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The Man with the Axe
🕑 Added 2023-07-13 17:35:38 +0000 UTCThe Man pulled the door to his mudroom behind him shut as he exited his small, modest house. The evening air was much cooler than it had been in the daytime; the humidity was still godawful though. Shadows lay everywhere, dimly cast and stretched into grotesque shapes from the numerous walnut and pecan trees dotting his backyard. In the distance, the still visibly red sides of the old barn looked as flimsy as ever. A solid wind might have knocked it down.
Gods, how he hated going out at night.
A meow at his feet, followed by a solid bump against his booted calf, caused the Writer to glance down. A small smile flitted across his exhausted, stubble-covered face. Deeply set green eyes, hung with bags so dark they looked practically purple, gazed fondly down at the pair of young cats winding their way around his ankles. Their white and black pelts were soft beneath his fingers as he stooped to give both of them some scritches on their cheeks and down their spines. One liked it, she practically never got enough, while the other was more skittish and took time to warm up to being petted.
"Evening girls," he murmured. Their plaintive meows made him chuckle. "Yes, yes, it's dinner time." He lifted the small container of catfood and shook it, causing a soft rattling. The cats redoubled their crooning rubs, tangling themselves about his feet. "You're gonna have to give me room to walk, sweethearts." He nudged them gently as he could out of his way, then strode purposefully to the porch gate.
The black, simple lock clicked as he opened it, swinging the gate open and then gazing down the stairs that led to his gravel driveway. Much of it was starting to become overgrown with weeds; no weed-eater was going to cut it, not without slinging rocks everywhere; only hard, monotonous, plant by plant plucking would clear it and get it back to looking nice again. And of course he would be the one to do it.
He lingered on the top step, still gripping the railing of the porch as he gazed down those four, brown-stained steps. Not for the first time, he pondered how much he hated open porches with stairs like those, without backs. It was all too easy to imagine a hand shooting out from underneath, grabbing one's ankles and tripping them up, causing them to fall. He would be helpless if that happened; the Man hated being helpless.
The plastic bucket of food thudded as he set it down onto the decking for a second. With the cats still meowing around him, he went back to the house, opened the door, and plucked two things from the top of his washer/dryer. One was a headlamp, pulled down over his long, freely hanging hair; it pinched several times and he irritably adjusted the straps before clicking on the light atop it. The other was his axe.
Long-handle, grip wrapped in rubber, 4 pound head heavy enough to split a log with one good strike, provided one had the proper footing. It hung heavy in his right hand as he reclosed the mudroom door and stomped back over to the container of food that the girls were rubbing themselves against. He shooed them away and retrieved it by its plastic handle, then, steeling himself, took the first step down the stairs.
Every instinct in him itched and twinged as he took cautious steps down. Every second he was prepared to jerk his foot back or stomp at anything that shot out around his feet. His footing was always his worst issue. Even when he arrived at the bottom of the stairs, he cast a suspicious look underneath the porch. Nothing but leaves and a few toys kept underneath to save them from the rain.
Rain. His right leg twinged painfully. Definitely going to rain. Break your knees twice, and you sort of become a living barometer. He was rarely wrong about the weather. But it wasn't the weather that had him in a bad mood. Being outside, so late, was the issue.
He knew he should have just done this sooner, but the chickens didn't go to bed until the sun started to set. With it being summer, that was happening later and later, so it became hard to judge the perfect timing for his little evening rituals. At least these ones were pleasant. The others, not so much.
Not for the first time, he made a mental note to just set a damn alarm.
Glancing back, he saw the girls lingering at the top of the stairs as well, staring at him with big, yellow eyes, tails waving ever so slightly in anticipation. Their adorable faces gave him some peace for the moment, and he smiled before turning back to face the yard. Twenty five feet to the cathouse, an old, repurposed shed with no paint left on it at all, and the walls piled high with farmyard junk. A white table served as a sliding door, easily shifted by hand. The cats darted around, in front, and all about him as he stepped inside and poured their meals into a pair of plastic foodtrays.
Purring resounded all around the small shed as the cats dove into their food. He gave each of them one final stroke down their spines then stepped outside. A rush of evening summer air brushed past him, hot and muggy. He frowned again and slid the table back across the doorway as an afterthought. Then he reached out, grabbed the shed door, and began to close it too.
One of his cats looked back at him as the light inside the shed rapidly dwindled. She gave him a meow that could have meant anything.
"Stay safe tonight," he told her and closed and locked the door. It was by no means a safe or secure building, but he had an arrangement well in place. Nothing was going to bother his cats once safely inside. He turned then and eyed the much darker expanse of his backyard that led to his chicken coop. Night truly was falling rapidly now, the soft blue-grey of evening deepening to navy and black. The distant double doors to the barn creaked on their chain hoists as wind gusted about them.
He cast an eye upwards, to the leaves of the tree. None of them so much as stirred. Not a breeze. His irritated frown deepened, his hand gripped the axe a bit more tightly. Moving as quickly as his aching legs would allow, he crossed in front of the garage, avoiding glancing at the darkened window. He was far too nervous to look up and see something staring back at him through it.
The latch to his coop clunked as he undid the hook and allowed it to slide closed. Some clucking from within made him relax, if but for a second; they were still all right. It was a solid little coop, Mennonite made and well built. He could still see some scratches on the red and white paint where something may have tried to see if it could get through but to no avail. Well worth the price.
Now came his least favorite part of his evening ritual. He looked out across the expanse of his several acres of ground, eyeing each building warily. The corn was above eyelevel now, surrounding the yard on all sides. His wife said it gave her comfort to know that no one driving past their house on the county road they lived on could see them through it. He did not share her feelings on this.
Then he heard it. Music. His head snapped in the direction it came from. Not from the road. Not from the distant house of his neighbors. The field. It was faint, nondistinct, but he knew what he was hearing. There were no roads out that way, some 200 acres of farmland rented out through the year to farmers. Past them were even more fields, and beyond the towering sight of the hill that overlooked his little area.
Keeping his ears peeled, he listened. The music faded and he took cautious steps away from the chicken coop, pivoting on his feet between every two steps back towards the house, keeping his head on a swivel. He passed the garage. The music started up again, keeping apace with him, once again fading just as he began to discern its definitive source. His stomach tightened into a ball.
"So, it's like that tonight, is it?" he growled out in annoyance to help alleviate the fluttering in his chest and ice-cold blood surging through his veins. Taking a longing look back at his house, wherein his beloved wife and children were most likely winding down for bed with a story and endless negotiations to stay up longer, he turned and walked back away from it. He strode to the center of the backyard, axe held loosely in his sweaty palm.
The beam of his headlamp sliced through the darkness as he swept his gaze backwards and forwards. Nothing but swaying cornfields, creaking of barn doors, the rustle of a soft breeze across the grass. The music started up again and he turned irately to face it. The farthest part of his field, just past the barn, near the irrigation ditches. He never went back that far even in the daytime; too many ticks and long grass for them to hide in.
Soft notes and indistinct words drifted from the green stalks and leaves. Taunting. Placating. Goading. His stomach was an iron ball as he took a solid stance. One glance back at his house; it was too far to try and run for, and he wouldn't give it an opportunity to potentially rush past him. He stood in its way.
"Stop fucking around," he snarled at the darkness. "I want to get back to what I was doing, and you wasting my evenings like this is nothing short of pissing me off. Make your move or get lost." Stupid, yes. Insane, yes. Illogical, nonsensical, avoidable, yes. Fight or flight raged inside of him, urging his animal brain to just back off, to keep backing away until he was at his steps and then safely back inside.
The thing is, when you've broken your legs twice and now walk with a constant limp, flight becomes a moot point. Anything you're scared of at this point will easily outrun you; the wise person never turns his back on a predator. That left only one option: fight. And he was ready for it, as much as he could be.
The man with the axe considered his life up till then as the seconds of silence dragged on. He hadn't lived the best one he could have, but he wasn't ashamed of it. He had a loving wife, two sons, cats, a community of people who loved to read his work, best friends, numerous stories to write and share with the world. He had a lot to live for. That gave him a measure of calm and he inhaled deeply in a grateful sigh, closing his eyes for just a second before reopening them.
It was there. Standing just inside the corn, gazing at him. Dark eyes, unfeeling eyes, glittering like the carapaces of beetles behind a bone-white skull of a face. Heavy fur, nearly pitch black in color, rustled in a breeze that nothing else could feel. It was the wrong shape, the wrong size, the wrong everything, to be anything as natural as just some wild animal.
And at that exact moment, the light of his headlamp went out.
Viking and Gaelic blood surged to life as darkness closed rapidly in and the Writer gripped his axe in both hands. Only the tall lamppost with the motion sensing light high atop it cast any illumination.
"So..." he breathed quietly. "It's like that tonight." He nodded firmly, set his feet, and whispered one last thing to himself. "Victory or Valhalla." It felt silly to say, nowadays, and he knew he probably would and could never be a real Viking, but he respected his origins, his roots. Plus, it just plain helped him believe his axe really could do something.
A long fur-covered limb, festooned with claws too long on digitrade digits all too similar to the shape of a hand, reached out of the field, taking a purposeful, menacing step towards him. It was a different kind of black, darker than even the shadows around it. The bright eyes glittered, the fangs of the skull flashed in the gruesome pantomime of a smile; perhaps its real face was underneath. It had cunning, malice, predatory hunger, and a sadistic glee about it in taunting and tormenting him so.
He wasn't the strongest not by any definable margin, definitely not the fastest, skinny of frame, long-limbed, and suffered from migraines. Not for the first time, he felt a doomed, wishful hope to be a different man than he was now, if only to be better prepared. But strength didn't matter now, nor speed, nor anything but the one quality he knew might save his life, and had done so every night since this had begun: the Man with the Axe was ready to fight to the death at a moment's notice.
It took only one blow. It always took only one blow; sometimes though he took an extra few whacks just to make himself feel better. Being prepared for their little game was the important part.
Grimly, he wiped the blade of his axe on the dark pelt of the creature. It didn't move, sightless black eyes staring blankly up at the sky. The skull-mask over its lupine-shaped head was stained with old rusty red around the jaws, cloven neatly over the eyesocket by his well-aimed strike. He prodded it with his axe handle; it still didn't move.
Moving as quickly as he could, he backpedaled the whole way to his house. Not once did his eyes leave the crumped, over-sized, unnaturally proportioned thing. He was used to making the climb of his stairs without looking. He was used to backing up until the doorhandle met his groping hand. It turned and he hurried inside, closing it after him with a snap. The locks rattled into place and he cast one more look out through the nine-pane glass.
It was gone.
Arms and body still tingling, he set down his axe and slid the curtain over the window. He turned off the mudroom light and moved to the door beyond, leading into his house proper. His body stiffened as he heard a soft scratching down the door from the outside.
"Same time tomorrow," it wheezed in a voice, from a mouth, never meant to utter the English language.
He did not mention it to his kids as he kissed them goodnight, making sure to draw the curtains completely shut over the toyroom and bedroom windows. He did not say a word as he double-checked all the locks. Not a peep came from him as he slid into bed alongside his wife as they settled into watch Big Bang Theory for the fifteenth time in its entirety. At least in her arms, he felt a bit safer, but as she drifted off so much earlier than he did, he heard that music once again, drifting faintly from the direction of the field.
Definitely need to set that alarm.
So. In case you were wondering why I no longer sleep well, why every night is a constant, never-ending surveillance of my property, why I lock my cats and chickens up, and why I go outside every night with an axe, now you know. Even saying these things names can get their attention. And I wrote a damn book about them.
Stay safe.
