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

gear on. Do you have a backpack or bag that we can use to carry some of that food in the storehouse?”

“William has a rucksack. He usually keeps it in the storehouse, but I don’t know where. I’ve just seen him carrying it in and out.”

“I’ll go look while you put the rest of your things on. I’m really hoping that we can find whatever vehicle that key goes with,” he said, pointing to the keys. “I think it would be smart to take provisions, though, just in case we don’t find it. Without a car we’ll be spending another night on the mountain for sure. Anyway, don’t lose those keys. It would suck if we did find a car and didn’t have any way to start it.”

Mattie felt very nervous then, felt the sudden burden of not losing their way to escape. She went out in the main room, C.P. trailing her again, and rummaged in her work basket until she came up with a ball of wool. She cut off a long length of it, pulled the key ring over the string, made a second loop through the key ring just in case, then tied the double loop with the keys dangling from it around her neck. She tucked it all inside her sweater.

“OK, that works,” he said. “You won’t drop them by accident, I guess.”

Mattie put on her socks and boots and coat while C.P. went out to the storehouse. She wrapped a long scarf around her throat, pulled a hat over her shorn hair, and carefully tucked the stacks of bills and the money she’d hidden under the couch inside her coat pocket. C.P. returned just as she was putting her mittens in the opposite pocket. He was carrying William’s haversack. He held it out to her.

“Do you think you can carry this? I tried not to overfill it. We’re going to need to get my pack, and maybe Jen’s if we can manage it. The tents are with the packs, and if we have to sleep outside we’re going to want tents. Though I have no idea how we’ll even find the packs again. It’s like we ran through a maze last night in the dark.”

“It will be easy,” Mattie said. “We came along the deer path from the stream. All we have to do when we get back to the stream is follow our footprints in the snow. It didn’t snow overnight, so the trail will still be there.”

C.P. frowned. “Yeah, OK. But then what? How do we get down the mountain from there?”

“William always said the stream fed into a river, and the river goes down the mountain. So we just follow the stream.”

“Is that the way he goes when he leaves for town?”

Mattie nodded.

“Good, that means his vehicle is probably that way, too. We’ll be back in civilization in a few hours.”

Mattie noticed that they were both careful not to mention the creature, or the possibility that William was still out there somewhere. The sun was shining and they were rested and fed and all those things made the terrors of the night recede. It didn’t seem possible that bad things could happen to them in the day.

Mattie put the pack on her back, and then the two of them half-dragged, half-carried Jen out to the sled. She was so still and so pale that it was like carrying a corpse, but C.P. checked Jen’s pulse and breathing once they had her loaded on.

“She’s still alive,” he said, giving Mattie a thumbs-up.

They’d had to put Jen on her side, pulling her legs into a fetal position. She wouldn’t fit otherwise—she was far too tall for the sled platform. Mattie tucked a blanket around Jen. There were straps on either side and C.P. used these to buckle Jen into place.

“If she’s not waking up after all this . . .” he said. “Jesus, what the hell can be wrong with her?”

He didn’t seem to expect an answer, because he picked up the rope and started pulling. “This way, right?”

Mattie pulled the cabin door shut and trotted after him. She felt something huge swelling in her chest. She was leaving. She was really leaving. She was never going to live here again.

She felt an inward tug, something telling her she should look back, commemorate the moment properly.

Don’t look back. Don’t ever look back. There’s nothing for you there, nothing you want to remember. Don’t give him another second of your attention.

And then they were into the trees, and the moment passed, and Mattie knew if she looked back the cabin wouldn’t be visible anymore.

C.P. was too busy pulling Jen to chatter as he usually did. Mattie listened to the sound of the woods—the wind rustling in the trees, the busy chirping of winter birds. As long as she heard those birds then they were safe from the creature.

And even if William is alive he can’t really be a threat any longer. He can’t be. He could barely walk last night. He couldn’t run after us.

But Mattie listened hard for the thunk-drag of his walk all the same.

After a very brief time they came upon the trap. It had been reset.

“Did that guy actually stop to fix his trap last night?” C.P. said, sounding disgusted.

Nearby there was a dead squirrel in the snow. Mattie noticed a graze on its flank, like it had brushed against the teeth of the trap. But a little cut like that wouldn’t kill a squirrel, unless . . .

Mattie remembered that amongst the pile of seemingly random things William had purchased to defeat the “demon” was a liquid in a small brown bottle. She hadn’t looked closely at the bottle but she did recall that there was a skull and crossbones on the side of the label.

“Poison,” Mattie said. “William put poison on the trap. He bought some. I saw it.”

C.P. followed her eyes from the squirrel and back to the trap again. “That’s why Jen’s out cold? Because that son of a bitch put poison