The Mad and the Macabre

November 14th, 2010

Sunday

“Ouch.” Gabriel winced as Maura swabbed his cheek with alcohol. It felt as though he’d been attacked with a series of dull, rusted razorblades. Fortunately, the lacerations were fairly superficial, but that didn’t mean they didn’t sting like hell.

“I may not be a doctor,” Maura said, “but I think you’re going to live.”

She opened the medical kit Cavenaugh had had the foresight to bring and taped a couple squares of gauze over the side of his face. It was frightening how well-stocked the kit was. Not only were there bandages, but syringes, splints, vials of lidocaine and epinephrine, and enough needles to make an acupuncturist jealous. What kind of trouble did Cavenaugh anticipate they would get themselves into up here?

Again he pondered what Cavenaugh might know that he hadn’t divulged.

Maura closed the kit, took it back into the kitchen, and set it on the counter. Gabriel remained seated in the doorway, oblivious to the snow blowing in his face as he was too busy watching the others where they crouched beneath the window. They had widened the hole under the house substantially, and were now excavating the small recess. Cavenaugh wore a pair of non-powdered latex gloves, and wriggled in and out of the orifice. Each time he returned with a few more small bones, which he set on the pillowcase Kelsey held stretched open in front of him. Will pointed the flashlight over Cavenaugh’s back and directed the beam under the floorboards, while Jess stared intently at the growing collection of skeletal remains.

“Hand me another baggie,” Cavenaugh said.

Will passed him a sandwich-sized Ziploc bag, and a moment later Cavenaugh scooted all the way back out of the hole and stood. He grimaced as he stretched his back.

“Let’s get out of this snow,” Cavenaugh said, leading the others toward the back door of the cabin.

Gabriel rose to allow them to pass and followed them into the living room, where Maura had the fire stoked to a roaring blaze. Cavenaugh opened the grate to light the room and gestured for Kelsey to spread out the pillowcase on the floor in front of it. Will shined his flashlight at the collection for good measure. Carefully, Cavenaugh began to separate the bones by species. There were thin rib bones, beaks, leathery claws, and wings that still bore feathers, which he moved all the way to the right. Other smaller mammalian bones, a hodgepodge of rodents, were placed to the left. The remainder, in a jumble in the center, all appeared to be human. There were more than a dozen phalanges, most of which appeared to be from fingers, while the shorter ones were obviously from toes. Some were still articulated with cartilage that had long since turned black, but the majority were loose and disjointed. They were all scored with the same teeth marks in the manila surface, and there wasn’t even a hint of flesh.

“Do you think…?” Will asked.

“No way to know for sure,” Cavenaugh said, “but I think so. Unless there are more bodies hidden in these mountains. Without DNA analysis, we can only work under the assumption that they are.” He sighed and turned to Gabriel. “What kind of animal did you say it was?”

“I didn’t get a very good look at it.”

“Do you think it’s possible it might have been a cat?”

“A cat? But we’re in the middle of nowhere and…” His words trailed off as realization dawned.

Cavenaugh produced two clear plastic bags, the first of which contained an assortment of whole finger and toenails. He set it aside and held up the second for Gabriel to examine. It was filled with a mess of hairs: some of them were long and stiff, others shorter and slightly curved. There were even pinches that appeared to have been shed in clumps. Some were white, but most were a subdued orange.

“Oscar,” Gabriel whispered. “How could he have survived out here all this time?”

“You’re missing the big picture,” Cavenaugh said. He dropped the baggie on the floor beside the bones. “This cat knows where at least one of the bodies is hidden.”

***

They had all followed the tracks through the snow and into the woods until the prints had vanished in the detritus beneath the heavy pine canopy where the snow couldn’t reach, at which point they had split into three pairs and headed in different directions. That had been close to an hour ago now, which was the designated time to turn around and head back to the cabin where they would all meet for an early breakfast. While Maura and Will had branched left and struck off to the north, and Cavenaugh and Kelsey had continued east in the direction the tracks had been leading them, Gabriel and Jess had veered south. They all understood that the tabby knew this forest better than all of them by now, and if it didn’t want to be found, then they didn’t have a prayer of finding it. But they had to take the chance. If Gabriel had startled Oscar badly enough, Lord only knew when he might return to his home.

Gabriel had given up calling for the cat. Oscar certainly wasn’t going to scamper out of his hiding place at the sound of Gabriel’s voice, but it had at least made him feel like he was doing something productive. Now he and Jess walked in silence, with only the crackling sound of dead pine needles, broken branches, and festering aspen leaves between them. They swung their flashlight beams ahead of them, making the tree trunks cast shadows that simulated movement, as though dark figures ducked behind them as soon as the light neared.

Jess wore the same look on her face that Gabriel had seen earlier in the night. They weren’t close enough for him to try to coax out whatever was bothering her, so he waited for her to voice her concerns.

“It’s time to head back,” she finally said. A cloud of her breath hung around her head. Her cheeks and nose were bright red, and she had begun to sniff every few seconds. She looked him in the eyes, then turned quickly away. “We aren’t going to find him regardless. Not like this anyway.”

Gabriel pulled a bottle of water out of his jacket, took a long drink, and offered it to Jess. She took it with a grateful nod, and tipped it back.

“I’ve been thinking about this,” Gabriel said. “I’m pretty sure the remains have to be fairly close for the cat to have been able to find them. If Oscar’s still living at the cabin after all this time, then he can’t possibly be roaming too far.”

“That’s why we need to find him.” She passed back the water and he tucked it into his coat. “Maybe he can lead us to them.”

“I don’t think so. By now, the flesh would have rotted and sloughed from the bones. There would be nothing left for him to eat, or at least nothing he would want to eat. I’m confident he gathered those…parts not long after they died, and has been living off of birds and ground squirrels since.”

Jess nodded. It obviously wasn’t what she had been hoping to hear.

They started walking back to the north. Several minutes passed before she blurted out what was really bothering her.

“I think we should call the police. Maybe finding these new bones would light a fire under their butts and get them back up here. We could always use the help.” She paused. “And the bottom line is now that bones are beginning to turn up, they should stop looking at this as a missing persons case, and start investigating it as murder.”

“They came out here after discovering Nathan’s femur, and that accomplished nothing.”

“But we know more now than they did then. They could bring dogs up here to track the cat, and maybe figure out where it came across the remains.”

Gabriel shook his head. By all rights, new evidence should be turned over to the police, but Cavenaugh was a cop, and seemed to think that calling in the authorities now would be a waste of time. At least at this juncture. He had suggested they use the next several days to search on their own before reporting the evidence. Besides, the police and FBI had both scoured the countryside over the prior two days and had found nothing. The appearance of a pile of phalanges wasn’t earth-shattering news either, at least from their perspective, and any subsequent search would be halfhearted, undermanned, and sloppy at best. It would be a self-fulfilling prophesy. If they expected to find nothing, then that was exactly what they would find.

Gabriel agreed with Cavenaugh’s assessment and the plan to buy themselves just a little more time, but he didn’t particularly care for the idea of withholding their findings any longer than that.

“You agree we should wait,” Jess said, making no attempt to hide her disdain.

“For a couple of days. That’s all.”

“Doesn’t it make you wonder why Cavenaugh—Detective Cavenaugh—would not want to call it in?”

“I…don’t know,” Gabriel said, but he clearly understood what she implied, which brought him right back to his suspicion that Cavenaugh was indeed hiding something.

“Look at it this way.” She took him by the arm to stop him and met his eyes when he looked at her. “The bones were scarred with teeth marks, but none of them were broken. That tells us the cat was unable to break through the cortex to get to the marrow. What makes you think it would be able to bite off an entire finger? Think about it.”

Gabriel pictured the phalanges that had remained articulated. None of them had still been attached to the metacarpals or metatarsals, nor had there been any residual cartilage on the bases of the proximal phalanges. Cavenaugh must have recognized it right away.

“Christ,” Gabriel whispered. “They were severed before Oscar found them.”

***

Fueled by the lack of sleep, the manner in which they had awakened, and the task at hand, the tension in the main room of the front cabin was palpable. They had eaten their soggy oatmeal in silence, and now the dirtied paper plates hung in a plastic trash bag by a nail from the back of the northern cabin in hopes that the smell would entice Oscar to return. The coffee wasn’t percolating nearly fast enough to keep up with the demand. Will had joked that this was probably the only place in the world where there wasn’t a Starbucks within a block, but none of them had found it remotely amusing.

Cavenaugh, Kelsey, and Gabriel scrutinized the satellite maps while the other three played the daily video blogs on Cavenaugh’s laptop, making notes of anything the ghosts on the screen said that sounded like directions. They only narrowed the search to a ten mile radius for fear of being too aggressive. The last thing they wanted was to miss the right hot spring based on a faulty assumption. The springs were hard enough to spot on the maps as it was. With the dense forest and ragged cliffs, they could barely discern the river cutting right through the center, let alone smaller ponds. They guessed the maps were made in roughly March or April as there were still shaded slopes white with snow, while others showcased evergreens and aspens already beginning to sprout leaves. Details were relatively sketchy, but they had managed to locate several small creeks and a dozen larger bodies of water. They eliminated the lakes fed directly by the streams and those where they could see the wooden arch of beaver dams. Those were obviously freshwater, and they were looking for isolated pools without current or significant runoff, which narrowed their prospects to four. Two of them were within three miles of the cabins, one just under five, and the last barely within their radius. Considering they were only visible as faint reflections through the overhanging treetops, there were no guarantees they were actually bodies of water and not some stray piece of corrugated aluminum from an elk hunter’s blind, but they needed to explore every viable option.

All four possibilities were just below timberline, nearly hidden by the final surge of pines. One was on the southwestern slope of Mount Isolation, and there was another on the northern side. The third was on the northern slope of Mount Haverstam, roughly four miles south of Mount Isolation, across a valley bisected by a small stream. The fourth and farthest, was nearly ten miles to the northwest, on the northern slope of Mount Cranston. It was the least likely candidate as the rocky face was carved with eroded trenches above the pond, which potentially suggested that it was fed by seasonal runoff from the melting snow, but as they couldn’t entirely exclude it, they would save it for last.

“Listen to this,” Maura said. She sat on the middle cushion of the couch with the laptop on her thighs while Jess and Will leaned in to see the screen from either side. “This is from the book of Isaiah, chapter fourteen, verses twelve through fifteen: How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.”

“Three of the four are on the northern slope of the mountains,” Kelsey said, “but I don’t feel we can eliminate the fourth based on its proximity. It’s the closest to the cabins, and looks like it’s one of the larger springs. What else do you have?”

“Here,” Jess said, pointing down at the binder in which she was taking notes. She traced under the words as she spoke. “This is Ephesians, chapter six, verses eleven and twelve: Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

“All of them are roughly the same elevation,” Kelsey said.

“But of the three mountains, Isolation is the tallest.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” Will said.

“We need to remember that we’re dealing with more information than they had when they disappeared,” Gabriel said. “They didn’t have satellite images or any knowledge of hot springs. They were following the clues from the bible alone.”

“You said something about the bacteria turning red, right?” Jess asked.

“Yeah, for UV protection.”

“I know it’s a stretch, but fire could be used as a metaphor for the color red, like in this quote from Ezekiel: Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so; thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.”

“Do you really think it’s possible they found what they were looking for based on these verses?” Will asked. “I mean, what are the odds of all of this stuff existing right here in Colorado? Didn’t all of this biblical stuff happen somewhere in the Middle East?”

“It’s like they say here,” Jess said. “This is from Daniel: Thus he said, the fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. Stephanie said in the video that they interpreted this to say that the world is divided into four parts, and that the fallen angels were banished to similar locations within each. And that the fourth kingdom describes North America, specifically the United States.”

“Angels don’t chop someone’s fingers and toes off,” Will said. “That’s the kind of thing men do.”

“You don’t believe in angels?” Maura asked.

“This isn’t the time.”

“Your brother believed in them,” Jess whispered.

“Grant was a dreamer. He would have believed anything he was told. The more outrageous the better. But he was my brother. My only little brother. And I’ll be damned if I don’t return home with some kind of news for my mother…and someone to be held responsible. So you ask if I believe in angels? Not a chance in hell. And despite all of his faults, I loved my brother, and I’m here to see that somebody pays for his death.”

Will stewed in silence for a moment before rising and storming out the back door.

“Should one of us go after him?” Maura asked.

“He just needs to blow off some steam,” Cavenaugh said. “He’ll be back soon enough.”

“Yeah,” Gabriel said, gesturing toward the window. The snow was falling so fast and thick that it was like watching television static. Even the tall pines were now invisible beneath their winter coats. “Where could he possibly go?”

***

Gabriel was exhausted. The adrenaline rush from the previous night had long since abandoned him and left him drained. They had spent the remainder of the morning and early afternoon plotting their courses through the forest and viewing the videos chronicling the last days of their family members. It had been painful for all of them to watch, especially with each other. After the final entry, they had all drifted silently apart like specters.

Will had returned after a couple hours, noticeably subdued. He had offered a mumbled apology to them as a group, but had said little else for the remainder of the time they had been together. Gabriel couldn’t blame him. Will had nearly vocalized his own thoughts verbatim. It was hard enough to lose someone cherished, even harder when the reason why seemed absurd. Their loved ones had vanished while searching for something that had meant the world to them, yet made little sense to those left behind to mourn them.

Right now, Gabriel just wanted to crawl into bed and close his eyes. The plan was to strike out into the mountains in the morning under daybreak, with plenty of time to make the trek and return home before nightfall. None of them wanted to find out what it was like to spend the night in the wilderness, even knowing that the storm showed no sign of relenting and that the longer they waited to leave, the more difficult the hike would become. That was a problem for tomorrow, though, and right now he just wanted to make all of the problems go away, if only for a few hours.

He trudged through the shin-deep powder in the courtyard to the back door of his cabin, opened the door, and stepped into the kitchen. The precipitation had loosened the bandage on his cheek, so he peeled it off and dropped it into the trash bag, careful not to notice the amount of blood that had soaked into the gauze. He was just about to stomp the snow from his boots when he heard heated voices rise from the other side of the wall in the main room. After a moment’s hesitation, he crept across the room and pressed his back against the wall so he could better eavesdrop.

“I don’t care if you think it’s a bad idea,” Jess said. “It’s the right thing to do. The only thing to do.”

“And just what do you think that will accomplish?” Cavenaugh asked. He lowered his voice, but his anger was no less apparent. “Look outside. There’s no way they could even make it up the mountain in this weather.”

“Of course they could. They have SUVs with four-wheel drive and helicopters, for God’s sake.”

“You think they’re going to come thundering up here with a chopper because we found some old finger bones?”

“No, but that’s not the point. What we found is the evidence of a crime. That’s why we need to call them. There’s nothing more to debate. What if those bones belonged to Jenny? Hmm? What if that cat had been hiding under this very floor gnawing on your little sister’s remains?”

There was a heavy moment of silence before Jess spoke again.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

Another pause.

“Fine,” Cavenaugh whispered. “Make your call. Tell them whatever the hell you want.”

Gabriel heard footsteps on the wooden floor headed in his direction and barely had time to step away from the wall before Cavenaugh blew past. The detective didn’t even look back as he threw open the door, stepped out into the snow, and slammed it behind him.

From the other room, Gabriel heard the beeping sound of a cell phone. He stomped the melting ice from his feet and walked into the main room.

Jess had extended the antenna on her cell and was pacing back and forth across the room, turning in various directions as she walked, all the while watching the small screen.

“Damn it,” she whispered.

“Are you okay?” Gabriel asked.

She started at the sound of his voice.

“I can’t get a signal.”

“Must be the storm. Cell signals are weak up here to begin with.”

She grabbed her jacket from the back of the couch and slipped into it.

“Where are you going?” Gabriel asked.

“Outside.” She breezed past him into the kitchen. “There has to be someplace around here where I can get a signal.”

The kitchen door opened and closed again, and with that, Gabriel found himself alone in the cabin with only the company of the crackling fire. He went into the bedroom, pulled one of the blankets off the bed, and returned to the living room. Moments later, he was bundled on the couch in front of the potbellied stove, fast asleep.

***

He awakened to the smell of chicken broth and sat up to find Jess standing over him. She smiled and eased down beside him while he rubbed the residue of sleep from his eyes.

“I brought you dinner.”

She proffered the Styrofoam bowl.

“Thanks. I didn’t mean to be asleep so long.” He glanced back over his shoulder at the window. The world had turned gray, save the flakes tapping at the glass and the crescents of condensation framing the pane. “What time is it anyway?”

“Does it matter?”

He smiled and nodded. “I don’t suppose it does.”

The soup was only lukewarm, but it tasted absolutely divine. He shoveled down a couple spoonfuls brimming with noodles, then looked at her. She was staring blankly into the room and working her fingers into knots in her lap.

“Did you ever get your phone to work?” he asked.

“No.” She turned to face him. “And we lost our internet connection as well.”

“Stands to reason.”

“Does it?”

She rose and paced nervously in front of him.

“Yeah. No cell signal, no WI-FI connection.”

“I know, I know. But something’s not right here. Can’t you feel it?”

“We’re all just stressed out. Tomorrow’s going to be a rough day. If everything goes according to plan, we’re going to find our sisters’ bodies. I need to know… We all need to know. I just can’t imagine how much it’s going to hurt when we finally see what actually happened to them. On one hand, it will be a relief to finally learn how they died. On the other, seeing it, seeing how they might have suffered… There’s no way to un-see that.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m probably overreacting. I can’t tell you exactly what’s wrong, only that something is.”

He finished his soup and set the bowl on the floor. When he sat back, Jess leaned against his shoulder and her hand found his. The fire bathed them in heat and the moment felt natural, comfortable.

“There’s an emergency transceiver in the main cabin,” she said.

“What do you propose?”

Jess was silent for a moment. “I don’t know for sure. I can only assume it connects directly to some emergency broadband channel. Maybe we could just alert them to the fact that we found these bones and let them determine the proper course of action from there.”

“That sounds reasonable enough.”

Another silence.

“What’s the problem then?” he finally asked.

“I don’t think Cavenaugh would appreciate it. He’s made that abundantly clear.”

“Cavenaugh? He already told you to make the call.”

“I get a bad feeling from him.”

Gabriel scoffed. “What could he possibly do?”

***

“So is everyone clear about the plan for the morning?” Cavenaugh asked. He surveyed their faces one by one. “Good. I don’t want to waste a single minute of daylight. I want us out of here by oh five hundred sharp.”

They all rose from the couch and floor where they’d been sitting through the final strategy meeting. The pertinent maps had already been pulled from the walls and rolled into neat tubes, rubber-banded, and marked with a number, one through three, to correspond with the team number. They were laid out on the wooden table they had dragged in from the kitchen. Beside each map was a radio unit, which had already been tuned to a common frequency, and a backpack containing granola, dehydrated fruit, two bottles of water, and a flare gun with two extra loads.

“One more thing,” Cavenaugh said as they were all about to disperse. He walked to the right side of the room where the communications gear had been assembled on top of the cases in which it had arrived. Beside the stack of components was a metal case Gabriel had assumed to be empty. Cavenaugh unlatched the lid and swung it open. He leaned over the foam-lined box and reached inside. “Who knows how to shoot one of these?”

When he turned around, he held a rifle across his chest. The polished barrel reflected the firelight.

Will walked over and took it from him, a curiously animated expression on his face. He whistled in admiration and turned it over in his grasp. Aligning the sights, he aimed it across the room, then resumed his appreciative inspection.

“Bushmaster RealTree Camo Rifle. Twenty-inch barrel with flash suppressor. Nickel Acetate finish. 5.56mm/.223 caliber, semi-automatic, thirty-round magazine. Six hundred meter range. This is definitely not your grandfather’s hunting rifle,” he said. “Fine piece of equipment though. You could drop a bounding deer from halfway across the state with one of these bad boys. How’d you get a hold of these?”

Cavenaugh shrugged. “Borrowed them from a friend.”

Kelsey took the rifle from Will and appraised it, but didn’t appear nearly as comfortable doing so. It looked more like an assault rifle than anything used for hunting.

Gabriel crossed the room and peered down into the case. There were several stacked tiers inside, each of which, he could only assume, housed a rifle in its custom fitting.

“Why do we need these?” Maura asked. Of them all, she seemed the most wary.

“We already know there are mountain lions in this area,” Cavenaugh said.

“They’re as afraid of us as we are of them,” Maura said.

Gabriel turned and watched Jess as she perused the stacks of equipment. She moved around the clutter as though searching for something. When she caught him looking, she shook her head and mouthed the words “It’s not here.”

“Then consider it an unnecessary precaution,” Cavenaugh said. “Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.”

Maura nodded her acquiescence, but didn’t appear relieved in the slightest. She just continued to stare at the rifle as though Kelsey were handling a venomous snake.

Understanding finally struck Gabriel. This wasn’t about mountain lions. Not at all. But until that very moment, all he had thought they might find in the forest were the remains of their loved ones. He had never considered the prospect that they might encounter whoever was responsible for their deaths.

***

Gabriel leaned against the kitchen cabinets beside the back door, dozing in and out. He was fully clothed beneath the blanket, and anything but comfortable. The warmth from the fire was fading fast and the bitter chill was seeping in through the walls and under the floorboards. Best not to stoke the flames to combat it just yet. If nothing else, the cold was keeping him from falling into a sound sleep, and right now he needed to remain sharp if he expected to hear anything other than the howl of the wind and the resultant creaking of the cabin around him.

He knew he should be getting as much rest as he possibly could in anticipation of the arduous day ahead, but this was something he needed to do. Whether or not Oscar returned, he at least had to try. That cat was now the only living link between his sister and him. Expecting a now-feral feline to lead them to the bodies was ridiculous, but Stephanie would have been heartbroken at the idea of her furry friend being abandoned in the wild. Maybe he would never learn what had happened to her, and would have to live with the guilt and the loss for the rest of his life. That would be his cross to bear, but at least if he found a way to take care of Oscar, he could justify to himself that he had done something. And perhaps through her cat, he could feel close to her again.

The rational part of him knew he was being absurd, but there were already enough regrets without adding one more. To leave her beloved cat at the mercy of the elements and predators would be to dishonor her memory and everything she had stood for. Stephanie had always been the most caring, most gentle—

There was a soft thump against the wall behind him.

Gabriel silently peeled off the blanket and rolled over onto his hands and knees.

The wind whistled along the eaves and rattled the glass in the window above the sink. He must have heard it blow the bag of trash against the siding. Hopefully it was still tethered to the nail, or all of this was for naught.

He rose to his feet, careful to place his tread lightly enough so as not to make the floorboards squeak, and took the hot dog he had set aside in a plastic baggie from the counter. Two stealthy steps and he was at the door, knob in hand. He turned it slowly, soundlessly, and drew the door inward.

Snowflakes swatted him in the face and something raced toward his feet. It was only one of the Styrofoam bowls, but that meant—

He whirled to his left. The yellow plastic ties were still bound to the nail, but the bottom of the trash bag had been ripped open. Its contents were scattered all over the ground. Bowls and trash had blown up against the building, while more garbage tumbled across the accumulation. This would never work now. He had thought for sure the bag would be strong enough to withstand the wind. Grabbing the useless tatter of white plastic, he inspected the bottom, then looked quickly back to the snow.

The wind hadn’t beaten the bag open against the cabin. Something with sharp claws had torn it open right along the seam.

There. To his right, at the very edge of the building, was a fuzzy orange face, eating out of a bowl pinned by a small paw. Oscar glanced up and Gabriel caught a flash of gold from his eyes.

Gabriel held perfectly still and the cat again resumed its meal of crusted oats.

Quietly, he eased out the door into the snow and removed the hot dog from the Ziploc. He split it in half and approached Oscar until the cat bristled and turned his attention from the bowl to the back door.

Gabriel froze. He expected Oscar to dash off for the safety of the forest at any second, but after a while, the cat stuffed his face back into his meal.

As slowly as he possibly could, Gabriel knelt in the accumulation, extended his arm, and held out the offering of processed meat.

Oscar appeared not to notice at first, but after a few eternal minutes, he raised his head and turned toward the smell. His face was scarred over his left eye and across his nose, and his right ear had been all but torn away. There were tangles and briars in his thick fur, and Lord only knew what crawled on his skin beneath. Cautiously, Oscar eased around the corner of the cabin and started in Gabriel’s direction.

The cold from the snow bit into his legs, but Gabriel knew if he so much as flinched, the cat would be gone.

Oscar approached a single step at a time, pausing and watching him between each, until in a streak of orange, the cat darted at him and nipped the hot dog out of his grasp. All Gabriel had felt was fur on his fingertips. Again, Oscar crouched at the far end of the wall, where he gnawed on his meal from the side with his back teeth.

Gabriel watched with a growing sense of disappointment. There was no way he was going to be able to grab the cat. Oscar had moved so fast he hadn’t even had time to think, let alone reach down and snatch the cat by the scruff of its neck.

He retracted his arm slowly, took the other half of the hot dog from his left hand, and held it out for the cat again.

Oscar had finished the first portion and now crouched on his belly, haunches flexed, prepared to pounce. He watched Gabriel closely for several more minutes before venturing out from behind the side of the building. Once he was again close enough, Oscar sprung at Gabriel’s hand and relieved him of the food. In a blur of orange, Oscar fled in the direction of the woods and vanished.

Gabriel stared into the darkness beneath the snow-covered pines for a long time before he finally stood and headed back into the cabin.