The figure resolved itself as it stumbled out from the shadowed trees and into the firelight: its starting stopping gait, its moan, that horrible, grey skin, and the eyes, all white and empty. It came out of the woods and startled our camp.
I gazed at it wondering and fearing; Holden sighed. Thrusting his bare hand into the coals, he sent a shower of embers flying at the monster. As the hot ash burned its skin, the thing let out a dreadful wail, but undeterred, it continued, its arms reaching, its broken and swollen fingers, black with death, fanned out ready to grasp.
Holden rose, clutching the unburned end of a log. Leaping over the flames, he brought this half burning stave down upon the head of the monster. The soot and ash exploded as the stick broke in two.
It staggered, bending as it stooped to the side. Holden, reversing the arch of his swing, drew his wooden weapon across the thing’s face, smashing it into the thing’s teeth. I could hear the solid thud of the blow. Now its jaw hung from its head, dangling like a pendulum.
Awakening to myself, I snatched up my axe and leapt into the fray. Coming to my friend’s side, I wailed with a battle cry as I planted my blade into the neck of the foe. The blow sank deeply into its flesh, but the creature did not fall.
My weapon stuck in that corrupted carcass, and as the creature jerked suddenly, it was wrested from my hand.
“Fire!” Holden barked at me. “Use fire.”
I looked back at our camp and said, “Grab an arm.”
Coming to either side of the thing, we plucked the abomination off its feet and dragged it towards the still burning campfire. It screamed as we held it over the coals, but its skin grew darker as the licking tongues of flame rose up to scourge the monster. Soon its struggles ceased, and we threw the half burned thing aside.
“We’re lucky,” Holden said. “Don’t know what we’d do if there were more of them.”
“Run.”
“Probably,” he said.
But I was already running. I could see at least twelve of them coming after their friend.
Tale Told 