Near the Bone(43)

If he did have a vehicle he’d made certain that she didn’t know of its existence, and the key would certainly be on his key ring. Which was on his person, and they’d never get it off him as long as he lived.

Not that it would do her any good if she found a vehicle, in any case. She didn’t have the least idea of how to operate one.

Mattie shivered. She’d been sweaty from the exertion of the fight and the fast pace, but now that they were sitting still her body was cooling. Jen noticed and sat down next to her, so that all four of them were crammed on the flat lip of the boulder. Jen put her arm around Mattie’s shoulder and pulled her close.

“You’re not dressed for this weather,” she said, rubbing her hand up and down Mattie’s arm. “And it will be dark in a few hours. We need to find a safe place to pitch the tents and start a fire.”

“We should go up to those caves,” C.P. said. “You know, the ones where we saw the tracks.”

Mattie stiffened. “You . . . went . . . to . . . the . . . caves?”

“Yeah,” C.P. said, his eyes alight with enthusiasm. “We saw that weird cave with all the bones and stuff that you told us about, too. I’ve got some amazing pictures on my phone, and Griffin has even better ones on the camera.”

“No,” Mattie said. Her throat hurt so much. Every time she spoke she saw William’s mad face above her, felt his hands on her throat again. But she needed to tell them, to warn them again. “No . . . no. Creature . . . warned . . . us. Can’t . . . go . . . there.”

The idiots. The absolute idiots. She’d told them not to follow the creature, not to play in things they didn’t understand. They hadn’t listened.

There came an unearthly roar, almost as if the creature had heard what they were saying, or had caught their scent. It wasn’t too close, but it wasn’t far enough away for Mattie to feel safe, either.

“What was that?” Jen asked. She didn’t look scared, though. She looked curious, and a little excited—just like C.P.

“Creature,” Mattie said. She stood up so quickly that her head spun. “Hide.”

“Creature? You mean the thing that made the tracks on the mountain? I want to see it,” C.P. said.

“No . . . no,” Mattie said. She wanted to shake him. What kind of person saw a room of bones and organs and thought, I really want to meet the animal that mutilated all these other animals? “You . . . don’t. Will . . . kill . . . you.”

“It didn’t kill you, right? You said you saw it. It came right up to your house.”

The creature roared again, and this time it sounded different. It sounded louder—and angrier. The roar echoed all around them, all through the forest—bouncing off the trees, filling up the air, echoing inside Mattie’s ears so that she had to cover them with her mittened hands or else that sound would seep inside her head and stay there.

She hunched over, closing her eyes, vaguely aware of the cries of the other three people—their surprise, their fascination. After several moments the sound faded away, though something seemed to still linger in the air—an undefined malice that made Mattie want to hide away forever so that she might never cross the creature’s path.

“That was awesome!” C.P. said.

Jen was smiling, and even Griffin had sat up and was staring around with an excited light in his eyes.

C.P. held some kind of device up in the air. It was flat and black and completely foreign to her. Mattie saw him draw it close to his face and tap on it. A moment later the creature’s sound emitted from the device again.

“Stop,” she said. She wanted to shout it but the small amount of talking she’d already done had strained her voice close to the breaking point. She flapped her arms so he would get the picture.

“Why? It’s amazing! I didn’t think we’d be able to capture a cry like that. We might even be able to get some video,” C.P. said.

How could she explain? How could she make them understand? She could hardly talk and they didn’t want to listen anyway. William was after them, and now the creature would be, too. There wasn’t anywhere on the mountain where they would be safe.





CHAPTER TEN



Jen noticed Mattie’s distress and grabbed Mattie’s wrists to stop the flapping.

“I know you’re trying to tell us something, but I don’t think you should try to talk right now. It’s hurting me just listening to you. Do you think you could write it out?”

Mattie shook her head. “Can’t . . . write.”

Though that wasn’t exactly true, she realized. She used to be able to write—or rather, Samantha could write. She had a vague memory of Samantha practicing her letters at the kitchen table—but she hadn’t done it in so long that she didn’t think she’d be able to write out anything legible.

“Creature . . . is . . . angry,” she said. Her throat was at a breaking point, but they needed to hear her. “Don’t . . . approach. Will . . . hunt . . . us . . . because . . . caves.”

She hated the way she sounded, like a child who didn’t know how to talk. But she needed to make them understand the important thing—stay away from the creature.

“I don’t understand what you mean, ‘because caves,’” Jen said. “Are you saying that the cryptid is going to come after us because we went into its bone cave?”