Howl of the Forsaken

The road stretched flat and empty before me, a strip of cracked asphalt cutting through the vast and indifferent desert. I drove the twenty-two miles to Pyramid Lake because the walls had begun to close in, and the silence was too loud.

The air smelled of dust and old ghosts, and the lake shimmered like something that did not belong to this world as I pulled onto the shoulder and climbed out. The land beyond was rough, a scatter of rock and brush rising toward the hills. I hiked up, boots kicking loose stones down the slope behind me. The wind was sharp, carrying the scent of sage and pine.

That was when I heard it. A cry stretched and yearning. It was a mountain lion calling for a mate. Wrong season, I thought. But nature has its calendar. Had it been hunting, I would not have heard it at all. The thought did little to settle my nerves.

The second cry came closer, and something in the sound uncoiled a deep and ancient dread in my gut. I turned back toward my truck, stepping carefully over loose gravel. Then, against my better judgment, I veered toward an embankment. I wanted to see it, wanted to know.

I climbed, pressing my back against a wall of stone. The next cry split the air above me. I froze. The thing was close. I could hear movement along the ridge. I held my breath.

Then he came into view.

A man—naked, his skin smeared with mud, his body laced with scratches that oozed dark against his pale flesh. He turned his head and locked eyes with me. There was nothing in them, nothing that made sense, at least.

His mouth opened, and the sound came again. The cry of a cougar in heat, torn from a throat that had forgotten language. I did not stay to hear it a second time.

I leaped down from my rocky perch and ran, sliding down the hillside in a rush of loose rock and pounding heartbeats. I did not look back. I did not want to see if he followed.

Reaching my truck, I threw myself inside, the door slamming shut like a gunshot. I turned the key, and the engine roared to life.

On the drive back, I told myself I would not think of him again. But the mind, like the desert, has a way of holding onto things.