Spotlighting
At this point he didn’t care if a fawn or rabbit walked out into the field, George Robles was going to shoot it. The sun was nearly set and the autumn chill grew as it’s warming rays receded into the orange sky. It was the third week into deer season and George usually had at least one by this time.
“Hunting is a war and it is me vs them!” He would shout around Low’s Bar and Grill. Most tended to ignore George these days, they were more or less “sick of his shit.” But when any hunting season began George would crawl out of the bar and disappear into the woods. Deer, turkey, duck, anything George would hunt it. Despite his ineptitude and general laziness at about everything else, George truly enjoyed hunting. Or at least most days he did, but these past three weeks had been the quietest he had ever known. Not even a squirrel darted by his path. It was as if the woods had fallen completely still.
Tonight though George was going to try a little trick he hadn’t done since he was boy, but maybe the deer are only feeding at night now. He pulled the spotlight from his backpack and wrapped the strap around his wrist. Spotlighting is frowned upon by the rest of the hunting community, but ”fuck em“ George thought. It is actually quite easy to spotlight a deer, you just got to simply shine the light out across the field and hope one is wandering about. They will freeze in place and then POW a nice and easy shot. They don’t call it a deer in headlights for nothing.
As the evening turned fully into night George took some healthy pulls from his bottle of jack he had in the backpack. This helped him ignore the chill in the air and passed the time. Which is the real enemy of the hunter. There never seems to be enough of it when the field is full, but too much of it when there is nothing to watch. George waited patiently, the first hour only shining the light across the field after every thirty minutes, but near the end of the second hour he found himself scanning across the field every ten minutes.
When he held the pistol grip of the spotlight, his fingers anxiously rubbed the plastic trigger. He would slowly raise the light up and release the ray out into the field. The spotlight had incredible power, was able to produce 2000 lumen. As the ray traveled out over the green field he could illuminate about half the field at one point and quickly scan the rest. However impressive it was though, George was still completely deer less and beginning to feel drunk. He made up his mind he would give it another thirty minutes and then call it a night.
As the final minutes in the thirty ticked by, George while lightly tapping his foot heard the sound of a leaf crunching, followed by another crunch. He squinted his eyes in the complete darkness and tried to tune his head towards the faint sounds as he slowly readied his rifle on the stand. He held the light with his left hand and hunkered behind the iron sights. He would only have a few seconds to determine the shot.
“Alright let’s see how big you are.” he muttered under his breath and pulled the trigger of the flashlight. The beam illuminated the field and it took Georges eyes a moment to adjust. As his mind processed what he was staring at he raised his head in confusion above the rifle. The creature was nearly 8 feet tall on all of it’s fours. It turned it’s massive horned head up towards the source of the light and let the deer fall from it’s fangs onto the ground.
“What in the flying fuck?” The flashlight cut out and George was cast back into full darkness he pulled the trigger of his rifle. The muzzle flashed out in the darkness not at all as bright as the light and the sound cracked through the woods, then silence. He was still pulling the trigger of the light, but nothing came out. George let go of the rifle and hit the side of the light with his right hand, and in the dark he felt the butt of the gun pass by his head as it tumbled out of the tree stand crashing to the ground.
“Shit!” he cried out and smacked the light again clicking the trigger repeatedly, but the light failed to appear.
What did he just see?
Had he really seen it even?
Did he hit it?
The silence in the night offered no answers and he stopped moving altogether and stared wide eyed out into the darkness. Trying to listen for any sounds. As the silence around him settled in he thought he was just hallucinating. There was no way that was a real thing. He leaned back in the tree stand and looked down at the flashlight. He could only feel it in his hands, but even with the trigger pressed the damn thing would not shine.
After a few minutes George made a plan to just ease down the tree stand ladder and just take off through the woods back to his truck. If he did hit anything he would investigate in the morning. For now he just wanted to go home. He reached down into his backpack and began feeling around for his walking flashlight. He knew it had fresh batteries in it, he had changed them this afternoon and tested it in his truck before heading to the stand. As his fingers came across the plastic tube, the tree stand shook. Well not the stand, but the tree it was attached to. Something was hitting the bottom of the tree. George pulled the flashlight out of his backpack pulling his bright orange hat out of the bag with it which fell out of the stand and into the darkness below. He pressed the button on the side of the light as the tree shook again. The leaves above his head rattled as another thud resounded against the bark. Was it climbing? The flashlight burst out and it’s welcoming beam illuminated George’s face . He turned it down below him through the grated floor of the stand. There through the diamond holes George saw the face smiling up at him. The light gleamed over it’s dark red eyes and the thing grinned back with bloodied fangs at him. It had two large horns that stuck up over it’s brow and the face that resembled an animals, but no animal he had ever seen.
The thing lifted it’s claw from the tree as the flashlight went dead.
Another version of this story was read on a YouTube channel called Slumber Reads the episode is here
