by Lilly Wilder
The words came out of me in a flurry. I was more scared than I was angry, but my fear expressed itself in a flare of rage.
“He’s not married, and he doesn’t have kids,” Finn said through clenched teeth. “Dammit, I don’t have time for this. You need to leave, now, this isn’t any of your business. If Cal wants to see you then he’ll find you. If not, then you need to go away.”
I was aghast at the way in which he spoke to me and I couldn’t believe that Cal would associate with a man like Finn. The two men seemed opposites, although when I thought about it further I reminded myself how brooding and snappy Cal had been when we’d first met in the bar.
Finn marched away from me. Whatever his reason was, he was adamant that I shouldn’t press this any further. Wherever Cal was, it was a place where I shouldn’t follow. But that only emboldened me to find the man I had made a connection with. There was a mystery here, and I was going to get to the bottom of it. I let Finn walk away because I knew he’d only keep pushing me back if I tried to latch onto him, but my mind was already working on a plan to find him.
7
I called Misty when I got back. The evening had set in and the outside world had gone dark. I put on a lamp and lit a few candles. I always preferred using natural firelight to the electric kind. There was something about fire that had always spoken to me, something primal and passionate about the way the flames danced and licked at the air. The scent of vanilla filled the room, and the soft light had a calming effect on me.
“Where are we standing?” Misty asked when she came in. She’d brought a bottle of wine with her, although I didn’t feel like drinking. Misty fetched two glasses anyway and poured, so I had a little bit. The wine was rich and dark, and I instantly felt intoxicated.
“I’ve spent all day looking him up on social media, but I can’t find anything.”
“I had the same problem,” Misty said, draping herself over the couch. “I couldn’t find anything about him when we started talking. I suppose that was part of the attraction. I have always been attracted to men of mystery.” She let out a throaty laugh and took a long gulp of wine. “I asked him about it and he said that he had no use for such things. I don’t think he had many friends, and if he does then he only speaks to them in person.”
“Did he ever mention anyone named Finn?” I asked. I still wasn’t sure if Finn was even actually a friend of Cal. He might be trouble.
“Not that I can recall, but we weren’t speaking for very long.”
“Did he mention anything that might be relevant?”
“Not really,” Misty said, absently picking at her nails. I was about to ask what she spoke about with the men she met on these dating apps, but then I thought some things were better left a mystery. However, I wasn’t getting anywhere closer to finding out anything about Cal. Being mysterious was all well and good, but it didn’t help me figure out what had happened to him.
“You know we could spend this time making you a dating profile and finding some men who don’t disappear into thin air,” Misty said, taking another glass of wine. Her head lolled against the back of the couch and she looked up at the ceiling. She was never one to hide her true feelings.
“They wouldn’t be Cal. I’m not like you Misty, I can’t just connect with anyone.”
“What is it about him anyway?”
“I don’t know, I just know that I was able to confide in him in a way that I haven’t with everyone else, and his eyes…whenever I gazed into them they did something to me. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt anything like it.”
“I must have missed that superpower.”
I continued scouring the Internet for anyone named Cal or Finn, but with so little information to go on my search was futile, and only resulted in me throwing my hands up in frustration.
“You need more wine,” Misty slurred. She reached over and poured some more wine into my glass, from which I’d only taken a few sips, but she refilled hers to the brim. The liquid glugged and she set the bottle back onto the table, next to my laptop. “This is getting you nowhere, why don’t you just track his phone?”
She said this as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“What do you mean track his phone? What do you think I am the CIA?”
“No silly, but you don’t need to be a government agency to track someone’s phone. There’s an app or a website for everything nowadays.” Misty slithered to the floor like a cat and turned my laptop around, then typed in the address to a website. I watched on, intrigued and a little scared.
“Misty, why do you know how to track phones?”
“I saw it on a TV show,” she said. I breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment there I thought she had used it to make sure no man slipped through her fingers.
“Is this ethical though? I mean, shouldn’t we think about this? Even though we can do something, should we? What about Cal’s privacy? I have to admit I feel a little unsure-”
“Found him,” Misty said, and turned the laptop back towards me, cutting me off mid-sentence. All of my moral qualms disappeared as I looked at the map and saw a dot in the middle of nowhere.
“What’s he doing out there?” I asked, scrunching up my face. Misty gave an exaggerated shrug.
“But at least you know where he is. Come on, let’s take my car.” She pulled out the keys from her bag and tossed them towards me. I caught them by reflex, because my mind certainly wasn’t focused on catching them. The whole thing became more curious; why was Cal out in the woods? Did he just like camping or was there something more sinister at work? I didn’t know what we were going to find out in the woods, and perhaps if I had left it to the following day, I might not have gone out there. I might have cut my losses and decided that things weren’t actually meant to be like I had thought and that Cal was too much trouble. I mean, did I really need this amount of trouble in my life? There was something very strange going on with Cal, but I was caught in the middle of it and at that moment there seemed nothing more important than going to the woods to find out what exactly was going on.
Part of me felt smug as well, for I was sure that I had done something that Finn couldn’t have. I pulled on a warm jacket and dragged Misty outside, and then we drove away from my place and through the empty streets of the city. The car ran smoothly on the roads until we left the cosmopolitan area and went on the freeway. Electric lights were pinpricks as we drove, and the stars were distant but still visible in the sky. The moon was high and glowed silver. There was something magical about the night, I could feel it in my bones.
“I love an adventure!” Misty said, looking out of the window like an eager puppy going in the car for the first time. As always, I was amazed by Misty’s ability to perk up even after a few glasses of wine. In her position, I’d be wanting to curl up in bed and sleep off the fuzzy feeling in my brain. I was glad I’d only had a few sips of wine. I was clear-headed, focused, and ready for anything.
Or so I thought.
As we drove, part of me wondered why I was going to these lengths for a man I barely knew. Some might say it was the romantic side of me that wanted to pursue the connection we felt and would try anything for a chance at love, and while that certainly played a part, I don’t think it was the main reason. It was something borne out of fear rather than love, something that had become a part of me that night when my Mom had been attacked and hurt by a man she trusted. It was the same thing that had driven me to go searching for Misty when I thought she was in danger. I couldn’t live with myself if I let someone get hurt while there was a chance I could do something about it.
We drove for what seemed like ages on the empty roads. As we approached the woods, my nerves got twitchy and I gripped the wheel so hard that my knuckles turned white. Misty had an app on her phone that was linked to the website we’d used, and we used this to make sure we were on the right path. The road turned from smooth concrete to something more jagged and uneven. The car rock
ed from side to side, shuddering on the old, worn road. Misty giggled like she was on some kind of theme park ride, but I was entirely focused on the task ahead. My mind turned to dark thoughts. What if Cal had been kidnapped by some serial killer? What if Cal was a serial killer? My thoughts were all over the place, but I told myself that I had just watched too much TV. Soon enough I’d see Cal again, make sure that he was alright, and then we could all go on with our lives.
8
We got to a point where we couldn’t drive any further and had to take a narrow path that wound through the trees. The night air was cool, and I was glad that I’d brought my jacket. My breath swirled through the air. The trees stood like silent guardians and the darkness was foreboding. Misty said that she had a torch in her car, so I rummaged around until I found it. When I switched it on, a bright beam of light illuminated the area around us.
“Stay close,” I told Misty, who held out her phone and tried to determine where we should go. She turned around and pointed it like a compass, and then declared that we had to go a certain way. I wasn’t about to argue with her, but I wished that I had been holding the phone and she had been holding the torch as I didn’t quite trust her in her current state of mind, but she’d walked off and I followed, holding the torch in front of me, casting a spotlight into the trees. I heard a few animals rustling in the underbrush, and the fluttering of leaves as nocturnal birds flew by.
“I’m not sure I like this,” I whispered harshly.
“Don’t tell me you’re scared,” Misty teased.
I looked around at the darkness. “Damn right I’m scared. Are we close?”
My feet trailed against the grass and fallen leaves. Branches cracked underfoot and there were a few times when I almost stumbled. The woods felt like a different world than the city, as though we had been transported to another plane of existence. Fear slithered up my spine, and I suddenly realized that if anything happened to us nobody knew where we were, and I started to think it had been a bad idea to come out.
“Maybe we should head back,” I said cautiously.
“Have you learned nothing from me? Nothing good ever happened from retreating from an adventure! Nobody ever gets anywhere in life by retreating. You have to keep moving forward. Come on, we’re not too far away now.”
I knew there was no dissuading Misty, and although she had a point, I remembered Mom. I thought to myself how different Misty’s outlook was from mine. Would I have been carefree like her if I hadn’t had that experience? What was it like to live without anxiety and fear? Sometimes I wished I could have lived Misty’s life for a day, just to see what it was like.
I followed dutifully, glad that we had some light from the torch. I realized I was holding my breath and exhaled deeply. Misty was in the middle of telling me to relax when I heard the most wrenching sound. It felt as though a tree was being pulled up from its roots, breaking and cracking and splintering. There was a loud roar, louder than anything I’d heard before, and it made the hairs on my neck stand on end. I stood there, frozen in place, and even Misty couldn’t deny that some creature or beast was in the woods. As I feared for our safety, I was praying for Cal’s too.
Misty gripped my arm tightly, digging her nails so deep that I let out a small cry and almost dropped the torch. There was another sound, another cry from what sounded like an animal, and then a loud rush of air. The trees seemed to undulate and then from them emerged a great shadow. Misty called out and tried to jerk my hand up. I followed the shadow with my torch, but whatever had broken free from the trees was faster than my reflexes. The light shone up and caught the end of the creature. I thought I saw a tail, but that seemed impossible. It was so dark and I was so frantic that couldn’t be sure what I saw. All I knew was that it was very strange, and my heart thumped in my chest. I pointed the torch up at the sky hopelessly. The beam of light didn’t catch anything, but there had definitely been something there, and whatever it was, it was huge.
It still puzzled me why Cal was out here in the first place. Maybe this was all coincidence and he had just come out here to camp, but something told me that the two were linked. We moved to where the creature had left and heard some anguished moans. My first thought was that it was Cal, so I rushed forward, the beam of light moving jaggedly with my strides, until I heard a grunt. I stopped in my tracks and swept the torch around. I stood over a small copse and I gasped as I saw the carnage around me. Trees had been broken and snapped. Huge trunks looked as though they had been broken as easily as twigs. I was filled with fear. Whatever creature could do this had to be immense and some force of nature. It was the same kind of feeling I had when I saw the devastation left by an earthquake or hurricane, an utter sense of helplessness, awe, and a feeling that I was very, very small. If whatever did this came back, I was sure that we would need a miracle to survive.
But someone was in pain. I turned away from the carnage and tried to put away the sheer terror from my mind. There was nothing to say that whatever had done this wasn’t going to return, and I didn’t want to be here if it did. The terror almost paralyzed me, but somehow I managed to brace myself against it and push through. The light found his feet first. I rushed over.
“Cal?” I gasped and sank to the ground. I brought the light up, reached out with my hand ready to caress his face, hating that he was in danger. I saw blood on his clothes, and he groaned loudly. I didn’t understand how he survived, how anyone could survive! I called Misty over and thrust the torch in her hands while I examined the body for more wounds. There was a lot of blood, so much so that it stained the ground around him.
“Cal,” I gasped, the word choking in my throat, but as Misty brought the torch up to his face, my jaw hung open. It wasn’t Cal at all.
“Finn?!”
He groaned and stared and looked at me through half-lidded eyes. He was groggy and barely able to speak. His head rolled to the side.
“We should get him to a hospital,” Misty said.
“No, no hospitals,” he breathed, and squeezed my hand with what little strength he had left. I looked up at Misty and grimaced. There was something very strange going on. When I examined him more closely, lifting up his shirt, I saw that his wounds were mostly scratch and claw marks. They looked like they had come from an animal, and had left deep gashes in his flesh. Blood bubbled from his mouth. I was worried, but he seemed adamant that he didn’t want to go to the hospital and since the wounds, although deep, were just flesh wounds, I decided that maybe it was better just to take him back to mine and patch him up.
“If he gets any worse, I’ll take him to the hospital. But for now, I think he needs rest, and probably a nice warm bed. You know what hospitals are like. If we take him there now, he’ll be waiting there for ages.”
Misty wasn’t in the mood to argue. She helped me lift Finn up. I explained to her what had happened at the construction site. My motivations for not taking Finn to the hospital were a little selfish. I wanted to be there when he awoke so I could ask him questions, the first of which being ‘where the hell is Cal?’. I looked around the area to see if he was anywhere to be seen, but I couldn’t spot him. It was dark though, and Finn needed help. I had to take the chance that Cal was elsewhere and focus on getting Finn conscious again so he could give me some answers. This time I wasn’t just going to let him walk away from me.
9
When we got back to mine, Misty helped me carry Finn in. He had been in and out of consciousness in the car, but had mustered enough strength to stagger along, which made our job a little easier. Misty and I didn’t talk about what we’d seen. I think we were both afraid to admit the truth. It seemed so unbelievable, and yet we had seen it with our own eyes. I didn’t want to face it though. I kept telling myself that it had been a trick of the light, or that my imagination was playing games with me. I tried telling myself that it was a big bird or something, something else that made sense, but I kept thinking of that flickering tail that had been illuminate
d by the erratic torch light, and there was only one thing it reminded me of; a dragon.
I wasn’t about to say that because it sounded crazy. Dragons didn’t exist out of fantasy stories and fairytales. I shook my head, trying to dislodge these silly thoughts.
I took Finn inside and laid him on the couch. He continued to groan in pain, so I got some medicine for him to take, a bowl of water, some bandages, and some disinfectant. Misty offered to stay, but I told her that I’d be alright by myself. I wanted to interrogate Finn without Misty getting in the way. As much as I love her, she was prone to distraction.
Soon enough, Misty left me and Finn alone. I carefully peeled off his shirt, which had been torn and slashed, and threw it away. I couldn’t help but notice his sculpted physique. He had a broad chest which was layered with a bed of thick hair. It narrowed into a straight line at the bottom of his stomach. As my eyes followed the dark trail, a lump formed in my throat as I saw the dark shadow near his jeans. My heart beat a little more quickly. His biceps swelled and his forearms were strong and sturdy. His body was so long that his legs were draped over the arm of the couch, and his head nestled into the nook at the other end. His skin was hot and taut. He smelled musky and masculine, and yet he looked so vulnerable. This man was so strong, and it only made me more scared of what had been in the forest that it could do this to him.
I washed and dressed his wounds, throwing away cloth after cloth as they became soaked in blood. Thankfully much of the bleeding had stopped and he didn’t seem to be suffering from any broken bones. I pressed my fingers against his flesh and felt a rush of arousal. It felt wrong because I was supposed to like Cal, but I figured I had been lonely for long enough that just being in the presence of a half-naked man was enough to bring about this flash of desire.
I stepped away to compose myself and change the water, which had turned into a crimson mist. When I returned, I mopped Finn’s head with a flannel, and then did the same to my own. The candles I lit earlier were still burning, and their flickering shadows danced over his exposed flesh. The wounds already looked better than they had done before. They must have looked worse with all the blood.