me, so I started to make my way through it.

After a bit of walking, I came across a small creek that ran through the area, and the water shone like polished black glass. I hopped across a couple stones and made my way across it until I came to what looked like a game trail – but this one was bigger than I’d ever seen before. It weren’t no bear trail, that’s for sure. Tree limbs as big as my wrist were broke off all the way down it and some of the bark was torn up into tatters like something was clawing it up. Marking its territory. Well – no young man with a curious mind could have just let this be. As an adult, you may be thinking “Unnatural forest. Dark woods. Black water. I’d get my ass out of there.” But the problem is as a young man – that sort of fear hasn’t grown in you yet.

I started pursing this trail and that’s when I noticed the tracks weren’t anything I’d ever seen before. They were as big as a dinner plate. Claws too. Big ones. By the way they sank into the ground and dragged – I guessed the thing had to weigh about four or five hundred pounds.

Once I noticed the claws – that’s about the same time I noticed the bones. Scattered all about, and the farther I walked down the trail, the more bones I began to find. They looked like ivory against that dark forest. Not a speck of meat on them and they seemed to be sort of burnt up looking. I noticed that there were hardly any teeth marks on them, and that’s when it hit me.

The only thing that leaves bones untouched and white like that are owls. But this weren’t no owl.

It told me that whatever this…thing…was. It was big enough to swallow deer and other critters more or less whole.

There was a point where some part of me made my feet sort of stop walking forward. The rational part. The sensible part. The part that tries to save you, but I forced myself onward.

Eventually I came to the entrance of what looked to be a cave that was well traveled. I knew I had come upon this thing’s roost. I waited quite a while to make sure nothing was inside before I crept up off the trail to keep it from catching my scent.

That cave. Good lord, that cave smelled rank. I started walking into it and, brother, let me tell you. This place had to have been nearly half made of bone. Piles of them. Piles and piles on piles. Old ones too. As I came in through the entrance there were some strange paintings on the inside of the cave that looked like they had been there forever. Symbols. Circles in circles and that like. Red and white handprints. Some of them skulls. They was from cats. But cats you hadn’t never seen. Teeth longer than my hand. I started walking around with my scatter gun at the ready, poking through them bone piles.

Then something happened. You know that feeling that someone’s watching you? Witch’s whiskers is what my Ma called it. Well, my witch’s whiskers went tingling and I froze. I looked outside and that’s when I saw it coming to me, quieter than snowfall.

It was long. It’s body was as stark white as a burial shroud. Tail that stretched maybe six feet. A head with horns like you’d never seen. Whole thing covered in scales too like some sort of lizard from hell. Large green eyes as big as my head. Black teeth so large they came out the mouth like a gator. Smoldering smoke coming out its nose while it walked. It was quiet as a snake and it moved fast and sleek. The whole thing had to have been nearly twenty feet long from snout to tail. Closest thing I could approximate it to would be those stories about the dragons that the knights fought in the old days. How one got here, I don’t know.

I knew I had just a moment if I wanted to save my hide and I knew that scatter gun weren’t going to make a lick of a difference so I stashed it cleared a space in the bones and lay myself down and played dead.

I could feel it as it walked into that cave. The air changed. It felt heavy and fearful. It smelled like sulfur and death and I feared for my life. I don’t think I ever prayed harder to God – but God had different plans for me. It seems, that I somehow managed to pick the spot that the thing was going to pick to bed down. I thoughtmy goose was cooked and it would crush me, but the bones were enough to keep it off me.

I lay still under that thing for two days. Afraid to fall asleep and let out a fearful moan or mumble. There was no telling how often something this big would eat, but I prayed harder than I ever had, yet still to no avail.

On the night of the second day, I had reached my limit. I was either going to die from a lack of water or this monster. When you’re put in that situation, you realize that if the end result is the same, it don’t make no difference how you get there, so I cooked up a scheme.

I spent hours moving slow-like through them bones. Snaking my way through them in the hopes I could detect some sort of vital region. Some beating of a heart. Some warm spot and finally it paid off.

Above me I heard the slow thud of the creatures heart.

BOOM….

Silence…

BOOM…

It beat so slowly. Must be how you’d account for its old age.

I slid my camp knife up out of its holster. Same one I carry on my hip to this day.

I said one last prayer and I thrust up. Standing up into that thing. Twisting, gristling, shoving my way to freedom.

I let out a war whoop and my hands went up into the body of that ancient beast as I twist up into its heart until I felt the beat of the muscle moving the knife until it ruptured like a wineskin. That beast leapt up and I hung onto my blade, being showered with the most foul, unnatural smelling blood you could imagine and it dragged me through piles of bones until both the knife and I fell from its body.

It backed itself into a corner and I could hear the blood pouring from its body like a horse pissing on a fieldstone. I knew it didn’t have long, and those eyes. They were intelligent. This thing was a smart as any man – probably smarter. You don’t live for ages and not have a good reckoning of the world.

It tilted its head and looked me over. Somehow…I know this sounds mad…but I felt it in my mind almost. It was dread, that thing was, and it was sending it into me. It was growing in my mind like ink in water, filling me, paralyzing me.

I began to tremble and it being one mean son of a bitch, it got low, lifeblood still pouring freely, knowing it had but moments left to move and it was going to spend the last ones taking out the thorn that pricked it.

The beast sprung at me and the last I remember seeing was those jaws, wide and deadly with black teeth swallowing my world.

I felt it clamp down around me, and I lashed out with my knife and happened to put one of its eyes out.

The beast dropped me and took a step back, thrashing its head, bleeding black from its eye.

It let out a scream so ferocious that the stone walls shook. I knew I had only moments, so I sprung forward and put out its other eye, leaving it in darkness. That’s when it did the strangest thing.

It knew it had been bested, whether unfortunate or not, its time was at an end. It sort of just laid down and grew silent as if it were resting. I watched in shock while its massive body breathed in and out. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it were a thing of beauty – albeit the most deadly beauty imaginable.

It’s massive frame heaved as it drew in its final breaths, until it let out a sort of sigh and…well…that was that.

Jed Hawkins’ mouth hung open and his pipe had extinguished itself.

“The strange thing is that for years afterward I had a strange thing take place. I could hear the wildlife talk. Not with words so much as thoughts. It took a damn long time for that to fade away.”

Jed furrowed his brow while he thought about the story and started to chew on his lip.

“Hear the wildlife, huh?” Jed said somberly. “They ever talk about me?”

Nathan topped his glass off and took a sip.

“Yep.”

Jed’s face became serious and he leaned in over the table.

“What do they say?” he whispered.

Nathan looked around the room and leaned over the table so just the flame separated the pair.

“They say that you’re an ugly, fat bastard with bad teeth.”

Jed slapped the table hard with his thick hand, almost putting the candle out and sending whiskey out of the glasses.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” he said as he laughed so loud the entire tavern turned to see the commotion.

“You had me on that one,” Jed said as he lit his pipe again and puffed smoke out in appreciative clouds. “Magic dragons. Black forests. You’re full of more shit than a pig pen.

Nathan stood up and knocked back the last glass of whiskey, turned it upside down and slapped it on the table with a thud.

“And that, my friend, is the end of this story and the end of this evening. Hopefully I won’t give you bad dreams,” Nathan said as he turned and began to head out the door.

As he pulled the latch up, he turned back to look at Jed sitting at the table and gave an odd smile.

“Told you no one would believe me,” he said as he opened the door and walked into the night.

Jed leaned back into the chair, laughing at the story. How absurd the whole thing was. He chuckled as he thought about being taken for a run over such an absurd story and then knocked back the rest of his whiskey and yawned.

He stood up at the table and grabbed the mostly empty clay jug and picked up his glass. He walked around the table and picked up Nathan’s glass and something fell out of it and clattered to the floor.

Jed froze, looking in the darkness for what had fallen on the ground. He put the glasses on the table, picked up the candle and bent down to the floor, feeling around for the object until he ran his hand across broken glass.

He swore as he picked up what he thought was a shard of crockery.

But what he saw in the candle light was instead a large, black curved fang.