Page 5 of Abdominal Snowman

Sage wasn’t going anywhere in her rental. Not anymore. Another problem for after she found help before freezing to death on the mountain.

Her footprints were marking the trail behind her as she stalked along the fading lines of her tire tracks. What had she seen that made her swerve so hard?

“What the hell?” she muttered, her voice stolen by the rushing wind. Those bright blue eyes… Maybe it had been a wolf. A big one.

Shivering the unsettling thoughts away, she rubbed her hands together for heat and blew into them. The warmth from her breath chased the chill away, warming the cloth of her gloves and the sensitive skin beneath. It only lasted a second.

“Shit,” she said.

The howling wind answered her, and she realized she was alone up here on this mountain. Glancing down at her feet, she paused. Beside her right boot was a footprint.

Footprints.

Big ones.

“Okay, wait,” she said to herself and blinked a few times. She’d hit her head pretty hard, but…

Bending at her knees, she crouched down and extended her gloved hand. Sage hovered it over the footprint before slowly lowering her finger. She was gentle as she carefully swiped her fingertip over the heel of the print. Cold snow collapsed beneath her finger, and she jerked her hand back.

So they are real. I’m not crazy.

Following them with her gaze, she saw they tracked across the road, as if whatever it was had come… down the mountain. The tracks continued over the side of the cliff, but Sage didn’t move any closer.

The prints were easily twice the size of her own. It looked like a man’s foot, but even larger. Taloned. The pressure points were at the ball of the feet and the toes. Holes pierced the ground where the talons had helped it gain traction.

Suddenly the words of the man at the market rang through her ears. “You never know what’s up in those mountains.”

Had he known? And he’d been warning her?

“Okay, stop,” she told herself. She stood and turned away from the prints. “You’re thinking like a reporter. Stop it. You just barely missed a wolf and wrecked. That’s it.”

Sage came to a stop only a few feet away.

“Fuck,” she whispered. Phone still clutched in hand, she pulled up the camera and turned back around to take photos of the prints.

Who would she even show these to?

It was hard to focus the lens in the frigid cold wind, but she managed to get a solid picture or two. She wasn’t going to risk pulling her DSLR out in this weather, so her cell phone camera would have to do. Any moisture could ruin it, and the model she had didn’t come cheap.

No one would believe her about all this anyway.

The phone had no signal whatsoever, so she didn’t bother trying to call or text. She slid it back into her pocket to conserve the battery life. For all she knew, she might need its light to find her way in the middle of the night.

Shivering again, Sage really hoped it didn’t come to that.

As she turned away from the prints for good this time, her gaze fell to the tire tracks that skidded off the road. Chest heavy with anxiety, she followed them back down to the car, hanging onto branches and catching herself on trees in order to slowly make her way down. It was a miracle she hadn’t hit headfirst. She probably wouldn’t even be conscious yet if that had been the case.

The car had stopped smoking by the time she slid to a stop by the back door. Tugging it open, she grabbed her backpack and her camera bag. When she found help, she could come back for her duffle. What mattered was finding help. Everything else could come later—the car, insurance, the fucking fees she’d have to pay.

“Ugh!” she groaned. “Great vacation so far, Sage. Yeah, great idea.”

Getting herself up the side of the ditch the first time had been hard enough, but a shoulder strap bag and a backpack made it even harder, and her camera bag wasn’t something she’d describe as light.

But she managed. With the power of frustration and curse words, she made it to the top.

Lungs burning from the ice-cold air she was gulping, Sage leaned against a tree and caught her breath for only a second. She was losing daylight, and she didn’t want to be stuck in the woods by night.

Turning away from the crunched up car, she scanned her eyes across the expanse of white forest and snow-covered mountains.