2 Wilderness Horror Stories For A Cold November Night

My cousin, Eric and I used to have an agreement about camping. If one of us said it was time to leave, we left. There wasn't supposed to be any arguing about the weather, or how far we'd driven, or whether somebody was being a baby. We'd made that rule after a trip, where I insisted we could wait out some rain, and we spent most of a night sitting in three inches of water. For about six years, neither of us had to use it. Then we went into the coast range for a weekend, and a little after two in the morning, Eric picked up my pack and told me we were leaving. He was standing outside our tents with his bear spray in his other hand. He wouldn't take his eyes off the trees. I didn't argue. That part of the agreement worked fine. What we hadn't discussed was what to do if something wouldn't let us. This happened in the first week of October, back when I was still living in Corvallis. I was 36, and installing cabinets for a company that mostly worked on apartment renovations. Eric was six years older and worked on diesel trucks. Neither of us had especially interesting jobs, and neither of us had the money for the kind of vacations our wives occasionally sent us links to. A couple of nights in the woods was something we could afford without spending the following month feeling guilty about it. We weren't survival experts. I think that's worth getting out of the way. We knew how to follow a map, keep our stuff dry, and recognize when a trip was going badly. Eric was better at the practical side of things. I was the one who found places to go, usually during my lunch break, when anywhere without a microwave and six other guys looked appealing. The place I found that fall was west of Alcy, on National Forest Land. It wasn't a campground, or one of those trails with a sign and a little box for parking fees. There was an old road that had been closed to vehicles, a stream down at the bottom, and a few flat places where people had apparently camped over the years. I found it through a set of photographs somebody had posted several years earlier. Most were of mushrooms and fallen trees, but one showed a gravel bar beside a clear pool. There was a person standing in the photograph, which gave me an idea of the size of the place. It looked like somewhere we could spend a Saturday doing absolutely nothing. I checked the land boundaries, saved the maps, and showed Eric. He liked that we could follow the old road most of the way down. His right knee wasn't great, and he didn't like finding out halfway through a hike that my idea of a trail was aligned someone had drawn on the internet. The route was a little over seven miles each way. We planned to go in Friday, stay Saturday, and come out Sunday morning. My wife, Rachel, had a screenshot of where we'd park and the route we'd take. Eric carried a satellite messenger. He'd bought it after a different cousin broken ankle while hunting, and despite how much he'd complained about the subscription, he kept paying for it. So we did have a way to call for help. It worked when we needed it. Getting a message out wasn't what nearly killed us. We left my truck at the end of the drivable road just before 10 on Friday morning. It had rained overnight, but the forecast was decent until Saturday afternoon. Nothing dramatic was expected, just normal fall rain. We each had a small tent because Eric snored, and I apparently moved around like I was trying to escape my sleeping bag. I remember the walk-in being almost disappointing at first. The road was broad and fairly easy, with young trees growing in the middle and long stretches of crushed stones still visible under the needles. There were old tire-ruts filled with leaves. Every so often we'd find a piece of cable, or an empty can that looked older than either of us. After the first few miles, the road narrowed against the hillside. The trees got bigger. We started walking around fallen trunks instead of stepping over them, and there were places where we had to push through ferns that came almost to my chest. The stream was below us on our right, we could hear it long before we saw it. At one point we came to a shallow cut, where a section of the uphill bank had slipped across the road. There was a fur leaning out above it. I stopped to tighten one of my boots, and while Eric waited, he noticed a strip of orange fabric in the branches. It was high enough that I had to step back to see it. Maybe 20 feet up, caught where two limbs came together. There was a little black buckle dangling from the end. I thought it was survey material until I saw the buckle. Then I figured somebody had hung a food bag and gotten it stuck. Eric didn't say much about it. He took a picture because the color looked strange against all that dark green, then continued walking. That was the first piece of somebody else's camping gear we found. By a little after two, we were down beside the stream. The old road made a turn onto a broad shelf above the water and then petered out in a stand of alder. Somebody had made a small fire ring there years before. It was mostly full of moss, but there was enough level ground for both tents. The gravel bar from the photograph was about 30 yards downstream. A shallow side channel separated it from our campsite on the western bank, making the bar a little island. The main creek ran along its eastern edge. In dry weather, I doubt there would have been much water in the side channel at all. That Friday, it was about ankle deep. We checked the trees above the campsite for dead limbs. I remember doing that because later, I kept wondering how much of the afternoon we'd spent looking up without seeing anything. There were big branches overhead, but they looked alive. A fallen tree lay along the uphill edge of the clearing. These roots pulled out of the bank. That gave us a place to sit without getting our pants wet. Eric set up his tent near the roots. Mine was closer to the path down to the water. There was nothing threatening about the place in daylight. We ate sandwiches. I filtered water. Eric discovered he'd brought two left gloves and spent a while being angry at an empty glove. It was exactly the kind of minor inconvenience we'd driven out there to have. Later, while gathering a few loose sticks for a small fire, I found a spoon. It was one of those long handled camping spoons, the expensive lightweight kind. It was pushed almost straight down into the soil beside a tree. I pulled it free and wiped it on a handful of moss. There were deep scratches on the handle, but otherwise it was fine. I showed Eric. He said I'd finally found something that would make my cooking taste better, and I put it on a stump to take out with our trash. A little farther uphill, there was an old sock hanging on a low branch, gray, with a dark heel. It was stiff with dirt and had a hole worn through the bottom. I left that alone. People lose things camping. They hang wet clothes up, forget utensils, let their trash blow away. That's the kind of explanation you use when you're comfortable. You don't start assembling it into a story because there's no reason to. By 6, we'd eaten, washed up, and put the food away well outside camp. The light had faded early down in the valley. We sat beside the little fire and listened to the stream. Every now and then, a load of water fell from the branches above us. That happened often enough that I stopped noticing it. The trees were wet, and whatever breeze reached the upper limbs shook them. We'd hear a soft pattern in the leaves, then a heavier splash on the tent fabric or the dirt. The sound that finally got Eric's attention was different. It was a dull, solid knock, followed by a creek, something heavy settling on wood. He leaned back and shone his headlamp into the branches over his tent. I did the same. We could see the underside of a thick limb and hundreds of bright points where the water caught our lights. Nothing moved. We waited a minute. Eric suggested a porcupine, then admitted he didn't know much about porcupines. I said if one fell on his tent, I was going to laugh before I helped him. We stayed up until around 9. The fire was out and cold before we turned in. I put my boots inside the tent, tucked my phone into the pocket near my head, and fell asleep listening to Eric move around in his. Sometime later, I woke to a scraping sound near my feet. I thought it was a mouse. It was that sort of soft, persistent noise, something working at the fabric near the ground. I slapped the side of the tent and told it to go away. The noise stopped. Then the roof dipped over my face. Not much, just a slow depression in the outer fabric, visible because the moonlight coming through the trees gave the tent a faint grey shape. I could see a line where the rainfly touched the inner mesh. It held there for a second and lifted away. I lay still, waiting for a branch to slide off. Instead, the same thing happened nearer my feet. I switched on my headlamp. There was nothing to see but the inside of the tent, my bag, and a little condensation on the mesh. I called Eric's name, he answered immediately. That bothered me more than the sound had. Eric usually took a while to wake up. He sounded like he'd been sitting there listening. He asked if I was moving my tent. I told him no. I put my phone in my pants pocket and got out. I had to force my feet into my boots without loosening the laces. Eric was already standing beside the fallen tree, shining his light upward. His pack was on his back. He'd heard something before I woke and packed most of his things while he listened. My tent was still where I'd pitched it. The stakes were in. The fly was tight. A few drops of water ran down the front, but there wasn't a fallen branch anywhere on it. There was a fresh dent in the soft ground beside the door. It was roughly the length of my forearm, narrow at one end, and wider at the other, with several short grooves extending from the wider part. I thought a piece of wood had fallen and bounced away. Eric crouched beside it without touching it. Then something scraped along the trunk above his head. He stood up so fast he nearly fell over. Both lights went up. I saw the underside of a branch shake. Farther up, there was a shape pressed against the main trunk. It was the same grey-brown color as the bark, and for the second or two I could see it. I couldn't work out where it began or ended. Then it moved around the back of the tree. There was no crashing, no frantic scrambling, just a smooth shift of weight and the creek of wood. Eric said my name very quietly. I looked at him. He wasn't looking up anymore. He was looking at my tent. Four dark streaks ran down the rain fly over the place where my head had been. They were evenly spaced, with a smaller mark off to one side. The fabric hadn't torn, but something dirty had pressed into it hard enough to leave the shape behind. That was when I started thinking bear. A bear could climb. A bear could investigate a tent. I didn't like how long those marks were, but I had no better explanation and desperately wanted one. We made noise. We stood together and shouted into the trees. Eric had the spray out. I banged my cookpot with the handle of my knife until the sound hurt my ears. For a while nothing happened. Then something dropped through the branches behind Eric's tent and hit the ground on the far side of the fallen trunk. I never saw it land. I heard the impact and saw the ferns shake. The trunk between us was nearly as high as my chest, but whatever had landed behind it disturbed the branches well above that. Eric didn't wait for another look. He back toward me, picked up my pack from beside my tent, and told me we were leaving. He left the tent standing. I grabbed my coat and sleeping bag through the open door and took my pack from Eric. He'd already packed his sleeping bag. Apart from the food we'd stored away from camp, our supplies were in the bags or our pockets. He'd filled the water bottles before bed, and I thanked him for that more times than he's comfortable hearing. The path back to the old road ran uphill beside the fallen tree. We'd taken perhaps a dozen steps toward it when something struck the far end of the trunk. I felt that through the soles of my boots. There was a little shower of rotten wood and a section of fern flattened against the ground. Eric stopped. His spray was raised but he didn't use it. There wasn't a clear target and the air was drifting toward us. He told me to move toward the stream instead. I did it backward at first, which was stupid. My heel caught a root, and I nearly fell. He grabbed my coat, turned me around and pushed me ahead of him. We crossed the shallow channel and made it onto the gravel bar. There were no large trees immediately above it. We moved as far from the bank as we could without stepping into the deeper water, and Eric put his pack between his feet. For a minute, all I could hear was my own breathing and the stream. Then I saw my tent move. From the bar, we could see the front of it through a gap between two trees. The pale fabric caught our lights. First, it leaned sharply to one side as if somebody had picked up a corner. One of the poles bent. A stake popped out of the ground with a noise I could actually hear over the water. The tent flattened, dragged a few feet, and disappeared behind the fallen trunk. I stood there with my sleeping bag clutched against my stomach. I couldn't make myself put it down. Whatever was behind that log had just taken the place where I'd been sleeping. Eric started the emergency signal on his messenger. While we waited for a response, he asked what I'd left inside the tent. I had to think hard enough that it embarrassed me. A spare shirt. A book. The little inflatable pillow Rachel had bought, because she was tired of listening to me complain about my neck. No food. No toothpaste. Nothing either of us could point to and say that was why an animal had wanted it. The first reply asked what had happened and whether anyone was injured. Eric typed with one thumb. He said a large animal had entered our campsite and was preventing us from getting back onto our route. He gave the number of people and described where we were in relation to the original coordinates. We were told to stay together, keep our lights on and remain in the open if it was safe. Someone would coordinate with local responders. They asked about the animal. Eric wrote that we thought it might be a bear, but we hadn't seen it clearly. I had my own can of spray clipped to my pack. I took it off and held it. The plastic safety felt slippery under my thumb. For the next hour, the only signs of movement were above camp. Branches shifted, water fell. Once, a heavy limb lowered slowly into view, then lifted when the weight moved off it. We couldn't see the thing itself. That was almost worse than seeing it would have been. I kept imagining an ordinary black bear somewhere up there and then remembering that narrow mark beside the tent. Every time I came close to talking myself down, a branch would creak in a place I wasn't expecting. The messenger kept us from feeling entirely abandoned. Most of the messages were practical questions. Which road had we used? What color was the truck? Did we have dry clothes? Could we stay where we were until daylight? Eric answered everything. He also sent a separate message to his wife, asking her to call Rachel and tell her we were together and had requested help. He didn't want her finding out from a stranger. I spread my sleeping bag over our legs while we sat on our packs. Neither of us wanted to put a tent between ourselves and the trees again, even if we'd had one to use. At some point, I heard three short whistles from downstream. They were faint, with long gaps between them. At first, I thought one of our packs was squeaking against the gravel. I lifted myself off mine and the sound came again. I asked Eric whether he'd heard it. He nodded. He'd already turned his light that way. Beyond the far end of the bar, the stream curved between a steep bank and a pile of boulders. We couldn't see around the bend. I called out, asking if somebody was there. We waited. Three more whistles. Eric sent another message. Possible additional person downstream. We could hear a whistle but couldn't see anyone. I wanted to walk far enough along the gravel to get a view around the bend. Eric caught my sleeve before I moved. He pointed at the trees across the side channel. A branch was lowering toward the bank. I could see it well enough to know it wasn't the wind. It bent slowly, stopped, and trembled under a weight. Something pale extended below it, with Drew, and extended again a little closer to the water. It looked like an arm. I know that's a loaded word. At the time, I was still trying to see a bear's leg. But there was a bend in the middle, and a narrow end that opened around a smaller branch. The distance from one joint to the next was wrong for any animal I knew. It stayed there while I watched, holding on. Then it slipped back into the leaves. The whistles stopped. We didn't go around the bend. That's the decision I had the hardest time with afterward. We told ourselves we couldn't help anyone if we got hurt too, and that was true. It was also true that I was too frightened to leave the patch of gravel where I was sitting. By then, it was after four. There wasn't much conversation. We took turns holding the lights on the bank. When one of us needed to change position or drink, the other watched. Our shoulders touched so we could feel if the other person started drifting off. I remember looking at Eric's hand on the spray, and noticing a thick black line of grease under one fingernail. He'd come straight from work Thursday and packed at his kitchen table. Something about that small, ordinary thing made me want to cry. A few hours before, we'd been arguing about whether instant coffee could actually go bad. Now I couldn't look away from a stand of trees 30 feet from my shoes. A little before six, we got a message saying responders were heading toward our access point. There was also an attempt to reach an old quarry road east of the valley. If that road was usable, it could shorten the approach considerably. They couldn't give us an arrival time yet. I wasn't angry about that. We were seven miles down in a bandage. and rode, and I'd spent the previous afternoon congratulating myself on finding a place nobody visited. People had to wake up, get equipment, find the correct turn-offs, and then come into the same woods we wanted to get out of. We stayed on the bar until the sky began to lighten. The first thing daylight gave us was a better view of our camp. Eric's tent had been pulled sideways against the fallen trunk. One pole stuck through the fabric. The stump where I'd put the spoon was empty. My tent was in a tree. It wasn't dangling from a branch. It had been wedged into a fork well above the camp, folded around itself with the bent poles sticking out at different angles. One corner hung free. I could see the little yellow repair patch I'd put on at the previous summer. I kept staring at that patch. It was something my mind could recognize in a situation it couldn't accept. Above the tent, pressed along the thick branch leading back toward the trunk, was a long, dark shape. I thought it was a second branch at first. It ran almost parallel to the first one. Then one end lifted, and I saw a pale underside before it settled again. Eric saw it, too. He lowered his voice even though we'd been shouting half the night. It's not a bear. I didn't answer him. A whistle sounded downstream. This time it was followed by a voice. I couldn't make out the words, but I could hear the effort in them. Whoever it was sounded horse and badly out of breath. From the end of the gravel bar, daylight showed us a narrow strip of stones along the western bank, continuing around the bend. To reach it, we'd have to cross the shallow side channel where it rejoined the creek. Beyond that crossing, we could stay at the water's edge, out from under most of the branches. We sent a message saying we were moving downstream to locate the person. Eric kept the messenger clipped high on his shoulder, with the tracking still active. We put on our packs. I rolled my sleeping bag as tightly as I could, and secured it under the single buckled strap across the top of mine. Before we started, I looked at the tree again. The shape was gone. The branch was still moving. We waited the side channel and followed the stones downstream. Lights off now, spray in our hands. The sky was a dull white strip above the valley. Everything close to the ground was gray and wet. Halfway around the bend, we found a boot sitting on a flat rock. It was a brown hiking boot, lying on its side with the tongue pulled forward and the laces hanging loose. There was a clean patch inside the heel where somebody's foot had rubbed the lining. It hadn't been out there long. A few feet beyond it, I saw a hand emerge from under a boulder. The fingers were swollen and dirty. They opened once and closed. I stopped so suddenly that Eric walked into my pack. The man underneath the rock could see us. He was lying on his side in a space that looked too small to hold an adult. His face was pressed close to the opening, and a bright orange whistle hung from a cord around his neck. He didn't ask us to come closer. He whispered. Look up first. I did. A tree grew out of the bank above the boulder. Its roots had spread over the stone before going down into the soil. In the dim light, they formed a mess of pale curves against the darker rock. One of those curves moved. It slid down the face of the boulder and hooked under the edge, less than a foot from the man's shoulder. He pulled his hand inside. Something rose from the far side of the rock. I saw a broad flat head, followed by a set of shoulders that seemed too narrow to support it. The skin around the eyes was pale. Wet brown hair lay in thin strips along the sides of its face and neck. Its mouth was closed, but the line of it extended much farther back than it should have. It was holding itself above the boulder on two long forelimbs. The lower body remained out of sight behind the roots. For a second, it looked directly at me. The eyes weren't glowing. They were dark and small and very still. There was something horribly attentive about the way it held its head. I had the distinct feeling it was deciding whether I was close enough. Then it reached. The limb came over the top of the rock so quickly I stepped backward into the stream. I pulled the safety from my spray and pressed the trigger. The cloud struck the front of its head. It jerked back, scraping the rock with the ends of its fingers. I heard a harsh, breathy noise, almost a cough, and then the branches above us shook as it hauled itself into the tree. I kept spraying for another second after it disappeared. Eric grabbed my wrist and pushed my hand down before I emptied the can completely. He went to the opening under the boulder. I stood in the shallow water with one boot filling up, watching the tree while he pulled the stranger out. He came out feet first, making a sound through his teeth that I can still hear if I think about it too long. His right foot was bare except for a wet sock. The ankle above it was badly swollen. When Eric tried to help him sit, he grabbed Eric's sleeve and pointed toward the water. We moved him off the bank before doing anything else. There was a flat stone a few yards into the stream, separated from the bank by a shallow run of water. Eric helped him onto it while I watched the trees. The spray had drifted back enough to make my eyes water, but the thing hadn't returned. The man's name was Noah. He was 31. The first thing he asked was whether we'd called anyone. When Eric showed him the messenger, he started crying. It wasn't loud or dramatic. His face just crumpled. He kept trying to wipe his eyes with the backs of his hands, which were covered in mud, and apologizing for getting it on Eric's jacket. I took off my pack and gave him water. He drank too fast, coughed, then held the bottle against his chest like somebody might take it away. He'd been out there since Thursday. His car was parked at the far end of the old quarry road, east of the valley. He'd walked down to take photographs of the creek and planned to stay two nights. His girlfriend expected him home Saturday evening. As far as anybody knew, he was having a nice weekend. His camp was farther downstream, on the same side we'd been on. He'd hung a hammock between two trees and set up his camera beside the water. In the early evening, after eating, he'd climbed into the hammock to read. He told us he'd felt something touched the bottom of it. He'd assumed a branch was rubbing the fabric. Then the whole hammock had gone tight around him and lifted. One end tore loose while the other stayed attached to its tree. Then there was a sharp snap and both ends were rising. He was folded inside, unable to get his arms free while something pulled him upward. He didn't know how high he'd gone. He remembered hitting branches through the fabric. He remembered trying to straighten his legs and feeling something squeeze harder around his knees. Then a length of the broken suspension line caught on a limb and the hammock turned enough for him to fall out. He'd landed on the slope, rolled, and hit the boulder. His ankle folded underneath him. He crawled into the space below the rock because it was the only place he could see that offered any cover. The gap went back farther than it appeared to, then turned behind a second slab. Noah had squeezed around that turn into a hollow, just large enough to hold him. The animal's shoulders couldn't fit through the entrance and its hands couldn't reach around the stone into the back of the hollow. He'd spent more than a day jammed in there, pulling away whenever a hand came under the edge. He had a small bottle and two bars in his jacket. His phone was there too, intact and useless without service. The only time he'd come out was to catch water dripping off the stone after his bottle ran empty. He'd heard us Friday afternoon and tried both shouting and the whistle. The bank and the bend blocked the sound and the creek covered what got through. We hadn't heard him from camp. It wasn't until we moved on to the gravel bar closer to the bend that his whistle finally reached us. While he talked, I kept looking at the boulder. There were marks down the front where the covering of moss had been scraped away. Pale stones showed in four long tracks. Under the lip, where the animal had been reaching, the dirt was worn smooth. I didn't ask how often it had come back. I could see enough to understand. Eric sent the new information, including Noah's injury and the location of his car. He described what we'd seen as an unknown large animal and said spray had driven it off temporarily. He also made sure the person receiving the messages understood that it had physically attacked Noah and that nobody should approach through the trees alone. Eric pulled a spare fleece from his pack before he started typing. I helped Noah put it on and get his good foot under him. He'd taken the other boot off Thursday evening when his ankle began swelling and set it on the flat rock outside his hiding place. I retrieved it, but there was no chance of getting it back on. We put it in my pack. He had cuts on his hands and face. None of them bleeding much anymore. His leg was the problem. Eric wrapped it with spare clothing and secured two short straight sticks along the sides. It wasn't pretty, and we weren't pretending to fix anything. We were trying to keep his ankle from moving while we got him someone. safer. Noah was able to stand on his left leg with one of us under each arm. That was when the thing came back. I heard water fall from the bank and looked over Eric's shoulder. There was a thick limb extending above the stream, a little upstream from us. Something hung beneath it, pressed close to the bark. At first I saw only the head. Then it released one four limb and lowered that side of its body. It was longer than a person. That was the best comparison I could make. The trunk was narrow with patches of short, dirty hair and bare gray skin between them. Its hind legs were folded high against its sides. The front limbs were much longer and the ends closed around the wood in a way I couldn't mistake for pause anymore. There were fingers, thick ones, with blunt dark nails, but fingers. Its right eye was squeezed shut. Wetness ran down the pale skin below it. The spray had hurt it. I held onto that fact because it was the first encouraging thing I'd learned about it. Eric turned with the can raised. The animal stopped moving. It stayed there, head down, hanging under the branch while the water dripped from its face. Noah had both hands locked around my wrist. I could feel him shaking through my jacket. Then it drew itself back up and moved along the limb toward the trunk. Its rear feet turned inward around the wood. I watched one of those feet open, settle and close again. It didn't seem clumsy or injured anywhere except its eye. It was completely at home above us. The reply came while we were still watching it. A deputy and two rescuers had reached Noah's car from the east. They were preparing to continue on foot. The last stretch of road was blocked by a wash out, but the footroot beyond it appeared passable. The team approaching from our original parking place was still several miles away. The responders asked us to hold our position if possible. Eric told them the animal had returned to the bank. We had an exposed place to stand, but no protection if it came into the water. Noah said there was an open area on the eastern road below the old quarry. He'd walked through it on Thursday. The slope was loose rock with only small brush growing in it. If we could reach that, nothing could get above us without being seen. The beginning of the route was across the main creek on the eastern bank. Noah had crossed there on his way in. The path climbed through trees, met the quarry road, then followed a pair of long switchbacks. He thought the open area was less than a mile away. We had the line on our map. It hadn't been our planned way out, but it was there. Eric asked whether the team could meet us on the lower quarry road. He explained why we wanted to move and gave them the route. The answer told us to update our position and stop if Noah couldn't continue. They were coming down toward us. We weren't being told to attempt some heroic hike. We were three people trying to reduce the distance between ourselves and help, with an animal watching us from a tree. We crossed at the shallowest place we could find. Even there, it was difficult. Noah couldn't put his bad foot down. Eric and I each took one of his arms over our shoulders and moved together, letting him hop when the stones were close enough. In the deepest section, he held his right leg up while we carried most of his weight. My foot slipped once. Noah's injured ankle struck a submerged stone, and he made a short, awful noise before telling us to keep going. I was so focused on his face that I forgot the bank behind us. Eric didn't. He said, "Faster. There wasn't anywhere faster to put my feet. I looked back anyway. The thing was coming down the trunk. Head first. It's limbs spread around the tree, each one finding a grip before the next released. It moved steadily, without looking away from us. When its front limbs reached the ground, the rear half followed in a single folding motion. On the ground, it looked lower and wider. The shoulders were higher than the hips. It could have walked beneath a kitchen table, but its reach was enormous. It entered the water as we reached the opposite side. There went the hope that the stream was keeping it away. We hauled Noah onto the bank. Eric pushed him toward me and turned around. The animal crossed in a series of short, forceful movements, its hands landing on stones beneath the surface. Water came over its chest. It didn't slow much. Eric waited until it was close, then sprayed. The cloud hit it directly. It recoiled, swung its head, and caught one four limb against a submerged rock. For a moment, its whole body twisted sideways in the current. I thought it might fall. Instead, it caught itself with the other hand, and back toward the far bank. The sound it made was wet and rasping. It kept rubbing its face against its own shoulder. Eric used the opening to get under Noah's arm again. We didn't run. I wish we could have. We struggled up a muddy slope in a crooked line, pulling Noah over roots and stopping every few yards to get a better grip. The narrow path met the quarry road above the creek. By then, I was breathing hard enough to feel sick. My arms hurt from holding Noah, and my wet boot had started rubbing my heel raw. Eric had used most of his can. Mine had only a little left. We had no idea whether another dose would work, or whether the animal was beginning to understand what made the orange cloud. For the first hundred yards along the road, we heard nothing behind us. The grade was gentle enough that Noah could use our trekking poles, which Eric unclipped from our packs. He moved one pole, then the other, then hopped between them, while one of us held the back of his jacket. It was slow, but it gave our shoulders a break. He kept apologizing. Eric finally told him that if he apologized again, we'd charge him for the fleece. Noah gave this brief startled laugh. It sounded so normal that I almost smiled myself. Then we came around the first turn and saw what was in the trees. There were three separate bundles above the road. The nearest was a faded blue tarp, wrapped around something irregular, and jammed into the fork of a large fur. A length of white cord hung down from it. Beyond that, a green sheet of fabric had been pulled between two limbs. The third was farther up and almost hidden by the trunk, but I could see a red strap in the curved outline of a metal pack frame. A few loose objects lay below them, a cracked plastic cup, a sandal with the sole peeling off, a round piece of foam that might once have been part of a sleeping pad. I looked at Noah. He was staring at the green fabric. It was his hammock. I could see where one end had ripped, a broken length of suspension line hung below the other. There was nothing inside it now. Eric stepped between Noah and the tree and told us to keep moving. I understood why. We didn't need to inspect those bundles. We needed to reach the people coming down the road. Before I turned away, I noticed another piece of orange fabric. It reminded me of the strip we'd passed on our walk-in. But this piece was larger, wedged high in the blue bundle, with a row of black loops stitched down one side. It looked like part of a pack. That small scrap on the western road had seemed like evidence that someone else had camped there. Now it felt like a sign we'd walked past without knowing how to read it. We were halfway beneath the nearest tree when bits of bark began falling onto the road. Eric pulled Noah tight against his side and started moving him past the tree. I looked up in time to see a long four limb reach around the trunk. The animal had come back into the trees below the road and moved ahead of us while we struggled uphill. I could see the smaller limbs it had bent between the trunks. One was still swinging. We were much slower than it was, and the route we'd chosen went straight through where it lived. I used the last of my spray as it lowered its head. Most of the cloud hit the trunk. Some reached its face. It pulled back and I heard its nails scrape the bark. The can gave a weak hiss and stopped. I dropped it. There was no point carrying it anymore. We got beyond the tree before the animal came down. Eric was nearly lifting Noah off his feet. I caught up and took his other side, and we moved as quickly as we could along the road. The forest changed around the next curve. The uphill bank became exposed rock, loose chips lay across the road, and the trees on the outside edge stood farther apart. Through a gap ahead, I could see a broad pale slope with almost nothing growing on it. The open area Noah had described. It was perhaps 200 yards away. We stopped once to send our position. Eric typed that the animal was following. Our spray was nearly gone, and we were approaching the quarry. The reply came quickly. The East team had crossed the wash out and was moving down the road toward us. I remember being angry that I couldn't hear them yet. It wasn't reasonable. I wanted voices and boot steps and somebody else making decisions. I wanted the world to get bigger than the three of us, and whatever was moving through the trees behind us, Noah was getting worse. His skin had a great gray look, and he couldn't keep his bad foot raised for more than a few seconds. Every time it touched the ground, his whole body tightened. Eric told him to put his arms across our shoulders again. We carried him like that for the last stretch under the trees. My back burned. I could feel the edge of the pack belt cutting into my stomach. I was counting steps without meaning to, making little bargains with myself about when we could stop. We reached the open slope at a little after nine. The lower part of the old quarry was a wide shelf cut into the hill. The road crossed it, turned behind a mound of broken stone, and climbed toward the upper workings. There were alder saplings along the outside edge, but the ground immediately around the road was bare, except for weeds and a few low bushes. Higher up, chunks of rock had fallen from the cut face. Some were the size of furniture. Directors had crumbled into long fans of loose stone. We helped Noah onto a low block beside the road. Eric pulled the messenger free and held it in his hand instead of trying to read it on the strap. I looked back. Nothing was coming out of the trees. For several seconds, I allowed myself to think we'd done it. We'd reached open ground. Help was coming down the road. We had daylight and a place where we could see. Then Noah caught my sleeve and pointed up hill. The animal was moving along the top of the cut. It had stayed in the trees until the last possible moment, then come out onto the slope above us. It moved with its body low, picking its way between rocks. Its right eye was still mostly shut. Every few steps, it dragged the side of its face against one shoulder. I could see its size properly now. The head was about as wide as the middle of my chest. Its body was heavy through the shoulders and strangely narrow behind them. There was no visible tail. The longer forelimbs let it reach down to the next piece of stable ground, while the rear legs stayed folded beneath it. It was coming around the upper end of the quarry shelf, toward the bend where the rescue team would appear. Then he clipped the device back onto his shoulder and started shouting. He yelled that we were on the lower road and that the animal was above us on the inside of the cut. A voice answered from beyond the bend. I don't remember the words. I remember that it was an ordinary human voice, loud and confident, and that the relief made my knees feel weak. Eric shouted again, giving the location more clearly. Something about hearing other people seemed to wake Noah up. He straightened on the rock and reached for the trekking poles. We had maybe 60 yards to go before the bend. There was a large block of fallen stone part way along that stretch between the road and the cut face. If we could get behind it, we'd at least have something solid between ourselves and the slope. We lifted Noah and started moving. The thing stopped above us. Its head turned toward the voices. Then it looked back at Noah. I saw the change before I understood it. The rear legs unfolded. Its body lifted. The long arms came farther out to either side. It dropped onto a ledge below, hit with all four limbs, and came down the loose slope in a rush. Eric turned and fired what remained in his can. There was a short burst, then a thin stream. The animal swerved away from the orange mist without stopping. It was learning. Or it had learned already, and we'd used up the only advantage we had. I let go of Noah and step to the side. That sounds better than it was. I didn't have a plan to fight it. I was trying to give Eric enough room to drag Noah behind the rock. My sleeping bag was still across the top of my pack. I reached over my shoulder, felt for the buckle holding it there, and squeezed it open. I dragged the bag forward and shook it open as the thing reached the road. For an instant, it checked its movement. The bag hung between us, dark blue on one side and light gray on the other. I held it by the upper corners, mostly because I couldn't think of anything else to put in front of its face. It reached for the fabric. One hand closed around the top edge. I felt the pull through both arms. The other hand came around the side, and caught the shoulder strap of my pack. Up close, the smell was overwhelming, wet hair, old meat, and the sour smell of something that spent its life in damp places. Its closed mouth was only a foot or two from mine. The skin at the corner's creased, and the mouth started to open. I let go of the sleeping bag and dropped my weight. I fumbled the chest buckle open, but the waist belt was still fastened. For one terrible second, I couldn't find the release. The shoulder strap tightened against the side of my neck as the animal pulled upward. I got one thumb under the buckle and squeezed. The belt released. I ducked my head, pulled my left arm free, and let the pack drag the other strap off my shoulder. I fell onto my hands and knees. The animal had my pack in one hand, and the sleeping bag tangled across its other arm. Its head turned down toward me. Somebody shouted for me to get down. I was already down, but I crawled hard toward the large rock, scraping both knees through my pants. I could see Eric's boot beyond it. He reached out and caught the back of my jacket. The first shot was so loud it seemed to flatten every other sound. The animal jerked sideways. My pack fell onto the road. The second shot came before it had fully turned. Eric dragged me behind the rock. My jacket snagged on its rough edge and tore across the back. I landed partly across Noah's good leg and heard him gasp. I tried to move, but Eric held me by the collar and kept my head down. There was a voice above us, giving short instructions. Another person was moving close behind the rock. I could hear boots slide on gravel. Then a heavy scraping sound came from the road. One more shot. After that, there was only the ringing in my ears. Eric didn't let go of my jacket until somebody crouched beside us. The woman wore a red rescue jacket and carried a medical pack. She asked who was injured. I pointed at Noah, then realized my hands were shaking so badly that I was pointing at the ground. She put a hand on my shoulder, told me to stay where I was, and moved to him. The deputies stood farther up the road with a rifle still raised. He'd rounded the bend while Eric was shouting, and moved to the outside edge of the road. He later told me he'd seen the thing pulling me off my feet. Once I slipped out of the pack and crawled toward the rock, he had a clear shot across the road at the animal with the quarry wall behind it. At the time, all I knew was that somebody had finally stopped it. I leaned far enough around the stone to see the road. The animal lay on its side beside my pack. One of the long hands was still caught in the shoulder strap. Its hind feet had curled inward. The side of its head rested on my sleeping bag. It wasn't moving. The deputy made us stay back until he was certain. There was no sudden lunge, no last attempt to grab someone. After everything it had done in the trees, the stillness looked almost wrong. I kept watching for its chest to rise. It didn't. The second rescuer came down with equipment. He and Eric helped get Noah onto a litter while the woman worked on keeping him warm and securing his leg. Two more volunteers reached us while she was working. They joined the carry team. The deputy stayed beside the animal and radioed for someone to relieve him. Before we left, Eric retrieved the messenger from his shoulder and sent a message to his wife. He read it aloud before pressing send, because his hands were shaking too. We're with help. All three of us are safe. Then we started up the road. Getting out still took time. There was no dramatic final sprint. People carried Noah, traded places, and stopped when the footing got bad. I walked behind them wearing somebody else's jacket because mine had torn across the back. Eric stayed close enough to catch me when my legs started trembling. At the wash-out, more rescuers were waiting. We passed Noah across carefully and got him to the vehicles beyond it. His car was there, exactly where he'd said it would be. I remember that more clearly than I remember most of the walk. A perfectly normal silver hatchback parked neatly beside the road with a folded sunshade on the passenger's seat. It looked like its owner had stepped away for 10 minutes. Noah asked someone to call his girlfriend. Then he asked whether we'd found his boot. It was still in my pack, back on the quarry road. I told him we'd get it later. We did. There were statements afterward, photographs, and questions that none of us could answer particularly well. The animal was recovered from the road that afternoon. The copy of the incident report I received described it as an unidentified large animal. Eric and I both gave permission for the photographs on our phones to be included. A crew also recovered our gear and the bundles above the eastern road. I was told the other shelters were empty. I don't know who they'd belong to or how long they'd been there. My tent came back folded in a heavy plastic bag. I didn't open it. Eric helped me take it straight to the trash. About six weeks later, the three of us met for breakfast in Corvallis. Noah came in on crutches, wearing a different pair of shoes. He'd brought the fleece Eric had lent him, washed and folded, and he insisted on buying the food. We talked about ordinary things for most of the meal, work, the drive. A restaurant Eric thought had closed but hadn't. Before we left, Noah said he remembered our light stopping up stream after he blew the whistle. He'd been afraid we were going to turn around. I told him we almost had. He nodded, looked at Eric, and said he was glad we'd stayed. That was the last time we went through the whole thing together. There wasn't much left to explain. We'd gotten Noah out, the animal was dead, and everyone who'd come looking for us had gone home. I still have the photograph Eric took on the walk-in. The strip of orange fabric is easy to see. Behind it, against the trunk, there's a grey-brown shape that neither of us noticed at the time. I can't prove it's the animal. The picture isn't clear enough, but I remember stopping under that tree to tighten my boot, and I remember how long I sat there with my head down. The man who came looking for me on my third day in the Adirondacks knew my name, what car I drove, and where I was supposed to be that evening. That was why I went with him. I'd paid him $60 to know those things. People usually get hung up on that part when I tell this. They imagine a stranger stepping out of the woods, and me deciding to follow him because he looked friendly. I probably wouldn't understand it either if I hadn't been there. But I'd spoken to this man on the phone twice. I'd stood beside him at a public boat launch, while he helped me lift my canoe off the car. His name and number were on the itinerary I'd left with my sister. By the time I understood what he wanted, he was between me and the water, and everything I'd told him to make the trip safer had given him another way to find me. This was in fall of 2012. I was 41, recently separated, and working in the office of a school bus company outside Syracuse. Most of my day consisted of finding people who weren't where they were supposed to be. Drivers called in sick. Substitute drivers went to the wrong buildings. Parents called our office when they meant to call the school. I had a headset that left a dent in my hair and a drawer full of antacids. Two nights without a telephone seemed like a reasonable thing to buy myself. I wasn't new to canoeing. My husband and I had gone for years, and before that, I'd gone with my father. After the separation, I kept the canoe because my husband said he didn't want to deal with selling it. He made it sound like he'd left me with a problem. I thought I'd done fairly well out of that particular conversation. It was a short, lightweight solo boat by then. We'd sold our big tandem years earlier, and each bought our own. Mine was faded green, with a strip of silver repair tape near the front. I could carry it without help, although I couldn't carry it in a fully loaded pack comfortably over any real distance. On a long portage, I'd take the pack through first, come back, and get the boat. Up there, people often called those trails "carries". I'll use both words, because that was how I thought of them. They were the wooded connections between the pieces of water, sometimes a few hundred yards, and sometimes long enough to make you question your hobbies. I planned a three-day route in the country west of Tupper Lake, a couple of ponds, stretches of sheltered water, and two longer carries. I wasn't setting records. I wanted to drink coffee beside a lake, and read an entire paperback without anybody asking me where a bus was. The complication was getting my car from the starting point to the place where I'd finish. A woman at a small sporting good shop gave me the number of a man who did vehicle transfers. She said they'd sent customers to him before. He worked independently, mostly moving cars for paddlers and picking people up when they changed their plans. His first name was Calvin, but he introduced himself as Cal. On the phone, he sounded bored in a reassuring way. I explained the route. He asked what day I'd come out, what color the car was, and whether I had a spare key. I said I could arrange the key side of it. We agreed he'd meet me at the launch Monday morning and have my car at the final landing by Wednesday noon. He'd lock my main set of keys inside the car when he left it. I would keep a spare with me. That was all ordinary. My sister Melissa had the route, the car registration, and his phone number. I told her I'd call by eight Wednesday evening. If she hadn't heard from me by then, she was to call his number and start making a nuisance of herself. She was good at that. I trusted her more than I trusted most of the safety equipment I owned. I carried a paper map in a clear waterproof sleeve, a compass, and a basic flip phone in a small dry pouch. A copy of the itinerary, including Cal's number, stayed behind the map. The phone was mainly for when I reached the road again. I didn't own a satellite device. They existed, but I didn't have one, and nothing I did with that little phone later made it capable of reaching a tower that wasn't there. Cal was waiting when I arrived Monday. He'd brought an old pickup with a narrow trailer attached. He said his nephew would be along shortly to drive the truck while he moved my car. He was somewhere in his late fifties, with pale hair cut close to his head, and a red patch of skin below one ear. He wore clean work pants and a brown canvas jacket. There was nothing about him that made me hesitate. If anything, I felt a little silly checking the price again after he'd already helped me unload. He asked me to write the license plate and my expected finish time on a small card. Then he asked where I'd camp. I showed him the two possibilities on my map. There were designated sites, and I'd choose based on what was occupied and how far I felt like paddling. He knew the places I pointed to. He mentioned a landing that got muddy, and a stretch where a fallen tree had partly blocked a carry earlier that summer. That sort of information made him seem useful. I remember thinking I should tip him if the car was waiting exactly where he'd promised. My main key ring had a little yellow plastic bus on it. It was a joke gift from a driver at work. Cal held it up when I handed it over and asked whether I drove one. I told him I worked into a dispatch. He said that sounded like a headache. The spare was already zipped into the front pocket of my paddling vest, attached to a short piece of cord. I didn't show him. There was no reason to perform a demonstration. He knew I could get into the car at the other end, and that was enough. He watched me put in, then raised a hand as I paddled away. For the next two days, the trip was exactly what I'd hoped for. I had one cold morning, one lunch eaten while sitting on a tree root, and an ongoing disagreement with a zipper on my tent. I saw another canoe Monday afternoon, and spoke to two men fishing near a landing Tuesday. They asked whether I'd seen any other boats. I said hardly any, and all three of us seemed pleased about that. I finished the book Tuesday evening. It had a terrible ending, which I remember because I sat there wondering why I'd carried the thing all that way, when the author apparently hadn't decided who committed the murder until the last chapter. I put the book in the bottom of my pack and went to bed. Sometime before dawn, I woke long enough to pull my hat over my ears, then slept until it was light. Wednesday morning was overcast, with a thin layer of mist sitting on the water. I made breakfast, packed, and left camp a little after eight. I expected to reach the last carry before lunch. From its far end, I would have one more stretch of paddling, and then the landing where my car should be waiting. I was already thinking about a hot sandwich. The last carry began in a narrow cove. You could easily have paddled past it if you hadn't been watching the shoreline. There was a weathered sign on a tree and a little shelf of mud where people had pulled boats out. Behind that, the path climbed between spruce trees before leveling off. I unloaded at about 1140. My watch had a scratched face and a broken date window, but it kept time. I remember looking at it because I wanted to know how long the carry took. I left the canoe upside down above the water, tucked the spare paddle under it, and put the main paddle through the loops on the side of my pack. My food and camping things were in the pack. I kept my vest on, loosened at the waist, because it was easier than finding somewhere else to carry it. The phone was in my jacket. The map and compass were in the vest with my key. About a hundred yards into the woods, I came to a sign I hadn't been expecting. It was a sheet of white paper sealed in clear plastic and fastened to a tree. The heading said the carry was temporarily closed beyond that point because of unsafe trees. An arrow directed people onto to an alternate route marked with orange ribbon. A length of yellow tape crossed the original path. I stopped and looked at my map. There wasn't an alternate carry marked, but there were old lines through the woods in that area. Traces of roads and access paths that no longer connected to anything useful on the map. It had rained before I came in. A tree could have fallen. Someone could have put the notice up Monday afternoon, after I'd left the launch. The sign looked sufficiently official to make me feel that ignoring it would be irresponsible. I stepped around a small spruce and followed the ribbon. At first, the alternate route was easy enough to believe. It ran across firm ground. There were old cuts on some fallen trees, and the space between the trunks was wide enough to carry a canoe sideways through most of it. Then it started climbing. Not a steep hill, but a steady rise that took me away from the low ground, where the map showed the far end of the carry. I stopped twice to check my compass. I wasn't going in quite the direction I expected, although an alternate trail might reasonably take a wider route around damaged timber. After another few minutes, I reached a fork. There was orange ribbon on the left branch. The right branch went downhill toward a patch of lighter trees. I could hear water somewhere in that direction. The ribbon on the left had been tied around a sapling so recently that leaves were trapped underneath the knot. Several had been snapped off and were lying on the ground, still green. I stood there long enough to feel the weight of the pack pulling on my shoulders. Then someone called, "Nattalee?" Cal was coming up the right hand branch. He didn't look surprised to see me. He was breathing a little hard, but he smiled and lifted one hand in exactly the same way he had at the launch. He said he'd been hoping to catch me before I made several trips carrying my things along the detour. For a moment, I was simply glad somebody could tell me which way to go. He asked whether I'd left the canoe at the cove. I said I had. He told me there was trouble with the access road near my takeout, and I wouldn't be able to use the finish we'd agreed on. He'd come in to find me and bring me to a different landing on the north side of the next pond, where he could get the truck close to the water. I asked about my car. He said it was safe. He'd moved it where we could get to it without using the damaged road. It was irritating news, but it wasn't frightening yet. He had a reasonable explanation for being there. He knew I was coming through that carry. I'd practically drawn him a map to the spot. I asked whether anyone else had been told about the change. He said he'd spoken to the people at the shop. That was another small thing that made it easier to follow him. I pictured the woman behind the counter making a note beside my name. I pictured an ordinary arrangement between people who knew the area. Kyle looked at my pack and said there was no point taking it farther until we got the canoe. He offered to carry the boat himself so we could make one trip instead of three. We walked back toward the cove together. As we passed the closure notice, he reached up and straightened it. The lower corner had folded back against the trunk. It wasn't much of a gesture. People straight and crooked pictures without thinking about it. But he knew which side had the loose fastening, and he fixed it without stopping to read a word. I noticed. I didn't know what to do with it yet. The canoe was where I'd left it. Kyle turned it over and checked the carrying yolk with his hand. He asked me to take the spare paddle, so I slid it beside the other one on my pack. Then he lifted the boat onto his shoulders with a practiced movement that made me feel a little better about accepting his help. We went back through the woods, turned at the closure sign, and followed the orange ribbon. At the fork, he took the left branch. I asked about the water I'd heard to the right. He said that was just a small outlet, and we needed to keep climbing before we dropped down to the new landing. He walked in front. From behind, I could see his boots and the lower half of his jacket beneath the canoe. Every so often he'd tip the front of the boat upward to look at the ground ahead, then settle it back onto his shoulders. For the first 10 minutes, I was more concerned about making conversation than anything else. He was doing something difficult for me, and I didn't want to seem ungrateful. I asked whether he'd been busy that fall. He gave short answers. I took that to mean he was concentrating on the boat. The path got worse as we climbed. There were small trees growing in the middle of it, and a few branches had been cut just wide enough for a person to squeeze through. Kal had to turn the canoe sideways at one point. The rear end struck a trunk, and he said something under his breath. It bothered me that he hadn't mentioned this while offering to carry it. It bothered me more when we passed an orange ribbon tied on the far side of a tree. If we'd been coming the other way, we would have seen it clearly. From our direction, it was almost hidden. I asked whether the route had been marked for people leaving the alternate landing. He said yes, then stopped, and changed the position of the canoe on his shoulders. A few minutes later, we came to a flat place where several logs had been stacked beside the path. They were old, with moss covering the cut ends. Beyond them was a narrow opening through the trees, straight enough that I thought it might once have been a road. Kal put the canoe down on the logs. I pulled my main paddle from the pack loops and leaned on it while I checked my watch. It was a little after one. I also checked my compass. We were south of where we'd left the main carry. The new landing he'd described should have been north of it, unless there was a much longer loop ahead that he hadn't bothered explaining. I showed him the map and asked him to point out where we were. He barely looked at it. He said the map didn't show the route he was using. I said I understood that, but I wanted to know where the route came out. He put a finger on the map sleeve, somewhere near a patch of blue, and said we were close. His finger covered too much of the map to tell me anything. When I moved it slightly so I could see, he took his hand away. I folded the map and tucked it back into my vest with the compass. That was the first time he seemed annoyed with me. Not angry. Just annoyed. In the way a person gets when you're asking a question they've decided you shouldn't need to ask. He said I could take the pack off and catch my breath. We'd leave the canoe there for the moment and walk the rest of the way to his truck. He'd come back for the boat later. I asked how far the truck was. He said 10 minutes. I looked at the trees around us. There was no water visible. I couldn't hear a road or an engine. The only signs that anybody had been through recently were our footsteps and the orange ribbon. I told him I'd rather go back to the cove and work out another plan. He stopped rubbing his shoulder. For the first time since I'd met him, his face changed in a way I couldn't explain away. The pleasant, slightly distracted look disappeared. He looked at me as if I'd moved something he'd carefully set in place. Then he smiled again and said going back would waste the afternoon. I said I didn't mind. He stepped toward my pack and reached for the strap over my shoulder. He said he'd take it the rest of the way so I could walk more easily. I turned away. I remember trying to make it seem casual as though I was only adjusting my balance. I said the pack was fine and I wanted to keep my things with me. His hand closed around the strap anyway. It wasn't a friendly grip. He pulled it toward himself hard enough to turn me halfway around. I said his name. I said it the way I'd say a driver's name if he was about to back into another bus. Firmly, because I still thought there was some chance I could stop this by making him realize how he was behaving. He told me to take the pack off. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. I was looking at the hand holding the strap and the white pressure marks around his nails. His other hand went into his jacket pocket. My key ring came out with it. I saw the little yellow bus swing below his fist. There were other things in his hand too, something gray and folded, but for a second all I could look at was my key. He was still holding my main key. A minute earlier, I could have explained that as part of the changed arrangements. Now, with his other hand pulling at my pack, I couldn't trust anything he'd said about the car. I didn't know what the gray thing was until he let one end of it fall. It was a length of webbing with a buckle. One end had already been threaded through to make a loop. The key ring hung from his little finger while he held the loop open. Cal told me to hold still. There are probably people who would have reacted faster. I spent a second trying to fit what I was seeing into a less frightening explanation, and then he reached for my wrist with the loop. I dropped the pack. I'd already unclip the waste belt when he suggested a rest. I pulled one arm out of the shoulder strap, twisted away from the hand holding the other, and let the whole thing fall between us. The paddle I'd been leaning on fell against my boot. I caught the shaft before it slid away. Cal caught my jacket, but his grip slipped when I pulled backward. I swung the paddle low and hit the front of his knee with the flat of the blade. It made a thick, ugly sound. He folded forward and grabbed at me again. I shoved the paddle between us, felt it catch against his shoulder, and ran. I went straight into the tree trees instead of back along the path. That wasn't a clever decision. It was the only direction he wasn't standing in. The first 20 yards were awful. Branch's caught my vest. I stepped into a hole hidden by leaves and nearly went down. The paddle got crosswise between two saplings, and I let go of it because I couldn't stop to pull it free. I heard Cal coming behind me. He was still using my name. Not yelling it yet. Calling it loudly, as if I was a dog that had slipped its leash and he was trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. I ran until I couldn't hear individual footsteps behind my own. Then I went down a slope covered in wet leaves, half sliding, and pushed into a thick stand of young spruce. There wasn't room to stand upright in there. I bent at the waist and kept moving until the branches closed behind me. Then I stopped. I put both hands over my mouth. I wasn't going to scream. I was trying to make my breathing quieter. Every breath seemed loud enough to tell him exactly where I was. Above me, on the slope, something moved through the leaves. Cal called again. He said I'd misunderstood him. He said he was trying to help, and if I got lost out there, nobody would know where to start looking. I kept my hands over my mouth and stared at the ground between my boots. My right hand was bleeding from a scratch across the knuckles. I hadn't felt it happen. There was dirt under my wedding ring, which I was still wearing because taking it off had felt like a bigger decision than I wanted to make that month. That detail is embarrassing, but it's part of what I remember. I was crouched in the woods with a man looking for me, thinking about how I'd put off changing a piece of jewelry. He moved along the top of the slope. I heard him stop several times. Once, he came close enough that I could see a brown patch of his jacket through the needles. He was carrying the gray strap in one hand. I could also see that he was favoring the leg I'd hit. It didn't stop him walking, but he wasn't moving quickly. That was the first thing since the rest stop that made me think I might get away. He stood there for a long time. Then he said very clearly that I couldn't stay in those woods after dark. He didn't say what would happen if I did. He didn't need to. Eventually, I heard him moving away uphill. I waited until the woods had been quiet for several minutes. Then I waited longer because I had no idea whether he'd actually left or was standing still somewhere I couldn't see. When I finally moved, my legs were shaking badly enough that I had to hold a sapling while I straightened. I checked what I still had. My vest, my coat, the phone, the map and compass, the spare car key, a whistle attached inside one vest pocket, one small wrapped mint from the bottom of my coat, my water, food, dry clothes, flashlight and tent were all in the pack beside Cal's canoe. My canoe, I mean. I remember thinking of it as his even then because he had it and I didn't. I tried the phone. The first call wouldn't connect. Neither would an emergency call. I stood there holding it above my head as if another 18 inches could make any difference. Then lowered it before the bright little screen drew attention through the trees. I turned it off to save the battery and put it away. There was no point standing still and hoping the situation would become easier. I spread the map against my thigh. The problem was that I knew where I'd left the real carry but I didn't know exactly where Cal's path had taken us. I could estimate the distance and direction. I could identify the pond we'd come from and the next water on my intended route. Between them was a broad tongue of forest broken by marshy ground. The road where my car should have been was northeast of that. There was also a faint old access line running through the southern edge of the area but the map didn't tell me whether any of it was still usable. I had two obvious choices. Go back for the canoe, which meant going back toward Cal or try to reach the public road on foot. I chose the road. I didn't trust myself to follow an exact line through the trees. I decided to work east until I reached the shore of the next pond, then follow it north. That would give me a feature I could keep beside me instead of trying to walk a compass bearing over every rise and around every fallen tree. It looked possible on paper. I put the map away, loosened the vest enough to breathe comfortably and started through the spruce. I took my time. I stopped whenever a branch snapped under my foot. I looked behind me so often that I kept walking into things ahead of me. The woods were full of small sounds I'd ignored all my life. Water dropping from needles. Leaves dragging against one another. Something tiny, moving under the dead grass. Every one of them made me turn my head. I had been alone in those woods for two days and enjoyed almost every minute of it. In less than an hour, Cal had made it impossible to stand among the trees without feeling that somebody was close enough to touch me. I reached low ground about 20 minutes later. At first, the trees thinned and I thought I was nearly at the pond. Then the ground under the leaves began to move when I stepped on it. I stopped before putting my full weight down again. There was water underneath a mat of grass and moss. I could see it through the hole my boot had made. Farther ahead, small dead trunks stood in a flooded patch that hadn't been marked as water on my map. Something had raised the level since the map was drawn. Or the map had never shown the edge precisely enough for what I was trying to do. I couldn't cross it safely without knowing how deep it was. I went north along the firmer ground, keeping the flooded trees on my right. It was slow work. I had to climb over fallen wood and go uphill whenever the soft ground spread farther into the forest. Once, I found a narrow track and followed it for perhaps 30 yards before it disappeared in a tangle of grass. I stood there feeling stupid and angry. I'd spent two days moving easily across water and now a distance that looked insignificant on the map was eating the entire afternoon. At a small rise, I switched the phone on and tried again. It showed no service. I turned it back off and put it away before I could start having an argument with it. I hadn't heard cows since leaving the spruce. That should have helped, but it didn't. I knew he didn't have to stay behind me. He knew the paths. I didn't. I kept picturing him taking a ten minute walk somewhere that would take me an hour to reach. Eventually, the flooded ground narrowed and I got a view of open water through the trees. I was looking across a shallow bay. The shore opposite was close enough to see individual branches, but the bay curved away into a wider pond on my left. There was a little point projecting from that far shore, with a clear place between two trees that looked like a landing. My canoe was there. For a few seconds, I thought I had somehow walked in a circle. Then I saw that it was floating instead of lying on the logs, and that the land behind it rose differently. Cal had carried it to water while I fought my way through the wet ground. The alternate landing existed. It just wasn't a place I wanted him to take me. The silver tape near the front of the canoe caught the light. My pack was visible inside. The spare paddle lay across it. I can't explain how badly I wanted those things. I could see the top of my water bottle sticking out of the pack pocket. I knew exactly where the granola bars were. I could almost feel the relief of sitting in the boat, with my back supported, and the shore getting farther away. That wanting nearly made the decision for me. I started looking for a route around the bay. It couldn't have been more than a few hundred yards along the edge. If Cal had gone back to his truck, I could reach the canoe and be on the water before he knew I'd been there. Then I noticed the line tied to its front handle. It ran up onto the shore and disappeared behind a low bank. That wasn't unusual by itself. You tie up a canoe so it won't drift away. But the line wasn't slack. It moved a little as I watched, tightening and relaxing despite the boat barely shifting on the water. I lowered myself behind a cluster of thin trunks. A few moments later, Cal stood up from behind the bank. He had been sitting out of sight, holding the line. He looked across the bay, but I don't think he saw me. I was in shade with branches between us. He shaded his eyes with one hand and studied the shore in a slow sweep. Then he called my name. He said he'd put my things back in the canoe. He said I could come get them and we could forget the whole misunderstanding. I stayed down. He waited for an answer. When none came, he sat again, and the canoe floated quietly at the edge of the landing. I couldn't see him anymore. Anyone arriving along that shore would have seen the boat first. My pack, my paddle, and the water bottle. A complete way out, waiting in a place where the person watching it could reach me before I ever got the canoe untied. I backed away on my hands and knees until the water disappeared behind the trees. I don't know how long I sat there after that. that. Long enough for my hands to become cold. Long enough to stop thinking of Cal, as someone who might change his mind if I said the correct thing. He'd had time to cool down. He'd had time to leave. Instead, he'd carried the canoe to a place where he could use it to bring me within reach again. I took out the map and folded it smaller inside the sleeve, so only the area around me showed. The itinerary stayed tucked behind it. The bay gave me a better estimate of my position. The shape was distinctive, with a low narrow neck at its southern end and higher ground to the west. The nearest public road was still several miles away. The old access line on the map passed south of the pond before turning west. If I could find that line on the ground, it might give me a way through the forest that didn't lead past the landing. I decided to go back uphill and look for it. There was another reason. Cal had said his truck was 10 minutes away. I couldn't trust the distance, but he'd brought my car somewhere, and he'd reached this part of the woods without a canoe. There had to be an access route I hadn't used. A route that could take a vehicle could take me out on foot. Provided I found it before he found me. I climbed until the ground was dry enough that I could sit without soaking my pants. Then I ate the mint. It was a ridiculous thing to do. It wasn't going to feed me, but the familiar taste helped me stop breathing through my mouth, and for a minute I could concentrate on something that wasn't the woods. I put the empty wrapper back in my pocket. I still laugh at that part sometimes. There I was, trying not to be kidnapped, and apparently I remained concerned about littering. I moved south, keeping above the wet ground I'd already struggled around. The afternoon light had changed. It was coming through under the clouds now, low and yellow, catching the edges of leaves that looked dark when I faced the other way. I could see farther between the trees, but there were more shadows to mistake for a person. I stopped checking behind me every few steps. It was making me careless. Instead, I walked a short distance, stopped, listened, and looked carefully in every direction before moving again. I don't think I covered more than a mile in an hour. At some point I heard an engine. I stood still so quickly that my knees locked. It sounded like a truck engine. It revved, settled into a low rattle, and then went quiet. I couldn't tell whether someone had driven behind a rise or simply shut it off. It had come from somewhere to my southwest. For a few seconds I almost called out. Then I pictured cows pick up at the launch, and kept my mouth shut. I used the sound to adjust my direction. When I reached the top of the next low ridge, I found a line of older trees with a strip of younger growth between them. The strip was too straight to be natural. In places, there were shallow parallel hollows under the leaves. An old road. I didn't step on to it immediately. I crouched behind a tree and watched in both directions. Nothing moved. There was no recent tire track in that section. Only a little crushed grass where something had passed on foot. I checked the compass. The line ran roughly east and west, which matched the map. I followed it west, staying a few yards inside the trees. That was harder than walking on the road itself. But I didn't want to be standing in the middle of a straight corridor if the truck came back. The road got clearer as I followed it. The young trees gave way to weeds, then bare patches of gravel. There were fresh tire marks in a damp place near a bend. I had found the way Cal had come in. I had also found a reason to be more frightened. There were no buildings or public roads close enough for me to know that another driver might come along. If the pickup appeared, it would most likely be his. The road offered easier walking, but it also made me much easier to catch. I was trying to decide how far I could stay from it and still keep track of it when I saw something blue through the trees. It was the back corner of my car. I recognized the sticker in the rear window before I recognized anything else. A small white outline of a canoe that I'd put there crookedly and never corrected. For a moment, I couldn't understand what I was seeing. My car was parked in a clearing beside a small travel trailer. There was a shed behind the trailer, a pile of cut firewood, and a rusted metal drum with a lid on it. The clearing looked like one of those private hunting camps you pass on back roads, although I hadn't known there was anything like it in that part of the woods. The trees hid it from the old road until you were nearly beside the entrance. I could see no one moving. I put my hand inside the vest pocket and closed it around the spare key. It was still there. The car was about 40 yards away. I could be inside it in less than a minute. I could lock the doors and start the engine. I could follow the road I just found until it joined something larger. Then I noticed how it was parked. The front faced a stack of firewood. The rear pointed toward the short driveway. There was room to back out, but the driver's side faced the open middle of the clearing directly across from the trailer door. The passenger side was close to the brush. I looked at the trailer more carefully. One curtain moved. Not much. Just enough to show a darker space behind it before the fabric settled again. I let go of the key. Cal was in there, or somebody else was. Either way, the car wasn't an unattended gift waiting for me to find it. I eased backward until I could no longer see the clearing directly. Then I sat against a tree and tried to think. I had found my car. I had a key. I had also found the place he'd been trying to bring me to, and I couldn't assume that those three facts added up to an escape. I thought about leaving the car and continuing west on foot. I might have made it. I don't want to turn the decision into something inevitable, just because I know how it ended. But the light was going. I had no flashlight, and I didn't know how far the usable part of that road extended before it joined a public one. Cal could drive it faster than I could walk beside it. If he found me farther out, I'd have no better protection than I'd had beside the canoe. The car had locks, headlights, a heater, and an engine that had never given me trouble. I stayed. I moved around the edge of the clearing until I found a place where I could see the trailer door without showing myself. The pickup was parked behind the shed, with the narrow trailer I'd seen Monday beside it. A short path led away toward the pond. It looked like the connection between the landing and the camp. A few minutes later, Cal came outside. He was carrying a mug. That frightened me in a way the strap hadn't. I had spent the afternoon crouching in wet brush and arguing with a map, while he'd gone back to his camp and made himself something hot to drink. There was no hurry in him. He seemed willing to let the woods do part of the work. He walked to my car and tried the driver's door. It was locked. He looked through the window, then stepped back and studied the trees along the driveway. I couldn't see his face clearly from where I was, but I could see that he was still limping. He called my name once. Then he said he was leaving soon, and if I wanted my car, I needed to come out. I watched him return to the trailer. He left the door open for a while. Warm light showed a table, part of a cupboard, and something hanging from a hook. I couldn't see enough of the inside to know what he'd prepared there, and I didn't try to move closer. When he came out again, he carried a folding chair. He took it past the firewood and set it just inside the trees, where it faced the driver's side of the car and the entrance to the clearing. From the old road, he would be almost impossible to see. He sat down. The mug was in his hand again. I backed away from my watching place, slowly enough that it seemed to take forever. He knew about the spare key. He knew I could open the car if I reached it. I couldn't know for certain what he'd been thinking when he parked it there, but I had already seen what he'd done with the canoe. I was not going to walk across that clearing and stand beside the driver's door with my back turned to him. The other side of the car was close to thick brush. Behind it was the short driveway, with trees on either side before it opened onto the old road. From his chair near the front of the car, the wagon itself blocked his view of the hatch. If I stayed in the brush along the passenger's side, I could reach the rear without crossing the open ground he was watching. My car was an old station wagon. The rear seats folded down. I'd slept in the back once after a late arrival at a campground, and I'd spent enough time loading it to know where the release was without looking. I could get in through the rear hatch. I sat with that thought for several minutes, trying to find the thing I'd forgotten. The car might not start. He might have done something to it. He might hear the hatch. He might come around the back while I was still halfway inside. All of those things were possible. But I had seen the tires, and they weren't flat. I hadn't seen him open the hood. The keys in his pocket and his position in the chair, suggested that catching me outside the car. was at least part of what he expected to happen. I couldn't wait for a plan with no bad possibilities in it. I worked around the back of the clearing, using the darker trees to stay out of view. By then, I could barely read my watch. It was after six. The wind had picked up, and the loose edge of an old cover on the trailer kept flapping against the side. I moved when it moved. I don't mean I managed to synchronize every step like somebody in a movie. I stepped on things. I brushed branches. Once, a twig snapped so loudly under my palm that I stayed still long enough for my hand to go numb. But the trees and the loose cover made other sounds, and Cal didn't come looking. I reached the passenger side near the back tire. I put one hand against the cold metal and nearly lost my nerve. It was my car. I'd driven it to work hundreds of times. I'd eaten lunches in it and carried groceries and left parking tickets on the passenger seat until I remembered to pay them. Being that close to something ordinary made the rest of the situation feel unbearable. I took the key out of my vest. It was tied to its cord with a knot I couldn't undo with cold fingers. I pulled the whole cord out and wrapped it around my hand, so it wouldn't catch on anything. Then I moved behind the car, keeping my head below the window. I fitted the key into the hatch lock. The metal scrapes sounded enormous to me. I stopped and listened. The trailer cover flapped again. I turned the key. There was a small mechanical click. I took the key out, closed my fist around it, and lifted the hatch only a few inches at first. The cargo light came on. I reached inside and slid its little switch off before lifting farther. I couldn't see Cal from that position. That also meant I couldn't tell whether he'd seen the brief light. I got inside. My wet trousers squeaked against the floor. I released one half of the rear seat and pushed it forward, then pulled my feet in and reached back for the hatch. Closing it quietly was impossible. If I lowered it gently, it wouldn't latch. If it didn't latch, he could pull it open behind me. I shut it hard enough to catch. Then I lay flat. For a second, nothing happened. The loose cover moved in the wind. Somewhere off to my left, a chair scraped against the ground. I pushed myself forward over the folded seat. My vest caught between the front seats. I had to pull back, turn sideways, and force it through. I could hear movement outside now. Too close to mistake for anything in the trees. I got one knee onto the driver's seat and reached for the door lock switch. The locks clicked down. A hand struck the driver's window. Cal was right outside it. His face was so close that I could see the red patch below his ear again. He looked down at the door, then back at me. For a moment, he seemed more surprised than angry. He shouted something. I don't know what. I dropped into the seat, got my legs under the steering wheel and pressed the brake. Then I put the key into the ignition and turned it. The engine started. It started normally. No long grinding noise. No last second refusal. The car did what it had done every morning for years. I switched on the headlights as Cal pulled at the door handle. He reached into his jacket for the keys. I put the transmission in reverse before he could fit one into the lock. He stepped back, bent down, and came up holding a short piece of wood from beside the firewood stack. He swung it into the driver's window as the car began to move. The glass broke across my shoulder and lap. I flinched, but I kept my foot on the accelerator. The car went backward over the uneven edge of the clearing. Cal reached through the broken window, trying for the lock. His sleeve caught on the remaining glass and he stumbled alongside the car for a couple of steps before pulling away. I didn't stop. The rear tires hit the driveway. I turned the wheel, backed farther, and felt branches scrape along the passenger side. I couldn't see enough behind me to be certain I was clear of the trees, but I knew I had reached the open end of the driveway when the headlights swung across the road. I breaked, shifted into drive, and turned west. Cal came into the lights. He was coming toward the front corner of the car with a lurching uneven run. The piece of wood still in his hand. He hit the hood once. I accelerated, and he moved aside just before the car reached him. The last thing I saw was his arm raised against the light. Then the clearing was behind me. I drove too fast for that road. I know I did. The car bounced hard enough to throw things off the passenger seat, and once I hit a rut that made the steering wheel jerk in my hands. I slowed for the bends because going into a tree would have handed me back to him. I kept checking the mirror for headlights. There were none. The road went on much longer than I wanted it to. It passed through a low place, climbed, and crossed a small wooden bridge that looked narrow enough to take both mirrors off. I kept the headlights on the middle and drove across without stopping. There was no damage section blocking the way. Eventually I saw a reflective sign at a junction. Beyond it was a wider gravel road, and farther along that, pavement. I turned toward the direction I knew would take me back to town. Cold air came through the broken window. Little pieces of glass shifted in my lap whenever I moved. I could feel a cut on my shoulder, but it didn't hurt enough to make me stop driving. At the first place with lights and other cars, I pulled in. It was a small store with fuel pumps outside. There were two people at the counter, and a man coming out carrying a paper bag. I left the engine running, got out, and asked him to stay beside my car while I went inside. I must have looked bad enough that he didn't ask why. I told the woman behind the counter that a man had tried to restrain me in the woods and had just broken my car window while I escaped. I gave her his name. I gave her the transfer service number from the paper in my map sleeve. Then I asked her to call the police, because I couldn't make my hands work well enough to switch my phone back on. She moved me behind the counter and made the call. I didn't sit down until she told me twice. The police who arrived took me seriously. They could see the window, the glass in my clothes, and the cuts on my hand and shoulder. I showed them the road on the map and described the trailer, the shed, and the way my car had been parked. Then one of them helped me call Melissa. It was still before eight. She answered with an irritated little hello and asked why I hadn't called earlier if I'd finished the trip. I got as far as telling her I was safe before I started crying too hard to explain anything else. Cal was taken into custody at the camp that evening. An officer told me his pickup was parked behind the shed when they arrived. He tried to describe what happened as a disagreement over the transfer fee. They found my main keys, kept the strap as evidence and photographed the broken glass caught in his jacket. The shop had never been contacted about changing my route. There had been no wash out at my original takeout. The marked carry was open and passable. The orange ribbon and the closure notice had been put there by Cal, who had access to the hunting camp through a relative. His transfer business was real. So were the uneventful trips the woman at the shop remembered. His nephew had helped move the vehicle's Monday and then gone home. Believing Cal would complete the transfer Wednesday. I don't know whether Cal had done anything like this before mine. Nobody gave me an answer to that question and I won't supply one just to make the story worse. They recovered my pack and canoe from the little landing. One of the paddles was still caught between the saplings where I dropped it. I got everything back, although I threw away the vest because I couldn't get comfortable wearing it again. Melissa came to get me. We collected the car the following morning with the broken window covered and she followed me home. A few days later, an officer returned my main keys in a paper envelope. The little yellow bus was still attached. I took it off and put it in a drawer. The spare stayed on its cord. I also got a photograph of the false closure notice for my records. In daylight, on a screen, it looked cheap. A crooked heading, an arrow, a few lines of text. Nothing on it actually identified a department or gave a number to call. I'd stood in the woods with a perfectly good map and let that piece of paper turn me away from the trail I was supposed to follow. The carry had never been closed. Cal had needed me to believe it was. [ Music ]