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

Griffin. Go . . . down . . . the . . . mountain. William . . . will . . . follow . . . me.”

If Mattie stayed behind then the three of them would be safe from William. He’d only be interested in getting his wife back. The creature would probably follow her and William, as well, because it knew the scent of them and even where they lived. The three strangers would be able to escape, and Mattie would only have to worry about keeping out of William’s grasp until they returned with the police.

“No way,” Jen said. “Forget it. We’re not leaving you up here with your kidnapper.”

Kidnapper. That was the word for what William was. Of course William had kidnapped her, though she couldn’t seem to remember that part. She only remembered William coming in the window—her bedroom window. It was the first time anyone had said “kidnapper” out loud, though, the first time it was explicitly acknowledged.

“You . . . get . . . police,” Mattie said. “They . . . arrest . . . William.”

“By the time we get down the mountain and then back to you he’ll have chopped you up with an axe,” Jen said. “We already know he’s a murderer.”

She covered her mouth with her hand then, her eyes appalled.

“I’m sorry,” Jen said. “I’m sorry I’m so stupid. It was like I didn’t remember who I was talking to for a second. I guess I’m more stressed out than I thought.”

“Gee, I wonder what’s stressing you out?” C.P. said. “Could it be that we’re all going to die?”

“We’re not going to die,” Griffin said. He sounded worse every time he spoke. “But I do need to take a nap before we run anywhere.”

“You can’t take a nap here. It’s too exposed,” Jen said. She turned to Mattie. “You said we shouldn’t go back to those caves up by that meadow. Are there other caves, maybe nearby, that we could use?”

They all looked at her expectantly. Mattie acutely felt the limitations of her life in the cabin then, her lack of knowledge about the environment in which she’d lived for more than a decade.

“Don’t . . . know. William . . . not . . . allow . . . me . . .”

She trailed off. It would take too many words to explain that there were very few places she was allowed to go without William.

Jen watched Mattie closely, and Mattie felt a sudden flush of shame. How could Mattie explain to this woman, this woman so free and easy and independent, how one man had kept Mattie locked in a cabin for so many years? How could she explain that after a time she’d allowed him to do that? Mattie should have fought. She should have run. She should have tried harder, instead of just accepting her fate.

Jen’s hand was taking Mattie’s then, gripping it tight. “Whatever happened wasn’t your fault. You were only a child when he took you.”

“Eight years old, right?” C.P. said. “That’s what it said on the news.”

Mattie wanted to ask what else they knew, what else had been said on the news, if they knew anything about Heather, but Jen gave C.P. a quelling look and he went back to tapping his flat black box.

A third roar sounded through the woods, this one longer and fiercer than the last two. Mattie covered her ears again, and this time the other three did as well. As she hunched over, trying to block out the sound that leaked through, she had a strange thought. The creature sounded slightly different. It wasn’t the triumphant cry it had made when it found its prey in the woods, not the cry of anger and warning it had given when it had stalked Mattie through the woods to the cabin. This call was still angry, but there was something else underneath it. What was it?

Hurt. It’s hurt, and it’s . . . scared?

“Trap,” she said, and she didn’t realize she’d said it out loud until the other three looked at her. “William’s . . . trap. Bear . . . trap. For . . . creature.”

Mattie had thought that the creature would be too smart to be caught, or that the trap wouldn’t be large enough for the enormous thing, but maybe it had stepped inside the trap just so.

“That guy put out a bear trap for the cryptid?” C.P. sounded outraged. “Sure, the scientific find of the century and he’s going to catch it in a trap and put its head on his wall.”

“You think it got caught in the trap?” Jen asked. “Or fell into a pit?”

“If it did then that’s good for us,” Griffin said. His words came out of his mouth at half-speed, and he was clearly working hard to hold on to consciousness. “We can find a place to pitch our tents for the night and we won’t have to worry about it finding us.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know for sure,” Jen said. “Where did he—William—put the bear trap?”

“Path . . . to . . . stream. From . . . our . . . cabin,” Mattie said. She pointed in the direction from which they had come.

“So the opposite direction from here,” Jen said, and sighed. “I’d like to verify that the animal was caught, but I don’t think it’s smart to go back in the direction of the angry man with the shovel.”

“And . . . gun,” Mattie said.

And knives, and grenades, and all sorts of other weapons you haven’t even thought of yet.

When Mattie considered it, she realized that William didn’t even have to stalk them through the woods. He could follow them from a distance and shoot them with his rifle, or find a high ridge to perch on and then drop grenades on their heads.

“Must . . . go,” she said, standing up. “Off . . . mountain.”

C.P. had put away the strange black device and pulled something else out of his pocket—a compass. He peered at it closely. “Trouble is, we’re going in the wrong direction to get back to the base of the mountain. The top of the mountain is west, and the base is east. We’ve been moving west.”

“And east is where William is,” Griffin said.

“We’ll just have to find a way to circle around him,” Jen said.

“How? You can see every step we take in the snow,” C.P. said, gesturing at the path they’d