Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. White Ghost Fur Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

WHITE GHOST FUR

The rider bounced, certain it was only a matter of will and time before he came upon salvation. Lazy hooves dragged and crunched. A fine layer of snow had settled over the icy shelf that existed like bedrock from the first of October to mid-April. Steam puffed from the great white nostrils of the horse. Once a fine pale beast with brown speckles; the cold had made its mark. Snot icicles streamed solidly from the downturned chin. Tufts of fur sprouted in a last stand against the cold. Its eyes wore a milky glaze.

A squall had come onto the horse and its rider mid-morning. The already dead white world closed in further. The rider withdrew his compass regularly. The needle bounced along with him.

The steel grey sky was no help with direction. The days were short, no more than six hours. In a long patch of flat nothingness, the rider buried his face in bearskin folds while the winds pounded, finding gaps, whistling deadly kisses upon his damp and blemished flesh.

In time, the gale ceased, but the rider remained huddled into the skins. He was frozen in a way that spoke for the silenced winds. His pack had grown terrifyingly light. Two nights earlier, he ate the last of the salted buffalo strips.

This level of hunger reminded him of Ireland, and youth.

The rider spoke into the cloth over his face, “Dear Lord, save me from this barren place. Let me kiss the children. Let me hold my Mary again.”

There were four girls and one boy. They grew hair orange as rust, wore flesh of alabaster, freckled, not unlike the horse holding the rider upright.

The rider was once a member of a party. He’d been ill prior to the journey north. He’d carried a flu that would condemn the other scouts.

He’d taken three horses and kept their noses pointed south. The railway docked pay for a missing steed, meaning he could lose two before he lost wages.

On the first morning, he’d awoken to find a packhorse gone, along with half of the supplies he’d rescued for the trek. On the second night, his riding horse took off, perhaps spooked by the encroaching howls of wolves, perhaps something else.

It was a savage place with a million eyes in the trees. They watched and waited.

The rider rubbed salve onto his lips and the sore forming at the right corner of his mouth. It became difficult to sleep.

Screaming, he awoke to find his ears puffy and pinging a shattered glass throb through the cartilage. He lost a day coddling his head by the fire. He lost another day when a storm battered his pine and cedar lean-to.

The last horse whinnied and whined. The rider covered the horse’s eyes and forced it to sit, extended the lean-to as the world beat down on them. They ate milled grain in a smokehouse atmosphere.

Come morning, the horse walked. The rider rode. The forest opened into a plain. The rider reasoned that the open land meant people.

Beneath the plain was a grand limestone shelf. Young trees rarely surviving beyond saplings, the grass dwelled beneath the crust of snow. The plain did not mean people.

By nightfall, the rider prayed for good tidings, tongue slipping over the oozing sore as he spoke. The taste was sour and putrid. The fire crackled and the rider sat, the horse tied to a branch. He’d reached a patch of pale birch trees. The knots looked like lips.

The rider slept with a rifle. There were things in the trees. He had nine shots, should he need them.

He ate the last of the hardtack. What milled grain remained, he’d save for the horse until there was no choice. He prayed, the helplessness and hopelessness had inched and burrowed like a tick. “Dear God, please bless my horse with strong legs and bless me with a strong heart. Please let it be that the girls and Daniel are safe. Please let me see them again, amen.”

Morning, he set out, found more barren wasteland of rock and snow. The squalls came upon him. The temperature was as cold as the rider had ever known. The horse slowed.

The rider hunkered into himself as the winds whistled. He snapped wet eyes and sought the faces of those he left behind in Sherbrooke. Emma came first. She was the youngest, only two when the rider left. Edith and Beatrice came next. Daniel after that, he was seven, on his way to becoming a man. Claire was the eldest and she aged too quickly, an awkward shape began its shift by her tenth birthday. And Mary, the holder of his heart. They’d wed in the church of their homeland village. It was the last they saw of most of their people before striking off to the Dominion colony north of the claimed lands of America. He had a cousin at Grand Trunk and they needed men who could read, write, ride horse, and shoot.

“Dear God, let me see them again.” A tear slipped down the rider’s cheek, seeped into the threads of his scarf.

Evening fell upon the rider and the horse as they reached the edge of a forest. The horse refused to go further, soaking in the simple comfort of rest.

“Fine.” The rider slid off the horse. By the reins, he led the horse twenty feet, into the forest. Cold and stinging hands gathered limbs and bark. There was gunpowder in a pouch kept close to his heart. Into a short teepee, he settled the long-dead limbs. The gunpowder lit when flint met rock to create sparks.

A snuffing grumble fell onto his ear like a siren and he rolled onto his ass, pawing for the rifle. He scanned the leafless grey trees and saw only shadows. He listened, waiting. That animalistic grunt could’ve been one of many beasts, a few possibilities were worse than others.

The sound did not return.

The rider buried himself in pelts.

The horse whinnied and whined, oats depleted.

The night was forever. The rider awoke many times hearing groans, voices, breaths against his cover. Swinging wildly with the rifle pitched at the end of his arm. The fire was smoldering coals and the night engulfed.

The rider sensed the horse where it lay, sensed the trees surrounding them, sensed eyes too knowing.

“Dear God, I will be of the best men if You deliver me from this wilderness. Please God, I beseech You this, let me be a father and husband.”

The dark stayed short and long in equal sums. The sleep was insufficient, but the dark reigned for fifteen hours. Shivering, the rider huddled up to the fire for extra minutes beyond the general lifting of the bleak atmosphere. He closed his eyes and imagined lighting the trees on fire and basking in the heat.

Mysterious things watched him through the burning forest. Fires lit on backs and those mysterious things out there became his wife and children. The pale skin flaked like charred paper. Ginger hair sizzled into candlewick. Voiceless mouths wailed in silence.

The rider opened his eyes to the frozen world.

His family did not burn. They were safe and all too distant.

The trees ahead were thin but endless. The horse weaved without much direction, slowing now and then to test a dried tuft of moss clung to tree bark, licking snow from the drifting floor below.

The rider’s mouth moved in a steady rhythm of prayer into the twilight of afternoon.

“Dear God, I am hungry. Let me eat. I will read the Bible every morning if you present—”

The rushing of hooves was too fast to ready a defense. He turned his face: massive white head, nose to the ground, rack of antlers leaned for impact.

The rider had never seen, nor heard, of such a thing.

It was a moose. It had no coloration. It was one with the snow. The impact sent the rider flying. His back struck a tree and the whiplashing of the motion sent his head into an expansive haze.

He smelled and tasted iron. Breath huffed onto his face. He came to, sensing the angry beast on top of him. Eyes opened onto the emptiness of the woods, a scattered pack, and a horse on its side, wheezing too gently for the situation. Pain rocketed through the rider’s blood and bones as he crawled, dragging incensed legs.

The rider saw his face reflected in the tired half-dead eye of the horse. Two thoughts as the steaming mess of blood drained into the snow: he was dead and he was fed.

That night, eyes filled the darkness. The fire was double any the rider had made before. Running on limping legs, he carried the bloody horse stomach into the woods, trailing crimson breadcrumbs back to camp. Let the wolves feed away from him.

He cooked slabs of the most delicious meat he’d ever eaten. Through the night, the fire continued and the meat toughened. Cooked, crunchy, frozen portions filled a pack. He slept through much of the day, a picture of gore. His furs tinted and flakey with dried blood.

The second night with the dead horse, the rider carried hunks of animal into the woods, away from his fire.

“Dear God, I swear my soul everlasting if you keep the wolves away and bring me to my family.”

He slept deeply with a full belly and awoke to a black wolf dragging the horse by its ear. The rider who was no longer a rider stared down the dog. The dog snarled as it pulled at the too heavy carcass.

The walker reached for his rifle. It was too far. He grabbed the hatchet and swung three great strikes, freeing the head from the body of the dead horse. The wolf backpedalled, eyes firm on the walker, jaws latched tight to the pale ear of the horse.

The walker heated breakfast and swore his soul anew to the Lord above.

The meat was heavy on his back, but was enough for a week, a month if he thought surviving that long was worth the effort of rationing. When he imagined a month, he imagined getting home to find his children grown and his wife with another man.

His feet moved on persistently. He checked the compass rarely. Fantasies of having twenty-foot legs entered his head. He imagined taking leaps to clear miles. Once, he tried to run. Certain that if he ran, just over the hill was a town, or a farm, a rail to follow, as if civilization moved to outpace him. If only he ran.

Thirteen steps and it sapped all the extra there was.

The walker plodded into dusk, ignoring the eyes that bore in on him. A lightning-struck cedar tree stood brown in a cluster of green.

“Burn the eyes out of you.” He bundled bark and twigs over dug-free dead grass beneath the tree. The season-dead stock lit and burned quickly. It dried its living neighbors and set them alight. The brightness and warmth was a short blessing.

The walker gathered limbs and fed the fire around the dried trunk. He ate horsemeat and gazed into the blackness where the things dwelled, where, perhaps, the white moose watched him alongside the wolves.

“Dear God, let me be safe through the night.”

An encroaching wolf, grey, woke him. He flipped the rifle from his side, out from beneath the blanket and fired. There was no chance to hit, but all dogs hated shots. Right then, he hated all dogs.

The walker walked, daydreaming of riding. The sores on his face wept and his lips became scales. Blisters on his feet had formed and popped, healing in a way that adhered his feet to the threads of his socks.

The wind picked up in the early afternoon. The walker had come upon a rocky ledge that overlooked a river. A notion of survival bloomed anew.

“Thank you, Lord.” He was certain that if he kept sight of the river that he’d eventually stumble onto humanity. “I’m coming.”

Underneath a jutting of stone, not quite a cave, the walker hunkered down and decided on a day off. Warm and secure, he slept feeling free of eyes.

The walker awoke from a nap. Across the river, the white moose gazed. Safety was a mirage. Fear stuttered sleep on the second night. The stone seemed to bear eyes, witnesses feeding on turmoil.

“Dear God, let me be brave. Let me fear no more. Let me be home.”

Tears he’d never let slip in front of others slid his cheeks, free as summer robins.

The walker exited the partial safety of the rock and climbed high again. A bird’s eye remained on the river. He did not see the white moose but being higher than an object of interest turned his head to the thin trees.

Ravens, big and ominous, observed him with stilled bodies and craning necks.

As if rising like a bird, he imagined watching the ravens peck and devour a man in a bearskin with a horsemeat-loaded pack. He walked, vision shifting. The food source becoming his family, one body at a time. A scream of agony and frustration left his mouth, tarnished and grating.

Twilight had sprung unnoticed. There was a rustle to his right. Through the endless trees were peering eyes. The white moose had crossed the river and rounded him with undeniable interest.

The walker lifted his rifle, aimed, and squeezed. He lowered the rifle to find no moose and no movement from a fleeing moose. Good as anywhere else, he dropped his pack and began gathering limbs.

Unable to help himself, he ate a double portion of horsemeat. Night was cold, though comparatively warmer. Snow fell. Each flake glinted its potential for something more. The walker covered his head and huddled, fighting the imagination that turned flakes into eyes.

If it wasn’t for exhaustion, he’d have never slept.

In the pre-dawn grey, he lifted his face, shovelled fresh snow blanketing him into his mouth. There were two wolves on the far side of the dead campfire. One grey-white, the other black—an anomaly of allies, according to popular belief. He tried to lift the rifle. Caught in the layers of skins, he struggled and the wolves remained still for three heartbeats before they charged him.

“Git!”

The walker turtled into the bearskin. There was nothing for two seconds, three, ten, one minute. He lifted his head to a vast emptiness that crushed his soul beneath its boot. A hallucination.

“God, deliver me. I will give everything in Your name! Deliver me!”

The walker ate. The walker packed. The walker walked, thinking of what his dead mates had said about savages in the woods. He had seen no signs of wild men.

 “At least that,” he whispered into the cloth that had attached anew by mid-morning every day with scummy green bridges of infected pus and rot. “God, at least You gave me that.”

Night fell in a blink and he wailed against another day passed in the same as the previous—how many? He did not know.

The walker wore bricks for feet. He massaged them bare for the first time since he’d been alone. Ridges of yellowed crust rode in waves, divots in the shape of matted fur. He rubbed snow into the cracks and crevices, let the gone-bad flesh a chance to breathe.

“God, please. I will give every dollar I make for the rest of my life to see them again. I will devote my living heart to the church. God, let me see them again. God—”

A stick snapped and the walker lifted his gaze from his foot. The night was black and vacant. There was no way to be certain he remained in the world assumed beyond the firelight.

Was there anything out there?

A snap.

Something.

Another snap.

Something close.

He gulped and rested his foot against the damp steaming leather of his boot. He turned to grab for the rifle. It was gone. He spun to his right, his rubbed raw feet resting painfully against the frozen ground. Gone. Always, he kept it within reach. From his chest, he withdrew the hatchet in desperate need of sharpening.

There was a rustle and he turned to his left.

The pack was gone.

The food was gone.

Frantically, he laced his boots. A log pulled, flaming, he charged into the woods, running in a great circle. Eyes banked light back at him. Hundreds of them. The vicious world had come to view him like a travelling freak show. Fear stole into the core of his rotting organs and he wailed against the night.

“I need that food. Dear God! I need You now!”

The walker slept, eventually. He wore the extra furs on his shoulders. The search was brief. The only tracks in the snow had belonged to him, impossibly. He reached into a pocket for the compass and found only lint.

“God! Why have You forsaken me?”

The walker followed the river.

The sun went down.

The sun came up, behind the steel grey of winter.

It was the thirtieth day since leaving the camp of corpses. His feet offered ever-expanding agony. He crawled. Pus oozed onto the snow before him, dripping from his face. The wind buffeted the tunnel of his downturned body. Cold crept into folds and beneath layers.

“God, I love You. I have always loved You. Why have You left me to die?”

The crawler crawled, hungry, beaten.

The sun dropped and he worked a circle in a way that reminded him of his childhood on hands and knees, gathering dropped coal from carriages. He whined and cried.

There was movement around him. The fire lit.

The wily wolves returned. They stood on the far side of the fire like guests. From the trees, ravens dropped and bounded the periphery of the light’s reach. Branches crunched, snow clomping, undeniable footfalls. Three men, long black hair streaming around the sides, skinless up top, sat. They stared.

The Dominion and the French had paid for every savage scalp cut and produced, but that was long ago, before agreements, during wars. That was a thing of tales.

These men were dead. The crawler had no doubt of that.

“God, I am alive! Why have You left me?”

Heavier footfalls approached with locomotive speed.

“No, God, why? Let me see them. Let me hold them. I’ve loved You, dear God, why have You left me?”

The white moose was there, stopping in a skid that sent campfire sparks flying. The crawler covered his head, cowering before the white moose.

“Anything! I’ll give anything! Deliver me! Feed me! Let me feel the warmth of love again!”

“Anything?” a low voice whispered into the crawler’s ear.

The crawler did not rise, did not look, but knew who had left him to die and who might save him. The one fallen, cast aside, left to rot in eternal flame.

“Anything.”

“Do you offer your hands?” the voice asked, smooth, mannish.

“Yes.”

“Do you offer your heart?”

“Yes, anything. Anything!”

“Do you offer your soul?”

At this, the crawler lifted his head and stared into the dead black eyes of the white moose.

The air in his chest left his mouth in a great cloud. “You can have it all.”

“Say it,” the voice said. The moose’s mouth did not move and still, that voice belonged within that pale white form.

“Have my soul.”

“Why do you bend so?”

“God has forsaken me. You are my savior!”

The white moose straightened its neck and stepped out of the fire, turning away, leaving off into the woods. The Algonquin men departed in smoky shadows. The wolves followed. The ravens flew away.

The crawler curled into a bundle. He did not wake until a farmer stepped from his barn and over a hill into the bush, noticing a lump he assumed a dead bear. The farmer loaded the crawler onto a horse wagon and together they rode four kilometers into town.

XX