Zora Grizz

     Suddenly, I heard a young child screaming, a woman's voice shrieking in panic, “Git! Git!” and more screams and barks coming from just out of sight.

     “Fuck!” I yelped. I lept back onto the deck and ran inside the house. I made sure the door stuck closed behind me while I tied my long mane of hair back away from my face as I moved quickly towards the front door. I zipped up my parka. No time for gloves. 

     An old, solid, axe handle was lodged into a corner near the front door, in case of mountain lions outside, which is exactly what I was afraid was happening to some hapless weekender family who hiked up the hill, not knowing that there are at least 2 confirmed active lions in the boneyard next to the house & above the campground.

     I grabbed the axe handle and went outside. I could hear the woman yelling “git!!!” frantically and a child screaming. 

     “Hello?” I call out loudly, as I traipse through the snow piled up at the back of the driveway that goes into the woods. I keep going forwards, over the retaining rock wall, into the scrub until I’m knee deep in the snow. I scramble up onto a boulder and call out again as loud as I can, “Is there someone out there?!” My voice sounds terribly young, echoing through the stillness.

     Another scream coming from the woods in the boneyard is the only answer that I get. 

     “Shit!” I curse and start traversing through a field of snow that sucks me in above my knees with every step. I lurch onto higher ground, seeing the tops of what I know to be low-lying bushes sticking up through the white. 

     I make my way further into the trees. 

     I'm in the boneyard now, where numerous skeletal remains of elk, deer, and smaller creatures lay bleached by the sun, former meals of the mountain lions who call this place home and spend every winter here, next to the house. 

     I have the axe handle gripped in both hands, ready to swing it as a club, or to jolt it into an eye or a soft spot on a belly at a moment's notice. I creep as silently as I can through the deep snow. I hear nothing now. No screams. No barks. No yelling. My eyes are processing everything around me at rapid speed in the fading light, making sure to keep looking up into the trees so that I don't get pounced on by a lion. 

     I go all the way across the boneyard, maybe a half mile, my feet sinking into the snow, the cold burning and stinging my naked hands. 

     There's no one here. 

     There are a few scattered houses across a meadow on the other side of the boneyard, maybe a quarter mile away. I spot 3 or 4 little kids playing on the porch of the house closest to the edge of the meadow, laughing at each other. They are safe, not screaming in terror.

     There's no injured dog. 

     There’s no woman screeching “Git! Git!” in a panicked and desperate wail.

     I see nothing else and know I shouldn't linger….It’s not safe out here, especially at dusk, when the lions like to hunt their prey.

     By the time I make it back to my house I’m out of breath. The cold is a living presence taking up space inside my lungs and my hands are trembling.

     I tuck the axe handle back into its corner by the front door.

     For the rest of the night, I don’t play any music or podcasts. I keep things quiet. I leave a window on the deck cracked open and I stay alert and listen in case there are any more cries for help. 

     But there were none. 

     No barking. No screams. No sirens.

 

     The next day, I hiked out into the boneyard again. 

 

     I found nothing.

 

     That whole week, I searched the local news but there were no reports of lion attacks or missing hikers…nothing that would have explained what I heard that night. 

     The experience continued to hang eerily around me. No answers. No leads. Just…nothing. Only my own memory of the screams and trying desperately to find them and provide help…but finding nothing in the boneyard but thick, white, snow.

 

     Once spring arrives, I hike into the boneyard again. 

     The ground is cold but coming to life: bits of green growth burst through the few remaining patches of snow. The old bones are still there and visible: a bleached scattering of ribs and legs bones marking where elk and deer had been cached by the lions seasons before. 

     There are no new bones.

     None that I can see anyway. 

     There are no random mittens or hats on the ground, no scarves snagged in the undergrowth. Just…nothing.

     The experience left an uneasy and unanswerable question burned into my mind for years afterwards. A question that seemed to become more relevant with every passing winter and every new spring. As the world moved on and fell apart and together in different ways, the question clawed at my insides like a lion frantically trying to escape a cage. Or maybe the lion was trying to get around my rib bones and reach underneath, grasping for my heart, craving to pluck it from my chest with sharp teeth and throaty growls.

     The question echoes inside of me as if I am empty. 

     As if I am merely a meadow filled with bones and deep snow and dark trees, resting empty under a midnight blue sky.

     What do you do when you desperately want to help, but you can't, no matter how hard that you try?