Tom immediately ran forward, through the underbrush, through the bushes, knife extended. Jennings followed the guide stumblingly, saw the other man leap on the animal, cut it open.

The hairy skin split and the stomach contents spilled out.

His father’s body emerged from the open wound.

Jennings dropped his bow, backed away, all of the saliva suddenly drained from his mouth. Tom was scrambling away from the dead animal as well, an expression of shock and uninhibited fear on his face. The knife in his hand was dripping blood, and he gripped it tightly, pointed outward.

Jennings felt a warm wetness spread from his crotch down his leg as he pissed in his pants. He wanted to scream but could not, and neither he nor Tom said a word, made a sound.

His father rose to his feet. He was wearing a suit, but both the suit and his skin were covered with blood and a clear sort of viscous goo. He was smaller than he used to be, almost dwarfish, but he hadn’t aged at all or at least the age had not registered on his face. Jennings’ initial dumb thought was that his father hadn’t died, they’d buried the wrong man, but he remembered seeing his father’s body and knew that he had died and that this was some sort of… monster.

His father bounded instantly away from the gutted elk and toward Tom. The guide started stabbing outward, but his reactions were slow and the knife cut only air.

Tom’s neck was broken with one quick snap, and then his father changed directions and loped across the small open space toward him, grinning crazily.

There was elk blood on his teeth.

Jennings tried to get away, clawed his way through the brush, through the bushes, started heading back through the trees toward camp, but his father caught him before he’d gone more than a few feet. He was knocked to the ground, and he felt the weight of his father’s compacted body on his back. Strong hands slipped around his neck, fingers digging into his flesh.

Dad! he wanted to scream.

But the air in his lungs could not escape to form words, and the world around him faded, and he saw only blackness.

New York