Chapter One
Red glowing eyes stared at Allison from the darkness of the forest. A cold chill swept over her, and she struggled for breath the longer she stared at the monstrosity now confronting her.
The creature was unlike anything Allison had ever seen before. Its flesh hung loosely from its massive form, and although it had some human features, there was actually nothing human about what she was seeing, with its clawed hands and glowing eyes.
Everything about the monster was eerie and unsettling, as if the unearthly form had stepped out of some horror movie.
A high-pitched scream erupted from the creature’s mouth, and it echoed so loudly she was sure her ears might split from the sound. She covered them to muffle the sound and crouched on the ground, not really sure why she was there or what was really going on.
Something didn’t seem right, something more than just the monster making her heart pound. She couldn’t remember why she was even in the forest, or where she’d last been.
The longer Allison stared at the creature, the more she sensed her impending doom. She was certain the creature was going to kill her.
As if it heard her inner most thoughts, it locked its blood red eyes on her. She felt her heart stop as it did so. It took a few steps forward, its clawed feet crunching against the thin layer of snow on the forest floor.
Another piercing scream tore out of the creature into the cold night air. It charged right at her, loping with a speed she’d never seen outside of a movie.
At another time, when her life wasn’t on the line, she might have been fascinated by how it moved, both its speed and gait. At that moment, though, all she could do was tremble.
Allison couldn’t run. She knew there was no way to escape. The only choice was to wait for death.
For a moment, she thought the creature had screamed again until she realized it was her own voice. Her scream echoed in the night.
The creature loomed over as she cowered on the ground.
“Please,” Allison whispered.
The creature let out another deafening scream before swinging its massive hand.
Allison woke up in a cold sweat. The blankets around her were covered with the sticky heat from her body. The covers were half-off the bed, her top sheet loose, as if she had been struggling to get away.
She threw an arm over her head and let out a long sigh. The nightmares were getting worse.
Allison took several deep breaths, trying to make her heart stop racing, but her mind kept replaying the same scene over and over, with that horrible creature and its piercing screams.
For nearly a week now, she had been having these nightmares. They were obviously fueled by whatever it was that she had seen one strange evening outside her place, the night she’d watched a creature chase a man with glowing blue eyes as he held a woman in his arms.
First, Allison had tried to figure out some easy explanation for what she’d seen. That was hard, considering she hadn’t been tired, drunk, or otherwise messed up.
Then, she tried to pass it off as a hallucination, but that didn’t feel right. She was no expert, but what she witnessed was so specific, the details still burned into her mind.
The truth was, no matter how many times Allison tried to process what she had seen, there just never seemed to be the right word to describe the experience. Well, other than crazy.
But she wasn’t crazy. She knew it. Other than her nightmares, she hadn’t seen anything else. A hallucination should have been followed by more.
She groaned. And yet there was no way to explain the creature without sounding crazy.
What was she going to tell people? Some sort of evil Sasquatch was hunting people down in Eagle Ridge?
Allison hadn’t told a soul about the event. Her sister, Grace, had the grocery store to run. She also hadn’t told Celine, her secretary. No matter how friendly they were, it just wasn’t right.
There was no way to tell anyone that wouldn’t result in people getting her booted from her position as mayor and then locked up.
Allison frowned into the darkness. There was one explanation, one thing that had changed in Eagle Ridge that might explain why something strange was now going on.
It was that group who had moved in near the town. Most claimed to be family, even though a lot of them didn’t look related from what she could see, and most of them seemed huge. She knew it had to be them.
They were strange people who stayed mostly by themselves and always seemed to keep themselves slightly away from society. Probably some sort of crazy survivalists.
Though being crazy survivalists didn’t easily explain what she’d seen. She let out a dark chuckle. Maybe they’d come to hunt evil Sasquatches.
She didn’t trust that group. Same as she didn’t trust the crazy Azilian cult just down the road.
Though, when she thought about it, she realized she distrusted the Azilians more. There was something about people who tried really hard to be nothing but rainbows and sunshine out in the public.
Something about that just rubbed her the wrong way. Like there must be something really big to hide if they were acting that way.
Allison placed her head in her hands and sighed loudly. How on Earth their small little town ended up with two different crazy groups was beyond her.
This hadn’t been what she signed up for when she’d won the election. Allison knew that it wasn’t going to be all fun and games when she got elected, but she didn’t expect to have to deal with monsters.
The election had been hard. Her parents hadn’t exactly been the most popular people in the area. As the owner of the only real grocery store for miles, they had a monopoly on certain goods and had no trouble taking advantage of that with more than the occasional bit of price gouging.
She could still remember being in school and listening to everyone talk about her parents and knowing that those angry people weren’t wrong to be angry. She’d always felt what her parents did was wrong and always argued against it.
When they had died in a car accident, it hurt to know that so many people in town were relieved by their deaths.
Despite all that, her sister Grace ended up being a better person to run the store. She ran the place fairly and kept her profits mostly moderate.
Over time, Allison and her sister had been able to create their own reputations separate from that of their parents. Most people knew that Allison and Grace were people who loved and cared about Eagle Ridge and its people.
Earning the position of mayor had just been the culmination of all that. Although some still thought Allison wasn’t the right person for the job, especially with her self-appointed keeper, Doris, making sure she didn’t step out of line and always looking for a way to undermine her.
The creature she’d seen was a whole new ballgame. How the hell could she keep her people safe if she didn’t even know what she was keeping them safe from and couldn’t even tell them about it?
Allison laid her head back against the pillow and let out a deep sigh. This was the sort of stress that kept her up at night, the things she knew she needed to change but didn’t exactly know how.
Winning the election for mayor hadn’t been easy. A lot of people in town were still small minded and thought a woman couldn’t do the job. Everyone was watching her, and if she didn’t succeed, they were likely to take this as a sign of something bigger.
As it was, many people were concerned with the large number of animal killings that had been going on. Even though a conservation researcher had been looking into it and thought she had a solution with some sort of fancy-sounding gadget, Allison wasn’t convinced.
There was no way for her to know for certain, but she’d bet the creature from her dream had something to do with it. No conservation researcher would even think something like that was involved. Now she just needed to figure out what the hell the creature was.
Allison had done research on it and combed all sorts of myths on the off chance she would find something.
Nothing. Nothing really. The closest she could come up with was something like a Sasquatch or Bigfoot, but it didn’t look or act like any stories she’d ever heard about the Pacific Northwest’s most famous mystery creature. Then again, it wasn’t exactly like she could say for certain what a Bigfoot would act like.
The real issue was though that the creature didn’t just come from nowhere.
Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she was just overworked, and her crazy brain invented this just to keep her on her toes.
Allison threw back the covers and sat back up.
Her mind was going a mile a minute, and it would just be pointless to stay in bed.
She glanced at the clock beside her bed as she set her feet on the cold floor.
Five AM.
Only another hour before her alarm would’ve gone off anyways. At least she’d been able to get some sleep.
She padded into the living room and hit start on the coffee pot. Allison pulled out her favorite mug and sat down at the table.
Her mind drifted.
Change was on the horizon.
After a moment she shook herself from the dark thoughts that wanted to penetrate her mind. There was no telling what the future would bring, and change was always coming. That was how the world progressed. Dwelling on the things she couldn’t change wouldn’t do anyone any good.
With a new resolution for the day, she stood to grab another cup of coffee before hitting the shower.
Crack!
The sounds echoed through her house as the wood under her right foot shuddered.
Before she’d even had the chance to pull away, the wood splintered, and her foot was falling through. Just before falling forward she grabbed a hold of the table and found herself grateful that she hadn’t tossed out the heavy piece.
Slowly she eased her foot back through the hole so as not to catch on the wood. Once through she gave it a little swirl and found it tender and banged up a bit but not broken.
Allison stared down at the two planks that had given out, blinking. Now she had a hole in her floor. Great. Just great.
If she was a person who believed in signs, she might have thought this was something. But she didn’t.
She made her way to the couch carefully and sighed loudly. Just one more thing on her massive to do list.