Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
ELIAS
April has always been my favorite month out here.
Everything wakes up at once, like the entire forest hits a collective snooze button in March and finally decides it’s ready to exist again.
The meltwater finishes its tantrums. The first tiny wildflowers appear in defiance of the weather.
The wind stops trying to flay my face off every morning.
And I swear the trees get louder.
Not literally—they’re not holding conversations. Probably. But every creak and groan and rustle feels energized now that winter is truly behind us.
Two weeks have passed since the concussion incident, and my head has more or less forgiven me for the trauma.
I still get the occasional throb if I bend too quickly or look up too fast, but I can hike long distances again without feeling like my skull is floating separately from my body.
My research is back on track. My sensors are cooperating.
My trails are familiar again, and for the first time this season, the work feels smooth and satisfying.
The only thing not returning to normal is me.
It’s nothing I can articulate, not even in the privacy of my own head, but the sensation that I’m not alone has intensified rather than faded.
At first, I chalked it up to concussion aftereffects, but a person can’t maintain a two-week hallucination that consistently behaves according to wildlife patterns.
That’s not how hallucinations work. Also, hallucinations do not fix broken railings or repair fallen solar mounts with remarkable precision.
Something has been watching over me.
Not stalking, not hunting, not threatening—just… present.
I still find the occasional footprint by the station. They’re always gone by the time I check again, softened or washed by rain, but the shape is unmistakable. Not a bear. Not a human. Not anything I have ever documented on any of the surveys I’ve participated in.
And every time I find one, my chest tightens with anticipation rather than fear. Which is absurd. Absolutely, wildly absurd.
I should be reporting these sightings. I should be documenting them rigorously. I should be taking a million photos and cataloging soil compression and stride length and analyzing gait patterns.
Instead, I stare at them too long and feel ridiculous things like gratitude and curiosity and… an emotion I am absolutely not going to name.
Today, I have a long hike along the ridge, double-checking the microclimate station that still looks suspiciously well-maintained for a structure battered by three winters.
The air up here is cool and clean, edged with the tang of snow still clinging to the higher peaks.
Patches of old ice linger in the shadows beneath the trees, but most of the trail is soft with thawed earth and last year’s needles.
My boots slide slightly with each step, making that quiet sucking sound of mud letting go.
About halfway between the station and the microclimate pole, the feeling hits me again.
It’s the familiar prickle at the back of my neck, the one that says I’ve moved from being alone to being observed. It feels almost like being added to a list. Part of my brain wants to spin around and demand to see a clipboard.
I stop walking and let my gaze sweep the trees.
Trunks rise around me in ranks, straight and tall, their bark dark with meltwater and streaks of lichen.
The underbrush is still thin this early in the season.
There’s plenty of open sightline between the trunks, which makes the sense of being watched even more unnerving.
I can see everything. I should be able to identify what’s causing this.
A jay squawks from somewhere above me and takes off in a flash of blue. A squirrel rustles through the branches. The wind slides through the upper canopy with a sound like distant waves.
Then, between two cedars up the slope, something moves.
I almost miss it. If my eyes had been focused a bit more to the left, I would have chalked the motion up to wind. Instead, they land directly on it.
A figure stands partly hidden behind one of the trunks.
It’s very tall. That’s the first thing my brain manages to process with any clarity.
Far taller than any hiker I’ve ever met.
Broad through the shoulders. The impression of a massive chest. Fur, maybe, or very heavy clothing, a dark reddish-brown that blends with the bark.
The edges blur as if my eyes can’t quite hold the whole shape at once, but none of that really registers because of the eyes.
They’re the only part of him that snaps into perfect focus.
They’re set deep beneath a heavy brow, bright and aware. They’re not the reflective glare of an animal caught in a flashlight beam. They’re warm and intense, lit from within by a color that makes me think of sap and amber and late sunlight on whiskey.
For a moment, there’s no forest, no trail, no microclimate station, no concussion, no plausible deniability. There’s only that gaze, calm and steady, fixed on me with a kind of quiet concentration.
I should be terrified.
A rational part of my brain whispers that this is it, the moment I should feel every instinct scream at me to run. Instead, I feel strangely settled. My pulse jumps, but not in panic. My body recognizes some other reaction entirely, one that makes my stomach swoop and my chest feel too tight.
We stand this way for one long, suspended second. I don’t move. He doesn’t move. I can’t say how I know the figure is a “he,” but I’m absolutely certain.
My boot shifts on a patch of wet moss. My balance tilts.
The instant I look down to steady myself, eye contact breaks.
My foot slips sideways. I catch myself with a hand on a nearby sapling, breath punching out of me in an inelegant grunt.
My head gives a brief warning throb, like it’s reminding me that concussions still exist and I shouldn’t be making sudden movements.
I straighten as quickly as I dare and look back toward the trees.
The figure’s gone.
The space between the cedars is empty. No towering shape. No flash of fur. No gleam of amber eyes. Only ordinary forest shadow layered between the trunks, all perfectly mundane.
I stand here, heart beating too fast, trying to decide whether I imagined the whole thing. It could have been a trick of the light. It could have been a hiker in dark clothing who moved away while I looked down. It could have been anything.
Except there are no human tracks on the trail ahead of me.
There are no boot prints, no scuffs from trekking poles, no leftover scent of deodorant or synthetic laundry detergent, nothing that suggests another person has passed this way all day.
The only prints belong to me and a scattering of deer, elk, and smaller animals.
I’m alone.
Except I’m not.
I know, with a certainty that makes my nerves tingle, that I’m not.
“That really looked like Bigfoot,” I say under my breath.
As soon as I speak them, like I’ve stepped into someone else’s conspiracy documentary, I slam my mouth shut, just a little ashamed of myself. At the same time, they feel honest in a way that makes my skin prickle.
I don’t know how long I stand here, staring at that empty space, replaying the image of those eyes over and over. Eventually, the wind picks up, and the chill reminds me that standing in one place isn’t going to collect data or answers.
I force myself to keep walking, but from that moment on, every creak and shift in the forest feels charged. The memory of his gaze stays with me all the way to the microclimate station and back, lingering at the edges of my thoughts like a song I can’t stop humming.
By the time I return to the station, I’ve stopped trying to stuff the experience into the box labeled “coincidence” and have upgraded it to “incident that requires at least a partial existential crisis.”
So when I finally step back inside, set down my pack, and wash the dust from my hands, I decide to stop pretending.
Not pretending that creatures of myth and legend exist—I’m not quite ready for that leap—but pretending I’m not losing my grip on what reality feels like.
If something is out there, it’s time to admit it. Even if only to myself.
Which is why I call Milo.
Or at least, that’s the excuse I use as I press his contact name and listen to the dial tone buzz in the quiet of the station.
He picks up on the fourth ring.
“Hey!” he says brightly, sounding winded and half distracted. “Give me a sec—okay, I’m here. Are you okay? Is your head okay? Is your camp okay? Are you okay? Actually, start with that one.”
“I’m fine,” I say, sinking into the little chair beside the table. “Mostly fine. Ninety-five percent fine.”
His sigh is loud enough to be felt through the phone. “Am I supposed to guess which 5 percent is destroyed?”
“Only mildly dented,” I assure him. “Anyway, how are you? Where are you?”
“Wisconsin,” he says. “I’m taking in some hiking trails in Walworth County. You’re lucky you got me with a phone signal. The reception is a nightmare.”
I laugh, the tension in my chest easing. “Sounds about right.”
“So,” he says, and I can almost picture him narrowing his eyes through the phone, “what’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You called me on purpose.”
“I call you sometimes.”
“You call once every three to five business years.”
“That’s exaggerated,” I protest.
“It is absolutely not.”
He’s not wrong, since we reconnected, he’s been a lot better than I have at staying in touch. As his big brother, with shared parents from hell, I really need to do a better job.
I clear my throat. “Okay. Fine. I’m calling because… I wanted to ask you something, and I need you to not make fun of me.”
“Oh no,” he says immediately, sounding gleeful. “What did you do? Did you fall off a log again? Did you lose your pants to a river? Did a raccoon outsmart you?”
“None of those things. Stop listing them.”
“Then what?”