Near the Bone(45)

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 taken. The ground-up evidence of their passage was clear for anyone to see.

Mattie looked up at the sky hopefully. If another squall moved in then it would cover their tracks, but there wasn’t a sign of clouds.

“Have . . . to . . . try,” she said. “Can’t . . . stay.”

“Samantha is right,” Jen said, and Mattie felt that same startled shock as before, hearing the name she’d only just rediscovered. “We have to try. And anyway, we might get lucky. William might be too incapacitated to do anything.”

“You don’t think we killed him, do you?” Griffin asked. His voice was so low that Mattie barely made out his words.

“If we did, I don’t think it’s any loss to the world,” Jen said. Her tone was light, but Mattie noticed the flicker of unease in her eyes. “And if he isn’t dead, I don’t think he’s going to report us to the authorities.”

“No, he’ll just kill us,” C.P. said.

He was clearly joking, or trying to, but Mattie nodded.

“Yes. Kill us,” she said, and she looked at each one to make sure they understood. Once more she pushed through the pain, the reminder of the last time William had touched her. “You . . . took . . . me. I . . . am his wife. So you will . . . be . . . punished.”

She needed them to understand this, even though they ignored her warnings about the creature in the woods. If William hadn’t been knocked out by the blow Jen had given him with the rock, then he would follow them. He would follow them and take whatever justice he deemed necessary. He didn’t feel himself bound to the same rules as other people. He didn’t consider himself a part of society. These strangers were on his mountain, he would think, and on his mountain, his word was law.

“He can’t just kill people who do things he doesn’t like,” Jen said.

“Yes,” Mattie said.

Jen stared at Mattie.

“All the more reason to move as fast as we can,” C.P. said, checking the compass again. “I’ll keep checking for a cell signal. Maybe we can get a rescue team up here so we don’t have to walk the whole way. Hell, if they know you’re up here, Samantha, there will probably be news helicopters and everything else. In the meantime, we have to move east. Maybe slightly southeast, to see if we can angle away from the cabin.”

He scooped Griffin under the shoulders again. Griffin seemed to be trying hard to stay awake, but Mattie saw his head lolling and his eyes rolling back and forth. They didn’t need to walk. They needed to find someplace safe for Griffin to sleep.

The sound of crackling branches came from the forest behind them, filling the air. Crack, crack, crack. Crack, crack, crack. Mattie froze, her heart pounding so loudly she was certain the creature could hear it.

“What is it?” Jen asked.

“Creature,” she said.