Chapter 538

The old ute coughed and sputtered, kicking up a cloud of red dust that painted the already crimson sunset. Dust billowed, engulfing the rear of the vehicle. The light soon turned to a dark shadow. Dust clung to everything; the cracked vinyl of the dashboard, Bronte's sun-bleached hair, and the worn map spread out on her lap.

Bronte, a young woman defined by a life spent under the harsh Australian sun, kept driving deeper into the bush. She came this way for an escape. Work as a bouncer was beginning to break Bronte's spirits.

She squinted, the lines around her eyes a bit deeper from years of judging outback drunks. The map, old and brittle, showed a network of barely-there tracks leading to a place marked only as "The Clearing."

Rumors circulated through town about the spot—whispers of unusual quiet, an unnatural stillness that even the hardiest bushmen avoided. A sense of apprehension wormed, but her resolution hardened; if anyone can cope in silence and uncertainty it will be a woman built for the Outback.

Bronte didn't believe in ghosts, not really. The outback bred a different kind of fear—the very real danger of a broken axle in the middle of nowhere, the threat of snakes, of getting hopelessly lost. This dread began twisting the ordinary into something uncomfortable, a feeling of watching.

The track narrowed, scrubby vegetation scraping against the sides of the ute, the noise an abrasive soundtrack to the building unease. Trees, gnarled and ancient, clawed at the last light.

They seemed more hunched, more twisted than any trees she had seen before, and this says something growing up where she had. The last rays, the shadows, they appeared too long. It appeared wrong, this forest; dark, twisted.

Bronte killed the engine, and the silence that crashed down was absolute. Not the peaceful kind, but a heavy, smothering sort that pressed against her eardrums. She took a deep, steadying breath. The air tasted strange, metallic and dry, leaving a film on her tongue. Bronte reached under her seats for her rifle.

Stepping out, she found the ground unnervingly soft, cushioning her footsteps in a way that felt unnatural. The silence continued to bother her, a total absence of birdsong, insect chirps, or even the rustle of leaves. It felt wrong; the bush was never silent.

As the darkness collected, she noticed it first – a smell. Faint, but distinctly unpleasant. The scent reminded Bronte of off-meat. It was almost rotten, not quite, but with an underlying sweetness that made her stomach churn.

She flicked on her powerful torch, the beam cutting a swathe of visibility through the trees. The scent was stronger, definitely the smell of decay, yet with that disturbingly cloying sweetness that got on her nerves. She played the light, she began observing unnatural shapes in the deepening gloom.

The shapes started to resolve, and Bronte's breath caught. Hanging from the branches, barely visible in the half-light, were... things. Not just one or two, but dozens, their shapes distorted, suspended from the trees like morbid ornaments. She moved closer, her heart hammering in her chest.

Closer still, the torch beam revealed the gruesome truth. They were animal carcasses, but unlike any she had ever witnessed. Foxes, kangaroos, wallabies, even birds, their bodies suspended with rough twine or wire, their eyes open, expressions forever caught in some silent scream. What bothered Bronte was this—it all was clearly intentional.

What made the scene even more disturbing was their condition. The fur seemed to almost glisten, their skin appeared taut, and their open eyes strangely bright. They looked fresh, newly dead, yet the scent spoke of longer decay. It was impossible, revolting. Bronte reached, and almost turned away.

She touched one – the fur of a large kangaroo. It felt strangely smooth, cool to the touch, but beneath the surface, the flesh gave way, a slight indentation, as if the insides were somehow...liquified. She quickly took her hand off. Bronte felt bile rising in her throat.

"Bloody hell," she muttered, her normal language coming to her rescue. "What sort of sicko does this?" It was obvious whoever was responsible was not from around these parts. Someone was really damaged, someone from afar, she assessed.

She scanned the trees again, realizing with a rising sense of panic that the carcasses were not just scattered, they were arranged. The beam of her torch showed a pathway. The bodies lined the path, their heads facing inwards, as if watching an approach to a designated spot. Leading towards... something. Bronte swallowed her fear.

The track led downwards, towards a lower section of the bush, where the darkness had already fully settled. She could see that many tracks, many of which were not human-made led toward the same area. Whatever's going on, she figured it had to be in that dark area down yonder.

Moving forward felt wrong. Every instinct told her to get back in the ute and leave. Bronte considered it. However, curiosity mixed with something harder, a stubborn refusal to back down, kept her going forward. A dark curiosity and determination took hold.

The smell intensified, growing stronger with every step, and now Bronte thought she could hear something—a faint, almost subliminal hum. Not quite mechanical, not quite natural. It vibrated in her teeth, a constant noise she found oddly frustrating. She kept thinking; it was just off from something. Something she had heard or should be hearing.

She emerged into the "Clearing" marked on her map. The sight that met her nearly drove her to her knees. The trees gave way to an open space. This open space formed an amphitheater of horror. It made Bronte doubt, doubt a lot she hadn't previously.

Animal bodies were here, in their hundreds, possibly thousands. Not just the native creatures, but domestic animals too—cats, dogs, and even, sickeningly, what looked like the broken remains of a child's pony. The child-sized toy unnerved Bronte significantly.

They were arranged in a spiral, all facing the center of the clearing. The central focus of the ghastly arrangement was a raised mound of earth, stained a dark, oily color. It felt strange; how did Bronte miss the stench and the sounds; she assumed something unnatural, that the wind didn't come this way.

The humming was louder here, the sound filling Bronte's head. It made her teeth ache, it came in tandem with that putrid odor. She covered her nose, Bronte found it overwhelming. As she tried hard to maintain control of herself, she stepped, she looked.

And then she saw the movement. Not just one or two, many movements; hundreds, possibly more, came through Bronte's gaze. It was coming from the bodies themselves, as if their eyes were reflecting too strongly, something was distorting this area.

They weren't moving as she expected dead things should, they showed signs of slight shifts, minuscule jerks of heads and limbs, the soft, almost imperceptible swaying of their bodies. Bronte felt nauseous. Something impossible was happening here, Bronte started thinking quickly.

One of the carcasses, a large feral cat, seemed to move slightly, turning her gaze, toward Bronte's. It seemed to see her. Its eyes were completely dilated, dark and somehow… expectant. A sense of communication grew quickly between the dead creature and Bronte, the animal communicating.

And then it happened. Bronte's torch seemed to illuminate a small, subtle motion. A faint, soft tearing sound came from the mound in the center. Bronte could not quite comprehend what came next. She watched it intently; the image confused Bronte's brain.

The earth itself appeared to... bubble, for lack of a better description. As if something were breaking through from beneath. The soil appeared soft, moist, and disgusting as something pushed upwards, a slow, obscene birth. It twisted upwards toward the canopy.

A shape began to emerge, glistening and pale in the torchlight. It wasn't solid, not quite, but seemed formed of a thick, gelatinous substance. It resembled nothing of the animal world and resembled all simultaneously. As it rose, Bronte began forming new, horrible images.

The emerging thing resembled, it took an impossibly broad parody of flesh. It formed from liquid earth. It seemed vaguely humanoid, but its limbs were wrong, elongated, too flexible and not built naturally. The image shocked Bronte and burned inside of her brain.

Its "head," if it could be called that, was a featureless globe, save for two perfectly round, black indentations that served as eyes. There was no other characteristic; Bronte found the visual to lack definition or symmetry. It did not seem a complete item, a prototype maybe.

And then Bronte realized what the humming sound actually was. Not a sound at all. A low-frequency vibration originating, emanating, from the creature before her. Bronte now understood how impossible, how horrible this scene.

This… thing, was drawing the life essence, out of the dead animals. It drew the carcasses together, drawing them into the clearing from miles around, consuming their decaying remains to sustain, to fuel its repulsive shape and growth.

It was a parasite, a perversion of nature. A hunter, no—more like a collector of death, feeding on what was not truly dead and not yet ready to return. The collector. The taker. It was drawing Bronte, too. Drawing and analyzing her very lifeforce as she watched it.

The creature started gliding towards her, moving across the ground without any visible legs. Its mass rippling, reforming itself to move through the area. The sense of malevolence, the understanding of communication grew; an ancient, terrible knowledge passed in that single, drawn out glance. Bronte began forming connections.

This… thing… had existed before this location. Before people existed. This was old, ancient. An anomaly outside human comprehension, dwelling, drawing life from places where life and death blurred, where hunters and their kills merged into an unholy balance of suffering and death. It kept thinking, trying, it had something for her.

Bronte felt weak, her muscles sluggish. As if her very life force was slowly, carefully pulled from her. It was taking energy from Bronte. Slowly analyzing and removing the essence of Bronte's person, that essence it felt and was slowly connecting toward, toward Bronte.

"Stay back," she tried, raising her rifle. Her arms felt like lead, and her aiming point seemed weak. The target, it lacked clarity in Bronte's sight; a sense of unreality washed forward as Bronte's brain failed her. The trigger resisted.

The shot went wide, ripping through the creature's amorphous flesh. But there was no blood, no apparent reaction. The creature showed a strange indifference, the flesh rippled where the bullet passed through it. Bronte started moving backward toward her vehicle, her legs refusing.

As the creature came closer, she saw that the indentations it had for eyes were growing, spreading, stretching out to consume the blank surface of its head. As if it was… adapting to the image of human form. It was a shapeshifter, it could transform slowly, by stealing aspects.

It grew arms in a disturbing parody. An almost human like image was drawn to itself. It lifted these two horrible images, its appendages were far too elongated and lacked the structural characteristics required of a human. Bronte was shocked at how far from a true hand, an arm this thing was from real.

It wanted to become her. To take on her shape, as a perversion. She could almost feel what was left of her essence, trapped inside that monstrous body. Its essence, this thing wanted her strength, Bronte surmised; an animal and a human both.

The thing rushed Bronte; she dropped the rifle, realizing it was futile to continue any engagement in her weakening state. The woman, previously strong, now seemed as vulnerable, soft, unable to engage anything of her own strength. It communicated once more to her.

Bronte tried to scream, but her muscles felt weakened; a hollow gasp escaped, a very undignified sound of death. She fell to her knees, watching, looking. Helpless, a strange soft texture enveloped, embracing her; that putrid soft tissue forming itself against Bronte's, her face.

She felt herself absorbed. Not physically swallowed, a dreadful merging; flesh against this unformed substance of impossible reality. She couldn't make a noise. She had only enough time for a terrible finality and shock; how can her life end like this. Her essence slowly was stripped.

The thing, absorbing her completely; essence, form, memories and fears – everything that made Bronte her was siphoned into its repulsive being. And with this complete. This thing, a perverted mimicry of a strong human, took and completed her shape.

Bronte's new shape remained, with that unnatural sheen still holding to the skin, in a mocking reflection. With the eyes a slightly strange. Its very flesh that mockery that showed life; death and this being—now merged together, and collected forevermore. It walked.

It walked slowly back. The carcass started turning their gazes. Each dead animal turned, now fully absorbed with the earth, began the slow draw; to become the earth. Back where it began. Now this mockery would stalk another prey, it now understood better.

It walked in that forest. Slowly finding another location, another clearing, where new hunters with different means brought victims. For, the hunter's mark would become prey to this…collector. It will draw what will be. Bronte was left forever in place, her eyes staring outward at nothing, evermore.