Voracious - Alice Henderson [25]
If only she could somehow touch it, or touch something it had touched, she might know what it was and what it wanted. It hadn’t had contact with the backcountry book long enough for her to get any detail other than the blood.
She needed to touch something it had been exposed to for a longer period of time.
Or, she needed to touch the creature directly.
She continued down the trail, pondering, gasping for breath with her mouth open, a stitch forming in her side. Already the temperature was climbing. She’d never known it to be this hot in the Rockies, and she needed water badly. She had to stop and drink. Up ahead she saw a cluster of rocks. Maybe she could hide in there and drink from Noah’s water bottle. She hoped he was still alive, but his screams played intensely and repeatedly in her head, like some gruesome song she couldn’t get rid of.
When she reached the huge, granite boulders, she glanced back again. The trail was still empty. Quickly she darted off the path and ran around the side of one of the boulders. There she squatted on a bed of pine needles and flung the pack off her back. Inside she found another change of clothes, including some polypropylene long underwear and a pair of woolen socks. Next to that lay the water bottle. Grateful, she took a long drink, quenching her thirst.
Replacing the bottle, her hands found something smooth and solid. A great sadness suddenly swept over her. Curious, she pulled out the object, a very old hardback book. The spine was well worn and the paper old and spotted with age. She opened it carefully and found graceful handwriting and some field sketches: a flower, a mountain peak. It was someone’s old journal, she realized. She read the date on the page she was currently turned to: February 20, 1859. The book had a terribly sad energy to it.
Carefully she closed it, replacing it deep in the bag. Her fingers searched for sun protection, but met something cold and metal instead. Instantly images and emotions leapt into her mind.
Running down an alley in pursuit of a dark figure.
Fear. Desperation.
Throwing open a door to a train compartment and lunging inside, heart hammering.
She withdrew the object, holding it carefully. She knew backpackers carried knives, but those were usually folding blades or pocket knives.
The knife she now held in her hand was a foot-long dagger, encased in a round, ornamentally engraved silver sheath. The handle was completely metal, and when she drew it out, she saw that the blade was very strange. It had no edges but was round with a pointed end, like a sharpened spike. She touched the point and felt it snag on her flesh. Very sharp. She’d never seen a knife like it.
It felt important, vital.
It looked very old and very well used.
Very old. If Noah collected antiques like this, it would explain the strange images I got from him. An antique dressing table had once given her images of a young girl in a calico sunbonnet, and a cameo brooch had once allowed her a glimpse into the Victorian period, showing her an elegant woman who had strolled with a white umbrella on rainy cobblestone streets.
She put the knife back. After cinching and buckling the pack, she hefted it onto her back again. Fastening the waist and chest buckles, she wondered over the objects she had found inside. Then, screwing up her courage, she prepared herself for the long hike to Many Glacier.
She had just rejoined the trail when she heard shouting. She froze, stepping back away from the trail. She heard it again: a man yelling from the direction of the ranger station. She crouched down, peering out between tree trunks. A figure appeared on the trail, and Madeline desperately hoped that it wasn’t the creature. It definitely looked human, though after the ranger’s station, that wasn’t worth much anymore. No long claws or ink-black sharkskin. She remained where she was, trying to make out if it was a ranger or the creature in another guise.
And then she saw the familiar blond hair