Ghosts of Hell Creek

The stars were wrong.

It’s the first thing that hits Arthur when he walks out of his RV. The sound of the door banging shut made him jump, but he can’t look away from the sky.

No Big Dipper. No anything, no recognizable sketched shape of a constellation he knew. The sky was crystal clear, moonless as it had been when he’d flopped onto the bed, but it was not at all the same.

All his life, Arthur McCrane had known the locations of the stars. His dad had taught them to him on long fishing trips and hikes. He’d told him how to find the shapes and the many stories they told. They were steady in their motions, the guides of ancient sailors and a wonder to men far from home since history began.

They did not change.

Except now they had.

He didn’t really understand what drew him outside. He looked down from the strange sky to the RV park, dark and still here in the witching hour with only a few yellow lights casting weak halos in the night.

It’s also…not like that at all.

It’s a downward slope covered by trees, some kind of thick pine- redwoods?- and something with pale flowers that are bright in the starlight. Was that…was that a palm tree? The breeze kicked up and blew into his face the vague scent of greenness and wet. It’s an echo of an echo of a smell but still powerful as it shouldn’t be here in the rough scrubby badlands of Montana.

He took a few steps forward, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, and stepped into the image of a fern-like palm. It is there and not there, the sharpness of its rough trunk and the brush of its leaves at once vivid and vague.

A very long time ago, the stars would have once been very different. Palm trees and redwoods would have grown here when the world was warmer and this place was a coast, not the dry inland badlands now called Hell Creek.

He knew it. He knew it and if it weren’t for the smell of the air and the ghost of fronds against his shin, he would think that cold pizza had gone bad.

He turned back to his RV and started. It was covered in a half-real redwood, with ferns and flowers all around. He reached out and touched both his RV door and the bark of the ancient tree.

Something bellowed not far away. The sound seemed to come from a deep hole, but it also still seemed close.

Redwoods weren’t the only thing that had once lived in Hell Creek.

Curiosity beat out caution- nothing here was quite real, anyway, and what kind of paleontology grad student would Arthur be if he didn’t at least look?

He followed the noise through the ghost forest. He thought he caught small movements on the edge of his vision, but if they were some kind of animal- past or present- they hid themselves before he could turn.

As he drew closer, he could tell that the noise was a bellowing animal, giving off that ungulate roar like an elk, but deeper, bigger.

He broke through what was both a flat clearing and a hillside. The mismatch made him stumble, but when he found his feet, he couldn’t really focus on it.

A triceratops was bellowing a challenge to his rival.

He was huge, a mass of scaly skin and muscle and majestic horns. Beyond him was his herd, eating and watching. They were smaller- females and juveniles?- and mistier, less focused.

It was the old bones given life, but the bones were nothing compared to this. The weight of him, the fire in his eyes as he locked eyes with a smaller male. His frill flushed with that shadow of red with rage as he stamped a massive foot and snorted, head lowering.

The smaller male gave a squealing bellow and lowered his own head.

Arthur tensed as the two readied to charge. It was a calculated moment, he could tell. The bigger male had a broken horn, and those horns were cored with bone, not keratin, like elk. That kind of damage was permanent and dangerous. And that was just damage to a defensive weapon. The mass of one of these animals behind those sharp points against flesh…how often did they die in clashes like this?

The younger male lunged, but he never touched his opponent.

Crashing out of the forest came a nightmare of teeth.

It didn’t roar, just moved. Its huge taloned feet slammed into the ground, propelling the feathered bulk towards the smaller triceratops gaping maw first. Both triceratopses turned and bellowed threats as they dodged out of the way with great lumbering steps.

Massive jaws snapped on nothing but a shadow of dust. The shade rumbled and glared with eyes the color of dead stars. It seemed to be made of mist and starlight. All of its colors had been washed away by the passage of long ages.

Tyrannosaurus rex. Arthur took a step back.

He must have made a sound because the dead star eyes turned his way. The triceratops thundered away towards their retreating herd.

The rex turned fully towards Arthur. There was a desperate hunger in the lines of its body. It stepped forward onto the dry hillside and the coastal forest behind it faded to the barest of shadows you can find on moonless nights.

Only the rex remained near to solid.

Too much.

Arthur stumbled back as it took another step. It swung its head from one side to another before moving as it stepped again, carefully, as if testing the ground.

The badland wind kicked up and stirred the short crest of feathers on its head. The rex lifted its head and sniffed loudly.

Arthur ran up the hill. The ground was rocky and loose, and he scrambled to get to his feet. The steady steps of the rex behind him resounded like whispers in a silent room.

He hauled himself up the hill. He was too slow, he knew it, trying to navigate the rough ground with only starlight to see. He thought that he could see the shape of the ancient landscape in flashes, making it even harder to run.

The steps grew steadier and faster behind him. He didn’t dare turn around, just move and breathe. Muscles and lungs burned. He’d scraped his hands badly on the rocks, but they didn’t hurt. There was only breath and move, push against the ground, the loud-quiet noise of the beast behind him, inhale, exhale, faster, faster…

He tripped at the crest of the hill on a bared ridge of rock, landing hard on his hip and shoulder.

A giant clawed foot stomped to rest next to his head. When no teeth closed in, he turned to look up at the rex.

It was built from mist and shade, scraps pulled together out of time to form its huge bulk. Its edges seemed blurred, in motion, as if being pulled at violently by some unfelt wind. It leaned over him. Hot breath caressed his face with a rotten meat stink. A dragon’s breath.

He could see the hunger in its strangely burning eyes, all ferocity and…desperation.

It wanted to live. It only ever wanted to live, to move and breathe, to taste the heat of life again.

The huge jaws opened. The teeth were like enameled knives. Arthur hunched into himself, but he didn’t shut his eyes or turn away from that ancient hungry gaze.

The sun rose over the hills. The echoes of strange stars were blasted away by the new day and the ghostly overlay of a forgotten world faded into the air.

The rex lasted a moment longer. Whatever force was pulling on its edges began ripping at it, until the mass of it was gone as if it had never been. Only the hungering dead-star eyes remained for a beat, then they too vanished.

Arthur took a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding and slumped back. His hand shifted and he yelped as something cut it.

When he looked back, a time-worn stone tooth stuck up slightly from the stone, a chipped and broken knife stripped of its enamel and buried in dirt for long ages. He traced its ragged edge and sat up, looking over the badlands as the sun began to gild it.

The land remembered, he guessed, hardly believing it. Or maybe the land was remembered by those hungry, long-gone lives. Who knew? All that was left were these buried bones.