The Belmont Brothers: Binds - Part 1 Read online

The Belmont Brothers: Binds (Part 1 – Capture)

  By Matt Molgaard

  Copyright 2012 Matt Molgaard

  Chapter 1

  Jonathan knew he’d broken his leg upon impact, and he knew it to be quite serious. There was a sound in the bushes, the horse had bucked, reared upright on its hind legs and sent him spiraling through the air in a morbid pirouette. He hit the cobblestone (a rare luxury lain in the wealthier regions of Northern California territory; only afforded by a financial influx the area had seen in the wake of the great gold rush) in powerful and precarious fashion, bouncing once before coming to rest in a wave of pain and bright white light: sprawled in an awkward position which no human body may rightfully contort. His leg was a twisted mess. Although he’d landed on his back, belly up, his kneecap was warped in a nauseating spin, facing the very stone in which he lay upon, a complete 180 degree shift. His tibia had split in half, vertically, not horizontally, and two jagged yellow tinged ivory shards protruded from either side of his upper calf, having shredded his flesh in jagged eruptions, tearing the fabric of his slacks. The bones protruded like a horrifically inconceivable pair of identical stalagmites of ages old, the dripping blood a thawing ruby ice.

 

  Plasma slowly spilled around the wounds, not a staggering amount by any means, but it made for a disconcerting piece of imagery as it quickly congealed within the wedges of the cobble. Jonathan’s head spun as he craned his neck to assess the damage, he screamed out, a vulnerable cry of pain and terror. His stomach grumbled as the day’s meals threatened to swell in his gorge. Jeremiah, who’d been riding just paces in advance when his horse too had taken scare, came trotting back to Jonathan’s side in a rush, panicked by the melee, frightened by the yelp that emanated from Jonathan’s deepest recesses. He dismounted swiftly and ran to his brother’s side.

  “Christ almighty, you’ve shattered the thing in a thousand places brother!” Sweat spread across his forehead instantly, pooling in the arch of his brow bone. He shook, and fidgeted uncontrollably as he examined the extent of the injury, wondering how in the world he’d manage to get his brother to safety without seeing the appendage shred away to dangling tendons and torn flesh, hanging on by the human strands typically disguised by the body’s skin. “I don’t know what to do Jonathan! You’re broken to Hell!”

  “Doc Turner, ‘Miah. Go get to Doc Turner. He’s only half a mile back the road. Tell him to bring his assistant Thomas and their carriage… gonna have to carry me away from this one, and it isn’t happening on any horse!” His body had lapsed into mild convulsions and his skin had gone clammy with an ice cold sweat. He shivered, entangled in the day’s waning warmth.

  Without hesitation Jeremiah did as he was told. The elder of the two, he’d still always been the smaller, weaker of the brothers. He’d let Jonathan bully him on countless occasions when they were boys: beatings in the back garden, beatings on the front lawn, manipulations he could not counter. He’d always been the physically and mentally inferior of the two. But time had witnessed both mature into fair men, who cared deeply for each another. The days of abuse faded as manhood and honor had become introduced attributes embraced by both. They’d grown into the boots of integrity. Each worked at Grigsby’s Bank in the center of town, and by all accounts, though Jeremiah was still the physically feebler of the two, he made every dime his brother took in, if not more, and earned respect as an intelligent business man, from local clientele, the townsfolk and his family. Retribution for years of an inferiority complex that once restricted his head to palm, shame a visible illness.

  Business – and respect for that matter - bore no relevance to the issue at hand.

  Jonathan and Jeremiah had gotten off work as the clock struck 6 pm, and after loading up their notes (piled high due to numerous new accounts acquired after the recent completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad), they’d headed for their horses, that rested under the bank’s wooden awning out front, already saddled (a task bestowed upon Christopher, the banks latest hire) and waiting in the stoned street. Their prized steeds would guide them home, through the gorgeous mountain bends of Northern, California, where the trees loomed, the beasts howled and the wind whistled a sharp tune that comforted the tormented and haunted the innocent. It would have long since passed dark by the time each had made his full trek home (half an hour for Jeremiah, an additional quarter hour for Jonathan), and the truth is, given the severity of this unexpected debacle, Jonathan was fortunate to have endured such an accident on the mere outskirts of town. Had he been deeper into the rural setting when his mare had been spooked, he’d be left an entangled mess, far from the aid of anyone, where no light, save for that of the moon, graced the rocky path. He could be trampled to death for God’s sake… or worse: the animals of the region were not all docile. There were killers within the thickly wooded land.

  While Jeremiah headed back in the direction from which they’d come, back toward town, Jonathan broke down. A rugged man of great pride, he hadn’t cried in well over a decade, but the tears came upon him, and they splashed like a California river run wild with rapid waters all rage and tumultuous churning. The pain was unbearable. From his toes to his head his pulse pounded a rapid, unrelenting menace that brought pain with each pulsation. His hair clung to his forehead as he perspired profusely. Sweat and tears shrouded his face and he tasted the bitterness of both as the combination of fluids leaked into the creases of his mouth. Ironically, his throat, and only means of drawing the attention of anyone in the near vicinity, was dry as dirt. Rendered completely useless.

  For long drawn out minutes he gazed at the deepening purple of the sky: a foreboding omen. Darkness was on the way, and the thought left Jonathan’s senses swimming frantically. He’d never feared blackness. There was a peace in the still of the night, the insects humming in masses, a strangely melodic tune. But tonight, there was no peace.

  He was attempting to shift his mangled limb when a branch snapped in the distance. Blue, his mare, again reared, this time back pedaling, turning and running right past Jonathan (barely missing his motionless body, which would have been nothing more than mush had Blue miscalculated his retreat) into the distance: headed home. “Damn it,” he croaked, and the dense foliage responded: another branch cracked. Jonathan went quiet, trembling in pain, growing increasingly frightened. What the hell was in the woods? Those weren’t twigs cracking; those were branches, snapping in two. Another crack pierced the silence of the darkening night and Jonathan let out a yelp in accord. He was not alone, and what stooped behind the shroud of green vegetation was not welcomed camaraderie.

  “Who’s there,” he bellowed to the best of his ability, and an odd fluttering sound offered immediate response. It was, to Jonathan a sound not unlike a moth’s wings fluttering near a candle’s flame…but it was much, much louder. Moth perhaps, but if moth were the case, there must be a million of them clustered together, thrusting their wings upward, downward, upward, downward in absolutely perfect synchronization. Jonathan knew it not to be true.

  The sound came again, from his left, beneath the dip of the road where the rock gave way to dirt and the earth took to a fatal slant: an unforgiving mountainside. More rustling about had Jonathan’s heart beating at his chest like a trapped animal whose instincts ensure an inescapable and gruesome death. It could explode at any minute.

  More disturbances in the brush, this time further to his left, but far nearer the road. Whatever animal that had decided to stalk wounded prey was advancing and Jonathan had no way - save for a small blade he’d kept tucked into a discreet belt holster for miscellaneous chores at work or home - of defending himself. Never had he thought of bein
g forced to actually use it in order to protect himself: but now, in this moment, that blade seemed his lone line of defense and hope. It failed to ease his anxiety.

  The sun had nearly disappeared in its entirety. It slunk slowly below the tree lines, miles off in the western distance; slipped behind the walls of the rocky terrain. The blackness continued to close in, and the fluttering sound too continued, now, much closer: a thick drum that Jonathan’s heartbeat seemed force to match. A cricket chirped loud and shrill. An owl let out its announcement to the world: evening had descended. Jonathan closed his eyes, a silent prayer issued.

  More disturbances followed in the grass, and Jonathan’s heart sunk. Not only could he hear the earth being disturbed, he could now see the grass that bordered the road swaying back and forth. A hulking mass jerked against the backdrop of the ascending moon. What is it? Whatever it was moved awkwardly, a seemingly uncontrollable, yet simultaneously agile quality about its frighteningly fluid shifts in the night caused Jonathan a great deal of confusion, furthering his uncertainty as to what type of animal he dealt with. What the hell is it?! The weeds parted. There was no order in this animal’s approach: just a frenzied, anxious accosting… and yet, to Jonathan this monstrosity seemed so graceful in its movement. A pitiful squeak escaped his lips: all those years as the alpha Belmont and he’d been reduced to a helpless weasel prepared to beg for any measure of mercy.

  Mercy, he would not get. Not on this night.

  An elongated limb slipped from the brush, and reached out onto the cobblestone. The arm, the... paw! Jonathan thought: it’s all wrong! And indeed, it was. Two crooked talon-like fingers, perhaps ten inches long reached for a firm grip, while what looked like a thumb (also grossly sized) - webbed to the creature’s inner finger - came down to form a firm hold on a rock. And then the forearm followed, and it echoed the image of the hand: long… unbelievably elongated – two feet at least – slowly emerging from the grass. It was thick with muscle and fast-twitch fibers. In the moonlight Jonathan could see that it lacked any form of hair: only sinewy muscle stood out and seemed to pulsate against the leathery skin. The forearm collided with a joint that seemed too intricate to actually be required by any living thing: instead of a single elbow, the natural point of flexibility appeared to be comprised of three separate elbows, all sharp points that enclosed to form a singular spike when the monster extended its limbs to full capacity. It crawled, but not as a cat on the prowl would crawl, as a disfigured tarantula might crawl. The creature’s obstinate jerkiness immediately reminded Jonathan of an overgrown – much overgrown – praying mantis... with clawed talons and the muscle mass of a half dozen men.

  Jonathan began to scream, pleading for some random stranger or a distant neighbor, any evening traveler that might hear him and rush to his aid, but as the creature emerged from the roadside, he knew there would be no saving him. Not tonight, not ever again.

  It was a massive mound of flesh, most certainly leathery in nature, and wired top to bottom with muscles that a full grown lion might envy. Its chest stretched and contracted with its breathing, but it reached astounding proportions on both spectrum ends: when inhaling, it seemed the beast’s chest stretched to a full six feet wide, yet when it exhaled it somehow had shrunken down to no more than a foot in width. The beast’s torso was long, and curved inward which affixed a strange horizontal exaggeration to the creature: it seemed to Jonathan, to be at least ten feet long. Feet that matched the creature’s gnarled talons rested on the cobblestone, a steady hold on the rock below. Jonathan stared silently, frozen to the spot in amazement and sheer shock. The creature’s legs bore the most memorable difference between what Jonathan saw that night and any other living creature he’d seen in his 28 years in California. Rather than the primary bones: the tibia (the adjoining fibula) and the femur, this beast seemed to have three major bones within the lower extremities, resulting in not a single functioning joint, but two: each distanced by a foot of thick bone encased in wiry muscle and flesh, jagged and torn from past hunts, no doubt. Jonathan stared in petrified awe for a moment it looks like a kangaroo that had its legs broken and never had the chance to see them heal properly. It was a fair comparison. The head however, the head was something directly from a H.P. Lovecraft tale, the things nightmares are truly made of. The things that no grown man should ever be forced to acknowledge as tangible substance, and Jonathan felt an unrelenting wave of nausea overtake him as he gazed at the beast in all its morbid menace.