Bull might escape the bars of his cell, but he can’t escape prison.
Bull was always good at lying. He convinced the judge, jury, and lawyers that he hadn’t meant to kill his family. He got murder reduced to manslaughter. He convinced the warden that he smashed his cellmate’s head into the toilet in self-defense. And he convinced the two prison guards driving the van that he had $40,000 dollars stashed in the Alaskan wilderness. He promised to give it to them to help him escape. The amount to entice the guards was tricky. Too much and it was too good to be true. Too little and it wasn’t worth the risk. There was no money. Bull wasn’t even his real name.
The van swayed back and forth on the switchback road through the woods. Bull sat on the floor of the maintenance van in handcuffs next to an assortment of digging tools trying to stay in a seated position. He bumped into the bare metal sides every time the van turned.
“How much further?” The driver of the van said. He was a skinny pock scarred dope with an Adam’s apple bigger than his nose. Tick thought of Ichabod Crane when they first met.
“Keep going.” Bull said. Purposefully non-committal. He learned when he was a child to give only enough information to rouse curiosity when manipulating someone. For the greedy and gullible, Bull was like a cat. They were his canaries.
“I don’t want to get stuck out here, convict.” The man in the passenger seat said. He was an athlete once, but his muscles went into disuse under a layer of beer fat. Just sitting in the car made beads of sweat pop up on his bald head. He had a shotgun lying on his lap, and he was the less congenial of the two. Bull would take him out first.
“What’s the matter Benny?” The skinny driver said. “Afraid of Crescent Moon Man?”
“Drive the van, and keep your hole shut, Chop.” Chop was short for Chopper. Because of his build, Rick liked to think it was short for chopstick.
“Who’s Crescent Moon Man?” Bull said. Staying engaged meant dialogue. The more dialogue, the easier it was to keep his companions distracted.
“Local legend around here.” Chop said. “Long time ago, there was a Yupik man killed his whole tribe. Like fifty, sixty people.”
“I hate this story.” Benny grumbled and dabbed the sweat off his forehead.
“He was like some kind of butcher. Dismembered women, tore kids apart…”
“You’re kind of guy.” Benny interrupted directing the comment to his prisoner. Both the guards laughed. Bull joined them with a wry smile. They wouldn’t be laughing soon.
“Anyway, he kills everyone. But before he takes out the last person, it’s like a shaman, you know? She curses him to be bound to the place where he killed all their people.” Chop says as he winds down the road a little too fast making the tires squeal. Benny smacked him on the arm, and Chop slowed rubbing the spot and scowling.
“So, he’s stuck?” Bull said.
“Yeah. Forever. Immortal. That means he can’t…”
“I know what immortal means.” Bull said.
“His flesh is stuck to the land of his kill site. He can’t leave. Ever. And he can’t die. He’s a prisoner, like you.”
“Not much like him.” Benny chimed in. He turned his fat head on his fat neck to look at Bull. “You got off easy.”
“Why do they call him Crescent Moon Man?” Bull asked.
The two guards looked at each other waiting for an answer. Benny shrugged. “Don’t know. I guess that part of the legend got lost.” Chop nodded in agreement.
They went on for hours into the woods. The road was nothing but a single lane now and the trees got denser the more they drove. The canopy of leaves blotted out the twilight. Bull was waiting for the sun to set. Better to do the deed in the dark. “Pull over here. This is it.”
Benny jumped, more slid like a giant sack of mashed potatoes, out of the van and looked around. “You sure? There’s nothing around here. How do you know this is the place?”
Bull scooted on his butt out of the back of the van when Chop opened the door. “You think I don’t remember where my forty grand is. You know what I had to do to get that money? How many people I had to swindle?” Bull looked around theatrically. “Nah. This is the place. I’d know it like the back of my hand.”
Chop undid the handcuffs and Bull rubbed the cinching from his wrists. He reached into the van and grabbed the pick and shovel from under a rough wool blanket. The night was cool but not cold. Alaskan summers are notoriously pleasant, but the guards still wore their uniform jackets. Benny had his shotgun in his left hand as they walked through the woods to the fictitious treasure spot. He wasn’t wearing a sidearm. Chop was, but it was holstered and secured. That would buy Bull a second or two.
He led them deeper into the forest. Chop pulled out his flashlight to fight the oncoming dark. Benny stumbled over fallen limbs with his short plump legs, huffing and puffing the whole time. Bull stopped at a spot between five trees of the same size that were equidistant from each other. “This is it.” Bull said. He dropped the shovel and spit on his hands. He grabbed the pick and was going to start swinging into the soft earth when he felt a hand land on his shoulder. Bull sneered as he turned to see fingers so fat the meat was about to burst through the skin like overstuffed sausages.
“No games, Bull. We have a deal. You give us the money we get you to Canada. But don’t think I won’t cut you in half with buckshot if you double cross us.” Benny said. Bull could tell from the threat that Benny had never killed anyone. Killers don’t make threats. They just kill. Benny didn’t have the eyes of a killer, but Bull had no doubt the fat guard meant what he said. He jerked his shoulder free without reply and stabbed the ground with the pick.
He made a show of it. Working at different angles, getting the ground loose for the shovel. He would stop and roll his neck or work the strain from his arms. The pauses in his digging were ruses for Bull to see if his companions were sufficiently excited. Their eyes were wide. The greedy are easy to mold. Bull mentioned the money and they were hooked. Like throwing a glass of whiskey in an alcoholic’s face. He’s going to lick his lips.
Bull hacked at the ground for a full forty-five minutes. That was by design. He put the pick down next to one of the trees and massaged his hands. He looked up. The stars were barely visible through the tightly packed leaves overhead. It had gotten dark quickly. He picked up the shovel and motioned to Chop. “Shine the light right there.” Bull pointed at the chewed up dirt circle he made. Chop aimed the beam down. “You ready?” Bull asked. Chop smiled and laughed with lust in his throat. Benny took two steps closer. It was exactly what Bull wanted.
He aligned himself so that his back was to the fat guard. He put his shovel into the earth and gathered up a full mound dumping it to the side. He did it again, and right after he dumped the dirt, Bull swung in a wide arc. There was a dull clang as the shovel hit the side of the fat guard’s head with so much force the wooden haft broke at the connection point. Benny’s head caved in at the eye and below. He fell like a sack of garbage.
Bull was still holding the broken shovel handle, and he didn’t hesitate. He ran to Chop who dropped his flashlight and went for his gun. Bull had him figured out all along. The untrained will go for the weapon that does the most damage. It’s natural. At a few feet away, Chop would have had a better chance using his fists. By the time Chop had his hand on his pistol, Bull clubbed him in the head with the handle. Chop fell, but he was still conscious, scrambling back to get away. “We had a deal!” He screamed as blood spilled down his face. Bull didn’t like to gloat over his victims. He thought added dialogue took away from the drama. He came down with an overhead strike smashing Chop’s head again and again until his only reaction was a limp flop in reflex to Bull’s hammer blows. Chop’s head was pulp.
Bull dropped the handle and a heard rustling from where Benny fell. His body was shaking, and foam gurgled from his mouth. Bull chuckled and grabbed the pick. He ended Benny’s seizure with a quick strike to the head.
He was in his teens when he had his first taste of killing. He stomped on a homeless man’s head when he tried to mug Bull. To his surprise, he didn’t feel bad or guilty about killing him. He felt refreshed, like a cool shower or a drink of water. And that’s how he felt now seeing Chop’s smashed skull and the pick sticking out of Fat Benny’s head. Bull stood straighter, he breathed deeper. He was a better man now. Stronger. More confident. Scrubbed clean. Sick? Possibly. That was something Bull was willing to accept for the invigoration that always came with killing. And it had been too long.
Between the two guards, Bull was able to change his clothes. Chop’s pants were a little snug, but Benny’s would have uncomfortably large even with a belt. He had to settle for the fat man’s shirt and jacket though as his skinny companion was covered in blood. He picked up the shotgun and put on the gun belt. He waved goodbye to his corpse liberators and started back to the van.
It wasn’t hard to find even in the dark. Bull made a straight line at a ninety-degree angle from where they stopped to make getting back a no brainer. As for the bodies, Bull left them to the worms. They would be long gone before anyone discovered them. He got in the van and started it up, on his way to freedom.
Five minutes into the drive Bull realized two things. One, he didn’t know where he was, and therefor didn’t know where he was going. He started in the same direction they had been driving before. Bull told them to go east because that was the direction to Canada from where they were, but he didn’t know where he currently was deep into the weaving switchback road. Second, traversing the winding road in the dark was much more difficult than Bull expected. He had the brights on, but all he could see was the few yards of gravel that constituted a road in his high beams and the ever thickening walls of trees that moved closer to him the further he went.
He slowed the van to a crawl watching the lights and the sides of the road for anything that might tell him where he was. Surely, there would be sign sooner or later. He glanced at the gas tank and saw he was a hair over half full. Ever the optimist. If the tank was full when they set out and they were averaging twenty miles a gallon on a twenty gallon tank, Bull had near 200 miles left before he ran out of gas. Anywhere else that would have been fine. In rural Alaska, it was a concern.
He pulled the van over and turned off the ignition. He opened the glovebox and rummaged through it. He looked in back and under the seat. There had to be a map or something in the van, but no such luck. He glanced at the radio for a split second and put the idea down. There was no way they wouldn’t figure out what happened. Bull was a great liar, but even the greats have their limits.
Coming up empty-handed in his search he decided he would take his chances and keep going. He could probably squeeze a few extra miles out of the gas tank if he was really careful. Bull put the key in and started the van. Nothing. He pumped the gas a few times, checked to make sure the transmission was in park and tried again. Bupkis. He took the key out and put it back in a few times trying in vain to start the van and got the same result.
“Goddammit!” He said out loud. He wasn’t sunk yet though. Bull spent a few years as a mechanic before his sentence. It might be a simple fix, he thought. He got out of the van and popped the hood. The canopy of the trees was like a black umbrella blocking out the night sky. It was so dark Bull had to squint to see anything further than a foot. He went back to the van and got the flashlight. It didn’t turn on. The damn thing was fine not ten minutes ago. Bull unscrewed the top and switched the batteries around. Same result. A fleeting thought entered his head. This is how horror movies go. Bull shook his head and pushed the thought away. He could feel the closeness of the forest right up against the road. It was like being in a closet.
Bull decided he would walk up the road a little way. Just a little, to see if there was a road sign or marker. He was looking for anything that would give him a clue to where he was. He didn’t go more than fifty feet away and he made sure to stay on the road. Keeping the van in sight was futile. It was white but it might as well have been covered with stealth technology for as much as Bull could see as soon as he took ten steps. It was quiet. No owls hooting. No rustling of leaves in the wind. Now that he thought about it, there was no wind either. The only noise came from his feet walking along the road.
“Screw this.” He said. Bull didn’t get the fifty feet he allotted himself when he abandoned the idea of walking down a pitch-black road in the middle of Alaska all alone. The van was dead, but it was still a shelter. He could sleep there until morning and get a better lay of the land. It was getting colder in the darkness, but the van had a blanket. With that and the jacket he had, Bull would be plenty comfortable.
He turned and started back to the van when he bumped into something. He groped in the dark and felt the striated bark of one of the tall trees. He was certain he didn’t stray from the way he came. But Bull couldn’t find the van. He hadn’t gone more than a handful of paces, and he’d lost his temporary sanctuary.
Bull walked further than the distance he left. He still hadn’t found it. His pace quickened. His hands got sweaty. Had it gotten even darker? He started to make noises in his mouth like clicks and whistles just to have something break up the monotony of silence. Then he heard it. The gentle squish of his boots on the ground. Rick was positive he never left the road, but there he was in a forest so thick he had to turn his body sidewise to squeeze through the trees.
His gun belt got caught while he was shuffling in the dark and he took it off to move better. He was holding it and weaving his way through the brush and brambles when something hit his arm, and he dropped the belt. Rick bent down to get it. He was already lost. He didn’t want to be lost and unarmed. He felt around but he couldn’t find it. It would have fallen straight down, and he heard it hit the ground. Wait. Did he hear it hit the ground? He wasn’t sure. He groped around in the dark for what felt like a long time and came up empty.
Maybe he was losing it, but while he was on his hands and knees feeling around in the dark for something he already knew he wouldn’t find again, the trees were closer than before. Bull crawled a little bit to find his lost gun, but not so far that the terrain would have changed. He stood and wiped his hands off on his guard jacket. He took a breath.
He spun in a circle looking for a way out. His hands stretched out on either side banging into tree trunks. Every time Bull moved, a part of his body hit something. He unbuttoned the top of Fat Benny’s oversized shirt to catch a breath. His mouth was met with dryness. He swallowed a lump of nothing that hurt going down. He swayed on his feet clutching at anything to keep himself upright. Until finally a soft pinprick of light shone at him in between the thicket. He was light a moth unable not to go to it.
Bull walked into a clearing in the middle of a near wall of trees. He focused only on the light, faint as a whisper, coming from a tumbledown hut of mud, sticks and straw. There was a ring around the structure dug into the ground like a tiny moat ten yards away with the hut at its center. Stars were over his head again. The all-encompassing canopy had opened. Bull took a second to catch his breath and slow his thundering heart. When he gathered himself, he stepped over the tiny ring around the hut, and everything went black.
Bull’s eyes fluttered open to a messy dark blur. He could smell smoke and the distinctive musty odor of old cloth with a hint bowel mixed in. He reached up to rub the atrophy from his eyes. His arm didn’t respond. Bull willed his hand to his face but nothing moved. He blinked trying and get his wits back, and after a few seconds his vision cleared.
He was staring up at a lattice of sticks and vegetation. His eyes were dry. He tried again to rub them, but his arms didn’t move. Bull was laying on a bed made of the same material as the roof. He raised his head and saw he was inside a small square room. A cookfire was in a cobblestone hearth in the corner that looked like it had been repaired several times over its life. The walls looked the same as the roof, but the floor was dirt.
Bull tried to get up. He was stuck, and it wasn’t until he saw the other person in the room that he realized He couldn’t move because his hands and feet were bound to the bed. The man, Bull thought it was a man, had his back to him. He was hunched over the fire wearing a threadbare blanket over his shoulders. He had long stringy grey hair so thin Bull could see patches of aged skin on his scalp even in the dim light. The smell of smoldering wet wood filled the little space. His head was misshapen. Like something fell on it and left a dent.
“Hey.” Bull said. His throat was dry as a cracker. He cleared it and tried again. “Hey!” The man didn’t respond.
Bull yanked against the ropes. He only managed to start the beginnings of a rope burn. He tried banging his feet to loosen the binding. He was held fast. He licked his lips. His tongue was like jerky rubbing over sandpaper. “I was stuck on the road.” He said in his most pitiful voice, but he was only a quarter acting. “I got lost. I was looking for a place to sleep.”
The man stopped fiddling with the fire and pulled something out. He held it to his side. Bull saw it was a glowing hot blade. He looked around the room for something, anything that might help him. Hanging on the wall was Chop’s gun belt next to a war club that looked so old Bull initially mistook it as part of the wall of sticks.
The man walked over to the weapons. He kept his head turned away from his captive and pointed at the gun belt with a bony finger. “You.” He said. His nails were long with ragged ends. Then he pointed at the war club “Me.” His voice was low, almost bestial. Bull got the impression the man hadn’t spoken for a long time.
“Yeah?” Bull groaned. His voice trembled. “Well, you can keep the gun belt. Just cut me loose and I’ll be on my way.” He hadn’t expected it to work, but he had to try.
He turned to Bull, finally showing himself. His nose was flat and sunken into his face, and his eyes were set deep into his skull, like someone pressed them into the sockets with their thumbs. His forehead jutted out over his eyes making a shelter for them and his chin turned up to meet it. In prison, Bull saw a lot of scars and deformities. It’s just part of the life. His captor had a disorder or defect, Bull had never seen. He looked other worldly. The shape of his face reminded bull of a capital C. C for crescent…crescent moon.
Bull jerked against the ropes so hard the bed jumped. The man advanced. Bull yelled for him to stay away. He pleaded. He threatened. He begged. He thrashed hard against the ropes rubbing his wrists raw and bloody. The man lowered his face to Bull’s. He opened his mouth in a wide grin. His maw was black. His gums receded down to the bone making great gaps between his rotted teeth.
He jabbed Bull in the chest with his terrible finger then slapped himself in the chest. “We same.” He raised the hot knife, cut a piece of his finger off and popped it into his mouth. Bull screamed. The man pulled up Bull’s pinky and slice it off putting it in his mouth as well. Bull cursed the man. He told him he would kill him. Then he told him he wouldn’t tell anyone about this if he let him go. Then he told him he had $40,000 that was all his if he cut him loose. The bindings were wet and sticky with blood, but Bull could feel them getting looser.
The old man put his thin calloused hand on Bull’s forehead to hold him still. He didn’t force Bull’s head down. He wasn’t harsh. It was a tender gesture, compassionate even. His face was so close he was out of focus, but Bull saw his sunken eyes. It was familiar and chilling. He understood how long it had been for the man to go without the refreshing rinsing of his soul from the blood of others. He recognized it because Bull saw that lustful stare in his own eyes. And he knew Crescent Moon Man was right. They were the same.
He started to speak. Not like before where he struggled. He was fluent and graceful. It was like he was speaking backward deep from his throat in more than one voice. It might have been a beautiful language. Bull didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t any indigenous dialect he’d ever heard. He quietly wondered if it was of this world at all.
As the man chanted. Bull felt his jaw start to disobey him and his lips parted. He commanded his mouth to shut and used all his strength to clamp his teeth together, but they only responded to the words Crescent Moon Man spoke. Bull’s eyes streamed tears as he made incoherent cries for mercy. The man leaned over Bull and opened his mouth, A stream of black sludge spilled out into Hick’s. He gasped and choked and did everything he could to spit the vileness out. He was powerless as he swallowed the hellish dark ooze. “I you, and you me.” Crescent Moon Man said and pointed at Bull. “You I and me you.” He poked his thumb at his own stomach.
Bull flailed hard against the bed, and with a giant twist, the rope snapped. He pushed the old man away knocking him to the floor. Bull reached for the ropes of his other hand and pulled them loose. He was in the middle of untying his feet. When he heard the old man laughing. It was strange to define, but Bull was certain he heard that laugh before.
“Too late.” Crescent Moon Man said in a voice that was all too familiar.
Hick kept untying the ropes around his boots and watched in shocked silence as his hands withered into bony appendages with long chewed fingernails. He turned to the man, who was standing straight and tall. His grey brittle hair sucked into his head as a new chestnut crop sprouted. His features smoothed. His body filled. Before Bull’s eyes he watched a myth, someone that wasn’t supposed to be real, morph into an exact copy of him.
“No!” Bull said in a guttural animal shout. He grabbed his neck to stop the alien sound and felt leathery worn skin. His hands brushed his chin sticking out, curling up to a huge forehead that jutted out over his eyes like a visor.
Crescent Moon Man gave Bull a bow and walked out the door. Bull quickly, as quickly as he could using decrepit hands, finished with the ropes, and stood from the bed. A bolt of pain from the soles of his feet to the top of head shocked him. He swayed but managed to stay standing and stumbled out the door after his doppelganger.
The body was young and spry as it nearly skipped away from the hut. Bull’s body wouldn’t cooperate. He was moving as fast as he could, but his feet would barely rise off the ground. Every step was like his body was falling off a ladder. He wheezed. He coughed to catch his breath. After he couldn’t take anymore, Bull stopped and put his hands on his knees. He hadn’t gone five feet from the door, and he was panting like he’d sprinted a marathon. “Wait!” He screamed, and he felt the pain rock his body.
Crescent Moon Man stopped and turned around. “It’s your curse now.” He said. He stood stock still on the other side of the moat circle. Bull did his best to slow his breathing. He shuffled to the edge of the circle. Bull reached up to throttle Crescent Moon Man’s neck and his hand banged against something as hard as metal. There was nothing there. He tried again and was halted again by an invisible barrier. He tapped the air with a gnarled fingernail. “You’re tied to the land Crescent Moon Man.” Said Crescent Moon Man. “You have to pay for your crimes.” With that Crescent Moon Man walked away, And Bull fell to his knees screaming into the dim sunrise, pounding his hands on nothing.