Chapter 2
The ride was just the thing she needed. The freedom of being on a horse out in the rolling hills alone, just her and nature, slowly balanced her mood. They picked their way through the hills and valleys until they neared the outcropping that Carl had mentioned. An odd sense of unease passed over her, almost like a cloud had covered the sun. Ellie's ears perked forward and then twitched backward nervously.
Huh. Maybe there was a predator skulking about in the trees. She nudged Ellie forward, but the mare refused to go farther. Instead, she let out a displeased snort.
Tianna dismounted, and began to untie her shotgun from where she had tied it behind the saddle. She gave Ellie a pat on the neck and stalked forward to the treeline. Her feeling of unease increased substantially as she passed beneath the canopy. Dry grass and twigs crunched beneath her feet. She rolled her eyes at herself. Hunter she was not. That was okay, she preferred if whatever it was hightailed it off the property; she didn't like killing animals, the gun was merely for protection.
She walked for almost ten minutes before she noticed something odd. Pausing next to an old tree stump, she waited and listened.
Nothing. No birds, not the rustle of small rodents in the grass, nada.
She scanned her surroundings nervously. This patch of bush wasn't really large enough to house a greater predator for long. Maybe she should just fire off a couple warning shots and see if she could flush whatever it was out. But she had better warn Carl or he would worry.
She pulled her phone out of the front pocket of her pants. No service. Figured.
Well, she was already there. She decided to press on, but slowly.
Another ten minutes passed before she found it. Not a predator, though she still felt a foreboding that she was being watched. No, this was a great stone arch. Nearly four times her height, made out of stone so black it seemed to absorb all light around it, with foreign lettering up its sides.
She glanced back behind her. What the hell? She had been in these trees hundreds of times and never come across this. She would have remembered. There was nothing else in the forest that remotely indicated the existence of a stone structure.
Slowly, she moved toward it. The reality of its existence still boggling her mind. Even stranger, the space between the arches supports seemed...off, like when she looked at the trees through the arch they weren't quite right. She spent a few minutes exploring the duality and walking around the structure’s base. Tentatively, she reached out a hand. The stone was solid and cold beneath her fingers. One of the designs lit up. What the hell?
The deep snuff behind her brought her immediately back to the present, and her reason for being in the bush to begin with. So enamored was she with her discovery that she had forgotten to pay attention to her surroundings.
The shot of fear was like being electrified from the inside. She whirled, bringing her gun up, but it was too late, a flash of dark fur and claws knocked the rifle from her hands. She was left facing a monster.
Big. Taller than her by half and slightly humanoid in stature, like a gorilla but leaner, with claws and long appendages for ripping into prey. Its face sported a mashed nose and a mouthful of fangs. It let out a bellow, its maw opening, strings of saliva dripping from the sharp teeth within.
Tianna flinched and pressed herself against the stone behind her. This really was the day from hell. It figured she would be the one to find bigfoot, but it turned out he was a monster that was about to rip her apart.
The creature charged and Tianna slipped beneath the archway, putting the stone column between them. It bellowed again, somehow sounding distant, though it was right before her. She waited, expecting it to dodge around the stone to get to her, but it didn't. Or maybe it couldn't. She backed up and blinked. It was as if the creature was behind a large door, she could see it shuffle through the archway, but the other side of its body was simply gone. This was impossible. The whole thing was impossible. Somehow that didn't make it any better.
A dark, rage filled eye appeared through the arch.
Shit.
Tianna skirted backward desperately looking for a tree to put between herself and the thing. There didn't appear to be any good candidates. One long arm pressed through the arch, followed by the beast's head and torso.
Something weird happened then. A character on the archway, one that matched the shape she had seen on the other side, lit up, an eerie bluish light pulsing three times. There was a high-pitched whine in the air, almost beyond her hearing. The creature howled and tossed its head, its attention momentarily distracted. Then, as if it had never been, the archway blinked out of existence, taking half of bigfoot's body with it.
The scent of ozone filled the air, and then blood. The beast managed to roar, but it was a dying sound and blood leaked from its mouth as it did. In seconds, she watched as the light faded from its eyes. Then she stood, trembling, alone in the middle of the bush with half of bigfoot.
She crashed to the ground, her legs no longer able to support her. Holy crap. Fear had knocked out her senses, her whole body trembled. Shock, she acknowledged somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind. She was going into shock. She needed to get home and find a warm place to curl up while her body recovered.
Something moved in the trees behind her. Tianna refused to look. If she didn't look, then it couldn't be a monster. She focused instead on slowing her breathing, but her system was too keyed up. Her heart raced and every time she attempted to calm herself, she caught another glimpse of the monster's corpse and her pulse leapt again.
A voice, male and soft, spoke something behind her. She couldn't make out what it was, but it sounded strange to her ears, like a language she had never heard before. Had Carl come to find her? How would he know where to look?
She wanted to turn, to call him over, but sitting and staring seemed to be the only thing she was capable of.
A pair of deep brown hands came into her view first. Not Carl, then. The hands reached out for hers and held them gently. Next, a face with deep chocolate eyes and shoulder length black hair appeared. His beard was long, but neatly trimmed. A stranger, though she felt no threat from him. He spoke again, his voice soothing, but she didn't understand.
Her hands warmed in his and with his voice murmuring to her, she slowly, ever so slowly began to feel her body let go of the adrenaline. He stayed like that, crouched before her, for a very long time. Might have been minutes, might have been hours, but soon her mind started to clear and she was breathing easier.
“Who are you?” she asked. And how did he find her in the middle of the ranch?
The man tilted his head and said something to her. She tried to place the language. Not Spanish, she could speak that reasonably. No, his words had a foreign lilt to them she had never heard before.
He rose to standing and she immediately felt the loss of his touch. It was as if he had been passing his calm and comfort through their joined hands. And his words weren't the only thing foreign about him. He wore a set of brown pants, tailored in a style she had never seen. They were loose fitting down the legs; if he were to stand with his legs together it might even look like a skirt, but as he paced to the creature's body, she noted they were indeed pants. On his torso, he wore a tight white shirt that had clasps in the front and a darker vest over top. A stained leather satchel hung over one shoulder and rested against his hips. Weirdly, it reminded her of the old pirate movies.
Hello Captain Blackbeard.
She stifled a giggle. Not good. She was actually losing it.
He bent down and touched the creature, and then did something that she couldn't quite make out, but it looked like he was collecting samples. When he was finished, he approached her again and spoke, this time adding in hand gestures to encourage her to rise. She did so—she couldn't exactly sit in the middle of the bush forever—and he nodded his approval and then moved forward into the trees. She followed but found herself immediately disoriented. Nothing about the forest looked familiar. Indeed, as she studied the trees around her, she noticed they were much wider and taller than the stands of poplar and spruce that she had entered.
“Where am I?” she muttered. Of course, her guide didn't answer, not that he could understand her it seemed. Even the temperature seemed wrong. She had ridden out on a warm summer day; somehow, the air had turned crisp, as though she had stepped into a brisk fall morning.
She paused, a realization hanging just beyond her reach.
Blackbeard noticed her lingering and waved her forward. She really had no choice but to follow. It took nearly an hour, far too long...the outcropping of trees wasn't that large...for them to reach the edge of the forest. It was this first glance down the hill into the valley that brought her realization to the forefront.
There, below her and her guide, lay a valley free of fencing and happy cows, though the pasture land dotted with stands of trees looked familiar enough. Ellie was nowhere in sight. And, at the valley's bottom, ran a river she knew not to exist on the ranch. A spread of squat buildings hugged the clear banks; a small settlement, it seemed.
She was no longer home. Somehow the strange events of the day had left her in this new, unfathomable situation.
The archway. It was the only explanation. Somehow, she had found some weird break in the world and ended up somewhere implausible. She stared at the scene for a long time, and then turned back, considering the forest behind her. Would she be able to find her way back to the spot where the arch had been? Would it come back? Or would she have to find another way home?
Blackbeard tapped her on the arm, and she turned to meet his gaze. He gave her a little head shake. The motion was punctuated by a familiar bellow from deep within the trees. Dear God, there was more of the monsters.
Blackbeard raised his brows as if to make a point and then gestured toward the settlement. It was late afternoon. Somehow, the sun had traveled several hours in the time since she faced Bigfoot. She didn’t want to be caught in the forest at night with one of the creatures.
Blackbeard patted her arm again and she felt a surge of reassurance from him. She studied his hands for a long moment before allowing him to lead her down the hill.