Page 52 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
It’s the third night since Max was taken, and he’s huddled under a scratchy blanket, shivering and trying very hard not to cry. Crying won’t help. He knows that, but the tears are half fear and half frustration. He spent the first day trying to escape, but that didn’t do any good. Whoever has him isn’t giving him that chance. His legs had been tied except while they were walking, and in the beginning, he hadn’t even been allowed to walk. He’d been wrapped in a stinking blanket and carried.
That had been so Storm couldn’t track him. If he walked, she could follow his scent. Even if his captor carried him, she could pick up his scent in the air. That’s why he’d been wrapped in a blanket, and that’s why it stank.
His captor would carry him for a ways and then put him down to rest, and then carry him some more. Eventually, Max was allowed to walk, but his captor would still sometimes carry him, as if trying to mess up any trail he left. Max was too heavy to carry as far as his captor wanted. He’d realized that, and he’d thought maybe he could use it to his advantage—escape while his captor got tired—but the man never lowered his guard.
It was a man. Even though Max had been blindfolded from the start, it was obviously either a man or a very strong woman, and while his captor hadn’t spoken, the grunts and noises sounded male.
Could his captor speak? When he removed Max’s gag to let him eat or drink, Max had tried talking. He’d seen that in a movie once, where a kid had been taken, and he’d talked and talked and eventually his kidnapper got to know him and wouldn’t hurt him. But when Max talked, his captor put the gag back on until Max was quiet again, and if he kept trying to talk every time the gag came off, then he didn’t get to eat and drink. Eating and drinking seemed more important than talking. Keep his energy up.
Still, Max had begun to think that maybe his captor couldn’t speak. That he’d been taken by the bear-man. While that seemed obvious, Max still wasn’t sure. After he’d left Carson, he hadn’t marched into the forest at the spot where he’d spotted the bear-man. He’d entered at his usual place, away from the bear-man, with no intention of getting close to it. Yet he’d still been grabbed.
At first, he’d figured his captor was sent by the people who’d killed his dad. They’d tracked them down to Haven’s Rock and kidnapped him.
Max still thought that might be the answer, but the not-talking part had made him think it could be the bear-man after all.
It should have been easy to work that out. The figure he’d seen had bear fur and bear claws and bear ears. All Max had to do was touch his captor and see whether he felt fur. But he wasn’t getting that chance. Once when he’d tried reaching out, the man tied his hands up again and fed him.
One thing that made Max think it couldn’t be the bear-man was the hands. If his captor could tie and untie him, that seemed to mean he had human hands, and Max had seen bear claws on the figure in the forest. When he’d first been grabbed, he’d caught a glimpse of his attacker’s wrist. He’d seen a bare underside of white skin with a streak of dirt.
What if the bear-man’s hands were part bear and part human? Maybe human fingers with long claws. Could he still tie ropes?
These were the questions that had consumed Max, as if figuring out who had him—or what had him—would help him escape. Tonight, though, he can’t summon any hopes or fantasies. Tonight there’s just frustration, with a little bit of fear, but even that fear is knotted together with the frustration. He doesn’t know who has him. He doesn’t know why he’s being held. The not knowing is getting worse, the fear of that eating into the frustration.
What does his captor want? If his captor can talk, he isn’t explaining or asking for anything. He just watches Max. Even blindfolded, Max can feel him watching.
He remembers what Gunnar said about trusting that twist in his stomach. He feels it now. The sense that he faces a certain kind of danger here, that this man has a certain kind of interest in him, from the way he sits too close, the way he touches Max’s shoulder or arm, a tentative touch before roughly checking his bonds.
It’s not proof of anything. Carson would scoff. And yet …
After what seemed like endless walking, they’d ended up in some kind of space. A cave? Maybe. The sounds outside were muffled, but he’s been in caves with Deputy Will and Detective Casey, and they had a smell and a chill, and this doesn’t have either. He only knows that he’s lying on hard ground with a scratchy blanket over him.
Once or twice, he’s woken and thought he was alone, but then his captor returns. Other times, lying here with everything quiet, he’ll think his captor is asleep. He’ll hear him breathing, right beside Max, but if Max moves, that breathing catches and he knows his captor is not asleep. Just sitting there, watching him.
Max thinks it might be night, but he has no idea. Everything is dark behind the blindfold, and his meals aren’t breakfast, lunch, and dinner food. They’re just meals. Dried meat and what tastes like bread and then water.
When his captor squeezes Max’s shoulder, Max jumps, but he’s come to know what this means. Apparently, it’s time to eat.
His captor grunts, which Max knows means he’s supposed to hold his arms out straight so they can be untied.
Max does that. He doesn’t fight. Not anymore. The first few times, he’d lashed out, only to get cuffed so hard he’d sworn he’d seen stars, like in that old saying. Bright lights had popped behind his blindfold. Was that from his eyes? Or his brain? He’d need to look that up when he got home.
Back in Haven’s Rock, Max has a list of things he wants to look up once he has the internet again. This is something he’ll add, and if a little voice tries to change “when he gets home” to “if he gets home,” he isn’t thinking about that.
He holds out his hands and lets his captor untie them. Then his captor starts tying his one hand to something else, like he always does when Max eats.
His captor is in the middle of doing that when he stops.
“Shh!”
Did his captor just shush him? It sounded like it, but Max hadn’t said anything, so maybe that shh was just a noise?
Then Max catches another sound. A voice.
His head jerks up.
Someone’s out there.
He opens his mouth to call out, but of course he can’t. He can make noises against the gag, and he almost does, until some instinct warns him to shut up.
