Blood

“This one.” Nathan fished a glossy photograph out from the neat lineup spread across the plastic tablecloth. He held it up to face the stout, gray-haired vendor counting the bills in her change-box. “What’s this supposed to be?”

“That one?” She hesitated, her wrinkled lips opening and closing ever so slightly. The farmers’ market hubbub—vendors gossiping with their regulars, farmers hawking their late-summer squash, toddlers begging for ice cream—covered over her gravelly Southern drawl. Here, everyone knew everyone…except Nathan had never seen this woman before. “Lordy, I wish I knew.”

He tilted the photograph towards the lukewarm mountain sun. Unlike the other photos for sale—mostly close-ups of cuddling squirrels and baby birds—this image was cast in dark grayscale, clearly taken by a camera not meant for night vision. A few hazy tree trunks helped him make out the shapes and shadows of a small wooded clearing. But at the right-hand edge, nearly out of view, skulked a dark silhouette: blurry at the edges, shaggy, as if covered in bristly fur. Rearing upright, but tall, much too tall to be a bear, and elongated, with the lithe muscle of a pursuit predator. One arm reached out towards the camera, curving at the end into a set of cruel, jagged claws. Out of its shadowy head shone two clear eyes—pure white against the backdrop of night, as if glowing with moonlight.

Ignoring the fear crawling down his spine, Nathan waved the photograph. “When’d you see this?”

“Well, I never saw it m’self. Now that I’m old, I use automatic motion-capture cameras: they see somethin’ move, they start sendin’ pictures straight to me.” The woman tapped her phone screen. “I set up a few near the ol’ fire tower last week, but I accidentally left one out there overnight, an’ when I looked at what it got…”

“Aw, hell.” Nathan squinted at the photo, quickly rubbing sweat from his widow’s peak. “Reminds me of—you ever heard that urban legend?”

She shook her head. “Grew up down south, darlin’.”

Nathan hesitated. Leaned closer, just enough for his head to fall under the shadow of the tent overhead. 

“Folks in town say there used to be something…not human out there. Something out for blood.” He pointed at the forested mountain ridge that loomed over the town. More sweat dripped down his temple. “Every few months you’d hear about some new horror: deer mutilated, dog all scratched up, huge claw marks on the trees, someone’s torn-up veggie garden. Stuff only a big predator could do. Something vicious.” He leaned back, just a little. “Haven’t had a new incident in a while, though.”

“Sounds like nothin’ a bear or mountain lion couldn’t do,” chuckled the woman. “But hey, gotta keep the kids outta the woods somehow, right?”

Nathan’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t believe in it?”

She shook her head. A tiny cross necklace twinkled at the hollow of her neck. “I don’t believe in there bein’ monsters. Everything the Lord made is good, and all that. But I do need to get my camera back at some point, so…”

“I could give you a lift, if you want!” he blurted eagerly. A beat of silence. “It’d be no problem. I live up by the fire tower. My pa—I mean, I have a cabin off Bogshead Road.”

The old woman’s eyes were blue as robin’s eggs, and crinkled at the corners when she smiled. “Well, now, bless your heart. I’m Kathy. Nice to meet’cha, Mister…?”

He held out a hand. “Call me Nathan.”

They shook. Kathy’s hand was soft and warm, with a surprisingly steady grip.

“You mind if I hold onto this?” Nathan waved the photograph again.

Kathy shrugged, packing up her pocketbook. “All the same to me.”

He slipped it into his back pocket—the printed side facing in, just to be careful. He didn’t want those eyes anywhere close to this town.

________

Hours later, Kathy heaved herself up to stand, creaking both the wooden bench and her joints. The market had been packed away hours before, and late afternoon sun gilded the half of the parking lot that the mountain’s shadow didn’t reach. She and Nathan had agreed to meet back here around four, and he had just rounded the corner in a rusty blue pickup. The truck ambled to a horizontal stop in front of her, ignoring the faded parking lines, and the window rolled open.

“Hey there. Ready to go?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

The suspensions complained as Kathy clambered onto the running board. She cracked the passengers’ side door to see Nathan leaning over, brushing a layer of thick black fur off the seat. “Sorry about that,” he sputtered as she hoisted herself in. “My dog usually sits there.”

They ground out of the parking lot onto the main road, heading towards the mass of dark forest that loomed above the town. A near-forgotten country song twanged softly on the radio. Kathy folded her hands on her lap and gazed out through the smudgy window, watching the telephone poles whiz by. 

Eyes on the road, Nathan cleared his throat. “So, what brings you to the Catskills?”

“I actually used to live ‘round here, but my parents moved down south when I was young. Thought it’d be nice to ‘find my roots,’ or what have you.” Kathy let out a barking laugh. “Maybe meet some distant cousins.”

“Any luck?”

“Nah. Everyone I knew’s either moved away or dead.” Her fingers moved to her throat, fidgeting with her necklace. “No one left here to know who I am.”

Nathan tapped on the steering wheel. “My pa’d probably know you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, he lived here all his life. In fact, he used to scare me to death with stories about this thing. Even said he came face-to-face with it once as a kid—all big and hairy. Huge claws and teeth. Eyes like a strike of lightning.”

“Face-to-face?” Kathy’s watery eyes widened as big as fists. “What’d he do?”

“Ran like hell, I s’pose. What else can you do?” Nathan steered around a dusty pothole. “I dunno enough to say for sure, though. Apparently he got into some fight with his extended family about it, so they picked up and left—that’s why it was just me and him growing up—and he drank himself silly whenever I tried to ask.”

“All that must’ve done a real number on him.”

“I s’pose.” Nathan sighed. “He was just a kid at the time. Like I said, there hasn’t been a real sighting in decades.”

“Huh. Maybe it died. Or decided not to do those things anymore.”

“Or maybe it just skipped town for a while.”

Nathan looked sideways at her, out of the corner of his eye. They drove on.

“Should we ask him more about it? Your pa, I mean?”

Nathan rubbed his scruffy neck. A bit of dried blood flecked his shirt collar: a shaving accident? “He died a couple years back.”

“Oh.” Kathy stared out at the fir branches blurring together outside the window. “Sorry to hear that.”

“S’okay. Now he could be a real monster. Wasted too much energy trying to keep both of us on the straight and narrow. Bit easier now that it’s just me.”

“You and your monsters,” chuckled Kathy. “Still. Blood’s blood, after all, no matter if you wish different.”

They drove on in silence, with switchback after switchback taking them ever higher up the mountain. Slowly the freshly-tarred town roads gave way to light tire-worn pavement, then to smooth packed-dirt roads, then to thin gravel paths. Every bump and jolt seemed to drill up through Kathy’s tailbone. Finally, Nathan pulled off the road in sight of a rickety wooden cabin, and the truck sputtered to a stop.

With difficulty, Kathy eased herself down onto a patch of crabgrass, and shivered at the sudden chill in the air. Nathan emerged from the tattered backseat, a well-oiled shotgun slung over his shoulder. The slams of the car doors cracked the mountain stillness.

“My place.” Nathan nodded to the cabin. Kathy glanced over the splintered logs and patched roof: no doghouse, no yard stake, no leash in sight. “You wanna lead the way?”

Kathy blinked. “You’re comin’ too?”

“Not letting you go alone. Not with that thing out there.” Grimly he patted his gun, avoiding her eyes.

“Well, it’s just near the top o’ the ridge,” she told him, picking her way through the weedy yard to an overgrown path out back. “Shouldn’t be far.”

They melded into the treeline and, beating back the vegetation, began to hike towards the mountain peak. The slight incline had Kathy huffing and puffing before long. Nathan followed behind, his sturdy boots stepping overtop the imprints of her thin tennis shoes, and was quick to offer a hand whenever she slipped.

Soon Kathy had all but forgotten that life existed outside the forest. Vines and shrubs tugged at her legs, and knobbly roots pressed into the soles of her feet. Dense loam and fresh pine swirled in her nose. Twin warblers coiled and curlicued between boughs overhead, writing unintelligible cursive in the afternoon sky. Their cries—wee-ta, wee-ta, wee-ta, wee-TA—still found her ears long after they’d left her sight. She knew Nathan thought she was afraid, out here all alone with him and his gun and no one around for miles. But how could she be, when she was right at home?

Nathan sighed through his teeth. “Are we close?”

“Just a lil’ bit farther.”

They walked on. The reddening sun inched lower in the sky, cowing the birds and insects into silence. The sky dimmed to a deep-sea blue beyond the treetops, which crowded ever closer together like a horde of onlookers. Evening stillness thickened the air until it seemed that the very forest held its breath. Kathy squinted. She could just make out the edge of the moon peering over the horizon.

Close, she thought. They had to be nearly a mile out from the road. Just a little bit farther.

They walked on.

Soon Nathan coughed, a crackle in his throat. “Hey, Kathy. I got a question.”

“Yes, darlin’?” She glanced up again at the moon. Full and luminous.

“Why don’t you believe in monsters?”

Goosebumps sprung to life beneath Kathy’s thin sweater. Death and decay—damp leaves, rotting wood, dripping sap—now stung in her nose. She felt hyper-aware of her accelerating heartbeat, the sweat prickling her body, her labored breathing.

“I told you already. Every creature that the Lord made has to be good, exactly as is. It can’t be a sin if you ain’t got no choice but to do it.”

She could hear the tap of his footfalls on the path; sense the hot breath heaving in his lungs; smell the sweat that streamed from his forehead, layered with something darker and wilder and more familiar than she dared admit. Her clothes felt suddenly itchy, and tight, much too tight.

“There’s always a choice,” growled Nathan’s voice, sounding oddly guttural through her distorted senses. She heard cracking, popping, stretching of bones and joints and ligaments—her own, or someone else’s? Her lean muscles tensed, buzzed with energy, ached to be let loose. “I had to teach my pa this too. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you look like…”

Kathy looked up. The soft moonlight burned into her eyes, consuming her vision. And at last, there came the pain, the tremendous pain and rage that drove her out of her rational mind. It bore down on her like a crushing weight until all she wanted was to rip and crush and kill—

“If you choose to hurt and scare other people, then that makes you—”

Kathy whipped around, fur bristling, fangs bared, eyes like a strike of lightning. For the first time, she came face-to-face with—

“—a monster!”

__________

Later, Kathy leaned back against a tree trunk, the cool soil pressing through the seat of her trousers. One hand toyed with the photograph of the monster, now smudged and spattered; the other held the camera she’d retrieved from the tree, absently pressing the “delete” button on every last fuzzy image. She yawned, wide and lazy; the white light from her eyes flickered over the tree trunks.

She hadn’t enjoyed the hunt this time. Awful that it had to end this way, especially so soon after rooting out that “distant cousin” she’d hoped for. Together they could’ve had their way with this dinky town. Too bad all that good-bad nonsense had gotten to him first.

Nathan’s shaggy face, all screwed up with righteous anger, flashed into her mind’s eye. Idealistic, just like his father. Maybe he was right—maybe it was what you did that made you a monster. But everything had to eat, one way or another. Just the law of nature. She yawned again—she always got so sleepy after a good meal—and wiped her lips with the back of her wrist. Red smeared onto her sweater sleeve.

Blood was blood, after all. No matter if you wished different.