es
by Victor Storck
Copyright©2013 Victor Storck
Table of Contents
Friday Morning: The Hunter and the Hunted
Friday Afternoon: Reality Is No Dream
Saturday Morning: The Blizzard
Saturday Afternoon: Promises, Promises
Saturday Night: Target Practice
Sunday Morning: A Few Visitors
Finally: A Frozen Soul
Friday Morning: The Hunter and the Hunted
The fifteen year old hunter, camouflaged and well hidden, held his breath while taking careful aim. Hours of waiting and now his chance had finally come. The hunter didn't care about the freezing cold, or the waist high snow he had to struggle through to get to his favorite hunting spot. All that mattered now was the small brown deer less than fifty yards away.
The hunter shifted his brand new rifle an inch to the left. Almost perfect. One more tiny move upwards. There. The deer's white haired chest was now squarely in his sights. The hunter's finger rested lightly on the trigger. He told himself to stay perfectly still, to not even breathe.
The deer had no idea it had a deadly rifle aimed directly at it’s heart. All it knew right now was hunger, all it cared about was finding food. Head down, sniffing and pawing at the crackling cold snow, the deer could barely make out the scent of brown grass underneath. It was probably only a small patch with hardly any blades of grass left, but even a tiny mouthful would help to get rid of that awful starving feeling.
Here in southeast Montana, all throughout the spring, summer, and fall, the fields for miles around were thick with grass. No shortage of food at all. But this year the unforgiving winter came early. The first blizzard arrived in late September and dumped almost two feet of snow in one day. All that luscious grass was instantly buried under mountains of snow. Now it was the last week of October. Snow drifts of ten, fifteen, twenty feet high towered all across the fields. A two day long snowstorm that began on Tuesday had just ended. Since that first storm in September the temperature never got above twenty degrees.
The hunter’s trigger finger felt good resting on the trigger. A feeling of power. Incredible power. The tiniest squeeze and the deer would be shot clean through it’s heart, dying instantly. A painless death. That was the mark of a true hunter. “One shot, instant kill” the saying went, the most important thing the hunter had been striving for since he was eleven years old. Over the last four years he’d come close, hunting with his father, but he had yet to kill anything. Now he was fifteen and out here alone, his father moving away once the divorce was final. The hunter felt like he had waited his whole life for this one moment, and now it was finally here. There was the deer, it’s head down, no idea of what was to come.
The hunter squeezed the trigger and CRAACK! the rifle came to life. Just as the bullet fired out a sudden blast of snowy wind blew directly between the hunter and the deer. The deer, startled by the freezing cold wind, rose it’s head up and caught the faintest whiff of human. It took a powerful jump forward. The bullet slammed into the deer’s rump and knocked the deer down. The deer was not seriously injured, so it bounced right back up and ran off into the distance.
For a moment the hunter was in shock. What happened? The deer was dead center in his rifle’s sights. The deer should be laying there, and he should’ve had his first one shot, instant kill. Instead the deer had gotten away. Was it that cold breeze that came out of nowhere? Must’ve been. Just enough to throw off his aim, and just enough to make the deer aware of his presence.
The hunter scanned the snow covered fields with his binoculars. He spotted the deer several hundred yards away. The deer had stopped sprinting and was struggling through the deep snow, heading for a large group of bare trees. The hunter could see the red and bloody wound in it’s rear end. Looked like the wound was slowing the deer down. Now all he had to do was track the deer and finish what he’d started.
The hunter slung his rifle over his shoulder, rose up out of his hunting spot, and climbed down a small hill, his boots crunching through the icy snow. He followed a narrow trail that wound between several gigantic snow drifts. The hunter hurried his pace the best he could, but even having a trail to follow didn’t help as the snow was a good four or five inches deep. Being so cold for so long the snow was packed hard, and the constant ice cold wind had frozen a thin layer of ice on top. Every step took a tremendous effort, but the hunter didn’t care, he had a wounded deer to find and put down.
The closer the hunter got to the trees, the more he felt that something wasn’t quite right. From a distance he knew he had clearly seen the deer heading towards a group of bare white oak trees. He even noticed the branches, totally leafless, thin and so cold looking, slightly waving back and forth in the wind. Now that he was closer the white bark of the trees seemed to blend in with the snow, and the skinny branches were fading away. The trees seemed to be disappearing right before his eyes. Must be the cold and all this pure white snow playing tricks on me, the hunter thought. Trees don't just disappear.
The hunter kept going, closer and closer towards what was quickly turning into nothing but an outline of tree trunks and branches. He spotted a few drops of fresh blood on the snow ahead. This made him more determined, for now he was sure he was heading in the right direction. The wounded deer couldn’t be far. Just a little further ahead, towards the trees, the trees that seemed to be fading away.
The hunter finally reached the first few oak trees. They looked real, even though he could swear they were just black outlines filled in with the clearest and most perfect white color he’d ever seen. He touched one to make sure. The tree bent ever so slightly backwards, seeming to back away from his outstretched hand. Another trick of the cold and snow, he thought, as he reached again and this time his hand rubbed against the smooth bark, and it certainly felt like a real tree.
The hunter continued on, crunching through the snow, deeper into the trees, following the deer’s trail of blood. After a few minutes he stepped into a large round open space. He stopped, and that strange feeling of things not being quite right came over him again. All around him, lining the edge of the circular space, were those smooth barked, pure white oak trees that looked more like a vision than the sturdy and strong trees he knew they really were. The bony looking branches continued to quietly wave up and down in the chilly wind.
But it wasn’t only the trees that now gave him such a weird feeling. Up ahead, at the top of the open space, were two large oval shaped black stones sticking up through the snow. They were spaced evenly apart. Underneath them, laying on top of the snow, were two dark colored branches in a straight line, again spaced evenly apart, and right beneath the branches were two small black stones. The hunter looked hard, not quite believing what he was looking at. For sure the stones and branches looked like two eyes and a nose. This had to be just an incredible trick of this cold weather making him see things. Because if they were really eyes and a nose, where was the mouth? Right in front of him was where it should be. Looking down all he could see was nothing but snow.
Once he looked beyond the oval shaped stones his senses came back to him. There was the deer’s trail of blood. Okay, the hunter thought, the deer definitely came this way. The tracking and hunting will continue.
He lifted his leg up and took a high step. When his boot crunched back down, it took an extra second before it found the ground underneath. He lifted his other leg, and when he stepped down the boot crackled through the layer of snow, finding nothing but empty space underneath. He almost fell over, but he spread his arms out and regained his balance. He used his other leg to step forward, trying to find solid ground, but it too found empty space. In a split second he crashed through the snow, arms swinging out wildly, falling and falling, bl
ackness surrounding him. Was there a mouth after all, and did it open up and swallow me, the hunter wondered as he fell, then he thudded down onto something hard and everything went totally black, totally silent.
Friday Afternoon: Reality Is No Dream
“Chippity chip. Wood chips, wood chips, chippity chip.”
“Whoo whoo. Whoo oh whoo. Whoo whoo whoo.”
“Quiet, both of you. Our guest is waking up.”
The hunter slowly opened his eyes. Everything was fuzzy and blurry. His head felt light, like he was floating through a pure black sky. What happened? Where was he? He had to think … had to clear his head, had to get rid of this groggy feeling …
He knew he had just heard some voices. Strange ones, sounding like chirps and squeaks, maybe the hooting of an owl. He also thought he heard words.