Reconfiguration
Achcauhtli stood at the edge of the tree line while snow hissed across the frozen earth in silver sheets. The storm had only grown worse since nightfall. Wind screamed through the pines hard enough to bend branches and bury footprints almost as soon as they were made.
“Chieftain Achcauhtli,” Aucaman said through chattering teeth, “we cannot keep searching for him. No man could survive this cold. Pachamama is unforgiving tonight.”
The old chief didn’t answer.
Aucaman stepped closer, lowering his voice.
“With every step we take, two more disappear beneath the sleet. If we keep going, more of us will vanish into the Unatsi.”
Still nothing.
Achcauhtli stared into the white abyss ahead of them as though sheer will alone might force his son out of the storm.
“He is my son,” the chief finally said.
His voice sounded tired. Ancient.
“If my feet freeze black and my hands split open from the cold, I will still search for him.”
The wind answered with a mournful howl.
Then—
movement.
Something shifted beyond the curtain of snow.
The hunters stiffened immediately, hands tightening around spears and clubs as a figure slowly emerged from the storm. At first it looked like a wounded man stumbling through the dark.
Then it stepped into the firelight.
“Lusio,” Aucaman whispered.
Achcauhtli took a step forward before stopping dead in his tracks.
The thing standing before them wore Lusio’s shape, but only barely.
His skin had gone pale white, almost gray beneath the falling snow. His lips were cracked and split open. Yellow teeth protruded from swollen gums, and his eyes—
Dear God.
His eyes had rolled nearly all the way back until only a sickly white glow remained.
The smell hit them a moment later.
Rotting meat.
Sweet and foul all at once.
Several hunters covered their mouths.
Lusio swayed slightly where he stood. His feet no longer looked human. Blackened masses shaped like split hooves jutted from beneath torn strips of leather and fur. His fingernails had lengthened into crooked claws stained dark with dried blood. Deep gouges ran across his chest and stomach like something had tried to claw its way out of him from the inside.
Achcauhtli’s expression faltered.
“What happened to you, my son?” he asked quietly.
No answer.
The chief swallowed hard.
“Where is your wife?” he asked. “Where is your child?”
Slowly, Lusio lifted his head.
A smile stretched across his face.
Not joy.
Not relief.
Something wrong.
The grin pulled too far at the corners like it hurt to hold it there, but he couldn’t stop.
“You don’t understand,” Lusio whispered.
His voice sounded wet.
“I had to.”
The wind shrieked through the trees behind him.
“I did it to survive.”
Achcauhtli stared into his son’s eyes searching for something familiar. Grief. Shame. Fear.
Anything.
There was nothing there.
Only emptiness.
Only hunger.
“Who are you?” the chief asked softly.
“Father,” Lusio said, “I am your son.”
Achcauhtli’s jaw tightened.
“No,” he whispered.
Snow gathered in the fur lining his coat.
“My son is dead.”
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then Lusio began to laugh.
Quietly at first.
A weak wheezing sound rattling in his chest.
Then it deepened.
The laugh twisted into something animal. Something wounded.
A low bellow erupted from him so violently the hunters stumbled backward. It sounded like a dying moose screaming somewhere deep in the mountains.
Lusio collapsed into the snow.
His body convulsed.
Bones cracked beneath his skin with sharp popping sounds like tree branches snapping in winter. His legs bent backward violently. The sound made Aucaman gag.
Then they began to grow.
Muscle swelled beneath pale flesh. His legs thickened into monstrous trunk-like limbs while his feet split fully into massive black hooves that crushed deep into the frozen earth.
Hunters started backing away.
One began praying under his breath.
Lusio’s fingers stretched next.
Nails lengthened into hooked black claws that tore trenches through the snow as he writhed on all fours. His shoulders bulged outward grotesquely, bones shifting and resetting beneath skin that looked too thin to contain them.
Then came the sound none of them would ever forget.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
His jaw pushed outward inch by inch.
Blood spilled from his mouth as his face elongated into something animalistic and wrong. Rows of sharp teeth forced through torn gums while dark fur burst across his back and shoulders in wet patches.
Aucaman could only stare.
Antlers erupted from Lusio’s skull with a sickening spray of blood.
Huge things.
Twisted and uneven like dead trees reaching toward heaven.
Then the creature lifted its head.
Its eyes rolled back once more—
and turned red.
Not bright.
Not fiery.
Just deep dead crimson.
Achcauhtli stood frozen before the thing that had once been his son.
The creature looked at him.
For one terrible moment, the chief thought he recognized something behind those eyes.
Then the beast screamed.
The sound ripped through the forest.
It sounded human and inhuman all at once. Thousands of voices layered together—crying, pleading, shrieking in agony beneath the roar of some enormous animal.
The hunters dropped their weapons and covered their ears.
Snow shook loose from the trees.
Then silence fell.
The beast lowered its head slowly toward Aucaman.
Ash drifted from its nostrils with every breath.
Aucaman could not move.
Fear rooted him where he stood.
The creature lunged.
One moment Aucaman was alive.
The next, his upper body disappeared between rows of teeth.
Blood sprayed across the snow in steaming arcs.
Achcauhtli shouted in horror and raised his spear, but the creature moved too fast. A massive claw seized the old chief and hurled him through the air like he weighed nothing at all.
The spear vanished into the storm.
Achcauhtli hit the ground hard.
Before he could rise, claws tore through him.
The old chief died without ever finishing his scream.
The beast stood motionless over the bodies, breathing heavily as snow gathered across its fur.
Satisfied.
But not full.
Slowly, its head turned toward the village lights flickering through the trees below.
Then it ran.
The creature bounded toward the forest with horrifying speed, climbing the great pines in seconds before leaping from branch to branch like some starving demon loose in the night.
Before dawn came, the village was gone.
And still—
the hunger remained.