Chapter 4
ANGIE
Ihuddle over my laptop with the heater sputtering in protest beside me, the tent walls snapping like sails in the wind. My fingers ache from cold and nerves, but I don’t stop scrubbing back through the footage. Each time I pause, sharpen, and lean in, my breath fogs the screen like a second veil.
There. That frame again. The one that refuses to behave like it should. The pixels bleed, the motion blur stretches wrong, and yet I can’t deny the shape that lingers—half-man, half-bear, caught in an impossible silhouette.
I mutter into the recorder clipped to my collar, voice hushed though no one is here to hear me.
“Enhancing contrast at thirty percent. Grain correction applied. And still, ladies and gentlemen, we have… something that absolutely shouldn’t exist.” My laugh comes thin, strained. “I’m officially spooking myself.”
The radio at my elbow crackles, and Gordon’s voice blares in like a drill sergeant. “Angie, you got something yet? Investors are breathing down my neck, and I’m about two hours away from putting a bullet in my own foot just to have drama worth reporting.”
I roll my eyes so hard it nearly hurts. “Gordon, put down the gun, because you’re not going to need theatrics when I send this clip. But—and hear me out before you blow your gasket—I’m not sending it yet.”
Silence follows, heavy enough that I can picture him pinching the bridge of his nose, red in the face, pacing around some warm office while I sit here with frost in my eyelashes.
Then comes the explosion. “Angie. What do you mean you’re not sending it?
Do you want this project to tank? Do you want your dogs repossessed?
Do you want to explain to your father why you’re crawling back broke with nothing to show for six months of his guilt money? ”
I grip the edge of the laptop tighter, my knuckles whitening in the glow.
“I mean,” I say carefully, because if I shout he’ll only shout louder, “that I need to know what this is before I let it loose. I’m not about to upload shaky footage that could be a bear, could be a man in a costume, could be—hell, could be some glitch—just so you can plaster it with clickbait headlines. I want proof, Gordon. Real proof.”
He groans loud enough to rattle the speakers. “You’re impossible. Proof doesn’t sell, Angie, spectacle sells. You have spectacle. Send it.”
“No.” My voice cuts sharper than I expect. “Not yet. You’ll get something. Just not tonight.”
Before he can chew me out further, I flick the radio off and flop backward onto my cot. The canvas creaks under me. My curls spread across the blanket, damp from melted snow, and I stare at the low ceiling while my heart drums unevenly.
The footage still burns behind my eyes. That shape, caught mid-motion, eyes gleaming with something not human, not animal either. Haunted, like it carried storms inside. I hug my recorder closer and mutter, “There’s a story here. And I’m going to find it before Gordon sells it for clickbait.”
A shadow darkens the tent flap, and I bolt upright, heart leaping. A voice rasps from outside, old and thick with accent. “Miss, your dogs are restless. They smell something. Best you tie them closer tonight.”
I unzip the flap to find one of the locals—Jari, the fisherman who lent me extra fuel last week. He’s wrapped in layers of fur, his beard stiff with frost, eyes pale as sea ice. The dogs tug at their harnesses behind him, whining low.
“Thanks, Jari,” I say, pulling my coat tighter. “They’re probably just bored of listening to me talk to myself.”
He doesn’t smile. His gaze drifts over my shoulder toward the dim glow of my laptop. “You keep your camera pointed at ice, and only ice. Don’t go chasing shadows.”
I laugh, light and dismissive, though the seriousness in his tone makes my skin prickle. “I’m a documentary filmmaker, not a ghost hunter. Shadows don’t pay bills.”
Still he doesn’t smile. Instead, he leans closer, voice dropping. “There is a guardian out here. Silent. Watching. Not man, not beast. The old stories say he keeps balance, but if you cross him, the ice will take you. Remember that, girl. Some things are better left unfilmed.”
The way he says it makes my throat dry. I force another laugh anyway, waving him off. “I promise, if I see a seven-foot-tall guardian stomping around, I’ll keep my lens pointed respectfully at the horizon.”
He narrows his eyes, then turns and disappears into the storm, leaving the words to stick like thorns in my mind.
Back inside, I sink into the cot, tug the blanket around my shoulders, and stare at the laptop screen again. The frozen frame glows faintly, those blurred eyes boring into me, fierce and mournful all at once.
My chest tightens. It isn’t just a spectacle. It isn’t just something to sell. There’s a story here, bigger than Gordon’s contracts or Jari’s warnings, and I can feel it humming through my veins like the cold itself.
I press the recorder to my lips and whisper, “I’m not deleting you. Not tonight, not tomorrow. I’ll keep filming until I know the truth. Whoever you are, whatever you are, you’re not staying a blur.”
The wind howls, the heater clicks, and my words vanish into the silence, but my gut knots with certainty.
I have seen something real.
And I am not letting it go.