Read Online Primal Scream by Michael Slade - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Slade
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Psychological, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective, Suspense fiction, Horror, Canada, Fiction - Psychological Suspense, Horror Tales, Horror & Ghost Stories, Horror - General
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howled as the snowy owl dropped, with talons spread, to pluck prey from the hoary woods.
Winterman Snow was on the hunt.
Like the owl and the white wolf, he was all white, too. He wore a white parka with a white hood, buried in the hole of which was his pale face. Gloves, and pants, and mukluks, and snowshoes were also white, so the only color about him was the RealTree camo on his Deer Hunter bow, and the soft-yellow fletching of arrows visible over his shoulder.
Saint Sebastian , he thought.
The image of it was ever in his mind, linking this shadowy world of the present with the even more shadowy realm of his people's past, back when nature and super-nature merged hi life and art, creating a mythic wonder in which men and animals as kindred spirits traded both secrets and bodies. That was the time of salmon, cedar, the potlatch, and totem poles, when all fish bones were returned to the rivers so they could swim to the Salmon House for reincarnation, fog brooding over tree-quilled slopes untouched by man, while twenty war canoes sailed off with thirty men apiece, chiefs clothed in sea-otter skins and warriors dabbed with red ocher sprinkled with shining sand, heading for headhunter battles from which they would return with baskets filled with the heads of enemies slain.
Like yours, Saint Sebastian , he thought.
Snow could hear the silence and feel the solitude. Mother Nature spoke to him through voices of the night. He knew the name of every creek, lake, and peak in this lone land. Not the empty names that white men had given them to honor then- own, but Indian names which honored the nature of what they described. Rivers and mountains and wilderness had a language, too, and his mind caught the echo of what they said. He felt their hate for what the white man had done to the land, just as he felt his people's hate for what had been done to them, after both they and all they held sacred were signed away without their consent so prosperity would accrue to the newcomers with their new order of things, not to ancient dwellers with their ancient ways. It was the same hate he felt for what the white did to him.
Saint Sebastian.
And Reverend Noel.
Though he hunted like his ancestors, Snow's was no Indian bow. This compound bow like Rambo shot in one of his he-man films had a machined-aluminum handle bolted to Magna glass limbs, tipped with wheel- like Synergy III eccentric cams or pulleys. Whereas longbows and recurve bows release energy stored in their limbs to propel the arrow, a compound bo w stores its maximum or peak weight in the cams, then "lets off" half its draw weight after mid-draw so the archer can aim lo nger with less effort. Draw 40 l bs @ 50 % let-off and you will hold 20 l bs, for mathematicians. This Deer Hunter had a thirty-inch draw of sixty pounds, modified to forty pounds (with holding weight of twenty pounds) so the arrows Snow fired would stick from his prey like those in the painting of Saint Sebastian behind the reverend's desk.
Saint Sebastian.
Martyr to the bow.
The sun crept over the eastern rim to spew a flood of light. The teeth of the jagged horizon bit deeply into the bloody disc. A thousand tints of gold blazed around the solar ball and washed west across a sea of icebergs from the Rockies to the coast. Mountains soared around the plateau like white giants bald with age and cloaked hi mist, spiking peaks above veils of vapor, sudden warmth sucked from their glaring skins. The quick, unerring eye of the hunter tracked dark footprints over the dazzling snow from where he stood to movement in a spiny thicket beyond. There, where the hunted man sought sanctuary in the dregs of fading night, dawn cast shadows behind the white trees by shooting rays of sunlight at him similar to the metal arrow the archer pulled from the quiver on his back.
Left side facing the man in the bush and shoulders in line with his quarry's spine, Snow kept his bow hand loose so not to choke the weapon, then nocked
Winterman Snow was on the hunt.
Like the owl and the white wolf, he was all white, too. He wore a white parka with a white hood, buried in the hole of which was his pale face. Gloves, and pants, and mukluks, and snowshoes were also white, so the only color about him was the RealTree camo on his Deer Hunter bow, and the soft-yellow fletching of arrows visible over his shoulder.
Saint Sebastian , he thought.
The image of it was ever in his mind, linking this shadowy world of the present with the even more shadowy realm of his people's past, back when nature and super-nature merged hi life and art, creating a mythic wonder in which men and animals as kindred spirits traded both secrets and bodies. That was the time of salmon, cedar, the potlatch, and totem poles, when all fish bones were returned to the rivers so they could swim to the Salmon House for reincarnation, fog brooding over tree-quilled slopes untouched by man, while twenty war canoes sailed off with thirty men apiece, chiefs clothed in sea-otter skins and warriors dabbed with red ocher sprinkled with shining sand, heading for headhunter battles from which they would return with baskets filled with the heads of enemies slain.
Like yours, Saint Sebastian , he thought.
Snow could hear the silence and feel the solitude. Mother Nature spoke to him through voices of the night. He knew the name of every creek, lake, and peak in this lone land. Not the empty names that white men had given them to honor then- own, but Indian names which honored the nature of what they described. Rivers and mountains and wilderness had a language, too, and his mind caught the echo of what they said. He felt their hate for what the white man had done to the land, just as he felt his people's hate for what had been done to them, after both they and all they held sacred were signed away without their consent so prosperity would accrue to the newcomers with their new order of things, not to ancient dwellers with their ancient ways. It was the same hate he felt for what the white did to him.
Saint Sebastian.
And Reverend Noel.
Though he hunted like his ancestors, Snow's was no Indian bow. This compound bow like Rambo shot in one of his he-man films had a machined-aluminum handle bolted to Magna glass limbs, tipped with wheel- like Synergy III eccentric cams or pulleys. Whereas longbows and recurve bows release energy stored in their limbs to propel the arrow, a compound bo w stores its maximum or peak weight in the cams, then "lets off" half its draw weight after mid-draw so the archer can aim lo nger with less effort. Draw 40 l bs @ 50 % let-off and you will hold 20 l bs, for mathematicians. This Deer Hunter had a thirty-inch draw of sixty pounds, modified to forty pounds (with holding weight of twenty pounds) so the arrows Snow fired would stick from his prey like those in the painting of Saint Sebastian behind the reverend's desk.
Saint Sebastian.
Martyr to the bow.
The sun crept over the eastern rim to spew a flood of light. The teeth of the jagged horizon bit deeply into the bloody disc. A thousand tints of gold blazed around the solar ball and washed west across a sea of icebergs from the Rockies to the coast. Mountains soared around the plateau like white giants bald with age and cloaked hi mist, spiking peaks above veils of vapor, sudden warmth sucked from their glaring skins. The quick, unerring eye of the hunter tracked dark footprints over the dazzling snow from where he stood to movement in a spiny thicket beyond. There, where the hunted man sought sanctuary in the dregs of fading night, dawn cast shadows behind the white trees by shooting rays of sunlight at him similar to the metal arrow the archer pulled from the quiver on his back.
Left side facing the man in the bush and shoulders in line with his quarry's spine, Snow kept his bow hand loose so not to choke the weapon, then nocked
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