The Shortcut

Maya was late again.

Not a little late. The kind of late that came with a warning stapled to it. Mr, Damien had said it last week, straight, right to her face, in the voice he used when he wasn't kidding. "One more time, Maya. One more and you're done."

Rent was due in five days. She had only forty dollars in her account and a fridge with ketchup and half an onion in it. So no. Getting fired was not an option tonight.

So she took the shortcut.

Everyone in Portland knew you didn't cut through Forest Park after dark. Lindy had told her a hundred times. "People go missing there, Maya. I'm not being dramatic. Take Burnside."

But Burnside added twenty minutes. And Maya did not have twenty minutes. She had a boss who counted them.

She'd been up since five in the morning. Opened at the coffee place, closed at the diner, the two jobs stitched together with a bus transfer and a granola bar eaten standing up. Her feet were done. Her back was done. All of her was done. Five more days and rent came out of the account, and if this shift didn't happen there'd be no rent, and if there was no rent there'd be no apartment. Maya had clawed too hard for that one room to lose it over twenty minutes of being sensible.

The moon was too big. That was the first weird thing. Big and low and way too bright, like somebody turned the brightness all the way up on the sky and walked off. It came down through the trees in white patches. Made everything look like it was moving even though there was no wind.

Rain had just stopped. Everything dripped. The path was mud and wet leaves and her sneakers were soaked through inside a minute. She walked fast. Head down. Phone out, flashlight on, the little circle bouncing in front of her feet.

She was maybe halfway through when she heard it.

Footsteps.

Not hers.

Heavier. Slower, at first. She stopped. They stopped too. She told herself that was in her head. Everybody's footsteps echo in the woods. That's just how it works.

She started walking. The footsteps started again. And this time they weren't slow.

"Hello?" Her voice came out small. Scared. Stupid. Only crickets answered. She stood there with her heart going so hard she was sure the whole park could hear it, and she told herself the same thing everybody tells themselves right before it goes bad. It's nothing. A dog. Some hiker. Nothing.

She started walking again. Faster this time. The footsteps kept up.

Okay. Not nothing.

She jogged. Then ran. The flashlight went everywhere, up the trees, across the path, her own shaking hand. She almost went down twice on the slick leaves and caught herself both times. Behind her, closer now, she could hear breathing. Deep and even. Not tired. Not human-tired anyway, not like a guy sprinting after her. Even. Like whatever it was could do this all night.

She thought about screaming. Then she thought about who'd hear her out here. Nobody. That was the whole point of the shortcut. No people. So she kept her mouth shut and ran, and the breathing stayed right behind her, patient, not even working that hard. And somehow that was the worst part. It wasn't chasing her. It was following her. Like it already knew how this ended.

Then the root got her.

It came out of the dark and hooked her foot and she went down hard, both hands out, and the ground came up and knocked the wind clean out of her. Pain shot up her leg. She rolled over. Her jeans were ripped at the knee and blood was already coming through, dark in the moonlight, and it hurt so bad her eyes watered.

She tried to get up. Her leg wouldn't take it.

And then she smelled it.

Wet fur. Something wild and warm and close. She looked up.

A wolf.

Not a normal wolf. Not a dog somebody let off a leash. This thing was the size of a truck. Dark fur with the moon caught in it, silver at the edges, and it stood over her close enough that she could feel the heat coming off it. And its eyes. God. Yellow. Bright yellow, like fire, like two coals somebody blew on.

Maya couldn't breathe. She just stared. Waited for it to lunge.

It didn't.

It tilted its head. Slowly. Like it was confused. Like she was the weird one, sitting in the mud bleeding, and it couldn't figure out what her problem was.

Then it stepped closer.

She shut her eyes. She didn't decide to. They just closed on their own, and every part of her went still, and she thought, okay. This is it. This is how the missing people go missing.

But there was no teeth.

There was something warm on her knee.

Wet. Careful. She cracked one eye open and looked down and the wolf had its head bent to her leg and it was licking the blood off. Not tearing. Not eating. Just cleaning it, slowly, like it had all the time in the world, and it didn't hurt at all. It was warm. The stinging stopped. The throb in her knee backed off and went quiet.

When she made herself look again the cut was gone.

Gone. No blood. No rip in her jeans, even, like the denim had knit itself back together. Like the last five minutes hadn't happened. She put her fingers on her knee and felt smooth skin under the wet fabric and nothing else. No mark. No scab. Nothing.

Maya's brain just stopped. It couldn't do anything with this. A cut doesn't close. Skin doesn't stitch itself back up in ten seconds. Denim doesn't fix itself. She looked from her knee to the wolf and back, waiting for the trick, waiting to wake up. Neither one came.

The wolf made a sound low in its chest. Not a growl. Softer than that. Something she felt more than heard, down in her own ribs.

It looked right at her. Those yellow eyes didn't blink. And for one long second Maya had the craziest feeling, sitting there in the dirt with a monster two feet from her face. She wasn't scared anymore.

Then it turned and went back into the trees. Just like that. Gone, like it folded into the dark.

Maya sat in the mud for a full minute, shaking. Not from cold. She touched her knee again. Smooth.

"What the hell," she whispered.

Then she got up and ran the rest of the way. She didn't take the shortcut ever again, she promised herself that, sprinting out of the trees and onto the wet street with the diner sign glowing red at the end of it. She ran the whole way and didn't look back once.

Mr. Damien looked up when the bell over the door went. Took one long look at her. Mud to the knees, hair stuck to her face, chest heaving.

"You look like shit," he said.

"I'm fine." Her voice came out shaking. She grabbed her apron off the hook. "Bathroom. Two minutes."

She didn't wait for him to argue.

The bathroom was the size of a closet and smelled like bleach and old coffee. She ran the cold tap and splashed her face and gripped the sink and made herself breathe. In. Out. It was nothing. She fell. She hit her head, maybe. People imagine things after they hit their head. That was a real thing that happened to people.

She looked up into the mirror.

And went cold all over.

Three long scratches were cut into the glass. Deep. Fresh. Right across her own reflection, from the top corner down, three clean lines like something had dragged claws through it while she stood there.

And under them, written in fog she knew for a fact she hadn't breathed onto the mirror, one word.

MINE.

The letters were already starting to run, dripping down the glass in little trails.

Maya's hands started shaking again. She grabbed a paper towel and wiped it, fast, both hands, scrubbing until the fog was gone.

The word came off.

The scratches stayed.

She stood there staring at three claw marks gouged into a mirror in a locked bathroom, and she did not have one single thing to tell herself this time. No dog. No hiker. No hit on the head.

She wiped her face one more time, forced her legs to work, and went back out.

Mr. Damien was down the counter talking to a delivery guy. Big guy. Tall, filling out the doorway, a black jacket beaded with rain and a stack of flat boxes balanced on one arm. She couldn't see his face. Just the back of a dark head and shoulders like a doorframe.

"Order's under the register," Mr. Damien was saying. "You want a coffee for the road, it's on me, you drove up in this."

The delivery guy turned.

Maya's stomach dropped straight through the floor.

Yellow eyes. Bright. Fire-yellow, the exact same, unmistakable, watching her from across the diner like he'd been waiting for her to walk out of that bathroom the whole time.

He looked at her. Then his gaze dropped. Slow. Down to her knee. The one that should still be bleeding. The one that wasn't.

And he smiled.