Chapter Twenty-Nine #3
Daddy nodded, enthusiastic. She could see only his profile because of his angle sitting clear of the fire. “Yeah, that’s good. Hand that to me. Aspirin’s better, though. Lemme… look.”
“Where is it?” Sharise said. “You keep watch, Imani.”
“In my backpack. The black case,” Imani said, but she was heartbroken to recall her awful oversight. “Sorry I don’t have any water, Daddy.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t you dare feel bad. You did… great. More than great.”
He reached his glove around to her again to give her hand another squeeze.
“Your fingers must be cold. I saw your glove on the tree. And your note, Sharise. You’ve both been so smart.
” With effort, Daddy shifted his position to reach into his back pocket.
He grunted and handed Imani her glove. She slipped it on her left hand so her trigger finger was unencumbered.
Despite the fire, she could barely feel her fingers.
“Here,” Sharise said. She had found the first aid kit in its black zippered case, and she handed it to their father. He unzipped it in a hurry.
“I can’t believe you found us, Daddy,” Imani said.
“I had some help… from Uncle Ricky,” Daddy murmured, rifling through the first aid kit.
The sisters shot each other another look. His uncle Ricky? All of Dad’s family was dead. Was he delirious? This time, Sharise squeezed Imani’s hand almost hard enough to hurt.
“Just try to warm up from the fire, Dad,” Sharise said. “You shouldn’t try to talk.”
“Wow… there’s so much in here…” Dad said. He sounded more overwhelmed than impressed. Maybe he couldn’t think clearly.
“Let me look, Dad,” Sharise said, so he handed the case back to her, hand trembling.
She raced through the packed items. “Burn gel? Blister strips? Jesus, Imani, where’d you get this stuff?”
“I saved up my birthday money,” Imani said. “It’s a survival first aid kit, not like in the drugstore. Look in the packet with the medicines. I think it’s the black one.”
Imani wanted to look over Sharise’s shoulder to help her search, but she had to keep her eye on the snow, ready to put her finger on the trigger instead of tapping across the guard.
Now that Daddy had appeared, she expected to see other shapes in the flurries.
The wind was picking up, making their fire burn brighter.
And faster. She hoped they wouldn’t run out of wood before Daddy got warm enough.
“I see it!” Sharise said. “What about ibuprofen, Dad?”
“Aspirin,” Daddy said. “See if there’s aspirin.”
“But isn’t it all for pain?” Sharise said. “Why does it have to be aspirin?”
“Not… pain,” Daddy said. “It’s a… blood thinner.”
Sharise’s eyes hung on Imani’s. It sounded like more gibberish to Imani, but now Sharise looked scared.
His heart, she mouthed to Imani. Why were they telling so much truth?
Imani usually hated being treated like a baby, but she needed some sugarcoating now.
It was bad enough that they didn’t know where Mom was—but now Daddy might die in front of them?
“Yes—found aspirin!” Sharise said, overly cheerful. Before she gave it to her father, she ripped open the white packet as if she thought he might not have the strength to tear the paper.
“Just a… precaution,” Dad said, and shook the pills from the packet into his mouth.
Imani wished she had water to give him so badly that her eyes stung.
“Yeah, this is good,” Daddy said, already sounding stronger, unless it was just an act. “Fire’s good. I’m gonna warm up a little… and we’ll figure out what to do. ’Kay?”
“Don’t go to sleep,” Imani said.
Daddy huffed out a chuckle. “Yeah… so I’ve learned,” he said. But Imani didn’t see why it was funny. Nothing might seem funny again.
Sharise noticed the rousing fire burning through their meager twigs too. “I’ll grab the rest of the wood in back,” she said. “Maybe I can find something else.”
There wasn’t much left to find. The larger branches were already burning. Before, the fire was mostly intended to be a deterrent against the Beast, but now it might be keeping their father alive. Either way, they would be in trouble without it.
“I can go outside and look for more wood,” Imani said, although it would be hard to find dry wood in the snow. She had seen that on TV too.
“No,” Daddy said with so much firmness that he sounded like himself again. “No one leaves. Stay in there until we have a plan.”
“Maybe that ski pole will burn,” Sharise said.
“No way—we’ll need that,” Daddy said. “It’s a weapon too.”
So someone had said it. Daddy knew their fighting was not over. They had not talked about the Beast except when it was smaller, like a faraway problem. They had not talked about Mom. They had all been sugarcoating their situation in silence.
“Daddy… what is that thing?” Imani asked.
Daddy shook his head. “No fucking idea,” he said. “Pardon my French. It’s like one of those videos… where people adopt pets from the wild… and then they get big?”
“It was your grandmother’s pet?”
“I think so,” Dad said. “She fed it. My uncle Ricky knew—he just wouldn’t admit it. I’ve never seen anything… like it. I came to this tree to shoot it… when I was your age, Imani. But I chickened out. Told myself it wasn’t real anyway. And that was it. Straight to… denial. It was a family secret.”
“Are you sure it’s the same one?” Sharise said. “Maybe there’s more.”
Imani already had shared her own opinion on this, but she waited to see if Daddy agreed.
“I can’t explain it, but I don’t think there’s more,” he said.
“I’ve never seen more than one set of tracks.
And if there were more… it just seems like someone would have seen them by now.
Somehow, no one has seen this one… except my grandmother. And my uncle.”
“No one who survived,” Imani said. That brought such a long silence that she was almost sorry she’d said it. But it was the truth, wasn’t it?
“My uncle didn’t survive,” Daddy said. “I think he went out looking for it after my grandmother died… and it killed him. No one found his body.”
Like Mom, Imani thought despite herself.
She reached into her jacket pocket and brought out the sock, which was still damp. “We found this on a branch, Daddy.” She reached past the fire to give him Mom’s sock.
Daddy sat up straight as he stared at the sock. It wasn’t her imagination; he was getting stronger. Maybe the fire was healing him already. “Where’d you find this?”
“On a bush,” Imani said.
“Near a big snowdrift,” Sharise said. “We don’t know where, but Imani has footage.”
Imani remembered her GoPro and tugged it from her head strap again. But this time, the screen was black when she looked. “My battery’s dead now. But the tracks went past the bush, and she wasn’t there. We looked for her in the snow, Daddy. That’s all we found.”
Daddy stretched out the sock, examining it from every angle.
She wanted to tell him not to open the cuff, but he did—and his cracked, dry lips fell apart.
His cheeks deflated so quickly that his skin might be melting away.
He saw the blood. He bent over with a harsh sound from his throat that sounded like a heart attack, but he was weeping.
Imani had never seen their father cry. Neither had Sharise, from the anguish on her face.
The more she heard her father weeping, and then Sharise joining him, the more Imani felt her emotions drawing further away, as if she were watching them from the mountaintop. Crying had mauled her like a chestburster from Alien. No more crying for her today. Fuck crying.
Instead, she focused on the snow outside, to see if the ground would move again. She imagined how good it would feel to shoot the Beast dead.
Once Johnny could compose himself after seeing what he was sure was Tasha’s blood—his first sign that she had suffered and bled—he gave his daughters a tutorial on the rifle so they would be more sure-handed about reloading and aiming it.
He told them they only had twelve rounds.
When Imani asked how he knew so much about it, he said, “Uncle Ricky taught me.”
He wanted to tell them he thought he’d seen Uncle Ricky’s ghost, but they were worried enough about him.
That would be a story for later. Unlike Mazelle and his mother and uncle, he would not keep important secrets from his daughters because they were inconvenient.
Mazelle’s secrets were destroying them all.
Miraculously, the fire lasted another hour. Between the heat and the emergency blanket, Johnny’s shivering stopped. The fire helped dry his clothes. Except for the grief roiling in him, he felt strong enough to stand again. Strong enough to walk.
The snowfall was thinning, and in a far corner of the gray cloud bank, he saw shafts of sunlight.
This was the time to find his way back to the lodge.
He’d made the trek when he was thirteen, so he could probably do it again.
He would leave the girls in the safety of their shelter and take the rifle to protect himself on the way back.
The Beast’s fear of gunfire might get him to the lodge safely even if he missed.
Johnny had decided that his daughters’ snowboard boots would make it too difficult for them to walk back, since they didn’t have snowshoes.
And even during the periods when they could use their snowboards, their speed would only create separation.
As much as he hated the idea of leaving them—and they would hate it more than he did—he couldn’t fathom endangering them again when the tree was so secure.
Revealing this plan would be the second-hardest thing he had done today, second only to watching Tasha get dragged out of the car.
Johnny took a deep breath and told Imani and Sharise his plan.
“Fuck. That.” Sharise cut him off almost as soon as he’d started.
“Listen to me…” Johnny said. “That snow is too deep to—”
“I don’t care,” Imani said. “We’re going with you! The fire’s almost out.”