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

go. Just tell them before it’s too late.

But I can’t go outside.

Mattie’s hands moved, seemingly without her own thought or consideration, but they were trembling. They pushed the curtains back, lifted the window. Cold air rushed into the cabin, stinging her face.

Both men turned as the window scraped in its frame.

Mattie opened her mouth, tried to say, “You can’t follow it,” but nothing came out except a little croaky sound.

“What the hell?” C.P. said, but Griffin was already moving toward the cabin.

He must not have had a clear view of her face, for when he drew closer she heard his quick indrawn breath. His dark eyes snapped with anger as he rushed closer.

“It’s you! My god, what did he do to you?”

Griffin reached through the open window but Mattie retreated a few steps in shock. No one ever touched her except William. She hadn’t even spoken to another person in years.

Mattie tried to steady herself, but she couldn’t stop wringing her hands and her heart was beating so hard she felt sick. The back of her throat was clogged with acid and her legs shook.

“I’m sorry,” Griffin said, holding up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just so . . .”

He trailed off, and she saw him making an effort to hide his surprise and anger.

William never does that. Once his anger bubbles up he lets it spill over, lets it burn me.

“My name’s Griffin Banerjee. This is my friend C.P. Chang.”

C.P. approached the window, peered in. His eyes widened but he gave Mattie a little wave. “Hey.”

Mattie swallowed. She didn’t realize how frightened she would be, how strange it would feel to speak to new people.

“I—” she managed, but then the gorge rose in her throat and she had to stop and swallow it down. “I need to tell you . . .”

Why was her voice such a whispery thing? Why couldn’t she just be firm and strong and tell them what needed to be told?

“Do you need help?” Griffin asked. “We could help you. You look like you need a doctor.”

C.P. frowned at Griffin, and Mattie could read the thought behind his gaze—We don’t have time for that.

“N-no,” she said. “No doctor. But you can’t go up the mountain.”

There, she’d gotten it all out. Sweat pooled at the base of her spine. Now that she’d told them, she wished they would leave, go back to where they came from, cease staring at her like she was an animal in a zoo.

C.P. turned his frown from Griffin to her. “Why not?”

Mattie gestured out the window in the general direction of the symbols. “The creature. It came to warn us. Don’t disturb it or it will hurt you.”

“You’ve seen it?” C.P. asked, his frown abruptly replaced with excitement. “When? What happened? Can you describe it for us?”

The sudden barrage of questions made her step backward again, like she could escape his interest if only she moved far enough away.

“You can’t go up the mountain. It left a warning,” she said.

“You saw it do that?” C.P. asked, gesturing behind him at the symbols traced in the snow. “When?”

She wasn’t explaining this correctly. If she had then they wouldn’t be asking more questions, acting excited instead of frightened. If they knew then they would leave. And they would be safe.

And I will be safe, too, because then the creature won’t come back and punish me for their behavior.

Mattie turned her good eye on Griffin, who was watching her intently.

“Y-yesterday,” she said, and had to stop because her mouth was so dry. She wished for a glass of water. Why was this so difficult? Why was it so hard to get the words out? “Yesterday when we saw you . . .”

She trailed off, because the intensity of his stare was making her forget what she wanted to say. She wished she could cover up her swelling left eye, because he seemed fixated on it. In another moment he’d ask her again if she needed a doctor, she was sure of it. Mattie hurried on before he could.

“Yesterday, when we saw you, did you go into any of the caves?”

“No, I didn’t. It’s not a good idea to go into a cave alone—too many things can go wrong and there was no cell signal up there. C.P. didn’t come up until today,” Griffin said.

“I had finals, and I couldn’t get off work until today,” C.P. said. “The project deadline was Tuesday but I couldn’t finish my job until other people finished their job . . .”

He trailed off, realizing that Griffin was glaring at him and Mattie was simply confused.

“Project?”

“I’ve got a work-study project . . .”

“It’s really not the time, C.P.” Griffin said.

“Right,” C.P. said, and subsided.

Mattie hadn’t understood anything that he’d said. “Cell signal” and “work-study”—it was like he was speaking a foreign language.

“Anyway, I didn’t go into any of the caves. I was curious about what you and your husband were doing up there. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the tracks.” There had been a demonstrable pause between “your” and “husband,” like Griffin couldn’t quite believe that William actually was her husband.

“But why do you care about the tracks?” This wasn’t what she meant to say. She meant to tell him about what was in the cave so he would know, he would understand and then he would leave.

Griffin and C.P. exchanged slightly sheepish grins.

“Well, we’re cryptozoologists,” Griffin said. “In our spare time, you know.”

Mattie must have appeared as blank as she felt because C.P. said, “It means that we go hunting for evidence of supposedly mythical creatures. You know, like Sasquatch and chupacabra, things like that. We heard there was a sighting of something big up here—some campers saw it in the woods, and later found some tracks. We thought maybe it was a Sasquatch sighting but these prints are like nothing we’ve seen before.”

“Sasquatch?” Mattie felt that she’d completely lost the thread of the conversation. This was some kind of fun for them, a lark with their friends. They didn’t understand. She had to make