“Mya!”

My ears prick up and my heart races as I peer into the darkness. It sounds like my friend Emily. “Em?” I yell back. “Where are you? I can’t see shit!”

“Over here!”

Well, that’s fucking helpful. I groan. Despite my fear and misgivings, I take several hesitant steps through the forest. “Do you have your torch?” I yell. My torch! Of course. “Emily! Come toward the light!” If she’s lost her torch, it’ll be far easier for her to come to me, than the other way around. I shine the weak beam on a nearby red pine, steadily moving the spot of light up and down the gnarled bark in the hope she’ll see it through the ancient trunks and foliage.

Heart still thumping in my chest, I hear nothing. If she’s out there, she’s not moving, or if she is, it’s not toward me. “Emily!” I call out again with panic. “Can you still hear me?”

Several tense moments of silence follow, before her familiar voice answers.

“Mya! Help me, please!”

Shit. “Are you hurt? Stay put! I’ll come to you. Just keep talking!” I don’t know where it comes from, but I find my courage. Dauntless, I head into the gloom in the direction I think I can hear her. I’m scared, yeah, but my friend needs me. I have to pull myself together and help. Emily’s pulled my head out of the toilet on more than one occasion during our college tenure, and she’s always been the best wing-girl. I’m not wimping out now, not when it matters most, not when she needs me.

****

The terrain is uneven, and an obstacle presents a new danger every few feet. The thought of being without my sad little excuse for a torch is unthinkable. Its weak radiance is just enough to see what’s directly in front of me. The scent of petrichor fills the air as I go, the lush, damp, earthy aroma inundating my senses. It relaxes me the tiniest bit. It’s one of my favorite things. The beauty of nature combined with the life-giving promise of rain is satisfying and soothing in a way I’ve never been quite able to explain.

But rain right now? That’s not so great. The notion of being drenched to the bone and out here shivering is not something I want to give further thought. But when the sky falls is not up to me. Mother Nature has her ways and they’re not for me to question.

“Mya! It hurts!” Emily’s voice sounds pained, and somehow more distant and faint.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I swear. I’m just not covering ground fast enough. But what the shit is Emily doing? Is she walking away from me? Or is she fast losing her strength? If she passes out, I’ll have no hope of finding her. A twig snaps nearby and my heart seizes. I freeze on the spot like a startled deer. With bated breath, I wait. For what? I’m not sure, I’m simply reacting at this point.

Another sound, like the crunch and rustle of feet through the thick carpet of fall leaves has my heart racing again. “Emily?” I venture, my voice quavering. “Is that you?”

There’s no answer and the temperature around me drops inexplicably.

A chill shivers down my spine, my hand trembles, and I warily raise my torch to scan my surroundings. Nothing. Nothing. I’m alone … until I’m not. I catch a glint of white in the dark and I gasp, my soul practically leaving my body as someone—or more accurately, something—steps into the light. I raise the weak beam as the creature rises from all fours to its full height. It must be ten feet tall! For a split-second I think it’s a bear, because all I’m taking in is black fur and a broad chest, but then as terror seeps into my veins like a slow-drip poison, I realize the reality is so much worse.

With impossibly muscular limbs ending in vicious, curved claws, an exposed rib cage protecting its huge chest, the thick black fur covers the being from its taloned toes to its neck. There the fur stops, giving way to a long, bleached stag skull face with hollow sockets where eyes should be, and enormous blood-soaked fangs. And sprouting from its nightmare-inducing skull face are a pair of spectacular gnarled antlers.

“Fucking Jesus,” I breathe, every fiber of my being transformed to stone. I’m literally paralyzed by fear. It’s a goddamn fucking wendigo! I can’t move my muscles, nor can I rationalize what I’m seeing. I’m frozen in place, as if trapped in time and space, caught between one breath and the next, I teeter on the event horizon of terror. The pregnant, unbroken pause stretches on for what feels like an eternity. Until a low rumble finally cracks the silence like thunder.

“Run,” says the monster, his voice low and deep.

I can’t believe my ears. It spoke. I’m losing it. Or I’ve lost it. Maybe I’m currently unconscious and dreaming? Or maybe I fell and passed out, and this is nothing more than a nightmare?

A long, black tongue snakes out of the wendigo’s maw and makes a tasteless show of languidly licking the dark scarlet smeared over its teeth. “Run,” it repeats.

My mind races as fast as my poor heart and an unbidden question slips from my lips in a whisper before I can think better of it. “What happens if you catch me?”

The wendigo takes a lumbering step toward me. “Depending on the hunt you provide,” it answers after a moment, “I’ll eat you or fuck you.”