Chapter Seventeen #3
“How did a bear even get in here?” Sharise said, pulling on her hoodie. The kitchen was so frigid from the door standing open that they could see their breath. “Who left the door open?”
“It wasn’t me!” Imani said, defensive. She looked at her dad as if to be sure he believed her.
“I know it wasn’t you,” Johnny said. “It was probably me. I grabbed some firewood outside after dinner and I must not have locked the door. Maybe I didn’t even close it all the way. Sorry, guys. If there’s food around, bears will try to get to it.”
But, he noted silently, the burger buns in the package on the counter were untouched.
The bags of chips on the stove had been disturbed, but seemed untouched otherwise.
He didn’t see any signs that the visitor had eaten their food, which made his thoughts trip back to Goldilocks: Who’s been sleeping in my bed?
“Really, Dad?” Sharise said.
“I’m sorry, everybody,” he said. “This one’s on me.”
Everyone groaned, but Johnny barely heard their complaints because his mind was filing through what he’d seen when he came out of the bedroom.
As he got close to the kitchen, in the faint stove light underneath the swinging doors…
the scant shadow of something bulky had moved across the floor with surprising fluidity.
Not walking—more like gliding. The shadowy movement had stopped Johnny in his tracks, and he’d stood frozen in the hallway while he wrestled with identifying what he’d seen. It had to be a bear, he told himself.
When he’d shouted, “Hey, bear!” he’d heard it bump against a chair before he walked through the kitchen’s swinging doors. But by the time he shined his flashlight toward the noise, all he caught was the back door trembling after something flung it aside to flee into the night.
Just like when he was thirteen, it was gone before he could see it.
While Tasha, Imani, and Sharise chided him for leaving it unlocked, Johnny stood at the kitchen door and stared past the curtains at the snow, which was flurrying so hard now that a white void lay beyond the porch steps.
The weak porch light only illuminated the closest clumps driving down.
In Johnny’s imagination, the snow animated as a narrow snout, tail, and claws—similar to the creature he thought he’d seen when he was younger, but big enough to cast the shadow he’d glimpsed moving across the kitchen. So much bigger.
Johnny’s heart clogged his throat, making it hard to catch a good breath.
His palms clasping the rifle too tightly were clammy and cold.
He tried to dismiss his fear as adrenaline, but everything inside of him screamed that he needed to convince his family to pack up and leave.
It wouldn’t be hard after an encounter with wildlife.
But even if he wanted to risk driving at night, he didn’t dare drive in such heavy snow.
Visibility would be shit. Worse than shit.
“Do you see it?” Johnny finally realized that Tasha had asked him a question. Probably two or three times.
Johnny yanked the window’s curtain closed and turned around with what he hoped was a smile. “Just snow out there. It’s gone.”
The three of them studied him with scrutiny. Now that they had finished their nervous joking, Sharise looked scared, hugging herself.
“Let’s just all go back to bed…” Johnny said, although he knew he wouldn’t be getting any more sleep.
He would sit up in the kitchen the rest of the night to see if it—whatever it was—might come back.
To see how it had gotten inside. For the first time, he related to the characters in his Frat House movies who kept quiet about phenomena they were sole witnesses to: He didn’t want to turn his own delusion to panic.
There was no point in confessing that it might not have been a bear, especially if he didn’t have any suggestions about what it was.
The stress of returning to Bear Creek Lodge might have caused him to hallucinate, and he didn’t want to drag his family into his personal breakdown.
Tonight was hard enough on them already.
“Dad…” Sharise began, uncertain. “I need to tell you about something we saw outside…” Johnny saw his daughter’s lips moving and heard her words, but her mouth and voice looked out of sync as a memory surged: Uncle Ricky, do any animals hunt under the snow?
Imani slapped Sharise’s shoulder with the back of her hand. “Hey.”
“What are you talking about?” Tasha said. “What did you see?”
Before Sharise could go on, the kitchen lights flickered out and spat back on with a loud crackle and hum.
They all looked up as if they could diagnose whatever had caused the light to waver.
The long fluorescent bulbs were more yellow than white.
Dimming. As they watched, the bulbs flickered off and on again.
The snow was coming down so hard that it pattered the rooftop.
Damn it to hell. They might lose power in the storm.
“You said this place has a generator, right?” Tasha said. “Because I think—”
The kitchen lights died. Darkness fell upon the house.