Page 128 of Silent Bones

The sound was similar to Ed's call but different, wilder, more primal, with a quality that seemed to come from something that had never learned to imitate human sounds, only to respond to them.

Mia and Ethan stopped laughing.

Ed froze, his hands still cupped around his mouth. Noah felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, not from fear but fromthe recognition that they were hearing something that didn't belong in any field guide.

"Was that...?" Ethan whispered.

Ed lowered his hands slowly. "I've been doing this for thirty years," he said quietly. "That wasn't an echo."

He raised his hands again and produced another call, this one shorter, more tentative. They all held their breath, waiting.

The response came faster this time, closer, with a timbre that suggested something large moving through the trees just beyond the reach of their firelight.

Callie reached over and took Noah's hand without taking her eyes off the forest. Mia and Ethan moved closer to the fire, their earlier laughter replaced by wonder and a healthy dose of nervousness.

"Should we—" Mia started to ask.

“What?" Noah replied softly. "Go investigate? Chase it through the woods with flashlights?"

After everything they'd been through, the human monsters, the institutional corruption, the violence that people could inflict on each other in the name of justice or revenge or simple greed, the idea that something unknown and possibly unknowable might exist in these woods felt almost comforting.

The forest had gone quiet again, but it was a different kind of silence now. The kind that suggested something was listening, watching, considering whether to reveal itself or fade back into legend.

They sat around the fire for another hour, talking in whispers, listening to the night sounds, waiting to see if their mysterious respondent would call again. But the forest kept its secrets, offering nothing more than the ordinary sounds of wind and water and the settling of old trees.

Eventually, the fire burned down to embers, and they began the process of banking it for the night. As Noah helped Ed securethe campsite, the older man paused and looked back toward the forest.

"You know what I think?" Ed said quietly.

"What's that?"

"I think there are things in these woods that don't want to be found. Things that are better left alone."

Noah recalled the note left on his windshield.

Noah followed Ed’s gaze into the darkness between the trees, thinking about all the secrets these mountains held, some exposed, some buried, some that would never be fully understood.

"Maybe that's for the best," he said.

As they settled into their tents for the night, the lake lapped gently against the shore, the stars wheeled overhead, and somewhere in the vast wilderness around them, mysteries endured.

Noah fell asleep to the sound of water and wind, holding onto the memory of that otherworldly response echoing through the trees. In the morning, they would break camp and return to a world of incomplete justice and imperfect systems, but for now, in the heart of the wilderness, other possibilities lingered just beyond the firelight.

The mountains kept their secrets.

And perhaps that was as it should be.