Leshii

It coalesced out of the swirling mists fifty meters to my right. An amorphous cloud forming into arms, legs, head, and torso, coming together like a surrealistic painting of giants in days of old.

But it wasn't days of old.

This was now.

And it wasn't just a giant.

It was a monster.

* * *

"How can it be so damn cold the first day of October?"

I don't know why those words of Bobby Joe Hillspringer keep floating through my addled brain. Could be because I can't get warm these days, even in the heat of my cozy room. Being cold reminds me of that thing in the hills of Siberia that my patrol—including Bobby Joe of Denton, Texas—encountered.

That monstrous, unholy thing.

I'm sure Dr. Brenner will be around any minute to ask me again about our experience—that what she calls it, an experience—in the hills northwest of Ust-Belaya. Not that she says the actual geographic location; no one ever does. It's as if we landed on the banks of the Mississippi River instead of the Anadyr and took a stroll across Louisiana rather than Siberia. But it's still hush-hush, or at least it was two months ago (or maybe three; it's easy to lose track of time in the Fort Wainwright psychiatric hospital with no windows while being pumped full of Thorazine, Haldol, and God knows what other kind of psychotropic medications).

"This is an off-the-books mission," is what they told us before we left our base on St Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, fifty nautical miles away from Siberia. I'll never forget a smug, little CIA prick, standing in his neatly pressed navy-blue suit and polished elevator wingtip shoes, pale bald head sweating in the air conditioning, bright blue eyes gazing over us like slaughterhouse worker eyeing cattle before their final walk. "It's a simple mission," he said in a nasal voice, like sharp nails on a chalkboard. "We need some basic information on the nature of potential Russian military activity in the area, so we're going to do things the old-fashioned way."

What he meant was that their billion-dollar spy satellites were having glitches again or couldn't see through the thick cloud cover of eastern Siberia, so they had to turn to us—the soldiers that always paid the price for the bureaucrat's stupidity and greed.

"I want to emphasize the simple nature of this excursion," he continued, staring at me. "There is to be no engagement with anyone on the ground. This is purely a look, see, and get out excursion. Period." That condescending stare made his thoughts as clear as if they were encased in bubbles over his head—if this uppity black solider from Detroit causes this mission to go FUBAR, he's going to end up in a windowless cell in an interrogation center in Romania.

Like that worried me. I had just finished a twelve-month deployment in Syria; figured a quick in and out in Siberia would be an easy walk in the park, albeit a cold one.

I never counted on having to lock eyes with a demon.