Callum Lore's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Callum Lore hung his newest skull, a raccoon, above the front window and thought he was safe. Six weeks in the abandoned ranger station had taught him one rule: a skull on every window kept the woods out. The elk skull over his bed had been first, found while drunk. Now every pane wore bone. He laughed at the wall of empty eyes, too loud, alone. Then he heard the scraping under his boots. Something dug beneath the floor. Not scratching. Digging. Slow and heavy, working up through packed dirt and stone. He went still. The skulls faced the trees, the porch, the road. Not one faced down. He had warded the windows and forgotten the ground. He stamped the floorboards. The digging stopped. Then it started again, closer, right under the kitchen. Dust sifted between the planks. Callum grabbed his lantern and ran outside before the floor could open under him. He drove to the logging camp because a one-armed man there had lived through this. Jack Timber sat outside his cabin sharpening a hatchet against his knee, the empty sleeve pinned flat. He did not look up when Callum's headlights hit him. "It's digging under my station," Callum said. "The skulls don't stop it." "Skulls stop nothing," Jack said. He tested the blade with his thumb. "It took my arm before I heard it move." "How do I kill it?" Jack finally looked at him. His eyes were tired, not afraid. "Belly's the only soft part. Pale throat. You get under it or you don't get it at all." He set the hatchet down. "They don't come alone. Two, always. And they can't climb." Callum drove back before dawn. Can't climb. The words turned in his head. His station had a loft, a low crawlspace under the roof, reached by a ladder. He had never used it. The digging had broken through. A hole gaped in the kitchen floor, edges crumbled inward. Dirt and splintered board lay in a fan. Callum did not wait to see what made it. He climbed the ladder into the loft and pulled it up behind him. Below, something dragged itself out of the hole. He heard the wet slide of it, the click of teeth. It circled the room. It found the ladder gap and could not follow. A second sound joined it. Two. Jack was right. Callum lay in the dark loft and listened to them hunt a house they could not reach. He had wanted to seal himself in with bone. Instead the walls of skulls stared at nothing while he hid above the reach of teeth. By morning the digging had stopped. He climbed down. The two had gone back through their hole. His kitchen floor was a mouth in the ground now, and it would not stay empty. He needed to fill it, or find the throat Jack spoke of before they came up again.