Alice Henderson - Voracious

A photographer stood on the shore, setting up a large-format camera on a tripod, bag upon bag of gadgets strewn at his feet. Sometimes she’d seen camera enthusiasts set up hours before sunset to get that perfect alpenglow shot, when the setting sun bathed the distant peaks in an intense, rosy glow.

An elderly couple walked by her, eating huckleberry ice cream cones, the afternoon heat causing the purple ice cream to drip off their fingers. They laughed, enjoying themselves, and she smiled. She didn’t know if she’d make it to be their age, but if she did, she hoped she’d be eating a huckleberry ice cream cone in this gorgeous place.

Tucking her book under her arm, she looked for a comfortable place to sit. She liked reading in unusual places: along whitewater streams, or perched on boulders above the treeline. Later on, when she thought of the particular book she’d read in each spot, she could easily conjure images of how the wildflowers looked that day or how the stream burbled and flowed over moss-laden rocks and driftwood.

She looked at her watch. She’d only killed half an hour in the gift shop.

Scanning around, she saw a sun-bleached log on the shore of the lake with a long, smooth spot, perfect for sitting. Little foot traffic passed by the log, yet it was still close enough to the swarms of tourists that she’d feel safer there. She started off in that direction, squinting in the bright sun.

Eventually she’d have to go back to the cabin to gather her meager possessions: the burned cotton shirt, jeans, and her new toothbrush. But most importantly, she needed her wallet. She dreaded the thought of returning to the cabin, one place the creature knew she might be, but she didn’t want to leave her driver’s license there for the creature to find. She didn’t know if the creature knew where she lived in Mothershead, but just in case it didn’t, she didn’t want to arm it with any more information than it had. Plus, she realized with an audible gasp, she’d written down her future address with student housing in San Francisco on a slip of paper that was in her wallet. She had to go back and get it before the creature found it.

She wondered if she should go right then and looked toward the path that led to the cabins. No one walked on it. The desolation of that shady trail invited doubts to gnaw at her, and she decided she’d just wait until George got there. It wasn’t worth definitely risking her life now to avoid possibly risking it in the future. She’d wait until more people filled the path or until George arrived. Preferably both. To find her future address, the creature would have to go to the cabin, find her wallet, dig through it, and recognize the importance of the slip of paper she’d written her address on. She hadn’t marked it “My future address” or anything. It was just a number and a street. She looked with uncertainty at the path again. Still empty. No, she would wait. But she definitely wouldn’t leave without it.

And when she went back, she could also grab her pocket knife. Her mom had given it to her when she was five, after the incident with the wildfire. It had bailed her out of several tough situations in her life. Once she’d used it to scare off a creepy guy who had followed her home from the diner in Mothershead, and another time she’d used the little magnifying glass to start a small fire when she was in danger of hypothermia in the backcountry of the Canadian Rockies. Plus she’d used it endless times to make repairs on her backpack during overnight hikes. Though it wasn’t very big, it was the one sharp weapon she had, and it made her feel safer. The knife held much sentimental value, and had been with her on every trip. She was superstitious that way.

Stepping off the parking lot onto the pebble-strewn incline that led to the beach, Madeline veered for the log. She sat down on the smooth spot with her back to sun and opened her new book.

Three hours dragged by, with Madeline checking her watch every ten minutes, reading, and staring at tourists. The book was amazing and fascinating, though, filling the three hours with gripping accounts of hikers and hunters mauled by grizzlies, almost all surviving the attacks. In the past, Madeline had always played it smart with grizzlies, making noise while hiking, getting the hell out of an area if she stumbled across the carcass of a game animal, backing slowly away quietly the two times she’d come across a grizzly on the trail. The gigantic omnivores couldn’t afford more problems with humans. Montana’s population of the bears had greatly dwindled since the arrival of settlers from the East, and she didn’t want to be another reason to get one shot.

The book gave her even more respect for the gigantic omnivores and had some very helpful tips to avoid confrontations with grizzlies. But the most interesting part had been the attitude of the victims. They didn’t wish harm on their attackers but instead had a sense of awe for nature and for the sheer power of the bears. She found it fascinating.

So fascinating, in fact, that at one point she realized her butt had long since fallen asleep. She shifted on the log, her back muscles groaning in protest. Finally she stood, stretching, and looked out over the lake. The sun was far lower in the west, and the photographer with the large-format camera was busy changing plates.

She looked at her watch. Less than an hour until George got there.

She held the book up, looking at its cover, a close-up of a snarling grizzly’s face. She knew then why she’d chosen this particular book. She’d been looking for some insight into the mind of a survivor who had faced a powerful predator and lived. She wanted to know what they’d done to survive and how they’d dealt with the incident after the fact.

But what she’d come away with didn’t help. It didn’t even pertain to her situation. These people had faced grizzly bears, powerful creatures indeed, but seldom predaceous, and then only when desperate for a meal or threatened beyond reason. Most of the time when a grizzly attacked, it stopped when the person played dead or was no longer a threat. In only very rare cases had grizzlies eaten people.

A powerful force of nature, a symbol of a healthy ecosystem, the grizzly didn’t make it personal when it attacked. It hadn’t selected its victim from a series of newspaper articles, or from word of mouth as people chatted with each other about friends with extraordinary abilities. The victim mauled by a grizzly wasn’t selected at all but just happened to be the unlucky person who stumbled across a mother grizzly and her cubs or a big male eating a moose carcass.

But the creature she faced was no bear. It was undeniably predaceous and calculating, selecting each victim for the precise purpose of devouring the person’s flesh, for acquiring a talent or gift.

It had specifically selected her. And it wouldn’t stop when she played dead. It would keep coming, teeth sinking into her, devouring her flesh. And then it would have her “gift.” The power that would give the creature staggered her. It would know intimate details about its victims, where they were going, their routines, their deepest fears. It would twist and compromise her ability, finding endless, horrific uses for it; it would contort the “gift” into a thing of evil, extending it to a place of darkness she herself never would have taken it.

She glanced around nervously, scanning the lake’s edge, the gift shop and lodge, feeling oddly possessive of her gift. She may not have asked for it, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to see it used for evil.

She wondered where the creature was, why it hadn’t even made a single appearance since the night before. Here she was, sitting alone, and though she was among a swarm of pulsing, vibrant tourism, she thought at least she’d feel its eyes burning into her back or catch a glimpse of furtive movement in the trees at the lake’s edge. But she’d seen nothing in her three hours of reading and watching.