"What the hell was it you said you saw?"
"I didn't say because I don't know what I saw."
"Then what the hell do you think we're tracking, Oswald?"
"Stop cursing, James. Whatever it is, it isn't like anything I've seen before." Oswald was crouched low in the weak light, trying to make sense of the tracks and drag marks on the forest floor. Nothing about any of this made sense to him. Something had been stalking their village for the last three weeks. That first week, pets started disappearing. Ones and twos at first: Cats, dogs, even gerbils and hamsters. Despite that, rats and mice hadn't become a problem in the fortnight since the last pets were lost.
Then, last Monday, the latest of the Pridbor family was stolen from her crib. Poor baby hadn't even been held by her mother for longer than a day, let alone christened. The town had turned itself inside out and upside down to find her. Watches were selected, lots were drawn, and for two days, it seemed it had just been the last of a string of tragedies. Then, the Theodore boy was taken. The window had been smashed in, and some manner of beast had torn its way over the roofs and been lost in the forest pines.
More watches were posted, and rifles were donated by the kindness of the local smith. Lanterns were issued out to every man who stood watch. Nothing was seen or heard. But that isn't to say that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, but that nothing of it was known until the sun broke the oppressive abyssal darkness and the silence that accompanied it. It was then that four of the watchmen were found. Well, their shoes were. And little else of themselves were with them.
Oswald had returned from the big city to this madness and volunteered for a whole night's watch, not just one shift, though he had refused to take a lantern or the offered rifle. He strode silently along the streets of his home, keeping to deeper shadows, waiting for he knew not what. It was while he waited that he did hear it, or more, he caught the absolute lack of sound pass by over him on the roofs above his head.
When he looked, he saw shadows on shadows, shifting around precisely as a mountain lion would, yet this seemed like it had horns, and the back half of it seemed wrong to his eyes in the dark. He couldn't be sure, but he swore it was watching the patrol across the street, stalking the two men by the light of their lantern. Oswald dared not cry out to them, even as the shadows lowered themselves to the ground before him and padded forward. He followed close as he dared, praying that no errant breeze betrayed his scent behind the beast. Luckily, none did.
As he set his rifle to his shoulder, ready to shoot the beast where he thought its heart was, it struck as swift as lightning. It snatched Patrick by the neck, standing on its back legs as it did. He was dead before he dropped his rifle, the clatter causing James to whirl around, the lantern leaving him blind to the beast only two feet away from him. That was until the crack of Oswald's fine-blued rifle let off into its side as he put three shots rapidly into the beast.
Seemingly for naught, it had run off, dragging Patrick still clutched in its jaws. Now they followed its tracks, and the destruction that told them it still held Patrick tight as the sun showed herself modestly in the clouded sky and morning fog.
"You shot it three times. How is it moving this fast?" James asked, as the adrenaline slowed and his mind began playing back the last hour of the night, knowing Oswald had hunted near everything that walks the wilds of the world on any continent.
"It doesn't appear to have even bled. If I didn't know better, I'd say I missed it." Oswald said absentmindedly as he followed the paw prints, unmistakably feline in shape and spacing. Still, they were the size of the largest of bears or a juvenile elephant's tracks, with hoof marks following behind them. Then he heard it again, the utter lack of sound. Twisting on his heels, as his rifle rose to his shoulder, the shadow was already on top of him, the paws slamming into his chest with the force of a cannon as James emptied his rifle into the beast.
Great suspenseful tone and pacing. If you listen to Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" while reading, the "Introduction" fits the atmosphere perfectly, and "The Augurs of Spring" should kick in with the pulsing strings right at the climax in the last paragraph. Awesome reading experience.