Page 137 of Mazywood

Her light shone toward a mosaic of large and small bones arranged in oddly neat piles as tall as she was against the cavern wall. Empty eye sockets from skulls of different sizes and species stared back at her, a macabre display. One skull crowning the closest pile was obviously human, arranged like the star at the top of a Christmas tree. Animal pelts and ragged human clothing and shoes were woven within the tapestry of bones. The leftovers.

Imani screamed. The echoes mocked her in the caverns.

The Beast chittered in response, a sound that filled the cavern, matching her volume, a regimented tik-tik-tik-tik-tik like rows of rusty scissors snapping slightly out of rhythm, each a hair behind the last. The sound was more horrifying in the confined space.

Imani had nearly forgotten that the Beast was so close. She swung her light toward the sound, and it was half coiled the way it had been when it confronted her in the snow—but its long snout was closed. No threatening teeth. Still, it was raised to her father’s height, its flaps extended as if it might snatch her again.

“Stay back!” Imani said, backing away. “I mean it!”

Something crunched beneath her boot. She didn’t dare swing her light down to look, but it sounded like a small bone cracking from her weight. Bones lined both walls, casting horrific shadows above her in her beam.

Tears slipped from Imani’s eyes. She had been in denial when this thing took her, assuring herself that such a gentle passage meant Mom must be alive. But this wall of bones—this room of bones—was evidence that this creature had been killing animals and people for years, for generations, just like the severed hand her father had found under the Jeep.

Maybe it didn’t kill its meat right away because it liked its meat fresh. Not carrion. Maybe she was just a snack for later, and it had eaten its fill today.

Imani’s flashlight showed her the fuller dimensions of this cavern, which was a dozen feet high and nearly as wide, with narrower passageways in three directions—but only one that promised light. Without thinking, she grabbed her backpack and ran toward the bend where she’d seen faint light. Her running was wild, her boots slipping on rocks—or bones—scattered in her path.

Imani barely heard the swooshing sound that brought the Beast back in front of her, blocking her path. It had moved so fast from behind her that its motion was blurred in the light. A breeze followed, late.

Nothing earthly moved that way.

Imani screamed again, more tears spilling. The word that flew from her throat as she crouched to the cavern floor was pure instinct: “Mommy!”

Through her own panicked breathing and the Beast’s chittering, she heard a faint voice from somewhere behind her: “Imani?”

Imani held her breath, and the world jolted still as she listened to make sure the voice was real and not her deepest wish. “Imani—where are you?” Mom, like her, was crying.

Imani picked up the biggest stone she could find and hurled it at the Beast, her best fastball. It ducked away almost as if it knew what she would do as soon as she thought of it, darting out of her light beam. The stone cracked against an invisible cavern wall. If she had hit a person in the head with that throw, they might be dead.

“Leave me alone!” Imani screamed.

Then she turned to run into the darkness.

Toward her mother.

Thirty-Five

“WHAT HAPPENED?” JOHNNY PANTED WHEN he finally reached the girl crumpled in the snow at the base of the boulders. “Are you hurt? Sharise—what happened? Where’s Imani?”

At first, Sharise couldn’t answer because sobs frayed her voice. She clung to his neck the way she had as a toddler, as if he could lift her up on his shoulders. Johnny wished he could. He longed for those times—any time but this one. Chaotic patterns in the snow beyond the boulders revealed that this had been the site of a catastrophe.

He examined Sharise’s shoulders. Checked her neck. No injuries or blood. Johnny scanned the disturbed snow, expecting a river of crimson. But there was none.

What had happened? And how had this happened so fast? From his distance behind them, he had seen Sharise reach Imani just before Imani had vanished from sight, gone. Sharise had fired the rifle, a sound that had gutted him with the realization that, once again, he was too far away to help their fight. He had been running ever since, barely noticing that one of his snowshoes was half untied, dragging behind him as his boot dove into the deep snow.

“I… I…” Sharise hiccupped, trying to speak. She shook her head back and forth so violently that he heard her neck crack.

Johnny held his older daughter’s cheeks, trying to focus her eyes so he wouldn’t have to slap the hysteria out of her. He hated the part of him that wanted to hit her so he could know. “Sharise, tell me—where’s Imani?”

“It took her!” Sharise wailed.

“It’s okay,” Johnny said despite the way that devil’s lie seared him to his core. While the day spun, a more confident man’s voice emerged from his lips; a man who wasn’t so gutted that he was speechless. “We’ll find her. It took her where?”

Sharise pointed to swishing tracks away from the boulders running parallel to the cliff for a few yards. And then the tracks vanished, leaving nothing behind except the thin fog.

“Where, Sharise?” Johnny’s terror and frustration sounded like rage.

She pointed again—this time up toward the craggy cliff. Probably forty feet high and vertical, with no visible way around it. His stomach clenched staring up at the uneven cliff face.