Erza Styles walked into the tavern with his brother's last postcard folded in his coat pocket. James had sent it a week before the camping trip. On the front, a crooked drawing of a pine tree. On the back, three words: Don't worry, brother. Erza had not worried. Now James was gone, and Erza had come to this town to find whatever took him and put a knife through it. First he needed to know where James had slept his last night. The tavern went quiet when the door shut behind him. Four men at the bar. Two women at a corner table. Every face turned, then turned away. Erza sat on a stool and asked the barkeep about a red-bearded man who looked like him, older by six years, passing through two weeks back for a weekend in the woods. The barkeep wiped a glass that was already dry. He said he didn't remember. The man beside him said the same before Erza finished the question. Erza laid a folded bill on the bar. The barkeep looked at it like it was a spider. One of the women stood up and left through the back door. Erza asked which trailhead campers used. The barkeep said there were a lot of trails. Erza asked which one strangers were told to avoid. The barkeep set the glass down and walked to the far end of the bar. Erza stepped outside. The woman from the corner table was waiting by the porch rail, arms crossed against the cold. She was thin, gray at the temples, and would not look at his face. She spoke to the boards under her feet. "Your brother rented from me," she said. "Two weeks Sunday. Paid cash for three nights. Never came back for his deposit." "Rented what?" "A cabin. My husband's, before he passed. I let it to hikers." She pulled a brass key from her apron and held it out without looking up. "North side of the ridge. Follow the creek from the old logging road until you see the chimney. His pack should still be inside. I haven't been up since." Erza took the key. It was warm from her hand. "Why tell me?" "Because nobody else will." She finally met his eyes. "And because whatever's up there is done with him. It'll be hungry again by now." She went back inside. The lock clicked behind her. Erza walked to his truck and spread a paper map across the hood. He found the logging road. He found the creek. He drew a line with his thumbnail to the spot where a chimney might stand. Two hours of daylight left. He put the key in his pocket beside the postcard and started the engine. The trail was no longer cold. It ended at a cabin door, and something waited past it.

The logging road ran farther than the map showed. Erza drove past the creek turn and kept going. The ruts deepened. Branches scraped the paint. The road did not end at a trailhead. It ended at a door. His headlights lit the cabin straight on, chimney above, lantern dark over the step. He killed the engine and sat with both hands on the wheel. He had come to hunt a thing he could not name. Walking in blind was how he would end up like James. He stayed in the truck and worked the problem. He had a hunting knife, a flashlight, the brass key, and no idea what waited past the door. The woman had said it would be hungry again. He needed to know the shape of it before he met it. He got out slow and walked the ring of trees with the flashlight low. The claw marks were here too. Same perfect circle. Same height. He measured one gouge against his own hand and spread his fingers wide. Four cuts, but the spacing was wrong for four fingers. He counted again. Three. Three deep, one shallow, like a thumb dragged behind. He crouched and found tracks in the mud near the step. Three toes. Splayed wide. Bigger than a bear's. He circled the cabin. One window on each side. He wiped the glass and shined the light in. A table. A pack on the floor. James's pack, red strap, brother's name in marker on the flap. No blood on the boards. No body. Whatever had done this had not done it inside. He went back to the truck for the axe from the bed. He wedged the door of the cabin open with a stone and stood clear. Nothing came out. He waited a full minute by his watch. Then he stepped in, knife first. The cabin was cold and empty. He checked under the bed, behind the stove, in the small closet. He found James's boots by the door, laces still tied in the loop James always used. He found the sleeping bag folded. He found a plate with dried food on the table. No sign of a fight. He stepped back out onto the boards. That was when the smell hit him. Wet fur and rot. He turned toward the treeline. Something moved between two trunks. Low to the ground, then tall. Three pale eyes opened in a row. A mouth split wide below them, red and wet, full of crooked teeth. It did not roar. It watched. Erza did not run. He backed to the doorway and pulled the door shut between them. He slid the bolt. He heard claws drag once across the wood. Then nothing. He knew its shape now. He knew where it slept. He was locked inside its kitchen, and the road behind him ended here.

Erza pressed his back to the door and listened. The claws had stopped scraping. That was worse. He could hear his own breath and the tick of the stove cooling. The light through the windows had gone the color of rust. He had maybe an hour before dark. The truck sat twenty feet from the step, and twenty feet was too far with that thing in the trees. He worked the problem the way he had worked it in the truck. Knife. Axe. Flashlight. One door, two windows, one creature that could open none of them yet. He dragged the table against the door and jammed a chair under the knob. He shoved James's pack aside and crouched under the front window with the axe across his knees. Something heavy moved along the north wall. Claws dragged the logs, slow, testing. Then a second sound, farther out. Boots. Running. A man's voice, raw and shouting, no words Erza could pick out. He stood and wiped the glass. A big man burst from the treeline with a length of broken branch raised over his head. Red hair down to his chest. Gray shirt filthy at the belly. He was screaming at the creature and swinging as he came. Erza's hand went flat against the window. James. James was dead. The woman had said so. Two weeks in the woods, and here he came out of them at a dead run, going straight at the thing that had taken him. The creature turned from the wall. Three white eyes fixed on James. Its mouth split open below them, red and wet, too many teeth. It moved low and fast across the clearing. Erza tore the chair out from under the knob. He threw the table aside and hit the bolt. "James!" His brother swung the branch and caught the creature across the snout. The wood cracked. The creature did not slow. It took him at the waist and drove him down. James got one arm up. He was still shouting. He was still James, tattoos on the forearm, the belly, the bad temper, all of it alive and here. Erza came off the step with the axe. He swung for the ridge behind its eyes and felt the blade bite. The creature screamed, high and wrong, and rolled off James into the dirt. It scrambled backward on three-toed feet, one eye shut and leaking, and vanished between the trunks. Erza dropped the axe and hauled his brother up by the shirt. James's belly was torn open along one side. His eyes were pale and did not track right. "You came," James said. "I've got you." Erza got an arm under him and dragged him toward the door. The clearing was empty. The light was almost gone. The creature was out there bleeding, and it knew the cabin now, and it knew his brother was alive.

Erza got James inside and laid him on the floor by the stove. Blood soaked the gray shirt through. James's eyes drifted, then fixed on the ceiling. Erza pressed a folded towel to the belly wound and put James's own hand on top of it. "Hold this. Hard." "Where you going." James's voice came thin, but it was still his voice, the same flat drag Erza had known since they were kids. "It's bleeding out there. I can track it. If I don't find where it sleeps, it comes back tonight and finishes us both." James's fingers tightened on the towel. "Take the axe." Erza grabbed the axe and the flashlight and stepped out. The sun was a red line above the trees. He had minutes, not hours. The blood started at the edge of the clearing. Thick black drops on the moss, then a smear across a fallen log. Erza followed at a jog. Three-toed prints pressed the mud between the drops. The trail cut north through the pines. The drops shrank. Twenty yards in, they were pinpricks. Forty yards, the moss showed nothing. He crouched and swept the flashlight low. Nothing on the needles. Nothing on the bark. The creature had slowed its own bleeding, or the ground had drunk the last of it. He cast a wide circle. He checked the base of every trunk for a smear, a hair, a print. The light failed while he worked. The forest went from rust to gray to black. His flashlight beam turned the trees into flat white cutouts and hid everything between them. He stood in the dark with the axe across his chest and understood he had lost it. Something moved behind him. Not close. A branch cracked, then another, farther off, then nothing. It was circling. It knew he was out here alone, and it knew the cabin was behind him with the door open and James on the floor. Erza ran. He crashed back through the pines with the flashlight jerking across trunks. He saw the cabin light through the branches and made for it. The door stood open the way he'd left it. James lay where he'd left him, the towel dark under his hand, his chest still rising. Erza shut the door and dropped the bolt and shoved the table back against it. "Well?" James said. "I lost it." James closed his eyes. "Then it's coming." Erza knelt by his brother and put a fresh towel over the first. The wound was deeper than he'd let himself see in the clearing. James needed a hospital an hour ago. The truck sat twenty feet from the step. Between the step and the truck was a wounded thing that now had all night and knew exactly where they were. Erza picked up the axe and sat with his back to the door.