Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
MILO
I slammed the door shut behind me harder than intended. The bang echoed throughout the empty cabin and bounced off the walls.
I stood there a second longer than necessary, palm flat against the wood as if something might shove back from the other side.
The latch slipped the first time I tried it.
My fingers felt thick, unreliable, like they belonged to someone who’d just sprinted a mile instead of someone who had been standing very, very still.
Shaky hands fumbled the latch again.
“Get it together,” I muttered, and finally, the metal caught.
The cabin smelled like pine cleaner and old wood, tinted with the faint aroma of the coffee I’d made that morning.
Normal smells. Indoor smells. My lungs pulled in a breath that felt too shallow and too fast, and I leaned back against the closed door, waiting for my body to understand that there were walls around me now.
It didn’t.
My pulse was still hammering hard enough to kick my heart into my throat.
My hands vibrated when I unhooked the camera strap from my neck, the motion jerky enough that the lens cap slipped from my fingers and bounced once against the floorboards.
I bent to grab it and nearly cracked my head on the edge of the table.
I hadn’t run.
That realization came with a strange clarity.
I hadn’t run, I hadn’t screamed. I hadn’t done any of the things you’re supposed to do when something the size of a truck steps out of the tree line and looks at you like you’re a variable in an equation.
I’d stood there.
So had he.
The thought tightened something low in my stomach, and I pushed away from the door before anything too wild could take root.
Routine. That’s what I needed.
I set the camera on the table and forced my hands to move slower than they wanted to. Battery out, cable in, laptop open. The familiar hum of the system booting up felt almost absurdly comforting. Technology, menus, and icons were things with predictable outcomes.
The first photo loaded.
Morning light through reeds. Clean, balanced, sharp.
I scrolled until I found a pair of sandhill cranes mid-step. The curve of water reflected the sky. The tree line where the clearing opened seemed wider than it looked from the path.
Then the frame from just before… him.
My breath hitched in my throat.
At first glance, it was nothing—just trees and shadow layered far too densely for detail. But when I zoomed in, something near the edge of the photo didn’t look right.
A vertical shape where there shouldn’t have been.
I zoomed further.
The branches got bigger, the grass filled the frame, and the water didn’t budge. But that shape didn’t change at all. It stayed just as unclear, like it hadn’t been captured properly in the first place.
I sat back slowly.
“Okay,” I murmured again, this time to the empty room.
It wasn’t a hallucination. Hallucinations don’t cast shadows. They don’t bend grass. They don’t make a three-hundred-pound bear rethink her position in the food chain.
I scrolled through the last several days of photos, heart rate climbing again despite myself. Tree line, marsh edge, that narrow rise near the ridge.
Nothing obvious, but now that I knew what I was looking for, I could see the suggestion of something in more than one frame—density where the space should have been open. A fraction darker, a hair taller.
Watching.
I snapped the laptop closed and—like the door—it was harder than intended.
The cabin suddenly felt smaller.
I dragged a hand over my face and crossed to the bathroom sink, twisting the tap on and splashing cold water over my wrists. My reflection in the small mirror above it looked controlled enough—eyes wide, yes, but not unfocused.
This was real, which meant I had a decision to make.
I reached for my phone while I was still deciding what to do next.
No signal.
Of course.
I let out a breath and moved toward the front window, lifting the phone as if the extra height might help…
as if altitude inside a one-room cabin might magically improve reception.
One bar flickered and disappeared. Steeling myself, I grabbed my jacket and returned outside, dusk bringing in cooler air.
The clearing beyond the porch looked ordinary. Quiet—too quiet.
It took a few paces down the gravel drive for one thin bar to hold long enough to try.
If anyone could make sense of this, it was Elias.
The line rang.
Once, twice, three times.
He would pick up, unless he was out in the field or the signal at the station dropped again. Washington had been hit or miss since he got there.
Last time we talked, he’d been halfway up some ridge complaining about wind interference and laughing about it like it wasn’t a problem. Before that, he’d sent me photos—tree lines, tracks, one blurry shot of something he swore was a bobcat. I’d sent him back a meme just to annoy him.
Each thump of my heart tightened something in my chest I hadn’t acknowledged yet.
He should answer.
He’d had a concussion a few weeks back but said he was fine. He sounded fine. Still, my nerves heightened.
Voicemail.
I swallowed hard.
For a second, I considered just hanging up. Then the beep sounded, and the silence on the other end felt heavier than the trees behind me.
“Hey,” I started, shuffling on the gravel, eyes still on the tree line, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. “So this is going to sound insane—”
I stopped.
The word hung there. “Insane.”
Elias would ask questions. That’s what he did. He’d want details—distance, movement, what I saw first, what I felt, what the animal did. He’d try to fit it into something that made sense.
Because once I said it, once I described it, it would stop being a private, contained thing that had happened between me and the forest. It would become a story. A report. Something that needed fixing.
Something that needed leaving.
My gaze drifted past the porch, toward the darkening tree line.
He had stepped between me and the bear.
I exhaled slowly.
“Call me when you get this,” I finished instead, quieter now, and ended the call before I could change my mind.
That bar of service vanished as if it had done its job.
I stood there another second, phone still in my hand, listening to the wind move through the upper branches. It sounded almost like breathing if you didn’t think too hard about it.
And for the first time since I’d arrived, I considered the possibility that going home might be the only rational option.
The thought should have brought relief. Instead, it sat heavily in my chest.
I walked back up the steps and into the cabin, shutting the door carefully this time. The lock clicked into place, thin metal against wood, and I stood there for a moment simply staring at it.
Ridiculous.
If something that size wanted in, the lock wouldn’t matter.
Still, I left it.
I crossed to the table and reopened the laptop, the screen illuminating the room in a pale blue light. My pulse had dropped from a sprint to something closer to manageable, but my mind wouldn’t calm. It kept circling the same questions without landing anywhere useful.
“Large unidentified animal Wisconsin.”
The search results were exactly what I expected: black bears, wolves, the occasional cougar. A handful of blurry “cryptid” articles laid buried beneath ads and amateur blog posts.
I clicked one anyway.
“Beast of Bray Road.”
The article loaded slowly. It was nothing more than grainy photos and second-hand sightings. Tall, bipedal, muscular, seen in rural Wisconsin, mostly at dusk or near isolated stretches of road.
My stomach tightened.
The descriptions weren’t precise enough to be convincing, but they weren’t wildly off either. There was a consistency to the reports that made it harder to roll my eyes and close the tab.
I read three more paragraphs.
Then I shut the browser.
Not because I’d decided it was true, but because I didn’t want the algorithm deciding it for me.
The cabin felt quiet again, too still around the edges.
I leaned back in my chair and stared at the dark window over the sink. My reflection stared back—paler now, more thoughtful.
I didn’t believe in folklore, but I also didn’t believe in things that stepped between me and a bear unless they were real.
Whatever that had been out there hadn’t felt like just a story.
I closed the laptop again, gentler this time, and let my gaze drift toward the duffel near the foot of the bed. I hadn’t fully unpacked when I arrived—just enough to make the place liveable—camera gear on the table, clothes in the dresser. The rest of my clothes were still folded in the duffel.
I paid for two months, and had been here for a week.
Two months of quiet, of uninterrupted light and not having to explain myself to anyone.
The refund policy flashed through my head in practical fragments—partial reimbursement after thirty days, non-refundable cleaning fee.
I’d skimmed it when I booked the place. At the time it had felt like insurance against boredom, not against… this.
I imagined loading the car before sunrise. Gravel crunching under tires as I headed south, back toward Chicago traffic and brick and noise. Back toward my parents’ polite concern if I tried to explain why I’d cut the trip short.
You saw what?
A what?
Victor would suggest stress. Marianne would suggest lack of sleep. They would mean well. They always did.
Mrs. Alvarez would listen differently, but I wasn’t calling her either.
I dragged a hand through my hair and sighed.
If he had wanted to hurt me, he would have.
That part was simple.
He had closed the distance, positioned himself between me and a bear that had every biological right to take offense at my existence.
I hadn’t felt hunted.
I felt evaluated.
The difference settled heavy under my ribs and refused to move.
“He protected me,” I whispered into the cabin air, testing the shape of the words on my lips.
They didn’t feel absurd. They felt accurate.
Something moved outside.
It was a faint sound—subtle, and easy to miss. A single controlled step taken. Then… nothing.
It was quiet enough that I could have second-guessed it. Except, my body had already gone stiff again.
Every hair I had stood on end.
I listened.
Whatever was out there didn’t come closer. It didn’t move around the cabin or toward the porch.
It stayed right where it was.
Present, but distant.
And sitting there, listening, I had the uneasy sense that I wasn’t the only one considering my next move.
I stayed where I was until my lungs remembered how to function again, then I crossed the room to my things.
This wasn’t sustainable.
I couldn’t spend the next seven weeks wondering what moved beyond the treeline every time the wind changed. I couldn’t keep glancing over my shoulder every time I stepped outside with a camera.
It was the sensible decision to make.
I grabbed my duffel from the corner and laid it open on the bed. The zipper whirred loudly in the small space. I packed with methodical care—camera body wrapped in cloth, lenses in their padded sleeves, extra batteries tucked into the side pocket. The bear spray went in last, within easy reach.
I reached for the zipper, then stopped.
My portable hard drive sat on the table where I’d left it.
I crossed back for it and slipped it into the bag, between the lenses where it wouldn’t shift.
That came with me. No question.
The cabin creaked, the temperature dipped, wood expanded. My shoulders tensed anyway. Every sound felt magnified now, every brush of branch against siding amplified by the knowledge that something large was out there.
I set my alarm for five in the morning, then placed my phone face down on the nightstand.
It was early enough to load the car in gray light. Early enough to be back on the highway before the woods fully awoke.
I plugged in my phone and stared at the screen for a moment before locking it.
This decision was rational.
I was leaving.