by Joe Stanley

eight

The foliage thinned out and he realized there were no places to hide. The river bank had disappeared replaced by cliffs that offered only a deadly drop or an impossible climb. Every step forward left him feeling more exposed and he expected a fresh shot to ring out any moment. His steps left were few now, and a final twist of the trail left him staring at a vertical cliff. There was nowhere left to run.

Grimly, he broke a tree branch to use as a club, and gathered a few fist-sized rocks. Rocks and sticks against a gun. He almost laughed.

His mind returned to the cave and the slaughter of those people. It was juvenile, he knew, but he couldn’t keep from dwelling on how unfair it all seemed. Earlier, the beauty of nature had almost promised him a new lease on life, now in its unyielding indifference it guaranteed his end. Like those people in the cave, he would be murdered and lost, tucked away in a land so rugged that even modern man had no use for it.

The Professor came into view, walking calmly with a dark smile on his face. It disappeared as he closed the distance, signifying that the game was over. There would be no more words, no more stalling. He knew that the Professor would simply shoot when he was close enough to hit.

Harold thought for a moment of the cavemen’s doomed charge, and he considered doing the same. Even if he couldn’t win he could show him that he wasn’t afraid. He knew that it wouldn’t matter.

With mere seconds on the clock of his life, he dropped his club and simply stood tall, holding his ground. The Professor was in range now, and he raised the pistol, not in anger, but with the practiced skill of a marksman. This time he wouldn’t miss.

As he watched, behind the professor, a large gray rock shifted. They had both gone by it and neither had noticed anything about it. Now it rose up as a hulking shape of shaggy gray fur. His face twisted to match the terror in his mind as he saw it, saw its face. He tried to tell himself that it was some kind of ape, but he knew he was on the wrong continent for that. It’s face was not the face of any primate he knew, the closest would be man.

It towered behind the Professor, and though the man wanted to kill him he want to warn him, but he was frozen, speechless in fear. It was a fear that was buried in the deepest and most primitive part of his mind, and not even reason could overcome it.

The Professor turned his head to glance behind him, when he saw it he wheeled around and screamed. It was a sound so terrible that he felt pity for the madman. The beast man grabbed him by his upper arms and with a deafening, unearthly roar lifted him high in the air. The Professor’s body looked like a rag doll in the grip of a giant, furious child. Every from this distance he heard the sounds of cracking bones and ripping flesh. With a single smooth motion the beast had torn the Professor’s body in half.

Harold sensed the stone trail rising to meet him as he slipped into the bliss of blackness.

When he woke both the professor and the beast were gone. His fearful eyes darted all around him, but he knew if it was still there he wouldn’t see it until it wanted him to. He made his way as quickly and carefully as he could back down the trail, to the jeep. The professor’s jeep was parked beside his, and he left it behind as he continued on, back down the river and to camp.

He knew there would be questions, and on the long journey back he decided he would tell them the truth. He was surprised when he arrived that the people waiting had no questions for him. The terrified look on his face must have said everything for him. He found himself on a plane, first to a hospital and then home.

It was sometime before he felt like he could tell his story, but he never quite told it all for fear that it was unbelievable. He never returned to that wilderness, and all he had taken from it was a new chance at life.

The natives of that place, regardless of their lineage, have a name for the man of the old world. In their hybrid traditions, they call him shadow ape.

-end-

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