by Emery Blake
“The bar fight was just a pretext, he was here to threaten us. There is definitely more to this than an animal attack. He wouldn’t try to scare us off if there wasn’t more to find.”
“Why would someone want to prevent us from investigating?”
I sat down on the bed. Kaia stopped pacing and leaned back against the wall, shaking her head.
“I don’t know, Skylar.”
“So, who are we going to harass tomorrow?”
“I had an idea about that. You know the guy that kid Tanner mentioned in the bar? The one who kept a bear as a pet?”
I nodded in the affirmative.
“Whether he has a bear or not, he likely knows more about what goes on in those woods than anyone around here. I say we drop in on him.”
I wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of walking up to some hermit’s house in the woods. Who knew what kind of nutcase he could be. Besides, he might be the type who doesn’t enjoy strangers on his property and has a fondness for firearms. But I didn’t voice my hesitation. Kaia seemed set on the plan and I trusted that she could handle whatever we found.
“I’m going to go grab a drink from the vending machine outside, do you want anything?” I asked. Kaia shook her head no. Outside the sun had sunk down below the level of the treetops. The motel backed up against a dense forest. Old growth trees had been cleared years before, maybe in the hopes of further development, later abandoned.
New forests were always denser, more chaotic. Each plant struggled to gain a foothold in the open space. The hierarchy of the old forest, with the established trees choking out the sunlight from a hundred feet above, left the floor relatively clear. But the space behind the motel was filled with young trees, fast-growing bushes, and a carpet of weeds and grasses. It was a riot of greens and browns.
The failing sunlight leeched the color. Darkness grew from the center of the forest, as if it had been waiting, hiding during the daylight hours. Behind a small hawthorn tree, I saw a flash of another color. Something that didn’t belong in the forest. It wasn’t the green of leaves or the grey-brown of tree bark. It wasn’t the dappled brown of a deer’s fur, or any other animal I had ever seen.
It was pale, a whitish grey like human skin that had lost all pigment and been drained of blood. The patch of color moved behind the cover of leaves, the flowing patches of green alternately hiding and revealing the ghastly color behind.
It was gone just as quickly as it had appeared. The forest returned to its normal palette, slowly fading and darkening in the deepening night. I hesitated. The strange color had disappeared before I could get a good look at it. Curiosity fought with fear in my gut, roiling my empty stomach.
“What the hell,” I thought. “I won’t go very far from the parking lot.” Satisfied by my compromise, I loped off in the direction I had last seen the strange color. When I reached the edge of the woods, the darkness under the trees seemed to have thickened. I strained my eyes, but I couldn’t see much more than ten meters before the dense, murky undergrowth defeated my vision. There was no creature, no strange patch of color. Nothing but the deepening dark.
The next morning, we drove north of town towards the location of the attack. Based on what we had pieced together from the people in town, the victim had been attacked about a mile past the trailhead along Bristol Creek. We parked the truck and started hiking. The morning sun drew mist off the vegetation, making the air thick and redolent with life and growing things. It made for a pleasant morning walk. It took us twenty minutes to reach the spot on the creek that the townspeople had spoken about.
Kaia didn’t speak the whole time. She kept scanning the forest, head swiveling left and right and her eyes darting about constantly. Her manner made me a little nervous, but I couldn’t see how anything could be dangerous in the bright morning. I thought about the source of the very human fear of the night and darkness. After all, many creatures came out at night because it was safer for them than it was during the day. Night provided cover, a way to move about, hidden from the sharp eyes of daytime hunters.
But my senses were built for daytime, so the dark was blindness, hidden dangers, and fear. Morning felt like a respite from night-time dangers. But Kaia walked as though an attack might come at any moment.
The location of the attack was hard to miss. The creek was about ten or so feet wide at this point and maybe three feet deep. The water was icy cold and still fairly clear. The bed of the stream was rocky, with rounded stones covered in a thin layer of slippery green. A huge boulder marked the spot where Don Harper had liked to fish. A brown streak of dried blood marked the spot where he’d been first attacked.
Kaia squatted down close to the ground, turning over leaves and examining broken branches. I leaned against a fallen tree and waited. I had never been hunting and had no experience tracking, so I did my best just to stay out of the way. After several minutes, Kaia stood up.
“It’s hard to tell exactly what happened. What’s clear is that he was standing near the boulder when he was attacked. Whatever it was must have thrown him against the rock. The blood there is probably from his head. Then he was dragged off through the brush here. You can see some pieces of cloth on these broken branches.” She waved me over to look more closely.
“It is hard to get any clear sense of what happened. Those cops have trampled over everything, the prints have all been muddled. But one thing is for sure, I don’t see any bear prints near here. Deer, some rabbit, but other than that they are all human, including one big bastard with no shoes on. Weird.” She stood up and brushed her hands against her thighs. “Let’s follow the trail here.”
She pointed to a path of broken branches and torn, trampled weeds that led away from the creek. Some of the leaves were spattered with reddish-brown droplets of dried blood. The morning sun was bright, but the air was still chilly.
The path led for a hundred meters or so into the woods until it ended in a little depression. Larger trees ringed a bowl about fifteen feet across. The bowl was carpeted by grasses and small weeds. Rounded stones emerged from the dark soil in an irregular pattern. There was blood everywhere.
“The victim must have been dragged here while he was still alive. That would explain the thrashed foliage along the way. Then whatever did this killed him here. The cops must have taken the body but look around to see if you can find anything they missed. Anything that might help me identify what did this.”
She started stalking around the depression, bent over at the waist. I followed, scanning the dense growth. Not that I wasn’t especially keen on finding anything. I wanted to help, of course, but I was already feeling a little queasy just from the copious volume of dried blood that soaked the ground. Something caught my eye.
A metallic shine reflected the early morning sunlight. I walked closer and pushed aside a small fern to get a better look. It was a ring, a golden wedding band. Still on a finger. I stood up quickly and felt all the blood drain out of my face. My vision collapsed down to a tiny pinhole and I felt the coffee and croissant that I had had for breakfast start making their way back up. I fell forward, landing on my knees in the soft, wet dirt and vomited.
“You ok?” Kaia called from across the bowl.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and took a few deep breaths to steady myself. My whole face still tingled, and the dizziness prevented me from rising up from all fours.
“I’m fine. I found a finger.”
Kaia’s laugh boomed in the misty forest. I crawled away from where I’d been sick, keeping my eyes focused on the ground in front of me. I heard the Valkyrie bound over and start searching through the foliage.
“Ah, good. You didn’t hit the finger. Well done, Skylar.” I looked up at her. She stood over me, sunlight enveloping her from behind. She looked every inch the golden goddess of myth. Except she was holding a man’s severed finger.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kaia sat on a fallen tree trunk, rolling the finger back and forth in her han
d. She tried to point out the finer details to me, but I focused on my hiking boots.
“You see here, the bone is intact, but the flesh around it has been torn. Not bitten, but ripped. And there are no tooth impressions or bite marks on the skin of the finger, so it must have been a creature that could grip. That eliminates some possibilities. But there isn’t enough to be sure.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “You feeling better? Ready to go?”
I nodded weakly and followed her away from the scene of the slaughter.
I kept close to Kaia, but always a few steps behind. I was still a little light-headed. She strode confidently on her long legs. I didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t know if she knew where we were going, but she walked so purposefully that it seemed like she did.
We walked the better part of an hour. The sun rose overhead, and a light wind blew away the early morning mist. But the sun provided no heat. It was strange, despite the bright sunshine, the air was still chill. In late summer, the forests were normally filled with a wet heat, but the cold I felt wasn’t just a result of having just thrown up. Something was odd about this part of the forest.
A wisp of smoke was the first sign of habitation.
I crested a ridge and looked down the lightly wooded slope to see an artificial clearing. In the middle stood a small cabin. Not stood, more like squatted. Its roofline was low, almost touching the ground at its extremities. The walls were solid and thick, with a few windows too dirty to give off a reflection. Pale grey wood smoke rose from the chimney.
Kaia made her way down the hill without hesitation. I went after her but stopped after a couple of steps. The air had changed dramatically. It was like swimming in a lake in the summer, when the first few feet of water are warm and inviting, but if you go a bit deeper, your feet brush the layer of icy cold beneath. Only here it was in reverse, the air in the valley around the cabin was warm, as a forest in summer should be. Maybe air currents were to blame. I filed it away in the back of my head and continued down towards the cabin.
When Kaia had almost reached the door and I was still crossing the clearing, I felt a prickling on the back of my neck. I turned around and felt my heart jump up into my throat. A black bear stood a few feet in front of me. He lifted his muzzle into the air and drew in large breaths, smelling me. I was frozen. I knew that you shouldn’t try to run from a bear, but I couldn’t remember if you played dead with black bears or brown bears.
“Kaia,” I called out as calmly as I could. “A little help, please.”
I started taking slow steps backward, not taking my eyes off the bear. He lowered his nose and shadowed me, keeping the same distance between us.
Then he charged.
My heel caught on a rock and I fell backwards, cursing myself for being clumsy.
“Mack! Stop!” A deep voice boomed out across the clearing. The bear skidded to a stop, its long, curved claws inches from my feet. His head turned toward the owner of the voice and he trotted over towards him. I followed the bear with my eyes. He approached the speaker like a pet dog, his stub of a tail twitching and his muzzle lifted skyward as if he was asking for a pat on the head. The speaker obliged.
“Are you ok, miss?” The man was tall and broad-shouldered, but lean. His copper-brown face was lined with deep wrinkles, but he moved with a lithe grace that gave no indication of the effects of age. He reached down to help me up. His hand was warm and thick with callouses. It felt like leather that had been left out in the sun.
I popped up onto my feet and he clapped me on the shoulder.
“Sorry about Mack, here. He isn’t used to having guests and I forgot to tell him you were coming.” He turned to the bear, now standing obediently at his side. “Mack, apologize.”
The bear lowered his head and shuffled forward. I looked a question at the man. “Go ahead, give him a pat.”
I reached down and scratched the bear behind one of his little round ears. He gave a low growl, almost a purr, and rubbed his muzzle against my leg. I let out a laugh as Kaia walked over.
“How do you do? My name is Kaia, and this is Skylar. Forgive us for dropping by unannounced, but we are in need of your help.”
“Oh, not a problem, not a problem. Have you eaten breakfast?”
My stomach growled an answer. After having lost mine earlier, the prospect of another meal was tempting. But Kaia refused politely.
“Thank you, but we just need to ask you some questions.”
“About the man in the woods, yes?”
Kaia looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “That’s right. Do you know anything about that?”
“Oh, a bit. I knew Don Harper. Can’t say I liked him very much. But he was a man who respected the woods, so we didn’t have any problems.”
“Some folks in town think you are responsible. That you let this bear of yours loose and it killed Mr. Harper.”
“And what do you think?”
Kaia smiled. “I think some folks in town are wrong.”
The man laughed, a booming, joyous sound. He slapped the bear on its side, then leaned down and whispered in its ear. The bear trotted off behind the house and disappeared.
“Let’s go inside anyway. Have a cup of tea, at least. My name is Gitchee, by the way.”
We followed Gitchee to the cabin. Something rankled, like a piece of food stuck in your teeth that won’t come out no matter how much you pick at it with your tongue.
“You said you forgot to tell Mack we were coming.” I said.
“Yes,” Gitchee replied without turning around.
“How could you have known we were coming? We didn’t tell anyone where we were going.”
The tall man stopped and turned, his smiling expression now serious, impassive.
“How do you do the things you do? How does she?” And then he turned again and walked through the low door of his cabin. I could walk under the lintel unhindered, but Gitchee and Kaia had to stoop. As she bent down, Kaia gave me a guarded expression.
I didn’t know what to make of this hermit. He was friendly and polite, and he had expressed no hostility at all. But at the same time, he radiated power. He gave the impression of a gentle breeze that could whip up into a gale in an instant. Danger lurked just beneath the surface with him, though I sensed no malice. I resolved to be cautious, listen, and follow Kaia’s lead.
We sat around a rough-hewn table as Gitchee prepared the tea. His gnarled hands moved swiftly and delicately, measuring the dry leaves and stuffing them into an ornate ceramic teapot. We sat quietly until he had poured steaming hot tea into our cups and joined us at the table. From a corner of the cabin a lithe, brown shape leapt onto the table. It was a fisher, a relative of the weasel and marten. It ran across the table and rubbed its head along Gitchee’s arm like a housecat.
“Now, Kaia, tell my why you think old Mack isn’t responsible for eating poor Mr. Harper.”
“It’s rather obvious, actually. No prints, no fur, too much blood sprayed about. It wasn’t a bear.”
“Good, good. You know something, it seems. But why are you here? You are not from here. I can smell it. Why have you come?”
His stare was penetrating. I saw that even Kaia, usually unperturbable, was feeling the impact. I jumped into the conversation with our planned cover story.
“We are researching a book…”
“No.” The strange man cut me off with a wave of his hand, as if he were casting a spell. Perhaps he was, because I fell silent, unable to continue.
“No, you are here for something else. Where do you come from? There is an odor about you I do not recognize, and I know all the smells of this land.”
“We have travelled a long way to get here, you are correct.” Kaia had recovered her composure and her face had resumed its stoic grace.
“A long journey or a single step?” he let out a single, humorless laugh. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. You are here, in the moment, and you can help.”
Gitchee drained his cup of tea and
rose to put more water on the stove. Kaia and I looked at one another. This hermit seemed to know far more than I would have expected. Neither one of us was willing to give anything away that we didn’t have to. I didn’t know whether or not he was a friend or an enemy, yet, but one thing was clear, he was dangerous.
“What kind of help do you need?”
He turned from the stove and leaned back against the counter. The light from the window over the sink cast a halo around his tall, dark form.
“I don’t need help with my memoir, so it is good you are not a writer,” he said looking at Kaia. Then he turned to me and said, “I don’t need help with a scam, so it is good you are a bad liar. I don’t need help for myself. Old Gitchee and Mack will be fine, have been for ages. Other people need help. There is evil in these woods that I can’t manage on my own. I need help to track the creature that killed poor Don Harper, so it is good you are warriors.”
Kaia leaned forward, her elbows on the rough planks of the table, and fixed Gitchee with a hard stare. He looked back at her, utterly unfazed.
“Gitchee, who are you?”
A wide smile split his aged, wrinkled face.
“You answered your own question. I am Gitchee.”
Kaia’s mouth twitched at the corner, she was a direct person, uncomfortable with game playing. I didn’t want our conversation to turn into an interrogation. After all, we were in his house.
“Gitchee,” he turned his head to look at me. His face was kind, but his eyes pinned me in place with their intensity. I swallowed and continued. “It was a cold morning in the forest outside this valley. But when we walked down the hill towards your cabin, it was warm. How is it warmer here than the rest of the forest?”
He shrugged.
“The cold is unpleasant. I prefer the warmth. I live here.”
“Wait, you live here because it is warmer? Or are you making it warmer here?”
