Hoofbeat Hill (not a fantasy)

[Nautipus]

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Not all small towns welcome expansion. As a matter of fact, most don't. Not all small towns are entirely openarmed to new additions into their community, either. Some towns wont accept newcomers until several generations down the line. Then there are the towns that, while completely unaccepting of new blood, arent entirely unfriendly. Though these towns do care for their new citizens, they are loath to allow them into their most inner circles.
But there is another type of place. One with a heart the color of noble's silk, and just as smooth. They stare down from their high branch onto the outsiders, and, if they cannot push these people out, they remove them focefully. They do away with them the way a gardener might remove a weed: with precision, speed, and brutality, a single fluid event. The only thing that could indicate a former prescence is a small patch of disturbed earth, one which a skilled gardeder who is long practiced in this activity could remove easily. Though these places reject outsiders, they also hold onto their own with bonds of blood and steel. Their hold on some runs deeper than the roots of the mountains, and is just as stable and lasting.
Sometimes, though, a few do get away. And sometimes, these towns are hostile for a reason. Sometimes they have something to protect. Sometimes they have secrets in their closets. Or under them. These secrets are sometimes never revealed until their protectors are long gone, or they are done protecting it. When that happens, the scattered seeds of these places are called home.

[Nautipus]

Chapter 1

Have to run.

And she did. She ran full tilt through the thickening forest. The branches of hibernating trees slapped against her, tearing at her clothes, her hair. The narled and blasted hands seemed to grab at her, trying to pull her back into a world she thought she would never know, and never wanted to again.
The trees continued their frantic seizer of her clothes and hair, as low-lying brambles tore at her skin. the summer clothing she had on was not suited to the winter weather around her. These early hours also had a chilly and thickening fog rising from the nearby lake, and it chilled every square inch of her exposed skin. The cold caused every score dealt her by the forested army to reach its sting that much deeper into her skin. She crossed her arms infront of her head and continued blindly in the darkness of the morning, holding out the knife she had used to effect her escape in her right hand.
She ran until exhausted. Holding the knife out in a feeble protective posture, she slumped against a tree. She couldnt see much, but she felt as if she had reached the end of the phalanx of trees. She felt dirt, instead of forest detritus, under her shoes. She felt her eys closing, then a bright light assaulted her. She covered her head with her arms and shook with fear, exhaustion, and rage. The last thing she saw before slipping into sweet oblivion, was the radiance, backlighting the Angel of Death.

[Nautipus]

He rolled over, searching for the phone. Instead he pounded the top of the alarmclock, inadvertently setting it off. The relentless beeping launched him into a state of full awareness. He looked over the edge of the bed and saw the cordless lying on the floor. He grabbed it and lay it against his ear.
"Hello?"
"Tyler?"
He cleared his throat, "Yeah."
"They found her."



She lay quietly in the hospital bed, a product of the strong sedatives that were being infused with her I.V. drip. Though lying silently, she was still awake. She lay, staring at the ceiling, her eyelids heavy, but more powerful than the drugs circulating through her system was the fear. the fear that if she fell asleep, she might wake in the place she had fled, wherever that was.
She couldnt remember where she had come from, she just knew that it was a bad place. She didnt remember what may, or may not have happened there, and there wasnt a mark on her body besides the shallow cuts she had sustained while running through the forest. She barely remembered that, just the trees and eventually the road. Still, she felt that she had ended up in a much better place than she had started out in. She felt the drugs continue their steady pull on her eyelids, so she finally surrendered, and fell back into the embrace of a cold dream.

[Nautipus]

Tyler Davis strode quickly into the hospital's patient wing. At 2:43 in the morning, there were few people to stop him. He walked quickly towards the far end of the hall, where he saw his brother Alex talking to two policemen, apparently getting quite upset. He was talking loudly enough for tyler to hear him all the way down the hall, and was probably disturbing the patients.
"what's going on?" Said Tyler as he reached his brother's side. Alex was the larger of the two, and more heavily built, but they looked alot alike: Dark hair and eyes, tall frame, tanned skin that showed their native American bloodlines. one could say that Tyler was the more handsome of the two.
Alex turned to face Tyler in a rage, "They wont let me in to see her!"
Tyler cast a sharp look towards the policemen flanking their sister's room.
"She's too drugged up to talk right now anyway, besides, that's what the doctor ordered. No one is to see her until he finishes his tests and she's strong enough. Now, we'll call you when she ready, but you'll still have to wait on the detectives."
"But she's our sister", growled Alex, "We havent seen her for almost six months. You guys gave her up for dead! Your detectives", Alex pushed the word out like it was bile, "should have to wait on us!"
One of the policemen stepped forward and placed a firm hand on his right shoulder.
"Now listen here big fella", he said, "we did the best we could for your sister then, and we're gonna do the same now. So, you can either spend the night here in the hospital, or in my jail, it doesnt really matter to me."
Alex opened his mouth to say more but tyler turned him away, "We've waited this long, we can wait one more night." Alex looked from Tyler to the cop, and turned to go back down the hall.
After a moment Tyler asked, "Where'd they find her?"
Alex slowed his pace as he talked, "Some remote logging road. An old guy was going home from one of the bars here in town and happened to see her on the side of the road. he was pretty drunk but not so tanked he couldnt call the right people."
"What was the man's name?"
Alex gave a tired shrug, "Don't know, just some old guy. He already gave a statement and left." he threw a glance back down the hall in the direction of the two cops, "They havnt even spoken to tasha yet."
"Smal blessings." said Tyler, "Did they tell you exactly where they found her?"
Alex stopped in front of the door to the lounge in which they were going to stay, "I already told you, some old..."
Tyler shot him a withering look, "You know what I mean, Alex."
Alex sighed heavily, "Yeah, I know." He looked back towards the cops, far down the hall, "The road was on the outer edge, near Hoofbeat."
Tyler nodded, he had suspected.

[Nautipus]

The official police report had stated that she probably had gotten lost in the woods after leaving her car. She'd been going to visit their hometown, Hoofbeat Hill, Kentucky. They had left as kids: Tyler and Alex were 18, Tasha was 16. They had run because of something that their parents had tried to indoctrinate them to. Tasha wasnt old enough to know, so they had taken her with them to try and make sure she never did. Tyler and Alex had sworn never to go back, Tasha had not. She was going back for the first time in twenty years.
When the police had found her car they had suspected that she was probably nearby. They searched but found no trace of her. They had found her car where a logging road had dead-ended. it was supposed to have been finished over a month before. It would have connected with a more modern road, which would have led into the center of town, making the trip shorter.
When the police couldnt find her they tried to contact the Hoofbeat Hill PD, with no success. The isolation of Hoofbeat Hill made tracking it difficult. Few people entered the town, even fewer ever commuted elsewhere. So when they didnt receive an answer they assumed that the PD was already out on a call. They tried several more times over the course of a week before sending in a few county patrolmen. They found an empty town.
There was simply nothing left in Hoofbeat Hill. There were no animals of any kind, and no people. Several teams were sent in from lake biologists to botonists, trying to find out where everything went. The mountain lake that Hoofbeat Hill bordered, Shultz Lake named after the founder of the town, was devoid of any kind of life. All of the plant life around the town was either dead or nonexistent. The houses and buildings had taken on a ramshakled and disorderly appearance. All of the material property in Hoofbeat Hill was in place, but there was no life. All the cars in the town, anything mechanical for that matter, had stopped working. All the mechanical clocks were set to one time:3:33.
It was as if all life in Hoofbeat Hill had ceased. Alex and Tyler were familiar to this.

[Nautipus]

Chapter 2

She was dazed and disoriented as she awoke from the drug-iduced sleep. She looked around the hospital room. It seemed okay. She tried to shift in the bed, but found she could'nt. She looked down at her body. She was wearing the shorts and shirt that she'd had on during her run through the woods, and there were decaying leather straps wrapped tightly around her torso and legs, securing her to the bed. She struggled for a moment, then there was a deep rumbling from behind her.
Because the bed was tilted upward at a slight angle, she couldnt lift her head to look behind her, and the straps fastening her to the bed prevented her from torqueing her body around. She struggled frantically, trying to loosen the strapps that held her so securely, as the rumbling continued to grow. It grew in volume, and the sound seemed to have a density of its own, so that it surrounded her. It towered over her and pushed up from underneath, squeezing her uncomfortably. She closed her eyes at the unbearable onslaught.
Then it ceased. The sound stopped, and she opend her eyes to look around. The room seemed as it had been before. She began to relax, slightly. Then she heard another sound. Faint, almost below the threshhold of hearing.

Almost like a human sigh.

She looked above her. The wall that her bed was pressed up against was stretching, pulling itself out like skin, changing into the shape of a great mouth. It leaned out over her bed, its horizontal jaws glimmered as if wet, anticipating the meal to come. She screamed, and the jaws descended.