She felt her eyelids drooping and realized she was falling asleep, falling asleep while she was walking, which was something she hadn’t thought possible.
“Stay awake,” she said.
“I’m trying,” he said.
“No, not you. Me. My eyes were closing.”
“Mine are, too,” he said. “What if we just stood here and took a one-minute nap?”
“No naps,” she said. “Move now, nap later.”
They were moving slower than they had been earlier, but it still didn’t take very long to reach the stream again. Mattie felt a wash of relief as they entered the clearing. The creature couldn’t hide from them here. They would have warning if it was coming.
Then C.P. cried out, “No! No! For chrissakes, no!” and she saw what he was yelling about.
Jen hung from her intestines in a tree on the other side of the stream, her torso an empty cavity like a blank eye.
“Don’t look,” Mattie said, though she couldn’t stop staring herself and her voice didn’t sound like it was attached to her body. “Don’t look. You can’t do anything for her. Don’t look. Come on, C.P. Come away.”
He let her lead him like a child, her hand pulling his. The rifle slid out of his other hand.
“The rifle,” she said. “Get the rifle.”
“What good will it do?” he said dully. “That guy had the rifle. He shot the monster. We heard him shooting it. But it still didn’t die.”
“We don’t need to kill it,” Mattie said, picking up the rifle herself and wrapping his hands around it. “We just need to keep it away from us so we can live.”
“It doesn’t seem fair,” he said. “That we can live, and they didn’t.”
“No,” Mattie said. “It doesn’t. Come on. Don’t think about it right now. Just take a step. Let’s go. Come on.”
They went on like that for some time, Mattie coaxing, C.P. shuffling along like a sleepwalker. All the while she was listening, listening for the sound of birds chirping above the bubbling of the stream, listening to make certain it never got too quiet.
The stream bent around toward the southeast, just as C.P. said it would. Mattie couldn’t hear the river yet, but she hoped to very soon. The river meant they were closer to the base of the mountain, to town, to places where there were no monsters.
William came from a town, once, and so did you. Your monster came right in through your bedroom window.
No, she wasn’t going to think about William. She wasn’t going to drag his ghost with her all the way to her new life.
The quiet came all at once, a hush that swept through behind the wind.
But why? Mattie thought. We’re leaving, moving farther away from its cave, and neither of us look as weak or injured as Griffin or Jen did. It has no reason to hunt us.
“Don’t stop,” she said in an undertone. “It’s here.”
C.P. looked at her, but his eyes weren’t focused. He’d gone somewhere far from her, someplace where his friends were still alive and happy and not hanging from trees in the forest.
“What’s here?”
“The creature,” she said. “It’s near. The woods have gone quiet.”
The dazed look receded, and he glanced around. “I don’t see it.”
“You never do see it,” she said. “Stay near the water, away from the trees. If it wants us it will have to come out and show itself.”
“I don’t want it to show itself. I never thought I’d say this, especially given why we came here in the first place, but I do not want to see it,” C.P. said. He gripped the rifle a little tighter.
There was the sound of branches breaking, the sound getting closer and closer.
“It’s coming,” he said.
“I know.”
“I think we should run.”
The creature roared, the sound filling up the air all around them, pressing against their ears, vibrating inside their heads. Mattie couldn’t run. She couldn’t even walk. The roar made her legs weak, made her hands tremble, made her chest feel like it was caving in.
C.P. must have felt the same way, because he staggered and stopped, his face pale.
The roaring ceased, and Mattie stood there for a moment, trying to find her breath again.
The creature burst from the trees on their side of the stream, its speed impossible to track. Mattie only had a sense, as always, of something enormous, something fur-covered and powerful. There was a flash of one dark eye, a blood-covered maw, teeth, claws. Then C.P. was on his knees, screaming, and the hand that held the rifle was gone.
And so was the rifle, and so was the creature.
She didn’t think. She pulled the long scarf off her neck and took the bloodied, ragged stump where his hand used to be and wrapped it tightly in the cloth. There was blood everywhere, blood soaking into the scarf, blood on her hands and on her trousers, so much blood.
C.P. passed out.
“Oh, no,” Mattie moaned. “No, no, no. Not you, too. You can’t sleep now. The creature will come and take you and then I’ll be alone. Come on, come on, C.P., wake up. Wake up now.”
She shook his shoulder, but he didn’t respond. Her scarf was already soaked through with his blood but they didn’t have any bandages.
She quickly unbuttoned her coat and pulled off her sweater. Underneath she wore an undershirt and this she removed, too, flushing because her breasts were exposed even though C.P. couldn’t see. She quickly pulled all of her layers back on, shivering. Then she dragged C.P. closer to the stream, unwrapped the scarf, pulled up his coat sleeve and put the stump in the freezing water. Blood flowed away into the water.
She was only thinking about cleaning it and binding the wound more tightly with her undershirt, but the shock of the freezing water made C.P. open his eyes and sit up, shouting incoherently.
“Stop,” Mattie said. “Just leave your arm there.”
“Are you crazy? I’m going to get hypothermia,” he said, and then he looked at his wrist, and turned his head away. “Nope, actually, I’m going to be sick.”
Mattie quickly bound the stump tightly with her shirt. The blood still flowed, but it seemed a little more sluggish now. Maybe it was her imagination.
She stood, and tugged at his arm. “We have to go.”
“Jesus, doesn’t losing a limb entitle me to five seconds of rest?” he said.
“No. It’s still here. It’s watching, waiting to see what we’ll do. And if you lay down or pass out it will take you, just like the others.”
He didn’t argue anymore, just let Mattie pull him up.
“Can you walk?” she asked.
“Not by myself,” he admitted. “I’m a little dizzy.”
She slung his uninjured arm around her shoulder. He was heavy, so much heavier and taller than her. She didn’t know if she could drag him. “Don’t fall asleep on me.”
“It came for the rifle,” C.P. said as they started forward, moving slowly.
“What?” Mattie said. She was trying to concentrate on her steps, to match her rhythm to his so that walking would be easier.
“It took the rifle. That guy shot it, right? So when it saw me with the rifle it wanted to make sure we couldn’t hurt it again,” C.P. said.
It made sense, but Mattie wasn’t looking for explanations. She only wanted to get away. She didn’t know how long the creature would follow them.
“We need to walk faster,” she said.
“I don’t think I can. I think you’re going to have to leave me, Samantha Hunter.”
She glanced up at him. His eyes seemed to be rolling in every direction at once.
“Don’t you dare,” she said. “Don’t you dare pass out. It’s you and me and we’re going to make it to the bottom of this mountain so you stay awake, do you hear me? Stay awake.”
They
shuffled along, and Mattie felt the creature watching them from the trees, waiting for its chance. Its gaze seemed to press down on her, stopping the breath in her lungs.
Just stay focused on the stream, on putting one foot in front of the other, on keeping C.P. upright.
“Hey,” he said, and he sounded more alert. “Hey, am I hallucinating or is that a road?”
He gestured with his stump, wincing when he caught sight of the bloodied shirt wrapped around it.
Mattie saw it then, too—a dirt road that wound along parallel to the stream, almost hidden by the trees.
The trees. There weren’t many of them, but to get to the road they’d have to cross through the trees.
“The vehicle. Remember the key?” he said. “Oh my god, we’re saved. Let’s go find it.”
The stream was wider here, and there were almost no rocks to step on to keep their feet dry. C.P. plowed forward, tugging Mattie along with him, splashing through the water.
A branch cracked behind them.
“No,” Mattie said. “Don’t follow us. Stay away.”
They climbed up the little incline on the other side of the bank. The trees weren’t as thick here. They could see the road in between the trunks.
“We have to run through,” Mattie said. “Because the trees are its hunting ground. Can you run?”
“I can do anything if there’s a car waiting on the other side.”
“We don’t know there is for sure,” Mattie said. She didn’t want him to get his hopes up and then have them dashed if William had hidden his vehicle so well that they couldn’t find it.
“It’s got to be,” he said. “That’s a car key around your neck, and there’s a road. That guy had a way of getting up and down this mountain quickly.”
“Okay,” Mattie said. “Okay. Let’s run.”
They took off, pushing through the snow, both of them barely upright.
The tree trunks were closer, closer, closer, and then they were inside them and Mattie saw the road on the other side, maybe ten feet away. Nine feet, eight feet, seven feet. They were almost out.
The creature roared again, louder than before, and the sound wanted to break her but she could taste her freedom and so could C.P. He grabbed her hand and they ran, breaking free of the woods, their feet touching the dirt road.
“He cleared this,” C.P. said, looking left and right. “That’s the only reason we could see it from the stream. He must have a truck with a plow on it.”
Mattie didn’t care what kind of vehicle it was as long as it was near, but she didn’t see anything.
“It’s not here,” she said.
The roaring had stopped, and there was no warning crunch of branches breaking.
“Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not here,” he said. “It’s probably that way, closer to the cabin.”
The cabin. Everything in her life seemed to circle back to that place, no matter how hard she tried to get away from it.
And the creature was following. If they went back in the direction of its cave, it might decide to eliminate them both with one swipe of its paw.
“Maybe we should just follow the road down,” Mattie said. “On foot. It will still be easier than hiking through the snow.”
“Let’s just look,” he said. “Just a little ways in that direction.”
Mattie glanced back at the trees behind them. There was an enormous silhouette there, waiting.
“It’s watching us,” she whispered.
She saw him find the silhouette with his eyes, saw the blood drain out of his already pale face.
“But it’s not attacking,” he said, his voice trembling. “It’s just watching. So let’s just follow the plan.”
He took her hand again, and squeezed hard. They walked up the road, toward the cabin.
“It can’t be too close to the cabin. Otherwise you would have heard the sound of the engine every time he went somewhere.”
Mattie knew he was trying to sound calm and normal, to pretend that the shadow in the trees wasn’t following them with unnatural silence.
It’s watching and waiting. It’s trying to decide if we’re still a threat.
She heard the creature’s breath suddenly, heard the huff of its exhale.
It’s going to attack. It’s not going to wait any longer.
“There it is!” C.P. shouted.
The creature paused.
And there, parked in the middle of the road, was a huge black truck.
“With a plow, just like I said!” C.P. shouted. “Get the key, come on.”
Mattie tugged the string holding the keys off her neck and handed it to him. He ran toward the truck, but Mattie stayed where she was. She turned to face the shadow in the woods.
“We’re leaving now,” she said, and her voice was so small, so faint. She tried again. “We’re leaving, and we’re not coming back. So the mountain can be yours now. There’s no need to follow us.”
The shadow shifted, and Mattie thought she saw the gleam of eyes.
Not two eyes. Four.
And then the shadow drew a little closer to the road, and though she still couldn’t make out exactly what the creature looked like, she was certain of one thing.
There wasn’t one creature, but two. A smaller one on the back of the larger.
A parent and child? she thought. Is that why it chased us even when we were no threat? It was trying to keep us from its child?
“What are you doing?” C.P. shouted. “We’re leaving right now!”
Mattie turned away from the shape in the trees, ran to the truck, climbed inside. She felt the creature (creatures) watching as she went.
C.P. had already put the key into the ignition, but now he looked at the stump where his right hand used to be.
“I can steer with one hand, I think,” he said. “But I need to hold the wheel while you put it in drive. Can you do that?”
Mattie stared at him blankly.
“The stick in the middle,” he said. “I need you to press on the button on the side and pull it back until it’s next to the ‘D.’”
He grasped the wheel with his left hand. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Mattie followed his instructions, and a moment later the truck was rolling forward.
C.P. started laughing. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. We’re actually getting away.”
Mattie didn’t laugh with him. She stared into the trees, looking for the gleam of eyes, but the silhouette was gone.
* * *
• • •
C.P. pulled the truck to a stop in front of a low, brick building. There was a sign on the front that indicated it was a state troopers’ barracks.
“I think we should take you to a doctor first,” Mattie said.
“This was closer,” he said. “And they know how to call an ambulance, believe me.”
Now that they were off the mountain the energy seemed to have drained out of him. He closed his eyes. “I’m just going to rest here for a minute, okay? I’m really tired.”
A second later he was asleep, breathing deeply. Mattie looked at him. She looked at the glass door. She was going to have to go in by herself.
She climbed out of the truck. It seemed like it was a long way down to the ground, and she walked slowly toward the door, her heart pounding.
It’s okay. They’re going to help you. They’re going to help. They can’t give you back to William anymore.
She pushed open the door. There was a man at a desk. He had very short dark hair and he wore a uniform. She saw him take in the blood splashed on her trousers, her black eye, the bruised marks at her throat.
“Miss? Are you all right?” he said, hurrying around the desk.
“Yes,” she said. “But my friend needs a doctor.”
> My friend, she thought. I have a friend. And somewhere, I have a sister. I’m not alone.
“Please,” she said. “Please help him.”
“We’ll help him, don’t worry,” he said. He lifted a radio to his mouth and said several things that Mattie didn’t really pay attention to. “What’s your name?”
She took a deep breath, felt the years fall away.
“Samantha. My name is Samantha.”
Photo by Kathryn McCallum Osgood
Christina Henry is a horror and dark fantasy author whose works include The Ghost Tree, Looking Glass, The Girl in Red, The Mermaid, Lost Boy, Alice, Red Queen and the seven-book urban fantasy Black Wings series.
She enjoys running long distances, reading anything she can get her hands on and watching movies with samurai, zombies and/or subtitles in her spare time. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son.
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Near the Bone Page 27