The Heartbeat Between Life and Death
The forest was blood red, dying with the year. Cold iron in his hands, the hunter trod the well-worn trail, stepping silently around fallen leaves. He felt a rhythm through his feet, where the pulsing of his veins matched that of the forest, a feeling that grew stronger as he stalked deeper into the humid shadows.
The gun was his father’s, just like the land past the forest’s edge. Good land, family land, rich land, its dirt tamed by generations of dedicated labour. Land where the hunter and his siblings had played and danced, sweated and toiled, cursed as they dug up rocks and roots, dreamed of the homes each of them would build on neighbouring plots. And always, in the background, the shadow of the forest had loomed. When the plough fell still or the shovel rested idle in his hand, the forest had been waiting, a shadow stretching out dark fingers, a sound just beyond hearing.
These trails carried life through the forest, animals large and small. They carried death too. The death that was part of this place like the dark lines were part of his hand, a death that came with fangs and claws, a death that crept out into the surrounding fields as the nights grew short and the food with them, a death that had taken the hunter’s brother. Now a different death came in the footfalls of the hunter, death with a wooden stock and a metal barrel, death that smelled of gunpowder and grease. Vengeful, purposeful, determined.
It wasn’t enough to kill the bear that had killed his kin. He would kill this place.
The dark dirt of the trail matched the twilight blue of the sky above, seen in torn fragments through the leaves. Something rustled and the hunter flinched, gun twitching toward the sound. He wanted to pull the trigger, to kill whatever crept through the undergrowth, to scream as he called blood for blood. Instead, as the leaves fell still, he turned back to the path and kept walking, watchful and tensed.
Bats chittered through gaps in the last broken bird song of the day. Branches rustled. Clumps of long grass hissed as they stroked his shin. The forest closed in like a fever, drawing sweat from his brow.
The hunter knelt and pressed his palm against the trail. The pulsing like blood in his veins was still there, the power of the forest flowing along this well-worn trail. His fingers curled, claw-like, into the loam, and for a moment he caught a coppery scent, but when he raised his hand it was only stained with mud.
Soon.
The shattered pieces of sky were almost black now, but a glow through the trees led him on. Not the green of daylight through leaves, but a crimson illumination seeping between the trunks of the trees.
He could hear the rhythm louder, beating like a drum, like the throbbing of blood in his ears. He raised his rifle, eased back the hammer, crept closer to his prey.
In the centre of a clearing, above the barrow of a long-dead king, hung the vast heart of the forest. Not the heart of playing cards and romantic greetings, bright and smooth-sided, but the heart a butcher would wrench from the chest of an ox, lumpen and muscular. With each throbbing beat, a malevolent light pulsed, while liquid oozed down thick veins into the earth. Beneath it knelt all the creatures of the forest: wolf and deer, fox and hare bathed in crimson light.
Fury was a bullet in the hunter’s heart, waiting to be fired. He drew a slow breath, lined his eye to the sight, shifted his foot into a firing stance.
Dead leaves broke beneath his boot like the cracking of scabs. Animals turned and every eye fell upon the hunter. Growls sounded from behind bared teeth. Tails flicked. Claws furrowed the earth.
Blood pulsed in the hunter’s temples, roared like thunder in his ears. In a moment, tensed muscles would uncoil, flinging those creatures across the clearing. His flesh would fall like the trunk of a storm-torn tree, his blood water the roots, and it would be worthwhile.
His hand tightened around the rifle’s grip, but he couldn’t bring his finger to squeeze. The forest’s heart beat in time with his, a kinship he’d never known. The pounding in the trail didn’t just match his pulse; the two of them were joined. He took a step forward, teeth bared, still unable to fire, and the animals parted for him. Without willing it, he found himself standing before the heart of the forest, his hand pressed against its side, fingers moving with a muscle as old as time.
Death could never come from outside because death was the life of the forest.
In the darkness, an owl screeched as it fell on its prey.
About the author:
Andrew Knighton is an author of short stories, comics, novellas, and the forthcoming novels The Executioner’s Blade (Northodox, November 2024) and Forged for Destiny (Orbit, April 2025). As a freelance writer, he’s ghostwritten over forty novels in other people’s names, as well as articles, history books, and video scripts. He lives in Yorkshire with an academic and a cat, growing vegetables and dreaming about a brighter future.
Find Andrew:
Website
Bluesky
Instagram
Mastodon: @gibbondemon@wandering.shop
RECENT STORIES
