Coldwater Creak

“Got yer roll, Joe? Y’know s’gonna be cold tonight, Joe. Need yer roll.” 

Old man Amos stopped next to a tall pine and placed a calloused, bony hand against its trunk, then sniffed at the freezing air like a wolf seeking the scent of prey. A heady scent of sap competed with the musk of rotting pine needles and earthy soil, a smell they had all been accustomed to the last several days since leaving the trail and striking upwards towards the mountains. Sometimes the smell of the forest mingled with the bitter scent of scat and stale piss from unseen deer and bears, and in the evening the odour of woodsmoke and roasting meat from their campfire would compete for dominance. Underfoot, a thick mulch of brown needles formed a natural carpet that silenced their steps, only the occasional crack of a dry twig telling of the presence of men moving stealthily beneath the tall pine trees. 

Fog crept in through the space between shadow-dark tree-trunks, filling the voids and hiding the forest from view as it thickened. It had come soon after the shadow of the mountain passed over them; a sudden lessening of light, accompanied by so sharp a drop in temperature that woollen shirts and fur jackets were pulled from packs and quickly donned. Long before the last of the day had fled to the west, the light that made it to the forest floor was filtered to dour drabness, all color leached away to pastel shades of grays and browns.

“Shut yer yap old man, I ain’t afraid of the cold.” Joe Tanner tugged once more on Jess’s halter. The stubborn mule was almost as annoying as the old man. For the last hour or so it had taken to stopping suddenly, laying its ears flat and baring its teeth whenever Joe tried to persuade it on. Joe was tempted to drop the rope and let the damn animal do what it will, but it carried all the equipment they would need when they reached the Coldwater, as well as supplies that included spare ammunition and alcohol, so Joe yanked once more and followed old man Amos and the others into the fog.

“Is it far now, Amos?” Joe’s father asked. Zeke Tanner was not so different from the old man himself. Both men were tall and heavy in build, with long beards grown wild and unkempt, only whereas Amos’ was white, Zeke’s was brown. All the men were the same - Amos, Zeke, Isaac and William looked like the prospectors and backwoodsmen they were, gnarly like the woods and mountains themselves, and tough as old leather. Only Joe was fresh faced and lean, betraying his fourteen years and the fact of his first gold prospecting trip.

“We’re nearly there,” said Amos. “See the bones? It were the same when I came before. Bones aplenty, but never a deer to catch, no sir.”

Joe had seen the bones. Old and weathered, covered in green moss and slime, they poked up through the pine needles wherever you looked. Broken and scattered ribs, leg bones, back bones and skulls were everywhere underfoot. He’d seen the remains of deer, and once what looked like the smashed skull of a bear.

Isaac, a wiry veteran of ten years prospecting in the Rocky Mountains of both California and Colorado, shifted his rifle, taking it off his shoulder and cradling it in his arms. “What could have done this you reckon?”

“Flood, probably,” said Zeke. “The river flooded and washed the animals down here, Ain’t nothing special.” Zeke trudged on, uncaring. But Joe felt the same as Isaac. He didn’t like this place, and neither did Jess, who baulked once again. “Come on,” he hissed. “Get goin’!”

When they found the Coldwater, it was almost full dark. The river tumbled over jagged rocks that lay in the stream as large as houses. Branches with green needles and rafts of debris washed out from the river banks upstream rushed past them, and the sound of boulders tumbling in the flow only underlined the fact that the river was in spate.

“Must be the warm weather we’ve had recently,” offered Isaac. “Melted the glacier up yonder. Goddam waste of time comin’ here - I told y’all!” Amos and Zeke ignored the younger man, whose complaint that the hard trek up into this remote valley on the word of a cranky old coot, who gave a sometimes rambling, and often vague recollection of a productive gold panning spot once visited in his youth in the year 1843 was a constant source of suspicion.

“We'll set up camp here for the night and scout out the river in the morning,” said Zeke. “Joe, see to Jess, then help Isaac and William make a fire.” Joe tugged the reluctant mule over to a tree that was growing adjacent to a clearing near the river and unloaded boxes of tools and supplies onto the ground. Normally Jess could be relied on to stand still and quiet while he did this, but now Joe had to tie the halter firmly to the tree and avoid being kicked and bitten as the mule tried his best to pull away and head off back into the woods.

“Quit your bitchin’ will ya?” Joe cursed the mule for a pox-ridden son of a whore, but Joe could feel it too. This place, with its cold rushing water, thick shifting fog and bone-strewn forest made him feel uneasy - and he knew the others felt it too. It told in the way they all moved; cautious, quiet, staying within sight of each other, rifles kept close or in hand when there would otherwise have been banter and laughter and noise. They were hungry too. Until recently they could count on coming across a deer or rabbit every couple of days, but it had been four days now since they last ate fresh cooked meat, and the dried beef they carried in their packs was already wearing thin on their pallet, and hard on their teeth. William decided to try his luck with a line in the fast flowing river, hoping to add a sweet tasting salmon to their meager fare.

Joe laid his roll out by the fire once it was alight - a poor, smoky fire that gave out little heat - and tried to find a comfortable spot to rest his weary back. The wind sighed through the pine trees and the fog rising from the river had gotten thicker as the night deepened - not a nice evening by any means - yet within minutes Joe fell into a restless slumber. In his dreams, the bones of long dead animals were rising from the earth, bear and deer and mountain cat all scrambling up and out and away, tumbling over each other and swiping and kicking blindly at something unseen as they charged headlong into the forest, away from the river and the fog. He dreamt that one one of those dead animals was trying to rise up underneath his roll, its bones sharp in his back, and it’s cold, dead breath making his face ache where it touched.

Joe woke with a start, sitting up and thrashing his arms about to free him of his blanket, certain that something was there ... had been there moments before. He touched his face where the cold feeling still lingered, and found it wet with a thick, sticky fluid. He looked about him, the embers of the fire only just light enough to pick out the huddled forms of Amos, Zeke and Isaac nearby. He couldn’t make out William on the other side of the fire; the fog had grown so thick that it was impossible now to see anything more than a few feet away. It was eerily silent. No wind disturbed the trees, and the river had subsided to the point where it was making no more than subdued babble. Joe felt an oppressive sense of unease and reached for his rifle, wanting to feel the familiar reassuring weight of it in his hands and the courage that a bullet can give, yet his hand found nothing but dirt and pine needles. 

Rubbing his face where the cold feeling lingered, Joe called out quietly, “Pa! Pa! Wake up!” It took a shake of Zeke’s shoulders to bring him to wakefulness, but once Zeke got a look at Joe in the firelight he sprang up onto his haunches, pulling Joe closer to the fire to see better. “Jesus, Joe, what happened to your face? It’s covered in blood!”

Joe touched his face once more, running his fingertips over his cheek and finding a wound there that he hadn’t noticed in his panic a moment before. “God help me, pa, I can’t feel it! Can’t feel it at all!” Zeke held a finger to his lips, and looked about them, listening intently for any sounds that might be a threat. “Pa, my rifle’s gone!” whispered Joe. Zeke threw his blankets and roll aside, but his rifle too was missing.

Zeke and Joe quickly roused Amos, Isaac and William, who woke grumbling about ‘lack of fish in the goddam river’. It took but a few moments to find that not only their rifles, but also their knifes, had been taken from the camp while they were sleeping.

“I’ll bet it’s some of those sneaky Ute Indians we met back in Leadville,” said Isaac. “You remember how they were eyein’ us up when they overheard us talking ‘bout this here river? You saw ‘em Will, what you reckon?”

“...not Indians,” muttered Amos.

“What? Speak up old man!”

“I said, it ‘aint Indians. They don’t come here.” 

“You certain?” said Isaac, “‘Cause it sure seems like some sacred spot or something - all these bones everywhere. I bet it’s some place they sacrifice to their gods, and I reckon we’re next!”

“Shut your yapping and listen,” said Zeke, waving a hand to emphasise his demand. “You hear that?”

Joe couldn’t work out at first what his father was listening too. The sounds he heard were the normal sounds of the mountains; running water, the hoot of a far-distant owl, the creak of trees as they swayed in the wind.

Except there wasn’t any wind…

“I hear it! The creaking…” whispered Joe. It sounded like it was coming from the river, somewhere a little to his left. Near to where he’d left the unsettled mule tied to a tree near the riverbank.  “Jess has gone quiet too pa,” he said, wondering now how he could have missed the snorting and braying that Jess had been making since arriving at this place.

By unspoken consent, they began to make their way cautiously towards the place Jess had been tied up. Zeke stooped down to pick up a branch that had been gathered for the fire and held it in front of him like a club, ready to strike should anything appear out of the darkness. Isaac, William and Joe did likewise, then gathered closely behind. Amos left the logs alone, but reached into his coat and after a moment's ferreting around, pulled out a candle and matches. Light flared as the match was struck, but the fog prevented the light from reaching any more than five or six feet, and the candle did no better. Still, it was an improvement on nothing. Amos took up a position next to Zeke at the head of their small party.

They shuffled slowly towards the creaking, which with every step seemed certain to be coming from where Jess should be. A sudden crunching brought them to a halt, The sound repeated, again and again, and Joe was sure that it was bone being splintered by powerful jaws. A gasp of disgust from William on his right spurred Joe to action, and without really thinking why he did it, he threw his branch hard into the darkness where he judged the sound to be coming from. There was a thunk as the wood hit something hard and the chewing noises stopped, replaced by more creaking and a curious, hollow knocking sound. 

Then, just as Zeke took another cautious step forward, sudden thuds shook the ground as if a number of large horses were running past close by unseen, and whatever it was moved off fast towards the river, the sound of a large splash marking a return to silence. They all rushed forward as one.

Jess was dead. The ground was soaked in blood, and the mule’s hind legs ended in stumps where the thing had been feeding. Joe felt his gore rise and bent over to retch, the sharp smell of vomit mingling with the thick stench of blood. “Jesus. What was it Zeke? Were’d it go?” Isaac was bouncing from foot to foot and the branch he held shook in his hand as he stared wild-eyed about them. “What the hell was that!” he shouted.

“Calm down, all of you!” yelled Zeke. “It went into the river. Whatever it was, it must have come from there. Ain’t no animal that I know of, that’s for sure. How ‘bout you Amos, have any ideas?”

Amos looked back at them all, a haunted, lost look in his eyes. “I thought it were just a story, something told us white fella’s to keep us away from their land.” 

Isaac turned on the old man in fury. “I told you! I said it were some sacred Indian place! Why didn’t you tell us so, Amos?”

“Not a sacred place. They never said it was sacred. They just said they never go here. They said it was haunted. I thought they were just scaring us off the land, ‘fraid for the influx of us white folk. We never saw anything twenty year ago to make us think it was real, but now…” Amos petered off, and looked scared for the first time Joe could remember.

“What did they say, exactly, about this haunting?” asked Zeke.

“They said … they said it was the home of a foul creature. The Creaker, they called it.”

“The Creaker, uh? Well, they got that right.”

Joe was still bent over, his stomach threatening upset once more. He was looking at the ground, away from the bloody mess that had been Jess, and that was when he saw it. “Amos, what’s that around your leg?” They all stared down at the thing that was slowly wrapping itself around Amos’ lower leg. It looked like a feathery tendril, white and soft, and very thin, and it had dissolved itself through his boot without Amos even noticing. Blood oozed out from between the leather, running down to the floor in rivulets of red.

“Good god almighty,” muttered Amos, who tried to pull his foot away. Instantly the grip of the tendril tightened. With a yelp of fear, Amos was yanked off his feet and dragged, cursing, into the dark towards the river. His candle fell to the ground and went out, and they were all plunged once more into total darkness. Joe was knocked to the ground as Isaac and William ran blindly away. Zeke grabbed Joe by the shoulder, and together they stumbled back towards the campfire which glowed faintly through the fog. 

“Grab your stuff, we’re leaving,” breathed Zeke, gathering up his sleeping roll and scooping his pack off the ground. 

“What about the others?” asked Joe. “They can look after themselves tonight,” replied his father. Joe grabbed his pack and together they made for the woods, away from the river. Within seconds, however, a sudden creaking and a cry cut short brought them to a stop. The darkness was almost total. Fearing an attack like that he had just seen with Amos, he checked the ground, but saw no sign of any feathery white tendrils. A frightened whimper told him someone was close by, but the Creaker was so close too he dared not call out. The silence was shattered by a scream, cut off abruptly by wet crunching and more creaking. Zeke pulled Joe away, and together they stumbled blindly into the forest, branches scratching their face and tugging at their clothes as they sought an escape.

Joe’s foot caught in something and he fell, losing his grip on his father. For a second he thought he was caught, but he felt his foot and discovered it was the ribcage of a long dead animal that he had tripped on. The Creaker was getting closer. The sound of heavy footsteps mingled with the creaking noise the creature made, and the hollow rattling that accompanied it was getting louder. 

Then it was there, appearing through the fog like some foul deep-sea fish trawled up from the deep.

The Creaker was just a few feet away, it’s crab-like shell glowing a faint blue-white. Two huge, black, lidless eyes stared at him, beneath which were bony, beak-like mouthparts that opened to reveal a maw large enough to swallow him whole. Numerous sharp, pointed legs supported its squat body, which filled the space beneath the pines, and the putrid, fetid smell that assailed Joe’s nose caused a wave of nausea to wash over him. A pair of feathery tendrils snaked outwards towards Joe, and in his terror, he opened his mouth and screamed.

Something glittered behind him, the light reflected in the Creakers huge eyes. A flare of light flew over his head, replaced a moment later by an explosion of blue and yellow flame as a brandy bottle stuffed with burning rags smashed against the Creaker's shell. Hands grabbed Joe roughly and pulled him away, and he found himself held between his father and a limping, bloodied Amos. 

“Got yer roll, Joe?” asked Amos as they ran as fast as they could from the burning, screaming Creaker behind them. Underfoot the bones of the dead cracked, and the smell of death chased them through the trees.  “Gonna be cold tonight, Joe. Need yer roll.”