Dark as the wolf’s flesh.
One of the two double doors behind Green slammed shut and he barked out a cry.
“Stop,” he said.
The gaunt man reeled back and doubled over from the sound of Green’s voice. He gagged and spit in the dirt. His clipboard clattered on the ground.
“Christ,” he said to the empty air as Green stumbled out of the van.
Green staggered to the cabin’s porch and let himself spill onto the weathered boards, his heart racing.
The man in scrubs recovered and slammed the second door. A moment later he, his partner, and the body of a woman on a fun little trip to the mountains rumbled down the wooded drive and away from Kinkaid Cabins. Green sat up and watched them go, trying not to think of the way her lips looked like molded wax. Not alive. Somehow, not fully dead. Completely and utterly wrong.
He scanned around for Valentina, but couldn’t see her. It was hard to know whether that was good or bad. She wasn’t much of a comfort. He flinched at a car door slam and looked up to see the cops were pulling out of the little parking area.
Gravel dust billowed.
The sound of the tires rose and fell.
Plastic police tape murmured in the breeze of approaching evening.
“Mr. Green?”
The Valentina smudge stood five feet off.
“What?”
“Tell me what you’ve seen so far.”
The question made him very tired.
“I saw one of the bodies. I knew her face. I saw her at the gas station when I arrived in the mountains. Like I saw Kyle Cartwright. Is this me? Am I doing this somehow?”
He didn’t need to see her to feel the weight of her attention.
“Hmm. Are you a dangerous, predatory cryptid somehow deceiving the most experienced cryptonaturalist in the world?”
Her tone seemed artificially light. He didn’t like it.
Green thought of the things he hadn’t told his new teacher. He thought of the acorn in his pocket. He thought of the crow he couldn’t explain, the acrid haze of memories that hurt to touch. He thought of the wolf’s accusatory pronouncement.Not-man.
“Did you somehow come here and harm these people while you were simultaneously observing the rag moth?”
He didn’t have the words or the energy to argue.
“No,” he said.
“No, indeed. No, you are one of the people fighting to solve this. That is what you are doing here. Now, tell me what you saw.”
Green tried to breathe, but it felt shaky.
“Teacher. Can…can it wait?”
In his current state, away from the awe of the library tree, using the word “teacher” felt uncomfortably infantilizing.
Valentina paused. He couldn’t see her face or guess her expression. He was talking to a disturbing bruise on the landscape.
“Yes. I suppose so. Come, stay within sight of me while I finish my examinations.”
