Trail Cams

I woke shivering in my bed. The sheets smelled of smoke and burnt hair. Through bleary eyes, I looked around my room. It wasn’t much: a small open cabin up in the mountains. Far away from people. There was water and dirt streaked across the floor, leading to the front door.

I quickly got up to throw on some clothes. That was when I noticed the blackened streaks of dried blood smeared across my chest and bedsheets. I’d gone to bed in my usual pajamas. I was naked as I dug through my dresser, shivering from the cold. The fireplace had gone out sometime in the night.

I threw on fresh jeans and a coat and stumbled to the fridge. My throat was dry and scratchy. My mouth hurt and tasted of copper. I rinsed with water from the fridge and spat pink spittle in the sink. I glanced to the corner where I kept my computer. It was hooked up to the many trail cams I’d lined around my property, as well as a single camera inside the corner of my cabin.

It had been years since my last episode. I was scared to look.

I knew I had to.

I sat down and opened the footage from the last twelve hours. I’d gone to bed the night before around 11:00 p.m.

At exactly 1:11 a.m., I watched myself sit up in bed. I just… sat there, not moving. Barely breathing. Looking straight at the camera.

At 1:33, light poured in through the window from outside the cabin. Headlights, from the look of them. A few minutes later, I climbed out of bed, stripped naked, and walked out the front door.

I paused the footage and leaned back in my chair. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I stepped away and went to the fireplace. I was shivering. The thermometer read 33°s. I got the fire going and just sat there, savoring its warmth and building up the courage to check the other cameras. When I stopped shivering, I turned on the stove and brewed coffee.

Coffee in hand, I sat back down and checked the cameras. I cycled to the one facing out from the front of the house.

An old pickup was parked out front. It was full of people. The footage was blurry, but it looked like everyone was naked, save for the masks on their faces. They were piled in the back of the truck like sardines. No one moved as I approached and climbed into the back, joining the pile of flesh. I disappeared into them, the bodies shifting to make room. My skin crawled as I imagined pushing myself into that mass of flesh, steaming in the cold. The hairs on my arms stood up; I could almost remember how it truly felt. Almost.

The truck pulled away, heading west across my property. I quickly got up and walked to the window to look outside, praying this wasn’t real.

I could still see the tire tracks in the snow and mud.

I sat back down and cycled through the cameras, following the truck. After a few minutes, I knew where it was heading.

To the west of my property lies a small meadow. In the summer, the grass grows tall around a winding creek, its waters clear and cool and delicious. The distant mountains climb high and touch the clouds, fading to ever lighter shades of blue as far as the eye can see. Snow lies forever dormant on their frozen peaks.

In the winter, the meadow is dead and cold, and the creek lies frozen and still. I watch the empty black field through the eyes of the camera, and wait.

Light cuts through the snow and dead grass as the truck pulls into view. I watch as bodies pour forth and scatter into the trees. The driver kills the truck, plunging the meadow into darkness. I sit there, watching the black-and-white footage. Wild eyes peer through wooden masks as the men, women, and I crawl on hands and knees through the meadow and surrounding woods. While in the car, I donned a mask myself: that of a black goat.

I watch a man collect a bundle of limbs and run them to the center of the field. The rest follow suit, and soon a massive pile of limbs is erected in the center of the field.

Slowly, the crowd gathers around the pile. My eyes are on the bed of the truck. I can’t see over the rim, but I swear I see it shake. When it does, I catch glimpses of something thrashing in the back. Something white and covered in hair.

The figures form a circle around the makeshift bonfire. A few minutes pass until light begins to flicker from the center. The onlookers are still. I watch myself staring at the small ember of growing flame. The wet wood takes forever to burn. The time shows 2:55.

Slowly, the fire begins to mature. Steam rises with the smoke as water boils off the wet wood. I keep glancing between the crowd and the truck. The crowd begins to move. The figures crawl across one another, making slow, winding circles around the flames. I watch myself slither in the snow over the bodies. Water drips from my dirty skin. My eyes, partially hidden behind my mask, are white orbs in the cam-trail’s lens.

As the flames climb higher, so does the pace of the dance. I don’t know what else to call it. Arms and legs extend and retract. Feet slam into the ground, mud and snow kicked up beneath dirty bare feet. Backs arch and necks croon and embers float into the nothingness of the barren sky.

The fire reaches its peak, the meadow encompassed by its blazing light. My breath catches as the crowd suddenly stops, each member rising to their feet before growing still before the flames.

I watch myself, my lonesome, shivering self, break from the gathered mass of bodies and walk to the truck. I lower the bed and reach inside. The truck shakes as a single white lamb emerges. It fights as I half-lead, half-drag it away from the truck and toward the fire.

My mouth tastes of copper and coffee and acidic fear. My hands shake above my keyboard. The fire crackles behind me, but I can’t feel its warmth.

I lead the lamb through the crowd. They gather around me. They carry no tools: no knives or hatchets or hammers. For a moment, all is still save the flames.

The bodies block my view. I kneel and disappear into the crowd.

I can’t tell what is flung from the pit at first. People join me below. I catch specks of black tossed before the flames. Men wrestle, their muscles straining in the night. One rises holding a hairy leg. A woman emerges, entrails dangling from the neck of her fox-masked face.

I lean over the wastebasket next to my desk and vomit; it is dark, with what I know to be congealed blood.

When the bodies disperse, I am left alone before the flames and the carcass of the lamb. I watch my body tremble with each heavy breath. I close my eyes, but it is no use; the lamb is beneath me. Its blood steams in the freezing air. My hands are warm and slick. I can feel my smile beneath my mask.

One by one, the crowd disappears into the trees. Foxes and badgers and bears and skunks slink off, naked flesh dripping blood upon the snow. The sky is lighter now on the horizon. The deer walks to his truck and drives away. I check the time of the footage. It reads 6:17 a.m.

For a time, I am alone in the field. The fire slowly dies, crumbling logs sending embers into the graying sky.

At 6:45, I stand and… walk away, in the direction of my home. My toes are numb in the snow, and the blood is no longer warm.

I track my journey back through the woods and fields. I watch from the front camera as I stumble up the steps of my cabin. I stop in front of the door and remove my mask. The smile I’d felt is gone. My eyes are closed, jaw slack. Frozen tears cling to my cheeks. I run a bloody finger across the inside of the mask, lean it against the doorpost, and step inside.

I switch the camera. Inside, I stop to dump water on the embers still glowing in the fireplace. Then I climb into bed. The time is 7:30.

I force myself to my feet and stumble to the door. The wind roars outside. Fresh snow falls fat and heavy from the gray sky.

Against the post, I find the bloody mask of a black goat. I smell smoke in the wind.

I don’t bother with boots as I set off toward the meadow. I want to know what I felt. What I did. Why should I be cut off from my own experience?

I follow the truck’s tracks through the woods. My feet are numb as I enter the meadow. The fire smolders in the center of the field. What’s left of the lamb lies cold and wet and broken before scorched earth.

I fall to my knees before the lamb.

I feel their watching eyes.

I hear my own voice all around me, repeating what I wrote in the mask.

You can’t outrun that which lies within you.