Monster

by Frank Peretti

  “Ted! Come back here! I’m scared!”

  He turned to look back, his face illumined like a lone planet in the dark of space. “Can you see anything?” he said.

  She could see only his face and his right shoulder.

  Just beyond his right shoulder, two silvery-green retinas turned into the light.

  Melanie screamed the scream of her life, backing away, hands to her face.

  Ted spun around just in time to take a blow to his head that nearly snapped his neck. He tumbled like a rag doll out of sight. Branches snapped and Melanie heard hissing through the leaves.

  “Ted!”

  Something big was moving out there. It screamed like a woman being stabbed. Melanie found a rock and threw it into the blackness. It glanced off a tree.

  “Melanie!” Ted’s voice was muffled as if he was yelling into the ground.

  The shadow moved that direction.

  “Ted, run! Run! ”

  She heard him screaming, thrashing in the brush, moving right, falling again, screaming again.

  The woman screamed just above him.

  Melanie grabbed the hot frying pan with a pot holder and bolted crazily into the dark, her own shadow a black demon dancing on the trees before her. She caught a glimpse of Ted high-stepping, grappling, pushing through the woods on her right, trying to make it to some light.

  “Melanie, it’s behind you!”

  She spun, swinging the frying pan like a baseball bat. The pan tilted vertically and contacted a black, furry mass with a dull bong and the hiss of hot grease.

  The thing screamed and spun away. Melanie dropped the pan and ran toward the light.

  Ted was ahead of her now, his body a silhouette against the camp lantern, his shadow a man-shaped tunnel through the campfire smoke. She ran down that tunnel, stumbling on the uneven ground.

  The thing was behind her, screaming in pain and rage.

  Ted had reached the car. “Come on, Melanie, come on!”

  She got there as he started up the engine. She dove inside, slammed the door, then groped, slapped for the lock button until she found it and pounded it down.

  Ted hit the gas and the car lurched forward.

  The thing leaped through the headlights, its coarse, black flank absorbing the light, then glanced off the right fender. For an instant, Melanie saw a face in her window: crazed, glowing eyes, a gaping mouth, glistening fangs.

  They roared down the logging road so fast that debris from the potholes and ruts hit them like flak.

  Melanie twisted and looked through the rear window. The light of the camp lantern was quickly receding, and against that circle of light, in a backlit haze of campfire smoke, a monstrous, hulking shadow was ravaging their camp.

  Arlen Peak stabbed two remaining slabs of beef brisket, lifted them off the open-pit grill, and dropped them onto a platter. “Okay, when they cool down, stick ’em in the freezer.”

  His wife, his daughter, and his two granddaughters were cleaning up dishes and tables after the barbecue buffet, the Tall Pine’s contribution to the search effort. Most of the search crew had stuck around for the free meal, but it wasn’t a festive occasion. The meal passed quickly, and now the courtyard and tables were empty under the floodlights, the haze from the barbecue thinning with the evening breeze.

  Reed poked his head out of Room 105 and surveyed the courtyard and parking lot. Not too many folks still up and around. Most of the search crew had either gone home or were settling in for the night in the RVs neatly parked at the hookups across the parking lot. Satisfied, he stepped out, an empty plate and silverware in his hand. He’d eaten because he knew he had to, but he’d eaten in solitude. With a little luck, he could return his plate and utensils and maybe get some air without seeing anyone.

  I’m acting just like Beck, he thought, wagging his head at the irony. This had to be how she felt most of the time: awkward, stared at, discredited for no good reason. No wonder she avoided people—as he was doing right now.

  He’d often been asked, “How in the world did you ever get to know each other?” It wasn’t easy. They first crossed paths in St. Maries, Idaho, when he was a well-established high-school senior and she was the new girl in school. He’d seen her at school but actually met her in church, which, he’d often reflected, was a good place to meet a girl. She was a shy, awkward, introverted newcomer to the youth group, devastated the first time the youth pastor called on her to read a scripture aloud, terrified of conversation, and slow to make friends. Nevertheless, he’d already eliminated most of the other girls from his field of interest, and though he could never explain it, he found her fascinating. Their first date was a movie—they just watched the movie and didn’t have to talk. Then, after he promised that talking wouldn’t be required, she took a pleasant afternoon walk with him along the St. Joe River. After that, he took her bicycling, which they enjoyed in silence. When he took her out to dinner, she pointed at what she wanted on the menu and he ordered for them both. The silence between them took getting used to, and he often caught himself babbling to fill the dead space. Nevertheless, it was in those quiet times that she could be amazingly articulate with her eyes and playful, even teasing, with the corners of her mouth.

  Without a word, she had him hooked.

  It was the evening they played Scrabble with her folks that he first heard her put an articulate sentence together, word after word, and he was astounded. When she was at home, in a safe and familiar world, her speech impediment nearly vanished. She won the game that night, and after that she started talking, in halting phrases at first, and later in fluid sentences, but only to him. It was like striking oil, a real gusher of information, her soul in words.

  But she could only speak if she was comfortable, and that became the ongoing problem. At their wedding, her maid of honor repeated her vows for her and she nodded in agreement. His friends at the Sheriff’s Academy never saw his wife, not even at graduation. She met Sing Capella only because Sing went out of her way to meet her, prepared with things to do and share without a word being spoken. The two were chattering with each other within a week, but talking with Cap took longer.

  So Cap and Sing became their closest friends, but Beck still had few friends, and that was troubling. Cap, Sing, and Reed had often had their little talks in Beck’s absence about what they could or should do to help her. If only Beck could get a little confidence, they’d said. If we could just help her come out of her shell and face life head-on, just a little . . .

  Reed stacked his plate with the others in the kitchen pass-through and dropped his silverware into the big can of soapy water. Arlen’s granddaughter looked at him, smiled a bit, and kept on stacking the dishes in the dishwasher. He passed two search volunteers on his way to the parking lot, but they didn’t bother him; they didn’t even look him in the eye.

  Cap and Sing had already said their good nights. Sheriff Mills had left to catch up on loose ends at the department. Pete Henderson had gone home to crash, planning to start fresh at first light. And Jimmy Clark was . . . well, Reed didn’t much care where Jimmy was so long as he was elsewhere, at least for the night.

  All Reed wanted right now was a little space, a little air, a little time to think—or not think, which would be even better. A walk around the town might feel good—

  He heard voices from the other side of the RVs, over in the picnic area.

  “But did you see that cabin? One guy couldn’t have done that.”

  “One guy with a good-sized hammer—”

  “Oh, get real!”

  Reed turned and drew closer, not sneaking, but not making his presence known either. From the shadows among the trees, he recognized two Search and Rescue volunteers sitting at a table, conversing with another man who leaned against a tree. The two at the table had worked with Team 1 at the cabin that day; the guy standing, with hair in a ponytail and so blond it was nearly white, was a newcomer Reed hadn’t seen before.

  “I’ve done search and rescue af
ter a bear attack before, up in Glacier,” said the newcomer, “and let me tell you two things: number one, the victim isn’t drug very far, so it doesn’t take that long to find him, and number two, the victim’s dead. He isn’t wandering off.”

  “That’s how it’s gonna turn out,” said the bald guy.

  “That’s how it should have turned out, but it didn’t. We’re still here.”

  “Well, Jimmy’s setting out bait tomorrow. We’ll bag the bear, and that’ll be the end of it.”

  “Hey, wait a minute!” said the younger man in the Mariners cap. “What if Thompson and Shelton’s wife staged the whole thing so they could run off together?”

  “You’ve seen way too much TV!” said the bald one.

  They were laughing.

  The newcomer wasn’t laughing when he said, “What if Shelton turns up with another woman?”

  Reed’s hands balled into fists.

  The other two quit laughing.

  “You serious?” the bald guy asked.

  “Why not?” The newcomer took a drag on a cigarette, the orange tip glowing in the dark. “Like that cop in Spokane who shot his wife and blamed some black guy that didn’t exist. These things happen.”

  “But what about the cabin? You think Shelton tore it all up?”

  “What if a bear wrecked the cabin and Shelton saw an opportunity? Took out his wife and Randy Thompson because Thompson could have been a witness?”

  The two were silent as they thought about it.

  “I guess Shelton’s wife was a little strange, kind of a retard,” said the bald one.

  “Yeah,” the young one agreed. “If he’s got another babe somewhere . . .”

  “So what’d he do with the bodies?”

  “Put ’em where we’ll never find ’em,” said the newcomer. He took another drag and the smoke puffed out with his words. “That way nobody will find out how they really died.”

  “You’re sick, you know that?” the bald one replied.

  “Think what you want. My money’s on Shelton.”

  Reed wanted to meet this guy, introduce himself, share a few words of understanding, and put him on the ground. Maybe he could even acquaint the man with the natural taste and crispy texture of pine cones stuffed in that big mouth. He took a step forward—

  “Reed!” It was Cap, hollering from the inn. “Reed!”

  Good old Cap. Reed hurried back across the parking lot with eyes and thoughts forward.

  Cap was on the porch in tee shirt and jeans. His boots were still untied. “Reed, there’s been another attack!”

  Shock. Relief. Horror. I-told-you-so. “Where?” Reed breathed.

  Sing burst out the front door in blouse and jeans, barefoot, her hair unbraided and billowing down her back, a handheld radio close to her ear. “Two campers were attacked an hour and a half ago, six miles up Service Road 19, north of Kamayah.”

  “Kamayah. That’s—what?—about ten miles southeast of here?” Reed said.

  “Ten miles southeast,” Sing confirmed, “then six miles north up that service road . . . it’d be within four to six miles of the first attack.”

  Cap finished tying his boots. “That thing’s moving.”

  “Does Sheriff Mills know?”

  “He and Jimmy are on their way now,” Sing answered.

  “What about Pete?”

  Sing traded her radio for her cell phone. “I’m going to rouse him out of bed.”

  Reed spun around, counting vehicles and RVs, trying to guess the number of available bodies still around. “We can’t give up the search here!”

  “We won’t.”

  Cap was insistent, excited. “We’ve got to see this. It could explain everything!”

  Reed looked directly, boldly, at the three men having their little whodunit discussion around the picnic table. “It sure could.”

  Flash! Sing, in warm coat and cap, photographed the empty frying pan lying facedown where the woods bordered the meadow. Cap was her light man; he held a strong floodlight so Sing could see what she was doing. It was close to midnight. Ground fog and campfire smoke hung along the ground and shrouded the trees in a ghostly haze.

  Jimmy was shining his flashlight around the devastated campsite and counting the empty beer bottles scattered in the grass. From the breath and demeanor of the two campers huddled by the revived fire, there was no question in his mind where all the suds had gone. “Guess you’ve had a few beers, huh?” Jimmy said.

  Apparently, Ted became obstinate and easily offended when drunk. “So what? We weren’t driving!”

  “You drove out of here, didn’t you?”

  Melanie, when drunk, became gushy and emotional. “Well, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you wanna get away if some big monster was coming after you?”

  Flash! Sing captured the beer bottles, a shattered camp lantern, and a broken camp cooler.

  Jimmy swept the edge of the woods with his light. “That the frying pan you hit him with?”

  “That’s it!” said Melanie. “He got the message!”

  “I think he ate the hamburgers,” said Ted.

  “Looks like he ate a lot of things,” Jimmy observed. “You had fruit salad lying out, hamburgers frying, eggs and bacon . . .” He walked to where the remains of a paper plate lay in the grass alongside scattered remnants of lettuce and tomato. “What was this, a salad?”

  “My dinner salad,” Melanie replied. “With French fries.”

  Flash! Sing took a shot to show the location of the ravaged salad in relation to the campsite.

  Jimmy drew a breath, as if gathering patience. “Folks, you should know better than to have food like this lying around your camp. Fried foods, greasy foods, garbage like this putting out all that smell, it’s a wonder you didn’t attract every bear within fifty miles!”

  “This-s wasn’t a bear!” Ted countered, his voice slurred and unsteady. “It was a big, hairy thing! It was like K-king Kong or . . . something!”

  Sing went blind in the dark. “Cap. The light.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  Flash! She captured a field of debris: a jacket, a paperback novel, a punctured thermos, shredded food packaging.

  “What else have you had tonight?” Jimmy asked the two campers. “Any mushrooms, by chance?”

  “Hey, whaddaya trying to—”

  “Just be careful what you say. You don’t want to get in trouble with the law.”

  Sheriff Mills picked up an edge of the flattened tent and looked underneath, probing with his light. Two sleeping bags were spread out; a hot rod magazine and a gardening magazine were undisturbed. There were no mushrooms.

  Flash! As the sheriff held the fallen tent up, Sing captured the tent’s interior.

  Reed tried to keep his voice calm as he questioned Ted and Melanie Brooks. “Did it make a sound like a woman screaming?”

  Their eyes got wide with the recollection. “Yeah,” said Ted. “Scared us to death!”

  “We thought it was somebody in trouble!” said Melanie.

  “Did it walk upright?”

  “Sure looked like it!”

  Jimmy asked, “Was it about twenty feet tall?”

  Ted and Melanie looked at each other, and then Ted answered, “Coulda been!”

  “Big hairy hands?”

  “I saw it using its hands, yeah! They were real hairy,” said Melanie.

  Jimmy nodded to himself, then called toward some flashlights sweeping and winking only a foot from the ground near the edge of the meadow, “Pete, you got anything?”

  “Not yet,” came Pete’s voice through the murk.

  “Sing, did you get a shot of this cooler here?”

  “Got it,” she replied, working her way toward the woods.

  Mills met her with the punctured thermos in his hand. “Better bag this.” The thermos had been nearly bitten in half, the tooth marks forming a jagged, saw-toothed rift.

  Sing pulled a Ziploc bag from her pocket and dropped the thermos inside. “Mr. Tee
th again, just like the can of beans I found at the cabin.” She placed the bagged thermos in her shoulder bag.

  Mills called, “Jimmy! Pete!”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re raising the caution level. Searchers go out in twos from now on, with at least one rifle or a sidearm between them.”

  “Understood,” said Pete, his voice muffled by his nearness to the ground.

  “You got it,” said Jimmy, having a further look around. “Good idea.”

  Reed took hold of Jimmy’s arm to get his attention. “Jimmy, you heard ’em, right? They saw the same thing we did!”

  “Reed,” Jimmy said, “didn’t you hear the questions you were asking? You were leading the witnesses. Give me a break!”

  “Jimmy! What’s it gonna take to—”

  Jimmy put his hand on Reed just to hold him steady—and quiet. “Reed, listen,” he whispered, “you don’t want to get lumped in with those people. They’re drunk, they might be on drugs—”

  “But they—”

  “Reed! They’re bad for you. They’re two fruitcakes who did everything a stupid camper can do to attract a bear!”

  “But it wasn’t a bear!”

  “Shh! Don’t!” Jimmy looked around, clearly afraid that someone may have heard that. “Reed. Look at me. I’m talking as your friend. This could be a real break. This has to be the same bear, which means we have a fresh trail. We might even be able to backtrack from here and get some kind of lead on Beck. Now . . .” He put his finger in Reed’s face to hold him in check. “Reed, I’m telling you—don’t ruin it. We’ve got plenty of volunteers ready to work with us as long as they’re good and clear on what it is they’re doing. If there’s a bear to be tracked down and killed, they’re with us. But if you start going on about some big, hairy . . .” He looked around again. “They’re talking already. Some of them are having some real doubts about what we’re doing and about you, and you don’t want that. You want them on your side.”

  Headlights illumined the camp as a truck pulled up.

  Jimmy searched Reed’s face a moment. “Reed, am I getting through?”