The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

“Yep. Wellocs are everywhere. More of them than you shake a stick at — Nevada, Indiana, Massachusetts. Buncha foreign states too. Their granddads threw a wide loop, as my pappy used to say.”

“My parents lived east of here. Over the mountains. Dad had some cousins in Ransom Hollow. They visited occasionally. I was a kid and I only heard bits and pieces… the men all got liquored up and told tall tales. I heard about the stag, decided I’d drill it when I got older.”

“Here you are, sure enough. Why? I know you don’t give a whit about the rifle. Or the money.”

“How do you figure?”

“The look in your eyes, boy. You’re afraid. A man like you is afraid, I take stock.”

“I’ve known some fearless men. Hunted lions with them. A few of those gents forgot that Mother Nature is more of a killer than we humans will ever be and wound up getting chomped. She wants our blood, our bones, our goddamned guts. Fear is healthy.”

“Sure as hell is. Except, there’s something in you besides fear. Ain’t that right? I swear you got the weird look some guys get who play with fire. I knew this vaquero who loved to ride his pony along the canyon edge. By close, I mean rocks crumbling under its hooves and falling into nothingness. I ask myself, what’s here in these woods for you? Maybe I don’t want any part of it.”

“I reckon we all heard the same story about Mr. Blackwood. Same one my Daddy and his cousins chewed over the fire.”

“Sweet Jesus, boy. You don’t believe that cart load of manure Welloc and his crony been shovelin’? Okay then. I’ve got a whopper for you. These paths form a miles wide pattern if you see ’em from a plane. World’s biggest pentagram carved out of the countryside. Hear that one?”

Luke Honey smiled dryly and crushed the butt of his cigarette underfoot.

Mr. Williams poured out the dregs of his coffee. He hooked his thumbs in his belt. “My uncle Greg came here for the hunt in ’16. They sent him home in a fancy box. The Black Ram Lodge is first class all the way.”

“Stag get him?”

The rancher threw back his head and laughed. He grabbed Luke Honey’s arm. There were tears in his eyes. “Oh, you are a card, kid. You really do buy into that mumbo-jumbo horse pucky. Greg spotted a huge buck moving through the woods and tried to plug it from the saddle. His horse threw him and he split his head on a rock. Damned fool.”

“In other words, the stag got him.”

Mr. Williams squeezed Luke Honey’s shoulder. Then he slackened his grip and laughed again. “Yeah, maybe you’re on to something. My pappy liked to say this family is cursed. We sure had our share of untimely deaths.”

The party split again, Dr. Landscomb and the British following Scobie and the dogs; Mr. Welloc, Luke Honey and the Texans proceeding along a parallel trail. Nobody was interested in the lesser game; all were intent upon tracking down Blackwood’s Baby.

They entered the deepest, darkest part of the forest. The trees were huge and ribboned with moss and creepers and fungi. Scant light penetrated the canopy, yet brambles hemmed the path. The fog persisted.

Luke Honey had been an avid reader since childhood. Robert Louis Stevenson, M.R. James, and Ambrose Bierce had gotten him through many a miserable night in the tarpaper shack his father built. He thought of the fairy tale books at his aunt’s house. Musty books with wooden covers and woodblock illustrations that raised the hair on his head. The evil stepmother made to dance in red hot iron shoes at Snow White’s garden wedding while the dwarves hunched like fiends. Hansel and Gretel lost in a vast, endless wood, the eyes of a thousand demons glittering in the shadows. The forest in the book was not so different from the one he found himself riding through.

At noon, they stopped to take a cold lunch from their own saddlebags as this was beyond the range of the lodge staff. Arlen trotted from the forest, dodgy and feral as a fox, to report Scobie picked up the trail and was hoping to soon drive the stag itself from hiding. Dr. Landscomb and the British were in hot pursuit.

“Damn,” Mr. Williams said.

“Aw, now that limey’s going to do the honors,” Mr. Briggs said. “I wanted that rifle.”

“Everybody wants that rifle,” Mr. McEvoy said.

Mr. Williams clapped his hands together. “Let’s mount up, muchachos. Maybe we’ll get lucky and our friends will miss their opening.”

“The quarry is elusive,” Mr. Liam Welloc said. “Anything is possible.”

The men kicked their ponies to a brisk trot and gave chase.

An hour later, all hell broke loose.