Alex Scarrow - October skies

Get back, you fool, Ben found himself urging Preston.

‘Away!!!’ shouted Preston, taking a step forward and jabbing the creature in the flank again. The second jab was enough. The bear abandoned the man on the ground who, Ben was surprised to see, was still moving. It advanced on Preston, rearing up on its hind legs and baring teeth red with blood, from which dangled tatters of flesh.

‘Can anyone fire?’ Preston called out over his shoulder, his voice broken with fear.

Ben looked around to see at least half a dozen men frantically and shakily priming their guns with powder and shot.

The bear dropped down on to all fours.

‘Can anyone fire?!’ Preston shouted again, backing up slowly. There were screams of alarm, people begging Preston to turn and run while he still had a chance. But he stood his ground, bending his knees in readiness, holding nothing but a smoking, fragile branch.

Then the bear charged.

One paw swiped aside the pitiful stick. The other swiped across Preston’s chest, hurling him a couple of yards across the snow, where he landed heavily and almost immediately began to stain the snow dark.

The bear was astride Preston when another shot rang out, this time punching the bear heavily in the side. It reared up in rage and agony, losing its balance and tumbling over. It recovered its footing, but the shock of the wound seemed to have been enough to change its agenda. With surprising speed, it raced away on all fours from the baying crowd, out of the pall of light from the fire and into the darkness.

Ben looked around to see where the shot had come from, and saw Keats still squinting down the levelled length of his rifle and a cloud of blue smoke languidly rolling away from the muzzle.

Ben rushed towards Preston, lying on the ground and clutching his side painfully, gasping short little breaths that peppered the snow with dots of blood.

He looked up at Ben and managed to rasp, ‘I’m fine, man. You tend to James first. I’ll wait.’

Monday

Blue Valley Camp, California

Rose found her easily. She was serving in the convenience store on the camp site.

She had enjoyed the half-hour drive up the twisting mountain road from Blue Valley. It was a steep incline all the way that taxed the hire car’s modest engine so that it whined like a fly in a tin can, but also a spectacular drive with thick firs to her left and a drop to her right, revealing a sweeping and breathtaking picture-postcard vista of a broad valley and a gently winding river.

The camp site, set alongside a small man-made lake, was all but deserted this time of year. Most of the family cabanas were empty, just one or two occupied by hardy folk who obviously enjoyed hiking National Park sites all year round. She imagined that in the middle of summer with a clear blue sky, bathed in welcoming sunlight and alive with smoking barbecue pits and children charging into the crystal-clear lake water, it was the kind of camp that holiday brochures are made for. But right now, with the wan light of autumn and a bland Tupperware sky, abandoned and silent, it looked a somewhat cheerless place.

The door to the convenience store opened with a quaint small-town ding that reminded her of Mr Godsey’s corner shop on Walton’s Mountain. Grace was perched behind the counter in her National Parks Service uniform, stuck into a sudoku puzzle.

She looked up and her weatherworn face creased into a smile.

‘Hey, Rose.’

‘Hi,’ Rose replied. ‘I must have taken down your cell number wrong. I tried to call you.’

‘Problems?’

‘No.’ Rose shrugged. ‘Just getting a bit lonely, I suppose. Jules has shot back to London for a few days, and I’m taking a break from messing around with my cameras.’

Grace put down her paper. ‘How’re things going with your little film?’

‘Very well, I think. I haven’t heard much from him. He sent a text saying he’s already got some good meetings lined up.’

Grace nodded and then leaned forward, lowering her voice slightly. ‘Louise Esterfeld, the Park Manager, asked me about you guys. How the field trip went.’

‘Oh?’

‘Wanted to know if her camp’s going to end up in your film,’ she snorted, ‘whether you guys goin’ to give her an interview and such.’

‘I suppose we could do that if you think it’ll buy us a little good will.’

Grace shook her head. ‘Screw that. Silly woman just wants her face on TV. Anyways, told her you were wanting another trip up into the woods sometime soon.’

Rose smiled coyly and winked. ‘And that’s when we’ll discover a very interesting find?’

Grace nodded. ‘Can’t leave it too much longer, though.’

‘I know.’

It was Jules’s suggestion that they give her a little ‘thank you’ money. There were ways and means of doing that. Rose imagined a proud and hardy woman like Grace would find a wad of notes in a plain brown envelope distasteful — although she could probably well do with it. It had taken no more than a dozen mouse clicks on the internet for Rose to find how little the National Parks Service paid their wardens; a pittance. They seemed to rely more on the dutiful enthusiasm of their staff to keep things running than on a properly managed budget.

Grace leaned back on her stool and pulled a mug out from a shelf beneath the till. ‘Wanna coffee?’

‘Thanks. Look, Grace. I’ve got a couple of days to kill. I thought I’d fill the time with a bit of research and gather up some local flavour for our story.’

The older woman filled the mug from a Thermos flask and placed it on the counter. ‘Comes already with cream and sugar,’ she said.

‘That’s fine, thanks.’

‘What sort of research?’

She passed a steaming mug over the counter to Rose, who took a sip. It was sickeningly sweet. ‘Well, I suppose I could start with the various ghost stories we’ve heard from people in Blue Valley. There do seem to be a lot of them.’

Grace nodded. ‘Yup, and all very different.’

‘But I wonder whether it’s possible to trace their roots back to something that did actually happen.’

‘You’re thinking some of them might have something to do with that find out there?’

Rose nodded. ‘That’s usually the case, though, isn’t it? I mean, maybe some of the people who ended up stuck in those mountains made it down okay, into this town. They’d have stories to tell, possibly some quite gruesome stories… particularly if they ended up like that Donner party.’

‘It’s possible, I s’pose.’

‘I can imagine that over a hundred and fifty years those could eventually become the basis for the local ghost stories that Julian and I recorded people talking about last week.’ Rose sipped her coffee. ‘I mean, there was one bloke who said — you know how it goes — a friend of a friend was camping up in those woods and saw a walking skeleton…’

Grace laughed. ‘Oh yeah, the Rag Man story. I’ve heard about a dozen versions of that one from my boys over the years, and now my grandchildren scare each other in the play-ground with the same old thing.’

‘Ooh, let’s hear it.’

‘Not much to it, really. It’s just the name for our local boogieman. The Rag Man, a walking skeleton, sometimes in a monk’s cowl, sometimes in rags, sometimes he’s an escaped lunatic, sometimes a drug-crazed serial killer. Some stories have him hacking up lonely teenage girl campers, some stories have him wandering around in town stealing little girls.’ Grace shrugged. ‘Kids round here regurgitate all sorts of rubbish from the crappy movies they watch, and then replace Freddy Kruger with the Rag Man.’

‘Hmmm… what about older ghost stories? Ones that aren’t Hollywood inspired. Do you know of any?’