The Spirit

“If you can find them, I can fix the radio and we’ll have some Rangers up here in five minutes. Check his office, and take a light with you.” Wood­ard edged back to the center of the lounge, where he could watch the shop and her in the office simultaneously.

She went through his desk. No wonder he couldn’t find anything—his food bills were in the folder with heat and electricity, a bill for a cord of wood was stuffed back in a drawer. No batteries. They probably moldered in a box down in the basement somewhere.

Alone for the first time all night, she tried to collect her thoughts. This thing was pure concentrated hatred. It or they were not merely wrecking the lodge, but trying to get at them. This was not patience living on a hill watching humans scurry about, this was a primal rage that broke all restraints, including that of self-­preservation. Martha sensed that some particular incident must have caused it. Maybe the male’s return. Maybe. Though the attacks hadn’t started until the incident with Lester Cole. Perhaps there was some connection.

Glass tinkled from a bungalow down in the woods.

“Duane!” she called softly. “It’s down at the bungalows.”

“What’s it doing down there?”

“Maybe it’s going away.” She put her ear to the shuttered window to listen.

The shutters exploded on both sides of her. Two arms preceded by serpentine fingers broke through and closed around her chest like a vise, hugging her to the wall. “Duane—” she said weakly.

The beast had thrown the rocks to the bungalows to lure her to the wall. The pressure around her chest was beyond belief. Her breath squeezed out, and a groan was all she managed before blacking out in a dim haze shot with blood.

Duane Wood­ard smashed at those arms with his rifle. He pried at them with the muzzle and nearly sobbed in frustration as they crushed her with her feet off the floor like a bug banded against the wall with metal staples. There seemed nothing left of her body between breasts and hips.

He shoved the rifle muzzle through a crack between Martha’s body and the arm and felt it hit flesh. He pulled the trigger. The hands unclasped, the arms snaked out of the wall, and Martha slid to the floor, a small trail of blood trickling from a corner of her mouth.

He frantically searched out a pulse as the feet chuffed down the sun deck and around the corner, headed for the shop wall. Her pulse was strong and regular and her breathing deep although ragged. She had probably broken several ribs.

He ran into the lounge as the beast crashed through the wall of the shop and into the gallery. He fired toward the partially open sliding doors. The Bigfoot paused, then pushed hard, scattering the furniture like toy boxes. It ducked back as he fired again.

The door shuddered, then split, and the sliding rail tore loose from the ceiling. The doors fell inward with a final grunt of effort and seesawed over the piled furniture. Duane aimed and fired. He hit it. The thing howled. It picked up a sofa and threw it as Duane fired a third time and found himself out of ammunition.

It was a female. The chest rippled with soft breast flesh, and it was smaller and lighter than the beast that had chased him across the meadow.

He threw the puny rifle at her, and she caught it. She broke it in half and came for him, arms reaching out, the hands passing in and out of shadows from the feeble lantern light. The other one had walked fifty miles without a toe. Her fur was thick, her body massive and quick. She seemed almost unhampered by her wound.

Duane backed up and stumbled over a sofa. She tried to close with him. He ducked away, nearly fainting from the musky stench, and grabbed a poker. He faked a move toward the gallery, trying to keep her away from Helder’s office. She moved to block him, and he jabbed her with the poker. He was rewarded with a screech that impelled him to try again. She flicked a huge arm, and he ducked and jabbed hard. This time the tip came back coated with blood.

As they circled each other, Duane deliberately avoided looking at her face. Those hands that opened and closed spasmodically, those fingers—they were the real danger.

Duane grabbed a lantern and flung it to the floor. It exploded in a sloppy pressurized burst of kerosene that flooded the floor and drizzled in rivulets on the walls. So much for animals being frightened by fire. She stepped, fur-­armored and untouched, right through the stuff and kept coming. He swung the poker at her head, felt it graze the thick skull. She grabbed the poker out of his hands and tossed into the fireplace.

Her breath floated out in a steamy cloud, forming ice crystals over the fur on her chest and face. He heard a snowmobile buzz on the road.

Abruptly, she rushed him. He swung his hand edge outward like an ax, but missed completely, for she bashed the furniture and went full length through the plate-­glass window of the shop. From the shop she ran through the hole to confront the returning snowmobile.