Paul’s Cabin

A dreary night cascaded over a cold day somewhere deep in the American mountains. The air still save for a light breeze over the ground. Amidst the pines and creeks stood a cabin surrounded by finished and unfinished woodcraft. The man who lived here had settled here after the city, now far from here, had taken nearly everything from him. In response he had pushed everything away, including anyone who had tried to get close to him and had never succeeded.

Paul was a solitary man. Never had he seen the use for pets or comforts of the kind. It was loneliness he desired, and loneliness he had paid for. Little did he know, loneliness couldn’t have been further away…

He hunted for his food. Purified his own water with fire. Picked berries. Killed wolf, bear and often bird alike with his bow and arrow and roasted them in his kitchen, a room with a large fire pit under a second chimney he had built himself. It only took a month.

But tonight, as fate would have it, he did not hunt alone. About a mile from the cabin, he came upon a wolf bleeding into the ground before he found it. Anger rose in him, but suspicion beat it’s progress to the surface as he approached the carcass.

What had done this?

What was obvious was that it had been torn apart by tooth and claw. A bear perhaps, but a bear would use claw alone, and no beast he had tracked before could leave teeth marks like this. A clean tear from the body, the mouth far too wide from the look of what was left. Chunks missing from the shoulder and paws completely missing as was much of the left leg.

Of what was left, Paul carried back to the cabin. When he returned to hint in a days time, he brought a dagger in case he was surprised.

It came as little shock when he found another wolf carcass. Attacked similarly, and eaten more completely than the last. Hind legs missing and eviscerated, the smell permeating Paul’s lungs as he hauled the body into a sack and once again brought home dinner he hadn’t quite properly earned.

What did give Paul a pulled jaw and a staggered step was the day he found what remained of that pack of wolves. This time it was only a half a mile from the cabin. Drawn by the smell, a sign that the thing had struck again, he had brought his sack along, but was unprepared for the sight he met.

Half-eaten wolves were one thing, but this was a massacre. For each wolf was missing it’s head, and what was left made Paul sick to think of what if any sort of meal this was. It made him sicker to know that for a fact, this thing was getting too close to his cabin.

Hoping that a monster like this was only interested in four-legged creatures, his senses were heightened as he retreated from the scene, wanting no par in it’s horrific detail.

On his way back to the cabin, he removed his footprints and repaired the path he had taken toward the smell. It was nightfall when he returned to find his back door wide open, a fire going in his kitchen.

But when he entered his home, an arrow tucked between his fingers as he swept from room to room, there was no sign of anything, or anyone, amongst the heat from the large fire in the kitchen pit.

Paul didn’t wait for caution. It was going to be him or whatever beast awaited his arrow in their heart now.

***

The wolf killings were all he had to lead him to the beast. First, he had to collect wolf’s blood and draw the beast into open land. There he would find out what it was. There he would end the menace for good.

Smelling his way back along the trees, half a mile from the cabin, landmarks forming along his way, he found the place easier this time. But when his eyes found the ground, they met only dried blood. Nothing resembled the scene he had encountered hours ago. It appeared that not only had the beast fed on the rest of his kill, but that this also meant, to Paul’s horror, that the beast was still close.

For a moment he stood there and quivered. A branch snapped in the distance. Paul swiveled. His bow shaking. The arrow almost falling as he gulped for air, desperate all of a sudden for sustenance.

Then it hit him. Hard as stone on his skull. The beast had drawn him out, not the other way around. But as he thought, he fell, and all was black.

***

Paul awoke right where he had fallen. Regaining his senses, he felt the back of his head and found blood there. Rising to his feet, he felt dazed and disoriented. He slowly forced his focus to return. It was then that he remembered… but his weapon was gone, along with his load of arrows.

He had brought just one bow and had to force himself not to search the area for the beast. Or whatever it was that hit him… and could have eaten him… His theory of the beast only having the taste for four legged creatures became more reasonable. Relieved at having escaped death, he set off quickly for the cabin.

When he arrived, quickly closing the door, he caught his breath in the living room before grabbing a new bow off of the vertical beam that began the staircase. On the floor were fresh arrows, and he was armed again.

The door began to pound behind him. Someone was banging on it from the other side. As Paul fixed an arrow to it’s string, the next series of bangs sent him to the floor. Apparently the beast was not only strong, but angry. Somehow Paul found his feet and retreated up a few steps as it was only a matter of time before the door lost its structural integrity and broke apart under such treatment. As he wished he had put a chair underneath it, the door broke apart inward and the beast came tumbling through.

It was surprisingly quick how fast the thing moved through the house. In a few short moments, Paul caught a glimpse of a short greenish man with short arms, long pointed ears and a fat head. It was also skinnier in the legs, and strangely, had a torso much like that of a starving child. All over his green skin were bumps and boils, while at his waist was worn a torn cloth. Without noticing the stairs or much of the cabin’s interior at all, the beast zoomed back out of the hole he had made of the front door. Leaving Paul awestruck behind him.

Shaking off this shock, Paul realized this was his chance. Jumping off of the stairs, he gave pursuit. Outside the cabin he saw it running through the trees. He cast a warning shot above the beast’s head that thudded into a tree instead but the monster ran on.

Paul picked up his pace, firing off an arrow every few steps. After a few minutes, the monster climbed into a tall pine and out of sight of the forest floor. Paul stopped below the tree and began to circle it, looking for the color of his enemy.

He spotted the beast feeding on a hawk as if nothing was wrong. It took a well placed arrow to not get caught in the many branches between them. But Paul found his angle, and shot.

The beast swayed where it sat, the shaft protruding from the back of its neck, and started to fall. As it’s limbs hit the first few branches, Paul moved clear of the base of the tree. Moments later the beast hit the floor in a heap of bird feathers and green boiled skin.

Paul took the fresh carcass by the feet and flung it over a shoulder. The fire in the kitchen pit smoked up the forest and surrounding patches of land as Paul was once again safe in his cabin, free to hunt wolf, bear, fowl, and if he ever met another,

GOBLIN.