Chapter 14

The first light of dawn was breaking over the trees when Laird Kerr dropped Harmony off outside the Dunlaps’ front lawn. They’d stayed up all night, talking, laughing, drinking, eating, and swapping stories. Harmony threw the car door open. “Thanks for dinner.”

Laird’s laughter shook the car windows. “Come on back any time.”

“You better check with Celia first.”

“I will. See you around. Have a good trip home.”

Home? She wasn’t going home. Harmony waved to him and turned toward the house before she noticed she wasn’t the only person awake at this hour. The whole Dunlap family stood on the front porch, all except Aiken and Boyd, who talked to two other people at the foot of the front steps.

She didn’t want to interrupt family business, but the palpable tension nagged at her and drove her forward. She started walking faster when she recognized one of the people. It was Bain Campbell. The other man was Roger McPherson, the County Sheriff.

From the front gate, she heard McPherson talking. “No one is accusing anybody of anything. We’re just here to follow up.”

Aiken’s voice rumbled across the lawn. “If you want to follow something up, you can ask that twit right there what happened to her.” He poked a finger at Bain.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bain muttered.

“Sure you do,” Aiken returned. “You were the last person to see her before she disappeared. What happened to her?”

McPherson held up his hands. “Okay, okay. You have to admit it’s pretty strange her disappearing on your land. She came up here for a day visit and hasn’t come back to town for a week. We had to come up and find out what happened to her.”

“She came up here with Bain Campbell, or didn’t he bother to tell you that?”

Harmony jerked the gate open and strode up to the steps. “What’s going on?”

Sheriff McPherson gave himself whiplash spinning around to stare at her. Bain Campbell turned white as a sheet and glanced toward the trees to make sure he had a clear escape route.

Aiken waved toward the two men. “Would you please explain to these two illustrious gentlemen of the law that you weren’t kidnapped and held hostage in our woodshed for the last week?”

“What’s going on, Sheriff? You can see I’m not a prisoner here.”

Sheriff McPherson turned bright red and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes, ma’am; I can see that well enough. It’s just that Bain Campbell here told me…”

“I don’t have to tell you how reliable Bain Campbell’s word is against anyone or anything that ever happens on Bruins’ Peak.”

The Sheriff shrugged and looked away. “Yes, ma’am, I know that. It’s just he said you got kidnapped up here and hadn’t been seen since. I had no choice but to investigate.”

“You can see I’m alive and well. Nobody kidnapped me.”

“What did I tell you?” Aiken burst out.

The Sheriff waved for quiet. “I hate to bother you, ma’am. I can see you’re alive and well, but everyone’s mighty worried about you back in town. Would you mind telling me just exactly what happened to make you disappear without a word to anybody of your plans?”

She cast a glance at Bain. “Do you want to tell the Sheriff what happened, Bain?”

Bain looked around with wild eyes. He looked at Harmony. He looked at Aiken. He looked up at the Dunlaps. He looked everywhere but at the Sheriff.

“I’ll help you get started. You came up to me in the parking lot at Social Services the evening before I left town. You wanted me to show you where I encountered that bear.”

Aiken interrupted; “Even though it was on Dunlap territory.”

“I asked if you planned to kill the bear, and you said no, you only wanted to trap it and maybe send it to the zoo.”

“Is all that true, Campbell?” the Sheriff asked.

“Then, when I picked you up Monday morning to come up the mountain, you insisted on bringing your rifle with you. You said it wasn’t safe to come up the mountain without a weapon, and you told me a big tale about the children on the mountain being in danger. Am I following the facts accurately enough for you so far?”

Bain bared his crooked teeth.

“Then, when I showed you the spot where I met the bear the first time, we found the same bear waiting there. He came right up to me, and I said I thought he was tame. I had to stop you from shooting it on the spot, but when I put out my hand to him, you called out that he was dangerous. You spooked him, and he roared at you. You raised your gun again, and the bear charged at you and would have killed you if I hadn’t....”

“Stop!” Bain screeched.

Aiken chuckled low.

“You better finish the story yourself, Bain,” Harmony told him.

McPherson turned on Bain. “Well? So what happened then?”

Bain aimed a shaky finger at Aiken. “It was him! He did it! He...he....”

“He did what?” Harmony asked. “He saved my life after you shot me in the chest with your precious gun. Is that what you were about to say? I tried to stop you from shooting the bear, and the gun went off and hit me in the chest. If Aiken hadn’t been there to stop the bleeding, I would have been dead.”

McPherson glared. “Is that true, Bain? Did you lose control of your weapon?”

“I never lost control,” Bain screeched. “It was him. He would have killed me.”

“What are you saying?” McPherson asked. “Did he threaten you in some way?”

“He...he....”

“You’re not making any sense, Bain,” Harmony remarked. “Explain yourself.”

“It was him.” Bain waved his arms in circles. “He attacked me.”

“You just said no one was there but you and the lady and the bear. How could he attack you?”

Bain spluttered, but he couldn’t form the words to say what he meant. At that moment, the screen door swung open and Marla came out. Why hadn’t Harmony noticed before she wasn’t on the porch?

Marla stopped next to her mother. Bain’s eyes snapped to her, and his mouth fell open in a spine-chilling howl. “It’s her! It’s her! She’s the one!”

Sheriff McPherson smacked his lips. “First it’s him, and now it’s her. What the blazes are you talking about?”

“She’s the one! She’s the one who killed my dad’s friend. She tore him to pieces. She ripped out his throat so his head bobbed on his neck. I was standing right there and saw the whole thing.”

The annoyed, frustrated expression vanished from the Sheriff’s face. He eyed Marla with new interest. “Is that so?”

“I saw her! She attacked him, and she turned into a devil right in front of me, and she killed him in cold blood. I saw it all. You could ask my dad if he was still alive, but my brother Edward was there, too. He can confirm it all.”

The Sheriff turned to Jasper. “I’m sorry to say this, Mr. Dunlap, but with another witness to confirm the incident, I have to treat it as a serious matter. I’ll have to question your daughter about this.”

Jasper scowled at the Sheriff. Then he murmured to Marla, “You better tell him.”

Marla raised her flashing eyes from the boards under her feet and met the Sheriff’s gaze. “It’s true. I killed him.”

Harmony gasped. “Marla!

Marla fixed her ferocious glare on Harmony. “Are you gonna arrest me now? Are you gonna ruin the lives of all the other kids on this mountain because of what I did? That stinking hunter attacked me, and he would have killed me if I hadn’t killed him first. I was only seven years old when it happened. I was walking through the woods minding my own business on my own land when all four of them came out of the trees and attacked me.”

“Four of them, you say?” Sheriff McPherson asked.

“Two men and two teenage boys,” Marla pointed at Bain. “He was just a boy then, him and his brother. One of the men was his dad, and the other one was this friend he talks so much about.”

“What did they do?”

“They grabbed me by the arms and wrestled me to the ground. Then they started arguing over who was gonna get me first. They were going to take turns with me and then kill me. They said they could hide my body and no one would ever find it. I….I….”

“Did you fight back?”

Marla looked at her father for help. “I….I got scared. I went berserk. The next thing I knew, this guy was lying on the ground with his neck broken and the others were running away. I looked around. I had blood all over me.”

“What happened then?”

Aiken spoke up. “She came back home covered in blood. Dad, Boyd and I were standing over there by the fountain when she showed up screaming bloody murder. When we finally got the truth out of her, she told us where to find the guy’s body. We went down there, and we buried it where no one would ever find it. We did it to protect Marla. I hope you understand, Sheriff.”

The Sheriff shook his head. “I think I see what’s going on here. I don’t need to hear anymore. You did what you had to do, and that’s all there is to it.” He turned toward Harmony. “If you want to lay charges against Bain, ma’am, I’d say you have a pretty good case of reckless endangerment with a firearm. If I was you, Bain, I would keep my accusations to myself until you can find a way to tell the truth, if that’s possible. I should never have listened to you.” He strode away to the patrol car tucked in the trees down the driveway.

Behind his back, Bain’s expression transformed from confusion to murderous rage. His lips curled back from his teeth, and his eyes smoldered in his pointed skull. He glared at Aiken. “You know, good and well, you attacked me out there. You know good and well you were there, along with the lady.”

Aiken grinned at him and asked, “And the bear?”

Bain flew into a rage. A ragged shriek broke out of his throat, and his feet left the ground on a flying leap at Aiken’s neck. Harmony screamed, but as fast as her arm shot out to grab Bain, she couldn’t react fast enough. He sailed past her.

Faster than the eye could see, Aiken spun around, with one hand guiding Bain’s outstretched fingers inches away from his face. Bain tumbled forward, carried by his own momentum, and Aiken moved around him from behind. Harmony couldn’t comprehend what happened next. A blur crossed her vision. It swirled around Aiken, and a concussion of air thumping away from him pounded against her ears.

Before she realized what happened, Aiken disappeared and a bear took his place. But that’s not really what happened, was it? Some forgotten part of her saw what really happened. She saw it perfectly well. She just didn’t want to let herself believe it.

Aiken, the man who told her he loved her no matter what, the man who said he would never stop loving her – he changed right before her eyes. His shoulders hunched and broadened even farther than their usual barn-door size. His head dropped between his shoulders, and his skin turned dusky brown. His back bent forward, and he fell onto his hands on the ground.

Shaggy fur sprouted all over his body, and the morning sun peeking over the treetops caught the golden hairs in their angelic glow. His face contorted and stretched out into a narrow snout with a black shiny nose. Aiken disappeared, and a bear took his place; but that wasn’t enough for Harmony. She knew that bear. She knew that bear on sight. It was him. It was the bear she met in the woods.

The bear lunged at Bain, but Harmony didn’t make any move to intervene. The rest of the Dunlap family stayed where they were. They weren’t the least bit surprised by what they’d seen. They’d seen it a thousand times. This was all normal to them.

The bear knocked Bain the rest of the way off his feet. Bain landed on his face against the steps. The bear came down on his front paws on either side of his head. His great body covered Bain, and his open mouth struck Bain in the neck.

Bain wriggled onto his back with a terrified squeal, and the bear let him turn. From her place by the steps, Harmony could see plain as day the bear didn’t tighten his jaws around Bain’s neck. He could kill Bain with the slightest pressure of his jaws, but he only wanted to scare him.

Bain flipped himself over to face the fearsome beast looming over him. He fought to put his arms up to block the bear’s jaws closing around his face. The bear drove in hard and bellowed full and loud in Bain’s face. His saliva spattered Bain’s cheeks and flew into his eyes.

Bain whimpered in terror. He shut his eyes tight against the onslaught and turned his face aside. The bear roared and roared again. He covered Bain’s face with his open mouth, but still he did not bite down.

Bain rolled sideways and pulled his knees up to his chest in a fetal ball. A stink of urine stung Harmony’s nose, and a dark wet stain spread down Bain’s pants. A trickle of yellow liquid muddied the ground underneath him where his legs rubbed the ground.

The bear stopped roaring, and in the silence between Bain’s muffled sobs, someone chuckled. Harmony looked up to see Boyd stifling laughter. Even dignified Jasper bit his lip to keep from smiling. Marla snorted, spun away on her heel, and stormed into the house. The screen door slammed behind her.

The bear sniffed at Bain and grunted under his breath. He craned his big head around and fixed his small eyes on Harmony. He stepped back and let out a puff of air through his nostrils.

A moment later, the bear straightened up on his hind legs. His forepaws hung down at his sides, and his shoulders dropped. His head shrank, and his skin turned from brown to white when Aiken took his place.

“You showed him, sonny,” Boyd crowed. “He won’t bother you again. You can take that to the bank.”

Aiken wrinkled his nose at Bain. He gave him a light kick in the side of the leg. “Get up, man. Get on your feet and get out of here. Don’t let me catch you in our territory again.”

Bain struggled to his feet. He cast one frightened look around and headed out of there, running down the driveway. Aiken didn’t turn around to watch him go. Boyd stepped forward and slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re the man, brother. You can really school ‘em.” He walked off toward the barn.

Aiken caught sight of Harmony, and the satisfied smirk vanished from his face. He put out his hands to her. “I’m sorry, Harmony. I couldn’t tell you. I wanted to. God knows I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”

She stared at him in stunned shock. “You’re....you’re a bear.”

He took hold of her shoulders and tried to draw her to him. “Harmony, please listen to me. I can explain. Just give me a chance.”

“You’re a bear… and not just a bear. You’re that bear. You’re the bear I met in the woods. You let me touch you, and you touched me. It was you all along. Why didn’t you tell me? I asked you a hundred times to explain it to me. Why didn’t you? You want to explain now? There’s nothing to explain.”

“Harmony, please; just listen to me for a second. I can explain everything.”

“So that’s why you didn’t want to be with me.” She nodded and turned away. “I see now.”

She pulled out of his hands. His voice shattered against her stony facade. “Please don’t walk away from me, Harmony. Let’s talk about this. I need you. Don’t leave.”

She nodded once to herself, but she didn’t see or hear him again. She walked up the porch steps and found her car keys where they sat on the table in the entrance hall. She stuffed them into her pocket and walked down the path toward the road.

She found her car where she parked it the morning Bain Campbell shot her. She got into it, started the motor, and drove back to town.