The buck snorted and shook his head.
“What is with you anyway? Why are you still here?” She really studied the animal then. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you ran me into this pit on purpose.”
But that didn’t make sense. Why would an animal that was known to be as docile as a deer suddenly want to hurt a human? Had her camera spooked him?
He snorted again and shook his head several times. After checking one more time, she shoved her phone back into her pocket then found a flat spot to sit on. The sun was heading westward and soon it would get dark. Although she’d prepared for every imaginable situation—or so she’d thought—she hadn’t planned on falling into a hole. Especially after getting chased by a huge buck and without her backpack filled with necessary supplies.
“I don’t suppose telling you to go for help would work.” She let out a rueful chuckle. “Yeah, right. Like you’re some kind of woodland Lassie.”
She hugged her knees to her chest. One rule she’d never followed while hiking was to tell someone where she was headed. Besides, who was she supposed to tell when she had no one in her life?
A sudden rush of tears welled in her eyes. She wasn’t a crier by nature, but if any time was a good time to cry, it was now. Letting go of her usually controlled emotions, she let the tears slide down her face. Sobs racked her body as she crossed her arms over her bent knees, laid her forehead on her arms, and gave in to her dismay. She stayed that way, huddled in the hole for an indeterminate amount of time.
The shadows of evening fell over her, drawing her attention upward. The buck was gone, and, although she knew it wasn’t rational, she couldn’t help but feel lonely. Now she really was alone. She waited for a while, hoping that maybe the buck would return, but when he didn’t, she pulled herself together.
At least the moon’s still there.
She could always count on the moon.
She was in a tough spot, but she’d been in tough spots before. After surviving an abusive foster mother who had then sent her packing to the next foster home and straight into the arms of a foster father who’d tried to rape her, getting caught in a hole seemed almost laughable. And not something that could beat her.
Drawing in a big breath, she went around the interior of the hole, checking for any indentations that she could use as a handhold. She’d rock climbed before, and although she’d had the necessary equipment for those treks, she had to believe that she could climb out of the hole, too.
“You can do this. No problem.”
She took hold of a rock that jutted out from the wall and stuck the tip of her shoes into a smaller crevice below. Pulling her body up, she skimmed her hand along the surface, but couldn’t find another rock to grab on to. Instead, she held on with one hand and started digging.
But the wall was harder than it looked. Instead of working her fingers into what she’d hoped was dirt, she could only swipe away a thin layer that covered a wall of rock. She tried another spot and found more rock. Groaning, she dropped back to the floor.
She couldn’t dig handholds into that rock. Not without tools. But she didn’t even have the right kind of tools in her pack. And her pack? She didn’t even want to think about that.
She cried out as her backpack landed on the dirt beside her. A few inches closer and it would’ve hit her. She gaped at it, then twisted around to gawk at was above her. What she saw sent her stumbling backward.
“Holy hell.”
A creature leaned on all fours, peering over the rim of the wall, perilously close to falling off. He had no fur covering his bone-thin black body. Bloodred eyes peered at her from a narrow oval face with two holes bored into the flesh that served as nostrils and a long, thin jaw. His front arms hung in front of him like a gorilla’s did when walking. A diamond-shaped spot of white brightened his forehead.
It tilted its head as though trying to figure out what she was and why she was there. But when its mouth stretched wide to expose dagger-sharp fangs, she couldn’t hold back a gasp. It wrinkled its forehead, giving its face a scrunched-up appearance and opening his nostrils wider. He reminded her of the drawings of aliens with their huge eyes and expressionless faces combined with the distorted combination body of a wolf mixed with a human.
Had it thrown her backpack to her? Or, more likely, dropped it? But why did it have her belongings anyway? She swallowed and waited for whatever would happen next.
Scrunch, as she suddenly named the creature, lifted his front paw in what, from a human, would’ve looked like a wave. Whether or not he was male was obvious when he lifted onto his back legs and exposed his erect cock. She widened her eyes then looked away. Would she encourage him by looking at it?