AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She backs up fast and tries to retreat to the path, but she gets turned around and ends up back at the snowy patch. Or is thisanothersnowy patch? Withmorewolf prints?
Deep breaths as she calms her racing heart. She’s fine. She can’t be more than a half mile from town. She just needs to find—
There! She spots a clear path through the undergrowth and sets out on it, walking resolutely back to town. She’s fine, just fine. A bit of an adventure, that’s all.
When her watch says thirty minutes have passed, she starts peering ahead for signs of the town. Then she remembers she’s not going to see any at this hour. There are strict light rules past sundown. You can use a penlight to get from building to building, but indoor lights are only allowed if the blackout blinds are drawn.
She keeps going. Ten minutes pass. Then twenty.
Did she miss the town? No, the path goes straight to it.
Is this definitely the path?
It has to be, doesn’t it?
She looks around. The path does seem narrower than she remembered, with branches poking her as she walks. But it has to be the one. She just isn’t there yet.
Penny takes ten more steps. Then something crackles behind her. She wheels to see a figure stepping onto the path, a dark shadow against the night.
“Thank God,” she says with a small laugh. “I thought I heard something in here, and I was only going to take a peek, and I wandered off the path.”
The figure doesn’t move.
“I went farther than I thought,” she says. “Can I head back with you?”
The figure snorts, and it’s an odd noise, one that has her squinting. The shadow moves, and she catches sight of flicking animal ears… two feet above her own head.
Penny falls back with a yelp. Her foot catches on a root and twists, and then she’s falling for real, the ground flying up as she crashes onto her back.
I am dead.
That’s all she can think. A grizzly found her, and now she’s dead.
The creature snorts again, and she looks up as the moon peeks out just enough for her to see the animal. It’s not on two legs. It’s on four. Four impossibly long legs, like a giraffe’s. The head looks like a horse’s. Then she catches sight of massive thick antlers.
Moose.
A memory flashes. A magazine photo of a majestic moose grazing in a twilit bog. That’s the one animal she wanted to see up here. A moose. Now she is seeing one, and holy shit, she had no idea how big it would be.
If she’d spotted it through a car window, she’d have gazed in wonder and awe. Seeing it standing a few feet from her—while she’s flat on her back—is nothing short of terrifying. It might not be a grizzly, but one wrong move, one moment of fear and panic, and those massive hooves will trample her to a pulp.
Penny slides backward as she rises. The moose only watches. She keeps backing up. When it snorts and shakes its antlers, she turns and runs. Runs blindly, even as an inner voice screams that she’s overreacting, it’s a moose for god’s sake. A giantdeer.
She doesn’t care. She runs until she is certain it’s not charging after her. Then she stops to catch her breath, looks around, and realizes she’s left the path far behind.
Penny squares her shoulders and heads back the way she came. Back toward the path. But after a few strides, she hits a solid wall of trees. This isn’t the way she came.
She’s lost. She’s completely—
Calm down. Look around. Get your bearings.
The moon has slid free of its cloud cover. Use that as her guide. Where was the moon before? Uh, overhead?
Wait, there’s moss on the trees. That only grows on the south side, right? Or is it the north? Is that even true? She vaguely recalls some online trivia saying it wasn’t.
Breathe deeply. Gather her thoughts. There has to be something she remembers seeing. Mountains. Of course. There are mountains to the west of the town, which makes the sun set earlier than it usually does, but leaves spectacular sunsets that had her itching for her camera.
She looks up… and sees trees. Pines rocket into the night sky and block any mountains she might see behind them.
