Mattie bit her lip to keep from crying out.
“Nobody’s home,” the first man said. “You can see the footsteps in the snow leading away from the door.”
“Only his. Not hers,” said the second man, the man Mattie thought of as her stranger.
No, don’t think of him that way. You don’t know anything about him. You don’t know if you can trust him. And if you think kindly of the stranger then William will see it in your eyes.
“She must be here,” the stranger said.
Mattie saw his shadow at the front window, knew he was trying to see inside, but she had pulled the curtains tight and she wasn’t moving. He’d never see anything in the cabin that way.
“Come on,” the second man said. Mattie heard impatience in his voice, like he’d already had enough of indulging his friend’s whim. “She’s not here. This might not be where she lives, anyway. There’s something more interesting here. Come look.”
“It’s got to be where she lives,” the stranger said. “Where else could they have come from?”
“Who cares?” The second man’s voice sounded farther away.
Mattie wondered what had caught his attention. Could he be interested in the storehouse? That was the only other building in front of the cabin.
If he tries to break in there, I must go outside, because I can’t just huddle here while someone steals our winter stores. I’ll have to say something, stop him somehow. Though I haven’t the least idea how.
“Obviously I care, C.P.,” the stranger said. He knocked again and Mattie just barely managed to stifle a scream.
“I can’t believe we’re wasting this much time looking for some weird married girl you bumped into on top of a mountain. You could just ask out a girl from work, like everyone else. Or go to a club. Or a bar. Or sign up for one of those singles adventure groups.”
“Stop being dumb. This isn’t about sex.”
“Then what is it about, Griffin? I thought we were up here to investigate a sighting, not hunt around for some girl.”
Griffin. His name was Griffin.
“You didn’t see her,” Griffin said. “She was scared. And . . .”
“I know you think you saw her somewhere before.” C.P. sounded skeptical.
“I did,” Griffin said. “I just can’t put my finger on it.”
“Listen, I think we should get out of here. If she is home she’s clearly not welcoming visitors. Besides, there were all those private property signs posted.”
Mattie’s eyes widened. There were private property signs around their cabin? How had she never noticed them? She knew how to read.
William probably doesn’t let you go anywhere near the signs. The signs are only important to keep away people who might drift in this direction, and he’s always made certain that you won’t accidentally encounter anyone. But the whole mountain isn’t private. Griffin and William both said something about the clearing and the caves being public land.
“You said that guy had a gun, right?” C.P. continued. “Anyone who lives alone in the middle of the woods with a bunch of ‘keep out, private property’ signs posted is not going to welcome unexpected visitors. We should move on before he comes home and decides to shoot us on principle.”
“Yeah,” Griffin said.
He still stood very close to the door. His voice was so close that Mattie almost imagined he was inside the room with her.
Maybe I could trust him. Maybe I could. He seems kind. He sounded worried when he talked about me. Maybe . . .
“And the property is marked on the map, so we don’t even have an excuse. Anyway, come and look at these prints in the snow,” C.P. said. “These look a lot like the ones you took pictures of yesterday.”
Mattie heard Griffin move off the porch. She unwound her coiled body and slid her stockinged feet over the floor cautiously, so as not to make a sound. She wanted to see the two men. She wanted to know what they were doing.
She twitched the curtain aside, just a fraction of an inch, just enough to make a slit to peer out between the curtain and the window frame.
The two men were crouched in the center of the clearing inspecting the prints in the snow. They had their backs to the cabin and all she could see were their caps and their large backpacks—Griffin’s orange, C.P.’s blue. Their voices were low and Mattie couldn’t make out what they were saying. Her stranger—Griffin, his name is Griffin—took several photographs with the camera that was still slung around his neck.
Both men stood, their eyes on the ground, and carefully crept around the clearing, stopping occasionally to take more pictures.
Mattie released the curtain and inched back when she realized that they were going to follow the creature’s tracks around the cabin. She didn’t want them to accidentally catch a glimpse of her. They passed within a few feet of the window, and she caught some of their conversation again.
“. . . have to hurry because Jen is going to meet us on the trail in about an hour and we don’t want to miss her,” C.P. said.
She hadn’t seen his face yet, this friend of Griffin’s, just the back of his head covered by a red knit cap with a large fluffy ball at the crown.
I had a hat like that once. Except it wasn’t red. It was blue and white and maroon stripes with a blue puffy ball at the top, and there was a big “A” on the front.
Mattie couldn’t remember what the “A” was for, though. She had a flash of men swooping around on ice, holding sticks in front of them, but she couldn’t quite remember what they were doing or why.
She shook her head. That wasn’t important right now. She had to know what the strange men were doing, and if they had moved on. Mattie had a vague notion of going outside to sweep away the evidence of their prints, and then her own. Then William would never know they had come and she wouldn’t have to face his wrath.
Mattie stepped silently into the bedroom. She knew of old where the boards creaked and how to avoid them. This was practically second nature now, as she never wanted to wake William if she got out of bed in the night. And she didn’t want the two men outside—if they were still there—to know she was inside.
She inched away the curtain and peered out.
Griffin’s camera obscured his face and Mattie saw his finger depressing a button over and over. C.P. was gesturing excitedly at the symbols in the snow, the ones the creature had left the night before, the ones that had convinced William that the creature was a demon come to try him.
Mattie couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, but their intention was very clear. They were interested in the creature, like William was. And they were going to follow its tracks.
No, she thought. They can’t.
If Griffin and C.P. followed the creature from the cabin, then the animal would think that she and William had ignored the warning. The creature would kill Griffin and C.P., and it would come back to the cabin for her and William.
It sounded crazy, even in her head—the idea that an animal could think and reason like a person. And maybe it didn’t think and reason exactly like a person, but it clearly wasn’t simply made up of instinct like every other animal in the woods. Mattie couldn’t let the two men outside risk being sorted into piles like the creature’s other victims.
And I don’t want it to come back for me, either.
But what should she do? Go outside?
No, I had better not. It’s not safe. It’s not just about William, either. I don’t know if I can trust them.
But she couldn’t just allow the strangers to wander blithely into danger.
She stood, irresolute, unable to warn them, unable to force herself to break William’s dictate.
How will you ever run from him if you can’t even do this?
Samantha again. She was very sassy for such a small girl.
“You’ve got a sassy mouth on
you.” William’s voice, one of those long ago and far away threads that seeped forward from the back of her mind, followed by a memory of pain—a great swipe of his hand across her face.
Just go. Just tell them before it’s too late.
But I can’t go outside.
Mattie’s hands moved, seemingly without her own thought or consideration, but they were trembling. They pushed the curtains back, lifted the window. Cold air rushed into the cabin, stinging her face.
Both men turned as the window scraped in its frame.
Mattie opened her mouth, tried to say, “You can’t follow it,” but nothing came out except a little croaky sound.
“What the hell?” C.P. said, but Griffin was already moving toward the cabin.
He must not have had a clear view of her face, for when he drew closer she heard his quick indrawn breath. His dark eyes snapped with anger as he rushed closer.
“It’s you! My god, what did he do to you?”
Griffin reached through the open window but Mattie retreated a few steps in shock. No one ever touched her except William. She hadn’t even spoken to another person in years.
Mattie tried to steady herself, but she couldn’t stop wringing her hands and her heart was beating so hard she felt sick. The back of her throat was clogged with acid and her legs shook.
“I’m sorry,” Griffin said, holding up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just so . . .”
He trailed off, and she saw him making an effort to hide his surprise and anger.
William never does that. Once his anger bubbles up he lets it spill over, lets it burn me.
“My name’s Griffin Banerjee. This is my friend C.P. Chang.”
C.P. approached the window, peered in. His eyes widened but he gave Mattie a little wave. “Hey.”
Mattie swallowed. She didn’t realize how frightened she would be, how strange it would feel to speak to new people.
“I—” she managed, but then the gorge rose in her throat and she had to stop and swallow it down. “I need to tell you . . .”
Why was her voice such a whispery thing? Why couldn’t she just be firm and strong and tell them what needed to be told?
“Do you need help?” Griffin asked. “We could help you. You look like you need a doctor.”
C.P. frowned at Griffin, and Mattie could read the thought behind his gaze—We don’t have time for that.
“N-no,” she said. “No doctor. But you can’t go up the mountain.”
There, she’d gotten it all out. Sweat pooled at the base of her spine. Now that she’d told them, she wished they would leave, go back to where they came from, cease staring at her like she was an animal in a zoo.
C.P. turned his frown from Griffin to her. “Why not?”
Mattie gestured out the window in the general direction of the symbols. “The creature. It came to warn us. Don’t disturb it or it will hurt you.”
“You’ve seen it?” C.P. asked, his frown abruptly replaced with excitement. “When? What happened? Can you describe it for us?”
The sudden barrage of questions made her step backward again, like she could escape his interest if only she moved far enough away.
“You can’t go up the mountain. It left a warning,” she said.
“You saw it do that?” C.P. asked, gesturing behind him at the symbols traced in the snow. “When?”
She wasn’t explaining this correctly. If she had then they wouldn’t be asking more questions, acting excited instead of frightened. If they knew then they would leave. And they would be safe.
And I will be safe, too, because then the creature won’t come back and punish me for their behavior.
Mattie turned her good eye on Griffin, who was watching her intently.
“Y-yesterday,” she said, and had to stop because her mouth was so dry. She wished for a glass of water. Why was this so difficult? Why was it so hard to get the words out? “Yesterday when we saw you . . .”
She trailed off, because the intensity of his stare was making her forget what she wanted to say. She wished she could cover up her swelling left eye, because he seemed fixated on it. In another moment he’d ask her again if she needed a doctor, she was sure of it. Mattie hurried on before he could.
“Yesterday, when we saw you, did you go into any of the caves?”
“No, I didn’t. It’s not a good idea to go into a cave alone—too many things can go wrong and there was no cell signal up there. C.P. didn’t come up until today,” Griffin said.
“I had finals, and I couldn’t get off work until today,” C.P. said. “The project deadline was Tuesday but I couldn’t finish my job until other people finished their job . . .”
He trailed off, realizing that Griffin was glaring at him and Mattie was simply confused.
“Project?”
“I’ve got a work-study project . . .”
“It’s really not the time, C.P.” Griffin said.
“Right,” C.P. said, and subsided.
Mattie hadn’t understood anything that he’d said. “Cell signal” and “work-study”—it was like he was speaking a foreign language.
“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 a
ll 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.
Near the Bone Page 9