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Miriam matched eyes with Kim across the extinguished campfire.
“The Loch Ness Monster is certainly the most famous lake cryptid,” Miriam said. “Name another.”
With dusk quickly approaching, they were just killing time now. Macy hadn’t answered since she’d radioed earlier, but Miriam didn’t give it much thought, assuming she’d just gone on a walk, or to use the bathroom. Macy didn’t always take these things as seriously as Miriam would have liked, but the frustration from that was only a minor annoyance at this point. If something important came up, Miriam felt confident that Macy would radio again.
Miriam still hadn’t forgotten Kim’s vanishing act. When Kim had returned, Miriam had asked where she’d been, but Kim only offered a vague reply that didn’t bring comfort. Walking. But why? They’d just walked so far to get to the camp. Why walk more? Miriam didn’t feel right bringing up any more such questions, though.
“Champy?”
Miriam smiled, impressed. She liked this conversation. She could command this one.
“Yep. In Lake Champlain, between New York and Vermont. Basically the same as Nessie based on eye-witness accounts.”
“Do you think that’s what you’re gonna find out here?” Kim asked, a strangely amused look on her face.
Miriam glanced out across the water, considering the question. “Not really. Not enough water for something that big.”
“What if it could walk?”
Miriam nodded. “Maybe then. There are some people who claim to have seen Nessie walking at least. I’d expect anything that big living in this lake would have to move to other waters occasionally for food. There are other types of lake monsters, though. They aren’t all purported to be plesiosaurs.”
“Well, that’s about all I know,” Kim said, her teasing eyes glittering. “I’m not a monster nerd like you.”
Though Kim had proven quite adept at getting under Miriam’s skin, this particular jab didn’t do the trick. Though Kim implied that being a “monster nerd” was an insult, Miriam actually wore the distinction with a badge of honor. She’d yet to meet anyone that could match her encyclopedic knowledge of cryptids. It honestly felt like the only topic of conversation she ever felt comfortable discussing.
“Well, maybe you should be if you’re going to live out here with one.”
“I don’t live out here,” Kim said.
“Might as well.” The comment came off a little sharper than she intended, colored by Kim’s strange disappearing act earlier.
“Well there’s the Monster of Elizabeth Lake. It’s a real weird one down in California.”
“How so?” Kim asked, her lips turned up as if she were about to laugh. Ever-teasing, ever-playful. It unnerved Miriam.
“If witnesses are to be believed?” Miriam asked rhetorically. “Bat wings, giraffe neck, six legs. Supposedly smells really bad.”
Kim made a show of sniffing the air. “Smells great here.”
“True. Probably not our cryptid, but California is reasonably nearby, and sometimes these descriptions are off.”
“Do you really think the... anomaly... is a cryptid that’s been seen elsewhere?”
Miriam shrugged. “Sure. Stands to reason. I suspect a lot of these cryptids are the same, just in different parts of the world. Eyewitnesses are unreliable and colored by their own culture. Ogopogo, Nessie, Mussie, Champy. I think they’re all the same, or at least closely related. Sure, you’ve got the outliers like the Dobhar-chú in Ireland, but most everything else is described as something approximating either a plesiosaur or an eel.”
When Kim didn’t respond with anything other than a nod, Miriam realized she had hoped to be questioned on the Irish water hound. Perhaps Kim had grown tired of the conversation. Miriam sometimes had a hard time reading the cues, especially when talking about her favorite subject.
After a few beats of silence, Kim chimed back in. “What about a kelpie?”
Miriam made no effort to hide her disdain. “A shape-shifting river horse? That’s just folklore. Not a real cryptid.”
“How do you know? They can take human form, after all.”
“Because it just doesn’t make sense.”
“I could be a kelpie,” Kim suggested with a quick wink. “Maybe I’m the devil of Misty Lake.”
“Well, we’re not in Scotland for one.” Miriam looked down at Kim’s sneakers. “And you don’t seem to have hooves. Also, you’re not trying to seduce me.”
“Am I not?”
Miriam felt the blood rush to her cheeks, hopefully masked by the dim light of the waning sun. “I hope not. I’d rather not have my entrails eaten.”
Kim’s smile grew so big that it glowed, her deep brown eyes twinkling. Miriam had given the troll some bait, hadn’t she? She could muster no better response than to awkwardly stare at the ground.
“Almost dusk,” Miriam said, motioning to the sky.
Only a hint of the sun peeked out above the trees. Miriam looked longingly at the black ash of the previous campfires. The warmth would have been nice, but they’d intentionally not started the fire, hoping to be as discreet as possible. Better chances of an encounter, Miriam figured.
“Ok,” Kim said, backing off her playful assault. “What do we do?”
Miriam got up and rummaged through her backpack until she found two pairs of small binoculars. She tossed one pair to Kim, easily and gracefully caught.
“Now we wait.”
***
Though the moon remained elusive, the clouds allowed more of its light to filter through than Miriam might have expected. The trees stood as silhouettes, guardians of the lake. Miriam and Kim had sat through dusk without so much as a ripple. They’d need to start a fire soon if they intended to start one at all, but she worried doing so would ruin their chances.
Kim sat diligently beside her, sending her twinkling gaze across the lake. She seemed content. Happier as the minutes turned into hours.
Reluctant to give up for the night, Miriam whispered. “Should we make a fire?”
Kim looked at her, the whites of her eyes apparent in the dim light. “Sure.”
The suggestion seemed to be enough. Kim took to work immediately, clearly practiced at the ritual of stacking the sticks and logs just right. Flames shot up in only a matter of minutes, and within ten, they had a small, cozy campfire, perfectly built so as not to rage but to crackle, to throw dancing shadows across the wall of trees. Miriam hadn’t realized how cold she was until she sat next to that fire.
“We still have dawn,” Miriam said. “We need to be up early.”
“You need to be up early,” Kim replied. “I’m just a guide, remember?”
Miriam looked at Kim across the fire, trying to determine whether Kim meant it as a joke. She couldn’t tell.
“Okay. Well, I’ll be up early then.”
Kim nodded, a stern and serious look across her face. Too stern. Too serious. The kind of forced expression someone might use when they were attempting to...
That Cheshire grin spread across her face again, her white teeth striking against the darkness. “I’m kidding. Of course I’ll get up with ya. Geez. I’m not that mean.”
Maybe not mean, but certainly obtuse at times. Did Kim get this way with everyone, or was there just an incompatibility of personality? Miriam didn’t get along with that many people. She had to at least entertain the possibility that their communications difficulties stemmed from her, not Kim.
Miriam’s heart jumped at the crying of an animal. She couldn’t immediately place what it was—it sounded like a baby mammal of some sort. Her head spun towards the sound just as it dissipated. It sounded close. And loud. Especially for a baby.
Kim just shrugged when Miriam turned back to the fire.
The cry echoed through the forest again, sending Miriam to her feet. Certainly not the cryptid she came to look for, but something in trouble. Curiosity overtook her as she reached down for a flashlight and headed towards the cries.
“Hey, wait up,” Kim hollered. Miriam didn’t slow down.
Miriam tried to be relatively quiet, but the underbrush whooshed past her legs, snapping back into place. Branches slapped against one another, creating enough sound that any creature would be able to hear them coming.
She stopped. She needed another clue. Miriam became aware of her heart beating. Of her chest rising and falling. She quieted herself as best she could.
Kim caught up, somehow moving through the underbrush more quietly, but not in total silence. She stopped behind Miriam.
Miriam held up one finger meant to keep Kim quiet. Kim obeyed.
After thirty seconds, Miriam’s breathing had slowed. She listened for the sounds of the forest, but heard barely any. Something had spooked the local wildlife into silence.
Again, she heard the cry. She crept forward for its length, following her ears. Ahead she saw a clearing. The sound had to be coming from there.
Trying hard not to rush and make more noise than she had to, Miriam advanced to the edge of the tree line, stopping at the lip of a depression in the forest floor. A big one, by the looks of it. If she’d fallen in, getting out would have been challenging. She tried to tease out the purpose of this thing. Of where it had come from, why it was there.
“A trap,” she whispered to Kim.
Having not yet employed her flashlight, Miriam switched it on, the beam shining downward. Slowly she lifted it, the spotlight inching across the floor of the depression. All manner of detritus littered the floor. The light reflected brightly back into her eyes as it crossed over... aging bone.
Yes, surely a trap, though not the deep, perfectly dug type she might have imagined. This thing was far too large to cover over with leaves and twigs to fool a passerby into stumbling into it. It seemed more like the work of a giant doodlebug—more appropriately called an antlion. She remembered fishing the small insects out of their conical traps as a child, though the floor of this trap lay mostly flat.
The cry rang out again, this time so close that Miriam instinctively snapped her flashlight to the sound. She expected an infant, but instead saw a full-grown otter. It skittered quickly around the opposite edge of the depression, with no way out.
Kim squealed, somehow in a whisper. “Awww. We have to get it out of there.”
Miriam ran the flashlight around the edge of the hole. It didn’t look to be more than six-foot deep. Certainly, with the help of someone up top, she’d be able to get out. She gave a sharp glance back.
“Okay, you’ll have to help me back up,” Miriam said, abandoning the whisper entirely. This otter couldn’t run away from them, and even if it did, it wasn’t the creature they were looking for, anyway.
Kim nodded. Miriam turned and tested the edge of the depression with the toe of her sneaker. Not sandy and loose like a doodlebug hole. Turning her ankles at painful angles, she shuffled down, almost in a full sprint to keep her footing. Once on the bottom, her heart fluttered with a brief jolt of panic.
She inched across, using the flashlight to avoid some of the larger chunks of leftover animals and accumulated foliage. The otter ahead skittered. She could hear its feet pattering across the dirt. Flashbacks of saving a cheetah cub in Rose Valley bounced around her head—the memory of the day her brother died. She twisted back towards Kim, driven by a need to verify the woman’s safety. Kim was safe, of course. Why wouldn’t she be? Miriam crouched down and shined the flashlight towards the otter. Its bright eyes curiously judged her.
“Hey fella. Did you fall in?” she said, feeling kind of dumb. The otter couldn’t understand her.
She held out a hand, the way she might when approaching a cat or dog. She didn’t know a ton about otters, but knew enough to know they could be dangerous if threatened.
The otter crept forward, stretching its neck to sniff the air. When it got close enough, she’d snatch it up, sprint to the nearest edge, and toss it into the woods. Hopefully she could do all that before it could cause too much damage. She remained patient as it sniffed the ground, slowly taking one step at a time. Like cats, otters were often slaves to curiosity, and Miriam surely made for an interesting investigation, especially if this one had never seen a human before.
The otter took another step and Miriam’s ears perked up. Leaves moved nearby. Knowing she couldn’t afford to move, she whispered back at Kim. “Is that you?”
“No. It’s...”
The way her voice fell off told Miriam all she needed to know. She stood up in a flash, the otter breaking away towards the darkness. She drove her beam up ahead just in time to see something emerge from the undergrowth, coiling and slinking. It moved almost silently. Miriam stumbled backwards, pointing the flashlight towards Kim. Towards her escape.
The ground shook as the thing moved into the pit. She could hear the otter crying again, its high-pitched whine cutting into the night. Then, from behind her, she heard a sound that she’d never heard in her life. Not a growl, or a bark, or a roar, but it rumbled into her bones. She could feel its hot breath.
She’d found the devil.
Also a slave to curiosity, Miriam spun around, backpedaling towards Kim and shining the flashlight at the devil. The beam didn’t illuminate its entire frame. She didn’t see a face. Only its back as it turned around, stepped out of the pit as if it were a rain puddle, and crashed through the brush away from her.
She fell, her foot catching on a rotting femur, then quickly scrambled to her feet. Kim crouched on the edge of the pit and offered a hand. Miriam took it, borrowing some of Kim’s strength to walk up the sloping wall. Slight in frame, Miriam felt sure that the twenty pounds of muscle that she had over Kim would prove challenging. Miriam looked up to see Kim’s bicep straining, a grimace on her face. She didn’t falter though, and Miriam soon found herself standing beside her trail guide.
Sweeping the area with the flashlight, Miriam searched for any sign of the otter. It was gone. Survival instinct made way for excitement as Miriam realized this trap might have been made by the devil itself.
“Where is it?” Kim said, her voice shaking.
“I don’t know,” Miriam replied. “Eaten, I assume.”
As big as that thing was, a single otter would hardly make a meal. Miriam’s mind raced, collating information.
“This is so great,” she said. “We can rule out so many cryptids now.”
“You almost got eaten,” Kim said, the usual twinkle of her eye diminished. “And you’re thinking about classifying it?”
Miriam might have blushed if her cheeks weren’t already flush from the encounter. She wouldn’t apologize for geeking out over this. It’s why she’d come. Sifting through everything she wanted to do and think about and plan for, Miriam never once considered packing up and leaving.
The devil was real. And she was going to find it.
