Near the Bone by Christina Henry (the mitten read aloud txt) 📕

“Yeah,” C.P. said, his eyes alight with enthusiasm. “We saw that weird cave with all the bones and stuff that you told us about, too. I’ve got some amazing pictures on my phone, and Griffin has even better ones on the camera.”

“No,” Mattie said. Her throat hurt so much. Every time she spoke she saw William’s mad face above her, felt his hands on her throat again. But she needed to tell them, to warn them again. “No . . . no. Creature . . . warned . . . us. Can’t . . . go . . . there.”

The idiots. The absolute idiots. She’d told them not to follow the creature, not to play in things they didn’t understand. They hadn’t listened.

There came an unearthly roar, almost as if the creature had heard what they were saying, or had caught their scent. It wasn’t too close, but it wasn’t far enough away for Mattie to feel safe, either.

“What was that?” Jen asked. She didn’t look scared, though. She looked curious, and a little excited—just like C.P.

“Creature,” Mattie said. She stood up so quickly that her head spun. “Hide.”

“Creature? You mean the thing that made the tracks on the mountain? I want to see it,” C.P. said.

“No . . . no,” Mattie said. She wanted to shake him. What kind of person saw a room of bones and organs and thought, I really want to meet the animal that mutilated all these other animals? “You . . . don’t. Will . . . kill . . . you.”

“It didn’t kill you, right? You said you saw it. It came right up to your house.”

The creature roared again, and this time it sounded different. It sounded louder—and angrier. The roar echoed all around them, all through the forest—bouncing off the trees, filling up the air, echoing inside Mattie’s ears so that she had to cover them with her mittened hands or else that sound would seep inside her head and stay there.

She hunched over, closing her eyes, vaguely aware of the cries of the other three people—their surprise, their fascination. After several moments the sound faded away, though something seemed to still linger in the air—an undefined malice that made Mattie want to hide away forever so that she might never cross the creature’s path.

“That was awesome!” C.P. said.

Jen was smiling, and even Griffin had sat up and was staring around with an excited light in his eyes.

C.P. held some kind of device up in the air. It was flat and black and completely foreign to her. Mattie saw him draw it close to his face and tap on it. A moment later the creature’s sound emitted from the device again.

“Stop,” she said. She wanted to shout it but the small amount of talking she’d already done had strained her voice close to the breaking point. She flapped her arms so he would get the picture.

“Why? It’s amazing! I didn’t think we’d be able to capture a cry like that. We might even be able to get some video,” C.P. said.

How could she explain? How could she make them understand? She could hardly talk and they didn’t want to listen anyway. William was after them, and now the creature would be, too. There wasn’t anywhere on the mountain where they would be safe.

CHAPTER TEN

Jen noticed Mattie’s distress and grabbed Mattie’s wrists to stop the flapping.

“I know you’re trying to tell us something, but I don’t think you should try to talk right now. It’s hurting me just listening to you. Do you think you could write it out?”

Mattie shook her head. “Can’t . . . write.”

Though that wasn’t exactly true, she realized. She used to be able to write—or rather, Samantha could write. She had a vague memory of Samantha practicing her letters at the kitchen table—but she hadn’t done it in so long that she didn’t think she’d be able to write out anything legible.

“Creature . . . is . . . angry,” she said. Her throat was at a breaking point, but they needed to hear her. “Don’t . . . approach. Will . . . hunt . . . us . . . because . . . caves.”

She hated the way she sounded, like a child who didn’t know how to talk. But she needed to make them understand the important thing—stay away from the creature.

“I don’t understand what you mean, ‘because caves,’” Jen said. “Are you saying that the cryptid is going to come after us because we went into its bone cave?”

Mattie nodded.

“But that’s ridiculous. It’s not human. It doesn’t think like a human.”

Mattie wanted to scream. Even Jen, who Mattie was certain would be sensible, didn’t believe. They were all willing to believe in the existence of an animal they’d never seen before but they weren’t willing to believe it could think and reason.

“Not . . . like . . . human. But . . . not . . . like . . . animal . . . either. Warned . . . us.”

Griffin, who seemed to be barely following the thread of the conversation up to that point, spoke up. “You said that the marks near your cabin were a warning because you went into the caves.”

Mattie nodded again, though she was worried about Griffin. His words were slurred together, and he seemed to have trouble focusing his eyes anywhere.

“So you’re saying that because we—me and Jen and C.P.—went into the caves after the cryptid warned you to stay away, that it will come after us, all of us?”

Mattie nodded once more. She thought her head would fall off if she kept shaking it around like that. Anyway, at least one of them understood, or seemed to. She hated the way they kept using that word, “cryptid,” though. It implied something benign, and the creature was not benign.

“So the wackaloon with the shovel is after us, and the cryptid is after us, too?” C.P. said. “Just what are we supposed to do here? There’s no cell service, you and Griffin are on the injured list, and all we have to keep us safe are our tiny nylon tents.”

Mattie had been thinking about this ever since she heard the creature’s roar. The important thing was that at least one of them got off the mountain to get help—or better yet, all three of them.

“You . . . take . . .