memento vivere - supernatural & criminal minds

chapter 13

Chapter 13
Into The Woods

To describe the home of Mr. Shaw as dingy would have been generous. The sole survivor of the ‘59 attacks lived in a small cabin on the edge of the woods. He greeted them at the door in a ratty robe, and again, their weak park ranger ruse was enough. A cigarette shook between his wrinkled fingers as he waddled into the house, gesturing for them to follow him. 

Jude slowly entered the home behind Sam, her boots creaking against the old wood. Her nose wrinkled at the smell of smoke that saturated the walls and floorboards. She squinted at Shaw’s rug as she plodded across it. The red weave was speckled with burn marks and stains, the result of an unsteady hand pushed by one of the empty whiskey bottles Shaw left scattered around.

“Look, Ranger, I don’t know why you’re asking me this,” he grumbled through the cigarette dangling from his lip. His voice was coarse and Jude guessed he’d been smoking almost his whole life as a way to manage his trauma. “It’s public record. I was a kid, my parents got mauled by a-”

“Grizzly?” Sam cut him off. “That’s what attacked them?” Shaw slowly took a puff of his cigarette and nodded. The red ember glowed by his cheek, exaggerating the sunken lines on his face.

“And the other people that went missing that year, those bear attacks too?” Dean challenged. Shaw was silent, hunched over with his free hand in the pocket of his robe. His thinning gray hair was disheveled and his stubble was patchy, with red marks where he cut himself shaving. “What about the people that went missing this year? Same thing?” 

Jude’s head tilted as she watched Shaw almost cower under the questioning. She stepped in front of the brothers and held out her hands in an offering of goodwill. “If our department had a better idea of what we were dealing with, maybe we’d be able to stop it. Prevent other people from going through what you went through.”

Shaw’s already slumped posture seemed to sag even further. He plucked the cigarette from his lip and scoffed, “I doubt that. Anyways, I don’t see what difference it would make.” He sank into a rocking chair with the smoke swirling around his head like a storm cloud. “You wouldn’t believe me, nobody ever did.”

Jude had to smile. “You’d be surprised.” She took the seat opposite him and folded her hands on the small table between them. “Just tell us what you saw.”

Shaw sighed, and for a second Jude thought he would just tell them to get lost. She heard Sam clear his throat and Dean shuffle around behind her, both growing impatient. “I didn’t see anything, not really. It moved too fast to see, hid too well. I heard it, though.” He shuddered. “A roar, like…no man or animal I ever heard.”

“The records said it came at night?” Jude gently pushed. “Got inside your tent?”

Shaw shook his head. “It got inside our cabin.” Jude tried to conceal her surprise under a sympathetic frown and largely failed, but Shaw was lighting another cigarette and didn’t notice. The first puff sent a cloud of smoke in Jude’s direction and she leaned back. Her dad had quit smoking before Jude was born and started again after Irene died. Both women had always hated the smell. “I was sleeping in front of the fireplace when it came in. It didn’t smash a window or break the door, it unlocked it. Do you know of a bear that could do something like that?” Jude flicked her eyes over her shoulder and saw the boys exchange a look. “I didn’t even wake up till I heard my parents screaming.”

Jude’s folded hands tightened on the table. That was how she’d woken up, too - to her mother’s screams and her father’s sobs. A hand brushed her shoulder and settled on the back of her chair.