I screamed again, a raw, pathetic sound that died in the humid air. And that’s when I heard it.
A twig snap.
Not a boot on a twig. Not the metallic clink of a canteen or a rifle. This was heavy. Soft. A thud, like a bag of meal dropped on the forest floor, followed by the crack of dry wood.
My blood went colder than the creek water.
“Who’s there?” I whispered, my voice trembling. “Please… I’m hurt bad. I’m Confederate cavalry…“
Silence. Then, another thud. Closer.
A shadow fell over me, blotting out the sliver of moonlight. It wasn’t a man. It was a shape. It towered. The smell hit me then, a thick, musky odor of damp fur, wet earth, and something primal I couldn’t name. It wasn’t a bear. A bear would have been on me by now.
It just… stood there. Watching me.
I tried to crab-walk backward, my shattered leg screaming in protest, but I only managed to kick up dirt.
“Help me,” I begged, tears streaming into my beard.
The shadow moved. It bent down, and for the first time, I saw it clearly.
It was a nightmare given form.
It looked like a man, maybe, if a man could be seven, maybe eight feet tall and covered head to toe in thick, matted, dark hair. Its arms were as thick as tree limbs. But the face… it wasn’t the snarling visage of a beast. It was just… calm. The eyes were dark, deep-set, and undeniably intelligent.
It looked at my leg. It looked at my face.
Then, it made a sound. A low, guttural purr, like thunder rumbling miles away.
I think I fainted. Or maybe I just shut my eyes, surrendering to the inevitable. When I opened them again, the thing was still there, but it had a companion. Another one, slightly smaller, stood beside it.
The first one, the giant, reached for me. Its hand was enormous, the fingers thick and strong. It wrapped around my good leg, just above the boot.
I shrieked. “No! God, no, please!“
It didn’t listen. It just pulled.
The pain was a white-hot explosion. It wasn’t just my shattered leg; it was my whole body, dragged through the leaves, over rocks, across the churned mud of the battlefield. I screamed until my throat was raw.
The second beast grabbed my other leg, and they began to drag me in earnest. They weren’t gentle. They were efficient. They moved with a terrifying, loping gait, pulling me through the dark woods, away from the battlefield, away from everything I knew.
I remember the smell of pine and the sharp sting of a branch whipping my face. I remember seeing the stars spin overhead through the canopy.
Then the ground disappeared. We were at a bank. They let go, and I tumbled, rolling down into a deep, cold creek. The water shocked my system, the pain vanishing for a second, replaced by icy blackness.
I felt a hand wrap around my shin again, pulling me through the water. I was sputtering, drowning, dying.
I felt myself being lifted clear out of the water. In one motion, the larger beast swung me over its shoulder like a sack of feed. My head hung down its back. I could feel the rhythmic bunching of its massive shoulder muscles as it walked.
The pain, the cold, and the terror were too much. The world went black, and I knew nothing more.
When I awoke, I was cold. Bone-chillingly, shakingly cold.
And I was in darkness. Not the moonlit dark of the forest, but a deep, absolute black. The air was still and damp, smelling of earth and that same musky scent.
I tried to move, and a jolt of agony shot up my leg. I was alive.
But where?
I blinked, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Far away, in the black, I saw a flicker. A tiny spark of orange.
Hope.
A fire. A campfire. I’d been rescued. My countrymen, my fellow soldiers, they must have found me. Maybe they’d seen the beasts drag me off and had driven them away.
A wave of relief washed over me, so powerful it made me dizzy. “Hello?” I called out, my voice a dry croak. “Anyone there? I’m… I’m here.“
The firelight grew brighter. A figure moved, picking up a burning branch, using it as a torch. The light began to move toward me.
My relief turned to ice.
The silhouette holding the torch was not human.
It was the creature from the woods. The giant.
It walked slowly toward me, the firelight casting huge, dancing shadows on the cave walls. I could see where I was now—a large, dry cavern. I was lying on a bed of piled, dry leaves.
I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t run. I was at the mercy of a monster. I was trapped in its den.
“God save me,” I whimpered, squeezing my eyes shut. This was it. I was food. They were just saving me.
The creature stopped a few feet away. It lowered the torch. I opened my eyes, forced to look.
It was the smaller of the two, the one I now saw was a female. She was massive, but her movements were… gentle. She didn’t snarl. She didn’t approach me with hunger. She just watched me, her head tilted, those dark, intelligent eyes scanning me from head to toe.
She made that low, purring sound again. Then she set the torch in a crack in the wall and turned back to me.
She was carrying something. A bundle of… leaves? She knelt beside me. I flinched, bracing for the blow, the teeth.
It never came.
She reached out and, with surprising delicacy, laid her huge, hairy hand on my forehead. It was cool and leathery. She was checking for fever.
Then, she moved to my leg. My trousers were soaked and caked in blood and mud. She began to tear the fabric away from the wound. I cried out, but she held me steady with her other hand, not angrily, just firmly.
She revealed the wound. It was a ruin of bone and flesh. She looked at it, then took a wad of the vegetation she carried, chewed it into a thick, green paste, and applied it directly to the wound.
I screamed as the poultice hit my raw nerves. It burned like fire. But almost immediately, the burning faded into a strange, cool numbness.
She worked for minutes, cleaning the wound, applying the paste, and then… I don’t know how… she bound it. Tightly.
When she was done, she stood up. She looked at me one last time, then walked back toward the fire, leaving me in the dim light.
I lay there, stunned. My leg throbbed, but the sharp, shrieking pain was gone.
I wasn’t their prisoner. I was their patient.
I don’t know how long I was in that cave. Weeks, certainly. Maybe a month. Time lost all meaning.
My life fell into a strange routine.
They were a family. The large one, the patriarch, would leave every morning and return at dusk, sometimes carrying a deer or rabbits. The female, the matriarch, was the one who cared for me.
Twice a day, she would come to me. She’d bring fresh water in a hollowed-out piece of rock. She’d remove the poultice, inspect the wound (which, miraculously, was not festering), and apply a fresh one.
She brought me meat. Roasted. They had a fire, deep in the cave, vented through a fissure I couldn’t see. They were smart. They knew how to control it.
The most bizarre moment came after the first week. My body, healing, had to… relieve itself. I was mortified, helpless on my bed of leaves. The smell was sharp in the enclosed space.
The Matriarch came over. She didn’t show disgust. She just looked, understood. She left and came back with a handful of pale, crushed powder. Lime, I realized. From the limestone walls. She sprinkled it over the mess, neutralizing the scent.
They were intelligent. Not just animal cunning. This was… reason.
But they were not human.
I’d hear them communicating. Not in words, but a language of low whistles, deep rumbles, and the occasional sharp click.
There were children. Two of them. Small, hairy, and impossibly fast. For the first two weeks, I only saw them as blurs in the shadows, peeking at me, their eyes wide with curiosity, before the Matriarch would shoo them away with a low growl.
They were terrified of me. But one day, the smaller of the two, the most curious one, crept closer.
The adults were at the back of the cave, busy with a fresh kill. The little one, maybe the size of a five-year-old boy, edged into the firelight.
He stopped ten feet away. Just staring.
I was weak, but I managed a small, tired smile. “Hey there.“
My voice startled him. He froze.
He looked at my face, then at my hair. I had a full, red-blond beard. He seemed fascinated by it.
Slowly, he took a step. Then another.
He reached me. He stood beside my hip, his little hairy body trembling. He reached out a small, leathery hand and… he touched my hair. My beard. He just wanted to feel it.
Then he did something that stopped my heart.
He smiled. Not a human smile, not really. It was wide, showing blunt teeth, but it was not a threat. It was pure, unadulterated curiosity and… joy.
He pulled his hand back, looked at it, and then scampered away into the darkness as he heard his mother approaching.
That was it. That was the moment my terror finally broke. I was safe. I was being cared for by these… monsters.
Slowly, I regained my strength. The wound closed. The bone was setting, crooked, I was sure, but it was setting.
I began to sit up. The family watched me, their curiosity evident. I would nod to them. “Mornin’,” I’d say. They’d just grunt or purr in reply.
The day came when I knew I could stand.
I pushed myself up, using the cave wall for support. My leg screamed, but it held my weight. I stood there, shaking, breathing hard.
The entire family stopped what they were doing. They just watched. There was no menace. It was… anticipation.
I took a step. Then another. I was lame. I would be lame for life. But I was walking.
I knew it was time to leave.
I felt a profound, aching sadness. These creatures, these “man beasts” that soldiers told stories about around campfires, had shown me more compassion than I’d seen on any battlefield. They had saved me when my own kind had left me for dead.
But I was a man. And I had to go back.
The next morning, I walked to the mouth of the cave. The Patriarch was there, as if waiting.
He just looked at me.
I nodded. “I… I have to go.“
He stepped aside.
I walked out of the darkness and into the blinding light of day for the first time in weeks. The forest was green and alive.
The whole family emerged behind me, blinking in the sun. The Matriarch, the two young ones, and the Patriarch. They stood there, a silent, furry line.
I turned to them. How do you thank a monster?
“I don’t know how to…” I started, my voice thick.
The Matriarch walked toward me. She was holding something.
My hat. My crumpled, blood-stained cavalry hat. I hadn’t seen it since the battle. They had found it. They had kept it for me.
She held it out. Her massive hand, which could have crushed my skull, was open and gentle.
I took it. I looked into her dark, black eyes, and I saw something I will take to my grave. I saw understanding.
“Thank you,” I said. I wasn’t just thanking her for the hat. I was thanking her for my life.
She didn’t respond. She just held my gaze.
I put my hat on my head. I turned and, without looking back, I started walking into the woods.
One of them pointed. Straight ahead. A path.
I looked back one last time. They were gone. All except one. The head of the little one, the one who had touched my beard, peeking over the bank.
Then he, too, was gone.
As I walked away, a sound echoed through the woods. A loud, long, mournful howl. It wasn’t a wolf. It was them.
I never looked back.
I am an old man now. Last year, I rode my horse back to that battlefield.
The war equipment is still there, rusting in the leaves. The trees are scarred. It brought back all the bad memories.
I rode further, into the woods, trying to find the den.
It was gone. The creek had washed the bank out. There was no sign a cave had ever been there.
I stood there for an hour, hoping to see them again. Hoping for a sign. But there was only silence.
As I mounted my horse to leave, I looked back one last time at the woods where the monsters had lived, and I wondered what had happened to them. I was filled with such gratitude for the way they had cared for me.
And then, as I rode away, I heard it.
From deep across the creek.
A long, loud howl.
I smiled. And this time, I didn’t look back.
