"That Was No Deer" by Viggy Parr Hampton

That Was No Deer

by Viggy Parr Hampton

His eyelids felt heavy, but when he heard the leaves crunching somewhere off to his left, Trey was immediately alert. His gun was balanced on the deer blind’s shooting rest barely poking out of the wooden hut, and he adjusted it to look through the sight.

The Michigan woods in October were an endless jumble of gray instead of green, so the deer should have been easy to spot. Trey squinted, panning the rifle around the clearing, but saw nothing but bare limbs, piles of dead leaves, and shafts of weak gray light.

“Shit,” he whispered. This was his first solo deer hunt, and his father had promised that if he brought home a deer, he’d get his own car on his sixteenth birthday, just six months away. Trey wasn’t sure if this bet meant that his father believed in him wholeheartedly or doubted him mercilessly.

Either way, he intended to bring home a deer—a buck, if he could get one, but a doe would do in a pinch. They both tasted the same, and their deep freezer back home was nearly empty of last season’s venison.

Still seeing nothing of note—no tawny hide, no white tail, no towering rack of antlers—Trey slid back down into the blind. It was small, no more than six feet square, with two narrow openings at the front for rifles. His father had built it when he was Trey’s age, and, as he proudly told his son, he’d shot at least one deer every season sitting right in that spot.

Trey loosened his grip on the rifle, but didn’t let it fall. He wanted to be ready if the sound came again.

He slipped a hand in his pocket, hunting for the Reese’s cup he’d snagged from his little sister Ariel before he’d headed out. It was nearly seven in the morning, and he’d been stationed at the blind since four thirty. Sleep tugged at his eyelids, but he wanted that new car more than he wanted a few more hours’ worth of half-remembered dreams.

His body slid lower, nestling among the sandbags on the floor of the blind. It was cold outside, the promise of snow in the air, but inside the wooden hut, he felt toasty…

There. The sound came again, although this time, it was different. Heavier. Slower. As though something huge was dragging itself through the woods. 

Trey opened his eyes—he hadn’t even realized he’d closed them. The light was different—flatter, auguring nightfall. How long had he been out here?

The thumps came again, and they were speeding up, getting closer. Trey could feel the presence now, and this was no deer. The papery, rotten smell of dead leaves gusted into his nostrils with each thump from outside, and Trey could feel the thing, whatever it was. He couldn’t see it, but he knew, he just knew—it was malevolent.

And it was coming for him.

Trey tried to grab his rifle, but his hands remained immobile. Move, just fucking MOVE, he demanded, but his fingers didn’t so much as twitch. There was a painful pressure growing all around him, pressing down onto his head, his chest, making his breaths come in loud, hitching gasps.

He wanted to open his mouth to scream, but nothing came out beyond the ragged heaving of his lungs. The rifle was solid against his fingers, but he was powerless to use it.

The ground shook as the presence trudged closer to the blind. Tears formed in Trey’s eyes when silence descended once again, because he knew that silence didn’t mean safety. That silence was waiting, full and angry, the dark presence standing just outside the door.

Please, God, please be a bear, he begged. Just a bear, please.

A bear he could understand. A bear he could attempt to fight.

But he knew this was no bear.

As he watched, the door knob began to rattle and twist. With all of his might, he willed his hands to move, his mouth to scream, his heart to slow its frenzied beating. Please, he begged again, Please, let me go.

All at once, as though a pressure valve had been released, Trey’s fingers grappled and found purchase on the gun. A high-pitched keening flew from between his lips, and then he was grabbing the gun, pointing it at the door.

The rattling stopped, and the silence descended again.

Trey wasted no time. Pulling in a clean lungful of air, he pulled his gun into his chest and barreled toward the door. He flung it open with such ferocity that it flew back and slammed into the side of the hut. He didn’t look back—he ran, full tilt, clutching his gun, until he reached the back door of his house.

When he flew into the kitchen, sweaty and pale, Ariel raised an eyebrow. “You get a deer?” she asked.

Trey bent over, hands on his knees, gasping. “No,” he said.

“Then why are you back? And why are you all out of breath?”

Trey stood up, his legs shaky. “There was something out there,” he said.

Ariel snorted. “Yeah, right. I’m not falling for your stupid stories anymore, Trey.”

“Seriously, I felt it—”

“I know you stole my Reese’s,” Ariel said, cutting him off.

“Ariel, I mean it, there was something out there,” he said.

“Sure,” she said, rolling her eyes.

At dinner that evening, Trey decided not to tell his parents about what he’d felt in the blind, and Ariel didn’t say anything, either.

The next day, he brought his father with him to the blind.

If his father noticed the claw marks on the door, or the massive footprints in the mud, he didn’t say a word.

Trey never ventured to that blind again. He’d earn the money for his car some other way.