Page 61 of Mazywood

The preserved surge of hope activated Imani enough to join Sharise, her sneakers slipping on ice as she ran.

Dad looked like he was only sleeping, all worry leeched from his cheeks and eyes. But when she slid her hand beneath his head, it came back wet with blood, a smell like hot pennies. It wasn’t enough to puddle, but it was too much. He needed a doctor.

Another distant shriek caught Imani’s ear. Muffled but unmistakable. Imani checked again and saw that the tracks went straight across the lodge’s driveway. Toward the ski trail.

Imani jumped back up. “Did you hear her? It’s Mom. We have to find her!”

Sharise looked up at her with a blank expression nowhere near believing her.

“Didn’t you hear her?” Imani said.

Sharise’s face said No. “We can’t just leave Dad out here. He’ll freeze!”

“Then you stay and try to wake him up—and I’ll go after Mom.”

“What? No.” Sharise stood up, restraining Imani’s arm to keep her from running off. Imani tugged hard, but Sharise held on. “What are you even talking about?”

“Look,” Imani said, pointing at the tracks. “Dad was chasing it. If it doesn’t start snowing and cover up the tracks, we can go straight to her!”

Sharise peered at the serpentine ruts in the snow. Then up at the gray sky.

“Imani… are you sure you heard her?” Sharise said softly. “I haven’t heard anything.”

“Yes! But it’s farther away. We’re wasting time talking about it! If it went down the hill, we can get our snowboards and go down faster. I can do it by myself!”

“Imani, no! Just…” Sharise clawed into her hair, her eyes watering again as she tried to think. Then her eyes widened with an idea. “Wait! I know how we can get Dad back inside. Then we’ll go after Mom—I promise.”

“How?” Imani asked.

“Go get that heavy blanket off our bed. We’ll drag him together.”

“Like a sled!” Imani said, impressed. Sharise wasn’t a Barbra after all! If Imani hadn’t been so focused on listening for Mom, she would have thought of it herself.

She ran to the driveway to go back to the lodge.

The living room was a tribute to a past life, already a distant memory from only fifteen minutes ago. Mom’s jacket lay across a chair where she’d left it. The blankets on the sofa bed were creased from their sleep. The peaceful room made Imani shudder with a sob. How could this have happened? She wanted to curl up on the saggy mattress and will herself back in time.

But her parents needed her. Imani grabbed a thick blanket they had left folded at the foot of their bed. The blanket was black with a red and gray pattern that looked to Imani like interlocking teeth as sharp as the ones on the Monster that had taken her mother.

Clutching the blanket, Imani rushed back outside to the road.

She hoped Dad would be conscious when she got back, but he still hadn’t moved. He looked like every dead body she’d seen on TV or in a movie. They laid the blanket down flat beside him, stretching it to its full size. And then carefully—very carefully, with Sharise cradling his head to prevent further injury—they rolled him onto it. Sharise posed his arms across his chest so they could pull up both sides of the blanket, nearly swaddling him, and began the difficult, tedious process of dragging the blanket’s weight to the lodge.

While she strained alongside her sister, grunting, Imani blinked away tears from the persistent silence around them. She hadn’t heard any sound from Mom in longer than she wanted to ponder. The deer’s head and severed hand were evidence that this Monster would savage her. But then why didn’t it kill her on the road? Why did it drag her away? Where is it taking her? Imani forced herself to hold on to hope. They just had to get to her in time.

Dragging Dad took much longer than Imani wanted, since their shoes didn’t have traction on ice and snow. Their rubber soles slipped with almost every other step, straining their arms when their unreliable legs lagged. Imani felt like she was uprooting her shoulders from their sockets with every drag. Beside her, Sharise started crying again, maybe because she had never heard Mom after the Monster took her. Sharise probably was afraid Dad might die too, that they were orphans already and just didn’t know it. Imani felt herself wanting to cry, but she thought that would just make it harder to pull. And the sooner they got Dad inside, the sooner they could go find Mom. That was all Imani could think about.

When she felt her throat closing or she got dizzy remembering Mom’s kicking legs as the Monster took her, Imani imagined they were only pulling a blanket piled with stones. It wasn’t her father who might be dying. She was not an orphan. She had a family. The closer they got to the lodge, the more Imani could almost see them eating burgers at the dining room table. Her real life was on the other side of this old wooden door with a knocker shaped like a bear’s head, mouth open, fierce. With sharp, sharp teeth. Why hadn’t she noticed it before?

The steps were hardest because they could hear Dad’s body knocking against the wood as they pulled him up. An elbow. A shoulder. Sharise let out a terrible wail when she thought she hit his head on the last step. But then the hardest part was over, and after Imani opened the door, they slid the blanket easily inside and stopped in the foyer, closing the door behind them.

The lodge was warmer than Imani remembered. The generator was still working. Sharise looked around the room, frantic, as if she wanted to find a way to turn back time as much as Imani did. It seemed so plausible here, where they had just been huddling by this door.

“Now we find Mom,” Imani said. “You promised.”

“Just let me think.” Sharise sounded so much like Mom that Imani was compelled to stay quiet. Then Imani remembered the rifle. She and Sharise had left it on the road, and they would need it if they found the Monster. Or if the Monster found them. Dad never had a chance to take her hunting, so Imani hoped they would know how to use it.

“We forgot the gun,” Imani said.