“Stalked and Stalker” - Short Fiction Contest Entry (Patreon)

Amazing artist Dean Spencer is holding a story contest for fiction based on one of his pieces of art. I entered.

Here is my entry.

The sun was just below the horizon. It had been just below the horizon for hours, and would stay just below the horizon for a few more days… and then it would be night for weeks. The dull sunlight was dispersed through the thin, cold gray clouds, and then reflected back by the endless snow and frozen lake. It bathed everything in a morose dim glow, making shadows short, but dark and plentiful. The glowing gray added to the  still, freezing air and hissing silence of the wilds around them, projecting an endless, hostile aura that terrified rational humans.

MacKenzie fucking loved it.

Bundled in thick furs, Gregor MacKenzie wiped his pickaxe clean in the snow, quick before the bunyip’s blood froze on it. At least he thought the creature had been a bunyip—he’d never encountered one in the Arctic before.

Then again, he’d never found pre-Neolithic stairs in the side of a mountain in the Arctic before, either. It looked like this rescue was going to involve a lot of firsts.

MacKenzie checked on Blaze, making sure she hadn’t gone any further up those selfsame stairs than she had promised. Elizabeth “Blaze” Carson had even more experience in these sorts of expeditions than MacKenzie did, but she was just a little too sure of her ability to deal with anything for MacKenzie’s comfort. But, as promised, she was only ten or so meters up the stairwell, and her lantern was clearly visible still.

While MacKensie was scraping off blood and checking on Blaze, Alec duSeverency had built a fire with shocking speed, and was already cutting steaks from the bunyip’s flank. MacKenzie wasn’t convince the beast would be good, or safe, to eat. But duSeverency was a practical man, and they were shorter on supplies than they’d planned for at this stage of their search.

The fourth remaining member of the team, Professor John Solomon, was crouching by the bones sticking out of the layer of frozen blood that coating the narrow rock outcropping between the lake and the stone stairwell. Solomon had lifted a cap of blood-ice off one bone, revealing it to be a skull – presumably human – in shockingly good shape. Mackenzie walked carefully across the red icesheet, lantern held low so he didn’t blind himself, pickaxe still at the ready.

“Is it one of our people?,” MacKenzie asked brusquely.

Solomon looked up briefly, his bushy beard moving slowly, a sign he was chewing on an idea as he did when in deep thought.

“You know I can’t be sure with two minutes and just a skull, Mac.”

MacKenzie nodded.

“I do know. I also know you already think you have the answer. So, give me your best guess now. If you figure out more later, tell me later.”

Solomon sighed. “Fine. No, I don’t think this is someone from the Ackerman group. It looks to me like this poor bastard has multiple wooden teeth, and tooth rot that got into the jaw. My best guess is this is someone from the late 1600s or early 1700s, maybe one of the mutineers from the Vagin/Permyakov expedition. The ice just preserved it for centuries. I think.”

MacKenzie cursed under his breath. Then he looked back at the stairwell. He didn’t like the look of it, and he did not know why. He felt like something was watching him.

Part Two can be found here.

Paying Patrons can instead go here, for a compiled, slightly more edited version of the story-to-date, along with my thoughts and authors notes about each section.