The Shuddering

right?”
    “It’s not roadkill,” Ryan said. The car stopped. They all looked at one another before Ryan unbuckled his seat belt.
    “Wait.” Jane blinked at her brother, shaking her head in protest. “You’re not going out there.”
    “Ryan…” Lauren was ready to join in Jane’s campaign for staying in the car, but Ryan was determined. His door swung wide and he slid out of the vehicle. A moment later the back passenger door opened and Sawyer followed him into the dusk.
    Jane rolled down her window. “ Both of you,” she said, her tone surprisingly stern. “Get back in here.”
    But Ryan was too intrigued to listen. He’d always been drawn to stuff like this, turning dead animals over with a stick when he was a kid, picking up bleached bones off the forest floor with his bare hands. And Sawyer had been even worse. He had scared his mother half to death when she found a dead bird stuffed in their freezer between two pints of Blue Bell ice cream, frozen solid in a ziplock bag. Ryan’s boots sank into the snow, a good three inches of powder beneath the crust. He crouched down, only a few feet from the red streak that decorated the landscape.
    “Goddamnit, Ry!” Jane was livid, her irritation diluted by the occasional gust of glacial wind.
    “We saw the same thing yesterday,” Ryan told Sawyer, “farther down the road.” He looked up, searching around the base of the trees for a carcass.
    “Animal?” Sawyer asked, his hands deep within his pockets.
    “I guess.” Ryan shrugged. “But where are the remains?”
    “Better question,” Sawyer cut in. “What the hell are these tracks?”
    Ryan straightened, shaking his head at the strange footprints. “What the fuck?” he said. “These would have had to have been made by something, I don’t know…”
    “Pretty damn tall,” Sawyer finished.
    The indentations in the snow were distinct. The long, skinny tracks were suggestive of bare feet, but with only four elongated toes leaving deep rifts in the snow. Ryan didn’t like it. From what it looked like, some mutant hillbilly was stalking the woods, killing whatever he could find to sustain himself through the winter. He’d have to keep Oona in the cabin, play it safe, but Oona would go nuts being cooped up like that. He had brought her out here so she could have a good time, and now he had this to worry about.
    “Maybe someone was hunting,” Sawyer suggested. “Isn’t it some kind of season right now?”
    “Turkey, I think,” Ryan told him. “We heard a gunshot yesterday.”
    “Well, there you go.” Sawyer dropped his hands to his sides, satisfied with that answer.
    “But these tracks…”
    “Weird shoes,” Sawyer said.
    “Are you kidding?” Ryan shook his head at that. “These aren’t shoes , man.”
    “No.” Sawyer took a backward step. “Haven’t you seen those highly attractive Five Finger shoes people are wearing these days? Just because they aren’t appropriate for snow doesn’t mean some genius didn’t wear them while hunting wild turkeys with his backwood chums.”
    “Really?” Ryan gave Sawyer a skeptical look. “A hillbilly in Vibrams ?”
    “It could have been Bigfoot,” Sawyer said. “It could have been the abominable snowman.”
    “You know they have a show about Bigfoot?” Ryan asked, turning away from the tracks and back toward the car. “Like, these guys genuinely believe they’re hunting the damn thing. They think it’s a science.”
    “But what if they’re right?”
    “What? That Bigfoot exists?”
    “Sure.” Sawyer shrugged. “Explain those tracks. Maybe it does. There’s a logical explanation for everything.”
    “Yes,” Ryan said. “I agree. Logical. Like hillbillies wearing toe shoes.”
    “Or maybe it’s a Realtor wondering what the hell we’re doing in that cabin while the new owner is a state away or something.”
    “And they’re hungry.” Ryan grinned. “So they’re hunting wild turkeys near the property, camping in the trees, wondering how to politely ask us to leave.”
    The car door slammed shut. Jane was coming for them. Sawyer patted him on the shoulder, encouraging Ryan to head back to the car. It was cold, and they were about to be reprimanded. Ryan stood there for a moment longer, his eyebrows furrowed at the swath of gore, before stepping back onto the muddy road.
    “What are you trying to do?” Jane demanded. “You’re an ass, you know that?”
    “It’s closer to the house,” Ryan told her. Jane