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Miriam didn’t handle transitions well. Sure, she seemed to always be calm and in control, but that was only because she had an uncanny knack for anticipating every eventuality, no matter how unlikely or mundane. Her entire mind worked as a flow chart, constantly pruning unused paths and creating new ones to be used at a later date, once she had enough information for one logical conclusion.
But now... now there were too many unexpected inputs, and her mind struggled to reform the flow chart into something usable.
“I don’t understand,” Kim said, wandering through the adjacent parking spaces. “Where did our cars go?”
Miriam collapsed onto a nearby curb block and stared out across the empty asphalt, not listening to Kim. Miriam had come to Washington to find the mysterious devil of Misty Lake. She’d completed that task earlier than expected in a way she couldn’t have imagined. The final report would be better written by Kim than by her.
And now, Macy. Where had Macy gone?
“I did leave her the keys, so she could have driven them away, but both of them? Why go through that much effort?”
Paths started to materialize. Decisions started forming. Years of experience, terabytes of data, and a heap of intuition combined to focus Miriam on her new task. Her new mission. She hadn’t ignored Kim. She’d simply buffered everything Kim had been saying. Now she could afford to process it, and now she had a pre-formed response ready—along with every branch that might result from going down the only logical path.
Miriam stood up suddenly. “You’re right. It doesn’t make sense.”
Instead of pontificating more on that point, Miriam walked back to the trailhead, its wide muddy mouth inviting hikers into the depths of the forest. Her eyes scanned the imprints left there, cataloging each. To the untrained eye, it was indeed a mess: footprints atop footprints, boot treads crossing other treads. She could make out her own boot prints coming out, along with Kim’s smaller ones just behind. Using that as a reference, she could make out pieces of their original prints heading to the lake.
They’d seen the gear out in the woods, so she expected to find prints other than their own, and they were easy to spot. The largest of them she guessed to be a men’s size thirteen, with the ones nearby a lot closer to Miriam’s own shoe size. Different brand, though, so not her or Kim. Four sets of prints.
No... five sets of prints.
Miriam knelt in the mud, giving little thought to dirtying her jeans. At first, she could only see a hint at the fifth set of tracks, but she followed those until she found a place that hadn’t been trampled. Five sets of tracks. Four sets of boots. One set of sneakers. Brooks running shoes by the look of the print. Exactly the kind Macy wore.
Miriam searched further in for any proof that Macy had come back from the woods, but found no evidence for that. She did, however, find the smaller tracks of the two strangers headed out of the woods, along with muddled, straight lines. Something—or someone—being dragged. It could have been Macy. Or it could have been the size thirteens. She needed some proof for that.
Kim stood at the end of the trailhead, watching Miriam as if she’d grown a third head. “What are you doing?”
Miriam held up a finger to shush Kim’s questioning. She had to focus. Following the prints and the line, she finally found what she wanted. At some point, the dragged one had put some weight down on their boots. On their very large boots.
“Macy’s in the woods,” Miriam said as she stood up and brushed off the knees of her jeans. “And the owners of that gear that we found are gone, I think. Or at least, they left. Hard to know if they came back after.”
“How the hell do you know all that, Batman?”
Miriam grinned. “Because I’m the world’s greatest cryptid hunter.”
“More like world’s greatest detective.”
“Same difference,” Miriam replied with a shrug. “Tracks are tracks.”
“Have you considered calling yourself something other than hunter?” Kim asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, maybe it’s just me, but ‘hunter’ seems nefarious. Like you mean these cryptids harm, and that’s not really what you’re all about, is it?”
Miriam regarded the look on Kim’s face, as if her trail guide needed that to be true more for herself than for Miriam. Certainly, she never explicitly went out to kill the things, but they were often dangerous, and fighting them was really what her father taught her to do. For the first time, Miriam wondered if she’d been taught wrong. Perhaps she really was more of a detective than a hunter—or, at least, perhaps she should have been.
Expertly changing topics, as Kim tended to do when things got serious, she turned towards the parking lot. “Ok, but what about the cars?”
“Well, two strangers. Maybe they took the keys from Macy and drove away. I don’t know.”
“What? You can’t read tire tracks and somehow tell who was driving? I thought you were good at this.”
Miriam didn’t know how to respond to that, but she’d started to believe Kim wasn’t being mean with all her poking. It was just her form of being friendly. A fine distinction that Miriam couldn’t always see the difference in.
“Well, we found the devil,” Miriam said. “Now we have to find Macy.”
“Do you think she’s okay?” Kim asked.
Miriam replied without hesitation. “Of course she is. She’s tougher than she looks, and it’s not the first time she’s been on her own. She wouldn’t have gone out there without a reason, either. So something’s going on that we’re not understanding.”
“Maybe she saw the devil. Felt obligated to follow for the sake of your job.”
“Maybe.”
Had Macy really become so invested in their little venture that she’d take on the cryptid hunting duties for herself? If so, Miriam would be very impressed.
Kim took a deep breath. “Should we call the cops or something?”
Miriam had already considered it and dismissed the idea, perhaps a little out of hubris. “We don’t really have any hard evidence, and you know these woods better than anyone. With your knowledge of the terrain and my knowledge of Macy, we should be able to find her in no time.”
“All right,” Kim said as she marched past Miriam. “Let’s go find Macy, then.”
Miriam turned and followed Kim back down the trail, shoving aside thoughts of the darker ramifications of Macy being lost in the forest. Aside from the dobhar-chú that Kim insisted wasn’t dangerous, Miriam didn’t really worry too much about Macy being in danger. Black bears hardly ever attacked humans, and not much else could kill a human even if it tried. Macy might be hungry and thirsty and tired, but she was unlikely to be dead.
Unless the strangers had killed her. Also unlikely, Miriam decided. Why would murderers be hanging out in the woods? Whoever they were, they hadn’t come to hunt humans. They’d come, at the very worst, to hunt the devil. Still, with the cars gone, it was hard to believe that Macy hadn’t at least run into the strangers. If they hurt Macy...
Miriam’s face flushed, and her heart sped up just thinking about it. She suddenly noticed that her fists were clenched. Over the years, Miriam had become good friends with Macy, yes, but she’d also developed a need to protect her. Not for the first time, Miriam briefly wondered if she had a savior complex, but really, if she did, it was probably the least of her many complexes.
Shaking the self-psychoanalysis, she turned her mind back to the task in hand. Lost in thought, and desperate to fill out her flowchart as deeply as she could, Miriam followed Kim as they headed back to camp.
