Near the Bone(10)

He seemed to realize then what he was saying and whom he was saying it to. He stood, thrust the candle back into her hand and said, “Come on.”

“But why are we going farther in?” Mattie asked before she could stop herself. She cringed away as he leaned toward her.

“Because I said so. You listen to me now or you know what will happen.” His tone was all cold fury. He marched ahead and she followed, because she did know what would happen if she didn’t follow.

He’s angry because he explained too much. He’s angry because now I know that what he’s really afraid of is people. He doesn’t care about the creature in the woods or what it might do. He just doesn’t want anyone else to come looking for it and find us.

(No. Not us. Me. He doesn’t want anyone to find me.)

Before Mattie could explore that idea further, the stink, which she’d grown somewhat accustomed to, became abruptly unbearable. Then her boot found something round and slippery and she flew forward, crashing onto her elbows. The candles slipped from her hands and rolled away, their meager light winking out.

“Clumsy idiot,” William said. She heard him fumbling in his pockets for another candle and matches.

The darkness was too close, pressing all around her, making it impossible to breathe. There was something under her, several somethings, things that poked at her at odd angles and clacked together like beads.

Bones. The word streaked across her brain like a panicky firefly. She scrambled back and away, swiping desperately at the front of her coat to make sure nothing had stuck.

William struck the match and for a moment all she saw was his face illuminated by the lit match head. Then the candlewick caught. William lifted the candle high, and Mattie shrank away from what the light showed.

They were in a large chamber, the ceiling several feet higher than the passage, and stacked all around the walls were piles of bones. The bones were enough to send Mattie fleeing but she didn’t dare, as William went closer with the candle, muttering, “What in God’s name?”

She saw then that the parts were sorted—skulls in one place, ribs in another, leg bones next to that and so on. They were from all kinds of animals, large and small—Mattie recognized deer and elk and mountain lion, and also chipmunk and squirrel and fox and coyote.

“It’s not natural,” William said. Mattie heard a quaver in his voice that had never been there before. She wondered if he was even aware of it. He seemed completely fixated on the bones. “No animal acts like this. No bear acts like this. But if it’s not a bear, what can it be?”

Mattie inched away from the chamber as far as she dared. She wanted to flee into the passage, to run back down the mountain until she was back in her own cabin, where there were still things to fear but these were things she knew and could understand. She didn’t understand this. She didn’t understand an animal that kept the bones of its victims.

“Let’s leave, William. Let’s go before it comes back.”

He ignored her, pacing around the chamber, inspecting each bone stack. When he reached the far side of the room, his head jerked back, as if in shock.

“Found out why it smells so bad in here. Come look.”

Mattie did not want to look. She wanted to leave the cave, not head in deeper, but she knew an order when she heard one.

She shuffled slowly forward, her heart in her teeth. We need to leave, we need to get out of this terrible place, it’s not natural, it’s not normal, the creature is going to return at any moment and kill us and our skulls and ribs will be sorted with all the rest.

“Look,” William insisted.

Mattie covered the scarf over her mouth and nose with her mittened hand. The reek was unbearable as she peered around William. A moment later she gasped and stumbled back.

It was a pile of organs, hearts and intestines, again in different sizes and from different creatures, all in various states of decay.

“Don’t you dare faint,” William snapped as Mattie swayed on the spot, her hand clutching his shoulder so she wouldn’t fall.

“I can’t breathe in here,” she said. “Please, William, please.”

He turned away, clearly uninterested in her distress and intent on his investigation.

“Please,” she whispered, or maybe she only thought it because William didn’t even twitch.

What would he do if I ran? If I just went to the cave mouth he would be angry, but maybe not too angry, especially if he saw I wasn’t trying to run from him, just the cave. He couldn’t be too angry, could he?

No, he could be very angry about it. Mattie knew that.

Still, she wanted to be as far from the rotting organs and eerie piles of bones as possible, even if it meant leaving the circle of light provided by William’s candle. Mattie backed away carefully until she was at the chamber entrance again. The darkness swallowed her up, squeezed tight around her ribs.

“Please, please,” she whispered. “Please let’s leave this terrible place, let’s just go.”

Then she heard it. The strange cry they had heard in the woods the day before—a furious roar that was nothing at all like a bear.





CHAPTER THREE



It was far off still—not on the slope yet, not about to enter the cave, but it would very soon. Mattie knew that for certain.

It would come home with its kill and find them in its cave, like Goldilocks sleeping in the little bear’s bed, except they wouldn’t be able to escape like the small girl in the story. They’d be trapped.