Chapter 9: The Dark
Chapter 9: The Dark
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token...
-Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"
Prentiss' eyes opened with an abrupt snap sometime in the middle of night. She didn't move. A childhood like hers had taught her one doesn't suddenly wake from a sound sleep unless there's danger, and only a fool goes bumbling into danger in the name of curiosity. Frozen, she waited and listened.
While she was certainly no woodsman, she remembered falling sleep to assorted night noises: the hooting of owls, the rustle of small animals in the undergrowth, and the call of night insects. In contrast, the woods were now silent, the only sound the barely-perceptible susurrus of wind through trees. Prentiss glanced over at her tent-mate, but JJ's breath was heavy with sleep, and her face-as illuminated by Prentiss' watch-was peaceful.
Letting out a brief sigh, Prentiss grabbed a flashlight and wiggled out of the tent. She felt stiff from a combination of rigorous exercise and sleeping on the ground, and she took a moment to stretch her sore limbs. She tried to peer into the brush surrounding the clearing as she did so, making it look casual, but it was too dark to see anything. The nearly-full moon was obscured by scuttling clouds, and when it did appear, it gave everything a silvery dream-like quality that helped neither her peace of mind nor her abilities of perception.
Prentiss hesitated to use the flashlight. Not only would it ruin her night vision, but it would also pinpoint her in the dark for anyone (or anything) who might be looking. The hairs at the back of her neck were standing on end, and she felt the chill of something more than the cool night air as goose bumps began to pucker her skin. She felt primitive and new, and she suddenly understood how the first men and women had felt when they left the safety of their caves: hairless, claw and toothless, and utterly alone in the dangerous wild.
The wind changed, and she detected a new scent in the air: it was rotten-sweet, like decaying flesh (she'd seen plenty of dead bodies in her time), accompanied by a strong note of musk. She knew enough to realize it was an animal she smelt, a large predator of some kind, but she wasn't really eager to find out exactly. The good thing, she also realized, was that if she could smell it, it could no longer smell her. Finding itself suddenly downwind, it would probably leave off the hunt.
Apparently all those hours watching Animal Planet were paying off, she reflected absently.
Another part of her wondered why she was so sure it was hunting.
She opened her mouth and took a deep, fortifying breath. Her thumb found the button on the heavy flashlight, and a moment later the beam illuminated the clearing. There was a sudden commotion in the bushes, a sort of alarmed grunting, and she swept the light that way with a burning, instinctive urgency.
As the light brushed the spot, something shot out from the trees and rocketed across the campsite toward Prentiss. The flashlight rolled across the loamy ground, illuminating the area in disorienting explosions of bright and dark, and she caught little more than a brief glimpse of furious eyes and that overpowering carnivore smell before the creature was gone.
Fear kept Prentiss rooted to the spot, shivering in the dark. It was the age-old terror of the hunted, and even though she could hear stirring from both tents-the noise had woken the others-she felt lonely and defenseless. A rabbit in the headlights, eyes stretched wide, mind stunned by the incomprehensibility of what she'd just experienced.
"To be honest, I don't know what it was," JJ said to Hotch, her voice soft so that Morgan and Prentiss wouldn't overhear. "It's really too late in the year for bears, and there's no bear sign. I guess it could've been a cougar, but they usually hunt from trees and fall down onto their prey; this doesn't seem like a cougar's style. Those are the only large predators in these woods."
It was just after dawn the next morning, and the soft early light filtered through the trees like falling snowflakes. They had examined the creature's hiding spot and the trail it had left through the campsite last night, but the darkness had left more questions than answers. Unfortunately, sunrise had illuminated matters very little.
"But you can smell it," Hotch said, drawing the air in deeply through his nose. It was still quite cool, and despite the musky odor he felt his mind clear with the bracing breath.
"Oh yeah. There was something here, no doubt. It was big, and it was a carnivore." She shook her head. "It was dark and she was scared and half asleep. Maybe she-"
"I know what I saw, Ranger," Prentiss interrupted with a scowl. "I know it sounds crazy, and I'm sorry you can't figure out what it is, but I wasn't half asleep. I wasn't confused. It was big-Morgan's size, maybe, or bigger-and it had huge eyes that caught the light like an animal."
"Coulda been Skunky, lookin' for a date," Morgan offered with a lopsided smile.
"That would be my luck," she said as she rolled her eyes, "but I doubt it. Isn't that skunk ape thing supposed to be hairy, like Bigfoot?"
"Most of the reports describe it that way, yes," Hotch agreed blandly.
"Uh huh. Well this thing wasn't really hairy at all. Its skin was sort of grayish, and definitely smooth."
"Did it have big black eyes? Did it ask you to take it to your leader?" Morgan again, of course, and this time he got a full-on Death Glare.
"I'm not saying it was fuckin' E.T., Morgan! I'm just telling you what I saw. It was big, it stank, it had shiny eyes, and it was gray and hairless. It was also fast as hell. And I think…" Here she hesitated, and her gaze turned inward as she remembered. "I think I maybe scared it about as much as it scared me. It didn't like the light at all."
"A nocturnal predator," JJ said. "It showed eye shine and sensitivity to light. Judging by these tracks, you're right about it being fast. The ground here is a mess."
Her tone was logical and straightforward, as though she dealt with mysterious night stalkers every day. Hell, maybe she did, Prentiss thought.
"Do you think, uh…do you think it's what got Rossi's team?" Morgan said. Sweat popped out along his brow at the thought.
"It wasn't wearing boots," JJ muttered.
"Excuse me?"
"What? Oh." She looked up from the tracks with a shake of her bright head. "We saw a booted man take Garcia's camera. This thing wasn't wearing boots, so I doubt it's what was chasing them."
"And it's not the same thing I saw on the path yesterday, either," Prentiss said. She wrinkled her nose. "I'd recognize that smell anywhere."
"So we've got two things following us now? Great."
"Maybe not," Hotch said. He gestured toward the rock pile. "We saw that mark on the trail yesterday, and now it's here. Maybe it's a warning, and maybe the man Prentiss saw wasn't hunting us at all."
"Those do look like pretty big teeth," Prentiss said. "I didn't get a look at its mouth, though."
"You're sayin' Grizzly Adams is after E.T., and E.T. is after us." Morgan's tone implied that it wasn't really a question.
Hotch's shoulders rippled in a slight shrug. "It's possible."
"Or we're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Grizzly Adams could have made these marks to indicate E.T.'s hunting ground; we stumbled into the wrong area, and he wants to make sure we don't become dinner," JJ suggested.
"How many people go missing from these woods each year?" Prentiss asked.
JJ and Hotch shared a glance; the latter shook his head. "Very few. But…"
"Yes, but?" she prompted.
"This area is supposed to be off-limits for campers," JJ said after a moment. "And the trail we were on yesterday isn't generally used by the public; it's a Ranger trail."
A silence fell. It was heavy with unspoken implications.
"We should get going," Hotch said. "I don't think there's anything more we can learn here, and it's at least half a day to the still."
No one moved.
Finally Prentiss gave a mechanical, jerky nod. "He's right. We came here to find out what happened to Rossi's team. We're not going to accomplish anything standing around scaring ourselves with half-baked theories."
Another few moments' hesitation, and then the group scattered and began packing up the campsite. All four sets of eyes studiously avoided the churned-up ground running through the clearing, and despite the bright morning, the silence of the forest around them was eerie and oppressive.