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Report On The Flanking Action

by Larry Blamire

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From the action report of Captain William Meecher:

“…the engagement ended with the capture of most of the hostiles and seven killed. Among our casualties, one killed and eight wounded. Still unknown as of this date is the fate of Hollis, lieutenant, B Company, and a detachment of the 4th Infantry, along with B Company’s scout, who, as part of a flanking action, were dispatched to the adjoining foothills in support of the cavalry, in hopes of setting up a line of fire above the enemy. All attempts to locate the missing patrol thus far have met with failure. At this late date it does not bode well for their return…”

Captain William Davis Meecher,

Company B, 8th Cavalry

Sept. 13th, 1873

The man’s face was so still he might have been carved from a tree. You really had to know where to look. And there was something of bark about him, some spirit akin to nature in this flinty wooden mallet with beard and slouch hat. When he finally did move it was like part of the forest taking leave, slipping out for a furtive stroll.

The ones following were more obvious; they lacked his unique talent and of course the uniforms didn’t help. Though dusty and dingy, they still smacked of dark blue, while the tree-man seemed cloaked in brush itself. But he was a scout—he could wear what he wanted. They were mere soldiers. And right now he outranked them in almost every way. Chief of which was the ability to find his way home. It had been three days now and Lieutenant Hollis’ detachment of ten were less hopeful by the minute.

So perhaps Bill Pride was feeling some power. Maybe the only power a half red-man can have over a batch of bluebellies like these. Good to feel something like that once before you retire. And even though he was in the shape of a man half his age, forty-four year old Bill Pride was ready to retire.

If they lived. Their foray into the foothills of the southern Callamo range was an embarrassment, though not an altogether surprising one perhaps since the area had never been mapped. There hadn’t been a commercial or military advantage in doing so till now. Capt. Meecher was the first to admit he wished someone had taken on that job—some intrepid team of army surveyors.

The likelihood of Utes—or any other tribe for that matter— hiding there had previously been dim. The Callamo mountains had a reputation for being inhospitable. Especially to Indians.

No one knew why exactly. Couldn’t be prettier thought Pride on Day One. By Day Three he wished he’d never seen the damn place. So many snaking gorges that seemed to track back on themselves, thick with impenetrable brush. He actually thought they might have circled a time or two—a truly humiliating notion—but he was pretty certain it was just a trick of the land; a slant of ground, a twist of branch, a confusion of light and shape, that made places seem similar when they really weren’t at all.

But try and explain the sun, that surefire wilderness guide, anchor to the sanity of daylight, mother of all lost souls. Something was not right with it, some bending in its movement—not quite from the east, not quite to the west, confused perhaps by this tangle of trees and meandering creeks and cathedrals of rock that dictated their own unnatural geography.

Pride was edgy, despite all the faith they had in him, despite all that power. He felt like the only man in on a private joke. Being that Bill Pride had never before set foot in the Callamos or their adjoining foothills. Scouts, of course, were just supposed to know these things. That’s why they’re scouts.

So Pride was reduced to sniffing along like a dog, all instinct, looking for a way back to their fort that wouldn’t trot them through the errant Utes like a line of ducklings.

Lt. Hollis and that taciturn giant Sergeant Kinneally knew their half-breed scout was having a tough go of it, but they tried to keep up morale. It was bad enough they’d never reached the flanking position, never even seen the enemy.

The party of Utes had strayed far from their reservation, provoked no doubt by encroachments of miners and settlers. There had been skirmishes here and there. It was B Company’s job to return them to their assigned land. Hollis would have liked nothing better than to get back and find out how successfully it went.

It was strange how they’d missed the convenient ledge Captain Meecher’s field glasses had spied, sitting oh so prettily above the Utes’ encampment. How could they lose track of it? Up the spine of a winding hill, through tall pine, across a bank, and they should have been practically sitting on the enemy’s head. That damn trail just didn’t lead where it should have led. And somehow they’d wound up at an elevation that felt far too high.

Bill Pride continued to move like a wraith. He wasn’t sure why he ventured with such caution, such heightened awareness of every stirring leaf and vine. No doubt Hollis and the others, inspired by his stealth, believed him to be in fear of the Utes. But he did not believe for a minute that any Utes had fled into these strange mountains.

Some other instinct was at play here.

---

Light was failing on their third day, painting the distant peaks hot crimson through the shadowed canopy of the trees above them. How such color could bring such cold was a puzzle. And so for the third night they would be forced to make camp and wait till morning. For the third night they would not leave this place.

Pride decided on a small basin overlooking a deep chasm, a natural shelf of stones and logs and bramble torn by high winds over time. There should be safety in its vantage; a natural ceiling of tall forest and a daunting crag below, while all around was steep and treacherous.

But he didn’t feel safe.

Hollis’ approval of the spot was perfunctory; he was not green this lieutenant, not so insecure as to question Bill Pride’s superior judgment in such matters.

Privates Hillhurst and Gent gathered wood for the fire while Private O’Connor prepared the dwindling rations. Private Thompson perched on a rim above, keeping lookout. And the camp settled in for the long hours of darkness.

Night seemed too active in these Callamos. No sounds really, no animals moving (an odd lack of game for a place of such abundance), but rather within that quiet, that innate stillness, that facade of innocence, there seemed a restless something, a sense of stirring. Though not necessarily anything tangible.

For two nights they had felt its unease, its melancholy curiosity at their motley intrusion. The jumpiness was catchy, like a cold towel passed from man to man. Thompson murmured to Jarvis who murmured to Stover. But never would the group acknowledge this. No one dared give credence to something so fleeting and fantastic. As though to speak directly of a thing were to bring it into being.

Then Hillhurst spoke.

“Anyone get a funny feeling in these hills?” asked he as the men sat around the fire mixing furtive glances with nibbles of hardtack and coarse bread. Apparently, that boneheaded country boy Hillhurst hadn’t received the imaginary orders to button up about such things.

“What’s your problem now, Hillhurst?” rumbled Sgt Kinneally.

“No problem, Sarge, no problem. Just this place is strange, strange it seems like places I know back home where folks don’t go, don’t talk about.”

Men stole glances at the darkening trees, nervous that such scattered whisperings had finally been let loose.

“Don’t you go gettin’ Lyons scared now, there are no clean uniforms till we get back to fort,” chided Kinneally to a smattering of laughter that had a nervous cut to it.

Lyons, the private everyone swore was underage wondered if he should laugh too, then joined in a bit too late.

Sergeant Kinneally then ordered Hillhurst to go relieve Thompson on the crest so the latter could come eat but everyone knew he just wanted to move that fat mouth away from camp.

By the time Thompson came down and was eating his supper the camp had resumed its mutually understood ignorance of things unknown, things perceived beyond the fire’s perimeter. But no sooner had Thompson finished scraping his plate clean than Hillhurst’s hushed warning electrified them.

“Lieutenant…There’s someone out there.”

The tense group listened. They heard nothing at first, the usual nothing that was the mountain’s nighttime speciality. Then the sounds reached them; a deliberate disturbance of vegetation, a push of branch, a crack of twig, the rhythmic crunch of crispy needles. It was rapid but not urgent. Someone was coming down from above, steadily closer through the pines.

The men grabbed their weapons and soon the entire camp was waiting and listening, staring up at the dark wall of mountain.

“Sarge, what do I do?” hissed the suddenly lonely Hillhurst.

“Pipe down.”

And just as they seemed close the sounds stopped. The detachment stood there waiting dumbly like jilted suitors. Finally, Lt. Hollis called out.

“Who’s out there? Show yourself.”

A faint shift of underbrush was followed by a voice.

“Hello the camp!” It sounded flat and hollow, beaten down by the roof of trees.

“Who’s out there? Who is that?”

“Mr. Cook. May I come in?”

Lieutenant Hollis paused only briefly at the absurd notion they should all know who Mr. Cook was. “Come on down.”

Gent looked at Stover who looked at Jarvis, as unease spread again like pox.

“Who’d be out there now?” asked Thompson reasonably.

“Shut up,” soothed the Sergeant.

The crunching steps resumed as the visitor descended from the high ground while hands squeezed rifles. Suddenly the firefight painted the pale head of a man as he passed intermittently through the shadows of trees. The flicker took form as he got closer, heading straight toward the center of the rim—a man clad in fur with a full beard and an old Springfield. He strolled over the bank and down into the basin like someone in a dream, never looking to his side, staring at the fire as though he recognized a friend.

He plopped right before it where the men parted, its glow giving them a good long study. He looked to be a trapper, this haggard mess with mangy coat, scratched up face and black beard strewn with brambles.

Mr. Cook sat there, cross-legged, staring at the fire a full minute before anyone could speak. “Mr. Cook, would you care for some coffee?” asked the Lieutenant.

“I would like some of that. Never felt a night so cold.”

Lyons, after a nod from Lt. Hollis, scrambled together a tin cup of their now ancient brew and held it out for the visitor. Mr. Cook took the cup and brought it to his pale lips.

“Never felt a night so cold,” he repeated.

“Mr. Cook, what are you doing out here, sir?”

Cook did not look at Hollis, did not tear his eyes from the fire, but something changed, some memory that twisted through him like worms.

“Me and my partner Jim Clum were trappin’ down on the Sly River. Game proved poor and we was thinkin’ of gettin’ out when one night Jim went out to check the traps and didn’t come back. I found him after a while in a gully with his neck broke. I was gonna come back come daylight and bury the poor bastard when a strange thing happen. As I set in camp havin’ my mornin’ coffee, just as I’m settin’ here now, in comes he walkin’ right as rain.

“I said, ‘Jim, I think your neck’s broke and also you was cold as a stream.’

“Well, he looks at me slowly, voice kinda faraway like. ‘That’s cause it ain’t me, Joe. I got a ha’nt in me now, ha’nt that lives on the mountain.’ Then he smiled.” Mr. Cook paused to sip his hot coffee. “I runned and I ain’t stopped since.”

Unnatural terror gripped the camp in a cold hand. Lt. Hollis felt a sudden desperate need to rein things in. “Mr. Cook, your friend was obviously not dead, merely injured, and having some jest with you.”

“No jest say I. Why, his neck were still bent.”

Bill Pride had been watching the trapper. Part of him was skeptical—though he wasn’t sure which part. The Pawnee side that had known small pox and cholera and the bleak reservation life of his mother was jaded, practical, yet also respectful of the spirit world. Maybe it was his damned white side that so feared the unknown. And that side was winning. He had to fight it.

“A man can live with a broken neck,” said Pride. “I saw it once at a botched hanging in Kansas.”

And with that bit of news Mr. Cook the trapper proceeded to slump forward at the waist as though giving in to a sudden urge to pray to a campfire.

“Mr. Cook? Mr. Cook, you alright?” Lt. Hollis looked at the man, who was very very still, then at the others. He shook the trapper’s arm. “Mr. Cook?”

Now their grizzled visitor rolled to the side, splayed out. Jarvis moved back. “What’s—what’s the matter with him?” Sgt. Kinneally was quickly down there, examining him. It was like the big sergeant had been bitten by a rattler, so fast was his recoil.

“He’s… son of a bitch is cold.”

“Hell, we’re all cold,” snapped Gent with forced bravado.

“Not like this. Man’s cold as rocks. Feel him yourself and tell me that’s not a dead man.”

“Just—just like that?” asked Thompson with a tremble.

“No,” replied Kinneally. “No, I’d say for quite a while.”

“What are you talking about, Sergeant?” Hollis was not pleased with his noncom’s careless assessment.

“Lieutenant… this man just ain’t newly departed.”

The Lieutenant rushed over to the body now and began to examine it. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Private O’Connor, at the edge of the group, started gibbering. He just stood there gibbering nonsense, like his lips had a life of their own, until finally all the attention had transferred from the dead trapper to him.

Sgt. Kinneally was quickly over. “That’s enough O’Connor, get yourself a hold on.”

‘‘Sorry, where was I? Oh, yeah—no, Jim was dead for sure, I know that. Dead with a broke neck twist.”

“What? What are you babblin’ about, O’Connor?”

“Talkin’ about my partner Jim Clum. My dead friend talked to me so I run. Kept on runnin’ till I found your camp.”

All stared at the O’Connor that was no longer O’Connor. His vocal cords—someone else’s words. Or some thing.

“The ha’nt! That ha’nt Cook talked about! It’s got him now!” Thompson was near panic. “Glory, don’t you see? That wasn’t Cook in the first place—never was! Cook was already dead!”

Before Lt. Hollis could reprimand Thompson, O’Connor opened his mouth wide and started cackling; a shrill wide-eyed laugh like some hellish jackass. Kinneally looked dumbly at the Lieutenant.

“Restrain that man, Sergeant.”

The veteran Kinneally showed only the briefest hesitation before holding O’Connor fast by the arms. The much smaller private was no match for the big noncom.

“Tie him up, tie him fast!” barked Lt. Hollis. Gent and Bill Pride were quickly over with ropes, leaving the raving Thompson bound and helpless against a log.

“What—what’s the matter with him, Lieutenant?” asked young Lyons feebly.

“Well, not some… ha’nt, that’s for sure. Man’s just cracked is all, taken leave of his senses,” spoke Hollis like a man trying to convince himself.

And with that the babbling, gibbering Private O’Connor slumped forward, suddenly silent.

“Is he—is he dead?” ventured Jarvis.

“How can he be—?”

Hollis never finished his query. Mr. Cook suddenly sat back up into his sitting position at the fire. “So, anyways, yeah, there we were—Jim Clum and me—”

Lt. Hollis’ pistol was out—an army Colt .45—but Bill Pride had already leveled his repeating rifle.

“God have mercy,” murmured Stover as Mr. Cook continued to chatter away. “We’re on a mountain of devils.”

“Just one perhaps,” offered Pride as—to everyone’s shock—he aimed and fired into the babbling dead trapper. A hole blew clear through the other side, but no blood was in evidence. Unexpectedly, Mr. Cook looked down at his chest wound, turned and smiled at Bill Pride, and then slumped forward towards the fire. Dead again.

The men were still in shock when Hillhurst joined them, rushing back from sentry duty at the sound of the shot. Even Lt. Hollis and Sgt. Kinneally were hard-pressed to offer any words.

O’Connor sprang to life again. “That hurt, red man, you put a hole in me.”

Private Lyons snatched up his rifle, but Bill Pride stopped him. “Hold on, son, O’Connor ain’t dead yet.”

“But how—how can he—?”

Before any could ponder this unfinished question, O’Connor quickly slumped again and immediately Private Jarvis was beside him with his knife out.

“Jarvis!” barked Kinneally. “Get away from that man!”

Too late. Jarvis had already sliced O’Connor’s ropes, freeing him. Then Jarvis collapsed and O’Connor sprang to consciousness again, grabbed Jarvis’ knife and plunged it into him.

The others cried out, but Bill Pride fired into O’Connor twice and the man crumpled back against the log.

“Hoped I wouldn’t have to do that,” said Pride.

Suddenly the stabbed Jarvis popped up like Punch at a puppet show, pulled the knife from his chest, and with a howl like a scalded animal ran into the black of night.

There followed a pall of confusion and disbelief as wits struggled to return to the hapless soldiers.

“Where’s Jarvis goin’?” asked the sorry Lyons. Kinneally simply stared at him.

“That thing. That thing got Jarvis. It’s out there”, whimpered Thompson.

“Jarvis. Jarvis is dead now. That means we can shoot him. Cause he’s already dead. Right, Bill?” Hollis was desperate to apply some reason, some irrefutable laws, to this insanity.

Bill Pride only shrugged. “Lieutenant… I just don’t know as shootin’ does any good when ya look it.”

As if offering proof, Mr. Cook stood up calmly and proceeded to walk away from them. As the others watched numbly, the dead trapper then collapsed beside the dead O’Connor who—sporting two bullet holes—jumped up and trotted a ways up the rim. Then O’Connor collapsed and up sprung Cook who passed him, heading a little farther up the slope. Then he dropped again and O’Connor resumed.

The soldiers observed this nightmarish “leap frog” like something distanced, something they’d bought tickets for, as the lone jumping spirit continued this cumbersome exit into the woods, until only the cold white of the birches flickered back like teeth in the light of the dying campfire.

---

It was a full minute before anyone spoke. Faces were pasty and haggard with fear. Only Bill Pride seemed slightly more successful at masking the results of going toe-to-toe with a grim unknown. Troopers turned to him now like he was a damn medicine man, with all the answers to their sorry plight.

“Bill? Any idea what we should do?” timidly asked Thompson.

“Break our necks we try to get down this mountain in the dark. Stay put. Stay in camp.”

“I don’t—I don’t get it,” muttered Gent. “Thing gets you if you’re dead, gets you if you’re alive.”

Lt. Hollis, quickly feeding the dangerously dim fire as though it might keep anything away, grasped for some semblance of logic. “If it can take us while we’re living… why in God’s name does it want us all dead?”

“Maybe that way it gets to keep us.” Bill Pride’s words sat like cold marble on their graves.

“Hey!” came a voice from somewhere out there. “Hey, I wanna talk to ya!”

“That’s O’Connor,” exclaimed Lyons.

“That ain’t O’Connor,” said Sgt. Kinneally.

“Come on in!”

“Are you crazy, Lieutenant?” snapped Gent, way out of line.

“What choice do we have? Might as well listen to what it has to say,” defended the officer.

“Might give a clue to stopping it,” offered Pride.

All eyes were on the high woods above camp, waiting for that thing from the dark. Needles, twigs, and pinecones snickered softly as it approached the circle of light. The pallid figure came through the trees and down the slope like a man delivering a basket of apples at harvest time. Only this man bore two bleeding holes in the chest.

“That—that’s far enough,” said Hollis, and no sooner had he than the O’Connor thing dropped like its strings had been cut.

“What–? Now hold on, where’d it go?”

The troopers all looked at each other, suddenly suspicious, giving space to their neighbor.

Young Lyons raised his rifle. “I think it’s Thompson,” he said and quickly blew Thompson’s head off.

“Hell—!” Sgt. Kinneally jumped back, along with everyone else.

“Or Stover,” added Private Lyons as he shot Private Stover.

He would have shot more no doubt had not Bill Pride clubbed the young man’s skull in with his rifle butt. “No, I think it was you, Lyons,” offered the veteran scout. Just as Lyons was crumpling, Sgt. Kinneally flinched as though struck, and grabbed the half-breed from behind in a massive bear hug. By now Hollis and the others were in motion and all managed to pull the big sergeant off Pride.

Kinneally and the whole group tumbled to the ground. As Pride managed to snatch up his rifle again, the Sergeant blinked at them dumbfounded. “What happened?”

“That you? That really you, Sarge?” asked Hillhurst.

“Course it’s me.”

Pride whipped his rifle around at the four remaining soldiers, waiting for a hint, any clue they weren’t who they were.

“Now, hold on! Hold on there, Bill Pride!” snapped Gent. “You don’t know who’s who. Might even be you!”

“He’s right—none of us have a rifle right now, Bill. It jumps to you with that repeater of yours, we’re all dead,” said Hollis.

Pride looked at each man, the sheer animal desperation in their eyes matching his. Kinneally nodded. “He’s right, Bill, better toss it.”

Bill Pride realized they were right. If he got taken, he could easily kill all the others. He tossed the rifle into the bushes like it was suddenly burning steel, then grabbed the Springfields lying about and tossed them away too. Far enough out of reach that if anyone went for them the others would have time to stop him. Then Pride sat down, joining them in an impromptu circle, five survivors of a grotesque war of nerves.

---

Time must have passed, but how much? The night seemed infinite. Pride, Hollis, Kinneally, Gent and Hillhurst all sat silently, eyes moving from face to face, looking for the first sign of an inner intruder, a clue that their troop mate was not their troop mate. Every so often the gaze would go to the dead bodies—O’Connor and Lyons and Thompson and Stover—for even the smallest tick of imitation life.

After a while Lt. Hollis needed at least the illusion of order, the facade of a military unit. And fortunately his brainstorm was a good one. They would keep up chatter, constant chatter, about anything and everything that came to mind, going around the circle from man to man. And it worked too—the talk was irrefutable, specific to soldiers who’d served side by side for a long time.

At one point Hillhurst stumbled, just couldn’t talk—simply ran out of steam like a shy guest at a social. The others were quick to goad him; his life depended on proving that Hillhurst was Hillhurst. His nerves were shot. He was on the spot with nothing to add, no words to cement his identity of the moment.

It was a gal that saved him. The gal he’d left behind that married a shopkeeper. Being a clear memory, even a sour one, was probably the best thing that gal ever did for him.

As the talk continued, movement caught the corner of Bill Pride’s eye. Dead O’Connor had twitched.

Eventually the others caught Pride’s gaze and the ridiculous small talk trickled to an end. O’Connor twitched again. As they awaited the third twitch they were more than rewarded. O’Connor suddenly leaped through the air and flopped to the ground like a rejected rag doll beside the dead Stover. Now Stover leaped into the air and plopped to the ground in the direction of the woods. Then O’Connor again, hurtling into the air, thudding some feet ahead of Stover. Then Stover, and on and on.

The process sped up, like a massive pair of disconnected shoes heading away from the camp. All the troopers could do was stare as the grotesque “stride” continued, and the flailing damaged corpses were shuttled off into the dark of the night.

That was it for Hillhurst. He let out a holler and flew into the dark before the others could stop him. He tried to head downhill, away from the direction of the bodies. But his long plummeting cry told them he’d found that deep chasm instead.

The sound of the stolen corpses had diminished to nothing, and the four remaining men sat in a chill and sober silence. It was Kinneally who finally spoke.

“I’m here now. I’m here with you.”

It took a brief second to look at him and see that it was no longer Kinneally. But before anyone could react Gent spoke up.

“Yep, I’m right here.”

“Right here,” said Hollis.

“Now here,” said Pride.

Faster and faster, round the circle of four, jumping before any man could move, a dizzying blur of Here! Here! Here! Here! Here! Here! Here!…

Then it stopped. They sat there, drained and disoriented.

“It was in me! It was in me!” cried Gent, revolted at housing something unclean.

“Like going to sleep—to sleep for a few seconds,” marveled Lt. Hollis in a quiet daze.

“We’re goin’ down the mountain,” said Pride.

---

The others needed no convincing. The four men were quickly up following the determined scout into the brush—not the way Hillhurst had gone.

Bill Pride pressed on, willing his senses to find a path. The entire mountainside was a sheer black shadow with the moon behind it. He would literally have to feel his way. Torches would have been impossible, as each man would need both hands for the climb down.

Kinneally snarled as he lost footing behind them, stumbling into some brambles. There was no time to stop and that was understood. It was each man for himself, though the smart money was on following Pride.

Pride became no longer aware of who was behind him. At one point he heard a cry that sounded like Gent. But the noise of his own desperate flight seemed to drown out all else.

A short time later there came a loud crashing somewhere back there. Then Lt. Hollis’s voice. “Sergeant? Kinneally is that you? Kinn—?”

Now Bill Pride pitched forward with a recklessness that belied the unpredictable downward terrain. His eyes had long since adjusted from being spoiled by the campfire. He was tearing along, feeling the pull of the cursed mountain less and less. All sounds ceased behind him, and he was grateful to still feel the endurance of a man half his age. If he just got away from the mountain…

His exhilaration continued even as he launched into open space.

---

It seemed like a different world. Soft sunlight invited birdsong as the foot of the mountain bathed in its warm reassurance. At the bottom of a craggy wash, beside a gurgling creek, Bill Pride’s body lay in a sitting position, supported by the tangle of vine and thick shrubbery he’d landed on.

His eyes opened, taking in the glory of a new day, so far removed from the desperate night. He smiled.

This body felt good.

---

Host Commentary

PseudoPod Episode 884

September 22nd 2023

Report on the Flanking Action written and narrated by Larry Blamire

Audio Production by Chelsea Davis

Hosted by Alasdair Stuart

Hello everyone, and welcome to PseudoPod, the weekly horror podcast. I’m Alasdair, your host and this week’s story comes to us from Larry Blamire. Larry is a writer, director, actor, artist, playwright known for feature films The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, Trail of the Screaming Forehead, The Lost Skeleton Returns Again and Dark and Stormy Night plus the audio series Big Dan Frater. He ha authored two volumes of western horror, Tales of the Callamo Mountains, a novel, Doc Armstrong: Suburb at the Edge of Never, and the recently released his epic graphic novel, Steam Wars. Larry’s play of Robin Hood has been performed worldwide and he regularly writes and illustrates for RPGs. A proud recipient of three Rondo Awards he contributes to numerous scifi and Blu ray commentary tracks and is currently developing a retro-absurdist comic, Flapjack Alley.

So get ready, because these are the facts and they have…to be true…right?

This is a story about things not being what they seem, which is not the story it first seems to be. I cannot articulate how much I love that buit I’m going to have fun trying.

What I love about it is that it maps the reassurance the characters feel onto the reassurance we feel. We know this story, we’ve seen this story several times before. It becomes a ‘pleasing terror’. I heard that term first when friend of the show Mark Nixon used it to describe what he and the team do on the amazing Shadows at the Door. He heard it in turn in connection with M.R. James and James, and The Thing, are the two pieces this story reminded me of tonally in the best of ways. I love that kind of story and I love that feeling. It’s why we take fairground rides and visit haunted houses. A pleasing terror, fear released but released into a space we define.

That lasts until the trapper dies for the first time.

Blammire knows what we expect and upends it. In doing so he takes that reassurance we feel and uses it to steer us somewhere new and dark, out on the mountainside. I love how we don’t see the haint, we just see its dreadful consequences. Human bodies rendered into building blocks and clothing for something which has no real relationship with physics or the polite reality we tell ourselves everyone is part of.

I also love how the chaos of just where and who the haint is at any given time seems tied to the collapse of the solders’ professional pragmatism. The cheerfully fatalistic binary of combat becomes something mutable and chaotic. You know that the enemy is here but you don’t know where the enemy will be next. But they can always see you and, on occasion, become you.

That in turn adds a fantastic sense of temporal dislocation. We know this is a story set in a specific period. We know it isn’t written in that period We also know that this feels a lot like a creepy pasta, one of the most recent evolutions of the form. If you liked this story, you’ll like the Search and Rescue stories. You’ll also never want to go down to the woods again as long as you live. Especially a sometimes the woods will come to you.

Fantastic, subtle, horrific work. Thanks to all.

You are a vital part of our operation. We’re an independent production you see, and entirely donation powered and that’s where you come in. We rely on you to pay our authors, staff and cover our costs. There’s a recession, a pandemic and yet here we are, making art for you. We can only do that if you help us.

We’ve got Paypal and Patreon subscriptions that start at 5 bucks a month.Both get you access to our audio archive. The Patreon subscription tiers get you all sorts of goodies at the higher levels. Please help out if you can. It’s always needed. Also now we’re a non-profit you have some very real tax benefits to helping us tell more stories in addition to getting more stores from us. So it’s a win two different ways.

If you can’t help financially, we understand completely please consider talking about us. It helps a lot too. If you liked an episode, please link to it, or blog about it or leave a review on your podcatcher of choice. It all helps and with your help we can keep doing this.

Pseudopod returns next week with The Grave of Angels by Erica Ruppert and read by Rhianna Pratchett. Kat will be your host and Chelsea will be on audio production. Then as now we’ll be a production of the Escape Artists Foundation a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International license.

And Pseudopod wants you to remember If It Takes Us Over, Then It Has No More Enemies, Nobody Left To Kill It. And Then It’s Won