Near the Bone by Christina Henry (ebook reader color screen txt) 📗

another, leg bones next to that and so on. They were from all kinds of animals, large and small—Mattie recognized deer and elk and mountain lion, and also chipmunk and squirrel and fox and coyote.

“It’s not natural,” William said. Mattie heard a quaver in his voice that had never been there before. She wondered if he was even aware of it. He seemed completely fixated on the bones. “No animal acts like this. No bear acts like this. But if it’s not a bear, what can it be?”

Mattie inched away from the chamber as far as she dared. She wanted to flee into the passage, to run back down the mountain until she was back in her own cabin, where there were still things to fear but these were things she knew and could understand. She didn’t understand this. She didn’t understand an animal that kept the bones of its victims.

“Let’s leave, William. Let’s go before it comes back.”

He ignored her, pacing around the chamber, inspecting each bone stack. When he reached the far side of the room, his head jerked back, as if in shock.

“Found out why it smells so bad in here. Come look.”

Mattie did not want to look. She wanted to leave the cave, not head in deeper, but she knew an order when she heard one.

She shuffled slowly forward, her heart in her teeth. We need to leave, we need to get out of this terrible place, it’s not natural, it’s not normal, the creature is going to return at any moment and kill us and our skulls and ribs will be sorted with all the rest.

“Look,” William insisted.

Mattie covered the scarf over her mouth and nose with her mittened hand. The reek was unbearable as she peered around William. A moment later she gasped and stumbled back.

It was a pile of organs, hearts and intestines, again in different sizes and from different creatures, all in various states of decay.

“Don’t you dare faint,” William snapped as Mattie swayed on the spot, her hand clutching his shoulder so she wouldn’t fall.

“I can’t breathe in here,” she said. “Please, William, please.”

He turned away, clearly uninterested in her distress and intent on his investigation.

“Please,” she whispered, or maybe she only thought it because William didn’t even twitch.

What would he do if I ran? If I just went to the cave mouth he would be angry, but maybe not too angry, especially if he saw I wasn’t trying to run from him, just the cave. He couldn’t be too angry, could he?

No, he could be very angry about it. Mattie knew that.

Still, she wanted to be as far from the rotting organs and eerie piles of bones as possible, even if it meant leaving the circle of light provided by William’s candle. Mattie backed away carefully until she was at the chamber entrance again. The darkness swallowed her up, squeezed tight around her ribs.

“Please, please,” she whispered. “Please let’s leave this terrible place, let’s just go.”

Then she heard it. The strange cry they had heard in the woods the day before—a furious roar that was nothing at all like a bear.

CHAPTER THREE

It was far off still—not on the slope yet, not about to enter the cave, but it would very soon. Mattie knew that for certain.

It would come home with its kill and find them in its cave, like Goldilocks sleeping in the little bear’s bed, except they wouldn’t be able to escape like the small girl in the story. They’d be trapped.

Which was exactly what Mattie had feared would happen.

William peered around the chamber, moving the candle here and there, completely absorbed in his task. It was apparent he had not heard the monster’s call.

I could bash the back of his head in with one of these bones. I could leave him here and the creature would find him and rend him to bits and make all of those bits part of its collection.

Then the roar came again, and Mattie couldn’t be sure but she thought it was closer, and there was no time for anything she might want to do but hadn’t the courage to actually do.

“William,” she said. “It’s coming.”

“What?” He turned around, blinking in the candlelight, his mind returning from somewhere very far away. Mattie recognized the symptoms.

“I heard it roar,” she said. “Outside. It can only be on its way here.”

“This is my chance,” he said, crossing the chamber in just a few huge steps. He thrust the candle at her and said, “Stay behind me. If you get in my way, you’ll wind up getting shot.”

Then he pushed by her, hurrying toward the exit without waiting for Mattie. She hurried after him, afraid to see what the creature looked like, afraid to see it running at them with an open maw ready to devour.

And it would devour them. William’s flimsy rifle was no match for the thing that made that horrible roar.

They were just at the cave mouth when the cry came once more, long and furious. It echoed strangely around the meadow, reverberated off the rocky cliff so that Mattie couldn’t tell if it was nearby or not. It might break through the trees below them at any moment.

William quickly scouted the immediate area and found a boulder that provided both cover and a view of the tree line below.

“Blow that candle out, idiot girl,” he snarled. “Do you think it won’t smell the fire?”

Do you think it won’t smell us? Mattie thought, but she blew out the candle and crouched low beside him.

They heard branches cracking, the sound of something huge blundering through the trees.

Or traveling through the branches, Mattie thought. Yesterday the creature had seemed to disappear high above them, even if William didn’t believe it.

The noise was tremendous, and the echo made it impossible to tell exactly where it was coming from.

“Just how big is it?” William muttered, training his rifle below.

I don’t care, Mattie thought. I want to