Bears Live Here

Abigail rolled down the window on the passenger side of the SUV. For the past seven months, sweat had pooled in every crevice she could imagine, and she was begging for the crisp mountain air to relieve the heat of the southern sun.

“Please, Jeremiah, I just want to see the leaves,” she pleaded with her husband. “It’s like we’re stuck in a green painting, and the artist is too stubborn to dip his brush into another color.”

Two years of marriage, and the young couple was already expecting their first child.

In between thoughts, Jeremiah grunted, “How about Vermont?”

“Are you crazy? I’m not flying,” Abigail scoffed as she cupped her tight belly.

Surely it can’t be that far, Jeremiah thought as he typed in his GPS. 23.7 hours. Shit.

“Okay, then where would you like to go?”

Abigail leaned back in her chair and patted her stomach with a smile. “She wants to go to the mountains.”

With the window down and the fall air filling the cabin of the vehicle, Abigail breathed a sigh of relief. The beauty of the winding road overcame her, and she began to cry.

“Are you alright?” Jeremiah asked, noticing her sniffling in the passenger seat. “Am I going too fast?”

She chuckled and put her hand on his thigh. “No, it’s just so beautiful here. It’s exactly what I wanted.”

Her husband smiled slightly and gripped the wheel tighter as a turn took him by surprise.

After another fifteen minutes of curves, the couple pulled into the parking lot of their boutique hotel.

“You go on ahead and get us checked in. I’ll grab the bags and meet you inside,” Jeremiah said from the trunk of the car.

Only four days away, and Abigail had insisted on bringing two suitcases. As he hefted one out of the back, his eyes found a sign mounted at the front of the parking spot.

“BEARS LIVE HERE. Please make sure to bring any snacks, food, or valuables inside. Guests take all responsibility.”

Jeremiah sighed as he leaned into the front seat and grabbed all of the snacks piled in Abigail’s floorboard.

Bears? Doubt it, Jeremiah thought as he stood back up. He wished he could pluck back even the idea of the thought, because standing about five feet away was a massive black blob with eyes. He had learned about black bears and what to do if one came into contact with him, but his body and mind were frozen solid.

Do I scream at it? Do I rush it? Do I stand still? Do I act dead?

It didn’t matter what he had learned. He was transfixed on the animal’s eyes. They were small but luminescent, bright red. He could see the beast’s chin dripping with something wet.

He felt an invisible tugging on his shoulder, but still, he couldn’t move. His eyes slowly shifted toward the feet of the bear, and his mouth opened as wide as it could. A silent scream finally found its voice and ripped through the night air. A woman covered in blood lay on the edge of the tree line where the bear was standing.

Jeremiah’s scream tore through the still mountain night. The beast’s head tilted, almost curious, before it lumbered backward into the dark. The woman’s body lay twisted at the edge of the trees, her blonde hair matted and wet, her arm bent the wrong way.

By the time the first flashlight beam cut through the trees, she was gone.

Abigail burst from the hotel lobby, barefoot and shaking. “What happened? Jeremiah, what happened?”

“I-I saw something,” he stammered. “A bear. It had her. A woman.”

He looked back toward the tree line, but it was empty now. The world had gone eerily quiet except for the faint echo of a river somewhere below.

That night, Jeremiah couldn’t sleep. The image replayed over and over. Those eyes, that face, that impossible mixture of animal and human. He called the park ranger, his voice trembling.

“Sir, I think someone’s been attacked near the Old Sycamore Hotel. There’s a bear, but something’s wrong with it.”

The ranger sounded unconcerned, half amused. “We get calls like that all the time, sir. Bears don’t hunt people. Probably went for your snacks.”

Jeremiah clenched his jaw. “This wasn’t a bear.”

Days passed, but he couldn’t let it go. He scrolled through his phone constantly, searching for bear sightings, local legends, anything that made sense. Abigail begged him to stop.

“You’re scaring me,” she said one night. “You haven’t even looked at me in two days. Every time I speak, you’re on that damn phone.”

He looked up, hollow-eyed. “You didn’t see it.”

“I didn’t have to,” she snapped, pushing up from the bed. “You’re more married to that park ranger than to me.”

Jeremiah said nothing. The ranger had stopped taking his calls anyway.

Two nights before they were supposed to leave, Jeremiah spotted movement outside the window. The same eyes; red, glowing faintly in the reflection of the streetlight. He grabbed his phone and pressed record, but by the time he stepped outside, the thing was gone.

The next evening, he found himself at a small pub near the edge of town. The kind of place that smelled of wood smoke and old beer. He nursed a whiskey and told himself to forget. Abigail ordered loaded tots, saying potatoes were all that could ease her cravings. Jeremiah could feel the warm air of the pub closing in around him, so he told Abigail he needed a moment.

When he stepped out into the chill air, his breath caught in his throat. There, across the street, stood the bear, half in shadow, watching him. Its chest heaved, breath visible in the cold. But this time, it didn’t move. It just stared until the headlights of a passing truck washed over the street, and it was gone again.

He never saw it after that.

Three weeks later, back home in Alabama, Jeremiah couldn’t shake the feeling that something had followed him. The house creaked differently. The nights felt longer. Even Abigail noticed.

“Do you hear that?” she whispered one night. “Something’s outside.”

He grabbed the gun from the closet and stepped onto the porch. The woods behind their house were still, but the air was thick with the smell of iron. Then came a shuffle, a slow, dragging step.

“Who’s there?” he called.

The woods didn’t answer.

He turned toward the porch light just as a shadow rose behind him. The shape was massive. It was too tall, too broad. Claws brushed his shoulder, but when he spun around, his scream caught in his throat.

It wasn’t a bear.

It was a man, naked except for the crudely stitched skin of a bear. The pelt hung loose around his shoulders, the head of the bear resting like a hood over his face. Through the open jaws, Jeremiah saw his eyes; red, human, crazed, and smiling.

“I told them you didn’t believe me,” the man said, voice low, almost gentle.

Jeremiah barely felt the knife slide in.

When Abigail found him on the porch at dawn, the bear warning from the hotel lay crumpled beside him, only now smeared with blood, a single line scrawled across it:

“BEARS LIVE HERE.”