Snow Stalker

by M K Dymock

  The town’s response to Cate had been, at best, mixed. There existed a hierarchy in Lost Gorge: old residents, new residents, seasonal workers, and tourists (although they didn’t know that). Mina had started her residency as a seasonal worker who transitioned into full time, more or less. What finally made her belong was volunteering on the Search and Rescue team.

  “Hey, Mina,” Cate said as she pulled off her coat. “What’s with the heat?” That was something coming from her. Cate, a former Florida resident, wore a parka in July. Other than the freckles, her white skin looked almost translucent against her black hair.

  Mina had always made an effort to be kind to Cate, remembering what it had been like to be new. “Just trying to make you comfortable.”

  “By the way, I took your advice and signed the kids up for ski school. Didn’t want them feeling out of place.”

  “Good. Here kids started learning with binkies in their mouths and blankies in their hands.”

  Cate turned her attention to Sol. “The mayor called, and he’s a little worried what this incident might do to the Christmas season. He wants me to post an update.”

  Cate ran the town’s social media accounts, posting and sharing outdoor photos with the tag #WhereAdventureIs. Locals used it to brag, and tourists used it to plan vacations.

  “Keeping the council and the mayor happy is a moving target,” Sol said. Mina knew he didn’t much like that part of his job. Considering the council begged him to take the spot when the previous sheriff proved to be far too good at keeping people happy, he had a lot of leeway to do what he wanted.

  “Too late,” Mina interjected. “Word is already out and people are cancelling their trips.”

  Cate nodded. “There are a lot of comments on Facebook. I need to post something.” Sol acquiesced and took Cate into his office for an interview that Mina knew would be short on words and long on questions.

  Once the door shut, Mina turned back to Clint. “How’s he doing?” she said as quietly as she could without going full whisper.

  “It’s hard to say.” Clint leaned forward in his chair. “But hell, I’m shaky and it wasn’t my wife. Never wanted to see anything like that again.”

  “This was worse, much worse. What those animals did—”

  “That’s just it; I don’t know if it was animals,” Clint said. “When I examined Daisy’s body, there were bite marks all over. And despite her lying there a week before we found her, her body was in better condition than what we found today.”

  “What else could’ve done it?”

  “I don’t know. I only have experience with the one body ravaged by animals. The bones, though, didn’t have a chew mark on them.”

  “But it had to be an animal,” she said. “Something was in those trees.”

  “Something is right. Let me know if you figure out what that something was.”

  8

  If Mina wanted to find out who knew what, there was only one place to go—the No Name Bar.

  Any random weekday, the young, single, and mostly seasonal workers in town would pack the bar. That night would be more crowded than usual with some workers’ days getting canceled and everyone wanting to talk the latest gossip. Entertainment was scarce after the sun went down.

  Mina spied Patrick sitting at a table with other patrollers. She returned his wave but headed to the bar in search of people she hadn't already talked to.

  Callie sat at a table with a few people Mina only knew by sight. Since moving into her own place a few seasons ago, she didn’t know as many fellow employees as she once had. Callie would know everyone and where they’d been on Saturday. With it being mid-December, the tourists hadn’t yet arrived.

  Mina grabbed a nonalcoholic beer from the bar before squeezing through the crowds. Being on the clock as deputy meant no drinking, but she didn’t want anyone else to know that. She sat down at the table with Callie, grabbing the one empty chair.

  “I don’t know why the band keeps on playing,” the guy sitting next to her said, struggling to carry his voice over a particularly long drum solo. “Not like anyone wants to listen to them tonight anyhow.”

  Mina laughed. “Not like anyone wants to listen to them most nights.”

  He laughed, but the girl between him and Callie shot her a dirty look before returning her gaze to the drummer. Mina knew for whom the drummer tolled.

  “I’m Ben,” the guy said.

  “Mina.”

  “I know. I’ve seen you around, but we haven’t officially met before.”

  Mina wished it was her stunning good looks that made her so well-known, but it was just her looks that did it. She was the sole Asian instructor at the resort and only one of three in town. Growing up in Southern California, she hadn’t felt “other” that often. Here, she stuck out. Guys wanted to date her because she looked like a nice complacent girl they could show off for. Once they figured out she could beat them at their own games, the interest disappeared.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said with a flat voice, not wanting to encourage him one way or the other until she got a better feel for him.

  The guitarist strummed his last note and announced a 15-minute break. The bar’s collective occupants all sighed in relief, except the girl, who ran to the stage to offer her compliments.

  Callie leaned back with her beer. “I heard you were the one who found the poor sucker.” Her voice, still used to carrying above the band, now reached the nearby tables.

  Mina could hear the beer being poured as all talk stopped and eyes turned to her. “Yeah, something I won’t forget.” Talking about an investigation wasn’t something she could do.

  No one responded as they waited for her answer.

  “The police said I’m not really supposed to talk about it.”

  “Screw the police,” said a voice she didn’t recognize.

  The whole deputy thing was a new development, and most, especially if they’d arrived in town the last few weeks, wouldn’t know about it yet.

  “It was bad. I don’t think I’m going to sleep for a while.”

  “I heard the head was twenty feet away from the body,” someone said.

  “I heard there was no head.”

  The conversation jumped off without much help from Mina. Most people preferred to share their own tales rather than listen to others—and Mina had come to listen. What she wanted to know, and what everybody had a guess about, was the identity of the body.

  Nobody had seen Sarah this season, and she never missed opening day. No, someone else said, she’s working in Utah, got a better offer. What about that skier someone rode the lift with and he promised to call for a date and didn’t? Or it had to be Charlie, right? More than a few people had seen him plastered by lunch and hadn’t seen him since.

  Mina excused herself to the bathroom to make notes on her phone of everything she’d heard. As she sat back down at the table, Patrick came over to wrestle a seat at the table. “What about the footprint?” he said in a low voice, ensuring everyone would try to listen in.

  Had she been a little closer, she would’ve elbowed him. Sol had specifically asked that information stay private. For one reason, they didn’t know for sure it was a footprint, and for another, bits of information about investigations were always held back.

  “What footprint?” someone asked.

  He leaned closer as if telling a secret, which he was. “One single bare footprint in the snow, larger than the dead guy’s foot. Larger than any guy’s foot.” The crowd quieted.

  Onstage, the band strummed their guitars, and Callie yelled out, “Shut up for once and read the crowd!” A smattering of applause shut down the music.

  “He’s full of BS,” Mina said, wanting to end the conversation. “And he’s full of whiskey.” Patrick, a Scotsman by blood, liked to brag he could slam whiskey until closing and ski a straight line home, which was probably true.

  Patrick winked at her. “Mina saw it. Said it wasn’t there when she first found the body
. Whatever left the track walked around after the guy had been killed.”

  Mina glared across the table, willing him to shut up. It wasn’t like him to trade on gossip. “There was no track,” she said. “He’s just peeing in your glass and calling it beer.” The table laughed at that one. “Next thing he’ll tell you is Bigfoot is hunting skiers.”

  Patrick took a chug. “Call it whatever you want, but something ripped apart that body.”

  Silence quelled the laughter. Stares dropped to the ground. “So it was really ripped apart, like people are saying?” Jenny asked.

  It was one thing to laugh about gossip but another to mock truth. Every person at the table had ridden that lift, a few since they were children. The Lost Gorge world was a small one, and one among them was unaccounted for.

  Patrick’s flush spoke of shame instead of booze as he realized he’d crossed a line. “We don’t… I mean, it’s too soon.”

  Mina stood. “They’re still investigating, but it was probably an animal attack. Patrick, you want to drive me home?”

  He followed her out the door as the band started playing. This time, no one objected.

  As soon as the door shut behind them, she began her attack. “You absolute idiot. You know you’re not supposed to say that. Not only are you screwing with the investigation, you’re going to freak out the town.”

  He took a step back at her onslaught. “I’m sorry; you’re right.”

  Her mouth hung half open with the retort she’d been about to make.

  “I drank too much,” he continued.

  There were two things she’d never heard Patrick say—“I’m sorry” and “I drank too much.”

  “You okay?” She hadn’t seen much of him since the last winter when they’d made their last attempt at dating. Each attempt had ended in the spring, when they’d both literally gone their separate ways.

  “Yeah, I’m just…” He looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry for the way things ended. You deserved better than that.”

  She cocked her head. “Patrick, things ended exactly how I expected them to.”

  “It doesn’t change the fact you deserve better than that. Maybe we both do.”

  “Where’re you staying this season? I can drive you home.”

  His shoulders slumped. “Just moved in with Wes yesterday to couch surf until I figure some stuff out. He’s inside; I’ll catch a ride with him.”

  “Is Wes still hanging with Charlie?” she asked, remembering the off-the-cuff comment in the bar.

  “As far as I know.”

  “Could he have gotten drunk enough to fall off a chairlift?”

  “He once got drunk enough to use a two-story house as a jump with his snowboard.”

  “Is that how he got that scar?”

  “Yeah, we were all a pack of idiots back then.” When Patrick usually talked about the dumb testosterone-fueled antics of his not-so-distant past, he did with a degree of pride. The somber note wasn’t like him.

  “You sure you’re doing alright?”

  “Yeah, I’ll ask around about Charlie.”

  One thing about the crowd they ran with was that you never could keep track of their location. The other thing was that everyone would surface in time for the Christmas rush. Their jobs, and thus their resort passes, depended on it.

  He returned to the bar while she headed to her Jeep, wondering who’d replaced Patrick. Maybe seeing that body had shaken up more people than her.

  9

  A few states and a world away from Lost Gorge, software developer Ryan Lehman squinted at his computer screen. The windowless room kept him literally in the dark about whether the sun had set or not.

  The tech company he’d worked at for five years was on the verge of going public. They’d scheduled to launch their next piece of software to coincide with their debut. Ryan was tasked with making sure it went without a hitch. It never did, of course, but he was working into the night to make it as hitch-less as possible. A year from now, if all went well, he would possess stock in the high six figures and a job that paid in the low six. He could stop working 80-hour weeks.

  He ignored his buzzing phone the first, second, and third times. By the fourth, he pulled it out to shut it off but caught sight of a text from a friend: Vindication? The friend included a link to a story on Facebook from a town called Lost Gorge. A body had been found, and the sole evidence was a single bare footprint.

  A few commenters asked about Sasquatches and yetis. The town’s account had replied on a few threads with “you never know” and a link to an old story from the 1950s. Apparently a white-haired, manlike beast had attacked a hunter, pulling him clean out of his snowshoes.

  It was nothing Ryan hadn’t read about or investigated a hundred times. His few vacations and every free weekend had been dedicated to the search for Bigfoot. Buried in the comments of the post, though, someone had mentioned the condition of the body or the pieces left. Now that stood out with a familiarity Ryan longed to forget.

  Twenty years had passed, but he could still smell the death. However, it was the smell of something living and watching that had kept him up many nights.

  Despite the late hour, employees still packed the building. He retreated outside, the only place where he could find some privacy.

  His friend and fellow Bigfoot enthusiast, Phillip Griffith, picked up on the first ring. “Thought that would get your attention.”

  “What are the authorities saying?”

  “Not much. It’s a tourist town. Either way, saying there’s been an animal attack that gruesome or saying it’s a murder doesn’t come off well. Probably why they’re tying it to Sasquatch, trying to get people talking about something else.”

  “Are you going?”

  “I’m already here.”

  “What?”

  “I wanted to spend a winter in a resort town. Figured the kids would visit me more if they could ski from my backyard. Being here is how I found about it so soon.” Phil held the enviable position of early retiree with money to burn. Ryan could claim neither the age nor the money. His job held him hostage.

  “You need to come,” Phil continued. “It’s too much like what you—”

  “I know what I saw. Don’t jump to conclusions; that’s how people start making up evidence.”

  Phil laughed into the phone. “Who are we if we’re not jumping to conclusions? The kids are coming a few days after Christmas for a few weeks. You’re welcome to stay until then.”

  “I can’t, Phil. This couldn’t have come at a worse week. I’ll be doing 16-hour days all week.” Ryan had been sleeping on a cot in the bullpen for the past two nights.

  “See you in a few days.”

  “I’m not coming.”

  Phil laughed again as Ryan hung up the phone. He returned to his desk and tried to focus on code that now read more like gibberish. With a glance behind him, he opened the link on his third screen. He logged into a Bigfoot chat site he frequented, looking for more information on the Lost Gorge incident.

  The site definitely had more information than what the article said, including a lot of speculation and outright made-up stuff. He knew enough to sort to the nuggets of truth.

  A few hours went by as he read through the threads. A couple of people had stories about running into Bigfoot in that area—nothing concrete—a print here, a sound there.

  Ryan downed another Red Bull as he refreshed the page. The can dropped to the floor as a new image appeared. Anyone else wouldn’t have understood what they looked at, but Ryan did. He’d seen a body torn apart like that once before.

  He opened a new tab on his Internet and typed “cheap airline tickets.”

  10

  Mina passed on the little information she’d culled from the seasonal workers to Sol, who would work any leads with Clint.

  That left her to return to the job she actually knew how to do. Her dry spell of no lessons hadn’t lasted long. They assigned her a class of six-year-olds who’d never
been on skis before. A lot of the more seasoned instructors flat out refused to teach that level and that age. Mina didn’t mind. Bookings were still down. Plus, as fast as kids learn, she’d be taking them down chutes in a few seasons.

  At the end of the day, she ushered them into the inside portion of ski school. This part, which was a lot of the younger ones’ favorite part, included hot chocolate and a movie while they waited for their parents to trickle in. She sat her class at a long lunch table where another class and their instructor already sipped their hot chocolate.

  “We didn’t see the monster,” said one of Cate’s twins, a towheaded boy named Chris.

  “What monster?” asked one of the other kids.

  “You know, the monster that ate the skier.”

  Eyes widened. “Where at?”

  “Right on a chairlift. That’s probably why we didn’t see it. Maybe tomorrow when teacher takes us up the lift. It’s got fangs and everything.”

  Mina heard the end of the conversation as she walked back to the table balancing four cups of hot chocolate. “A monster didn’t eat a skier. He’s telling stories.” She set down the cups without dripping more hot chocolate on her already-stained ski pants.

  “Nuh-uh!” Chris shouted. “I heard my mom saying so.”

  Mina made a mental note to talk to Cate. “What was everyone’s favorite part of the day?” Working with kids meant constant redirection.

  “Not getting eaten by a monster,” said the girl.

  “No, that would’ve been awesome,” said one of the other boys.

  “Movie time,” the other instructor announced, doing a better job of distraction.

  They herded everyone over to the bright red beanbags in front of a TV and a DVD of Frozen. It didn’t take long until several eyes, including the twins’, drooped from the day’s exhaustion.

  It fell on the instructors to clean up the room, and Mina wiped down the tables while the other instructor, a younger woman she couldn’t quite place, picked up garbage.