Near the Bone(28)

“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 them understand.

“Sasquatch, yeah. Like Bigfoot.”

“Bigfoot,” Mattie said.

The word—such a strange and funny word—twanged another deeply hidden memory. Mattie (no, Samantha) and Heather and Mom were on a trip somewhere, and in the gift shop there were these funny shaped keychains like really big feet. Gift shop. Keychains. She’d forgotten what those things were. She could almost smell the shop again—it smelled like the new T-shirts hanging on the rack and the row of candy sticks by the cash register and the woodsy undertone of cabin walls because the shop had been in a tiny cabin.

“Candy sticks,” she said, remembering peeling the plastic wrap halfway down the stick, the taste of blueberry on her tongue.

“Candy sticks?” C.P. said.

Mattie shook her head. “Nothing. Sasquatch. The thing in the woods is not a Sasquatch.”

“So you have seen it?” C.P. asked.

“Yes,” Mattie said. “It’s not what you think. And you need to get off the mountain.”

“You keep saying that,” Griffin said. “But you won’t tell us why.”

Mattie hesitated. If she told them what was in the caves they would probably want to go look, and that was dangerous, so dangerous. But if she didn’t tell then they wouldn’t understand and they would go fumbling around and then the creature would tear them open.

“In the caves, in one of the caves, there are bones. Lots and lots of bones, piles of them. And they’re all sorted—skulls in one place, ribs in another, that kind of thing. And there are organs, too, a pile of organs. The creature did that. It killed all the animals and it made—” She stopped, because she’d forgotten the word. She looked at Griffin. “It’s a word, like a prize?”

“Trophy?”

“Yes,” she said. “Trophy. It has all these trophies. And William and I went into the cave and saw these things. The creature knew we’d been there. It knew even though it wasn’t in the cave when we were there. It followed me last night. It stalked me through the woods until I came to the cabin and then it left that warning in the snow.”

Griffin tilted his head to one side. He’d been watching her fixedly throughout her narrative. She couldn’t tell if he believed her or not, or if he understood how strange and frightening it had been in the cave. She didn’t think she’d communicated this properly.

“How do you know it’s a warning?” he asked.

“What else could it be?” Mattie’s frustration was mounting. She had to make them understand. “It didn’t hurt me, though it could have. I was all alone and had no weapon. I couldn’t do anything against it. But it just followed me and then it left those marks in the snow, so that we would know it had been there, so we would know that it knows where we live.”

“Why were you alone in the woods?” Griffin asked.

“I . . . Because William . . . It’s not important,” she said.

This wasn’t something she could explain to a stranger. And it wasn’t important. They needed to leave. That was the important thing. Leave the mountain so that they would be safe. Leave the cabin so that she could find some way to eliminate the evidence of their visit. She peered out at the sky. The day had started off sunny but a heavy bank of clouds had moved in. It might snow.

Snow would be wonderful. Snow would cover everything up and make it clean and William would never know.

“Did your husband leave you out there?” Griffin asked. “In that state?”

There was something in his voice, something Mattie had never heard before, at least not on her behalf. Outrage. He’s not angry at me. He’s angry for me.

Something warm and new bubbled up inside her, something dangerous. I can’t feel this right now. I can’t be pleased that he wants to defend me just because no one ever has before.

“I want to know more about this cave,” C.P. said. “Do you remember exactly which one it was?”

Panic replaced the warm feeling. “You can’t go there. Don’t you understand? You can’t go up there at all. It’s not a Sasquatch, or some harmless made-up thing for you and your friends to play at hunting. It’s a monster. A real monster.”