Page 148 of Mazywood

“Stay behind me,” Mom said, nearly crushing Imani against the wall with her weight. Mom was pushing herself as far from the Beast as she could. Why hadn’t she listened when Mom said to stop talking to it? Had she triggered some kind of hunting response?

“I’m sorry,” Imani said. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”

And then she did know, a revelation that cleaved her in two.

Someone was coming. Someone had invaded its nest.

Imani’s flashlight beam’s white light was all that was left with them in the nook. Beast was gone, racing away in a motion she had barely seen from the corner of her eye, like the halo after a flashbulb.

Imani and her mother looked at each other, mirrored distress. Mom knew too. They should have told Beast everything while they had the chance. Even if it couldn’t truly understand them, maybe they could have explained enough to matter.

“Johnny! Sharise! Watch out!” Mom screamed, and more pebbles fell from above.

Imani grabbed her backpack, where she knew she had a knife. Not a big one—but at least it was sharp. This time, she remembered to throw in one of the water bottles too. She slung her backpack over one arm, turning to run.

“Imani!” Mom called with such urgency that she stopped cold. Mom looked like a ghost hunched against the rear cavern wall, draped in the remains of Mazelle Washington’s life.

“Mom, I have to—”

“Take this with you.” Mom held out her sharpened stick, the only thing she could offer. Her red-rimmed eyes commanded her to listen. “It’s not your friend,” she said. “It’s an animal. A killer, Imani. Do you hear me? Don’t forget that for a second.”

Imani took the spear, which looked sharper now that she might have to wield it herself. She had fantasized about killing Beast with the rifle and the ski pole, but now the thought of hurting this remarkable, mysterious creature twisted her stomach. The elation she’d felt when she believed they were communicating (Maybe in their heads!) soured to wretched grief.

Tears blurred Imani’s vision as she followed her light, racing to save her family.

And, just maybe, to try to save Beast.

Thirty-Eight

JOHNNY WRAPPED HIS RIGHT ARM around the jagged boulder above him and clung the way he would if he were drowning, panting for breath. The top of the cliff still loomed ten feet above him, but he had found a snowy shelf large enough to support him. He hadn’t been able to see the shelf until his last crawl upward, when it had appeared like a wish fulfilled. (Thank you, God.)

“Almost there, Daddy!” Sharise called from below. Too far below.

Johnny didn’t have the breath to answer. His legs swung when he released his footholds to try to lift himself up, momentarily loosening his grip, and in his white sheet of panic he was sure he felt himself falling thirty feet down. But he now instinctively knew how to plant his sole against the volcanic rock, and he pushed past the complaints of his weary calf muscles to hoist his legs and torso onto the ledge, displacing a shower of snow in his wake.

Shit. Shit. Shit. He had done it. He wasn’t dead and broken at Sharise’s feet at the base of the cliff. The dizziness he had staved off during the climb flared with his sudden motion to lie on his back, the gray sky careening above. The back of his head throbbed. He shifted when the rifle dug into his shoulder blade, reminding him to unstrap it and hold it ready. He wasn’t here to rest.

After a few more pants to clear his dizziness, Johnny sat up, patting the rock shelf to make sure it wouldn’t crumble under his weight. Mishaps during his climb had taught him that it was probably brittle, with a tendency to break away. He glanced at the formations behind him, but there was still no sign of a cave entrance, at least from where he sat.

“Dad, are you okay?” Sharise called.

“I’m good!” he called back. “I need to be quiet now. Go on back to the tree.”

“Do you see where it lives?” Sharise whisper-shouted. “What if you have to go higher?”

The idea was horrifying, but Sharise was right. Uncle Ricky wasn’t visible to guide him anymore, but Johnny was almost directly below where his visage had appeared. So why couldn’t he see the entrance to the monster’s lair?

When he looked behind him, he spotted the tracks, a dead giveaway. Snow skewed from side to side in the familiar pattern, stopping at a boulder that looked flush against the cliffside. Had the thing only climbed higher from here?

But no. As Johnny crawled on all fours on the ledge to follow the tracks, he found the passageway dug into the rock beyond the boulder. At first glance, it could be a shadow, as if the boulder were a bookcase concealing a library passage. The gap was as wide as the boulder that shrouded it.

His doubts dissolved when a lighter flicked on from the maw, near the mouth. He was about to scream Imani’s name when he saw Uncle Ricky’s face in the orange glow as he leaned close to light another hand-rolled joint identical to the one he had smoked while he was driving Johnny to Bear Creek Lodge from the airport. (He’d planned to report that to his mother, before he had so many other testimonies.) Of course he was a stoner even in death.

If only it could have been Imani—a sign of life instead of stubborn evidence of death. Johnny’s bitter disappointment tore at his throat, but he tried to swallow it down. Uncle Ricky’s spirit guiding him had saved his life more than once. Maybe he could save them all.

“Thanks,” Johnny whispered, but the light, and Uncle Ricky, were gone. Still, he added, “I forgive you. You didn’t know.” And his throat’s contraction relaxed. His breathing steadied. He couldn’t carry useless rage with him into this cavern.

And he wasn’t talking to Uncle Ricky anymore. He was talking to himself. Already, he wondered if he had been talking to himself all day. (Just like you wondered if that little creature in Mazelle’s window was real. Like that?)