Page 34 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
“Which we can’t know, not being in his head. If Max never went into the forest, he had to be grabbed by someone in town.”
“Yep.” Dalton moves ahead and bends to examine a broken twig.
When I don’t speak, he waves for me to follow him and says, “Keep talking.”
“We’ve searched everywhere in Haven’s Rock multiple times. So even if Max was taken by someone in town, he’s no longer in town. But if the culprit is a resident, they can lead us to him. That likelihood that someone in Haven’s Rock took him determines how much time I spend questioning versus searching.”
“You can question. I can search.”
“True.”
“You’d just rather be out here. Which, for now, I’d agree with. Unless we have reason to believe someone in town took him, we keep looking.…”
He trails off and bends near crushed vegetation and what looks like a partial boot print a couple of feet from the trail. The print is too faint to leave more than a half-moon heel impression. I bend for a closer look, shining my flashlight on it. Then I take a measurement and a cell-phone photo before we carefully make our way onward in that direction.
I start steering Storm around the print. Then I stop and ask her to sniff it. When she does, she snorts, as if clearing her nose. I frown and motion again for her to sniff. She obeys, with obvious reluctance, and then gives a low whine, her ears cocking down as if she’s done something wrong.
There is something wrong. But it’s not her. It’s the scent. I’ve seen this before, when we ask her to pick up a scent, and there’s some reason why she can’t, such as when it’s too faint. But that snort and reluctance suggests more. There’s something about the scent, as if it’s overlain with another smell.
I lower my own nose, and all I smell is loamy earth. Then … rot?
“Eric?” I say. “Could you come here a second?”
He’s disappeared into the trees. When he returns, I tell him the problem. Then I lead Storm away so he can sniff.
I walk into a clearing, and I’m standing there, in the moonlight, when a glimmer in the sky catches my attention. A faint ribbon of green.
“Aurora borealis,” I whisper to Storm as I smile. “We’re going to get a light show to lead the way.”
If only we weren’t in the forest searching for a lost child, which kind of puts a damper on the beauty of the northern lights.
I’m still looking up when movement in the trees makes me startle. I look toward it and …
What the hell is that? I step in that direction, only to see something move out of the corner of my eye.
“Eric?”
That’s all I need to say for him to come barreling through, as if I’d screamed in terror. I point toward the first thing I saw … and then the other.
“What the hell?” he says.
He strides to the first object. It’s hanging from a tree, and when he reaches up, a noise from me stops him. He lifts his flashlight instead.
The object dangles from a branch at eye level for Dalton. It hangs there, twisting in the breeze, which is how it caught my attention.
I move closer and squint up.
“Eagle feathers?” he says. “Yeah. Looks like eagle. The central feather does, at least.”
It’s a bald eagle feather hanging straight down with three smaller white-gray feathers affixed to it. Two of those smaller feathers are at the bottom, jutting out at forty-five-degree angles. One is tied across the middle. Together, they form a stick figure. Where the hands and feet would be are black splotches on the pale feathers.
“Is that…?” Dalton moves his flashlight even closer, and the black splotches turn dark red.
Blood.
I turn to the second object. It’s a replica of the first. As I turn, I see two more. Four stick figures hanging from the trees in this clearing.
“How far from town are we?” I ask.
