May joined Elizabeth at the vista. “Could be a plane.”
“No road,” Ailey said. “It’s probably just a weird echo.”
“Maybe there are other hikers down there,” Elizabeth said, and Ailey shrugged.
When they trudged into base camp, exhausted and thirsty and ready for dinner, Piper didn’t greet them.
“Hello?” Ailey called. “We’re back.”
One of the tents rustled. The girls looked at each other, and Elizabeth took a step away.
“Hey,” Piper called, delayed and strange.
May dropped her pack and unzipped the tent. “Hey,” she said, “you good?” She stuck her head into the tent, then recoiled. “Ooh, girl, if that smell was inside you no wonder you weren’t feeling well.”
“I’m sick,” Piper said, still sprawled in her sleeping bag. Her voice was small and grave. “I’ve been throwing up all day.”
Ailey crouched by the tent opening. “You look pale,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“Fuck!” Elizabeth yelled. “Holy shit!”
May jumped to her feet, looking around. “What?”
Something was crashing away through the bare undergrowth, a slim dark shape fading among the other slim dark shapes of the forest.
“It was right there,” Elizabeth said. “Holy shit.”
May squinted. “A deer?”
“I’m sick,” Piper said to Ailey. “I think I need to go to the hospital.”
“Fuck,” Ailey said.
“It was huge,” Elizabeth said. “It was right there.”
May crouched down again, squinting into the woods. She asked Ailey, “How long would it take us to get down to the car?”
“Four hours. At normal speed.”
Elizabeth said, “If that was a deer then I’m Mother fucking Teresa. It was a moose. At least. But, like, a starving one.”
Ailey and May looked up at the sky. Already the anemic light came slanted from the west.
“Guys,” Elizabeth said. “Did you see its horns? Antlers. Like it had huge fucking trees on its—”
“Shut up for a second,” Ailey said. “Piper’s really sick.”
“Yeah,” Elizabeth said, “But—okay. But did none of you see the… thing, though?”
“It was a deer,” May said flatly. Elizabeth scowled at her.
They huddled around the ashes of the previous night’s fire to confer. It was too close to dark, the route too steep. “It’s better if we wait till morning,” Ailey said. She’d taken over the administration of Piper’s illness, and had moved her sleeping bag in next to the sick girl, relegating May to Elizabeth’s tent. May had not complained. “And maybe you’ll feel better with some sleep, Piper.”
From her sleeping bag in the zipped-open tent Piper grunted, too miserable to respond.
May panicked awake in the dark. For disorienting seconds she wasn’t sure why she was cold, nor why the world was so slippery and unstable. And she wasn’t sure why she had woken, except that it was urgent.
When it happened again the scream was dangerously close to May’s ear. It was more of a yell, low-pitched and open-voweled; not the helpless keen of something lost but assertive, purposeful.
“It’s back,” Elizabeth bellowed. “It’s here, what the fuck!” And then there was a slick weight on top of May, and an elbow found her gut and shoved out a yelp.
“What the fuck!” Elizabeth said again, almost in May’s face. Her sleeping bag thrashed. A flashlight infused the tent with light from outside, and for a moment May saw Elizabeth’s face, frightened and pallid. Trapped, May tried to wiggle her sleeping bag away from the other girl.
“What is it?” Ailey called, nearby. “What is it?” There was the sound of a zipper in the quiet, river-washed dark.
Knees, weight on May’s stomach pressing out her breath. She would be bruised in the morning. The tent zipper tore open and freed Elizabeth. The tent rocked. May struggled out of her bag and felt for her flashlight.
“What is it?” Ailey repeated over Elizabeth’s fuck fuck fuck. Her flashlight bobbed and shuddered and then made loose, frantic sweeps. “Elizabeth, what?”
“It was here,” she said. “The thing, the… the deer. The moose.”
“Elizabeth.”
May crawled out of the tent, flashlight on, and floundered with her boots. “What’s going on?”
“It was here,” Elizabeth repeated. She whipped the flashlight’s beam in a circle—she must have wrenched it away from Ailey—illuminating the stark columns of tree trunks and the quivering arms of lower branches. “It was there. Right there.”
Ailey spoke quietly. “There’s nothing there now.”
“The deer?” May said. Her flashlight beam joined the sweep, but what were they looking for? “Girl, you’re freaking out. You stepped all over me.”
“If it’s a deer, it won’t hurt us,” Ailey said. “Even if it’s a moose. You scared it away.” She took Elizabeth’s shoulders in her hands. “It’s okay,” she said, “you’re fine.”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “No, it’s not—it was…” She panted. “You don’t know.”
None of them wanted to go back to their tents, so they started another fire. Ailey checked on Piper and then the three of them sat, cross-legged, in the glow.
“It wasn’t a dream,” Elizabeth said, “because I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep last night either, and I wasn’t sleeping now.”
“I was,” May muttered.
“I saw it.”
“How?” Ailey said. “From inside your tent?”
“No,” Elizabeth turned, scanning the circle of light cast by the fire. “It was the outline. The shadow.”
“Hon,” Ailey said, “it’s dark. You need light for a shadow.”
“I know!” Elizabeth snapped. “I don’t know why I could see it. I just could. I wasn’t dreaming!”
May crossed her arms and leaned them against her knees, hands stuffed in her armpits. Her skull felt hollow. She was so tired she didn’t care what was going on, if Elizabeth was crazy from stress and sleep deprivation or if there was another explanation.
“Okay, you couldn’t sleep.” Ailey sounded like she was persuading an animal out from hiding. “I wasn’t sleeping, either.”
Elizabeth looked over both shoulders at the dark balusters of the forest holding up the night. “Did you hear those noises?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Snapping. Animal sounds.”
Ailey shook her head. “All I heard was the river. But we are in the woods.”
Elizabeth groaned and dropped her head into her palms. “That’s not what I mean.”
Piper couldn’t keep water down the next morning. She would only get up to stagger into the bushes, where May could hear her retching. Pale and disinterested, she didn’t complain and rarely moved. She was like a creature gone into hibernation, conserving herself against pain.
Ailey was In Charge again, having been certified—whatever that meant—in wilderness first aid. May listened to her inside the sick tent, quietly harassing Piper to try to drink. More whispering, rustling, and then Ailey ducked out to join them. Ailey sank to the ground next to restless Elizabeth, who sat with her back to the fire. They both looked as tired as May felt, though May was the only one who had gone back to sleep. Eventually. “I think maybe it’s appendicitis,” Ailey whispered, conspiratorial. “Or really terrible food poisoning. She can’t walk, though. It’s bad.”
“I’m not staying here another night,” Elizabeth said.
Ailey held up a hand. “Shh,” she said, “I don’t want Piper to worry.”