Creature: A Horror Novel (Carver Book 1), page 1
CREATURE
A HORROR NOVEL
FLINT MAXWELL
Copyright © 2022 by Flint Maxwell
Cover Design © 2022 by Carmen DeVeau
Edited by Sonya Bateman
Special thanks to Sabrina Roote
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions email: fm@flintmaxwell.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read his work.
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For Calvin,
Your first, and not your last
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
― MARK TWAIN, FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR
BEFORE
THE THING IN THE WOODS
October 3, 2008
Illuminated by a full moon, Owen Carver—eighteen and a little buzzed—thinks he sees a shadow pass between the trees in front of him.
He is standing in a field near a collection of vacant factory buildings, staring into what seems like the infinite darkness of the surrounding woods. He is not alone; two others are with him: Ryan Kensington and Dave Rivers.
Officially, these woods are nameless, but the younger residents of Pickwick, Ohio, have taken to calling them The Hollow.
Because they are empty inside, almost completely devoid of life.
Trees stay dead year-round, shrubs sprout only the slightest bit of green in the spring, and no matter the time of day, you will hear no insects buzzing or birds chirping.
But…if you listen very closely on windless nights, you might hear a voice—just the faintest whisper of syllables.
They say this voice belongs to a witch.
The Hollow Witch.
Ryan and Dave had told Owen the story of the legend and the Blood Rock an hour or so earlier as they rode around town, guzzling beer and sipping from a bottle of cheap vodka that Ryan had stolen from the gas station.
Owen had thought it was all bogus. He laughed it off.
“It’s real,” Dave said from the front seat. He was a big guy, even bigger than Owen, who stood a few inches over six feet and was two hundred pounds of lithe, athletic muscle. “People go missing ’round here all the time.”
Owen leaned forward and wiggled his fingers. “Oooo! You’re telling me you actually believe it was a witch?” He glanced at the six-pack sitting next to him in the backseat and reached for another beer. Truth be told, the talk of witches and curses and missing people unsettled him. “That’s stupid.”
“Nah, bro, it’s not stupid!” Dave said. “She takes these people, guts them and then uses their organs for potions that help her live forever. I mean, dude, there’s so many dead people back there, the leaves don’t grow on the trees no more!”
“Or…you know…maybe it was all the chemicals from the factories?” Owen said.
But tonight wasn’t a night for logic.
From the driver’s seat, Ryan’s gaze flicked to the rearview and he looked at Owen. “If you think it’s so stupid, New Kid, why don’t we drive out to the factories and you see for yourself?” he said.
Owen wasn’t afraid of anything. In his almost eighteen years on this earth, he had never met a feat he couldn’t accomplish. He hadn’t answered immediately, though, instead turning to the window and watching the dark trees pass by in a blur.
“Well, Carver?” Ryan said.
Owen faced the front and reached a hand between the seats. “Fine. But gimme some of that vodka.”
And here Owen is, still staring into The Hollow, replaying the movement he thinks he has seen deep in the abyss before him. His bravery is fleeting. A coldness has begun to spread inside his chest, digging down into his ribs like roots.
“Hey, fat boy, don’t drink it all!” Ryan says from behind, snapping Owen out of his own head.
“No-no-no, I’m cuttin’ you off, bro,” Dave says. “You’re already hammered.”
“Whatever, I’ll just go steal more. You know…’cause I’m not too chickenshit to do it.”
Owen turns around as the plastic vodka bottle hits the ground. Around eight that evening, he had waited outside of the Gas ’N Go while Ryan and Dave went in and purchased a bag of Doritos and some Vanilla Coke. All a ploy, of course. The real merchandise had been stuffed into Ryan’s cargo pants: an eleven-dollar bottle of Sobieski that tastes like rubbing alcohol to go along with the six-pack of Bud Light that Dave procured from his dad’s mini-fridge.
“There ya go,” Dave says now, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Drink up, then, Ry, but just remember I’m not gonna be the one carrying your dumbass home when you’re too drunk to stand. You’ll be crawling.”
With a sneer, Ryan bends and snatches the vodka from its spot in the tall grass. He twists off the lid, holds up the middle finger of his left hand, and downs a few more hearty gulps. “Ahhh,” he says, grimacing from the vodka’s burn. “I don’t need some chickenshit carrying me around anyway, Fatty.”
Dave is unbothered by Ryan’s remarks, but Owen cringes anytime the big senior’s weight is brought up. It makes him think of the kids who teased his little brother, John, back in Pennsylvania. While John isn’t overweight, he is a little on the nerdy side. They could be ruthless. Owen wonders why everyone can’t just get along.
Hearing Ryan say these things to Dave also rubs him the wrong way. He likes Ryan. He’s a natural leader and for the most part kind. Not to mention, he can pass the rock like Steve Nash. That’s always a plus. Back at Corbin High, Owen had to fight three defenders just to get his shot off, but Ryan makes it so much easier. He has this game sense on the court Owen has never seen before. He can tell when and what a defender will do on nearly every possession. To keep that synergy on the court, Owen believes they have to get along off the court too.
A sudden chant breaks out.
“New Kid! New Kid!”
Owen turns and chuckles.
“Well, are you gonna do it or not, pussy?” Ryan barks.
“Fuck off. Don’t call me that.”
A sloppy grin spreads across Ryan’s face. “Oh, sorry…I meant, chickenshit.”
The first step is the hardest, but with the vodka and beer making Owen’s head swim with false courage, he’s able to push past the mental block and step through some bramble. Another step. Dry twigs snap beneath his Converse, the sound almost deafening in the stillness of the night. Now both of his feet are in the woods. He turns and looks back. Dave is wide-eyed, his sunburned face as white as the full moon above; but Ryan is still smiling as he makes a shooing motion with his left hand.
Ignoring the tremors rippling through his arms and legs, Owen grits his teeth and plunges deeper into the woods. He has gone fifteen steps—yes, he is counting—and looks again. Disorientation sweeps over him, because he can no longer see the field. The woods seem to have constricted around him, the dark, jagged branches reaching out, crossing over each other.
Owen turns to the right and thinks he must’ve looked the wrong way, but all he sees is more trees and more branches. His throat tightens. It is becoming harder to breathe. He scratches at his Adam’s apple and tries to swallow. His mouth feels like it is coated in sandpaper.
He turns the other way.
The trees are moving, he thinks, and he’s not bothered by how silly that sounds. In fact, he finds it downright terrifying.
Owen backs up, head on a swivel, eyes darting from tree trunk to tree trunk. “Guys?” he says. “Yo?”
Faintly, Ryan’s voice drifts into the woods. “Are you at the Rock yet? I don’t hear you calling her name!”
He sounds far away. Thousands of feet. Miles, even.
“I don’t—” Owen begins before he trips over something he can’t see, a root or a rock, and he falls on the soggy forest floor. The breath is knocked out of him. He takes a moment to collect himself, thinking, You’re fine. It’s just a regular forest. There’s no witch. There’s nothing…
The thought fades. He stares down at his right hand, which is planted in the dirt. Beneath his palm, the ground pulses rhythmically as if it is breathing. Owen bites down a scream and climbs to his feet. If he had been buzzed-going-on-drunk before, he was stone-cold sober now.
“Owen?” Dave shouts, but the sound is dampened. It is almost like Owen has sunk to the bottom of a pool and Dave is speaking to him from dry land.
I gotta just get it over with, he thinks as he blinks a few times and stares at the ground where his hand was a minute ago. Owen lets a nervous chuckle free. It’s relieving. He shakes his arms and jumps from foot to foot, like a boxer getting loose before a big fight. He feels better, and his head is a bit clearer.
“I got this,” he whispers. “No big deal.”
The Blood Rock should be in front of him soon. Dave said he wouldn’t be able to miss it. It’s the size of a car and covered in graffiti.
Walking carefully for another thirty or so seconds, Owen finally spots it. It is marred by carvings and spray paint. Crudely drawn penises, sku
When he is closer, two words catch Owen’s eye. Near the top of the rock, half obscured by the third six in a deeply etched 666, are the words SHE WATCHES.
They are written in what looks like blood.
For a brief moment, Owen suddenly feels as helpless as a little boy again.
“Shit,” he whispers, shaking his head as he steps toward the big rock and puts his hand over a deep gash. He clears his throat and says as loudly as he can, “HOLLOW WITCH!”
There’s one time; two more to go.
“HOLLOW WITCH!”
Twice.
His lips part, preparing to form the H for the third time: “Hah—”
He sees movement out of the corner of his eye, and the words die in his throat.
Owen whirls around, half-expecting to see nothing at all. But this is not the case. There is something there, all right. It passes between the trees deeper in the forest. A large, hunched-over figure.
“What the hell…?” he whispers.
“That’s two!” Ryan shouts from the fields. “Don’t wuss on us, New Kid!”
Owen’s frozen brain kicks into gear. He realizes what this is now. It’s not an initiation; it’s a prank.
“All right, assholes,” he says, standing straighter and speaking louder. “You’re hilarious, but I can tell that’s you, Dave!”
He squints. The figure is still there in the distance, wading in a pool of shadows.
Owen turns to where he thinks he has come from and shouts, “For real, guys! Joke’s over! Help me get outta here, I don’t wanna get lost!”
When he turns back, he sees the figure has advanced.
“What?” Dave shouts, but the voice comes from far behind him, not from where this figure waits. “You okay, dude?”
An alarm blares in Owen’s head. Years of evolutionary warnings going off like a tornado siren. Standing upright, the figure is partially illuminated by the full moon. Light gleams in its eyes. They are a violent red dotted with small yellow pupils. Inhuman, yet the thing stands like a man.
It comes farther into the light, hunching over again—or rather crouching like a sprinter on the starter block. The figure has a snout, long and ridged, and a mouth full of fangs. Its arms hang past its knees, its fingers claw-like, its body covered in gray fur and bloody gashes.
This is not Dave. It cannot be.
This isn’t happening—this isn’t real—there’s no way in hell…
Perhaps it is a different friend of Ryan and Dave’s. Bobby Welton in a monster suit from the Halloween U.S.A. store, maybe?
But Owen can’t fully buy that idea, because he has started to think it’s not a person at all. He has started to think it’s a creature, something that shouldn’t exist in the real world. Something that somehow does.
And now the creature growls. It is a terrible sound, a hungry sound, that rumbles from inside the thing’s chest.
Owen’s knees give out on him. He takes another hard seat on the forest floor. Loose rocks stab his tailbone and the backs of his thighs, filling him with pain he is too frightened to acknowledge.
As the creature hunches back over, its face disappearing into the shadows, something like a gasp mixed with a scream squeaks from Owen’s throat.
I have to be hallucinating, he thinks. I have to be. He squeezes his eyes shut, hoping it’ll be gone when he opens them.
Please be a tree, please just be a tree, please don’t be real.
Squinting now and—
Relief barrels into his gut like a sucker punch.
See? You’re losing your mind, he tells himself, because there is nothing there in front of him, no giant creature with red eyes and dripping fangs, no Hollow Witch. Only the still woods. Creepy in their own right, but not dangerous.
Owen has no intention of finishing the dare. He pivots and heads back toward the field where Ryan and Dave’s voices have come from.
“Hey! Where you guys at?”
He waits a moment, standing in a small clearing he doesn’t remember, the pale moonlight shining down on his shoulders.
The others give no answer. All he hears now is the wind. There aren’t even the sounds of bugs or birds or forest critters. He must’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Shit.
He wishes John would’ve tagged along with him tonight. For a kid who likes to stay in and watch nerdy movies and play video games, Owen’s little brother is surprisingly smart when it comes to navigating the wilderness. Probably because John is smart in general.
They used to play Jeopardy! when they were boys, tallying a point for each correct answer on a small dry erase board. Being a few years older, Owen always thought he’d win no problem, but once John got the hang of the game’s format, he would say the answer before Alex Trebek was finished reading the question. Owen never stood a chance. His little brother was damn smart. He’d be able to get them out of these woods.
God, Owen would do just about anything to be back home sitting on the couch with his little bro, playing Jeopardy! or watching Star Wars together for the millionth time.
Soon, he tells himself and calls out for the others again. But as if in response to his voice, another sound joins in with the blowing wind.
A low grumble.
Slowly, Owen turns toward it, and on the opposite side of the clearing he sees the same violent red eyes from earlier.
“No,” he moans. “You’re not real.”
Without thinking, he turns back around and runs into the bramble. He doesn’t care if he’s going the wrong way, because the right way is any direction away from that thing.
He gets about a dozen steps before the vines and branches start to slap at him. The pricker bushes jab into his flesh, whack his face, slice his cheeks and brow.
Owen, grunting, ignores the pain and forces himself to keep going.
Don’t look back, he thinks. Don’t look back, don’t look back, don’t look back—
But even when we tell ourselves not to look back, we never listen, do we?
Owen does look back and there’s—
A sound like a chainsaw fills the void of the woods.
He stumbles as the dark figure launches at him. It is so large it eclipses the swollen moon above and becomes this backlit silhouette of fur and muscle and claws.
Owen is still screaming as the creature sinks its teeth into his throat.
CHAPTER 1
WELCOME TO PICKWICK
The summer of ’09 was a summer of firsts for me.
During that time, I made my first real best friend, I had my first real crush, and I learned how to fend for myself…but it wasn’t all good things.
It was my first summer as an only child. And it was the summer I would come face-to-face with a monster (or monsters, depending on how you view Ziggy).
Back then, I found out there was a lot more to the world than what our eyes could see. A lot more terrible things.
My name is John Carver.
And the summer of ’09 was the summer I grew up.
This story actually begins in the fall of 2008, a few months after my mother, my older brother Owen, and myself moved from Corbin, Pennsylvania, to Pickwick, Ohio.
It begins on a Friday in early October. That was when Owen went missing.
He had come to me that evening and asked if I wanted to go out with him and some of his new friends. They were going to ride around town, maybe hit the Walmart in Stone Park and mess around on the bikes in the toy section, or head to the automotive side and climb into the big tires and push each other down the aisles until they inevitably got kicked out.
Owen was just being polite. For lack of a better term, I was a hermit. Leaving my house (my shell) for fun scared me. I barely did it in Corbin and hadn’t even attempted to do it since arriving in Pickwick.
