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‘Before we go on the record—’ Twilight cut in. The Archivist’s finger halted on its way to the tape recorder. ‘—it’s, I’ve got some stuff to clarify. That you probably don’t want clogging your tapes.’
‘Sensitive matters?’ His finger stayed hovering.
‘Just – confusing ones, maybe? Um. I don’t have a name you can put down.’
‘You don’t have one?’ the Archivist said. His face worried at the eyebrows, jaw. Twilight felt concern for early-developing wrinkles on his forehead, and feared for his dental bill.
‘Well, could you not put my legal name? It’s confusing.’ he repeated.
‘Name change? I can put your new name down. That isn’t unheard of.’
‘No, no, it’s…’ Twilight itched the corner of his ear. The man’s eyes shifted to his ear to observe the action – embarrassed, Twilight moved his hands back to his lap where he folded them. ‘It’s a matter of anonymity?’
‘Right.’ Annoyance, but not total defiance or disbelief.
‘Just put Twilight, please. It’s a nickname.’
‘Twilight. And no last name.’
‘Yeah, that’s fine. If it’s fine with you.’
‘It’s… acceptable by me. Not preferable. There’s no names I can use to follow up on? We try to—’
‘Don’t follow up. Uh, kindly. Sir.’ Sir. Twilight felt his own accent wilt on the word, twangy beyond belief next to the man’s polished one.
The Archivist didn’t try to hide disappointment this time. Judgement came in the form of a twitch where his knuckles rested on the table, and an eyeroll that could’ve been mistaken for a glance to the side, if Twilight was more forgiving. The man could’ve been nice off work, sure, but he had the bitterness belonging only to those just trying to do their jobs.
‘And then, uh, I have some friends. And I’d like to redact, or, I guess, supplant their names as well.’
‘Okay.’
‘Um, I’ll reference a – a Four, a Wild, a Warriors, a Legend, a Wind, a Time, a Sky, a Hyrule… that’s it. Maybe some friends, but that’s all the people in our group.’
‘Your group.’
‘I’ll get to that.’
‘And we have to use the nicknames.’
‘Yes..? It makes things… easier.’
‘I struggle to see how.’
‘We need to differentiate ourselves.’
‘What?’
‘It’s Link.’
‘Your name is?’
‘All of ours. Is.’
‘You are all named Link.’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s not a common name.’
‘No.’
‘We work as a group. We’re… pretty acquainted with this sort of stuff by now, but… what happened recently was… out of the usual. Extreme. You crew might be able to make sense of it.’
‘Ghost hunters. I’m familiar.’ The Archivist brushed past his hint at urgency.
‘More monster hunters. There’ve been ghosts, but they’re not the majority.’
‘Ah. Of the week variety?’
‘The… week… of the… what? I don’t get it, sorry.’
‘Monster of the week.’ The Archivist’s voice strained with the regret of someone who didn’t often make pop culture references. ‘Like Buffy.’
‘Who?’
A wince.
‘The vampire slayer.’
Oh. Yes. Some of the boys, Time and Legend and whoever else would join them, watched that show together, though they were loathe to admit it.
‘Uh, not so many vampires either. Some. Nasty things, but… thankfully not common.’
‘And how would you describe the monster of this… week?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
‘Right.’
‘I’ll try. I just need – some time to dig into it. That’s what I’m here for, right?’
The archivist made no response. Instead, he moved his finger onto the recording tab, and pressed it down. Twilight felt a tremor in his neck.
‘Right. Statement of “Twilight”, regarding… a monster sighting. Statement recorded direct from subject, 18th of May, 2016. Statement begins.’
Twilight stalled a second, before the Archivist gave him a look.
‘So, um. This one was ghosts. Or, rather, we were hunting out something that hadn’t been seen. Most likely a ghost. Or something really sneaky, I guess.
My friend Ilia reported it. That’s – one of the people not in our chain. Uh. And the chain is a nickname we have for our… friend group. Anyway. Ilia’s Pa lives way out, in a farm. He kept having animals slaughtered. Not like – sorry, not like he was slaughtering them himself for meat – like something was getting in and killing ‘em.
Ilia recommended us. Her Pa let us stay in a barn thing… more like a shed, in its décor and comfort. We were gonna do a stakeout out by where they were dying.
I was really the only one dressed for the occasion. The rest of the boys were shivering, and crowding in on the fire. Not an open fire, mind, it had walls on all sides. It was for heat much more than light – when you weren’t checking for the monsters, you started to freeze up. Eventially, Wild produced some warmer clothes from the pits of his backpack, and they all rugged up. I kept to my hunting jacket.
We went in groups of three. I would go with Four and Wild, as the third group. When the other two groups had both returned, both with head-shakes of concern and nothing to tell for themselves, it was our turn.
As soon as we stepped from the fire I felt our determination sink a little. Wild got the coldest of us all – even in his parka he had to make fists to keep from shivering, and his breath fogged from the corner of his clenched teeth, beneath his pink nose. And Four went stiff, but said nothing. He crossed his arms in his oversized coat and rubbed loose circles on his elbows.
I wasn’t fit for the cold weather either, but I focused on breathing hard from my nose while the air in my lungs was still warm. I sucked it up like the rest of them because I knew once we got moving, we’d warm up enough. And then it was back to the fire.
I had no doubt that there really was a ghost around. Ilia didn’t lie, and her dad wasn’t stupid, and we’d seen a lot similar. I wasn’t so naive to go in expecting a perfectly natural explanation. But mostly what I wanted to do was find the thing and get out of there. I didn’t hope for an uneventful search.
Ilia said that the dead animals were mostly found lying in the stretch of wood by the paddocks where they were kept. Never dragged far. It was easy to do a sweep of that area. We went back and forth a few times, eyes firmly on the ground, marching, almost. But it felt like cheating to go back to the others so soon when they’d all searched for longer – and surely more thoroughly.
“We should go deeper.” Wild huffed out.
I gave a nod of agreement, but Four looked doubtful.
“What if the monster comes while we’re away? Then we’ll lose the chance to prevent the animal from dying here.”
He had a point. And the rest of the forest was large – even if we only did a rough sweep of it, it could take twice – or more – the time we’d already spent.
We resolved to just have a look. Dumb as it sounds now.
The paddock grass further in was a lot less trampled down, spikier and wetter. The trees were unpruned at the lower boughs, and so we had to weave in and out of the ones that stabbed out sideways. The torch beams struggled with the tangles, and I found myself wishing I could turn them off to readjust my eyes to the darkness and not rely on their weak light.
We kept our eyes on the ground, scanning – but after a while, it started to feel too thick or too dark to find anything. And we were only getting colder. Wild was sniffling, and Four glanced around nervously. I felt myself prickle and my heart began to thump in warning.
We turned around. It was clearly fruitless, and it was probably better just to monitor the strip of forest by the enclosures. We’d gone further than we should’ve. It was easy to get lost when you were constantly shifting a little to the left or a little to the right to dodge the boughs. We went the way we guessed we had come, but as we kept up our evading of the foliage the way back started to feel longer and longer. I heard the breathing of the other two echo inside my ears, smelled their muted panic. I tried to pretend that it was just empathy for the others that was making me scared too.
Then we came into a clearing. Tiny, barely the space for the three of us. We must’ve come back at some weird diagonal, because we hadn’t seen it on the way in, but that wasn’t our main concern. Our main concern was–
There was a goat – strung up. Sort of halfway up a tree – there were these strings, hanging from a long bough, and they were wrapped and almost… grown-looking, like a creeper, around its stomach and legs and chest. And a mess of – I thought blood, trailing the rest of the way down to the ground.
The strings were pulpy. Bulby, like you get on half-developed garlic roots. But so thin besides that – you had to wonder how none of them snapped. I mean, you wondered at first. When you saw just how many of them there were, you kind of got it. The bulb-growths almost seemed to shift in their lines, and the goat spun like a pinata, twirling like a lazy wind chime as the forest breeze knocked it back and forth.
None of us screamed. I felt a stab of sadness for the animal, but we’ve seen similar before. All we were thinking was – better this poor creature than a person. Than Ilia or her dad… or one of our number.
Then there was the dripping.
From the strings or from the corpse – it was hard to tell at first. But Wild swept his torch back and forth over it, and the shine all the liquid took on was the same as the one pulsing in the veins. It was all a messy black and glowing magenta, marbled like badly mixed batter. Wild’s torch flicked down to the ground and all we could hear was each other breathing. I toed forwards – I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I reached the substance. Not touch it, that much was for sure.
As soon as I’d thought that, there was a splat by me, and a light hiss, like you’d get from acid in a movie. More like meat thrown into oil in a frypan. Four had beat me to the corpse of the goat, and – all torch beams fell on him – a drop from the mass had landed on his hand. He gasped in pain.
On sheer instinct – I nearly yelled for the kid, then – he suckered his mouth over the wound as if to clear blood off it. I saw his eyes burst open mid-gesture, and he turned his head over his shoulder to spit.
I remember cursing Wild out in confusion in my head as he raised his phone to get a photo of the strung-up goat – but when he grabbed Four’s arm and ran in the next breath, I was glad we had photo evidence of the thing. I ran with them, and when we broke into the fire circle the rest of us mostly got up, yelled, and turned in circles.
Under firelight, we could see the injury on Four’s arm. It was blistering – but where the stuff had sunk into his arm, it looked almost like a cut, like the blood inside him had been supplanted with the goo. A shiver went around the circle as each of us saw it. Hyrule tended to it – antibacterial-wiping it out of the gouge and flicking the matter into the fire. Four hissed as the wipe dug into his skin, and watched, lip quivering, as Hyrule dressed the now gingerly bleeding wound.
He stayed silent for a while, staring into the fire, blocking his hurt hand protectively with the other.
Wild showed the photo and we resolved to head back in. Wild and me volunteered ourselves, but in the end it didn’t matter since most of us ended up going. Hyrule stayed to care for Four – I don’t remember who else was at the fire, but it was only a few of us.
We brought out all the best tools we had for dealing with this type of thing, and headed back in. A few of us split off to stay patrolling the designated animal area in case the goal of the monster was to distract us from there. I think in the end it was me, Wild, Sky, Legend and Time. I think. But things start to get fuzzy around here.
I could see bundled-up arms swinging ahead of me, see shoes turning in the mud, but – and this is the bit where you can say that I was asking for it – but I was the one without a torch, and they were muddy in my vision. Yeah, we should have one for everyone. But it just feels like a bit excessive, right? Bad for the environment to go through so many batteries, right? Yeah, I was probably asking for it.
They started to bob out of view. It was so slow, I hardly noticed at first, but I struggled to keep at their heels. I wanted to shout, or make a grab for them, but the dark was soporific. Soon, they were gone, as though they’d raced ahead – but by the time I started to feel the chill wrapping me, I realised that it was me that was standing completely still.
I couldn’t move, almost, couldn’t make anything but a dry dribbling of sound come out of my mouth. I felt like there was a hand on my shoulder, a blade to my throat, murmuring to me not to move or I’d get cut.
There was nothing there – there was nothing there, and I knew it, but while I seized up muscle by muscle, it was clear to me that the darkness was a person. This darkness, at least, had a will, and it wanted me there.
It wanted me away from the group, in total pitch black, likely close to that thing that had killed the goat, and closer, closer, as it crept towards me. It wanted me dead, probably, or it wanted to make me a warning, and I have always, always, been frightened of the night.
I would be lying if I said it had never done this to me before.
There was a tapping, the dripping – it sounded like a twig twisting in the wind, rapping against a tree – it was almost excusable as a natural sound. But then there was the wetness of it, almost an echo at the heels of the tapping sound – but there.
Then, it let me turn.
I followed the sound. The dark may have released me, but not the cold. I trembled as I followed, and my lip quivered relentlessly. It let me see the outlines of the trees again. I shouldered through them.
Along the floor of the same clearing, suctioned around the bases of the trees, it crept on nails. Fingernails like construction nails, in hands thin and twisted, clawing it around. And eyes. Eyes floating, like they were ingredients in the dark, tacky soup.
None of the eyes fixed on me, but it was coming at me. Slowly. I held my breath and began to take baby steps backwards. My mind was draining of any real strategy, but I thought maybe if I moved one leg at the same time as the huge body moved one arm, I would keep our distance. We kept shifting like that, as my frightened sounds got harder to suppress. After a while of it, my feet and ankles became sore, the pain amplifying itself as it fed on my fear. I gagged on my breath. Still, it wouldn’t look at me.
I started moving back diagonally, back and to the side. I had predicted it would pivot, but it stayed on its path as I moved out of it.
I sighed. It kept inching forward, now away from me.
And then there was a snap, like someone stretching their back, as the monster came alive. Arms wheeling, body near-solid and straining, it surged forwards. Still forwards. Still away from me. In a sinewy flash, it was gone.
I could hear the underbrush cracking beneath it as it went, impossibly fast.
It wasn’t retreating. It was a motivated rush. It had a target.
I started after it, my feet landing in the damp trail it had left. It didn’t seem so scary now that I was the one pursuing. That’s what I told myself. I raced at my capacity, aiming to catch it, and I drew, uh. I drew… so, for monster hunting’s sake, I have… a sword.’
‘You have a sword.’ the Archivist cut in.
‘It’s – when the monsters are made of a certain… evil… the sword I have is very effective at getting through ‘em.’
‘I’m sure that a sword is good at cutting through most things, innately evil or not.’
‘I don’t use it for just anything, you understand.’
‘I imagine when you have a sword, everything looks like a monster.’ the Archivist continued. His teeth were really into this bit of information now. Twilight tried not to wither with embarrassment.
‘Anyway, it – I – I chased it, my sword whacking against the ground. Eventually, I was on its tail, my shoes hissing with discomfort as they landed in the more recently laid trail. The trees began to thin. And then we were out of the forest, and – and headed straight to the heart of the fire circle.
It pounced on Four, still staring at his hand. Hyrule yelled, and started going through his bag for a weapon. But I had all I needed in my hand.
I rolled into it. My somersault opened into a weak kick as I landed in the mass. Beside me, Four was squirming.
It wasn’t hard to figure out why.
Through my clothes, it was okay – swampy in a way that made it hard to move, but… well, painless. Where it met with my skin though, it burned, like landing on a bed of spikes – it felt like I had a thousand open, spreading lacerations, wounds breached with thick fingers, like stab wounds inside stab wounds inside stab wounds.
I couldn’t help but shout and squirm – but with all the motion still left to me, I lurched my sword about. I plunged it anywhere the form would take it. It clashed. Clinked. Hissed. Groaned.
I wrestled myself onto all fours. Save for my sword arm. I crouched over the handle, using the press of my chest and stomach to plunge it in. It slid. Half the way in, it hit the ground beneath.
Four was panting. I slumped, and where my hands sagged down, the monster swallowed them.
I grunted in pain, whined, but what could I do? Curl up and die like a dog. That was all I could manage, with my brother slipping away beside me. I fell into the monster, and pretended that the stinging all around me was charitable warmth.
And then I was rolling – not by my own choice. Something knocked me back abruptly, back and out of the monster’s grip. I heard yelling.
I reached for Four, shook at his shoulder. I blinked the floaters out of my eyes and looked for the monster.
Wild gave me the thumbs up from where he stood above it – look, please don’t make me explain the legality of this bit – and I realised what had just blown me out of the monster. The monster hissed and I saw bits of its already molten “flesh” smoulder at the edges. A small explosion. Wild is… crazy. He’s crazy.
But despite its pained noises, the monster wasn’t done. Wild rushed it, sword landing next to where mine was embedded. Hyrule stumbled up from his kit and put his blade home, too.
Then it was staked through with our swords, pinned in place, and writing with a dying desperation. There was only one missing.
I wheezed for Four. Under my hand, he twitched, then raised his head.
It took us some steps of mostly crawling, but we made it to the monster. He found his sword easy, though, smiling dryly as he wrapped his hand over the hilt.
Under all the swords, the monster puddled out, thinning like poured-out golden syrup. I imagined blood spurting as a simulated catharsis. The eyes were gone, then the hands were gone, and then it all seeped into the dirt.
I hoped it wouldn’t affect the fertility of the soil.
The injuries healed okay, in the end. They turned out to be pretty similar to bruises – me and Four have a couple little dent things where it got under the skin, but the rest of the damage is just phantom pain.’
The Archivist stared at him a long while, before reaching out a finger and clicking the tape recorder off.
‘That’s – that’s the end of that?’ he confirmed.
‘Uh – yeah. End of story. Just thought I should report it. Look – you don’t need to follow it up, really. Just wanted to let you know in case it happens… again.’
‘You think it will happen—’
The door clicked open behind Twilight.
Four stood, hands on their opposite elbows, in his grey hoodie, too big for him. He cleared his throat.
‘Hey, there’s – we got a call. The others said—’
‘Who let you in?’ the Archivist interrupted.
‘Uh – the guy that—’
‘I don’t have to ask, actually.’ The Archivist massaged his jaw.
‘He said just come in the door.’
‘Did he specify not to knock, too?’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s not you.’ he grumbled.
‘Um. Twilight. There’s something now.’
His cheek hitched up into his eye in the way that said he was impatient, nervous.
‘Coming.’ said Twilight. He pushed up from the chair and made for the door. Four nodded, cracking a small smile at the corner of his mouth.
‘Wait – wait, wait!’ the Archivist got up in much more of a hurry. ‘Where are you – what are you doing?’
‘’S’urgent.’ Twilight shrugged. ‘Sorry.’
Four rubbed at the large scar on his hand, now purpling like an angry scab since it had been allowed to be exposed. He used the injured hand to tug the door half-closed. Twilight felt the dents on his own face itch.
‘But,’ he said through the closing door. ‘Depending on how it goes, maybe we’ll be seeing you again soon.’