When Nature Calls

by Harper Crowley

  I smile, catching his omission. “But you have seen something.” Russ trots over to us and zooms in on Trapper’s face.

  The younger boy crosses his arms over his chest. “I seen lots of things in the woods. Bears, mountain lions. You name it, we’ve got it.”

  “What about the disappearing hikers?”

  He shakes his head quickly. Too quickly. “I don’t know anything about that, either. But if you’re going out there again, you gotta be careful.”

  I lean against the counter. “And why is that?”

  “There’s lots of things out there that’ll kill you if you’re not prepared.”

  The sheriff’s eerily similar warning swims to the forefront of my mind. Yeah, I somehow doubt this is a coincidence, either. Something’s going on in those woods, and everyone wants to keep us out of it.

  “Is that a threat?” Ceri asks.

  He shakes his head again. “No. It’s the truth. If you’re going out there, be careful so whatever got those missing hikers don’t get you, too.”

  AFTER WE’VE FINISHED talking with Trapper, we head over to the diner and get some food. I’m famished, and Jess is a little pale, so I know she needs to eat. Russ eats a ton, so I figure he’s probably starving, as well.

  After we finish eating, it’s time to head back to old George’s cabin for our Bigfoot hunt. Ceri bounces on her heels when I tell her about it, eager to go, but she wilts when she remembers that she has to work.

  “I’ll look up the names of the other people we got from my dad’s file,” she says, shoring up her shoulders and her confidence. “That’ll help, right?”

  “Definitely,” I say, but inwardly I’m thinking more about the fact that her dad’s less likely to arrest his own daughter than he would be us if he found out we had copies of his police files. The nice-cop routine would end pretty quickly, I imagine.

  On the way to George’s, we stop at the 7-Eleven to stock up on drinks and snacks. “If we’re going to be out in the woods,” Russ says, stuffing the goods in his backpack, “I want to be prepared.”

  “Is that why you got this?” Jess holds up the stick of beef jerky. “You hate this stuff.”

  “Give me that.” Russ grabs the beef jerky and stuffs it in his bag. “Maybe I decided to try something new.”

  Jess laughs. “You know that’s all a lie, right? I doubt Bigfoot or Sasquatch, if it even exists, likes beef jerky.”

  “Whatever,” he says. “When an angry creature comes chasing after you, at least I have something to try to distract it. What do you have, your phone? Or you could always throw your shoe at it.”

  She sticks her tongue out at him. “All I gotta do is make sure I can run faster than you, and with that heavy backpack, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “You’ll both be lucky if I don’t leave you out there,” I mutter, pushing between them to climb in the passenger seat. “Your turn to drive.” I toss the keys to Russ and deposit Bear in the backseat as my sister climbs in.

  Russ starts the van and pulls out of the parking lot. “Do you want to call George on the way out?”

  “Good idea.” I try, but there’s no answer. “It’s not like we have anywhere else to go.”

  “Yeah, like a hotel room,” Jess says.

  “I’ll get us one tonight. God, do you ever shut up?”

  Jess gives me the side-eye. “You should know better than that by now.”

  Chapter 16

  Russ knocks on the door to George’s cabin twice, but there’s no response.

  “Maybe he left.” Jess shifts from side to side, her voice as hollow and insecure as her words.

  “I doubt that.” I peer in one of the dust-coated windows next to the door, but it’s too dark to see inside. Frustration makes me snap. “He said he’d be here, and it sounded like he was looking forward to it.” But my words don’t sound believable, either. Damn. I knew this was too easy.

  Russ pans the outside of the cabin and uploads the footage to our online storage. It won’t be part of our main investigation, but we can use clips for the intros and outros. When he set up the system, I used to joke with him that it was security in case we were murdered for poking our noses in where they didn’t belong.

  “Then the police can comb the footage for our murderer,” I’d said. “It’s a great idea. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.” I clapped him on the back, but he gave me a dark look.

  “That’s not funny. God, you have a morbid sense of humor.”

  I shrugged. “Kinda runs with the territory. Just wait. You’ll get there someday.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “I hope not. I mean, you and Jess are already nuts, so one of us has to at least look sane.”

  I chuckled. “Have you looked in the mirror lately? Three peas in a pod, we are.”

  Just as we’re about to head back to the van, an obnoxious motor revs from the trees behind the house and breaks me from my reverie. I jump backward, dragging Bear with me, as our very own mountain man, George Smith, roars out of the brush on a shiny black four-wheeler. He flies past us, beard and long, graying brown hair flowing in the wind, a look of wild abandon replacing the years on his face. He races around the cottage and jerks to a stop behind another of the machines so abruptly that he almost falls off.

  “Howdy,” he says. George slaps the seat of the ATV as he hops off. “Ain’t she a beauty? I’ve been wanting to get her out of the barn for ages.”

  Jess’s lips twist into a reluctant smile. “I was not expecting that,” she says.

  Russ whistles, his brown eyes huge. “Where’d you get that?”

  George lifts one shoulder and drops it. “I got a barn hidden in the brush. Couldn’t let those kids in town know I got some toys, or they’d come and steal ‘em. Hoodlums, the lot of them.” He caresses the ATV’s handle bars. “I got a pair of ‘em. Great deal, they said. From Tulsa. Don’t get to take ‘em out much, on account of people sticking their noses where they don’t belong, but I figured this was as good a chance as any.” He bares his yellow teeth in a feral grin. “Besides, if anyone sees ‘em, I’ll just blame you city slickers. Brought your toys and let an old man have a ride. Then again”—he pauses, his eyes turning thoughtful—“ain’t nobody going to believe me anyway, on account of they all think I’m crazy. Especially the sheriff. So I figure I’m as safe as I can be.”

  He’s got a point. I share a glance with my sister as we all approach the ATV. It looks easy enough to operate, and with George’s guidance, soon Russ and my sister straddle the second machine, which leaves me to ride with—damn it. I shoot Russ a murderous look, but he ignores me, his eyes twinkling. Jerk.

  Tucking Bear in my jacket, I reluctantly slide on behind our host and loosely loop my arms around his waist. Bear grumbles about his imprisonment but soon burrows down because it’s warm and comfortable.

  “Hold on tight,” he yells. He revs the engine, shooting off so quickly that I almost fall off the back.

  I open my mouth, but George’s hair whips into my face. Well, that was disgusting. I clamp my mouth shut and duck my head, focusing instead on imparting calm thoughts on the little dog bundled into my jacket rather than the old man in front of me who maybe showered sometime in the last century.

  About fifteen minutes later, George stops the ATV. I open my eyes, blinking at the thick trees towering around us. “Is this the spot?”

  “Naw,” George says. He waits for me to get off, and when I do, he pockets the keys and slides off. “But I don’t want to scare the Bigfoots away. If they know we’re coming, we’ll never see ‘em.”

  That makes sense.

  Jess and Russ roar to a stop behind us. “Wasn’t that awesome?” Russ says. The excitement on their faces reminds me that they’re still kids, really. Well, Jess is seventeen and Russ is twenty, but circumstances beyond their control stole so much of their childhoods. I can’t help the pang of loss that strikes me. But there’s nothing I can do about it. Not now, anyway. I shake myself free of
the morbid thoughts and reach into my jacket to get Bear out. A low growl greets my attempt.

  “Oh hell no. You are not staying in there, you ungrateful mutt,” I mutter, risking life and limb to pull him out of what he considered a comfortable, warm den to deposit him on the ground. All’s forgiven when he smells something interesting and wanders as far as he can on the leash.

  “Good idea bringing the dog,” George says, watching Bear. “Didn’t think to bring any bait with me.”

  I scoop Bear up and clutch him to my chest, horrified. “He is not bait.”

  George laughs. “I’m just messing with you. Your buddy”—he jerks his head at Russ—“said he’s got a backpack full of stuff we can use.” He scratches his head. “Though I don’t rightly know if they’ll eat that. Usually I use roadkill or the innards of possum or coon, or a deer if I’m lucky enough to get one. They seem to like meat, from what I can tell.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” I say, my voice short. “Because I’m not staking my dog out there like that poor goat on Jurassic Park just to see if we can coax Bigfoot in.”

  George chortles. “Damn, I knew I’d like you.” He points at a narrow path down a steep gorge. “Come on. We don’t want to be stuck out here after it gets dark.”

  Yeah, I’ve heard that before.

  His comment sobers our mood, and without another word, we follow George down the path and across a shallow, gurgling stream. On the other side, I set Bear down, and he pulls on the leash, his nose buried in the ground. He likes it out here. Not that I blame him. If we weren’t hunting a huge, hairy bipedal creature that may or may not be responsible for several missing people, I’d like it too. But this isn’t a nature walk, and I don’t want to end up another page in Ceri’s dad’s case file.

  After about a mile, George lifts his hand and stops. Immediately, Russ digs in his pack and hands both Jess and me a camera. I also get a voice recorder, turn it on, and slip it into my pocket. We can never have too much evidence, even if it is muffled.

  The trees tower overhead, enclosing us in what feels like a bubble from the outside world, only I know the isolation is pretty real out here. I could scream all I want, and no one would hear me—no one outside our group and the monster, that is.

  Across a second stream, the path gets rougher. Gnarled exposed tree roots threaten to trip us, and more than once, my sister swears behind me. I know she’s got Russ behind her, so I focus on shooting video of our surroundings, keeping Bear’s leash from getting impossibly tangled, and keeping my own feet under me. If George is a serial killer, he’s doing a great job, because we’ll never be able to get away from him. Hell, we’ll get lost and die just from the elements before any of us can escape.

  “How ya holding up?” George grunts at me over his shoulder.

  “Just ducky,” I say, gritting my teeth after I smoke my shin on a rotted log jutting out into the path.

  He chuckles. “Good, ‘cause we’re almost there.”

  Twenty minutes later, he stops just on the other side of a large, overgrown field. George takes his hat off and swipes one flannel-covered arm across his sweaty forehead. “Used to be a couple homesteads out this way. One’s still here. My uncles used it as a hunting camp, but it’s falling down. Other one’s just a foundation.” He waves his arm at the clearing. “Bet you wouldn’t know just by looking at it, huh?”

  I shake my head. The grass and scraggly weeds are higher here, but I’d have never known it was anything but a natural clearing. “Nope. When’s the last time you were out here?”

  George ticks off his meaty fingers, one by one. “About three, four months. Been busy.”

  Doing what, staking out Bigfoot and waiting for one to poop? “How do you know they’re out here?”

  “‘Cause they always are. This here clearing butts up to about a thousand acres of state land, and it’s about as remote as you can get. Other than hikers and hunters, nobody comes up here.”

  “So it’d be a good place for a creature like Bigfoot to live.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” George says. “Weather’s pretty good all year round, and there’s plenty of food for hunting and fishing. Berries and fruit too. Anything a critter like that could ask for.”

  Russ sets down his backpack, and he and Jess rummage through it, pulling out a tripod, a fresh set of batteries, and a can of Mountain Dew. That must have been Russ’s idea.

  “So do you mind if we get some pictures and video of the clearing?”

  George frowns. “You do that, you’ll scare ‘em all away.” He jerks his head toward Russ and Jess. “I’d be surprised if you see anything with all the noise they’re making back there.”

  Russ and my sister freeze. I mouth “sorry” at them.

  “No, Ms. Brady. If you wanna see a Bigfoot, you gotta hunker down and be patient. Ain’t no other way about it.”

  So hunker down we do. Jess and Russ stake out a few feet away on either side, while I stick to George like glue. He promises me that they usually come around sundown, which should be in an hour, and I figure we can wait that long, not that we really have a choice. None of us could find a way out of here if we tried. Slowly, the bird and animal sounds return, and I watch the sun descend on the horizon. I only pull out my phone once, and that’s to see that we don’t have any reception. Great. Now I can’t even stream any stupid videos on my phone to pass the time.

  As the shadows grow longer, George nudges me in the side. Half-asleep, I jerk awake, my heart thudding in my chest.

  “I’m gonna try to call it in now,” he says, eyes twinkling in the evening light. “Dusk and dawn are when they’re most active.”

  “Okay.”

  “So don’t get scared or nothing. Have you ever heard a Bigfoot call before?”

  “Only what I’ve heard on TV.”

  He snorts. “Those are all fakes. Just you wait. I’ll show you the real deal.”

  I’m not sure whether or not to be nervous or excited. “Okay...” I motion Jess and Russ over to us and explain what he’s going to do.

  “You can do that?” Jess asks, her eyes wide.

  “Watch,” George says with a wink. He cups his hands around his mouth, tilts his head back, and lets out the most god-awful screechy howl I’ve ever heard. I cringe, clutching Bear to my chest so he doesn’t bolt. I mean, I would if I were him. George does it again, deeper this time. Then he pauses. The birds and animal sounds die down—they’re probably wondering what the hell that was, like the rest of us, before he does it again.

  “I didn’t know people could make those sounds,” my sister says, her voice more than a little awed. She looks younger all of a sudden, less wise to the ways of the world. Interesting.

  “Sure they can,” George says. “Want me to show you?”

  Jess flushes. “No, I’m good.”

  George nudges her in the side. “Come on. It’ll be fun. I’ll make your sister turn the camera off so she don’t record it. I bet you’ll get the hang of it really quickly.”

  “I’ll do it with you,” Russ says. The three of them disappear into the trees so I can continue panning the clearing without interruption, at least until George’s imitation whoop makes me jump. Bear whimpers.

  “I hear you, buddy,” I mutter.

  Russ’s is next, and if I thought George’s was bad, Russ makes it sound like Christmas caroling. After a few tries, my sister’s bell-like voice rings out, surprisingly sounding a lot more like George’s than Russ’s. Not bad. Now she can list that as one of her talents. I make a mental note to mess with her about it later.

  The setting sun gives the horizon an orangeish glow. It’s beautiful, and not in a postcard way, but in a wow, I didn’t realize Then I see movement, branches parting, to be specific. A shape, vaguely human, is on the other side of the clearing. It’s too far to make out for sure. Damn it.

  I hurry over to the other three and grab George’s arm. “Hey, do you see that?”

  He peers in the direction I’m pointing. “Holy shit,
it worked!” he crows.

  “What’s going on?” Russ asks.

  I point at the slowly approaching shape, struggling to keep equal parts fear and excitement from bubbling up within me. “Look.”

  Jess gasps. “What is that thing?” She tries to zoom in on her phone, but the dim light makes it impossible. She gets frustrated and stuffs her phone back in her pocket. “I can’t tell what it is.”

  “Are you sure it’s a Bigfoot? What if it’s a pissed-off bear or something?”

  George shakes off my concern. “Too small for a bear, unless it’s a little one.” He scratches his head. “Or a baby Bigfoot. What’d you call one of those? A little foot? Is that what you’d call a baby one of them?”

  God. I am not getting into this discussion right now. I stand up, alternating glances between George and the approaching creature. “I don’t know, but shouldn’t we be... you know, doing something about this? What if it’s going to try to kill us?” Something tells me we shouldn’t be standing here waiting for whatever it is to reach us. That’s a great way to get eaten.

  George pulls a small handgun from his pocket. “Don’t you worry none. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

  The creature stumbles, disappearing into the grass.

  “I’m with Mer.” Jess’s ducks behind me.

  “Yeah, me too,” Russ says.

  The figure bobs up. It’s closer now, about thirty feet away. “Help!” A voice, hoarse and way too human, calls out from the field. “Don’t leave me here!”

  “Holy shit. That ain’t a Bigfoot, it’s a person,” George says.

  “Oh God.” Russ sprints out into the field. Jess and I follow him and George crashes through the brush and grass behind us.

  Right as we get to the man, he collapses, and we drop down at his side. Dirty brown hair hangs in strings around his gaunt, dirt-streaked face, and a stained and ripped denim shirt envelopes his frame. “Help,” he groans.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Russ helps him sit up, and the man leans on him, unable to sit on his own for more than a few seconds.