Chapter #2: The Betrothed, The Devoured

It stayed there for hours, watching from that goddamn branch, speaking in multiple voices, mostly ours, but also in other voices, more than likely of its former victims. There was a young woman, an older woman, a gruff male, a young boy, and a young girl, which was the same voice he used to lure us out of our tents. We waited as patiently as we could, staying near the fire and talking quietly among ourselves until the first signs of daylight broke through the immense chilling darkness. As the sun rises, the creature looks out and gives us another deafening shriek, before skittering off across the treetops like a gigantic spider.

"Is... Is it gone? Does daylight hurt it?" Darrel asks nervously, peeking around to make sure it isn't attempting to sneak it way back to us.

"No. It just makes it harder for it to hunt us. That doesn't mean it won't try. It's still gonna come after us once we move. We need to make torches of some kind, and find anythin' else from what we brought that can burn it. But we have to be careful while we figure out what to pack. It's still watching us, but now that it's hiding, its gonna try to get us as soon as we leave too far from the campfire," I explain, searching for any sign of the beast.

"What should we look for?" Juan asks, peering around anxiously.

"Both of you stay here, I'm gonna go grab our bags from the tents. If you see it coming up on me, SCREAM," I order, shaking as I stand up. I don't want to do this by myself, but it'll be easier and less dangerous for the two of them if I go by myself. As much as I hate to admit it, I do feel like this is my fault a bit. I take out my knife and cut off half of my sleeve from my hoodie, slicing it into long strips. I find a decent sized stick from the pile of firewood, wrap the strips of fabric around the tip as tightly as possible, and pour a small amount of the rubbing alcohol over the tip as well.

"Dude... be careful, we'll watch out for you," Darrel says, eyes still searching the treetops.

I nod and light the makeshift torch in the campfire, letting it burn for a minute before building up the courage to head over to the tents about 20 feet away. I take a deep breath, and sprint over to my tent, reaching inside and throwing my backpack toward the others. I hurry over to Darrel's, the closer of the two, and peer inside until I find the large pack he'd brought, hauling the heavy case out and launching it toward them without looking back.

"CHRIS!!!" I hear them both scream, and instantly look up to be greeted damn near face to face with the Witiko.

"Hehehehe, will you be my friend?" It coos with the voice of the little boy, letting out a fearsome grin as it breathes on my face. The stench is a mix of sour rotten meat, putrid curdled milk, coagulated blood, and pungent fish. I gag and swing the torch toward the beast, which easily dodges and claws the side of my face, knocking me down with four large fresh cuts that leak blood onto the forest floor. I quickly pick myself up, swinging wildly once more. It leaps from the tree its on, clinging to another one about five feet away.

"Damn that's good!" It shrieks delightfully with Juan's voice as it sucks on each of its fingers, savoring the taste of my blood and fear, playing with me instead of straight up murdering me. It continues to glare at me with a devilish grin as I inch my way over to Juan's tent, grabbing the lip of the doorway and tugging hard until I feel all four of the small stakes give way and the tent pulls away with me. I don't take my eyes off of it for a moment, afraid of being caught off guard a second time. I drag it back to where the others are, wincing as the pain begins to erupt from the torn cheek and chin. Luckily it stopped short of the neck, missing my artery.

"L-look for anything flammable and light that we c-can easily c-carry. Fuck the clothes, ffff-f-fuck anything that will just s-slow us down. We're g-gonna hafta walk the whole way t-to town. R-running will just leave a… a bigger opening for it to pick us off," I tell them as I regroup with them near the campfire.

"Shit, are you okay dude? It got you pretty bad! Did it hurt your mouth?" Darrel asks as he rummages through his pack, taking out some shirts and a bottle of vodka he hadn't shown us yet, probably because he was waiting to drink with us tonight. So much for that plan.

"I-in my bag is-s a s-small med-kit… C-can you dig it out for me?" I stutter, eyes still fixated on the beast lingering on the tree, which is staring at me with a newfound interest. My anxiety is through the roof, it hasn't been like this since I was last in a fight. My adrenaline causes my entire body to shake and cause my stutter to flare up, but I'm still calm and collected, albeit really freaked the fuck out. Juan finds it and passes it to me, then takes the torch and lets me fix myself up. I pour a decent amount of the rubbing alcohol on my cheek and scream out in pain, feeling it kill away the disgusting infections that must be hidden under the Witiko's disgusting claws. Once the stinging subsides, I rub antibiotic medicine on each of the cuts and slap two gigantic bandages over the side of my face, covering the worst of the cuts. "Fuck!"

"You good bruh?" Juan questions, as I empty out my backpack, putting the med-kit back inside first, along with the rubbing alcohol, and two rolls of toilet paper.

"It's fine for now, I-I'm okay, just worried about gettin' t-the fuck out of this goddamn forest," I tell him as I stand back up, taking the torch back and allowing them to continue looking for resources. "If you have anything you wanna take, t-throw it in here unless y-you have your own backpack. Alcohol, uh, thick shirts we can s-shred, um, spray deodorant, m-matches. And probably some f-food for the way since we gotta walk for like eight hours."

"Will this work?" Juan asks, pulling out two large cans of bug spray and another full bottle of whiskey along with the half empty one from last night. I nod and glance back at the tree to see that the monster had disappeared once again.

"FUCK!!!!"

"What happened?!" They ask nervously.

"It fuckin' disappeared again!" I shout, searching for it desperately. All around us we can hear the demon, leaping between the trees, flitting across the ground, yet too quick for our eyes to catch.

"There's nothing we needa get outta the truck is there?" Juan asks hopefully, not wanting to dig through the backseat with our backs exposed.

"Naw, l-lets just get what we need outta here and the ice chest and start walkin'. The longer we stay here, the later it gets. A-and if we don't make it to town before sundown we're gonna hafta make another c-campfire, and wait until morning. If it was able to fuck me up that easily during daylight, imagine what it's g-gonna be able to do to us at night if we're not prepared again," I tell him with a little groan, the pain flaring across my face in waves of extremely hot and devastatingly cold. It begins to subside once I stop talking again. At least I'm getting my stutter a bit under control.

"I think we've got all the shit we need bruh, you ready to do this?" Juan asks, nudging me in the shoulder as he lights the two extra torches for him and Darrel, each of us holding our own torch now.

"Yeah… Come on."

We set out, constantly watching each other's backs, yet the walk is excruciatingly grueling, because as we keep trudging back across the forest floor, we are surrounded by voices, noises that make us stop to search every inch of the background. And after about ten minutes, we aren't even far enough to be out of sight of our camp.

"Chris? Is there more'n one of these fuckers? It sounds like there's so many of 'em out here!" Darrel questions as the road finally comes into view.

"No, I'm almost positive that there's only one out there. From what my grandma used to tell me, they won't hunt in packs. If they did, there'd be less food to go around, and it would attract too much attention to their hunting grounds. And when they do, then once they run out of food, they'll begin to cannibalize each other to satisfy their hunger," I reply, praying to god that the legends are true. They have been so far at least.

"Hello?! Is there anybody out here?!" a man's voice calls out from ahead, across the road, from the other side of the woods.

"…Fuck is that?" Juan asks.

"Probably just the Witiko fuckin' with us again, just ignore it," I respond, eyes still scanning where the voice came from for the beast.

"PLEASE!!! My wife has been attacked!!! She needs help!!!" the voice calls out again.

"Where are you?!" Darrel shouts as we breach the forest, finding ourselves on the wide concrete road once again.

"Dude!" I seethe, trying to keep him quiet.

"Bro, what fuckin' difference does it make Chris? It already knows where we are! If it is just the Witiko, it won't make a difference if I call out, right?" he asks and I just sigh. So much for playing it safe.

"It's been effectively fuckin' with our heads all night, this could just be another trick! And if we slip up, one or all of us are gonna get fuckin' torn apart, piece by piece, and eaten alive. Do you want that?!!" I argue, not wanting to expend any unnecessary energy. I'm already worn out from staying awake all night, I don't need to take care of more wounded people that probably aren't real in the first place. I'm more worried about my friends and myself than some fucking strangers anyways. It's selfish, but true.

Suddenly, a man rushes out of the forest from the other side of the road, carrying a limping woman, her leg leaking from a huge gash bitten out of the front of the thigh. He smiles ecstatically as he spots us, picking up the pace, only to have the Witiko drop down on his shoulder, knocking the two of them down. The demon pounces on the man's back as the wife screams in terror, trying to kick the thing off of her husband with her good leg, to no avail.

"Hold on!!!" Juan shouts, rushing over to them. Before he can reach them however, the monster wretches its mouth open to an abnormal size, even for how wide its smile spreads, and takes a huge chunk out of the man's neck. It's so deep you can see the white of his spine, silencing his screams instantly, yet leaving the increasingly alarmed look of absolute terror on his bewildered face.

"NO!!! GET BACK!!!" I scream at Juan, who ignores me, taking a swing at the demon, smacking its shoulder with the torch. It lets out a hellish bellow and leaps off of the dying man to Juan, both gigantic feet kicking hard and knocking him flat on his back, the wind hurriedly forced from his lungs, leaving him gasping furiously. I drop the torch and grab the axe with both hands and swing upward hard, connecting with the demons chest plate, lodging itself in so deep that it stumbles back, trying to pull it out quickly with no luck. I pick up my torch from the ground, before it burns out, and take another big swing at the Witiko before it can recover. I make contact with its forearm, causing it to leap back into the cover of the forest, wailing the whole way.

"Get Juan up!!!" I shout at Darrel who stands frozen, but snaps out of it, heeding my words and helping our friend up while I hurry over to the couple.

"Please help my husband!! I can't stop the bleeding!" she shouts, but I ignore her, pulling her up and hurrying her over to the guys. I shove off my backpack and toss it to Darrel.

"Disinfect it and stop the bleeding on her leg, then tie it off!!!" I order as I make my way over to the man once more. Yet I only take three steps toward him before I catch something shimmering in the woods being thrown in my direction. I panic and dive to the left, narrowly avoiding an axe to the gut as it bounces off of the road and pierces into the trunk of a tree at the opposite end of the forest where we first appeared from. "WHAT THE FUCK?!!!!"

"NOOOOOO!!!!!!! HELP HIM PLEASE!!!!" the woman screams hysterically, trying to break free of Darrel's tight grip as Juan continues to catch his breath.

I turn back around to see the Witiko has grabbed the husband by the neck and is dragging him back into the darkness of the forest. I stand up and try to swing at it again, but it's too late. It tightens its grip around his throat until it snaps, and leaps back onto a thick redwood, scurrying up into the canopies of the forest, leaving nothing behind but a trail of blood, and the woman's screams, echoing into the vastness of the woods.

****

It's been two hours of trekking along the empty road. The woman hasn't said much, except to curse at me when I had to re-wrap her bandage that had bled through. The bleeding has finally stopped now, thankfully, otherwise she would be dead before we get to town as well. She keeps giving me dirty glares whenever I look back to check on her, while Darrel is helping her along.

Juan has a gigantic bruise already formed and swelling on the entirety of his chest, and his breathing is rattled whenever he takes a deep breath. I'm pretty sure a few of his ribs are broken, but it should be fine as long as we get to town. What I'm more worried about is if the ribs broke so traumatically that its piercing his lung. If that's the case, we really need to get to town, before the lung fills with blood and he suffocates.

It's only about nine in the morning, so we have until around 7:30 or 8 at night before the sun goes down. Before the run in with the couple, we could've made it to town kind of easily. But now two of our group are injured and we're stuck going at a snail's pace to keep from overexerting everyone. As long as we keep this pace, we should still be fine, at least until night falls. Fingers crossed.

"Do you guys have anything to drink?" the woman asks timidly, shocking us all.

"Here you go," I grunt, passing her one of the three water bottles we had brought with us from camp. She drinks about half of it and hands it back.

"How bad does it hurt?" I question, but she just shrugs me off, so I ask again, directing my question to Juan this time.

"It's not... that bad... homie. I just gotta... take my time. Sorry," he responds through pinched wheezes, wincing every time he has to breathe in to respond. I nod and slow the pace down to give the both of them some reprieve, hoping it'll help in the long run, considering we actually make it out of this fucking nightmare. Thankfully it hasn't tried to rush us, but it did taunt us in the woman's husband's voice for the first hour of us dragging along the road. It's been eerily quiet since.

****

"Why?" the woman questions randomly, breaking the silence. We've been walking quietly and on edge for another hour or so with still no sign of human life or the Witiko. As fucked up as it is, that goddamn monster is probably gorging itself of her husbands corpse to keep itself busy before it comes for us. It knows we can't get to town before it's done, even if we ran. What's more fucked up is that his corpse is still buying us the much needed time to travel as far as we can toward town, unhindered by the beasts constant attacks and mind games.

"Why what?" I ask her, glancing back to see her crying now, the shock finally wearing off.

"Why didn't you try to save my husband?"

"What's your name?"

"Arabella."

"Like the... Arctic Monkeys song? That's... pretty cool!" Juan comments between his wheezes, which seem to be getting deeper and harsher. It's very worrisome to say the least. I don't want to lose any of my friends, especially not to a monster like this. I don't have much family that I actually consider family anymore. Juan and Darrel are pretty much my brothers, and I'm not giving up on them. Not even if it kills me. The woman ignores him and keeps her focus on me.

"If you honestly wanna know Bella, I didn't really wanna help you guys at all. In case you haven't noticed, we had already been caught in our own little run in with the Witiko," I tell her, pointing to the bandages on my face which barely conceal the claw marks. "And we already had enough to deal with, so I didn't even wanna check on you, because that thing can change its voice to sound like whoever it wants. I thought y'all were fake, or that it was a trap. And it was, by the way, because it lured us toward each other just so we would be caught off guard, and to freak us out even more. But we did, and it's plan worked, now look at what's happened! My friend can hardly breathe without sounding like an old man struggling for his oxygen machine! So that's the first reason.

"The second reason is because your husband got bit on the neck so badly that a huge chunk of flesh was just torn the fuck off!!! I don't know if you noticed because of everything that was going on, but when I went back to grab you, he was limp, and wasn't breathing anymore. I'm sorry to say, but I'm pretty sure he'd already passed away from either blood loss, or from the pain and shock. Either way, I wasn't going to take him instead of you when you still have an actual chance of making it out of here with us. And… I'm sorry. I know that's fucked up, but there was nothing else I could've done. If I hadn't grabbed you away from him, you would've been dragged away to be eaten alive."

She doesn't respond, just looks down, the tears continuing to pour from her eyes. For then next ten minutes I fill her in on what a Witiko is, just so she wont bother asking me another thousand pointless questions, then I focus my attention back on the road, making sure the torch still has enough fabric to burn for at least another hour until I'll be forced to change it again. I'll have to repeat the same with both Juan's and Darrel's too. I don't care if she doesn't like me, she can even hate me, as long as we keep moving the fuck forward.

The Witiko was wounded by both Juan and I, in multiple areas. If I had to guess, it'll be done gobbling down Arabella's husband down any minute, maybe trying to heal itself quicker, maybe out of spite to chase after us as soon as possible, but I know one thing is sure. When we encounter it again, it's not going to be like before. Before, it was hunting its prey playfully, fucking with us, like a cat torturing a mouse before it finally kills it. Now that we've wounded it, it'll be out for revenge. Now it's ready to rip us apart, while causing as much pain as humanly possible before devouring us.

"Bell?"

"What was that?!" Arabella asks hopefully, eyes wide and frantic, a screwy smile creeping upon her face as she searches for the owner of the voice.

"Bell. Help. It hurts."

"Danny!" she shouts out into the forest, trying her best to pull away from me, as I'm the one holding her upright now.

Its midday, probably, around two or three in the afternoon now, and as far as I can tell, we've only gone a total of maybe five miles from our campsite, which is not good. And to make matters worse, we're all exhausted. Darrel is still in shock, my face is still burning profusely, Juan's breathing isn't getting any better, and Arabella is limping worse than before, meaning I'm pretty much carrying her more or less instead of just propping her up.

"Bella, ey, STOP!!!! That is NOT your husband!!! We watched him get dragged up a fucking tree after his neck was snapped! You really think he survived all of that with that chunk also taken out of him?!" I try to reason with her, only for her to elbow me right in the cheek where the bandages are. I try to retain my grip on her as I scream out in pain, my vision blurring as the tears stream down my face, and I lose my grip on her. "FUCK!!!" I bellow while shaking my head and trying to regain my composure. After a few seconds, everything clears up a bit so I can see Darrel holding her back as she tries to crawl back into the forest, directly towards the voice.

"HEEEEEEELP!!!! AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!! BELLLL, HELP ME!!!!!! HELP ME!!!! HELP!!!!!"

"Get back! *Gasp!* Both of you get *Gasp!* away from the goddamn forest!!" Juan wheeze-yells as I pick myself up, grabbing the torch I'd dropped and running to help Darrel with Arabella before it leaps on the both of them.

"There!!! There he is!!! I can see him!!!" she shouts excitedly, though we still pull her back to Juan in the middle of the road. The four of us peer out into the forest unable to see what she was talking about, until Juan pulls out the flashlight and illuminates the dark, showing Danny, Arabella's husband.

His stomach has been gouged out and devoured, ribs and all, leaving a cavern for us to stare into, seeing the white of the spine and pelvis. The body is sunken in and dried out, leaving me to assume all the blood had been sucked out of the body. Both his arms and legs have been gnawed off, leaving the shortest bits of nubs. The Witiko is holding the body up by its broken neck, with a finger on its dried lips moving the lower jaw up and down as its speaks in Danny's voice. Both of the eyes have been scooped out, along with the nose, leaving nothing but black holes where they should be.

"Do you still love me baby?" Danny/the beast asks, as Arabella shrieks in disbelief and terror, her lower lip quivering as she looks on in disgust. "You'll love me forever, right Bell?" The demon chuckles before turning Danny's lifeless face towards its own, and taking a huge bite, bone and all, devouring half of his face. Arabella cries into Darrel's shoulder, looking away from the traumatizing scene.

It continues to eat Danny's entire head, the sound mortifying, like walking over a thousand clam shells, while a dog chews on dried out, brittle, chicken bones. Once there's nothing left but a stump of half of the neck, it stops and licks its lips with a rotten black tongue. It sucks the meat from between its fucked up teeth and stares back at us.

"One," It starts, glaring at Juan while licking its teeth, before its eyes flicker over to Arabella.

"Two." Then it glares over to Darrel.

"Three." It lets out a gigantic smile for him, before finally switching its attention to me. The smile on its face disappears, and as creepy as it was, I definitely preferred it to the devilish snarl it wears for me now, its teeth and gums bared at me as the beast's eyes narrow to a tiny slit.

"Four." The demon says is a voice so dry, rough, and baritone, that it could only be its own, counting off each of us in a random order. Then it smiles wide and opens its popping eyes as wide as they can go in excitement.

"Four long pigs to eat tonight!!!"