The Sighting

Wind buffeted the small sedan as it swirled up the winding bypass, the silver beams of its headlights the only illumination in the deep September night. Camilyn leaned her head against the passenger window, staring blankly into the scant ribbon of evergreen her naked eyes could penetrate.  Beside her, her husband stirred briefly from his taut grip on the steering wheel to run a hand over her hunched shoulders.  “We didn’t have to come, you know,” he told her.

She looked back at him questioningly.  Sometimes Neal said things just to so-called comfort her that didn’t ring true to his earlier expressed views.  She decided to let it slip, glancing back with a nod and a half smile before returning to her detached perusal of the forest.  Something felt wrong about tonight and this travel route in particular, although she couldn’t put her finger on why.

“Honey,” she began, just as a stiff gust rocked them and forced Neal to draw back, returning to tight-knuckled control of the car.  He had argued against coming, but insisted if they made the trip, they leave at once, not wait until morning.

“It’s not about Ma’s sickness, Neal. We both know she meant it when she promised to cut me out of her will if I failed to show up next time she got sick.”  And with it, the house, the only chance she--they’d--have of owning property, of living in the country, away from the hectic pace and crowds that made Camilyn sick, and of realizing her dream of being a writer.  Her mother was a confirmed hypochondriac who, since being widowed three years back, repeatedly became “deathly ill” until her only child showed up to care for her, then got miraculously better each time.

Neal said nothing, there being no safe answer to her statement of fact. They passed two signs indicating a turnoff in the state forest.  Like many state parks, a scattering of people lived inside its borders in small get-away cabins or ramshackle houses. Cami would have thought she’d died and gone to heaven if she ever got to live in such seclusion and harmony with nature.

No, it was something else, and usually she was right in her gut feelings, which she trusted and relied on to an extent her husband couldn’t understand, being a more “logical” person himself. Some danger lurked along the way tonight, something bad was going to happen which couldn’t if they’d just wait until tomorrow. The sense intensified once the signs vanished in the blackness behind, some last opportunity for turning back and avoiding the unknown threat.  Cami shook her head, as if she could tell the part of her brain which fed her this information that it was illogical and groundless.  

Then she saw it, ahead, an indistinct shape not belonging to rock or tree or man-made thing, something animal moving fluidly, suddenly, straight at them.  Pale fur, rising from four legs to two as it rushed, and the strangest thing was its eyes reflected nothing back--no headlight gleam, just empty pits.

Her husband cursed, slamming on the brakes as he swerved into the oncoming lane, missing the thing by inches, overcorrecting sharply, and nearly sideswiping a tree leaning parallel to the road.  He ground the Volvo to a halt about fifty feet later, smoke and gravel dust rising around them, obscuring their view outside to nothing but a billowing silver veil. In the silence Neal examined his wife with raw horror, as if her prescience could somehow shape the events she forecast.

Cami, with typical hysterical reaction to confirmation of her vision, punched him in the arm.  Hard.

“Ow!” he cried, clutching his bruised ego.  

“I told you, I told you but you didn’t believe me!  You almost hit that elk, we would’ve been stranded out here!”

“That was no elk,” Neal replied firmly, looking over his shoulder into the settling argent clouds.  Cami looked too, not seeing it anymore, uncertain whether the menace was over in her adrenaline response.

“Alright, it’s eyes didn’t glow like a deer’s, I’ve never seen an elk walk on its hind legs, and it was too gray for an albino animal–of any species.  What was it, y’think?

“You tell me, you’re the expert here,” he replied.  It was not the validation of belief in her abilities that she’d sought, but it would do for now.  She reached for the shotgun in the back seat, only to find Neal’s hand on it already.

“No.  I’ll go.”  He unbuckled his seatbelt and fumbled the door unlatched, still searching out the rear window but seeing nothing.

“Whatever it is, I hope this’ll stop it.  It was coming– ”

The car shook violently and Cami screamed.  The driver’s side door was flung open and she saw brindle fur, clawed hands rip Neal from his seat like a dummy, a crash-test dummy, so swift she couldn’t grab and keep him in.  At the same instant the car shut off and its headlights died, darkness descended, and a single scrape of feet on gravel sounded from the dim beyond, then all was silent.

She was alone.  The shotgun never made it out of the car.  Camilyn grabbed it, slammed open her door, and lunged after them, shouting to draw the creature back, knowing it was the only chance for her husband to survive.

“Come back here, you son of a bitch!  You’re not going anywhere with my husband,” she yelled, bravado husking her voice.  She clatched the shotgun, aware of a sudden new form of sight open to her.  She could make out their shapes thirty yards to her right, in the trees.  “Heat vision, that’s nice,” she thought, taking aim.  The creature hesitated, and she registered it as something between a werewolf and sasquatch in general outline. She hoped it was intelligent.

“That’s right, you there, predator humanoid, whatever you are!  How would you like to be hunted to your den and killed, I will I swear, bring enough soldiers and troopers to see you to your last lonely night, if you are alone, I’ll make you regret you ever hunted a man, much less one of mine!”  She was just getting revved up, hysteria and fear swept away as ice ran though her veins.

She aimed, carefully.  Whatever it was, was unclear on the concept of a human shield, so it wasn’t hard to target its head.  She fired, before it could change positions, the recoil knocking her against the trunk. She racked the shotgun, eyes never leaving the inhuman wolf-giant.  

She had missed, by how much she wasn’t certain, but close enough that it was scared of another blast.  It dropped her husband and fled into the star-blind forest as easily as if it were full day. When Cami was sure it hadn’t stopped to creep back and surprise them, she ran over to Neal.

Tripping over undergrowth, cursing that it wasn’t visible in her new night-vision, she glanced back to be sure she could see the car and not get lost.  Its heat signature was strong but noticeably fainter, and she prayed her husband wasn’t injured and could walk.

She bent over him as he came to, helped him rise to his feet, and they tottered back, Neal’s arm over her shoulder, his arm around Cami’s waist.  It felt good. She felt more alive than she had in ages, and that sense of pride and joy that wrapped her in the nights, fiercely encompassed her now in its warm embrace.  

“No one’s going to believe us when we tell them we saw Bigfoot,” were the first words out of her husband’s mouth once she had belted him in on the passenger side.

Camilyn grinned like a she-wolf.  “Only my mother has to know,” she assured.