Midnight Falls

Prologue

Fifty miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska

February 5, 1992

The cold seeps into my bones, but it's nothing compared to the icy grip of fear that clutches my heart. I write this as a sort of last will and testament.

To all those who come after me, be warned. What I did in Midnight Falls was necessary. It had to be done. That godforsaken nightmare and the fiendish creatures who called it home had to be stopped. They, who had for centuries, feasted upon humanity, had to be purged from this world.

They weren't human, not really. Oh, they walked and talked like us, wore the masks of normalcy with ease, but beneath the surface, they were monsters. Twisted and evil. They were demons, and Midnight Falls was the place the Devil had set them loose.

I did what I had to do six years ago, and I don’t regret it.

And yet, as I sit here in this frozen wasteland, I can't shake the feeling there are more of them out there. Small towns, tucked away in the forgotten corners of the world, where the monsters can run free and unchecked. Maybe they're lurking in the dark forests of Maine or the rugged mountains of Oregon and Washington. Maybe they're waiting, watching, hungering for their next victim.

The more I think about it, the more I believe Midnight Falls was a trapped community, soon to be discovered, had it not been for what I did that night. It’s the reason why I’m writing this. What I’m hoping to pass on to others, so that my deeds are not forgotten and what evil the world was spared. The horror of that night still haunts my sleep, and there hasn't been a single night since then where I haven't awakened screaming in a cold sweat. Even on the nights I drink myself into a stupor, the nightmares still come to me and play out their horrors on the inside of my eyelids.

Their voices ring in my ears, the screams and cries of those who were being torn apart, and howls echoing through the long, lonely nights as the creatures burned. I hear them even when the moon doesn’t shine. Those howls, those damned howls, are why I sit here now in this old hunting cabin in the middle of this wintry hellscape writing this. Here, where it's colder than a witch’s tit and inhospitable to anyone, and yet I can feel their hot breath on the back of my neck.

They're coming for me, the survivors of Midnight Falls.

I know I can't run forever.

I’ve seen them, the paw prints in the snow. They were there last night. They have come for me. They're out there in that white hell, hungry and waiting. Baring their fangs, knowing soon they'd have their revenge.

It started last week when I spotted the tracks for the first time. They were getting closer, bolder, more determined. I knew then I couldn't hide anymore. I had to face them, had to stand my ground and fight. But as the darkness closes in around me, I wonder if I made a mistake. Should I have left well enough alone and fled when I had the chance? Or had I done the world a favor by ridding it of those monsters?

This isn’t the first time they’ve caught up to me. It’s been nearly six years since I’ve been on the run, hiding. At first, I thought I had gotten away, but it wasn't nine months later, and I noticed the footprints. When I saw those tracks, I knew not all of them had perished, and the survivors would be coming for me.

The prints had appeared in the field behind my cousin’s house. He’d mentioned them one day after coming in from an early morning hunting for turkeys. Turkeys are early risers and had themselves a regular Butterball gala out in his field. In fact, those birds were the only reason he owned the field. Brent was no great shakes at farming and could never grow anything more than weeds.

The oddest tracks I've ever seen, Brent had said, wiping his brow. Worry was etched in the deep lines and furrows of his ruddy face. I've seen coyote and dog tracks, but those are way too big. They looked for all the world like wolf tracks, but that dang sucker would have been the size of a bear to make those.

I’d waited until the sun had come up and made sure I had my trusty Remington in my hands before venturing out into the field. As I’d crouched in the tall grass, examining the tracks, I couldn’t shake the feeling something was watching me. It was as if the trees and scrub that made up the rolling hills and mountains were alive and examining my every move.

Sure enough, there had been at least three deep prints in the drying mud. Whatever had made them had been big, but there was something else I noticed that Brent had overlooked. To make those prints, the creature would've weighed a great deal to leave them so deep. Something massive and heavily muscled had come into the field and stood right there to watch the house.

I’d remained there for what seemed like hours, alternating from looking at the tracks to scanning the woods. I knew as I watched the trees, they were watching me.

I tried to dismiss it, to play it off as some large dog or maybe a lame bear, but the next day, there were more tracks. There had not been just one set, this time, but at least three. The creatures had come again and sat together, facing the house, looking for something or someone. Looking for me. They had crept closer in their daring efforts, sniffing out their prey.

The third night they’d been closer still. They had halted just at the edge of the field. The tracks were only in the tall grass, as if they were not brave enough yet to step out on the neatly cut grass of the backyard. They didn't dare venture into the open. Not yet, but I knew they would be soon.

And so, I waited.

I’d sat up that night, waiting and watching for what I knew was coming. I wasn't disappointed.

In the dead of night, there they were. Dark shapes skulking through the field. Slinking towards the house, towards the window, towards me, but I was ready. I had set rifle ammo on the dresser in front of the window, waiting for them. There was at least half a dozen of the things.

I waited for them, crouched on the floor with my shoulder to the stock and my eye to the scope. I waited until I could see their glowing eyes burning like hot coals in the inky blackness.

They paused at the line that divided the yard from the field, surveying for potential threats or witnesses for the carnage they had planned. One of them slowly stepped out of the field and into the yard. It put out one leg and set it gently down on the freshly mowed lawn as if it were a swimmer testing the temperature of a body of water.

In my frenzied haste, my finger pulled the trigger instead of squeezing it. The blast exploded into the stillness, echoing through the air, utterly decimating the silence. The shot dropped, hitting the ground in front of the animal, and sent a plume of dirt and debris into the air. The beast's leg jerked back in a flash of movement that vanished like a ghostly apparition. I slammed a fresh round into the chamber and took aim, firing blindly into the field. If the creature had still been within my sights, the bullet would have found its mark, a fatal blow between its unseeing eyes.

They had fled at the first shot, their massive bodies thundering through the high grass as they disappeared into the night. I fired at their masses as they moved through the high grass. For creatures of such bulk, their speed was almost supernatural, gliding through the shadows as though they were made of fog.

I didn't have time to reload, my heart pounding in my chest as I realized my mistake. I was vulnerable, and exposed, and they were coming for me. When they returned, I planned to not be here.

I’d had to answer to Brent for waking him and his wife at one in the morning with the gunfire. I was easily forgiven when we found the fresh prints in the morning and a pool of blood. I must have gotten lucky with at least one of my shots, and one of them was bleeding badly. Not that it would be enough to kill it. They were tough sons of bitches.

By noon, I was packed and headed out. The Charger's engine roared to life, a beast in its own right, as I peeled out onto the highway, heedless of the speed limit or the law. I was a man on the run, with nothing left to lose but my own life. The Remington sat loaded and ready beside me, a grim reminder of the danger that lurked in the shadows, waiting for its chance to strike.

I was headed north, but not before making a detour south to New Orleans. There, I’d gotten news that was a knife in my gut, a cold shock which threatened to consume me whole.

I had put in a call to my cousin, to no avail. At the Post Office, I managed to order a local paper. The headline made me puke. I couldn’t believe it.

I had gotten my cousin and his wife killed.

It had happened the night after I left. They were found the next day. All the windows had been smashed in, and both of them had been torn apart by an unknown predator with jaws like steel traps and teeth like razors. The authorities had no answers, no leads, and no suspects. All they knew was the bite marks were too large, too savage, too inhuman to have been made by any creature known to man.

I had to keep running. Fighting wasn't an option. I had fought and lost. I was alone and without a plan. There was nothing I could do. They would come for me, and nothing would stop them.

So, I ran. Again.

This time, I’d headed north, and I didn’t stop until I reached Alberta, Canada, where I rented a small house in a little town that reminded me of home.

The snow had a romantic beauty to it. It was melancholy, yet playful at the same time. I would sit up at night writing, the rifle always within reach. I would bang away at my typewriter and watch the snow fall while drinking hot chocolate or tea.

It was a little over two years before they’d found me again.

During that time, I’d grown a beard and cut my hair. I wore it shorter than I had in my younger hippie days, and it gave me a more professional appearance. I’d gotten a job writing for the local paper and had sold the Charger. Yes, I’d loved that car the way any young man loves his first sports or muscle car. I needed the money and a more practical vehicle that could handle ice and snow. I’d bought a Bronco with snow tires so big, I hardly ever had to put the chains on.

I’d heard it one night, and I recognized the sound. My blood turned to ice in my veins. The sound of death coming for me.

It was the second full moon in October, a blue moon, I believe it's called. It was beautiful as it shone its silvery light over the world. It had just snowed some nights before, which was piled deep. The generator roared in its shed as it chugged gasoline to power the house. Every time it snowed, it knocked out the power. The snow would build up on the lines and weigh them down until they broke. One year, one of the poles had frozen, and then, as it thawed too quickly, it had caused the wood to explode with a sound like a gunshot. I’d nearly driven off the road when I heard it.

That was nothing compared to how this sound froze my blood. It felt like all the air inside the house had turned to ice, and I expected to see my own breath. I sat and listened for it again. Far off in the distance, but it was unmistakable.

A howl.

It could have been a wolf, I’d told myself, but then came the answering calls. It seemed as if it were a rather large pack now.

After several sleepless nights, I’d awoken to horror. Footprints everywhere. They circled the house as if to draw a ring around me, warning others I was theirs and theirs alone. Dead carcasses had been left at both my doorsteps like an omen of my forthcoming doom.

Each door had a large bloody paw print. What scared me more were the footprints I found outside my bedroom window. They had come right up to the pane and looked in on me as I’d slept. One of the beasts had been mere inches away on the other side of the glass. Watching, waiting, and planning.

Why hadn’t they just smashed through the window as they had at Brent’s and killed me in my sleep? Maybe they were waiting for something, maybe just trying to scare me.

I have not slept soundly since that night.

I left Camrose and fled to Ibex Valley in the Yukon. It was a year and a half before they’d found me again. I had rented a cabin from some old-timer who had retired to Florida and didn’t have the time or energy to get back up to the cabin anymore. It was a small place with only two rooms. One kitchen combination with a living room, and one bedroom with its own bathroom. Not bad for the price. The bathroom didn’t work and had been one of the first things I had to fix. The generator had to be replaced, as well. The first time it snowed, I’d found myself without power. Thankfully, the cabin had been equipped with a wood stove, so I didn’t freeze to death.

That time I’d gotten lucky. I actually saw one of the beasts on the first night I believed they’d arrived. I had been fetching more firewood for the stove. I’d become accustomed to sitting by the warm woodstove during the night. Something about its warm glow comforted me. I hadn’t had a TV or a phone since Midnight Falls, and I had taken to making my coffee the old-fashioned way with a boiling kettle.

I was too young to be getting so old, but fear and life on the run ages a man something terrible. Night terrors and paranoia were taking their toll, and when I looked in the mirror, a man at least twenty years older than he should’ve been stared back at me. My hair had even begun to gray at the temples. Not normal for a man in his early thirties.

When I’d opened the door to visit the woodpile, I saw it. The driving snow had piled up against the door as it tends to do in the north, pinning it shut. I had to put my shoulder to the wood and shove with all my strength. My calf and thigh muscles bunched and tightened with the effort. Having to force doors open against ice and snow had built up my legs quite a bit over the past couple of years. Life on the lam tends to make a man’s body hard with tightly wound muscles. Tripwires in a minefield, ready to go off at a moment’s notice.

As I finally got the door propped open so I could bring in wood, I looked up, noticing night had already fallen. Snowflakes danced in the moonlight, taunting me with their playful beauty as my breath expelled in frost clouds. A snippet of that old song 'Twilight Time' by the Platters went through my head as I gazed into the darkening woods. I stood there in my own little world, the cold wind on my chapped and tired face, and my brain finally realized what I was looking at.

I stood frozen in my tracks, my heart pounding like a jackhammer in my chest. It lurked there, just beyond the tree line. Its massive form was a thing of nightmares, standing tall and proud, a primal force, covered with a matted coat of thick, bristly fur, snarled with sticks and leaves. Eyes, piercing and cold, glimmered like diamonds in the pale moonlight. Snow piled on its wide, powerful shoulders as I watched, mesmerized by its raw power. The creature's breath came out in short, ragged snorts of hot steam, curling in the frigid air like smoke from a dragon's nostrils. Its tongue, long and black, slipped out to lick its muzzle, revealing rows of long, white fangs that gleamed.

The forest had fallen silent, even the trees knew to be afraid of the monster who watched me with unblinking eyes. The snow barely came up to its knees, as if the earth itself feared to touch the beast. I could feel its hunger, its thirst for blood and flesh, emanating from the monstrosity.

Its eyes blazed with a fierce, unyielding hatred, as though they could burn through my very being. We locked gazes, two predators sizing each other up. Time stretched out, each passing moment feeling like an eternity. I wanted to reach for my rifle to defend myself, but my limbs refused to obey. Fear paralyzed me, leaving me helpless before the monster's wrath. It raised its shaggy head to the sky, releasing a mournful howl that sent shivers down my spine. It was a sound of pure sorrow and rage, a warning to any who dared cross its path.

In that moment, I knew I was in the presence of a creature beyond my understanding, a force of nature beyond human comprehension.

As quickly as it had appeared, the creature vanished into the darkness of the forest like a mist dissipating into the night. I stood there, shaken and trembling as if waking from a nightmare. But the jagged scar on my side, the burns on my chest and hands, were painful reminders that what had happened was all too real. I couldn't simply brush it off as a figment of my imagination. The wounds on my body were proof of the monster's existence, and the memory of its hateful eyes scorched into my mind like a brand.

No, it wasn't a nightmare. It was a warning, a reminder that a debt was owed, and it was owed in blood.

I left that cursed place that night, carrying nothing but my typewriter and my gun. I didn't stop until I hit the Pacific Ocean, and then I turned north, as far away from that nightmare as I could get.

But even as I fled, the monsters would never stop pursuing me. That's what they do. They run their prey to the ground, chasing them down until they're exhausted and helpless. When the moment is right, when the victim is at their mercy, they go in for the kill.

Eventually, I found myself in a small town called Northern Lights. It was time for me to stop running. I was too tired, too broken to keep going. So, I settled in, hoping to find some measure of peace. But I knew, deep down, the creatures would always be out there, lurking in the shadows. As much as I wanted to believe I was safe, that I had escaped its grasp, it would never truly be over.

I decided it was time to stop running and end the nightmare.

I’d rented a cabin in the woods just north of town, hoping the dense trees and isolation would keep me safe. But as the days turned to weeks, and the weeks turned to months, I began to realize I was never truly alone. The woods were alive with sounds I couldn't explain, with shadows that moved in ways which defied explanation.

Until I saw the tracks again. The same tracks that had haunted my dreams for years. They had found me once more, and this time, there would be no escape.

I pulled out my old Underwood typewriter and began to write. I had to tell my story, to warn others of the danger that lurked in the shadows.

You might wonder why I didn't run to a congested city, where I could lose myself in the anonymity of the crowd. If they could track me this far, through two countries and countless miles of wilderness, they would find me anywhere. And in the city, there would be no warning, no signs to alert me to their presence. I’d learned that lesson the hard way, at the cost of another person's life.

So, here I sit, typing away as the sun sets on my final day. I know they will come for me soon, but I refuse to go down without a fight. My story may not save my life, but it may save someone else's. And in the end, that's all that matters.

I have a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey to get me through. There's some solace in the knowledge this will be the last time I have to face the nightmare. My eyes keep wandering over to my desk drawer where there is a loaded .38.

As I said before, this ends tonight.

One way or another.

Chapter 1

Midnight Falls, Kentucky

May 28th, 1986

In the spring of '86, I was a naive twenty-five-year-old, convinced I had the world by the balls. Little did I know, the world had its own plans for me. 

Growing up just over in Flemingsburg, I thought I knew everything there was to know about small town living, but Midnight Falls was a different beast altogether. A mere speck on the map with a measly population of two hundred or so, the place was like something out of a Steinbeck novel. The streets were named haphazardly and laid in nothing resembling order. Towns like this just grew up around themselves like weeds in a garden, crowding one another until they choked everything else out.

Don't even get me started on the school. Midnight Falls Elementary was a relic of a defunct era, its walls practically oozing with decades of wear and tear. The older kids were luckier, as they got to go to school in Flemingsburg, like I had.

In the heart of Midnight Falls, there was only one store to speak of, the In and Out, a shoddy joint peddling gas and sundries at the crossroads of Main and Mount Olive Road. That’s where I set up camp, so to speak, although I didn't have much to my name, save for a car my mother had given me when I’d left for college, and a big dumb husky named Nimrod.

Nimrod, a shaggy golden-maned Siberian husky, had been my faithful companion since my college days. I'd picked him up as a pup during my sophomore year, and named him after a god of Norse mythology, though in hindsight, the Americanized definition of nimrod might have been more fitting. Like most stereotypical blondes, he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he made up for it with his goofy attitude.

He needed a patch of grass to call his own, having spent his early days cooped up in studio apartments and crammed into the backseat of my car. City life didn't quite agree with him, and fresh air was a rare treat. That's why he loved my car so much as it was one of the few ways he could catch a whiff of the great outdoors in the midst of New York City's hustle and bustle. If you can even call the polluted air of New York City fresh, that was.

During those sweltering summer months, Nimrod and I would make our way down to the local Irish pub where the kindly bartender, a burly man with a thick brogue, would ply my pooch with free beers. The sight of the hulking dog perched on a barstool, lapping up his suds from a battered old mug, never failed to amuse the patrons, who declared Nimrod the only Russian they'd ever let inside their establishment.

Of course, it was up to me to haul the sodden hound back home after the bartender had gotten him good and drunk. If you've never had the pleasure of dragging a tipsy dog through the streets of New York City, you're missing out on a real treat. You'd be surprised at how unfazed the jaded New Yorkers were by such bizarre occurrences. They hardly bat an eye at the sight of a man wrestling a liquored-up canine down the sidewalk.

It was nice to finally have a proper garage to house my beloved Charger. A sleek black 1970 model, the very same one the Duke boys used to tear up the screen, complete with gleaming chrome grill and bumpers. The mighty engine rumbled and growled like some kind of ferocious beast, especially when it was in full flight.

Nimrod adored the car's spacious white leather seats, and he'd poke his head out the window, tongue lolling in the wind as we careened down the roads at breakneck speeds. The thrill of the ride seemed to bring out the best in him as he basked in the heady scent of the countryside whipping past