‘Damn this road is hard.’ The ACL is ripped, the meniscus maybe gone, switch back down through the trees—don’t pound back down this road.’
He ran up the drive towards the Arch Tree. He noted something hanging from he arch. No way was he going to become an old nerd a week out from the fight. He trotted up the drive, then down the path towards the hollow, that passed under the Arch Tree. He jogged in place under it, knees high, head up, looking at the damned thing that hung there. It looked like a cat’s skull, but was as big as Norman’s jug of a head. The skull was clean, but seemed fresh, with some bloody meat hung from it and a fresh wet look to the bone. Scrape marks from a large knife were evident. It was hung by a chord through the ears, its empty eye socket’s looking up the path and the driveway to the powerline cut. Big crow feathers hung from what looked like bloody bowstrings tied to the lower incisors, teeth that were two inches long, the upper teeth a good three inches.
He worked his step-and-drag around the thing and saw a long, wedge-shaped puncture in the back top of the cat head, still wet with blood, some of which dripped on the ground. He then noticed that he was doing his high steps in jelling blood. A chill coursed up his spine, a chill he had never before felt—‘Doc! Fuggin’ Hell!’
He ran off up the path, recalling, in a fit of rationalization, that Stormgren had said something about his Granddaughter working at a big cat rescue center in Missouri. The old dude is crazy…
The cat skull hanging from the Arch Tree, put out of mind, with blame to the Weird Doctor assigned, Christos recalled his mother, as he packed to go to BJJ Nationals in New York, reminding him, “If you’re not going there to win, you’re wasting your time.”
He had won.
Fight Camp inventory occupied his mind now. He had professors he taught under in three states, his Brazilian professors having relocated to Arkansas and New York. But he was his own coach. The fight camp had been well thought out. His best two guys of the fifteen he directly instructed, Norman and Wulfgar—fucking weird-ass neo-pagans, but solid men, had gone missing; no calls, no text, no email—nothing even on telegram. It was not like them.
He was light-footing it up the hard granite and clay “road,” or “driveway”, both being misnomers. A hoot and flapping of great wings sounded off to his right. In the zone and unstartled, in fight-mode, he ran lightly up and around a fresh dead fall he would have to process today so that Grudge Girl could be taken to town for ice cream. He noted that the bird taking flight was a large owl that seemed to have horns on its head—the like he had never seen.
Thomas, his best Tennessee associate fighter, could not make camp due to the transmission on his beater taking a shit. As a gear head, able to work on his own cars, but usually unwilling to take away from fight time, it irked him that so many of his fighters neglected their vehicles or failed to properly maintain them.
Panzer, another Tennessee fighter, was down in that same carpool.
Roland, from North Carolina, was on the way by train. But the damned thing kept breaking down!
Norman was what he needed to train hard for a catch weight bare knuckle MMA bout. Norman was six foot, 230, solid muscle. Everything was about strength with Norman. He was a BJJ purple belt and couldn’t box for shit. Incredibly rugged with good wind for such a wall of muscle, Norman was an even match for Christos, He shouldn’t be. Why a genius with an encyclopedic mind for history and theology, who could quote ancient texts and recall the dates of battles that no one else gave a shit about, would be more focused on how big and strong his neck was rather than how good his technique was, boggled the mind of the ever practical Christos. On security detail, Norman was his go to—no more reliable meat shield among his circle of cultured thought-crime thugs.
He noted the owl had come to roost high in an oak at the edge of the cut.
‘At least you aren’t a damned vulture,’ he silently communicated, with a galling notion that his thoughts could be heard on this strange morning.
‘Morning? Its just past noon!’
He glided up to the cut, glanced right along the creek bed, where he saw a big buck, with a rack that was at least ten-points, totally out of season.
‘What the hell? You should have felt nubs!’
The huge deer seemed to agree as it browsed.
He looked left and noted fog lying thick in the lower east end of the creek bed at the base of the cut, on this early July afternoon.
‘It is hot and muggy as shit—the fog should be six hours gone.’
That chill reversed now, playing down his spine, rather than up.
‘Those mushrooms out front, Stormgren better not have cooked any of those up with the steak last night. What the hell?’
Shaking his head, Christos sprinted through the creek bottom, over the culvert—nicely maintained, by himself—and up Panther Road towards the Spring Tree.
Jogging upward back into the dark shaded wood, Christos felt right again, the chill gone, his body working well. Around the bend to the west, and up south again, Christos sprinted, having a sense that he might surprise whatever was there, though nothing should be.
Cresting the 40 degree rise where Grudge Girl had rolled her RAV last week, Christos gained line of sight on the Spring Tree. Stormgren had came to investigate this thing, had explained to them how the Indians long ago had used cordage, splints and careful limb manipulation, to convince this poor stunted tree to grow into a downward thrust trident with the main trunk rising like the staff of the fishing spear. Nobody ever went under the thing. Jay and the other native hillbillies had great reverence for the Spring Tree and the Arch Tree below. But something was hanging from this weird-ass tree. The tree so important to others, he had rarely glanced at, focused as he was on fighting, coaching and protection details, a distant from The Mountain.
As he approached it, now at a walk, suspicion ringing in his ears, as he saw a big damned coyote hanging from that tree, Christos recalled his last conversation with Norman. That maniac had expressed his ideals on how the world was ruled by Satanic Cabalists. They both joked, in the wake of Norman’s doomful prognosis, that if they could not work some social change in America to make it less gay, that they’d go to India, hijack a plane… and there the fun fantasies took flight…
“That’s not a fucking coyote!” he heard himself declare, as he stood before a freshly killed wolf that was bigger then him.
“Hell, this thing is as big as Norman!” he mused, as he noted it was hung by it’s hind paws and dripped blood from a slit throat, blood that pooled all about his feet. His mind reeled and he felt like passing out, “I’m no pussу—I don’t pass out! I don’t hit the floor unless I score a takedown.”
“I know, Brother,” gurgled the wolf, in a woeful tone.
“What?”
Christos grabbed the wolf by the scruff of the neck and lifted it to look into its eyes. What he saw was Norman, his throat cut, wearing a wolf skin like some ancient warrior, but not dead, looking into his eyes. The bleeding throat closed into the Nordic rune tattoos about the neck of his friend he was familiar with.
“It took you long enough—the sun is at noon,” gasped Norman.
“I’m sorry, Brother,” he apologized, still feeling guilty over waking six hours late for the first day of the last week of his fight camp.
Then Norman’s face split into a bloody-mouthed Grin. Norman’s arms, laced into the great wolf-hide, lifted a necklace in both hands, hanging upside down, and dropping it over Christos head, “Me too!”
The blood had risen above his shoes to fill them, the roots of the tree winding p his shins and calves, “Norman, what the fuck?”
The neck, wider than the big head, now flushed with blood behind the healed scar. The strong chin, once clean-shaven, now shortly bearded, formed the bottom point of a wicked grin and Norman gave a wolfish growl, “It’s not a plane, Brother—the best I could do.”
Tree roots encased his legs like sandal straps and dragged him into the cool earth like a worm, a worm that was pissed off to a roar, “Norman!”
