I swung my flashlight toward the noise. At the end of the beam, I glimpsed something moving between the trees, maybe twenty or thirty feet away. The beast was there and gone in a blink. I saw it for only a second, but I had never seen anything like it. It was most definitely not a bear. It walked on two legs the way people do, more than seven feet tall, with a thick, matted coat of shaggy orange-brown fur. It looked right at me when it saw the light, and I saw the reflection of its eyes like two bloodred suns.

Now I was scared.

I stood alone in the clearing, absolutely frozen in place, unable to move a muscle. I wished I would hear those thunderous footfalls head away, but the beast had stopped again. Another loud growl rumbled out of the darkness, and the sound had a menace to it, like a threat.

I was trying to decide what to do when I heard a familiar shout not far away. It was my father.

“Rebecca?”

He was looking for me, thank God. He would save me. I put my head down and charged back into the woods, making as much noise as I could, my flashlight beam bouncing crazily as I ran. I crashed through brambles that grabbed at my tangled black hair and scraped their woody fingers across my bare arms and legs.

I hoped that the noise would scare the beast away, but it didn’t.

There it was. Its giant shadow loomed in front of me and blocked my path. I didn’t dare bring up my flashlight to see it clearly. All I could make out was its shape, hunched and huge, twice my size. We were so close that I could smell its stench and feel the heat of its breath. With a swipe of a paw, it could slash off my face. I tried to scream, but there was no sound in my throat. My whole body shook.

I lifted the revolver, struggling to keep it steady. My quivering finger slid over the trigger. I dropped the flashlight to the ground and balanced my wrist with my other hand. At that range, even a scared little girl couldn’t miss.

But I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t.

I could not kill this thing, which had done nothing to me. Somehow I think it sensed that, as if we had a truce between us. He would not hurt me, and I would not hurt him.

“Rebecca!”

My father shouted again, much closer to us.