Chapter Forty
Forty
DAD WRAPPED HIS ARM AROUND Imani’s shoulders on the ledge while the two U.S.
Forest Service rangers ventured inside the cavern’s gap to try to find signs of the animal that had attacked them.
They had all agreed to simply say that the creature was big and they didn’t know what it was.
Once the rangers saw for themselves, they could sound crazy in their own reports.
But the two rangers—one a man, one a very young woman—came back out almost as soon as they went inside the cavern.
“Blocked,” the man reported. “No one’s getting in there anytime soon.”
“You all are really lucky to be alive,” the woman said.
Imani could tell that they thought something wasn’t right about the story.
They hadn’t found a sign of what Dad called the “bone room” either.
Maybe the rangers thought their family had gone rock climbing and gotten into trouble, since there were no teeth marks or bites to prove the existence of a giant animal.
Mom’s injury, which could have happened in a fall, apparently looked so bad that the older ranger looked as sick as Dad when he unwrapped her foot.
Imani noticed how the ranger told Dad that they would rush her to the hospital to try to save her foot, and her stomach cramped again.
Dad looked so worried about Mom’s foot that he didn’t mention the mauled body parts under the Jeep at Bear Creek Lodge. Not yet, anyway.
Because Mom’s cliff rescue was so dramatic and dangerous with ropes to hoist her and the medic into the hovering helicopter to take her to the hospital, Dad agreed to allow the uniformed forest rangers to lead him and Imani down from the cliff using ropes.
Imani would have thought that rappelling down rocks with ropes was fun on any other day, but she only wanted to curl up somewhere and sleep.
She envied her sister for riding in the helicopter with Mom, but the rangers’ snowmobiles were waiting for them on the ground, so at least she didn’t have to hike back in her stiff boots like Sharise.
Clinging to the male ranger on the back of his snowmobile was almost fun despite the cold and snow flying in her face.
Almost. The snowmobile squirmed and nearly fishtailed once under their combined weight, and Imani thought she might die after all.
But the rest of the ride was smooth. All she had to worry about after that was whether the doctors could save Mom’s foot.
That question was a shadow hanging over the day.
Before Imani knew it, Bear Creek Lodge was in sight at the top of its bluff.
It didn’t seem possible that the trek that had consumed so much of her day was so close to where she had begun.
The rangers could only take them as far as the Steps of Death, so she and Dad said their thank-yous and walked the rest of the way back in weary silence.
Snow had covered all the tracks from earlier that day, so no raw vestiges surprised Imani as she trudged up the abysmal steps. The ski trail looked fresh and inviting, and she wished she hadn’t left her snowboard behind. Maybe she would want to come back here one day.
Imani and her father didn’t speak after they got inside the lodge either, where the generator was still running and the place felt as warm as a blanket.
They entered through the side kitchen door, where Imani couldn’t help noting the mess on the checkered floor, including the spilled flour, where a trail’s streak made her stomach tighten with sadness.
That and the second package of bottled water still sitting undisturbed on the counter.
Just because she could, Imani grabbed a two-liter Coke bottle and chugged it halfway empty. Then she grabbed handfuls of potato chips and stuffed her cheeks until they bulged.
When she walked into the hallway, she stared at the portrait of Mazelle Washington on the wall—not her awful movie posters, but the full-color painting of her in her red robe.
Mom did kind of look like her, Imani mused.
But now she knew she would never find the answers to all her questions.
She would have to make up her own story about what had happened today.
Dad had opened his overnight bag and found fresh, dry clothes to change into by the time Imani made it into the living room.
Everyone except Imani had left their luggage behind when he’d said they had to leave in a hurry early that morning, so her clothes were in the RAV.
Hell, no. She didn’t feel like changing, or doing anything, much less returning to the scene of their nightmare.
Her body rang with fatigue, and she could still hear the tumultuous echoes from the cavern. The explosion of the rifle.
After she took off her boots, Imani picked up Mom’s plum-colored jacket and hugged it to her while she lay down on the sofa bed to close her eyes. Maybe she could teleport herself back to her home bedroom if she tried hard enough. It might be possible to do anything.
“Shit,” Dad said while he packed his phone charger into his luggage. “I don’t know if anyone’s coming to take us to the hospital. Sharise probably thinks someone else is doing it.”
Ordinary problems were overtaking their day, replacing cliffs and helicopters. Imani noticed that she thought of him as Dad when she felt safe and in control; he was Daddy only when she was scared.
She must have dozed off. She woke up to the sound of the front door closing hard. Dad had been outside and returned with her duffel bag.
“I don’t think the cops have even been here yet,” he said. “Sharise took the Jeep, but it’s still… a mess out there. Anyway, I have to get a tow truck here for the rental.” Dad was talking to himself. He groaned with frustration. “Can one thing be easy today?”
“What about the Caddy?” Imani mumbled, half asleep. Dad stared at her as if she were speaking gibberish. “In the garage? There’s a red Cadillac under the tarp. Sharise and I saw it.”
Dad’s face lit up. “Hollman billed me for his work on that car,” he said. “Did he really get that thing working?” Dad had an extra Cadillac and didn’t know. They must be rich, all right.
Imani dozed again while Dad rushed into the garage.
When she closed her eyes, her body sank into the mattress as if she were floating, but she jerked awake with a gasp from a nightmare she couldn’t remember, except for snow flying in her face.
She was sure it would be dark when she woke, but the sun was brighter through the windows than it had been all day.
Or had she slept straight through to tomorrow?
A chorus of trumpets sounded from the front of the lodge.
Imani sat up, bleary-eyed, and stared out at the bright red vintage Cadillac through the window.
It was a convertible, but Dad had the aged white top up.
He waved at her from the driver’s seat. Imani wondered again why cars had looked like boats back in the day.
How had people fit two cars in their garages?
But finally—they were going home.
Dad locked up the lodge and turned off the generator.
He dutifully left a note on the door for the sheriff, in case someone came to investigate what had been hidden under the Jeep.
Then Imani joined him in Mazelle Washington’s Cadillac.
The pale leather seat felt as hard as tree bark, crackling when she sat down.
She could imagine that it might have looked glorious once, but now the car was a relic.
Except for the paint job, everything that had been shiny was faded.
But the engine worked, only sputtering from time to time.
Dad’s hands tremored slightly before he rested them on the huge steering wheel.
He must be more tired than she was, she remembered.
Imani closed her eyes when they drove past the spot where the Jeep had been and where she knew the RAV was still trapped.
She didn’t want to see any body parts or frozen blood.
She had seen enough carnage to last the rest of her life.
From habit, she turned on the radio and punched all the silver buttons before she tried turning the knobs for fine-tuning, but all that blared from the speakers was static. One station played snippets of an old jazz orchestra, fading in and out. She turned the radio off.
Dad looked left and right and then left again before he turned from the lodge’s private road back toward the pine-lined road that had brought them to Bear Creek Lodge.
The tires slid a bit as he turned, but the view was pretty without driving snow.
Imani remembered it would be Christmas soon.
She had forgotten all about it. She should help Mom with the decorations.
“What are you going to tell the sheriff?” she asked. It was as if they’d had an unspoken rule not to talk about any of it, but she was tired of the silence.
“Good question,” Dad said. “I think we just stick to what we said: We don’t know what it was. It’s buried in the cavern. You said you got footage, right? We’ll show them. After we see your mom, we’ll send them to look at what was under the Jeep. One thing at a time.”
Imani slipped her hand inside her backpack to make sure she’d packed her GoPro, relieved when her fingers touched the camera.
Her battery was dead, but once she charged it again, she had footage of Beast (Scout?) that might change their lives.
But people might accuse her of faking the footage or using AI.
Maybe there was no such thing as proof anymore.
And anyway, she had no proof of how its eyes had stared at her.
Or how it had listened to her. Or how it had brought her and Mom water bottles when they were the most scared.
She couldn’t prove that it had seemed to understand everything she said.
She couldn’t prove that it had never planned to hurt Daddy, or any of them.
Anyone who watched the video only would see a monster.
Grief swamped Imani, fueled by her exhaustion.
The biggest miracle of her life was something no one else but her might understand, something she could never share even with her family—just like her great-grandmother.
Maybe that was a part of what legacy meant too.
But at a cost.
“Do you think Mom’s foot will be okay?” Imani asked.
Dad’s sigh didn’t sound hopeful. “We’ll see, sweetie.”
No false assurances. No sugarcoating. No matter what, their family was changed now.
The buffed Cadillac in bright red was the only vehicle on the two-lane road toward Route 89 between the stately pines and roadside snowdrifts. The only other living thing in sight was the small brown dog sitting in the road in their lane—almost as if it were waiting for them.
“Dad, stop,” Imani said, since Dad wasn’t slowing down. He hadn’t seen the dog.
When Dad braked, the tires skidded a few inches forward before stopping. They were barely ten feet from the dog in the road, but it didn’t move. The dog stared at Imani through the windshield. Not at Dad—at her.
Dad honked. The Caddy’s old-fashioned horn sounded like a goose. Still, the dog stared.
Something about the dog felt familiar, although Imani was sure she had never seen it before. The dog wasn’t big, but it wasn’t small. She noticed that it wasn’t wearing a collar.
“Dad, it’s in the middle of nowhere. It must be lost.”
“Imani…” Dad sighed. “Please. Let’s just get to the hospital.”
But Imani’s car door seemed to open by itself before she jumped out of the car. Impulse control. She ran closer to the dog, her sneakers squishing snow melting from the sun.
“Watch out—it might have rabies!” Dad called.
But the dog’s tail wagged as Imani approached. Its stubby tail looked chopped in half.
Then the dog did something remarkable: It stood on two legs and twirled as if it were dancing, circling once. Twice. Three times. The dog fell back to all fours and barked merrily.
“Dad!” Imani said. “Did you see that? It’s trained!”
“Then I’m sure its owner is around here somewhere.”
Dad opened his car door, but he didn’t climb out. Imani thought maybe he wanted to be ready to intervene in case the dog turned mean. But this dog wasn’t mean. It stared at Imani with brown eyes so full of love that the grief she had felt since the cavern receded.
“Imani, don’t—”
Imani was already petting the dog, scratching behind its ears.
When she moved her palm away, her skin was coated with brown dust. This dog wasn’t brown, it was only dirty.
The clean fur ringing its dark eyes was white.
Imani smelled her palm, and her head pulled back.
This dog smelled like the stink from the cavern.
Still, it was so cute! After their cat, Django, ran away, Imani had said she didn’t want another cat. Her parents had promised her she could have a dog, since dogs never wanted to let their owners out of sight. All this dog needed was a bath.
“Sit,” Imani said, and the dog sat down, eyes hanging on hers for approval. “Roll over.” When the dog rolled over in the wet snow, some of the grime on its coat stained the snow with ash. It shook itself dry.
“Bark,” Imani said.
The dog barked, tail wagging. It was as if he understood everything she said!
Not only would this dog be perfect to hang out with, but her videos with him would go viral.
She had seen videos with hundreds of thousands of likes for less than what this dog had done already.
Imani looked back at her father to make sure he was seeing how well trained the dog was too.
“Dad?”
“Okay, I’m impressed. We’ll take him for now,” he said. “Just get back in the car.”
Imani didn’t have to coax the dog to follow her; he ran ahead as if he already knew the car.
As if he understood that Dad had granted his permission.
When Imani opened her passenger door, the dog jumped into the back seat and circled, excited.
Imani closed her door and climbed into the massive back seat with him.
The dog settled with his chin resting across Imani’s lap. He was tired too, releasing a doggy sigh that seemed to say, At last. The dog looked well fed, but Imani wondered how long he had been wandering in the woods by himself. Where had he come from?
“Seat belt,” Dad reminded Imani before he started to pull away.
While Imani clicked her seat belt, which latched like a seat belt on an airplane, she stroked the dog’s head, not caring how dirty she got.
Dad might think they were just going to drive the dog into town and look for a shelter, but Imani already knew that she would never let anyone take this dog away from her.
And Dog was no kind of name for her new best friend.
Imani leaned close to the dog’s ear to whisper where only he could hear.
“I think I’ll call you Scout.”
FADE TO BLACK