by Rick Mofina
Screaming?
Bowman scrambled from her tent.
Emily Baker’s demon had returned.
THIRTY-EIGHT
A dark wind had taken Emily as the night neared.
Seized her at the command post and took her back…forced her back to the days of Buckhorn Creek…back to that day.
The day of the monster.
Butterflies. Darting. Fluttering. Leading her and her little sister, Rachel, through the forest to…the monster.
Suddenly standing there at the cliff, waiting for them.
“Hello,” he says, “want to play a game?”
Seeing trouble, she squeezes Rachel’s hand.
“No thanks, we can’t. We have to go back.”
Rachel giggles. She wants to play.
The monster is beckoning.
“Stand closer to me. Watch me.” He laughs.
“No. We should go back.”
“It’s just a game.”
Rachel pulls her hand away; the warmth of it vanishes. She goes to him.
“Rachel, no, don’t.”
He turns, takes two steps. “Guess what I’m going to do. Watch.” He disappears off the cliff before them.
“He’s dead!”
Rachel stands there, giggling. Peering over the cliffside. Giggling! It is all horribly wrong!
Now Rachel is Paige standing there.
Emily screams…and screams…until--
“Emily!” Hands on her shoulders. “Emily!”
The FBI agent. Bowman. In her tent, shaking her.
“It’s OK, Emily. Wake up Emily!”
Her heart is throbbing against her chest. Her hands are moist with sweat, fear. Bowman is rocking her as she weeps.
“I think I am losing my mind. It’s happening again. I cannot--”
Others have come, murmuring concern outside the tent. Everything’s fine. A bad dream, Bowman tells them.
“I cannot take it anymore….If I lose Paige, I--”
“Shh-shh. You need rest. Talk it out. Tell me, whatever it is you’re carrying inside. It’s OK Emily. It’s time to tell someone. Shh, it’s OK. It’s time.”
***
A game. That was how it began. A game with a monster.
Emily struggle to talk. It was so painful. It hurt so much. In the weeks, months, and years after Rachel’s death, she was gripped by a dark obsession to understand what her sister’s final moments were like.
Did she suffer?
My Sun Ray.
Her sister’s death destroyed everything. While she searched to understand why it had happened, her mother and father withdrew into prisons of pain, leaving her under a cloud of accusation.
“Why didn’t you save her?”
The wound would not heal. About a year after the trial, her father confronted her with the rumor slithering through Buckhorn Creek
“It’s going around that you lied about what happened out there that day.”
Lied? No.
He was working in the corral on his horse, a big bay that seemed uneasy.
“I told the truth, Daddy.”
“That’s not what I’m hearing. People are saying you pushed your sister.”
“You pushed your sister.”
His words had burned like a branding iron into her soul.
“It’s a lie!”
“Is it?”
His horse was snorting and jerking. He yelled at it, “Settle down there!”
The blow of her father’s words brought her to her knees.
“You’re my father. Why are you saying such a horrible thing?”
“Because a man has been sentenced to die, goddamn you!”
Goddamn you. Was that directed at her? Or his horse?
It began bucking wildly, throwing her father from his saddle, the animal’s hind legs kicking. It’s hoof like a sledgehammer to his temple, killing him instantly in front of her, his accusation hanging in the air, rising up to the mountains with her terror.
“Daddy!”
Her mother rushing from the house, throwing herself on the soft earth. “Winston! Winston! Oh sweet Jesus!” Her eyes turning to Emily, filling with horror, hurt, blame.
It was as if her father had bequeathed his suspicions to her mother. He died, never knowing the truth; while her mother lived, refusing to hear it, taking her first drink the night after they buried him next to Rachel.
Not long after, her mother sold their ranch. Their perfect, happy home nestled against the Rocky Mountains. They moved to Kansas City, where she changed their names.
Natalie Ross no longer existed, except as a headstone for a beautiful life that died in Montana.
She was now Emily Smith.
“We’ll start over. New people. New life. No past.”
They moved into a stifling apartment above a shoe store. Her mother waitressed in a small diner six blocks from a school and they never spoke of Montana. Sometimes at night, when she heard the chink of glass, Emily would slip from her bed to see her mother, sitting in the dark, talking to her dead sister and father.
They stayed in Kansas City for a year or so, then moved to Toronto. Changing their names again; her mother drinking more. Next, it was Dallas, then Miami. They fell into a haze of moves, staying in one city long enough to get bus fare to take them to the next.
There was one night she heard her mother muttering incoherently about the country attorney debating whether to reopen the case.
Finally, her mother took her to San Francisco where they stayed with her mother’s sister, Willa. But that didn’t last. One morning, her mother was gone. Vanished. A year or so later, Emily’s aunt got a telephone call from Toronto. Emily’s mother had died of a heart attack in a women’s shelter, clutching pictures of her family taken when her daughters were little.
Her aunt claimed her mother’s body. The service was in Buckhorn Creek, Montana, where they buried her next to her father and Rachel. Emily refused to attend the funeral. She stayed in San Francisco, staring at the Pacific Ocean, thinking her parents died suspecting she was responsible for Rachel’s death.
She was sixteen years old. She was alone.
No one knew the truth about what happened that day.
Except the monster.
“You can tell me, Emily.” Bowman was listening. “You have to tell somebody before it is too late.”
Emily stared into the night, forcing herself to go back to the butterflies that led them to the cliff.
The monster.
He is just there. Waiting. Dirty jeans, boots, layers of shirts, frayed. In his teens. Tall, brown hair pasted to his head. Small, dark animal eyes hidden deep in a face lined and scarred so badly it looks like he is in pain. His smile reveals jagged brown teeth that have never known a toothbrush.
She knows his name.
Isaiah Hood.
The kids in town speak of him as if he were a myth, a spirit in the Rockies. Some sort of psycho. His father has hooks for hands. They live in a shack in the forest near the Blackfeet Reservation and the Canadian border. People rarely see him. But on this trip there are whispers around the campfire that he is out there.
And anyone with any sense knows, you do not ever go near him.
In fact, no one in Buckhorn Creek wants anything to do with the Hoods. They are regarded with scorn for what they are, pitiful.
But the butterflies lead her and Rachel to him that day, stopping them dead in their tracks.
“Hello. How about a game? Want to play a game?”
Tightening her hold on Rachel’s hand.
“We should go back.”
Rachel giggles. She wants to play.
“No,” he says. “Stand closer to me. Watch.”
“No. We should go back.”
Rachel pulls away, steps closer to him. Closer to the cliff.
“It’s just a game. Guess what I’m going to do. Watch.”
He turns and steps off the cliff before them.
“Oh no! He’s dead!”
“It’s just a game, Lee, see?” She’s laughing.
He’s sitting cross-legged on a large flat ledge, a few feet below, grinning at having fooled her into thinking he had jumped from the mountain.
“OK, very funny. We have to get back. Time to go, Rachel.”
He stands. “No. The little one wants to play. Come on. You try it, Rachel. I’ll catch you down here.”
“OK.” Rachel giggles nervously. Counting one-two-three. Jumping from the higher cliff. “No, Rachel!” She is reaching for Rachel’s hand but she is not fast enough. Rachel is now on the lower ledge with him. Laughing.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ve got her.”
They are sitting on the sun-warmed ledge. It is as big as a large bed.
She extends her hand to her sister.
Time to go, Rachel. We’re not supposed to play with you, Isaiah Hood.”
Hood’s smile disappears and his face darkens, cold black eyes burning into hers.
“You think you’re better than me and my dad, don’t you?”
“No, that is not what I mean,” she lies.
“All of you in town think you’re better than us. We hear it. We know it.”
“Rachel, come on. We have to go.”
“Not yet,” he says. “I say when you can go. One more game.”
He stands with animal swiftness. Takes Rachel by the wrists, pulling her arms straight up--“Owww”--lifting her. He is so tall, strong, baring his dirt-brown teeth. Scarred face grimacing. She is a small doll in his grip, light and easy to play with.
“Lee!”
She jumps to the ledge. “Let her go! You can’t have her!”
“Guess what I’m going to do.”
Holding her, he inches to the ledge, letting her toes brush the rock.
He is laughing.
“God, please! Let Rachel go. Please!” She pounds on his arms. Futile. They are so strong.
“Think you’re all better than us, like you just walk on air, my daddy says.”
“Lee!” Her sister is terrified. “Please!”
He is at the ledge. A sheer drop of five hundred, maybe six hundred, feet.
“Guess what I’m going to do.”
Slowly, he extends his arms.
“No! Oh--Lee!”
Slowly, he holds Rachel over the cliff, chuckling as she tries in vain to reach it with her toes. Gasping, breathless, sobbing.
“Please!”
Rocky Mountain winds are curling through the ranges, shooting up. The earth below is a dizzying drop.
She is stretching to reach Rachel’s wrist, but his arms are longer.
“Lee! Oh, please! Oh, please!”
“Guess what I’m going to do. I’m going to see if she can walk on air!”
“Noooo!”
“But you help me, big sister.”
Suddenly, Hood releases one of Rachel’s wrists.
“You get her now, big sister. You save her now! Unless she can walk on air.” He laughs.
She reaches for Rachel’s free, flailing hand, brushing it, touching it in time to feel it slipping from hers as Hood releases his grip.
Rachel is suspended for an instant.
Their eyes meet. Rachel, horrified, terrified. Knowing. Face is contorted with fear. “No, Sun Ray.” Hand brushing hers, a feathery touch so fast, Rachel’s head lifting.
Falling. “NOOOOOOO!” Her screams rising to the heavens as she plummets.
“Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!”
She cannot breathe, cannot think. Horror is hammering her senses. Pounding.
Laughing. Hood is laughing.
“Guess she can’t walk on air and she can’t fly. No better than anybody.”
His brown teeth turn to her.
“How about you, big sister?”
She scurries up the ledge, sobbing, gasping; his laughter chases her as she runs and runs and runs from the monster.
Running all of her life.
Running from her sister’s falling eyes, the death brush of her little hand stained with mountain flowers and the powder of butterfly wings. The last touch, the last look of horror. “Watch over your little sister.”
“I’m not scared anymore, Lee.”
Running all of her life.
Free-falling from the horror that destroyed her family; now feeling a measure of comfort from an FBI agent investigating the suspected homicide of her daughter.
THIRTY-NINE
Paige and Kobee ran for high country, scrambling along treacherous ridges, ledges. Dipping into forests only to gain elevation or traverse a difficult section.
It was the only way to stay ahead of the thing chasing them. The only tactic keeping her alive. She continued moving as fast as she could for much of the day. The grunting thing never emerged. She stopped to examine Kobee’s wound. Did the thing do that? She tore a strip from a shirt in her pack, bandaging him with it. Far off, she heard the helicopters. At times she waved, but they always missed her. Paige forced herself to keep moving.
Oh God, I am so hungry.
So afraid.
Please help me! Somebody!
When Paige stopped to eat one of her granola bars, she began crying and could not stop.
Does it hurt to die?
Paige whispered weakly. “Mommy, please help me.”
Kobee licked her salty tears. She shared some of her food with him.
“Don’t worry. I’ll look after you, puppy.”
Paige moved on, but later as the sun began dropping, fatigue, exposure, and fear continued taking their toll.
Got to keep moving. Climb higher and maybe they’ll find me.
She believed it was safer at higher levels.
It gave her the advantage of distance to see what might be ahead, waiting for her, or behind, gaining on her.
As dusk approached, Paige sensed that it was going to rain again. It was clouding up, getting colder. She began thinking of searching or trying to build a shelter as she continued ascending a rocky region.
Earlier in the day, she frequently spotted deer and big horn sheep. It gave her comfort seeing harmless forms of life keeping her company.
But as she worked her way up the harsh slopes of this region deep in the Devil’s Grasp, the deer and sheep became scarce.
Wonder where they all went.
The few she did spot seemed to be moving downward in the opposite direction of her ascension.
Why?
Finally, with little light remaining, Paige chose a spot atop jagged zone of high cliffs, which was dotted with forests. The ledges overlooked a sweeping valley from several hundred feet up.
Paige began building a lean-to shelter, using some spruce boughs against a large fallen tree. She used some as a floor, to soften the hard, rocky ground. She crawled in, hugging Kobee for comfort and warmth. Meanwhile, hunger and exhaustion battled within her.
Thoughts of a huge pizza with ham, tons of cheese, spicy sauce, pineapples, taunted her. As the night neared, she slipped into sleep.
A large branch cracked.
What is that?
Paige was fully alert. Pulse racing with fear.
A horrible, foul smell filled her nostrils.
It was back!
Kobee whimpered softly.
“Shhh.”
Like her first night.
Ohgodpleasehelpme!
Snorting. She heard guttural snorting. Then a woofing, popping sound. More branches snapping.
It was so close. She heard paw pads, slapping on rock; claws, scraping near her. Panting. Growling.
It brushed by her in the twilight.
A massive wall of fur, stinking fur, matted with excrement.
A bear. A giant bear. So close she could touch it.
Paige went numb.
She was going to die.
She prayed. Mommy. Daddy.
A massive claw swept the branches away; fur brushe
d against her, Paige shut her eyes. The second swat sent her hurling across the ledge top, rolling like a rag doll toward a yawning crevasse.
Paige opened her mouth to scream, hearing the beast charging and snarling. Its claws scratched across the rock, driving an unstoppable, unconquerable, carnivorous force as old as time toward her.
Mommy, Daddy, please save me…. Please, oh please, don’t let it hurt!
FORTY
In the pre-dawn light deep in Search Sector 23, a vast slope of lodgepole forest blistered by rock cliffs and fissures, excitement awakened Lola.
The three-year-old Belgian shepherd’s wagging tail was brushing the interior of the green nylon pup tent as she worked to rouse Todd Taylor, her nineteen-year-old handler. Nuzzling, panting and licking his ear to no avail. Taylor groaned, pulling his goose-down sleeping bag over his head. He was exhausted. Lola persisted.
“Just a few more minutes, girl.”
Taylor pulled her into the warm sleeping bag with him and listened to her heartbeat. It was racing, stirring him to the sudden realization she had detected something.
“OK, OK. Take it easy.”
He sat up, shivering, in the frigid morning air. He quickly pulled a sweatshirt over his T-shirt, then whipped on his fluorescent yellow windbreaker, which bore the words TALON COUNTY SEARCH AND RESCUE, COLORADO. The volunteer group was one of the first out-of-state agencies to arrive. Taylor, a college freshman from Boulder, was studying to be a paramedic. Lola was regarded by SAR people across America as one of the best scent-trackers in the field.
“Coffee,” Taylor moaned, pouring a cup from his thermos.
Sipping it cleared his drowsiness. He faced the dreadful fact it had rained again in the night. Cripes. Theirs was one of the most remote eastern search zones, and between sunrise and sundown yesterday, they grid-swept it twice. Taylor kneaded Lola’s neck. He never ceased to marvel at the ability of tracking dogs to locate people, or traces of them.
Humans constantly give off streams of scents that flow into the air like vaporous clouds, emissions originating from the bacteria in the millions of cells in hair, skin, blood, urine, sweat, saliva, which the body replaces each second. The process produces a distinct human odor that trained scent dogs like Lola can detect. But Taylor knew the success of the so-called probability of detection all depended on scores of variables, like the dog’s health, wind conditions, time of day, air quality and density.