A Game With No Prize
As he stumbled away, suddenly howls and shrieks rang out in the distance.
Killjoy stopped dead in his tracks, turning back slightly at the noise. It let loose again, their screams deep and harsh.
He tried to shake away the screams, dismissing them as the simple yells of coyotes. It had to be just coyotes; they usually screamed at night, and a few lived in the area.
Killjoy tried to take another step, but the yells blared again. The hunter groaned raggedly as an idea set in, barging into his head, knocking incessantly. It was a horrible idea, an impossible thought: what if it was more of them?
The hunter wanted to forget about it and just keep moving; his job was done, cut and clean.
But, just for the sake of the idea, if there were more: he couldn't possibly risk leaving them alone. What if they went out and followed him, out of the forest? What if there were so many of them, and they reached a town?
His eyes widened at the thought. There was no way he could let even a sliver of a chance of that happening. Not even a gun could pierce its skin; they could devour a settlement in mere hours.
However, what can he do about it? Even he nearly died trying to survive against one. If he turned back now and there were more of them, what could he possibly do in his state?
But he can't just leave. And Killjoy hated that fact. Because now there was only one thing he should do: to turn back.
Killjoy stumbled through the dense woods, the various branches and thick oak prickling him like a coffin of edges. He still reeked of the horrible odour of the beast he slaughtered, its blood sticking to him like honey.
He gauged the moon's position in the midnight sky and realised the sound came from the south, where the mines lay abandoned.
So the miners were the first victims of those things, or 'Wendigos' as that local called it. Or, just maybe, it was the miners who disturbed them first.
After having limped for so long, Killjoy had finally returned to the mineshafts. The grounds were as still and ever-empty as it was before. Not a single wisp has changed about it.
Yet, the air felt thicker, an unfamiliar weight that churned Killjoy's stomach. Though, if there was any proof that this was the right place, then it would be the fact he felt hungry.
Soft groaning escaped from one of the caves.
Killjoy quickly turned, gripping his harmonica. It was laughable that now all he had left as a weapon was but a single instrument, but he had long realised now that it wasn't the simple tune that made it deadly. It was probably, somehow, the silver that it was encased in.
The hunter approached the maw of the cave with a careful stride. Its entrance seemed to be sparsely made, with little in the way of equipment or real infrastructure. Only some crates lay on the side, and some piles of pickaxes, lanterns, and other dusty tools dotted the ground.
It was like the cave was only recently discovered and they were quick to try to make work with it.
The cave rumbled some more, the ecstatic moans increasing in number, like stray groups of cats purring violently. If it wasn't clear to him what kind of monsters could've been down there, it was now.
He nudged the harmonica against the temple of his head, trying to think of something. Even though he got nearly outright destroyed, he was still the same Killjoy that earned the ire of many: he always ensured he had something up his sleeves, even if they were ripped away from him.
As he paced back and forth around the entrance, Killjoy found himself glancing at the pile of crates once more. He might as well take a look; if there was anything useful, he wouldn't find it on himself.
Killjoy bent over to pick up a crowbar lying next to the wooden boxes. Approaching one tall crate, he plunged the bar inside the top of the box and pried it open, wearing out his sore muscles.
Inside were bundled upon bundles of small logs wrapped in greyish-brown paper, some ineligible text written on the casing. Dust and age had taken its course on the worn sticks, but there was no doubting it: it was dynamite.
It looked like the miners were planning on blowing up the cave after digging far enough. With how things looked, Killjoy figured they couldn't dig any further.
And with how much was left, an idea became clear: the hunter would use the dynamite himself to collapse the cave.
Killjoy had unboxed the dynamite from the crates, which were much more numerous than he had thought. He stacked them at some edges and points along the cave's maw, structurally weak places. He had even ventured deeper into the cave from where the moonlight could hold, not letting a single chance of this plan fail.
He panted, holding himself up against the wall. Killjoy had tied another round of rope and secured a stack of dynamite against the rocky surface.
Having to use only one arm to move all this weight is catching up to him; his already worn legs were shaking, like even a strong gust of wind could knock them over. His shoulder was torn to pieces, his sweat had mixed with the Wendigo's blood that drenched his clothes, and where his left arm should've been, it stung with a phantom pain that shouldn't exist.
But no matter how much Killjoy was inevitably screwed, it wasn't something he could negotiate. If he was going to live as a cripple the rest of his life, he'd much rather do it after solving the problem that did him in, permanently.
Something then stumbled in the darkness of the cave, its footsteps echoing like that of hollow bones. Killjoy averted his gaze.
Grim settled in. Killjoy dropped everything and stood there, shaken. He slowly turned his head into the void that is the unlit depths of the tunnel, biting down his teeth. If even a single one of whatever was coming out now was alike the Wendigo that had nearly killed him, he wouldn't survive.
He could not simply let them leave, but he also could not light the dynamite in time now if he didn't do anything to slow them down. Killjoy had to buy time. He had to buy time.
Killjoy scoured the cave for whatever he could try to use to hold them off, trying to figure out what else could hurt those bastards aside from plain silver.
What did the miner say again? Silver and fire?
As much as he found it almost ridiculous, that miner was right about them being vulnerable to the metal. Then Killjoy pondered what else the man could've been right about.
Killjoy figured if silver hurt them, what else could? Wood stakes? No, they weren't vampires. And if a bullet can't kill them, what can a stake do?
What else could send them back to the fiery pits of hell they belong to?
Fire.
Killoy tore away a few kerosene lanterns lying around the cave and threw them on the ground. He picked one by the metal handle and swung it against the walls, screaming to ease the struggle of labour.
The oil spewed everywhere, coating the ceiling, drowning the rocky earth in its clear, thin liquid, reflecting the moonlight like a puddle of fireflies.
Along the ground was a long string of rope, slicken with wick, attached to a small depot of dynamite. He ambled towards the middle of the cave and ignited the wick. It blitzed into a small spit of red flame, slowly consuming the rope and inching close to the dynamite.
Killjoy meandered to the middle of the puddle of oil, holding his harmonica in his sole hand, and a match by the finger.
The hunter bowed over himself, reaching to the side of his boot. Killjoy placed the lighter match flush against the leather and swiped it forward several times before a small fury of light flashed. Then after a gentle burn of a flame.
The hunter stood as tall and calm as he could, staring off into the darkness. He waited for them to come out.
Before, he was wholly unprepared, and those monsters made him their prey. But this was different. He was a hunter himself, a predator of prey and for those whose coin he was paid to fetch. He had seen it all, been hit by everything, done anything to survive. And if it was the supernatural that threatened to end his legend, then he simply had to become something more.
He tried to remember what it was that one German philosopher said, something he had read once on the paper: he who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby became a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
Killjoy gazed into the abyss.
Seconds passed, but they felt so long. Like the moments before a kettle of tea whistled, or the stare of another man as you both draw your gun.
Then something scraped against the walls of stone.
A foot crept out of the fog of darkness. It slowly emerged from the shadows lurking behind it, approaching the light in the palm of Killjoy's hand. The figure stumbled and growled and when the light finally shone on it, all Killjoy saw was a haunting smile.
It looked like a zombie, still taller than a man but far smaller, more gaunt, than the undead ghoul that hunted Killjoy before. Its skin not only hugged its bones, it sunk within it.
While the Wendigo he encountered was out there, probably feasting on those human bodies to grow as strong as it was, these bastards must have been starving.
Killjoy took a slight step back. Though he had prepared more thoroughly, it was still unnerving: could he really do this?
The ghoul approached with painstakingly slow steps as it pitched over the side of the wall. More footsteps, like crackling against the rocky floor, came behind it.
Eventually, many more of them began to march out of the depths, lurching and shambling on their tilted, bony soles. They all had this same wide smile, reaching almost to their sunken eyes, almost gazing at Killjoy, staring right through him.
He tightened his hold of the silver instrument.
One of the skeletal cadavers twitched its neck forward, looking towards the outside of the cave. The outside and its moonlight enticed an even wider grin on its dry, splitting mouth.
It jerked forward, jolting towards Killjoy with a gleeful moan.
The hunter yelled with fury as he threw the match onto the ground, alighting the puddles of oil ablaze.
From what first lit into a ring of tall flames rapidly spread to the far reaches of the maw. The spitting fire climbed the cave walls, quickly emblazing the surrounding earth like a tsunami of fiery white and amber.
Some of the beasts stopped dead in their tracks, grinding their claws into the ground. Others lurched back, letting out painful screeches.
One, however, kept charging, its jaw hanging with its tongue loose, dripping slick saliva, the drops of it burning up as it touched the fire around it.
Killjoy ran forward, trying to match the ghoul at its turn. He raised the broken harmonica in the air before explosively lunging it forward, his muscles giving way.
The Wendigo leered at the human that dared challenge it and bashed into the hunter, smashing him out of the way and into the air with the brute force of its shoulder. It knocked the wind out of Killjoy, and he was sent flinging against a wall.
He stumbled onto the ground painfully, harmonica still firm in hand. A burn in his chest squeezed him as he coughed out dry blood. Despite the whiplash, Killjoy was left undeterred as he spat out another drop of crimson before forcing himself off the ground.
Killjoy steeled his nerves and stared off the same Wendigo before charging forward, trying again.
It cried out another thundering groan as the rotting mass of a corpse tore its way forward, shoving itself into the air, its void eyes set for the way out.
The hunter dropped to his knees, sliding along the blazing ground. Riding the earth, he went under the Wendigo and drove the silver instrument upwards into the gut of its belly, where its splintered edge had met, as the beast flew over.
The ghoul had dragged the harmonica with it, and so too did Killjoy, stumbling onto its hindlegs with a massive growl. But he used the last bit of strength in his body to push the harp downwards against its organs, deepening the wound, like plunging a stake into the dirt.
Tripping on itself, the monster hurled itself forward as it tried to run. Its entire abdomen split open as it fell on itself, ripping apart from trying to pull away what is essentially a knife embedded in it.
Guts and bones flew from the Wendigo and splattered on Killjoy with an uncomfortable squelch. He simply ignored the foul innards, wiping some excess off his eye; the hunter had grown accustomed to it.
Killjoy pulled the grey harp out of the fallen beast with a huff, tottering backwards on his worn feet.
He then turned to the rest of the ghouls.
There were crowds of them, like packs of hungry wolves baring their fangs at the flames around them. Some of them staggered further, away from the large masses of hot flames and only to the cool stone where it didn't burn. They were growing brave, it appeared.
Killjoy wheezed dryly. He was certain a lung or two were already punctured, and dealing with only one of those predators had knocked the stuffing out of him. The hunter wobbled on the two feet that held him up, heavy like carrying a slab of iron through the Mojave. He was certain he couldn't keep this up for long.
He turned faintly, his gaze falling on the hoards of dynamite placed around the cave, the stalactite-stricken entrance practically encased in the grey explosive.
The sticks had to explode soon, to cave the walls in and keep these bastards from ever leaving. But that would take a quarter of an hour to finally burn up and explode, and Killjoy wasn't sure if he could last even another minute holding these Wendigos off.
It was a riddle with no answer, a game with no prize. If he continued fighting now, he'd probably die before the wick even burned up. And if he tries to go outside and detonate it from afar, those ghouls would escape by then.
He spat against the ground, looking back at the threatening Wendigos in front of him.
There was no point in waiting to think about it if they were going to try to kill him at any second.