Bump

Bump

by S.J. Finch

Copyright 2011 by S.J. Finch

Smashwords Edition

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. – Abraham Lincoln

Chapter 1

Pine. Dampness. Dirt. If there was one aspect of camping that came anywhere close to redeeming all the others, it was the crisp scent of the mountains. The air was cleaner here, free from car exhaust, cheap cologne, cooking grease, and all the other smells that Ryan associated with the city. He inhaled again.

On either side of the narrow path loomed the forest. The trees were packed so densely that branches collided and interlocked into one giant wall of green.

Ryan peered through the trees and from the darkness, a strange roar erupted. It took him only a moment to realize however that this was not the hunting cry of some ferocious animal about to attack, it was something much worse.

Diesel.

He craned his neck to see past the trunk of a large tree. In this small sliver, he saw the unnatural gleam of an eighteen wheeler as it roared about its business on the highway that ran occasionally parallel to the forest path. The footpath and the highway were less than a hundred yards apart and Ryan smiled inwardly as he remembered one of the goals for this trip: getting back to nature.

He readjusted the waist strap on his old-fashioned, external-frame hiking backpack. The shift took some of the burden from his shoulders to his waist, but it did nothing to ease his other pains. His legs were sore and blisters were forming quickly on both feet, but the worst pain came from a cross-bar in the frame which dug right into the small of Ryan’s back.

His father was cheap. Practical was probably a better term, but Ryan wasn’t in a generous mood at the moment. This would be the first and last backpacking trip for the men of the Fisher family, and Ryan’s father knew it. The other fathers had gone out and far overspent on brand new backpacks they had fooled themselves into thinking they’d ever use again. Ryan’s father however had gone straight to the thrift store, and returned with a pair of ancient canvas monstrosities that Ryan was certain had once belonged to Colonel Kurtz.

The roaring truck was gone, and Ryan tried in vain to recapture the sense of peace and isolation he had felt before. It was no use.

You all right, buddy?

A booming, genial voice sounded from the trail bend ahead.

Mr. Lowery worked in public relations at Ryan’s father’s office, and the excursion had been his idea. Lowery had seen no flaw in the logic that, if three fathers were friends at work, their three sons would become instant friends when dragged along on a weekend camping trip. Still, Ryan liked the man. He was large and loud and very pleasant.

I’m fine. Ryan replied. Just enjoying the scenery.

It is beautiful, isn’t it? Lowery replied with a red-faced smile.

Ryan wasn’t very good at small talk, especially with adults in white-collar jobs that held no interest to him. Fortunately, Lowery enjoyed small talk enough for the both of them, so Ryan barely had to say a word beyond the occasional affirmation or semi-forced laugh.

They trudged along the path and enjoyed the changing landscape while trying to avoid the roots and rocks that poked out of the ground at odd angles.

Ryan’s sneakers were out of their element, but they had served him faithfully enough so far. Now however, the terrain had changed from dry and level to slippery and inclined.

He gingerly took his first step into a shallow ditch that had been carved out by a low, narrow stream. The side of the ditch was muddy, and against the worn rubber sole of Ryan’s sneaker, it provided no traction.

The step went bad and Ryan’s foot twisted in a way it was not meant to. He pitched forward and couldn’t bring his other foot up in time to right himself, so Ryan landed face-down in the stream with a thudding splash.

The landing itself wasn’t bad. The fifty-pound backpack that landed on top of him was. Lowery rushed to his side.

Whoa whoa, easy.You okay?

Ryan pushed himself out of the stream and nodded. He was embarrassed and he was soaking, but he hadn’t broken anything. His ankle, however, throbbed angrily.

Nothing major, just twisted my ankle.

I can imagine. Spill like that, you’re lucky it was just a twist. Good thing this happened so close to camp, it could’ve been a lot worse. Stay here, I’ll run ahead and get Carl and your dad.

The last thing Ryan wanted was everyone staring down at him while he was helpless in the mud. On the other hand, the first thing he wanted was the Ace bandage out of Carl’s first aid kit, so he was willing to endure the embarrassment.

Lowery shrugged off his pack and set off huffing down the trail as he yelled for the rest of the group to stop.

A moment later, the man returned with Carl Burris and Ryan’s father. Joseph Fisher didn’t much care for Burris, and Ryan had heard many a complaint about the man over the family dinner table. Nevertheless, Ryan had been able to piece together that Burris had some clout within the office, so declining his invitation for a weekend excursion would not have been a wise move. Ryan didn’t care much about the wild world of inter-office politics; only when they forced him into a backpacking trip.

You okay, Ryan? Joseph asked his son as Burris wrapped the ankle.

Never better.

Ryan’s father pulled him out of the stream bed and helped him hobble the last half mile to the place they were to make camp. Lowery, Burris, and their sons had gone on ahead, and a fire was already crackling in the stillness of the twilight. Its small flames cast flickering shadows on Burris who was busy cursing at his brand new, easy-assemble tent. Night was falling quickly.

Ryan eased himself into a canvas camp chair and began to count the hours until he could go home.

He had tried to do right by his father and play nice. He had introduced himself to Nick Burris, who had grunted an unintelligible reply without looking up from his phone. Then Ryan had tried to strike up a conversation with Eddie Lowery, who had pointedly put in earphones. Ryan had done his best, but he wasn’t sure what he was expecting to happen. The boys all went to different schools and lived in different neighborhoods; having fathers who worked together wasn’t fodder for riveting conversation. Ryan had resigned himself to a rather lonely weekend, and had instead begun focusing on the fact that the trip was almost over. He’d be going to bed soon and, with a little luck, his ankle would be well enough to hike out early the next morning.

Their camp was at the edge of a large meadow, one of the few clearings Ryan had seen in the dense forest. The setting sun muted the natural colors of his surroundings and substituted its own vibrant yellows and oranges. The patches of pale grass at Ryan’s feet turned a nearly-transparent, flaming red in the dying sunlight and they cast long, spiked shadows across the dirt. Through the trees on one side, Ryan could just make out the shimmering reflection of the sun on a small lake. He knew that opposite the lake was the highway, but even the thin stand of trees between them was enough to hide the blacktop from Ryan’s view. On either side of the meadow rose the forest, thick and dark even at midday, but now as the sun continued to set, Ryan couldn’t distinguish shape from shadow more than a few feet beyond the tree line.

He felt a gentle breeze pick up, and he could just make out the sound of it whistling through the countless branches. Much more audible were the sounds of Burris’ mild profanities, the crackling fire, and Ryan’s father constructing their small pup tent behind him.

Even these sounds however, became muffled whenever a car roared past them on the nearby road. Ryan smiled.

Joseph Fisher had their tent up in a matter of minutes, and he helped Ryan crawl inside.

Having fun yet? His father asked with a smirk. I think we’re going to play some capture-the-flag. Are you okay for me to leave?

Ryan smiled. Yeah, I’m really fine. Go do your thing, show Mr. Burris who was CTF champ at Camp Maplewood four years running.

Joseph Fisher grinned back. And here I thought you never listened to any of my old camp stories.

***

Out in the woods, night meant something very different than it did in the city. Stars shone through the murky canopy like countless pinholes in a black sheet. The moon seemed bigger out here, and its bluish light fell softly on Ryan and the dying fire.

He had gotten bored of staring off into the nylon of his tent, and had decided to hobble out and take his seat next to the fire pit. He poked and prodded at the embers, but Lowery hadn’t gotten nearly enough firewood to last them the night, so Ryan had occupied himself watching the flames burn slowly down to coals.

It was chilly, the first real bite of autumn, and Ryan hugged himself more closely, debating just how many body parts he’d give up to be back home.

Apart from the aromas, the other advantage of the woods was the silence. Traffic on the highway had stopped almost completely, and with none of the other campers around, Ryan reveled in the quiet. He leaned his head back in the canvas chair and closed his eyes, listening.

He let the silence wash over him, and despite the cold, even allowed himself to doze off for a moment. Then however, something came to him on the breeze: the faintest whisper out of the woods. Ryan’s eyes shot open and he strained his hearing for a second sound that never came. The first had sounded almost like a man’s scream: too ghastly and pained to be a flag-capturer’s cry of victory. After a moment however, Ryan dismissed what he had heard entirely. He had been half asleep at the time,and the forest at night was home to all kinds of mysterious sounds that, nonetheless, posed no real threat. Still, the split-second event had planted in Ryan’s imagination the possibility that there was a serial killer roaming the shadowy woods with a large hatchet. The silence was slightly less comforting now.

Ryan crawled back inside the tent and dug around in his pack. He pulled out a small paperback that he knew he’d never finish. It had been recommended to him by his mother, whose taste he generally trusted, but Ryan knew that as soon as he was back in the real world, the siren song of movies, TV, and video games would lure him away from literature. It always did. He liked to give recreational reading the old college try every few weeks, just to make himself feel better, but he rarely stuck with it faithfully enough to finish more than one book every couple months.

He had delved half a chapter in when the batteries in his flashlight began to fade. Ryan hadn’t found himself enthralled by the pages anyway, so he put away the book and crawled into his sleeping bag to begin the arduous battle of falling asleep in a tent.

Chapter 2

Ryan awoke with a start. The moonlight diffused through the wall of the tent cast a dull glow on his backpack and sleeping bag. He didn’t have a clue what time it was, or how long he had been asleep. He hadn’t wanted to worry about losing or breaking a wristwatch, so he hadn’t worn one, and his phone was where he had forgotten it in the car at the trail head.

He knew that at least a few hours had passed, since his father was now snoring soundly in the bag next to him. What Ryan wanted more than anything was to fall back to sleep. The sooner he fell asleep, the sooner it would be morning and the sooner he could leave; get back to civilized life and the real world.

Trying to get more comfortable, Ryan shifted and squirmed in his sleeping bag and discovered why he had woken up: a large rock was positioned directly beneath his bag. All night long it had been digging into the exact same spot on his back as the cross bar on his cheap backpack. No matter which way he turned, the rock was still there and his back was still sore.

After a few more futile minutes of tossing and turning, Ryan gave up. He sat up in his sleeping bag and stretched out his back as best he could in the small tent. He remained that way for a long time: awake and bored.

As quietly as he could, Ryan unzipped his sleeping bag and threw it off his lower half. He lifted his injured foot and gently unraveled the bandage. When it was off, Ryan was surprised by how much mobility he had. It no longer hurt so much to move. He decided to work it a bit, to put some weight on it and see how it felt. Ryan pulled on his shoes and awkwardly crawled over his father. He unzipped the door, slowly as to not make too much noise, and clambered out.

The night was cold, much colder than Ryan had expected. His shivering breath came out in dense white clouds and he clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. This made his warm sleeping bag, rock or no rock, seem all the more inviting. Still, he knew sleep was a lost cause for the moment, so first he zipped up the tent and then he zipped up his sweatshirt.

His foot seemed to be fine to stand on, so he took a few cautious steps. At first it was painful and stiff, but the more he walked, the easier it became.

Ryan looked up and once again peered into the woods. The blue light of the big round moon illuminated the entire meadow, but the light couldn’t penetrate the murky blackness of the trees. Even so, as Ryan peered into the forest, he no longer felt any fear. He felt at home in the meadow now, as though he had been here long enough that he was no longer so out of place.

By extension, the forest also seemed less intimidating. Ryan felt at peace with his surroundings and he was sure that in a place as beautiful and serene as this, nothing was going to harm him. A few hours in a nylon tent made Ryan feel as if Nature had accepted him as one of her own, and she didn’t harm her own.

As if to prove this point to himself, Ryan began to walk towards the forest. He had no clear indication of where to go, or why for that matter, so he chose to travel directly away from the highway and off to one side of the lake: the largest patch of the densest forest he could find.

It took Ryan long enough to reach the edge of the meadow that by the time he got there, he was already questioning his decision. The peaceful feeling was fading fast. Perhaps it was because he was waking up, and reason was quickly returning to his brain, or perhaps because looking at the forest from the middle of a clear, safe meadow was a much different experience than standing four feet from its gaping maw. Still, Ryan hadn’t forgotten the sense of peace and isolation he had experienced earlier that afternoon, and it was such an uncommon feeling in suburban life that he wanted to feel it at least once more before he left in the morning.

As he crossed the dark threshold into the woods, Ryan was all too aware of how ironic it would be if he did run into a hatchet-wielding killer. He had seen the movies: it was always the teenager who can’t run and wanders off alone that gets killed first. He smiled in the darkness.

Though the moonlight had served him well this far, the thick forest canopy now darkened his path considerably. Ryan fished into his sweatshirt pocket and produced his dying flashlight. He clicked it on and swept the weak beam in front of him. He picked his way through the brush, carefully but steadily.

Ryan didn’t know how far into the woods he needed to go, or even how he would know when he was far enough, but he did know that getting out of sight of the meadow and especially the highway was the first step.

Another breeze wound its way through the trees and pushed all the branches into a single, unified swaying motion. Everything in the forest, save Ryan, was moving in the same pattern. The familiar feeling began to creep back into his gut: that he shouldn’t be here, that he wasn’t welcome. Camping for one night in a tent didn’t mean he now belonged here, it meant he was still an outsider who had no right to stomp through this world.

As he moved through the forest, Ryan once or twice thought he saw something else that moved against the swaying pattern of the foliage. It was on the very periphery of his vision however, and the movement was so quick that Ryan could not be sure he had seen anything at all. As he continued on, he thought he saw the movement again, but without any sound of twigs snapping or underbrush being pushed aside, Ryan was sure it was nothing more than the breeze.

He continued on, making sure to keep the highway behind him so he would know how to get back. Soon he came to a small clearing in the trees, no more than twenty feet across. He looked over his shoulder and happily realized that the only thing he could see was the forest, with no sign of the meadow or the camp. He walked to the middle of the clearing and took a long look around as he inhaled deeply. Ryan sat down on a fallen log and closed his eyes. He listened to the sound of his own breathing, the wind rustling the leaves, the swishing noises of his clothes when he made even the tiniest movement. The smells of wet soil and fresh pine came to him on the chilly night air. The silence was so deep, so engulfing, the chill so constant, Ryan may as well have been at the bottom of the ocean or the vast expanse of space. He took another long breath through his nose and held it for a moment before letting it slowly out through his mouth. The white mist of exhaled breath hung in the air then dispersed in a thousand different directions. So focused was Ryan on his breathing, on the smells that each breath brought him, and on the sound that the cool air made as it rushed through his nostrils, that he didn’t notice at first when all the other sounds around him faded away into an uneasy nothingness.

It was as though someone had turned down the volume on a television and all sound had seeped out of the clearing at the same moment. Everything seemed to stop. There were no chirps of insects, no rustling of birds or squirrels, not even the wind made a sound. Instead the breeze swirled around Ryan and slid silently through the underbrush like a ghost.

His breathing was shallow, his heartbeat had quickened, and Ryan didn’t know why. Nothing seemed to have changed, but still he knew that everything was very, very different.

Suddenly, on some primal level in a way he had never felt before, the answer came to him: he was no longer alone. It was as though he was aware of his presence in this place, and in the next instant, he was aware of another presence as well. On the same primal level, where millions of years of evolution and animal instinct were contained, a conclusion was formed. This change in environment pointed his animal mind in one direction: with a chill shuddering through him colder than anything the night air could ever muster, Ryan realized he wasn’t the only outsider in these woods.

His reaction was not what he expected. He didn’t immediately run for the camp, in fact he didn’t do anything at all. Ryan was afraid, that much was certain, but the instincts that screamed at him to run were being beaten back by his own, very human curiosity. The animal in him was ready to fight or flee, but Ryan knew he couldn’t make that decision until he had more information. In the back of his mind, far from his conscious brain, Ryan knew that neither option was going to help him. His ankle wouldn’t let him run anywhere fast enough to escape, and he certainly wasn’t going to be able to fight any creature of these woods that was big enough to consider him prey. Elsewhere in his brain, he was inwardly chuckling at himself; a defeated, masochistic laugh as that tiny part of him realized the irony of it all. The injured teenager in the middle of the woods. Can’t run. Can’t fight. First to die.

In the next instant, contrary to what Ryan had often heard, time did not slow down. Rather, his brain sped up. Things happened in the blink of an eye, but Ryan’s brain was alert and ready to process all of it. Without warning, without any sound, Ryan felt something huge crash into him from behind.

He didn’t just feel the impact however. Ryan’s adrenaline-drenched brain fed him more data than he could process: the body heat of his attacker, the sinewy muscles rippling beneath coarse fur, the hot, musty breath on the back of his neck, and the large claws that ripped through his sweatshirt and raked searing pain into his side. It all happened in an instant, in less time than it took for a bolt of lightning to streak through the sky, then it was all gone. Gone, except for the blinding pain in his side and the feeling of hot blood pumping out of the wound.

Ryan pushed the pain out of his mind long enough to realize that he was on the ground, and that the wind had been knocked out of him. As he gulped for air that never seemed to reach his lungs, his eyes fell to the four identical slashes on his right side: each one at least six inches in length. He lifted his head as high as he could and looked around at his blurring landscape. He saw nothing. The animal in him had come to the same decision as his human mind: this was not a fight he could win. His lungs returned to normal and he inhaled noisy gulps of air. His breathing steadied, though still quick and shallow from the terror. Ryan lay there waiting for a second attack that he knew would come at any moment, the attack that he knew would likely be the last thing he’d ever feel.

The hushed seconds ticked by…no attack came. Ryan strained, over the sound of the blood pounding in his ears, to hear any sort of noise that might signal his attacker’s return. He knew of course, that whatever it was didn’t make noise. The first attack had come in utter silence, and the next one would be the same way. With another gasp of breath, Ryan blinked the tears out of his eyes and summoned all the strength he could to roll himself onto his stomach. The twigs and fallen pine needles poked into his skin as he forced himself up on all fours. He took a few more deep breaths and pushed away from the ground, shakily clambering to his feet. As he clutched his side with one hand and his aching stomach with the other, Ryan stumbled off into the woods in a direction he could only pray was the right one. His internal sense of direction had been erased by terror, and he had no way of knowing which way he had come.

Now that he was on his feet, Ryan’s adrenaline pumped faster than it ever had before. It dulled the pain in his side to a distant roar, and the protests of his ankle were drowned out completely. Even so, the foot was still injured. Ryan hadn’t made it more than ten feet outside the clearing when he buckled again. His ankle pitched him forward and Ryan landed on his hands and knees in the wet underbrush. His hands stung from the impact and Ryan felt as though he had used the last of his strength getting to his feet the first time. He doubted he had it in him to get back upright. Then the second attack came.

Just as suddenly as before, Ryan was hit again. It was the same freight train impact slamming into his left side, opposite the slash wounds. He heard two of his ribs break a split-second before he felt them. Then he felt them.

The impact sent Ryan sprawling with his arms and legs twisted about and forced at odd angles. He landed with a sickening thump in the dirt nearly six feet from where he had been hit. His eyes instinctively shot open to brace for another attack, but there wasn’t one. He saw nothing. There was no sign of his attacker: no hulking figure emerging from the shadows, no rustle of underbrush. Ryan couldn’t even spot a single branch that had been disturbed or even one dead, fallen leaf that had been kicked up and misplaced. It was as though the shadows themselves were rising up to attack him, then fading away just as quickly. The only evidence that anything had happened at all was Ryan’s own, broken body. That and the stillness.

He didn’t know how long he lay there, crumpled in dirt that was becoming soaked with his blood. The pain made time meaningless. The pain was all he knew, as if it was all he had ever known. He couldn’t think of a time in his life that he hadn’t been lying in this forest in excruciating pain.

Then something strange began to creep back from the recesses of his mind, some last spark of human will or instinctual self-preservation. Something gave him the idea that he could get up, that he could keep going. Ryan would have preferred to stay there and die.

He tried to, in fact. He wept silently into the damp earth and begged his mind, his body, to let him die. However, that same spark would not comply and after a moment Ryan felt as though his body were being run by remote. He hadn’t told his body to push itself up against a fallen tree. He hadn’t told it to inch up, little by little, until he was lying across the large log, almost standing. He hadn’t told his body to gingerly put weight on both feet, then stagger away from the support of the log. He certainly hadn’t told his body to take off at a slow, hobbling run. Ryan’s body however, had taken over. His mind and body had flipped on the autopilot and started