Monster

by Frank Peretti

  Reed whispered hurriedly, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “What difference does it make as long as we find Beck?”

  The blinding headlights obliterated anything and everything behind them until the engine quit, the lights winked out, and four men walked into the dull orange glow of the campfire. All four were armed with rifles. The first two were Steve Thorne, the buzz-cut “marine,” and a close partner Reed recognized right away, the man with the near-white hair, whose “money was on Shelton.” Ol’ White Hair had one of his picnic-table buddies with him, the kid in the Mariners cap, Sam Marlowe. The fourth was the hunter named Janson.

  “Hey, guys,” said Jimmy. “Probably won’t need you till we get some light.”

  “Couldn’t wait,” said White Hair. “We brought the overnight gear. We can camp out here ’til morning.”

  Reed eyed him steadily but did not offer his hand. “I’m Reed Shelton.”

  The man just eyed him back with a wry smile on his face. “Wiley Kane, from Missoula. Glad to be along.”

  Reed shot a glance at Jimmy, then engaged Wiley Kane one more time. “Looks like it’s happened again.”

  Kane nodded emphatically. “Oh, yeah. It’s a rogue bear all right. I’ve seen this kind of thing before.”

  “Yeah. Right. A bear.” Reed stole one more look at Jimmy, who returned his look approvingly.

  “Reed?” It was Sing’s voice, coming from behind Cap’s light near the edge of the woods. “Can we see you a second?”

  “Excuse me.” He was more than glad to be somewhere else. He made his way through the grass to where Sing and Cap awaited him, dark shapes against the white, wiggling background of flashlight beams in the fog.

  “Come on,” said Sing, “and step where we step.”

  He followed them, his flashlight on their feet, as they moved through the grass in a single file toward Pete Henderson and the man helping him. Immediately to their left, peeking through the creeping fog and smoke, a trail of bent-over grass skirted the edge of the woods and then broke into clear ground.

  Pete was on his knees and bent over, measuring a print while his assistant held a light at a low angle along the ground, bringing out the shadows. Without looking up, he said, “Reed, I think it’s your critter.”

  They encircled a patch of bare ground next to a dry streambed, flooding it with their flashlight beams. When the stream ran during the rainy months, this patch of ground was a shallow eddy of standing water, the bottom lined with a thick layer of silt. The water had receded for the summer, leaving the silt in a smooth, moist state, perfect for registering a footprint— which it had done.

  “This is big medicine,” said the assistant, holding his light steady as Pete measured and sketched in his pocket notebook.

  Pete looked up. “Reed Shelton, this is Marty Elkhorn. He runs the store down in Kamayah. The campers used his phone to call us.”

  Reed offered his hand. “Have you met Cap and Sing?”

  Elkhorn nodded, his face grim, his wrinkles deep in the bouning light of the flashlights. He looked up at Sing. “Pete tells me you’re Coeur d’Alene.”

  She nodded.

  “Shoshone,” he replied. He gazed at the print that was starkly lit like a feature on the moon. “So you must know the warnings, the things our fathers taught us.”

  Sing gazed over Pete’s shoulder at the print, her face eerily cold and statuesque in the weak light. “Tsiatko?”

  Elkhorn nodded, the fear in his eyes chilling. “The wild men.”

  Pete looked up from his work. “Marty, I do appreciate your traditions, but this is an animal.”

  “No! Don’t think that! The Indians didn’t make up the tsiatko. They were here before we were! We knew about them before the white man came, and they have always been with us! Every tribe has its own name for them. Oh-Mah, the hairy giants. Skookum, the evil wood-spirits.”

  Sing offered, “And I believe the Salish word is sess-ketch.”

  Elkhorn nodded. “When the white man came, he pronounced it his own way: Sasquatch.”

  The mist crawled on their skin and the darkness closed in on them as every eye focused on the print, deeply impressed in the black silt. The heel was distinct, with clear dermal ridges, but the forward half of the foot had shifted in the track, leaving a smeared impression.

  Reed was just as mesmerized as the others but had to be sure, at long last, that he could accept his own memories. “Pete, what in the world is it?”

  Pete finished jotting down his measurements. “Fifteen inches long, six wide. It’s not a perfect match with the other prints we found, but those prints were nowhere as clear as this one, so we might allow for that.” He pointed. “Four clear toe impressions, and this dip here must be the fifth. No claws. I’m gonna figure he was at the cabin last night, and at the waterfall.” He glanced toward the wrecked camp where Jimmy and the hunters were combing through the mess. “This ol’ boy’s temper is sure a match.”

  Elkhorn was getting more agitated the more they talked about it. He finally rose to his feet. “We can’t stay here. This is big medicine. Tsiatko has taken this ground.”

  “It has my wife!” Reed objected.

  “Of course it does! That’s what tsiatko does when it finds men on his ground.” He looked at the others, then pointed at the print. “And you think this is the only one? There are more. They’ve come to these woods, and you won’t see them either, not before they come in the night and take you!”

  Sing tried to explain to the others, “Many of our parents raised us to believe that, if we weren’t good, the giants would come and take us away.” She added, as politely as possible, “For some of us, these traditions are ingrained in our thinking.”

  Elkhorn, all the more resolute and fearful, stood eye to eye, nose to nose with Reed. “It has your wife. What more do I need to say?” Suddenly, in what seemed an act of madness, Elkhorn dropped the flashlight, threw up both his hands, and shouted to the forest in a shrill voice, “Elkhorn is leaving! Do you hear me? Elkhorn will never set foot on this land again! His wife and his children will never set foot here! Do you hear me?”

  Now the campers, hunters, Jimmy, and Sheriff Mills were looking.

  Elkhorn bolted and ran across the meadow, through the tattered campsite, and to his old car. He opened the driver’s door but stood to shout one more time, his arm upraised, “Elkhorn is gone, do you hear? He will never come here again!” Then, with his engine roaring and his wheels spewing gravel, he got out of there.

  Jimmy hollered to Pete, “Where’d you get him?”

  “Crazy Injun,” said Kane.

  “Pete! What are you looking at over there?”

  “Prints,” Pete answered.

  “Okay,” Jimmy said. “This bear’s a regular camp raider. Tomorrow we put up some bear stands and put out some bait.”

  “Good idea,” said the white-haired Kane. “I’ll take the first shift.”

  “I’ll back you up,” said Thorne.

  Jimmy rubbed his hands together briskly. “Okay, you two guys set up at the cabin. Janson and Sam, you take this site. We’ll have both locations covered. It’ll be a shooting gallery.”

  Pete waited, but Jimmy’s attention was elsewhere. “Won’t even look at ’em,” Pete muttered. “Reed, maybe you can hold the light.”

  Reed picked up the flashlight and stooped down, once again illuminating the print in the silt. “Pete, what is it?”

  Pete had to consider a moment before answering. “Could I please not have to answer that—at least ’til an answer comes to me? I’ve been tracking in and around this county for fifteen years, and I’ve never seen a track like this one. No question, though: whatever it is, it’s one mean critter and we’ve gotta find it.”

  Sing snapped some photos and then said in an aside to her husband, “Cap . . .”

  “What?” Then he wagged his head. “No, no, I’m not jumping to any conclusions—and neither should you.”

  “Conclusion
s about what?” Reed asked, impatient.

  “I’ve seen how it works,” Cap said. “People believe what they want to believe, and if they want to believe something badly enough, they can see things that aren’t there or not see things that are.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying . . .” Reed could tell that Cap was trying to be careful. “I’m saying we really, really want Beck to be alive. It’s the driving force in our minds right now; it’s dominating our emotions.”

  “So?”

  “So . . . what if we just don’t want it to be a bear?”

  Now Reed stood to face him. “Now you think I’m seeing things, is that it?”

  “Reed, maybe we all are because we want to. I admit, I really want to believe that something just picked Beck up and carried her off, because that opens up limitless possibilities, even fantasies that are a whole lot easier to handle than—” His sentence hit a wall. “See? I can’t even say it.”

  Pete broke in, his hand outstretched. “Reed, I need that light.”

  Still looking testily at Cap, Reed slapped the flashlight into Pete’s hand.

  Sing intervened. “Cap, unless I’m wrong, you have it backward.” He looked as though he would have come back with something if he had something. “You believe it, Cap, and not because you want to; you don’t want to! You’ve been arguing with yourself ever since this whole thing started.”

  “Now I know it wasn’t a bear,” said Pete. He shone his flashlight farther up the dry streambed, illuminating a strange, lumpy pile. He approached the new discovery and they semicircled around him like a nature class, flashlights centered on a pile of fresh droppings—lobed lumps loosely connected in a chain by strands of leaves, grass, rodent hair, and paper food packaging.

  “It’s only a few hours old,” said Pete. “But no bear leaves scat like this.”

  Sing looked at Cap and said softly, “Does it look familiar at all?” She gave him time to ponder while she aimed her camera and took some more pictures.

  Cap studied the droppings. From the look on his face, the news was bad, and the longer he looked, the worse it seemed to get. The others fell silent, waiting for his answer.

  Finally, after a fleeting glimpse at Sing, he asked Pete, “Can I get a sample?”

  “Take the whole thing,” said Pete.

  Sing was already pulling out a Ziploc bag. The droppings were soft, loose, and messy; it was difficult to preserve their original shape as she spooned them up. “I’ll get you those hairs as well. And I’ve got a thermos here you should take along. Saliva.”

  “Let me get some sleep and I’ll leave for Spokane tomorrow— or is it today?”

  “It’s today,” said Sing.

  Reed was speechless for a moment, but finally he met Cap’s eyes and said, “You’re the one, Cap. Any help you can give us . . .”

  Cap made sure the bag was properly sealed as he replied, “Well, it’s a chance to sleep in my own bed again. But this is a long shot. They may not even let me in the door.”

  “Try the back,” said Sing.

  Cap weighed that a moment. “If they catch me, I’ll tell them you said it was okay.”

  “You do that.” She winked at him.

  “So what do we tell Jimmy?” Reed asked.

  “Aw,” said Pete, rubbing his tired eyes, “just let him and his boys hunt their doggone bear. Cap’s right; people believe what they want—but it’s gonna be the weirdest bear they’ve ever seen.” He shoved his notebook back in his pocket. “I gotta crawl into my truck and get some sleep. Don’t let anybody mess up these tracks. And, Reed?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not crazy, so get to work.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Do . . . cop stuff. Find a pattern or something, one of those whatchamacallits . . . an MO. Any information’s useful.” Pete trudged on by. “It’s time somebody else did some of the work around here.”

  Reed watched Pete disappear into the darkness and fog, and then met the eyes of Cap and Sing.

  Cap looked away a moment, taking in the trashed campsite, the mysterious footprint, and the plastic bag in his hand, then met Reed’s eyes again. “There is a chance you’re not crazy.”

  “Far from it,” said Sing.

  Suddenly Reed had only a vague memory of feeling helpless and despondent in another time, another place. He could recall feeling like a liar even though he’d never lied, but now he had friends who believed. His mind began to turn over like an old car out of mothballs. “So . . . we really do have two occurrences, in two different places—No! Three attacks: Randy on Monday—we need to verify from Arlen Peak just when Randy went up there. Did somebody ask him that already? Then Beck on Monday night—and I can place that at about 11:30. Now we have this one, Ted and Melanie . . . ?”

  “Brooks,” said Sing.

  “Brooks. Okay, you’ve got their contact information?”

  “Got it.”

  “Cap, you’ll stay in touch, right?”

  “I’ll have my cell phone,” he answered, “or you can just leave a message at the house.”

  “If we all stay in regular contact, we can swap any new information. Sing, what about your mobile lab? Think we can use it?”

  “We’ll head home and I can bring it in the morning,” she replied.

  Reed was actually thinking, and it felt good. “Load it up. We need your computer, all your forensic stuff, and let’s get a batch of GPS transceivers with peer-to-peer positioning, one for each of us.”

  Sing raised an eyebrow. “With satellite feed to a master console on a PC?”

  Reed liked that. “That’ll work.”

  Sing wrote it down.

  Reed began to fidget and pace. “There might be a pattern here, something we can extrapolate both directions, past and future. We’ve seen three attacks, but there could have been more.” He stopped abruptly, afraid he was getting ahead of himself. “Does that make sense?”

  Cap smiled. “Just keep going, Reed. You’re doing fine.”

  He needed that. “Okay. I’ll get on it.” He took off for the cars. “Can you drop me by the Cave Lake trailhead to get my car?”

  Sing and Cap exchanged an arched look and followed close on his heels. “You got it,” said Cap.

  “Sheriff Mills!” Reed said.

  Mills was finishing up, tossing garbage bags into the trunk of his car. “Yeah?”

  “Is the office open? I need the computer.”

  Mills didn’t ask why. Something in Reed’s manner and tone must have answered that question. He just smiled the faintest hint of a smile, dug in his pocket, and tossed Reed the key.

  seven

  Beck couldn’t sleep. Lying against the beast’s immense body provided plenty of heat, but Beck’s slender rib cage, shoulders, and hips—not to mention her constantly complaining ankle—could only endure the bumpy, rocky ground for a minute or two before she had to wriggle, reposition, roll, curl, and search for some other way to get comfortable. The beast must have been uncomfortable too. She was squirming and rolling as much as Beck was, which gave Beck one more concern to keep her awake: making sure the big female didn’t roll on top of her.

  Finally, one brief moment of sleep came when the female lay on her back, her forearm over her eyes, and Beck found a way to lie against that big stomach with her head on the female’s breast. Now, that worked—

  Until the beast rolled and sat up, dumping Beck onto the ground again.

  “Oww!” A rock jabbed Beck in her rump, her elbow took a gouge from another hard spot, and, of course, her ankle gave her a sharp reminder. Sitting there on the rocks, in the cold light of a half-moon, Beck whimpered. Anywhere else it may have seemed childish, but out here, who would fault her? Certainly not the ape, who seemed to be ignoring her anyway, lumbering over to a grove of young firs and inspecting them, first one, then another, then another. She tugged at their branches, sniffed them, yanked them hard enough to make their branches
quake and their tops whip about.

  She found a ten-footer she liked. With one hand and one lazy, apish move, she tore it out of the ground, looked around for a good spot, and flopped it down. She then probed and poked around in the grove like a woman at a yard sale until she found another one she liked. With no apparent strain, she plucked it up and laid it next to the first. Starting at one end, she moved along, removing the branches with deft little twists of her hands, and laid the branches side by side across the two tree trunks.

  Beck watched in amazement—this big ape was actually building a nest to sleep on. Beck wondered why it had taken her half a night of sleeping on rocks to think of it.

  Now the beast was gathering leafy limbs from surrounding undergrowth and laying them on top of the framework she’d made, mashing them down with her hands. She was quite absorbed in her work, which presented Beck an opportunity she knew would not last long. Of course, judging from the urgent signals she was getting from her bladder and bowels, she would not need long.

  The squashed roll of toilet paper Beck found in her coat pocket was nothing short of manna from heaven. The two smooth logs, with a comfortable gap between them, lying in an enclosure of maple and syringa bushes, were like a tabernacle in the wilderness.

  It went well. It was worth staying up half the night for. Never, ever in her life did she imagine herself doing such a thing, but now, as she began to unroll a length of toilet paper, she breathed a prayer of thanks.

  The leaves rustled and she looked up.

  The big female was watching her, head cocked in fascination.

  Different rules, Beck reminded herself. Different rules!

  The female came right in, pushing through the limbs and leaves and settling in front of Beck to see how the whole process worked. The toilet paper held special fascination for her. She reached out tentatively to touch it.

  Beck tore off one little piece and gave it to her. She sniffed it, then put a corner on her tongue. Unimpressed, she tried to spit it out. It stuck to her tongue, so she tried again, then finally rolled it off against her upper lip and blew it away.