Page 87 of Mazywood

Finally, he stared down at the snow. He remembered the strange swishing pattern that had intrigued him from his first visit to his grandmother’s lodge… and there it was! A much larger version of the zigzagging ruts appeared near the stalled car and traveled to the front gate and beyond. It was as if the creature he had glimpsed in Mazelle’s window had been immature, a runt, and now he had met its mother. Or it was all grown up. Or there was a pack of them.

From where he was kneeling beside the RAV, Johnny saw that the snow had preserved his size-twelve footprints running on the road to chase Tasha. Imani and Sharise also had left twin footprints alongside the creature’s trail, sometimes crossing it. Those touching trails made him imagine a clash between the creature and his children, but there was no blood.

Get help, they’d said.

Johnny felt his back pocket, where he usually kept his cell phone. It was still there, the screen webbed with new cracks. The screen’s light glowed on when he triggered the facial recognition, and his breath caught with hope. His battery was nearly full. But instead of the SOS he’d seen at the gas station in McCloud, the space for the signal bars was a blank line. Dead.

And the RAV was a lost cause, in need of a tow. The Jeep might start up, but could he risk that twenty-minute drive? Did they have that long?

Yelling with resolve, Johnny pulled himself back to his feet by tugging on the RAV’s rear bumper. Both of his knees screamed at him, banged up and frigid, his jeans now damp from the snow. What he needed was his rifle, but Mazelle’s old Winchester wasn’t in sight. He considered searching for it, but he felt sure that his daughters had taken it, especially Imani.

Johnny patted his lower zippered jacket pocket and was relieved to feel the box of .30-30 rifle rounds zippered inside. He had only fired once, so the rifle might have up to four rounds left, if it had been fully loaded. Uncle Ricky had told him he had five shots, but he’d had to eject the cartridge each time. Would Sharise or Imani know how to reload before firing again? Imani had asked for hunting lessons, but he had avoided that conversation once they’d arrived at the lodge. After everything that had happened—the mess in the kitchen, the thing tracking him outside that forced them to sleep huddled in the living room—why hadn’t it dawned on him to teach them everything he knew about the gun?

He didn’t have time to get help. He was their help.

When his vision blurred again, Johnny tugged the bandage across his forehead down to cover his right eye, a makeshift patch. There. Much better. No more cycling in and out of white blurriness. If he had been thinking more clearly, Johnny might have found his duffel bag and replaced his missing contact lens. Or considered that a helicopter and experienced search and rescue might find Sharise and Imani faster than he could no matter how long his drive to town. Instead, Johnny’s thoughts were solely anchored to the trail.

The snow was displaced where he had fallen. He saw the tracks from Sharise and Imani dragging him into the lodge with the blanket, which had made a deeper indentation beside their footprints. (That quick thinking probably had saved his life, he realized. And under so much duress? If he weren’t so shaken, Johnny would have been full of nothing but pride.)

But their trail ended at the front porch.

Instead of going to the porch, Johnny picked up the trail of the beast he had been tracking for nearly fifty years, mostly in his nightmares. These ruts diverted from his daughters’ footprints after the driveway, swishing directly toward the ski trail instead of the porch. He recognized this monster’s tracks as clearly as he had when he was thirteen.

Tasha, he reminded himself. These erratic swishes were Tasha’s trail.

He expected to see blood, but not a single spray or drop stained the snow. (Not yet.) Johnny gritted his teeth to fend off his most despairing thoughts, because despair turned his muscles to sand. He rushed to the top of the ski run, where his daughters’ footprints reappeared. They had come back outside. And then…

Three sets of lines were carved into the strip of snow below: the monster’s erratic path and the more elegant swoops of his daughters’ snowboards.

“You went after her,” he said, voice flat with awe. Sharise’s note had told him their plan, and the evidence of their pursuit both uplifted and terrified him. “You fucking went after her.”

His daughters had pursued the monster that took their mother. Now it was his turn—

“Hey,” a man’s voice said behind him. Johnny turned around and saw Uncle Ricky sitting on Mazelle’s kitchen porch, his joint dangling from his fingers. Maybe he had never left.

“Go away!” Johnny said with fresh panic. He didn’t have a chance in hell of finding his daughters if he was out of his goddamn mind.

“You see all that snow? Might be as high as a couple feet. It’s national forest out there. How the hell you gonna walk in that? Go in the garage and get some gear, city boy.”

City boy. Johnny had hated when Uncle Ricky called him that, but how could he deny it? Still, it was better than being called old man, which was more apt because Johnny already felt every one of his sixty years in his sore joints.

“Better find some snowshoes in there,” Uncle Ricky said. “Boots too.”

“I don’t have time for all that!” Johnny said.

“You want your toes to freeze off? Those girls will need to rescue you.”

With a yell of frustration, Johnny trudged back toward the garage door beside the generator, which was still running with a gentle burr. He slipped so badly on the icy carpet of snow in the yard that he nearly lost his shaky balance.

“Told you,” Uncle Ricky said as Johnny passed him, and drew another long hit.

The light was already on in the garage. The girls had been here. Their snowboards and boots were gone. Apparently, they hadn’t needed Uncle Ricky to remind them to equip themselves. Johnny scanned the room for any other gear he could use. He remembered seeing a pair of snowshoes hanging on the garage wall before he hired Hollman, but the garage walls were bare except for shelves of neatly laid tools. Where was the snow gear? In his frustration, Johnny swept wrenches from the counter, clanking them to the floor.

A knife in a faded black leather sheath fell near his foot in the tangle. Johnny unsheathed the seven-inch knife, which was stained red with rust, or blood, across its blade. He had seen this knife on Uncle Ricky’s belt as a kid, the sheath black to match his favorite cowboy hat. Back then, this knife had looked more like a sword. In his hands now, it felt painfully small. He would have to be close enough to the monster to smell its breath.

But with the Winchester gone, this was the best weapon in sight. Johnny shoved the sheathed knife into his jacket pocket opposite of the one where he’d stored the shells, since he wasn’t wearing a belt. The pocket only zipped up partway, but the knife felt secure enough.

Johnny finally spotted a tall, two-door wooden supply cabinet near the garage door behind him, teasing him in plain sight. He’d passed it two or three times on this trip and never looked inside. He expected the cabinet doors to be locked, but they weren’t—they parted to reveal a treasure trove of winter gear. A pair of skis. Snowshoes. Two pairs of snow boots. Ski poles. All of it was picture-perfect and ready for his lodge’s imaginary guests.