Page 7 of The Girl Who Cried Bigfoot

The bell on the front door jingles, and a man walks in carrying a Pelican case the size of a small coffin. He sets it on the rug with a thud that makes the floorboards vibrate. He has a headlamp and a pair of binoculars that probably cost more than my car around his neck. He looks at me with the kind of intense, unblinking focus usually reserved for a rare bird sighting.

“Checking in?” I ask, pulling up the reservation screen. “Name?”

“Barnaby Jones,” he says, his voice a low, dramatic rumble. “Lead investigator for the North Cascades Cryptid Initiative. We spoke on the phone about the hotspot near the northern ridge. The one with the reports of the Crocs thief.”

“Ah, yes. The Crocs,” I say, keeping my face perfectly neutral as I slide a waiver across the desk. “Standard liability. If you’re carried off by a legend, the lodge isn’t responsible. Also, please don’t use the EMF meters after ten p.m. They interfere with the birdwatchers in Cabin Four.”

Barnaby signs the paper with a flourish, his eyes darting toward the gift shop. “I see you’re low on plaster-casting kits. I brought my own, of course. Industrial grade. You never know when you’ll find a print in the soft mud near the spring.”

“Good thinking,” I say. I hand him his key—the one for the smallest room, the one with the drafty window—and watch as he hauls his coffin-case toward the stairs. I wait until he’s out of sight before I exhale slowly. My marketing instincts are screaming at me to document this, to post a photo of the “investigators” to the hotline’s feed, but there’s a flicker of something else. A low thrum of unease that I can’t quite name.

I step outside to find Walt currently engaged in a standoff with a man trying to park a literal armored personnel carrier next to the woodpile. Walt is leaning on his shovel, his face a mask of rural patience. When he sees me, he tilts his head toward the vehicle, and it tells me everything about the absurdity of our current situation.

“Move him to the overflow lot, Walt. Near the old trailhead. If the ground is soft enough to sink him, that’s on him.”

Walt nods, the movement slow and deliberate, and turns back to the driver. I head to the gift shop. I need to count the HIDE & SEEK WORLD CHAMPION shirts. They’ve been flying off the shelves since the Crocs story went viral, and every shirt sold helps plug a hole.

As I reach the door, I see a figure loitering on the other end of the porch. It’s the grump. The conservationist. The man who looks like he was carved out of an old cedar tree and then dressed in flannel. He’s standing perfectly still, watching the chaos of the parking lot with a sneer of disgust as if he just discovered a termite infestation in his living room. His seven-foot frame casts a shadow that seems to swallow the sunlight. He hasn’t moved, hasn’t blinked. He’s just... loitering. It’s irritating. It’s also inexplicably strange. Most people in this lot are moving with a frantic purpose, but he’s a pocket of absolute stillness in the middle of a storm.

I should march over to him and tell him the porch is for guests only, or ask him if he’s lost his way to the hiking trails. But then I remember our earlier confrontation, remember the vibration of his voice that seemed to be part of the air itself, and the way his eyes didn’t seem to acknowledge the modern world at all. I file him away again. Another odd local with a grudge against progress. Opening the door, I step into the gift shop, the smell of cedar and cheap rubber floor mats calming me.

A group of teenagers are huddled around the bin of Bigfoot plushies, debating the merits of the one with the sparkly eyes. I move past them to the shirt rack. We’re down to an XL, two large, and a single small. I make a note on my clipboard, my mind already jumping to the next task. I need to call the supplier, place an order for the shirts and the mugs. I need to figure out if we can charge the guys with the satellite dishes a “technical equipment” surcharge.

My gaze drifts to the window. The bright sunlight hits the chrome of the SUVs and the tactical gear of the hunters. From here, it looks like a glimmer of victory. We’re fully booked. The shop is busy. The bank will leave me alone for another month. It’s exactly what I wanted when I started that stupid hotline, a digital spark that turned into a financial fire.

But the unease is still there, a cold thread weaving through me. A man in a ghillie suit walks past the window, looking for all the world like a sentient bush, and for a second, I see the forest behind him. It looks dark, deep, and entirely too close. It doesn’t care about room rates or marketing hooks. Sighing, I look back at my clipboard, at the numbers and the lists and the desperate, necessary math. I can save the lodge. I have to believe that. But as the hotline in my pocket pings with another notification, I find myself wondering if I’m the one who started the fire, or if I’m just standing closest to the flames.

The numbers don’t lie, though. If we maintain this occupancy rate through the end of the quarter, I can finally stop dodging the calls from all the debtors. I can pay Walt and Marge the bonuses they’ve earned a dozen times over for sticking by us when the lodge was a graveyard with a view, and I can keep the Cassidy name on the deed. That’s the mission. The only mission.

I’m halfway through a mental inventory of the pantry when the bell over the gift shop door jingles again. This time it isn’t a teenager or a man in a tactical vest. It’s Barnaby Jones again, and he looks like he’s just witnessed a miracle. He’s clutching a handheld device that’s chirping like a caffeinated cricket.

“Miss Cassidy,” he says, his voice hushed and urgent. “The static energy in the lobby is off the charts. Are you aware that your structural foundation is currently emitting a high-frequency vibration? My readings suggest a localized atmospheric disturbance centered roughly fifty yards north of the main porch.”

I look at the chirping device, then back at his earnest, sweat-beaded face. “That would be the old generator, Mr. Jones. It’s been localized and disturbed since the nineties. If the vibration gets too loud, just give it a kick. It’s a very temperamental piece of equipment.”

His brow furrows as he tries to reconcile ancient machinery with cryptid presence. “The generator? Are you sure? Because the cadence of the pulse is remarkably similar to the infrasound vocalizations documented in the 1974 Patterson-Gimlin audio analysis.”

“I’m reasonably certain,” I say, guiding him back toward the door. “But if you find any physical evidence that the generator is a misunderstood primate, please let me know. I’d love to see the footage. In the meantime, complimentary cider is being served in the common room. It’s locally sourced and entirely free of vibrations.”

He wanders off, still staring at his screen, and I take the opportunity to slip back outside. I need a moment of air that doesn’t smell like desperation and cargo shorts. Steering clear of the main entrance, I head toward the side stairs where the woodpile creates a small, quiet alcove.

The grump is still there. He hasn’t moved an inch from his spot at the end of the porch. Up close, the sheer scale of him is even more daunting. He’s wearing a heavy work shirt that’s seen better days, and his hands, resting on the railing, are scarred and stained with what looks like pine resin. He looks like he’s standing guard over a crime scene.

I stop a few feet away, leaning my hip against the railing. I should be professional and welcoming. Instead, I find myself mirroring his expression of distaste. “You’re still here. I thought I told you the lodge wasn’t looking for more conservation advice.”

He doesn’t turn his head. His profile is sharp, his jawline beneath his beard looking like it was hacked out of the same mountain he’s so protective of. “You’re inviting a plague of locusts and calling it a harvest,” he says. His voice is that same low, resonant rumble, a sound that seems to bypass my ears and go straight to my ribcage. “Do you have any idea what these people are doing to the soil? To the silence?”

“They’re paying the bills,” I snap, defensiveness surging through me before I can check it. “Soil doesn’t pay taxes, and silence doesn’t keep the roof from collapsing. I’m doing what I have to do to keep this place standing. My grandfather and his father before him didn’t spend years building this lodge just so it could be reclaimed by the brush because I was too pure to use a marketing gimmick.”

Finally, he turns. His eyes are a strange, deep amber-brown, and for a second, I feel a weird sliding sensation, like my brain can’t quite hold onto the image of him. He’s too big, too still, too... much. “Your grandfather understood that there are things in this forest that cannot be bought or sold,” he says. “He knew that some doors, once opened, cannot be closed with a ledger.”

“Well, my grandfather isn’t here,” I say, my voice trembling slightly. “I am. And I’m the one who has to explain to the bank why the Cassidy Lodge is still a viable business. So unless you’re here to help me fold brochures or park a tank, I really don’t have time for the cryptic warnings.”

He looks at me for a long beat, his expression unreadable. There’s no anger in it, which is somehow worse than if he’d shouted. There’s just a profound pity in his eyes. It makes me feel small, and I despise feeling small. I’ve spent my whole life trying to be the biggest person in the room just to survive.

“The mountain doesn’t care about your ledger, Wren Cassidy,” he says. He uses my name like he’s known it for a hundred years, even though I’m certain we’ve never met. “But it will care about the noise. And when the mountain answers, it won’t be in currency you can spend.”

He steps off the porch, his boots making a sound on the gravel that is somehow heavier and more definitive than the armored personnel carrier. He doesn’t look back as he walks toward the tree line, his tall frame disappearing into the shadows of the cedars with a fluidity that shouldn’t be possible for a man of his size. One moment he’s a looming presence of flannel and judgment, the next, he’s just... gone.