Page 96 of Mazywood

“Imani—” Sharise began, resigned more than panicked. She sounded ready to give up.

“Keep going!” Imani said. “I’m gonna shoot it!” She heard herself speak before she had made the decision, as soon as she knew to her bones that they couldn’t outrun it.

“Imani, no—!” Sharise yelled, but Imani did what she had always done—what they both knew she would do—and she ignored her older sister. She made a sharp turn around the nearest tree, kicking up snow. Her stop was abrupt and controlled. By now, the muscle memory was so deeply ingrained that her trembling joints didn’t matter.

When Imani raised the gun, her trembling mattered a lot. The sight was shaky. All she could see was the snow—and the place where the snow met white fur—barreling toward her. It was fifteen yards away now, the closest it had come to her since they were in the RAV.

“Watch out! Don’t shoot Mom!” Sharise screamed somewhere behind her.

Had the rifle been this heavy before, or had her muscles shriveled to dust?

As the Beast closed in, it raised itself from a snowy blanket of camouflage to reveal its true size, nearly as wide as a bear, its mouth open with that long crocodile’s snout and teeth like no creature she knew. For a split second, Imani couldn’t help admiring the pure audacity of this Beast’s existence, a creature that had crawled from Hell. Its webbed, bat-like flaps snapped open like a fan—the flaps that had grabbed Mom!

But Mom wasn’t there. Only white fur, veined webbing, terrible teeth and claws.

With a sob, Imani pulled the trigger. Thunder came. The rifle bucked against her shoulder like a grown man’s kick. The gunshot’s explosive sound against her ear was the worst pain of her life. Sharise screamed. Or was it her?

Imani kept praying she had killed the Beast even as she saw tree bark chip away a foot from her target. She had missed! The Beast reared up higher.

Imani pulled the trigger again, but this time it held. Not even a click. She gasped with the realization that she’d forgotten to eject the casing, fumbling to find the lever she had demonstrated to Sharise.

Imani never took her eyes off the Beast, hypnotized by it. It hadn’t come any closer, she realized. Was it afraid of the gun? Did it know what a gun was? She remembered Daddy saying, Bear, bear, bear! in the hallway last night when they thought a bear was their biggest problem.

The Beast seemed to grow taller during this horrifying standoff, body coiling like a cobra, arching high from a mere ten yards away. Sharise screamed again, a helpless witness. She hadn’t run away like Imani told her to, so this Beast would get them both with those teeth if it lunged.

“Get away or I’ll shoot!” Imani shouted, the way gangsters did in those old black-and-white movies Daddy loved. She waved the rifle’s barrel dramatically, and her hand found the lever to eject the casing. The loud clacking sound made the Beast hiss at her in a wave of warm, rotten breath emerging from its open mouth like fog.

Still hissing, the Beast slid backward, unsure. Imani raised the rifle to stare down the sight again, praying she had another shot. This time, bracing for the rifle’s painful gunshot and recoil, she closed her eyes tightly when she pulled the trigger. More awful noise. She didn’t see where the shot went. Her ears buzzed and rang.

But when she opened her eyes again, the Beast was gone.

“Where’d it go?” she asked, whipping her head around. How could it move so fast? Snowfall was everywhere, a medley of white motion, but she couldn’t see the Beast.

“There!” Sharise’s lips said, although Imani couldn’t hear anything except her heart’s forceful hammering. Imani followed Sharise’s pointing finger.

The Beast had changed direction, but Imani saw a snow hump racing uphill, zipping between two tree trunks. Still only ten yards away, but left of her now. She ejected the casing. Reloaded. Tracked the moving hump with the rifle’s sight. Twenty yards. Her arms were steady. She had it. Eyes open and focused this time, Imani fired.

The trigger clicked. The rifle was empty.

Imani’s scream, this time, was raw and primal. She’d had the Beast, and it had gotten away. She had wasted a shot by closing her eyes. And now it was gone, and Mom was gone. Mom was a sock in her pocket. If Imani could have, she would have clawed herself out of her life, out of the world.

“Imani—come on!” Sharise said. “We have to get far away!”

But Imani couldn’t move, except to shiver violently. She couldn’t remember the fearless version of herself who had barely flinched when the Beast had reared to hiss at her, its breath like decomposed meat. And its yellowed teeth, those daggers crowding its monstrous mouth. Webbed arms splaying wide, revealing Mom’s empty tomb.

“Imani!” Sharise grabbed her hand to force her to move. Imani’s fingers were so cold that she barely felt her sister’s touch. “We have to hide!”

Imani threw the useless rifle into the snow. Then she patted her pocket to make sure she could still feel the sock. Mom’s sock. The small lump was there. She pressed her hand against it.

All but their freshest tracks were fading in the snowfall. With that Beast stalking them, they couldn’t follow their tracks back to the lodge. Now the Beast was the only living being who knew exactly where to find them.

Sharise pointed out the sheer gray cliff face at the edge of the pine forest, misty in the snowfall. “What about over there? Maybe there’s caverns. Somewhere we can climb to.”

Imani whispered, “It climbs too. Daddy said it was in the tree. It does whatever it wants.”

Sharise fixed her tear-streaked face to try to look hopeful. “Just because it doesn’t still have Mom—”

“Shut up!” Imani said.