“That’s Griffin out there,” C.P. said. “We have to go out and help him. We have to do something. He sounds like he’s dying.”
“We . . . can’t. Creature. William,” Mattie said, and rushed toward the door. She sat down in the chair that C.P. had placed there earlier, determined not to let him outside.
She wished she could speak properly, or that Jen was awake to help talk some sense into C.P. How could he consider going outside? If the creature didn’t get him then William would, and once the door was open, William would come inside.
“I don’t care what you say, I’m going out there! Griffin would have done the same for you. We’re only in this mess because of you anyway. He couldn’t stop talking about you, kept saying we had to help because you were being abused by your asshole husband. We only came back in this direction because he wanted to do something about it and now you’re going to sit there like a cowardly little bitch and let him die outside your door?”
Mattie stared at C.P., stricken by the sudden change in him, the snarl in his voice, the contempt she felt radiating from him. Griffin’s screams filled up the empty space between them.
Cowardly little bitch. Was that what she was? Was this true? Had the three strangers only been put in harm’s way because they wanted to help her?
A rifle sounded outside, a huge booming rifle that made a noise like Mattie had never heard before.
“Demon! Go back to hell!”
William. William was shooting the creature.
C.P. moved from the window to stand in front of Mattie, who pressed herself back in the chair that blocked the front door. The flashlight was in one of his hands and the rifle in the other. He trained the flashlight on her.
“Get out of the way or I’ll throw you out of the way,” C.P. said. “I’m going out there to get my friend.”
Griffin’s screams faded out then, overwhelmed by the angry roars of the creature, William’s screams, the report of the rifle.
If C.P. went out there, he would only get caught in the crossfire—shot by William, or snatched up by the creature like his friend. She couldn’t let him leave.
And if he leaves you’ll be all alone with an unconscious woman and who will protect you then? Isn’t that right?
Mattie wanted to shout at that voice, that smug little Samantha, the one who knew that Mattie was helpless, nothing unless she had a man to protect her.
I’m not helpless, she thought. She curled her fingers around the seat of the chair. He’d have to pry her off if he wanted her to move.
“Can’t . . . let . . . you,” Mattie said. “You’ll . . . get . . . hurt.”
“Do you really think that matters? Griffin’s my best friend and I can’t leave him out there. Move.”
Mattie shook her head, half-blind from the glare of the flashlight. He was nothing but a silhouette to her, a silhouette of an angry man looming.
He’s going to hurt me he’s going to hurt me he’s going to hit me and throw me on the floor and throw the chair after me like I’m nothing but garbage and maybe I am because I don’t want to go outside and help the screaming man but there’s nothing we can do there isn’t anything the creature is too big William is too dangerous the world is too big and dangerous altogether it’s safer just to stay right here with the door closed.
The creature stopped roaring. William stopped firing the rifle. There was a strangled cry, and everything was silent.
Mattie’s fingers squeezed against the wood of the chair. What was happening now? Had William killed the creature? Was he even now stalking back to the cabin, triumphant in his defeat of the demon?
She listened. She didn’t hear anything, not the thunk-drag of William’s walk, not Griffin’s screams, not the flurry of breaking branches that meant the creature was moving through the trees.
But Mattie knew the creature could be silent when it wanted to be.
A second later, the front window shattered.
There was another huge roar, loud and close. Mattie covered her ears, curled up on the chair with her legs tight against her chest, trying to make herself as small as possible. The cold night air rushed in behind the open window.
C.P. turned the flashlight toward the window, and for a moment Mattie saw claws shining in the beam of light, thought she smelled the sticky metallic sweetness of blood, and then it was gone.
Neither of them moved. Mattie realized she was holding her breath and it was making her lightheaded. She exhaled but her whole body trembled.
“Was that its paw?” C.P. said. He sounded scared but fascinated at the same time.
Mattie hadn’t seen anything like a paw. She’d only noticed the claws—long, almost impossibly long things the color of night and sharper than any falcon’s, not the claws of a bear at all. Those were claws to rend and tear, claws to peel open flesh.
Her teeth were chattering again. The freezing air poured through the broken glass and the fire wasn’t lit.
And I’m scared. I’m more scared than I’ve ever been before. If the creature grabbed me with those claws there’s nothing I could do. It would tear me open like all those little animals it hung up in the forest and I would scream and scream but I couldn’t stop it.
“Do you think it’s still out there?” C.P. said.
“Yes,” Mattie said. She felt it, felt its malevolence, felt its eyes watching her even through the door of the cabin.
“Do you think it got that guy?”
For a moment she didn’t know who C.P. was talking about.
“William.”
“Yeah, do you think it got him or that he just dropped the gun or ran away or what?”
Any of those options were plausible. The creature could have injured William—injured him for a second time, if Mattie’s assumptions about why William was limping were true. He also could have dropped the gun, or had it swiped out of his hands by an animal furious at being shot. Or he may have just decided to cut his losses, to run into the woods.
That last seemed unlikely. The cabin was William’s and he would have run toward it if he could, not away from it. He would have banged on the door and demanded they let him in.
If he could. But if he’s been injured again, he might not have been able to do that. Or the creature might have blocked his way.
“We gotta cover this window,” C.P. said. “You don’t have any wood or anything? Tools?”
There were tools, but those tools were in the storehouse along with the food. William never left anything lying about that might tempt Mattie.
He never left anything I could use as a weapon. No matter how he crushed me, he was always afraid that I might show some spirit, so he never left a hammer within reach of my hand.
And there wasn’t any wood to cover the window. It was the same problem she’d encountered earlier when she thought about covering them up.
“No,” she said. “Tools . . . are . . . outside.”
“Well, we’ve got to put a quilt over it or something,” he said. “Jen’s going to freeze to death if we don’t, and so will we.”
Jen hadn’t moved an inch, not while all the screaming and shooting had happened outside, not even when the creature broke the window. Mattie didn’t think that was a good sign.
“We . . . should . . . put . . . her . . . in . . . the . . . bed,” Mattie said. “Get . . . warm.”
“Right. If she was awake she would say I was a dummy, wouldn’t she?” He choked on the last couple of words and Mattie realized he was crying. “Griffin’s probably dead and Jen’s probably dying and there isn’t a damned thing I can do about it. I’m not even smart enough to cover up a sick woman with a blanket. I’m useless.”
He was crumpling up before Mattie’s eyes, the terror of it all finally punching through his shell.
“Not . . . useless,” she said, pushing away from the chair and standin
g on unsteady legs. “You . . . and . . . me. We’ll . . . take . . . care . . . of . . . her.”
C.P. wiped his eyes. “Right. We’ll take care of her. We’ll take care of her and we’ll get out of this. You were right. It was stupid of me to want to charge outside. What good will it do if all of us are injured? You take her feet and I’ll take her shoulders.”
Mattie quickly untied Jen’s heavy leather boots and pushed them aside. Then she grabbed Jen’s ankles as C.P. lifted her shoulders and the two of them carefully walked into the bedroom, C.P. bumping into the doorway and then the dresser, cursing both times.
“We need some light in here. This is ridiculous. How do you live without electricity?”
They heaved Jen onto the bed. C.P. unzipped her puffy jacket and then maneuvered her under the blankets. Mattie collected some extra quilts from the closet, finding them in the dark by feel. They piled the extra layers on top of Jen.
“Her breath is so quiet,” C.P. said. “Should it be so quiet like that?”
Mattie didn’t know. She didn’t know anything except basic first aid, things that William had taught her when he’d been hurt or sick and needed help.
“I . . . don’t . . . know,” she said. “Sorry.”
“She needs a doctor. I don’t think this should happen—her being asleep like this—just because she got her leg caught in a trap. She didn’t bleed that much. And it’s clotted by now, or it should be. Do you think we should check? Try to cut off the bottom of her pant leg and clean the wound and wrap it?”
Mattie considered. There was always a risk of infection, and the metal teeth had bitten deep into Jen’s leg. However, the other woman was plainly unconscious and Mattie worried that it was dangerous to try to wake her.
“No,” she said. “Let . . . her . . . rest. Check . . . on . . . her . . . later.”
He stood there, a darker shadow against a dark room. Mattie didn’t need to see his face to know that he was looking at his friend and worrying.
“OK,” he said. “She’ll kill me if I cut those pants off anyway—those are her favorite hiking pants.”
Mattie didn’t point out that the pants were already ruined by the trap. He was clearly miserable and trying to make the best of it.
They filed out of the bedroom and Mattie pulled the door shut so Jen would be warmer. Even without the fire, the smaller room could feel quite snug, and cold air was still gusting through the broken front window.
“Anyway,” C.P. said, and it was clear that he was trying to push away his worry about Jen and focus on something else. “I don’t think we should try to go outside again until morning, so let’s cover up the window and at least get the fire going. I wish there was some kind of cell reception up here. I’d call the nearest rescue copter to come and get us ASAP.”
“Cell?” Mattie asked.
“Yeah, you know, for cell phones? There’s no signal here.”
Mattie remembered a phone in her mother’s house, a black wireless handset standing in a big black charger, but she didn’t think this was what C.P. meant.
She had a flash of someone in the grocery store—a man. He took something out of his pocket that was making noise, something silver with an antenna sticking off it, and flipped it open and put it up to his ear.
Cellular phone. Right. Mom never had one. She couldn’t afford it, and she said she didn’t need it anyway. She wasn’t some important business person. She was just a waitress at an all-night diner, although she tried not to take those late shifts because she had to find someone to watch me and Heather.
Mattie stilled. Her mother was—had been—a waitress at an all-night diner. This was the first time she remembered something concrete about her mom. Her mother felt less vague suddenly, more like she was coming into focus.
I don’t want her murder to be the only thing I remember about her.
C.P. seemed to be waiting for Mattie to respond, to commiserate with him over the lack of a signal, whatever that meant.
“You . . . have . . . one? A . . . cellular . . . phone?”
“Yeah, everyone has one.” He paused. “Well, I’m guessing you don’t.”
“No . . . phone. No . . . electricity.”
“Well, let’s get some light in here. You have candles or whatever? Torches for the wall? We’ve got to get that window covered up and then figure out our next move.”
Mattie could find the candles and matches in the dark. She didn’t want C.P. crowding her into the corner so she said, “Stay . . . here.”
The candles were in a basket near the window that the creature had broken. As she approached it she felt the rush of winter air through the shattered panes, felt the glass grinding into the floor under her boots. She had a sudden, irrational fear that the creature was outside waiting for one of them to approach the window. As soon as she was within reach, its giant paw would emerge again, grab her like it had Griffin, pull her through the window and out into the night.
She hesitated, listening. Could she hear its breath outside, the rustle of its fur, the scrape of its claws against the snow?
Stop being a fool, Mattie. It’s not waiting for you.
But Mattie wasn’t so sure about that. This creature, it didn’t act like an ordinary animal. It had shown terrifying cunning more than once already. And it was angry with them—with her and William and Griffin and C.P. and Jen. The creature had left the warning in the snow, told them to stay away. Then the three strangers had gone into its cave even after Mattie told them not to do so. It might be waiting, there by the window, just out of sight.
“What’s the matter?” C.P. said. “Do you need the flashlight?”
“No,” Mattie said.
She was acting foolish, the way William always said she did. They needed candles and they needed to block the cold air from coming in and they needed to light the fire. The monsters were out in the night—William and the creature—and Mattie and C.P. and Jen were inside the cabin, tucked away where it was safe. She stepped in front of the window, feeling her way around the table for the candle basket.
Her hand touched something wet and sticky.
Mattie let out a startled cry. C.P. clicked on the flashlight again and pointed it toward her.
“What is it?” he said.
The flashlight beam bobbed around her head and shoulders. She pointed at the table. “Something. There.”
C.P. approached the table, angling the light down. Mattie screamed again and stumbled backward, banging into one of the dining table chairs.
The creature had left something for them when it crashed through the window.
“That’s a heart,” C.P. said. He sounded sick. “A human heart?”
Neither of them said what they both were thinking. There were only two people the heart could belong to—Griffin or William.
And Griffin had been screaming, screaming in agony, until he’d suddenly stopped.
But I won’t stop hoping that it was William, Mattie thought. It could be him. It might be. He’s not standing outside the window demanding that I open up the door so maybe the creature cut his heart out with those razor claws and oh I hope it’s him I really do.
“Why would it do that?” C.P. said. “Why? It doesn’t make any damned sense.”
“It’s . . . a . . . warning,” Mattie said. “Another . . . one.”
“Animals don’t act like this,” C.P. said. “They eat what they kill. They don’t take their kills apart and sort them into component pieces.”
The flashlight beam was steady on the heart, like C.P. couldn’t stop looking at it.
“I thought it was weird when we were in the cave. Weird, but fascinating. I guess it’s only fascinating when you’re not the one being sorted into those component pieces.”
His voice sounded strange and distant, like he was drifting away from everything—Mattie, the cabin, t
he heart.
Mattie didn’t think. She grabbed the heart and threw it out the window. They heard a wet splat against the snow.
For a moment Mattie thought there would be a response from outside—that the creature would rush to the window again, or that William would emerge from the woods. But there was nothing—only the sway of the trees and the cold wind and the press of night all around.
“What did you do that for?” C.P. said.
He was angry, swinging the flashlight toward Mattie’s face, but for the first time she felt relieved to hear his anger. It meant he was himself again. She’d been frightened by the distance in his voice, the feeling that he was floating away and leaving her behind. She couldn’t do everything on her own. She needed him.
“We . . . don’t . . . need . . . that,” she said.
She wanted to explain more—explain that it wouldn’t help him or Griffin to keep the heart, that it would only frighten and upset them more to have it in the room with them—but her voice wouldn’t let her say the words. Her throat hurt terribly now, almost worse than it had when William was strangling her.
C.P. didn’t respond, only stood there, and she didn’t know what he was thinking. This was, in some ways, more disconcerting than his anger. In the brief period she’d known him, C.P. had always made his feelings clear from moment to moment.
Mattie found the matches for the candles. There were several in metal stands on the mantel over the fire, and she lit these first. C.P. stayed where he was, not watching her, not appearing to see anything at all. After his initial burst of anger he seemed to have faded out again, his mind gone someplace where he didn’t have to think about his friend having his heart removed by a monster.
He’s gone away to a place where he’s safe, where he doesn’t have to think about it. I recognize the signs.
Mattie had used this tactic herself many times, so she wouldn’t have to feel what William was doing to her. The trouble was that she couldn’t stay where her mind brought her. She always had to come back to the present world and the pain William left behind. When C.P. came back, his friend would still be gone and they would still be trapped in the cabin and there would still be a monster outside the door.
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