Hunger
by
Troy Davitt
Heath Nowak had always felt the most alive when hiking. His mother used to tell him that before he could even walk, his father and her would go on hikes and carry him up in a little baby carrier. As a child he would often beg and plead to go on a hike most weekends, regardless of the weather or what previous plans the family had had. He had learned how to camp and forage, and through his adolescence and early twenties completed longer and longer hikes, both in distance and time. This particular evening, Heath had been hiking along a trail he hadn’t walked before, but had planned to camp on for the night and to continue back home the next day.
Night had fallen a couple hours prior, yet even with the amount of walking he had accomplished that day, he wasn’t able to fall asleep. The sound of crickets normally put Heath to sleep almost instantly, but this night they seemed determined to keep him awake. Their incessant chirping echoed all around him and he could feel anger welling up inside his chest. Why this night they angered him, he had no idea, but it mattered little as to the “why”. What mattered was the “how” in the “how do I fall asleep with this sound?” He turned over in his hammock to try to find a more comfortable position within its warm insulated embrace, one that would hopefully overpower the sound of the crickets, and as he did just that, he saw it.
It was some sort of antlered skull, but not moose or deer. He had come across many animal skeletons throughout his time hiking, and this was not like anything he had seen. The proportions seemed… off, not quite right, as if someone had described a generic hoofed mammal to someone who had never seen one, then that person had been asked to draw what its skull would look like. The eye sockets seemed to be in the wrong place, there were no markings of where the plates of the skull had fused, the teeth were oddly human in shape and size, and yet still looked animalistic. It sat in the air about seven feet high. He noticed that while there was no source of light, the whole skull was lit up, as if there were multiple spotlights on it. Underneath it was a mass of blackness; some sort of body. Its shape and size couldn’t be determined, but it seemed to be illuminated opposite of how the skull was, where it seemed to soak in light and trap it, allowing only a primordial darkness that seemed impossible to create to form an undefinable silhouette.
Unlike most of his friends, Heath had never had any form of “monster sighting” or “mystical interaction” on the trail before, and he was never one for tales of cryptids or the beasts that lurk in the brush. He had never been afraid of the dark or the odd sounds in the night. Terror seemed to evade him. The skull startled him, as it would anyone seeing something they didn’t expect, but the fear which would have propelled him to scream or get his gun or even bury himself in his hammock with his blanket over his head all seemed to forget to show up.
“...H-hello…?” Heath muttered out, quieter than he had wanted. He hadn’t used his voice at all that day. He cleared his throat and asked, “...what… who are you…?”
There was silence as the skull-clad thing seemed to stare into his soul with its empty eye sockets. Heath knew that this thing wasn’t here earlier, and he was far enough from civilization that no one could be out here with him playing some sort of prank. He hadn’t eaten anything weird nor did he feel sick. This being was definitely there before him.
A voice both low and high pitched at the same time seemed to be beamed directly to him. “Hunger,” it said, the sound of the voice rumbling deep inside his chest and piercing his ears. It repeated again, “Hunger.”
Heath pulled an arm out of the warm blanket and laid it on his chest. “Hunger?” he asked in confirmation. “As in like, a name, or the concept itself?” He stared at the being and waited for a response. When none came, he put his arm out and pointed to the fire. “There’s a pot there with some stew left in it. My wife made it just last night, she’s a fantastic cook. It’s got venison in it though, I hope that doesn’t sit wrong with you.”
The being did not react for almost a minute. Right before Heath was about to ask if it heard him, it began to move towards the smoldering fire. He was right about the body; it did not light up with the orange glow of the embers but instead stayed an impossible inky blackness. A sort of hand and arm made of the same blackness protruded from somewhere in its middle and reached for the pot. It grabbed the handle and lifted the metal vessel from the stones it sat on, silent all the while. The pot was raised to the nasal passage of the skull, was kept there for a moment, then was promptly lowered and pulled into the torso of the being as if pulled into some sort of waterfall of ink.
The being turned away from Heath and the dying fire and began to walk into the forest. It wandered off into the bush, devoid of the expected sounds of footsteps on the crisp autumn leaves on the forest floor. In just a moment, it had slunk back into the darkness of the night without even a word of thanks. Heath sat in silent confusion for a handful of minutes, then finally shook his head in a motion of defeat and acceptance. He turned over in his hammock and got comfortable, readjusting himself to try and find the right spot he was in before. “Rude.” he muttered, finding himself questioning what the beings mother would say if it knew it never thanked him. He lay there, trying once again to fall back asleep, or at least to the half-sleep state he was in before. As he lay in his hammock, thinking of how he was going to explain to his wife why he needed a new cooking pot after just buying a new one a few weeks ago, he noticed something. Out in the woods, in the darkness and the wildness, the crickets had now gone completely and utterly silent.