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

key on his key ring, went inside, and emerged holding a loaf of bread and a hunk of yellow cheese wrapped in a cloth. Mattie went to the door to take the items from him so he wouldn’t have to track snow inside.

“Eat as much as you like today,” he said. “You need to get strong so my seed can take root.”

And then he went off around the back of the cabin. Mattie closed the front door, placed the food on the table and went to the back window. William took his gardening spade out of the small wooden trunk that held their tools and slung it over his shoulder. He went off behind the outhouse. Mattie wondered how far he’d go, and if it was safe to try to fiddle with the lock on his special trunk again.

She cracked the window despite the cold, in hopes that she would be able to hear William working. Sure enough, the sound of the shovel scraping through snow drifted in. He wasn’t far enough for Mattie to feel safe trying the trunk.

She placed the bread and cheese on the table.

I used to love cheese sandwiches. American cheese on white bread with yellow mustard. I wouldn’t let Mom pack anything else for me.

She had a sudden, distinct memory of unzipping a hot-pink lunchbox and inside was a cheese sandwich wrapped in waxed paper and an apple and a Twinkie.

“A Twinkie,” she murmured. “I’d forgotten about Twinkies.”

She’d forgotten about so many things, and all those forgotten moments would emerge so abruptly that it sometimes made her feel sick and dizzy, the past lying over her present like two pieces of a puzzle that didn’t fit together.

Mattie could almost taste the soft yellow cake with the cream in the middle, that first burst of sweetness on her tongue. She’d take very small bites to make her dessert last for as long as possible.

William never bought sweet things. They never had a cake or a pie because Mattie didn’t have the flour or sugar to make them. She’d never asked, never thought to ask because after a while she’d forgotten about sweets, but she was sure that the reason they didn’t have dessert was because it was not godly.

The sounds of William digging nearby continued, so Mattie busied herself with various chores around the cabin. She tried not to think about the money she’d hidden beneath the couch. How long would it be before William discovered it was gone? Would he even say anything to her about it? He generally seemed to pretend that money didn’t exist, or at least that Mattie didn’t know about it.

William had told her to eat as much as she liked, and the previous day Mattie would have, but now she was so nervous about the money she’d discovered that she didn’t have much of an appetite. She forced herself to swallow a slice each of the bread and cheese, because he would be upset if she didn’t eat when he told her to do so.

After a while the sounds of William’s shoveling ceased. Mattie wondered if he’d moved on to another location yet, and if so, how far he’d gone. It wasn’t safe for her to try to open the trunk if he was on his way back for lunch or to take a nap. He might have changed his mind altogether and decided not to dig the second pit today.

He didn’t tell me not to go anywhere. He didn’t say I shouldn’t leave the cabin.

(It’s implied, though. You know it’s implied. You’re not supposed to leave when William isn’t at home.)

She could make him a cheese sandwich and wrap it in a cloth and go out to the place where he’d just been digging, and if he was resting there she could say that she thought he might be hungry from his work. Surely he couldn’t be angry with her then. She was only trying to be a good wife, to look after her husband as she was supposed to do.

Mattie sliced off two thick pieces of bread and several slim pieces of cheese. William usually preferred sandwiches with meat in them, but any meat they had was in the storehouse and the storehouse was locked.

No it isn’t.

Mattie’s hands stilled. She’d watched William unlock the storehouse that morning and emerge holding the bread and cheese. She hadn’t seen him lock it back up again.

I could get some food and hide it somewhere for the night I escape.

But where could she hide it? It would have to be somewhere outside, where it could stay cold. She couldn’t put food underneath the couch. And it would have to be something she could eat without cooking—slices of ham and cheese and bread. It wouldn’t do her any good to hide a hunk of venison. That kind of food would only attract a bear, anyway—a real bear, not the thing in the woods that was pretending to be a bear.

Pretending to be a bear. Is that what the thing is doing? Is it copying other animals it has seen?

That didn’t make any sense at all. Why would a creature copy animal behavior?

“And where did it come from, anyway? It wasn’t on this mountain with us all along. We would have known.”

Griffin and C.P. said they were on the mountain because of a “sighting.” Who had seen the creature besides Mattie and William? The animal must have migrated from somewhere nearby, and Griffin and C.P. had followed its trail somehow.

She tried to think about what all of this information meant, but she couldn’t pull it together. Anyway, it wasn’t time for her to worry about the creature or the strangers on the mountain. She wanted to leave William. She had to have a concrete plan.

Chance had given her that roll of money, which would help her when she reached a town. William’s own preoccupation with the animal he called a demon had given her a second opportunity—to take food out of the storehouse and