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Phil lurched backward as something wrenched him off his sneakers. I swung around with a shout to see the hidebehind tugging on the hood of Phil’s Lions hoodie. Phil, more than slightly inebriated, went rag doll.

“Get off him!” I bellowed into the darkness. Red eyes flew to me as my flashlight hit the cryptid in his horrifying face. Hairless head, scarlet eyes, sharp rows of teeth, all housed in a skinny, slick-looking skin the color of night. Long claws rent the hood, leaving it in shreds as Phil now seemed to grasp what was happening to him. Mostly. He spun slightly, fumbled his footing, and went down to one knee as the hidebehind kept pulling. “Let him have it!” I shouted as I ran at them while struggling to pop the cork in the bottle of baijiu. It came free just as Phil lifted his arms over his head while falling to his ass. The hoodie pulled free. The creature spun to me as its initial prey had somehow shed its cotton-poly blend skin. I lifted the bottle, took a swig, and then spit the liquor into the cryptid’s face. Then, out of the blue, a ghost arrived with a roar and an ax. Henry took a mighty swing as the hidebehind pawed at its gruesome face. Glad for the help, I bolted at Phil still trying to tug his tee back down. The ax went through the monster cleanly. Sadly, spectral weapons don’t carry much of a punch here on the living side of the veil. Still, he had tried. The monster sped off into the woods, howling like a scalded demon. I yanked Phil’s T-shirt over his back. He threw nervous looks around the area, his gaze one of terror and confusion.

“I think that sort of sobered me up a little,” Phil panted, eyes wide in the now-crossed beams of flashlight and camera. “Holy shit…minge.” He snorted softly. Okay, so not quite sober yet. “Thing hates booze. Shame we didn’t have the proper ID to buy some.”

“Yeah, I think we’d have needed a case, not just a single bottle of sorghum spirits.” I got to my feet and helped Phil to stand. He was wobbly but upright. “Did it hurt you?”

“No, I learned how to escape that kind of hold when I wrestled in high school. Oh man! My new team baseball hoodie. Baseball team hoodie. Whatever! That fucker.” He stomped over to where his hoodie lay on the road, lifted it up, and sighed as only a drunken guy who had nearly been made into meatloaf could sigh. “Damn it. Now I’ll have to pay for another one. We only get one free. Fuck you, Dad, and fuck you, Hider!” Phil roared to the heavens and staggered around, trying to get his torn hoodie back over his head. I finally had to help him out. “Stupid sleeves.” He blinked at me. “You’re so pretty.”

“Thanks, babe. Let’s proceed into the camp. Find a cabin that’s sound. Maybe hole up for the rest of the night.” Phil nodded. “We should go back-to-back. I’ll lead.”

“I love it when you lead,” Phil replied softly.

“I know, baby.” I gave his scruffy cheek a pat before we made our way under the arch, me in the front, Phil behind me, one arm linked while the other made sweeping motions with our lights. Henry moved ahead with his ax, the soft blue glow of his spectral form sort of soothing. Soothing for a medium, I guess. We weren’t facing this night totally alone, anyway. I thought of asking Henry if there were more FIAs nearby but decided to stay quiet. We needed our ears more than I needed to find out about other lost loggers, or gods forbid, kids. Henry would linger nearby, I was sure. Moving cautiously, we made our way into a large round area, once probably free of trees but now filled with skinny saplings and tall weeds, which housed a large stone fire pit. Mossy logs sat around the pit.

“I wish I had a little more to drink right now,” Phil whispered as we crept past the fire pit, always scanning the surrounding area with our lights. I hoped the senator felt he was getting his money’s worth out of this damn job.

“Are you filming?” I asked just as my sight landed on a log cabin with an upside-down number one on the front door. The sides seemed solid. The windows long ago boarded up. We’d check it out, and if it was sound, crash until dawn.

“Yeah. Everything is content. That’s what Roxie says.” Phil stubbed his toe on something. Rock, root, who knows. He bumbled forward. I managed to keep him from faceplanting but just. His weight jerked on an already tender shoulder. “Sorry. My feet are not constipating with me.”

“Feet are like that at times,” I replied in a whisper as we made our way as quietly as we could to the door of cabin one. It creaked open, the sound making me wince. The crickets and spring peepers went quiet for a second or two. I whirled around, tipping Phil to the side and into the door as I whipped my light in a wide arc. Nothing. Phil snickered. A limb snapped to my right. Heart thundering in my chest, I pushed Phil further inside and slammed the door shut. Something big hit it on the other side. Inhuman sounds like a dog with lungs filled with pus. I shoved my shoulder into the door, grimacing as the cryptid clawed at the old wooden doorway.

“Phil, come help me!” I shouted while bracing my feet against the dusty plank floor. He arrived, placed his shoulder beside mine, and began grunting. “Hold tight.” I reached up frantically, hoping to find a bar to drop down but only located a barrel bolt. Slamming it into the catch plate, I eased away from the door, pulling Phil with me, light firmly on the portal that was being battered from the outside. “I hope that holds him off.”

“We should spit sour gum on the step,” Phil stated.

“Good call. Soon as he leaves, we’ll ring the door.” I’d need a little time to read over the books I’d grabbed during my library stop. Surely something in one of the old tomes would have information on how to capture and dispatch a cryptid. In the next breath, the attack on the door ceased and picked up at one of the windows. Feral, guttural wet noises leeched into the cabin. I tugged Phil into the center of the room, swinging my flashlight across several sets of bunk beds, a few empty footlockers, and a fireplace. Dust and droppings coated the floors and mattresses. Dampness permeated the cabin. The smell of mouse urine mixed with clammy, stale air. The hidebehind went from window to window, clawing, snuffling, snarling. And then it fell silent. Pulse thundering, I stayed next to Phil. His proximity made me feel safer. A crack outside, a limb snapping by the sound, and then scuttling on the roof. Ragged claws on weathered shingles. We watched as if we could see through the roof, following its progress to the flue. The sound of the monster breathing into the chimney made my skin crawl. It went on for several minutes, then once more, silence enveloped us.

“It’s too big to get down the chimney,” I whispered to Phil.

“He don’t have Santa magic,” Phil replied softly and padded over to peek up the chimney. “Ugh, its slurping snot noises are gross.”

I stood my ground for at least five minutes. Nothing could be heard other than the soft chewing of a mouse somewhere, the call of an owl, and the crickets picking up their song.

“I think it might have gone away,” I cautiously said before turning to look at Phil, who nodded, then decided it was time to sit. His ass met the top of a dark wooden footlocker. He panned the camera around the room, touching on me, then took it in before turning it on himself. “There’s a monster outside. I know you don’t care, Dad. You didn’t when I was young and they were under my bed, and you probably don’t now. Maybe you want this thing to kill me and suck out my marrow because I’m a queer disappointment but fuck you for bringing Arch into this mess.” He looked at me. “Guess I told him.” He snapped the camera off.

“Guess you did,” I replied as I allowed myself the first long, deep breath I’d taken in what felt like years. It was time to regroup, eat some aspirin, and see if I could get my boyfriend sobered up enough to help devise a plan.

“Minge.” Phil giggled.

Maybe we’d move the sobering up to the front of the need-to-do list.

Chapter Seven

The longest hour in the history of hours crept past.

Every second seemed like twelve as we sat there in that damp cabin surrounded by mouse droppings and a silent logger while a horrid beast clambered over the roof, then dropped to the ground, then leaped back to the roof, over and over, testing the boards and shingles for any weakness by the sound. Periodically it would sniff at the flue, knocking shards of black creosote or bits of old bird nests tumbling down to the charred remains of a long-ago fire.

Phil, at least, seemed to be less twisted up about the monster. He was rooting through the footlockers, kneeling in front of the last one, his upper half obscured as he dug about for who knew what. He was still lit up like a Christmas tree despite him saying he’d sobered up earlier. Fortunately, my lover was a timid drunk. I took a moment to admire his ass as he bent over the old wooden toy box. If I were going to die here, I might as well go out with a recent memory of Phil Kestrel’s glorious trunk.

Phil kept switching from sad whining sounds to perky camping songs at the drop of a hat. The campfire songs were preferable to his melancholy bursts. I knew he was hurting. A child never really totally got over being hurt by their parents. Sure, they might move on, deal with the disappointment and pain over the years, and even find peace with the past, but deep down, where that little girl or boy resided in the heart, the hurt lingered.

Allowing him to work out his family issues in his own way, I sat in the middle of the room—the farthest from the windows, door, and fireplace just in case the cryptid managed to wrench a board free or shimmy down the chimney like the old, animated Grinch. If only the monster were here to steal our toys…

“Arch, I found something,” Phil called as he knee-walked from a set of webby bunk beds to me. I looked up from a book by Elspeth about monsters and lovers to watch him wobble left and right, his usually stellar balance shot to hell. With a soft snort when he knocked over the two cans of cola I’d dug out of our equipment bag, he then flumped down beside me to present an old army truck to me. Green plastic with a white star on the door, it contained an equally old toy soldier. Whoever had crammed that poor guy behind the wheel had not been gentle. His tiny green head was cocked off at a terrible angle. “One time…are you doing homework? Man, I should be doing work. I’m going to fail Asian studies. I’ll flunk out and lose my athletic scholarship and will have to sleep under a front porch like an old naked raccoon.”

He slumped into my side, head dumped on my shoulder, and he sighed dramatically. “Now I feel sad. The truck had cheered me up, but now I feel sad.”