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It was after midnight when they finally crawled into their sleeping bags.
Without warning, A
Not yet concerned, she waited for the sound-the quality already forgotten, left in the sleep it had so rudely jerked her from-to come again, attach itself to meaning so she could call off the internal watchdogs and close her eyes.
A soft exhalation, the sigh of the wind or a ghostly child penetrated the tent wall, then brushing, gentle, the sound a soft-bristle brush would make on nylon. A
Tonight's brush was painting strokes high on the tent wall. Deer. Elk. Bear. A
Making no noise, she reached over and touched Joan.
She woke quickly. "What-"
"Shh." A
Shushing, susurrating sound. All around them now as if the animal circled the tent. Not once. Not to probe and, curiosity satisfied, move on. Circle after circle. No sound but the soft brushing and the periodic gusts of air, voiceless woofs. A bear. Grizzly. Black. Full grown. Shoulder touching high on the domed wall of nylon.
With each circuit, A
She pushed her lips as close to Joan's face as a lover might and barely breathed the words, "What's it doing?"
"Don't know," Joan whispered back.
The circling stopped, as if at the thread of sound the two women spun between them. A silence followed, so absolute in the perfect darkness of the tent, A
A barely audible rustle as Joan pushed herself up on her elbows sawed across A
"Do you think-" she whispered.
A snap of wood.
"Shh."
A growl broke the night above them and both women screamed. The growling increased in volume and moved down the length of the tent. On this circuit the bear leaned in, no longer brushing but caving the tent walls in with its weight. Formless, terrifying, A
Hands-Joan's-fumbled over the front of her sweatshirt, closing on the cotton. "Down," she was hissing. "Fetal position."
A
The growling ebbed and flowed but remained in one direction as if the animal stood outside the front-zippered fly talking to itself, deciding whether they were to live or die.
A
The mental listing was cut off. The bear was roaring, raging. "Holy shit," A
"God, I hope not," Joan said fervently.
A blow struck the tent then and they heard nylon ripping.
"Shit," A
"Quiet."
Nylon tearing. Roars that cut through the dark and tore into A
Noise from without went on for what seemed like forever but was probably only half that long. Crashing. Roars. Fabric ripping. Thumps as if the bear threw or batted things from one place to another. Swooshing and flopping. Digging. Bass gutteral grunts pushed out with the sound of frenzied destruction. Impacts against tent and earth as if the beast tore at the ground.
"What in hell?" A
"Beats me," Joan whispered back.
Soul splitting, a roar broke close and vicious. Blows began falling first to one side of the tent then the other. A
Blood. Now there would be the smell of blood.
The lightweight metal tent frame collapsed with a second blow and A
The animal had gone mad. The deep-throated anger of nature turning on humankind. Then came crunching and a prolonged rustle. Rolling on the downed tent? Burrowing through the thin stays in the fabric? A high wild roar, a shriek in gravel and glass.
"Rory," Joan whispered.
"Shh."
A crack. Maybe a tent pole, maybe a peg jerked from the ground by the elasticized cord and shot into a tree.
Abruptly everything stopped. Deathlike stillness. A
Nothing moved: not A
The crunch never came.
Fear did not diminish but increased. The fear that if she moved, even so much as an eyelash, if her pulse fluttered or her skin twitched, the narrowly averted disaster would be brought down upon them. Either Joan felt the same way or she'd fainted.
After a while A
"Gone?" A
"Wait," Joan replied.
Handfast like children lost in the wood, A
Unmeasured, time passed. With no new horror to stimulate it, the fear response began to wane. A