2
Decide fast, Stephanie. Either way, you’re dead. So what do you want? A long, drawn-out death by hypothermia? Or hopefully, a quick one by an animal once it finds you and rips your…
Yeah, no. No way. I’ll take getting hypothermia.
But just as I made this decision, my teeth were chattering so loud I knew that if the creature was still nearby, it could most definitely hear the click-click sound I was involuntarily making. I shifted a little in my seat, hoping to curl up even tighter, but the movement shifted several rocks I was sitting on, causing them to clatter against each other. I froze, cringing as the sound was much louder in this open space, even above the sound of the water trickling past.
It was then, from behind, that fast-approaching footsteps clattered over the river rocks of the shore, headed straight for me. Screaming, I flailed wildly, jumping up from my hiding place, and ran blindly into the dark, arms waving high over my head. I was so freaked out that I forgot that I couldn’t see shit, and ended up tripping over a fallen log, sprawling with a heavy thud onto the hard, rocky ground. With a deep moan, I curled up again as I sucked in breath after breath. I was so distracted by my pain that for a moment, I forgot that I had been running from something. That is until I heard a small shift of the rock behind me. Sucking in a sharp breath, freezing for a moment in dread, I slowly turned my head to look back.
Standing at the riverside, in exactly the same spot where I’d been hiding, was a person !
I blinked hard. Was it truly human? Oh my God… I was pretty sure it was! I sat up a little, wincing from the pain in my lungs, holding myself as I squinted in the darkness, hating that they were still standing well out of my range of sight.
“Hello?” I called, tentatively.
There was a pause like I had startled them, but then, “Bip, bip!”
It was the same call I’d heard before, the one that accompanied the strange whooping, but it was much gentler now, and higher-pitch. Was it a woman?
“Hi, hello? Please, I’m lost… I was in a-an accident…” I shivered, trying to speak through the clattering of my teeth, but I was so cold at this point I couldn’t even feel my lips. My damp clothes felt like they were frozen to my tiny five-foot frame. I sucked in a deep breath, wincing again as all my aches from today came rushing back, my most recent fall only adding to the tally of physical trials I’d endured on this trip.
The person hummed, then whistled at me, rather like a bird. But the higher tone confirmed that it was a girl. This revelation had me sighing heavily in relief. The last thing I needed was to be alone with a strange man in the forest.
Marcus… Pete… Harris… I shook those thoughts away. I didn’t need to add those dark memories onto a currently already traumatic experience.
I thought she’d say something, anything at this point, but instead, she just slowly moved up the path I’d run on, her walk oddly slouched over and strange. Was she hurt, too? Oh God, how was I going to help another person in this place when I was such a disaster?
The closer she got, the more the physical features and details about her became clear, the light of the moon helping aid me as I studied her.
This woman was a big gal. Like, I’m talking she could give some heavyweight boxers a run for their money. I didn’t know how tall she was, but it was definitely over six feet, higher even, but it was hard to tell by her strange, sloping walk. The bulking size of her shifted until I could finally see that what looked like lumpy muscles were actually furs… furs! Why on earth was she dressed in fur?
Because fur is warm, you bonehead.
I craned my head back to keep her face in my sights, squinting as I tried to make out something about her that confirmed that she was, indeed, human. While I struggled to get a better look at her, she seemed to have no problems studying me. I could tell by the way her head turned one way over my body and up the other. I was still lying on the ground, curled up in a ball, shivering like mad, peering up as I strained to try to make out something about her. As though sensing I was having trouble seeing, she waved a hand in front of my face.
Yes! A hand! Good! Another comforting confirmation that she was human!
Again, she waved her hand closer and closer until it became absolutely clear, and I reached up to take it. Her skin was a lovely golden colour like she sat in the sun often, but it had a looseness to it that reminded me of my mother. Despite the dirt and rough calluses, it was warm and gentle, and the moment I grabbed it, she closed her fingers around mine, enveloping my entire hand completely. Thank God, I might actually have a chance of surviving this!
Relieved, I dropped my head to the ground, hissing when I stupidly let it fall against the stones. I swear, I couldn’t go anywhere without hurting myself in some way.
The scars…
Those were on purpose. They’re different. They’re the reason I hide in my oversized clothing. I quickly push those dark thoughts aside. They were in the past. They don’t matter. None of it matters. I am here now . And I needed to figure out how to save myself.
The moment I let my head sink to the ground, the woman tensed, her grip on my hand tightening ever so slightly. I blinked hard, watching as she looked one way down the river, then up the other. She scanned the trees as if searching for someone, or something. I don’t know what she was looking for. As far as I could tell, there was nothing else around us but trees.
It was then, in the distance, that a hair-raising off-key WHOOP broke the quiet spell of the moment, and I instantly sat up, staring off in the direction it’d come from. The south. I knew that because it was upriver. It was answered by a very distant roar, the sound so far away I had no concern for this terrifying version of this woman’s call. I was pretty sure there was some fight going on, but again, the sounds echoed through the forest, breaking off from the distance between us. It was too hard to tell what exactly was happening. All I could think was that there were more people here.
How was that possible? Wasn’t this place off-limits to the public? How was this woman even here? This whole national park had strict rules about hiking and camping. And this area? It had been completely out of bounds.
The woman who still held my hand, however, was listening intently to the other calls, but something about them made her nervous. I could tell because she tensed up all over, her shadowed face pointed in the same spot through the trees like she could understand everything that was going on, and she didn’t like it.
Slowly, like she was being overly cautious, she bent down to my side, and I was able to get a better look at her face. It was warm, with dark hair that had gone almost completely grey. Her wide-set dark eyes were lined with crows feet. Her lips were smooth and full, her cheekbones high, and she had a friendly look about her that instantly put me at ease. She was lovely. I figured she must be in her mid to late forties, at least a good twenty years older than me. She studied my eyes, moving a finger back and forth before them, which I followed. Was she checking to see if I was concussed? Slowly, she pulled her hand back, finger still up, and I followed it as best I could, but eventually, lost sight of it in the dark.
“I-I can’t see very well,” I explained to her, and pointed to my eyes, shaking my head, “I lost my glasses in the river…”
She cocked her head to the side, listening, but there was no sign that anything I said registered on her face. Maybe she couldn’t speak English? I wish I’d paid better attention in Spanish class in school.
“Hablas espanol?” I asked, struggling to remember more.
Still nothing. I was thrown as to what other language around here was common enough to–
That terrible off-key call rang out through the woods again, cutting off my train of thought, followed by another roar. She turned away from me, staring south again, the tension in the air so high it was rubbing off on me and making me nervous as hell. Whatever was making that noise seemed to push her into making a decision. To my surprise, she effortlessly scooped me up, turning me so my face was pressed into the fur she wore around her body, and wrapped my legs around her waist and back. I was so thrown by this, her strength despite her age catching me off guard, that I just instinctively held on while she turned and headed northwest, right into the woods.
“Wait! I need to stay by the river!” I told her. I would have pointed back, but I was too scared to let go lest I fall, which would most likely be the end result. I didn’t need another injury to add to my list. She ignored me, but when I kept protesting, she pressed a hand to my mouth and shook her head, glancing around the darkness that surrounded us and I picked up the hint. Noise attracted animals and we certainly didn’t want that. So, I reluctantly shut up while wishing she’d just return me to my spot. I didn’t want to get even more lost than I already was.
She moved stealthily through the trees, making little noise as she hurried along, stopping often to peer over her shoulder as though checking for signs that we were being followed. Whenever she confirmed or felt confident enough that this was not the case, she moved on, still cradling me close. I felt peculiar about this, almost like a baby holding onto its mother, but she was so warm and gentle that I couldn’t help but cling on, my frozen fingers seeking the warmth from whatever dead animal hung from her shoulders. I tried not to think about that. My mother took me to a screening at the local theatre of the Disney movie Bambi when I was little, and I cried for a week after. I didn’t think this was a deer pelt, but I knew it would still have the same effect on me.
She ran for what felt like ages before the tall, towering shadows that were the trees began to span out farther apart from each other. The distance she’d run was impressive, but at the same time, I was crestfallen, because I knew trying to find my way back would be nearly impossible. We’d moved through the dark, hiding any natural landmarks I could have used to trace back my steps, and without glasses on top of it, I was most definitely lost.
As she slowed, stopping more and more frequently, lingering close to trees and bushes as she listened for signs of pursuit, I could make out the sounds of a small creek suddenly becoming clearer as we moved farther along. I turned my head to see in one direction, the massive trees now farther apart, but still overpowering the area, their limbs reaching up to the sky hiding the stars above.
Now, she made a run for it, heading in a straight line as though her destination was in sight. I twisted my neck to see behind me in the direction we were headed, and as we came closer, I began to piece together what we were moving toward, as I still couldn’t see that far. Around the base of an absolutely massive redwood, what looked like a giant rock was sitting in the middle of the forest, the tree having grown right through it. But as we got closer, I could make out several more enormous boulders, some the size of small cars, stacked here and there around the main rock, piled up around its sides with ferns sprouting between them. It looked natural, and yet, something about it screamed human intervention. Even with my blurred vision, it was impressive.
My carrier climbed up the side of the rock, her fingers searching in the dark for a crack to hold onto. I yelped and practically strangled her with my grip around her neck as the ground disappeared beneath us. The rockwall was literally a vertical drop, and she didn’t stop until she was at least twenty feet up. A small ledge smoothed in, close to the redwoods’ trunk, which revealed a black hole behind a fern, like an entrance to a cave.
I thought perhaps this was an animal shelter or something, but when she began to clamber down inside, feet first, I squeaked as my back scraped against the cool roughness of the stone.
“Bip! Bip!” She called down into the hole, descending smoothly at a sharp angle, and quickly, like she’d done this a hundred times before. For such an old woman, I couldn’t deny how impressed I was by her strength and agility.
“Bip! Bip!” To my surprise, another voice returned her call, a deeper one, a man’s. So she wasn’t alone out here! Oh my God, my chances of survival just went up another notch! I hoped these two were just some extreme hunters or something. Maybe they had food, or perhaps they found this place and have been using it as a sort of wild safe house when they came out here? Even though I was certain hunting was illegal here, I was so relieved to know I was no longer alone I felt like I could cry if I wasn’t so dried out from all the tears I’d shed earlier.
“Mowha! Gwod ug?” A third voice! Another man, but not as baritone as the first.
“Mmuh,” she replied, “Nawah gweebruh,” and with that last comment, she patted my head.
What in the heck were they saying? This was most definitely not English, and certainly not a language I was familiar with. I guess it didn’t matter that my Spanish was non-existent.
“Gweebruh?”
We’d come to the end of the tunnel and dropped deep inside the rock, but it was so dark I could barely make out anything except for a tiny bit of moonlight that beamed in through multiple cracks.
“Yahv. Chomm.” My savior ripped me away from her breast and held me up like an offering. She suspended me easily in the air, making sure the light of the moon was shining down on my body, her strength only more apparent now. I knew I was tiny, but I was still a nineteen-year-old woman. I squealed in shock, wondering what the hell was happening. What if these people were part of a Satanic cult? Was that what they were speaking? Was this why they were hiding out in this weird cave in the woods? Was I about to be sacrificed?
Before my face, a hand slowly emerged from the dark like something out of a horror movie, followed by a thick, muscular arm. Oh good God! I kicked and squirmed but the woman holding me was surprisingly strong, and easily kept me high up in the air. The large, manly hand seized my face, tilting it this way and that in the moonlight, his touch rough and calloused.
“Gweebruh!” The woman holding me said, excitedly. “Mowha jugra gweebruh!”
What in the heck did gweebruh mean? And why did I get the feeling that she was calling me that? The hand roughly turned my face around, then tilted it waaaaay back, and I got the sense this guy was looking at the rest of me, which was still hidden beneath my soggy, freezing, bulky clothing. When his other hand came out of the darkness to press against my chest, I yelped and kicked. Did he just cop a feel? Was he some sort of pervert or something? My heart was hammering away like a frightened rabbit’s.
Marcus… Pete… Harris… Cece…
“Please!” I cried, blushing hard and practically choking on air as this triggered many unbearable memories. “Please, don’t!”
He released me, his hand disappearing, but then slowly… very, very slowly, a face loomed from the shadows, the downlight from the moon exaggerating his features. His light eyes were upturned at a sharp angle, framed with black lashes. The odd, ghostly glimmer of them was both haunting and beautiful. He had a long, straight nose and high cheekbones, reminding me of someone with Nordic roots, but his hair was a wild tangle of wavy black, resting just above the shoulder line. In the pale light, I could make out the glint of silver in that shortly shorn beard of his.
I stared at him, struck dumb by the sharp contrast of his fierce beauty. He was gorgeous, but at the same time, there was a serious ferocious wildness about him that had me trembling in his presence.
He was looking over my head with a sharp scowl, like he was displeased with me for some reason, before he murmured, “Mmuh gweehbruh. Gwouy? Yahv. Gweed? Yahv. Mmuh gweehbruh, Mowha.” His voice was more of a growl than anything.
“Mmuh, aghaal Vulfu!” The woman holding me hauled me back to herself, cuddling me close against her stomach. “Yahv, yahv! Cht gwouy, yahv. Se!” She waved a hand in front of my eyes and shook her head. “Brahda.”
Another figure materialized from the dark, another woman, who bowed her head so that she could stare intently into my eyes. She was older than the others, with much more white in her hair. Her dark gaze studied my appearance closely, touching my clothes, my hair, and staring into my eyes like she thought she would find something there.
Meanwhile, over my head, the woman who found me and the man were shouting at each other, roaring and practically snarling as they argued. This sudden turn in events had me covering my ears with my hands, curling in on myself as I tried to look as tiny as possible which, around these beasts, wasn’t too hard.
“Rowha guh! Rowe guh! Mowha gwuhk gweebruh!” The one holding me changed her tune, her tone gentling with sadness but had a strange sort of wheedling tone to it like she was pleading.
Again, the man growled in response, his hand appearing briefly as he pointed at me and argued some more. Over all the noise, I could hear the movement of others shifting around in the dark. How many people were there? And why were they here? And what was the argument about? I was so confused and uncomfortable, hungry and cold, that I managed to summon more tears. Soon, I was bawling like my mind had sensory overload and decided it wanted to break down completely. I tried to pull away from the others, to climb out of this dark hole and separate myself from this mass of confusion, but I was held firmly in place.
At the sound of my cry, however, the others stopped, their argument momentarily forgotten.
“I-I’m sorry if I-I’ve caused some sort of f-fight here,” I sniffled between tears. “I just-just want to f-find my friends and leave. I-I promise I won’t be a-a bother… I just, I just…” I sucked in sharp breaths in quick succession, hating that I had such a problem articulating my thoughts to others. My cheeks heated in embarrassment to be seen by a group of strangers crying like a baby. But I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t stop.
As my stupid rambling petered off, from the dark, the same scowling man came forward again, the one who seemed to dislike me for whatever reason. Standing beneath the light, he reached out and held my face up once more, no doubt revealing my tear-strained, puffy face, my eyes glittering from tears. He leaned in close, his lighter gaze narrowing slightly as he peered at me, staring straight into my eyes for the first time. I met his stare, still sniffling, but at least I was no longer babbling like an idiot. As he studied my features more intently, I wondered what he was going to do. To my surprise, he leaned in ever closer, until his nose was almost brushing against the hollow of my throat, and inhaled like he was smelling me. My skin jumped at the brush of his contact but he pulled back then. His hostile expression changed, becoming more inquisitive, and the enraged volatility that had been there before softened the longer he observed me.
Suddenly, he glanced over my head at the woman. “Cht jugra Mowha hum,” to which she responded with a joyful cry. Before she could celebrate whatever the heck he’d just told her fully, he held up a hand, silencing her. “Cht mmuh gweebruh, cht jugra Vulfu.”
The long, deep rumble at my back said that whatever he’d just announced, she did not like. Not one bit. She stewed for a minute like she was considering whatever the heck he had just told her, before finally, she muttered, “Yahv.”
Yahv? I thought. What does that mean? “Wait, what’s that? What’s yahv?” I asked, surprising even myself by speaking up. But something about that word felt like it had officially sealed my fate. Like some massive decision or proposition had been made. And here I was sitting in the dark, figuratively and literally, with no idea what on earth was happening.
“Yahv.” He cast me one last lingering look, his eyes staring deep into mine for several seconds before he tore himself away and disappeared into the dark. Why did I get the feeling that he wanted to stay? And why did I get the feeling that whatever the heck they’d just talked about, it all had to do with me?