The wind from the open window must have ruffled the tarp. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d imagined things in the back of her car. The way the glass of the hatchback slanted, when streetlights played over it, often gave the illusion of something rushing forward from the backseat.
Madeline lowered the tarp over the tire. Mucus rattled in her lungs, and she coughed for several long minutes until her throat was sore. Leaning over, she spat up long strings of black, ropy phlegm. She wiped her mouth on her burned sleeve and looked around.
All of a sudden the road seemed very empty, the shadows deeper, each tiny sound louder. She glanced off the road into the darkened forest, then back to the asphalt itself, scanning up and down the desolate highway. The only sound was the idling engine, huge and cacophonous in the quiet.
Quickly she tucked the rest of the tarp in, slammed the hatchback, and ran to the driver’s door. Wrenching it open quickly, she gave one last look around the car and got in.
Gripping the wheel, she pressed on the accelerator and flew back onto the road, speeding back toward Lake McDonald and the cabin.
“Noah!” Madeline cried, running to the cabin’s door. She rummaged around in her jeans pocket and found the key, which she’d forgotten to leave behind. Unlocking the door, she thrust it open. It banged against the wall. “Noah!”
A muffled stir brought her into the bedroom. “Madeline?” Noah said sleepily.
She came into the darkened room and felt her way slowly to the bed. Cool cotton sheets touched her hands, and she sat down on the edge of the bed.
Noah sat up and turned on the light. “What’s wrong?” he started. “What in the world happened? Your face!” He brought his hand up, stroked her face and came away with sooty fingers. “And your clothes!”
She looked down. Her clothes were covered in soot and bits of dry grass. Black smudges covered the sheets were she had touched them.
“Did he come back?”
“No, well, yes… but listen. I want to help you. I can help you, tell you where he’s going to be next. Like you said. Anticipate his next move.”
Noah sat up straighter, taking her in, waking up more. “I don’t know what to say… I thought you didn’t want that.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
For a moment she was still. “A brush with death.”
“What? Are you all right?”
“I’ve never felt better,” she sighed. “I feel like I finally know what I’m supposed to do, and for once I’m not scared. I see the advantage he has over everyone he’s killed and is going to kill. He can be anyone he wants to be, know what they know. The advantages he has are countless: anonymity, the ability to change forms, to dispose of evidence without a trace. He’s almost unstoppable. Until now. I can figure out where he’s going next, and we can cut him off when he gets there.”
Noah stared at her, mouth open. He blinked several times, unable to speak. Finally he worked his mouth, and sound came out. “Yes.”
Madeline grinned. “Yes.” Her body felt light and filled with energy, exuberant and excited.
“Yes!” he shouted.
“Yes!”
Scrambling to his knees, he grabbed her tightly, wrapping his arms around her and practically crushing the air out of her lungs.
“This is it, Madeline,” he said. “I can feel it. We have the advantage. For once, we will be the hunters. We’ll close in and destroy him, once and for all.”
Noah’s Jeep climbed the pitted dirt road in lurches and jostles, and Madeline had to grip the armrest tightly just to stay in her seat. The road climbed steeply through dense pine forest. Through breaks in the trees, she caught views of the mountains beyond.
They’d started out on the smooth, paved North Fork Road, which ran along outside the western boundary of the park. The North Fork eventually turned to gravel, and soon they turned off onto a small, dirt road with only a fire number for a name.
Last night she’d told Noah of the forest fire and Steve’s death, hoping Noah would tell her that fire could kill the creature. But he had only shaken his head. She wanted to report Steve’s death, but Noah said it would be dangerous to investigating officers while the creature was still in the area, and that she should wait until it moved on. He also suggested she wait to report the four men who had attacked her for the same reason. She guessed he was right but grimly wondered how long this list would get by the time she did indeed return home. If she ever returned home, other than in a closed casket to hide her partially eaten body.
They had phoned in the fire, though, on an anonymous tip, but it had already been spotted, and fire vehicles had been dispatched. The dispatcher told them the fire was under control.
She guessed they’d find Steve was “missing.” She felt really sad about him, blaming herself for getting him involved. Maybe Noah was right that night when they got down off the mountain. Maybe she shouldn’t have involved anyone else.
The road ahead lay in utter disrepair and looked like it was used only twice a year, if even that much. “How much farther?” she asked as she left her seat and almost hit her head on the ceiling and then on the passenger window frame.
The air was still incredibly hot. Stifling heat filled in the cab of the Jeep as they crawled upward, far too slowly for a breeze to really get going. Madeline could feel that the sky wanted to rain and alleviate the heat, and that when it did, a terrific thunderstorm was likely. But for now there were only a few tiny white clouds in the otherwise bright blue sky.
“Another four miles, I think.”
Madeline’s mouth fell open. “Four miles!” Four miles on the highway or a paved street was one thing. But four miles on this road could take-
“The rest of our lives.”
“What?”
“Estimated driving time.”
The truck dived into a pothole again, sending her over Noah’s way. The seat belt cinched painfully against her collarbone. “Why,” she asked, as her voice reverberated with the rough motion, “do… they… make… Jeep… shocks… so… tight?”
“I… don’t… know,” reverberated Noah as they hit a stretch of washboard road that she was convinced had last been traveled by a bulldozer carrying two tons of cement and a brontosaurus with a weight problem. The grooved tracks were so deep that the Jeep seemed ready to bounce them right into an alternate reality.
Madeline looked ahead with fear. Would rifling through the creature’s things would be like when she touched the Sickle Moon Killer’s knife? Would it haunt her for years to come? The images awaiting her could be worse than those. Suddenly she wanted to turn back more than anything in the world.
It was noon by the time they arrived. The forest was absolutely silent. If she strained her ears, Madeline could hear the muffled fall of pine needles dropping to the soft forest bed beneath. Sunlight streamed through the branches to the forest floor below, illuminating wildflowers and small fairylike rings of mushrooms.
She climbed from the Jeep and took in the cabin. It was tiny, couldn’t be more than four rooms. It lay at the end of the long and winding road they’d traveled, and the nearest house they’d passed lay two miles back down the road.
The creature had wanted its privacy.
She hoped Noah was right, that the creature would have no occasion to be here now, no person to devour and digest. No need to build a nest.
“It’s isolated here,” Noah said after he shut the Jeep door.
“Quiet, too.”
Both grew silent as they stood there.
“Too quiet,” she added.