by K. T. Tomb
Lux didn’t break it, just watched him. His thick eyebrows were crunched down over his face almost violently. The bronzed color of his skin almost shone in the night. His eyes flitted back to her and she blushed, feeling like she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t have. But she didn’t look away.
“That still doesn’t tell me why you’re here.”
He cocked his head. “I suppose I’m Stevens’ insurance policy.”
A small river of cold rippled through her. Lux had been an insurance policy before, and it was never a good thing. Good for her, but never for anyone else involved. She shivered.
“Your turn.” He said.
“My turn, what?”
“Why are you here tracking an animal that you don’t believe in?”
She hesitated.
“I needed the money,” she finally said.
“How do you find something you don’t believe in?”
“I can find anything,” she boasted. “There’s something here. I don’t believe in fucking Bigfoot, but certainly there is something here. I can find what is here, be it Bigfoot or just a couple of hermits.”
“What happens if this is a hoax?”
The cold shivered through her again. If it was a hoax and they found out, the insurance policy might sentence them to something she didn’t even want to imagine.
“I don’t care what’s out there,” she said. It was mostly the truth. “I would lead us right back out of here and let everyone else deal with it. I just want the money so I can get out.”
“Get out of what?”
“Nothing,” she mumbled.
She had forgotten she was talking to someone like herself, someone who read the slightest movement, inflection, word. She had to be careful around him. Ben said nothing. Lux turned her brown eyes to the woods and away from Ben. She felt like in any other situation they would have perhaps been friends. He was too much like her, though. The situation was tense, and he was the insurance policy. There solely to ensure Dr. Stevens’ interests were served, by everyone, even if it meant… what? That he would kill them? Lux decided she’d rather not know, but felt reassured by the weight of the pistol on her hip.
“When did you start tracking?” Ben asked after a while.
The sun was set and the darkness was there like spilled ink. Lux sighed. She didn’t like talking about her life. It wasn’t something that she had much pride in.
“I was seventeen when I started doing it professionally.”
He looked surprised; the darkness couldn’t hide it.
“That’s young.”
She shrugged.
“It’s what I’m good at, and people knew it.”
The silence was filled with the low buzz of bugs in the night. Lux didn’t feel the need to say anything and nor, apparently, did Ben. Soft snores came from at least two of the other three hammocks, but she was awake, wide awake.
“Are you from Texas?” she asked eventually.
“No.”
She didn’t press for more information, and he didn’t give it.
“Why don’t you believe in monsters?”
Lux pondered her answer. She didn’t want to just say because it’s ridiculous, but that was her honest answer.
“I’ve been on cryptid hunts before,” she said. “They were hoaxes or drunkards or other human errors. I believe in evidence.”
“I think it’s out there,” Ben said quietly, “and whatever it is, it isn’t natural.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Chapter Three
Prints; strange, bowed and clawed, wove faintly through the trees. Lux tied her bushy blonde hair back and squatted down to examine them. She was no biologist, but she was sure that there was something strange about them. She had seen the prints from every animal that crawled through the woods, and these were made by none of them.
“Hey, Julie,” she called out, “come look at these.”
Julie hurried over, the three men jumbling and jostling behind her for the best view over the girls’ shoulders.
“What?” she asked, squatting down next to Lux.
“Take a look at these prints and tell me what you think.”
Julie pulled out her camera and ruler and started snapping away.
“I don’t recognize them. There are two, actually three, individuals here, I think,” she said, using her pinky to outline different prints.
The selection looked random, but Julie clearly knew what she was talking about or Dr. Stevens wouldn’t have assignedher the spot.
“It rained, night before,” Lux mumbled.
Julie nodded.
“They’re fresh,” she confirmed. “Like last night or something.”
“Whatever made them probably weighed about as much as us,” Samuel said, nudging his head between them.
Lux frowned at him, scooting away. There was about a hundred pound difference between Julie and Hal. Julie stood five foot nothing and Hal probably topped six-three. The prints had more variety than most in the animal kingdom then. Lux stood, Julie and Samuel following suit. The five exchanged glances.
“Well,” Lux said after a moment, voicing what they were all thinking, “let’s follow them.”
She looked at Ben last. His still eyes and smooth face gave nothing away, which made her nervous like Julie. The wind was quiet. The birds were quiet. The forest was silent. Lux walked like a cat, her feet alighting upon the ground with still air. The others were equally cautious, the still woods bringing to life all the fears that lurked shadowy in the human mind. In dead-still woods, they walked silent as the grave for hours. The prints wound through the trees in seemingly random patterns, but they were going purposefully east, deeper and deeper and deeper. The darkness grew, as did the frequency of tracks they found.
“There are definitely five,” Julie said. “See how this one is missing a toe? This is a longer print over here.”
“Let’s stop early,” Lux said, eyeing another hefty tree thirty or forty yards from the path. “I don’t want to be wandering the woods in twilight with something I don’t know about.”
“Ha! Big bad hunter girl, are you afraid?” Samuel sneered.
Lux pinned him with angry eyes.
“Aren’t anthropologists supposed to be likable?”
Samuel opened his mouth with an angry wrench of the jaw and was about to respond when Ben cut in. “We’ll stop here. Is that a problem?”
Lux decided that Ben would be useful to keep around. She was perfectly capable of fighting her own battles, she wouldn’t be alive otherwise, but she was fine with letting Ben deal with Samuel. Samuel dropped the issue.
“Can I see those pictures you took of the prints?” Hal said to Julie.
Lux strung up her hammock and ignored everyone. She was ready for the trip to end. She wanted to get out of the woods, of Texas and of tracking. She could start over with the money from the trip, go wherever she wanted. Washington State had always interested her. It was beautiful there, new. She flicked a mosquito off of her arm. The little red smear it left looked like a tree branching out in tiny thin feelers. The bugs in Piney Woods were what drove people crazy. She didn’t care how many monsters hid in the trees; the danger was in the bugs. They gnawed at the skin, impossible to stop. With a yawn, she slithered back down to the fire. Hal divvied up a portion of hot beans from the camp cooking gear for her, which she took with a smile, but wished it was a steak and a beer.
Hal was apparently thinking the same thing.
“I don’t think I want to see beans for a while when this is done.”
“Me neither,” Julie agreed quickly.
“Beans, beans, the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot. The more you toot, the better you feel. So we have beans at every meal!” Hal sang, and they all, even Samuel and Ben, joined in for the second verse, “Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart. The more you eat, the more you fart. The more you fart, the better you feel. So we have beans at every meal!
”
Lux couldn’t help it. She snorted all over her beans and Julie laughed out loud. Her laugh was clean and clear and light like a fairy. Even Ben smiled, teeth showing in a white line. The night stayed quiet and simple, lulling the weary travelers to sleep with the skittering of nocturnal animals and chirruping insects. Lux slept the whole night through, exhausted from the day’s travels. Bigfoot could have waltzed through the camp with a whole troop of traveling musicians and she probably would have snoozed right through.
Daybreak brought the fresh smell of brief summer rain. Lux yawned widely, pulled herself up and began to pack up the hammock. Leftover water droplets clung to everything and she had to snap the hammock out several times before she could roll it up. But the cool morning air and the chipper scent made it impossible for her to feel irritated. She scaled her way down the tree, and then turned to watch Hal come down. He was worth bringing along just to watch him climb trees because he moved as comfortably through the trees as well as a goat attempting ballet. She was certain he had at least a dozen splinters in each hand by the time he reached the bottom and that was clearly why he was always so quiet in the mornings as they walked; he was picking them out with his teeth.
When the Hal entertainment was over, she squatted down next to Julie and began to eat her power bar breakfast.
“How’d you sleep?” she said, around a mouthful of oats and fruit.
Julie shrugged.
“I thought I heard something moving around all night, but it was probably just Hal or Sam. They snore a lot.”
“I never!” Hal insisted, coming to sit with them. Lux was pleased to see him handling his power bar gingerly.
Julie gave a watery smile.
“Sure, and your breath is always minty fresh too!” Hal mugged, and made a show of cupping a hand to his mouth and grimacing.
Lux didn’t say anything. She remembered the creature she thought she dreamed the night before, its dark body, smooth gait, thick horns. She remembered the quiet noises it had made. Was there a chance that she had not dreamed it? No, she decided. There was no chance that she hadn’t dreamed it. Demons were never real; she knew that. They broke camp and Lux quickly found the trail of the animals again. It was thinner, partially washed away by the light rain. Lux cut a quick pace, hoping to follow it as deep as they could; moving uphill, there was a greater chance of the land being exposed to the elements, and therefore of the trail going completely cold. It was only thirty minutes before they came across a fresh print atop the old ones. No one moved. Five pairs of eyeballs were glued to the raised and pressed dirt, scanning the ground for the next print, which Lux with her experienced eye found first. The new route ran away from the first, down deeper into the forest.
“Um.”
Julie poked her head around Lux’s shoulder.
“Yeah, um,” Lux agreed.
“So, that means whatever made these tracks is less than a day ahead of us, right? If the print is laid in fresh mud…” she trailed off leaving the sentence unfinished.
“Yeah,” Lux agreed again. “Let’s go, but quietly. Follow only in my exact footsteps. Whatever it is we’re tracking knows these woods better than we do. No deviation from my path, got it?”
“Yeah,” everyone said almost in unison.
At half the usual pace, Lux led the party down, following a near random, twisting route that nearly circled the bluff the first set of tracks had followed, then doubled back on itself, and again. It was infuriating, animals rarely behaved like this, being creatures of habit in the main. Animals hunted the same spots, went to the same places to get water. They liked routine, just like humans did. Two hours passed in this slow pursuit, but before long and without warning, the tracks disappeared entirely.
Lux swore under her breath, the low curses reaching the others’ ears.
“What?” Samuel said, his previous animosity gone for the moment, presumably thanks to the progress they had made.
“The tracks, they stop,” she growled, scanning the dirt. Tracks didn’t just stop. She had been neck deep in the woods for her whole life. Tracks didn’t just disappear, not when there was nowhere to go.
Then she saw it, the heel of one of the prints disappearing into the brush to the side of the trail.
Crouching low, she followed the path, weaving around the bush.
“Here,” she mumbled to the rest, following the faint pattern.
“I don’t see anything,” Julie frowned.
“It’s here, I swear,” Lux said, skimming the ground.
A cracked twig here, a dip in the ground there. She came up face to face with a thick tree trunk. There were little nicks in it like claw marks, but nothing as clear as what they had found earlier. She craned her head back, scouring the trees for any form at all that shouldn’t be there. High up in one corner, there rested a leafy squirrel nest, but nothing else.
She swore again. How could she have been so stupid?
“It took to the trees,” she told the concerned looking team.
“Can you track it in the trees?” Samuel said.
Lux, just for a moment, hated him.
“No,” she ground out. “I cannot.”
What a ridiculous question. What they really should be concerned about is what kind of animal moves for miles on the ground, and then takes to the branches and moves amongst them like a chimpanzee? She regarded the upper branches, warily now. Where she had felt the rise of the predatory blood in her when following footprints on the ground; now the tables had turned on her. Danger could come from above. Samuel sneered derision at her, but before he could say anything, Hal piped up from the back of the group.
“We should follow the old trail then.”
As reluctant as she was to take orders other than her own, she knew he was right.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “Come on.”
The trail went nowhere fast. They walked all day, going in random loops and twists. Something smelled wrong to Lux. The air played through her mouth, tantalizing her with the knowledge that something was off, but not telling her what it was. She had always been able to read the forest like that, feeling its moods.
“Hey,” Ben said to her, quietly. “You look like a cat.”
“Thanks,” she said sarcastically.
“When cats do it, it’s called a grimace.”
“Something seems off.”
“What do you see?” he asked, the joking tone gone.
“I don’t know, nothing. And it’s driving me nuts. Something is very strange about this place, I can taste it.”
She scanned the trees over and over like she was reading the same message and not understanding it. But the message was there, she knew it was. Somewhere hidden out there, the trees were trying to tell her something. But it was hidden away in a code she did not speak.
“There is a disturbance,” Ben agreed, his face pointed out deep into the forest. “I just don’t know what it is either.”
She looked away from the forest and into his eyes. There was definitely the same ability lurking down in there that she had. She wondered what insurance policy had really meant. When she was the insurance policy, it meant she was the heavy weight when the situation called for it. She had been told to kill people if needed before; luckily it had never come to that, though close. There had been a few times where she had her pistol at a man’s temple, the metal warm from her body and pressing deep into his skin. There was the same steel, the same almost meanness in his eyes. It was a necessary meanness.
It was the kind of determination, the will, that pushed things; that made things happen. He could be the heavy weight. He could be the killer. But he could also keep them on track. Maybe that was why he was there, just to keep the peace. Maybe he was there just to track the group as she tracked the creature.
She hesitated, then said, “Do you really believe that there’s something out there, something like Bigfoot?”
Ben didn’t say anything for several long seconds. His eyes stayed on her face
, tracing the lines there. “You mean a ‘real’ mythical creature?”
She nodded.
“Yes,” he said, simply. She felt like it was the first honest answer he had given her, the first honest answer that meant anything. She swallowed. Maybe she could push her luck. “Why?”
Ben smiled slightly and shook his head.
“See, I knew you would ask that.”
“Are you going to answer?”
“Maybe.”
She took a deep breath, hiding her frustration. Why? Why couldn’t he just give her a straight answer? Was it really that hard?
“Why don’t you? Answer for an answer?” she asked.
“Okay, fine,” he sighed. “I answered yours first. Your turn.”
Lux thought about arguing, but she was too curious.
“Because,” she said, “there’s nothing we’ve seen that a human could not easily recreate.”
“You don’t believe that.”
No, she didn’t.
“Yes, I do.”
“Lux, you’re not a great liar. I am.”
She looked away. There was no other answer. She did not want to believe that something as ridiculous as Bigfoot haunted these woods. There would be more substantial evidence for it based on what they were finding.
“I believe there is because…” He hesitated. “Because there is evidence.”
Lux gave him a sad smile.
“You’re not that good a liar, Makarios.”
He laughed. It was not a happy sound, but she couldn’t pinpoint why.
“Touché.”
“Do over?” she asked, and Ben nodded his assent.
“Why did Dr. Stevens select you as the insurance policy?”
“I’ve worked for him before, successfully. I make sure things stay on track when people lose their heads. My turn. Why did he select you as the tracker?”
“I don’t know, probably because I could do the job and most trackers are more selective about the contracts they take. I was desperate. Have you seen what it is that we are looking for?”
“Yes,” he said, slowly meeting her eyes. “Why?”
“It comes here by night.” It was not a question.
“You’ve seen it too.” His was not a question either.