I froze. From where I was lying amongst the trees, I would be hard to spot.
The footsteps were coming faster now and I saw a flashlight. Within seconds, Dex entered my view. He had the flashlight in one hand, the infrared camera in the other. That figured.
I tried to move, to yell, but before I could do anything I saw myself come out from the trees. And by myself, I mean Sarah’s skinwalker version of me.
“Dex,” it said, pausing a few feet away.
Dex shone the flashlight on the fake me’s face and ran up to it.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” he started apologizing. He reached out for the fake me with his hand. Every instinct in my body told me to get up and stop them but that paralysis was seeping through my veins again. My own voice was caught in my throat, borrowed by someone else.
“Dex, I’m afraid,” it said to him. It was my voice but it sounded emotionless and robotic.
I could see him hesitate in the dark. Did he know something was up?
He aimed the flashlight in ‘my’ face. It turned away, squinting. He couldn’t see the eyes.
“I’m hurt,” it said, still flatly. She showed her hands to him. They were covered in blood. Whose blood that was, I had no idea, but I was relieved it wasn’t mine or Dex’s.
“Shit,” he swore as he kept the flashlight at the hands.
“What happened?” he asked.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were carnivorous, ravenous. An animal’s.
Before he had a chance to look into them, she reached up with her bloody hand and pulled his face towards her, closed her eyes, and kissed him.
Er, I mean I kissed him. I was awestruck and forced to watch something that should have been the most epic moment of my life. Only it wasn’t happening to me. Not really.
I was afraid she’d try and eat him. That’s what it looked like she was doing.
And Dex. Dex was kissing her back.
Wait, he was kissing me back.
My heart jutted around in my chest. Despite everything that was going on, the thought, the sight that Dex was kissing me (and getting quite into it, it seemed), made my insides feel giddy, and my stomach lurch around like I had butterflies. What was wrong with me?
I watched for a few more seconds, feeling like a Peeping Tom, or like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. It was turning me on. It was so unbelievably wrong.
But something happened to shake me out of it.
“Ow.”
It was Dex.
He pulled back from the makeout session and touched his mouth. He looked down at his hand. Had she bit him?
The skinwalker me went for him with her other hand. That hand was already a full-on wolf paw. It was going to swipe across Dex’s face. It would remove his handsome mug in one go.
Something came over me. I don’t know what. But I found the strength, or the strength found me. I bolted upright and screamed at the top of my lungs. I think I tried to say “stop!” or “duck” but it all came out in a supersonic unintelligible shriek.
But it worked. Dex looked up just in time. He ducked and did a roll on the ground as the wolf made a lunge for him. He got to his feet and scooped up the camera, forgetting about the flashlight and aimed it at the wolf which was moving raggedly away from him, its head and neck held at an awkward angle.
“Dex!” I screamed again. “Get away!”
I ran towards him. He flashed the camera in my eyes and tried to read me from the infrared viewer. He looked as confused as you could imagine.
“What the fuck?” he said.
I grabbed his arm and started to pull him towards the trees. “Come on, it’s you she’s after!”
At that, it was like the heavens opened up. Whatever breeze was blowing lifted the clouds away and the moon shone down on us in a straight shot. Everything was illuminated. Dex’s confused face. The wolf lurking awkwardly behind us. The crow that swooped down from the treetops and landed on the ground beside us with a squawk.
We jumped at it, knowing full well it wasn’t just a crow. But it was too late to do anything.
The crow morphed into a snake, then a deer, then a coyote, then Shan. For two seconds Dex and I were looking into the sparkling eyes of the ranch hand, Sarah’s confidante, and murdering medicine man.
He cocked his head sideways at us but didn’t say anything. Dex pushed me behind him and held me there with his arms, shielding me.
The wolf slowly crept over to Shan. Shan raised his hand at it. It stayed still and sat back on its haunches like a dog. Like a hunting dog.
“If you had just left things alone…things didn’t need to turn out this way,” Shan said carefully. I wasn’t sure if Dex had gotten the memo of what exactly was going on but it didn’t seem to matter.
“You killed Rudy. No one had to die for your fucked up cause,” Dex said.
Shan laughed. “Cause? You are misinformed, young man.”
He looked over at the wolf and pointed at Dex. “You sure this is the one you want? She seems to have more brains.”
The wolf didn’t say anything, though it wouldn’t have been weird at this point if it had. Shan turned back to us and took in a deep, narrow breath through pursed lips before speaking.
“I’ll give you both credit, though. You’re some of the most able white kids I’ve come across. It’s too bad we couldn’t have made this work out some other way.”
Shan took a step backward. We knew what was coming but we didn’t know how.
And then it happened. Before our eyes he turned into a bear. His bones stretched and cracked, creaked and crackled like a roaring fire, as they expanded to make room for his changing body. Fur spat out of his pores until he was covered from head to toe. Which, in itself, was about eight feet tall.
I know I had just seen it with Sarah but I still couldn’t get over it. How could I? How could this be happening?
Dex was obviously dumbfounded too. His body tensed, his hand gripped my forearm tightly. The fact that he was not filming this part, of all things, briefly (and shamefully) crossed my mind but I let it pass. What did it matter right now? What could we do to get out alive?
We were facing a fucking grizzly bear that had the mind of a demented and merciless human being. This had to be the most dangerous animal in the course of history.
There was a growl from beside it. Oh right, the wolf. That would make things easier.
Whether they wanted Dex or not, I doubted we were making it out of the forest alive. But it didn’t mean we would just give up. I knew I wouldn’t.
As the grizzly stood on its legs, it made a swipe at us. But like Sarah had shown before, Shan was not used to the bear body. He fell over and landed on the ground with an earth-shattering rumble. The wolf looked at the bear, concerned, or something like that.
This was our moment.
“The tree!” I yelled at Dex.
We turned on our heels and headed for the closest tree. Dex threw the camera on the ground, aiming it at the bear and wolf, and grabbed me by the waist and hoisted me up until I caught onto the first few branches. They were heavy enough to support myself and I pulled myself up, straining my muscles, cutting every inch of me on the scraping branches as I rose.
It didn’t matter. I grabbed and grabbed and climbed and climbed and felt Dex coming up behind me. I also heard a vicious bark and a scampering sound.
The wolf was making a run for the tree.
I couldn’t get out of Dex’s upward path fast enough but he managed to swing his legs up just as the frenzied, snapping jaw of the wolf came within inches of latching onto him. He grabbed onto the branches next to me and climbed up beside me. This was about as far as we could go. Anymore and the tree would start to bend over from our weight.
It was too high for Sarah to reach us, no matter how hard she threw her wolf body into the air. But it wasn’t high enough to escape the tallest reaches of the bear.
“Can bears climb trees?” Dex asked. I spied his frantic peepers between the branches.
“I think these bears can do anything,” I said sadly.
He nodded and swallowed hard. I did the same.
“I know I already said this, but I guess it was to the wrong girl. I’m sorry,” he said, his voice breaking.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. It didn’t.
“When we got to the house…I thought you were right behind me. I…promised to protect you and I failed.”
“We both failed, Dex,” I sighed, so bloody conscious of the grinding teeth just feet below us and the impending threat of the bear. The impending threat of death.
“I didn’t think I’d go like this,” he said. There was a hint of amusement in his voice.
“Death by a grizzly bear? Me neither.”
“No, I meant just…alive.”
I was puzzled. It was welcoming.
He looked below him at the wolf. The tree shook slightly as if the ground beneath was moving. I think the bear was stirring.
He looked at me and smiled, it was shady in the scattered moonlight.
“For once, I can feel everything. Every emotion, every feeling, every sense. I’ve never felt so alive. How ironic.”
I sniffed. This was sad. I always thought the horror of death would have overridden any sadness, but there it was, kneading my heart until it hurt.
“Well, I hope I make the best company you’ve ever had,” I whispered.
“You are the best,” he said sweetly.
He put his hand through the branches and stroked my face. I closed my eyes at his touch and a tear rolled down my cheek. I heard the roar of the bear approaching, its deafening sound rolling through us. I cursed Sarah for getting to kiss the man I loved while I didn’t get the chance.
Dex took his legs and swung them up around a branch and twisted his body underneath the one he was holding onto so that we were both between the same set of branches, our bodies close together.
He leaned in close, his eyes searching mine. They sparkled in the moonlight and reflected my own heartbroken face. Then he kissed me.
His moustache tickled. His lips were warm. It was wet and sweet. He tasted good. I felt like crying and laughing and screaming all at once. My body felt as light as air. A million symphonies played in my head. If I was going to die, I was going to die happy. That was something.
He pulled away. I wanted to cry. I did cry. It wasn’t fair. Whatever it was, I only knew it for such a brief time. Another tear ran down my cheek. He gently wiped it away with his hand and tilted my chin up at me. If other things were going on at the same time, I wasn’t aware of it.
I managed a small smile.