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

known I should have known this would happen because it happened before I saw it

C.P. looked up too, and she heard him say, “Oh, Jesus. Oh, goddamn,” and then he stumbled away from her, gagging.

Griffin was there, hanging from the tree by his own intestines. Mattie could see the gaping hole in his torso, the place where the creature had torn out all of his organs. The shredded remains of his shirt and jacket hung around him like a pathetic shroud.

The creature hung him just like it did the animals by the cave, the ones that I saw, the ones that I tried to show William but William didn’t want to see because he was so angry that I looked at Griffin and Griffin looked at me.

Griffin’s eyes were closed. Mattie was grateful for that. She didn’t think she could bear to see him wide-eyed, accusing her of not doing more to save him.

I couldn’t have done more.

(you could have let C.P. go out when we heard the screaming) That was Samantha, Samantha who lectured and harangued, Samantha who would never let Mattie off the hook.

No, then C.P. would be dead, too. I was right about that. There wasn’t any way for us to help.

(you just wanted to stay in the cabin because you were afraid of William you’re nothing but a little coward)

I’m not. I’m not a coward. I just didn’t want anyone else to die.

(Coward)

C.P. stood up again, rubbing his mouth. “We have to get him down from there.”

Mattie gave him a helpless look. “How? It’s too high for us to climb.”

“I don’t know! But we can’t leave him up there like that. We can’t.” The last word came out as a choked sob. Tears streamed over his cheeks. “He was my best friend and I can’t leave him there. What am I going to tell his mother? How can I explain this to anyone? No one will even believe us if we say that there’s a great big monster on the mountain killing people. Our families already think we’re nuts for searching for cryptids in the first place. If I go home and say Griffin was eviscerated by a . . . well, I don’t even know what it is, and that’s 90 percent of the problem right there. This is crazy. This never should have happened. Never.”

Mattie knew she ought to comfort him, ought to put her arm around him or say how sorry she was, but she didn’t know how. She didn’t know how to behave around people, didn’t know how to act without William telling her what to do.

Just be human, a voice whispered in her head. Samantha again.

Mattie reached out a tentative hand, rubbed his arm. “I’m sorry. I know he was your friend.”

This seemed like very little to give, but her hesitant comfort was enough to make him scrub his face with his hands and visibly pull himself together.

“Let’s go away from here,” he said. “Back to the cabin. I can’t be here with him like that. If we can’t do anything about it then I don’t want to be here, looking at him.”

It wasn’t very far back to the clearing. Griffin had been murdered and mutilated just inside the trees.

Close enough to touch.

(Close enough to save)

Shut up, Samantha.

“This was supposed to be a fun trip for the three of us. We all like winter hiking and camping, and this mountain isn’t very far from our college—just a couple hours’ drive. It seemed perfect. Plus, we wouldn’t have to do any really technical climbing, although there are a few places where you have to scramble over boulders, but that’s not a big deal. You can even avoid them if you want, take different paths or whatever. Griffin came up early because he finished his exams first and he was so excited about the reports he read online. And when he found those prints up by the cave—man, he was over the moon. I mean when I met up with him he was just bubbling, you know? About to overflow. That was all he could talk about. That, and you.”

Mattie stared at the ground. She couldn’t look C.P. in the eye. “I’m sorry.”

He tugged at her sleeve so she would look up. “No, listen. I’m really sorry I said that last night. I really am. It was a jerk thing to say. If Jen had been awake she probably would have slapped me for saying it. It’s ridiculous to blame you, and you were right. If I’d gone outside when Griffin started screaming, I would have ended up hanging from a tree, too. So thank you. For keeping me from doing something stupid. For saving my life.”

This was giving her far too much credit. Mattie looked at the ground again, at the scuffed toes of her heavy leather boots. “I didn’t save your life. I just didn’t want you to die.”

“That’s saving my life, dope,” he said, and gently tapped her shoulder.

Dope. It was a funny word, and it meant she was being stupid. But he’d said it in such a gentle, affectionate way—almost like the way Jen called him dummy. It made her feel strange, like she belonged to them somehow. Like she was part of them. A friend.

“Let’s get some food,” Mattie said, because she didn’t know how to respond and she didn’t know how to think about the idea that she might not have been a coward at all, but a savior.

They crossed the clearing to the storehouse. Mattie turned the knob, half-expecting it to be locked because she could hardly believe that William had made such a mistake in the first place. The knob turned easily and the door swung open.

“Whoa,” C.P. said. “Look at all this stuff.”

There were haunches of meat, hunted and dressed by William. There were cartons of eggs and milk and butter purchased from the town, and some loaves of bread and packages of cheese. Those things Mattie expected, because those were foods that William brought into the