Ninja Bear

People always said the snow and the cold were the worst thing about winter. Right now, as he battled against it, the cyclist thought the wind beat them both.

It infuriated him, on a level he probably shouldn’t have allowed it to. He knew it was ridiculous, but he couldn’t help it. It was as if the universe had a personal vendetta against him for trying to get home in a healthy manner. Sometimes he got so mad, he would roar and curse his frustrated defiance against the sky as he pedalled. It did no good; he could not fight against the push of air and achieve the speed he wished.

As he did every evening, he had joined this section of the South Coast cycle path, the part that ran alongside the A27, where it met the industrial estate in Havant. He hated that the path went through the estate, especially when it was raining as it was tonight. The path crossed over the entrances of the work units, which numerous lorries and vans had been ambling across throughout the day. By this time, when he was making his way home from work, these entrances were layered in foul water and mud which splashed up from his tires and into his face and mouth. He would spit, but the taste lingered all the way home.

The path exited the industrial site at the west end and then ran along Farlington marshes. The A27 ran parallel to the cycle path, at the top of an embankment. From where he currently was, he could see the tops of the highway lights above the foliage that covered the steep bank to his right. To his left, barely visible in the dark, lay the marshes and the distant lights of Southsea, his destination.

Even though the wind and rain fought against him, he always felt a slight elation at this part of the journey as it meant he only had another seven miles to go. A rush of wind brushed the salty smell of the sea into his face. He stood up on the pedals and pushed harder against the wind, eager to be home. The drumbeat on the music in his earphones became a rhythm for his pedalling.

He could feel the sweat on his back where he wore his rucksack, his work clothes inside probably soaked despite the numerous plastic bags he had wrapped them in before leaving the office. His thighs were aching from fatigue and from the cold wind and rain that seeped through his jogging bottoms. The back of his neck ached from straining against the wind and his fingers felt slightly frozen. He knew they would be stiff and painful to unfurl when he arrived back at his warm house.

The marshes to the left disappeared as the coastline arched south, to be replaced by a tract of farmland. He glanced left over the fence, where a large brown cow stared at him solemnly through the darkness of the night. He was currently feeling silly, perhaps a high from endorphins, so he shouted “Hello!” at it as he passed. It’s slightly bemused expression made him laugh as he zoomed onwards.

His laugh stopped as something struck his back wheel, making him wobble. The world strobed crazily in the light front lamp as his handlebars flew drunkenly back and forth. His heart leapt as he anticipated being tossed headfirst into the fence. Slamming on the brakes, he brought the bike under control. He leaned around and looked down, but could see nothing wrong with the rear wheel. He shrugged to himself and turned back around to leave, but as he tried to move forward, the wheel wobbled violently.

Climbing off, he crouched down to get a better look. The red rear light and the white light attached to his shoulder showed him the wheel had actually been buckled by whatever had struck it. More so, two of the spokes had been snapped completely.

“FUCK!” he screamed as he threw the bike against the fence. He wasn’t going anywhere on it now. The back wheel could hardly turn.

He stood up and looked both ways down the path. He knew it was at least a mile to either end. He could see no distant lights of other cyclists either. He cursed again. If he had left work at the usual time, there was the chance that more people might be riding along the path, but he had stayed late and it was now nearly 8 o’clock.

Sighing, he picked the bike up and prepared to push it home. Hopefully when he got to the car park at the end of the cycle path he could ring somebody to come pick him up. The broken back wheel would mean he would have to half push, half carry it and he didn’t fancy doing that for seven miles.

As he began moving, he heard something that sounded like a dry chuckle. At first he thought it might be the wind or his iPod skipping, but then it came again. He found it strange that he heard it at all over the wind and music, but it was a definite laugh. He looked to his right, where a tunnel led beneath the dual carriageway. It was pitch black in there, but he had the feeling someone was in there. He swung his shoulder round so the light shone in there, but the tunnel was too dark and deep for the lamp to have much affect.

“Hello?” he called as he peered into the gloom. Nobody answered. He shook his head, impatient to get moving. He told himself that he was imagining things. Yet the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up and his need to get moving was suddenly not just down to impatience. He glanced back into the tunnel and then began to push the broken bike forward, lowering his head against the wind and rain.

He moved three steps before something struck him in the back of the legs and knocked him over. He landed in a crumpled heap on the bike, tangled within the frame. A sharp pain was flaring up in his right calf. Looking down, the light of the bike showed a large wound bleeding heavily through a rip in his trousers. He hissed between his teeth in pain as he moved it.

He couldn’t see what had hit him. A shot of fear ran up his spine, but he pushed it down and forced himself to be sensible. He was alongside farmland so maybe it was an escaped sheep or even a small deer that had hit him.

He pulled his earphones out and pushed them down into his pocket. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg, he began to push himself up. Then he saw what had hit him.

Standing in the light of his front lamp was what seemed at first like a young boy, but then he noticed the skin was too wrinkled and yellow below the layer of foul smelling mud and grime. The bony pigeon chest heaved as it panted and the cyclist could hear the thing’s rattling breaths over the wind. One eye, bloodshot and twice the size of a normal human’s eye, stared at him. The other was squinted and dead, yellow pus leaking from the lump of flesh in the socket.

The cyclist stared in disbelief. He had never seen or smelt anything so hideous in his life. The creature stared at him with a mad look in its eye and then it laughed, the dry chuckle he had heard in the tunnel. The creature’s mouth was split into a grotesque, oversized grin, the broken teeth yellow and black. He scooted backwards slightly, away from the creature. It stared at him, breathing heavily. The way it was looking at him made sweat start to pour down his back and his arsehole clench in fear.

It began to move forward.

He involuntarily gasped at in horror as it neared him. It had stepped out of the light from the handelbars, but the shoulder light shone into its face. It raised an over-sized hand against the light and he saw long, half-shattered yellow nails. Blood glinted on them. His throat went dry as he realised it was blood from his wounded leg.

The creature cocked it’s head in a bird like movement and then suddenly struck forward, lashing out with its nails. They cut into his temple, severing the straps of his bike helmet. It fell and clattered to the concrete path, as the creature swung further across the cyclist’s forehead. He instinctively tried to back away, but the nail on the creature’s small finger raked deep into his eyeball and he screamed in pain. Blood, and what remained of the eyeball, ran down his face. It had blinded him on his right side.

It backed off slightly, seeming to delight in his pain. Fear and pain drove him to scrabble for the bike helmet, grasp it tightly and smash it up into the creature’s face. The creature tried to duck away as the movement began, but he caught it in the chest and sent it reeling over his bike.

He sprang to his feet, his leg and eye on fire. Scrambling forward, he headed for the embankment. As he pushed his way through the brambles and up the steep slope, he looked back over his shoulder to see the creature righting itself. Maniacal hatred was evident on its face. It began to move forward, low down like a deformed ape.

He was gripped by terror now, which spurred him even faster up the slope. He reached the top and pulled himself up to the metal barrier beside the road. Traffic roared past, a mass of white and red lights in the rain. Panicking he stood on the side of the road and started waving his arms and screaming for help.

No-one saw him in time. His reflective jacket had become muddied by his scramble and the rain obscured him from sight at the side of the road. Only one person even glanced at him and that was a young girl in the back of her parent’s silver car.

In his panic and sudden exhaustion, he didn’t realise that he had stumbled further into the road. The wing mirror of a white van, moving at high speed, clipped his left arm and shoulder. He felt it shatter in the socket before he was thrown back over the barrier. His rucksack of clothes saved his spine as he hit the metal and flipped over into the shrubbery.

He lay in the brambles, his body a wreck of pain. He had never felt so much agony and exhaustion in his life. It had only been ten minutes since he had stopped to check his wheel, but it felt like hours. All he could do was lie there and whimper.

The fear had left him through the pain, but it gripped him again as he heard the creature moving towards him. Pushing himself up with his good arm, he began scrambling towards the road again. He nearly made it, but the rucksack that had just saved his back became his downfall. The creature grabbed it and, with more strength that he imagined it possessed, hurled him backwards down the slope to the path.

He landed heavily on his shattered arm, causing him to scream. His shoulder lamp hit the concrete and dimmed violently. The rain was heavier now, washing into his destroyed eye and running the blood into his mouth. The creature stood, just at the edge of his vision, panting.

Anger mixed with his fear and pain and he shouted in frustration at it, “What the fuck do you want with me? Huh? You fucker!”

The creature didn’t answer, it just stared. He screamed at it. He had landing next to his bike again, so he grabbed the water bottle and threw it at the creature, followed by his bike pump.

Both were a wild throw and they missed the creature. It just watched them bounce past, as a cat would watch a bird or a piece of string.

Then it turned back to him.

It moved forward slowly. It seemed to be relishing his fear, drinking it in.

He tried in vain to scoot backwards, but it leapt upon him. It crouched on his torso, its vicious toenails digging in like claws. The creatures hands pinned down his shoulders with unseemly strength and it delighted in gripping his shattered shoulder, laughing huskily as it did so. His vision went black for a second at the pain and when he refocused, the creatures face was above his. Thick drool dribbled from black lips onto his face and into his mouth and eye. It burned where it touched.

He was so afraid now that he felt on the edge of insanity, he knew his mind was breaking. The creature stared, the one good eye locked on to his. Then it began to regurgitate. He watched in horror as its throat bulged up and down as it brought up liquid from its stomach.

In a quick movement, it reached up and wrenched his mouth open. It leaned in as if to kiss him and a torrent of thick yellow liquid poured out of the creature’s mouth and into his own. He tried to scream and struggle, but the creature held him with more strength than he would ever possess.

His mouth was forced closed and he felt the liquid move down his throat. It began to burn, like he had swallowed acid. He tried to scream, but the creature’s bile was disintegrating his throat and larynx.

It slowly moved off him and down his body, in an almost seductive way. It grasped his wounded leg in one hand, but he didn’t even notice that pain now. Pausing only to throw his bike over the fence, it dragged him into the tunnel.

His one good eye was flooded with tears and he felt his bowels finally empty. The creature propped him up against the wall and then sat back on its haunches, the mad grin gone now. He moved his head slightly and looked back to the entrance of the tunnel. The rain had slowed and he could just make out the distant lights of home. As he watched, a couple dressed in rain coats and walking their dog ambled past, chatting. He reached out to them and tried to scream, but his destroyed throat only bulged and bubbled. The dog looked round, as if keen to investigate the tunnel, but then it whimpered and pulled the couple away. They were gone.

He turned back to the thing, slightly visible in the light of his damaged shoulder light, as it moved towards him once more. One hand grasped his face and the other pinned his good arm against the wall. The creature lowered its head and bit into his bicep. In one strong movement, it tore the flesh from his upper arm. In his mind he screamed. The thing never stopped looking at his face.

Then it moved towards his neck and the last thing he felt was the broken, rotten teeth bite into his jugular. It was almost delicate.

In the field, the wheel of his overturned bike moved slowly in the wind.