The Gay Man and the Butcher’s Boy: Screams in the Night
The Bear and the Slaughterhouse Boy, 7
The white face of the slaughterhouse boy flashed in front of Jack’s eyes, almost like a movie playing. Without deciding to, he turned and started walking back to his truck. Fast. Then he started running.
By the time he started to sprint for all he was worth, he heard THEM behind him. Crashing through underbrush. Knocking over saplings. Breathing hard and reeking.
He dove for his truck door, praying he’d left it unlocked.
“Stop it!” he chided himself as he slid behind the steering wheel and started the engine. “Look at you! A grown man afraid of the dark. Afraid of the woods!”
He pulled onto the highway and roared off, resisting the urge to look back. “There is nothing back there!” he said to the radio announcer predicting weather for a city 500 miles away. “You’re not in some creepy horror movie, Jacko,” he reassured himself. “That kid is exactly what his grandmother says he is — a teller of tall tales.”
As Jack tried to forget Sonya’s own mysterious warning about staying inside the inn, the highway led him through virgin forest all the way to Lake Superior’s pebbled shores.
Stopping at one of an eternal series of deserted beaches, he spread a blanket and broke out a picnic lunch. Cold wind blew in off white-capped waves. He shivered to realize he was taking in a view unchanged for tens of thousands of years, ever since glaciers scraped out this massive inland sea then retreated back to the Arctic.
He thought about the forests that sprang up to feed and shelter the region’s first inhabitants, the animals who had trekked over a land bridge from Asia, who themselves had helped feed and shelter the first humans who arrived.
Jack knew his own ancestors had been the first to scar the land, invading from Europe, tunneling and blasting for rich underground veins of copper. They used up the metal fast as they razed forests to throw up bustling ports and crowded little towns. They pried open the earth for almost two hundred years until the copper was gone.
Most of the area’s indigenous people were long gone, dead by disease or pushed out by soldiers riding horses and jeeps. Now the miners’ children were slinking away too. Tiny communities like the Crossroads remained, but little else.
The land was too poor to grow much; not enough tourists came to offer prosperity. Those who chose to stay lived alone in the woods or huddled silent in tiny villages waiting for their children to leave and never return.
Jack hopped back in his truck and blasted the heater to drive the chill from his soul. The villages he passed along the shore weren’t just shrinking; many were crumbling into the ground. The canted steeple of an abandoned church, the cracked glass of a 60-year-old gas-station pump, or the swinging doors of a dead post office were all that testified to the former glory of more than a few shore towns.
The forest was on the march, it seemed, moving in to reclaim what had been taken from it.
After hours on the road, Jack finally spotted the sign.
Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park! He grabbed his phone to call Greg, then cursed. Still no signal? Didn’t the park rangers have a cell tower? How in the hell did they communicate?
Pulling off the highway and driving up a steep incline, he realized it didn’t matter. The ranger station welcome center was shut up tight as a drum, a sign announcing it was staffed only on weekends until summer, and not at all after the first snowfall.
He jumped out to read the small print.
Hikers are welcome but advised that they are on their own. WARNING: Our unmaintained trails can be dangerous. Weather after September is highly unpredictable. If you get into trouble, you might not be found until after the snow melts next June.
Jack shrugged. He breathed in rich hemlock and luxuriated in the heat of the the sun pouring out of crystal skies. He loved how it warmed his skin against crisp autumn air.
Leaving his gear, he scrambled up a steep path held in place by old railroad ties. Scattering gravel and using his hands for purchase, he struggled to get to the top without losing his breath.
When he crested the ridge that ran parallel to Lake Superior, he gasped.
He stood on the rim of an oblong bowl that curved along into the forest for miles. An ice-blue alpine lake nestled hundreds of feet below, a silvered mirror reflecting every filmy cloud grazing its way across the sky.
Looking back over his shoulder, Jack saw Lake Superior half a mile away. Its waters stretched endless to the northern horizon. Its beaches ran forever to the east and the west. No matter how hard he squinted, Jack couldn’t spot even the first sign of human habitation.
He knew the ranger station was below him, but it was empty.
He whistled in awe, feeling lucky to take in the park off season. No tourist families. No busloads of kids. And with the weather notoriously fickle, he doubted he’d have to share the spectacular view with many other hikers.
Two evenings later, sunburnt and sore, Jack was thrilled to have been proven right. He’d spent the first night in his tent, then hiked all around the lip of the bowl that sheltered the Lake of the Clouds.
He picked his way down to shore the next day. After hiking around to the other side, he found a little set of “hospitality cabins,” simple log structures with an outhouse nearby. Looking across the lake and way up to the top of the ridge, he could just make out where the ranger station and his truck must be.
He’d been happy to spread his sleeping bag indoors that night. A well tended fire pit had made dinner a pleasure to prepare.
He fished all around the lake the day after that, landing a few pan fish and missing a few big bass. Now, after enjoying a fresh-fish dinner with canned beans, he stretched out and relaxed, so glad he came.
He chided himself for letting the people at the Crossroads pervert his imagination. He hadn’t had a nightmare since he left. Life was good! Tomorrow morning would be the best, he thought as he shook out his sleeping bag and got ready for a sound sleep inside the cabin.
Morning promised a real treat!
He’d found an old aluminum canoe down by the water, a set of paddles secured in sturdy oarlocks. He supposed a ranger kept it down there, knowing that dragging it up switchback trails to the top of the bowl would be too difficult for all but the most determined thief.
Jack planned to use it to fish for bass. The lake had to be teeming with largemouth, but hunting them out was too hard from shore. With the boat, he could scour the lake systematically and haul in some monsters.
He’d put the boat right back where he found it. No harm, no foul.
Sighing with contentment, he spread the sleeping bag out on the cabin’s dirt floor, shut the sturdy wooden door against the the wind, and snugged himself down for a sound sleep.
Maybe it was the quiet that woke him. Maybe a stray tendril of stench alerted him.
His eyes popped open FIRST. He looked around wondering why he was awake. He propped himself up on one elbow and then shook his head as deadly silence sent chills through his body.
A explosion vaulted him most of the way to the ceiling. Sharp needles pierced his face and head. He needed almost ten seconds to realize broken glass had sprayed across the room.
He reached for his flashlight just as the SMELL finally explained itself. The SAME smell that had assaulted him in the truck with Paul and later at the trailhead.
He clicked the flashlight on and gasped. The kid hadn’t been imagining ANYTHING. It was all real, and it was here coming for him.
A huge black hand reached into the cabin through the tiny shattered window. Blood ran down matted fur. He KNEW that smell. A bear was trying to get into the cabin. By the size of the paw, a huge bear. A reeking bear.
A low growl turned into a roar, and Jack saw a chocolate-silver muzzle try to thrust itself through the window opening, fangs dripping.
Then he heard rattling and crashing behind him. Another roar joined the outraged scream of the first bear. Footfalls echoed from every direction. Roars drowned out more roars.
Jack was surrounded! He shined his light in every direction, listening to massive bodies crashing against the log walls of his shelter.
He beamed his flashlight at the window opening again. An arm covered with black bristles had thrust all the way inside. Curved claws reached for Jack — seeking, slashing.
“No!” screamed Jack! “Get out of here! All of you! Get away from me!”
The roars outside mounted into shrieks of outrage. Jack sank to his knees, hands over his ears, praying the log walls would hold against the massive bodies of the furious beasts.
Next chapter!
What you just read is fiction loosely based on a hunting trip I took to Michigan’s deserted upper peninsula several years ago. But we’ve left reality far behind as we build to a spooky/scary climax. Hold on tight as I unleash some fun Halloween terror!
Miss the first parts? Click here!
James Finn is a former Air Force intelligence analyst, long-time LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, an essayist occasionally published in queer news outlets, and an “agented” novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].