Page 39 of The Girl Who Cried Bigfoot

He pulls the burner phone I gave him out of his pocket. He looks at it, then looks at me. He dials a number, his thumb moving with a deliberate, slow precision.

My pocket vibrates. I pull out the hotline phone, the screen glowing with a local number. I look at the phone, then at him. He’s standing five feet away from me, the sunset turning the edges of his hair into a halo of copper light.

I answer the call. I can’t help it. It’s a reflex, a muscle memory that I’ve spent the last three weeks building.

“Bigfoot Hotline, what did you see?” I say, my voice a whisper into the receiver.

Rowan holds the phone to his ear, his eyes locked on mine. He doesn’t blink or smile. Just stands there, a seven-foot-tall myth in a bargain-bin T-shirt, and speaks into the phone.

“Tourists.” The word is flat, dry, and perfectly delivered. “Everywhere. Doing something inane with a stick.”

I can’t stop the laugh that bubbles up in my chest. It’s a real laugh, the kind that starts in my stomach and shakes loose the tension that has been plaguing me. I’m standing in a gravel parking lot with a three-hundred-year-old guardian, and we’re having a conversation on the phone while looking each other in the eye. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous. It’s the most honest moment I’ve had since I moved back to this lodge.

“Sir, please stay on the trail,” I say, playing along. “The Sasquatch is currently busy with his brownies.”

Rowan lowers his phone, a ghost of a smirk playing around the corners of his mouth. He doesn’t say anything else. He turns and retreats into the trees.

I stand in the parking lot, the hotline phone still warm in my hand. The sun has dipped below the horizon now, leaving the world in that bruised, purple twilight where the shadows start to look like things they aren’t. I look at the call log, at the hundreds of notifications from people who want to believe in something impossible, something larger than their own small lives. I realize then that I don’t need the blurry photos or the frantic voicemails. I don’t need the viral fame or the tactical gear. I have a nine-foot-tall secret and a kitchen that smells like rosemary, and for the first time since my parents died, I’m not just waiting for the next disaster. I’m part of the map.

I walk back into the lodge, the heavy door thudding shut behind me. The lobby is quiet now, the birdwatchers having retreated to their cabin, the only sound the steady, rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock. Sitting at the desk, I open the ledger, but I don’t look at the invoices. I flip to the back, where my father used to write notes about the trails. I pick up a pen and, in small, careful script, I write a single line.

The North Ridge is clear. The guardian is at home.

I close the book and set it on the desk. The lodge is silent, the mountain is watchful, and for one night, the world is exactly the size it needs to be.

21

WREN

THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A JOKE

The wind is picking up, a low, persistent moan that rattles the panes of the lobby window. Outside, the parking lot is a study in desolation, the single SUV belonging to the birdwatchers having long since gone dark. The forest edge is no longer a collection of individual trees but a solid wall of shifting black, swaying in a rhythm that feels less like nature and more like a warning. Opening the window, I adjust the Cassidy Lodge sign, though I know it’s still leaning five degrees to the left, stubborn and rotting in the damp air.

I pull my mother’s old cardigan tighter around my shoulders, the wool smelling faintly of her jasmine perfume. The silence in the lodge is heavy tonight, the kind that settles into your marrow and makes you notice every floorboard that contracts against the cold. I should go to bed, but the Bigfoot Hotline dashboard is glowing on my laptop, a series of red notifications blinking like a slow, electronic pulse. It’s been a quiet evening. I’ve only received a few blurry photos of tree stumps and a voicemail from a man in Ohio who is convinced he heard a Sasquatch reciting Gregorian chants.

I sit back down and tap a pen against the oak desk, watching the clock tick toward ten. The viral storm I kicked up has settled into a predictable hum of manageable chaos, a steady stream of tourists who buy shirts and leave before the real weather hits. I’ve become good at the curation of mystery, the strategic deletion of anything that looks too much like Rowan. It’s a business model built on a lie that keeps the lights on, a high-stakes joke that I’ve learned to tell with a straight face.

A new notification pings, the sound sharp in the quiet room. It’s a direct call, not a voicemail. Most people don’t call this late unless they’re drunk or trying to be funny, but the number on the screen isn’t from the usual list of repeat pranksters. It’s a local area code, the kind that usually belongs to a hiker who’s realized they’ve stayed out past the light. I hit the speaker button, my voice dropping into the practiced, professional lilt of a woman who spends her days talking to people who want to see monsters.

“Bigfoot Hotline, what did you see?” I say, the words a familiar script that usually ends in a laugh.

There is no laugh on the other end. There is only the sound of ragged, wet breathing and the unmistakable whistle of wind through a microphone. It’s a jagged, desperate sound that makes the hair on my arms stand up. I sit up straighter, the cardigan sliding off one shoulder. The levity I usually bring to these calls evaporates, replaced by a cold, sudden weight in the pit of my stomach.

“Hello? This is Wren at Cassidy Lodge. Can you hear me?”

“Help,” a voice rasps. It’s a man, his words thin and trembling, the consonants catching on a throat that sounds like it’s been screaming for hours. “Please. I’m… I’m on the Eagle Crest cutoff. I think I broke my ankle. It’s so cold.”

My hand tightens around the pen until the plastic groans. The Eagle Crest cutoff is a brutal, high-altitude trail that gets mean the second the sun drops. It’s miles from the lodge, deep in the kind of terrain where the cell reception is a gamble and the ground is mostly loose shale and ancient roots. I look at the window, where the first drops of sleet are starting to smear against the glass.

“Stay on the line,” I say, my voice steady even as my heart starts to hammer against my ribs. “I’m calling 911 on another line right now. Don’t hang up. Tell me your name.”

“Mark,” he says, and then a sob breaks through, a raw, unvarnished sound of pure terror. “The clouds came down so fast. I can’t see the trail. I can’t see anything. My phone is on five percent. Please don’t let me die out here.”

I grab the landline with my left hand, dialing the emergency dispatcher with trembling fingers. I explain the situation while listening to his shallow breaths through the laptop speakers. I’m a lodge owner, a marketing person, a woman with a useless art history degree. I am not a rescue coordinator, but I’ve lived in these mountains long enough to know that five percent battery and a broken ankle in a sleet storm is a body found in the spring thaw.

The dispatcher’s voice is calm, a stark contrast to the panic vibrating in my ear. “We have the coordinates from his ping, Ms. Cassidy. But with the storm hitting the ridge, we can’t get a helicopter up there. Our SAR team is mobilizing from town, but given the road conditions on the highway, they’re at least ninety minutes out from your trailhead. Maybe more.”

“Ninety minutes?” I look at the thermometer on the wall. It’s dropping toward freezing, and the wind is hitting forty miles per hour. “He’s in shock, and he’s wet. He doesn’t have ninety minutes.”