I’ve never really been able to talk about it.
I still feel it, though, in my dreams. Eyes on me, late at night. A presence, matching my pace, walking from my car to the front door of my apartment. I can’t shake it.
My therapist suggested I need to tell someone, that I need some sort of catharsis so I can finally shake what happened that day and move on with my life. How can someone move on, from something like this? There is forever a before, and an after. The carefree, open, bright-eyed me, and the me that has to triple-check the door is locked at night. The me that got a concealed carry permit and stops at the gun range after work five days a week.
But maybe even if I can’t move on, you’ll get something out of this. Even if it’s just a warning.
-–
California was always my dream vacation, so when my friend decided to have her bachelorette party there, I was ecstatic. It was expensive, sure, but it’s not like there was a lot else I was spending my money on. I didn’t have kids, or a partner. My fish food budget wasn’t exactly leaving me destitute. It would be a once-in-a-lifetime trip.
The plan was to go camping for a week at Yosemite National Park. A little unconventional, but the bride-to-be, Annette was always a bit of a crunchy granola girl. I’d never been camping before. I was excited. I was so, so stupid.
Focus. Deep breaths. Okay.
I’d spent my entire life on the east coast of the United States. Sure, we had mountains- the rolling, gentle green peaks of Appalachia- but nothing could have prepared me for the reality of the Sierra Nevada. Jagged granite spurs and sheer rock faces, too young to have been worn smooth by time. It radiated a fierce, wild, untamed beauty, and entering Yosemite Valley felt like crossing the threshold into a place of worship. It took my breath away.
Camping on the valley floor wasn’t enough for Annette, though. It was “too touristy,” according to her. Too many people around. The real Yosemite experience would be camping up in the high country, up the mountain, surrounded by trees and with some semblance of isolation.
Of course, we weren’t entirely alone.
There were five of us at our campground, up near a rather stunning rock formation known as Half Dome. Other campers were within shouting distance, but at night, it truly felt like we were off in some great wilderness. I keep coming back to that thought. It felt like we were. We were. There wasn’t any feeling about it. I was just too sheltered to realize.
The first day was fine. Pleasant, even. We dipped our feet into glacial springs and took group photos at the foot of waterfalls. After night fell, we roasted marshmallows and frightened each other with campfire stories and made sure we put all of our food up in bear bags.
Five is an odd number. Our tents were meant to sleep two people apiece. One of us could have insisted on cramming in with the others, but nobody wanted to be an inconvenience. I didn’t want to have to share my space, so I ended up sleeping by myself.
I didn’t realize how hyperalert I was until I tried to close my eyes. Every branch rustling, every crunch of underbrush, and the distant howl of coyotes- all quiet in their own right, but together they blended into a cacophony that left me anxious and bleary-eyed come morning.
We had to be up early. We planned for a hike the second day, nothing intense. It was fine. There was just a sense I had. Maybe some leftover animal sense, back when living like this was mankind’s normal, but the sense we were being tracked.
“You’re such a city girl,” Annette laughed when I mentioned this to her. “There’s all sorts of animals out here. There’s probably something there. But it’s not anything you have to worry about.”
I tried to laugh it off too. I pushed it aside, enjoying the bright California sun and the clear mountain air. I pushed it aside until that second night, where I had to get up to pee.
It was past midnight, and the fire had been long since extinguished. I had a little bit of a leftover buzz, from a joint I’d smoked before bed, hoping to ease some of my sleeplessness. Trying not to wake my friends, I unzipped my tent, tiptoeing by the light of my flashlight to get some tree cover in between myself and the campsite before I did my business.
I shuffled out, cursing men for their ability to hold a flashlight and pee in the woods at the same time. I’d just crossed into the tree line when I heard it. A snuffling, soft. Like a dog sniffing around a blanket. But the footfalls were much too heavy for it to be anything canine sized.
A bear? I swung my flashlight around. A bear bag creaked against the rope to which it was tied. I don’t need to be scared of bears, I told myself. They’re afraid of me, too.
There’s not a lot of underbrush in Yosemite. Forest fires burn away any thick brush that grows, and whatever was making noise didn’t have a lot of places to hide. But I didn’t see it.
I heard it. And whatever it was sounded like it was getting closer. I wanted to yell, or to make myself big, but I couldn’t get my throat to work. I felt paralyzed.
All I could do was step slowly back towards my tent, groping blindly behind me. It sounded so close. Nothing was there.
I darted through the tent flap and zipped it shut in one swift motion, using my flashlight to see if I could detect a silhouette against the cloth of my tent. Nothing was there.
I’m not sure how, but I eventually fell asleep. This didn’t last long, because at the break of dawn, I awoke to the sound of complaining.
Again, I crawled out of my tent, exhausted.
The girls were collecting bits of trash, food wrappers and napkins, that had been spread all through the camp. “Something got into our supplies,” Annette told me.
“But the bear bag was fine? I saw it last night,” I said.
“Well, whatever it was, it went to town,” she answered. “Slashed a hole right into the cloth and tore everything out.”
I bit my lip for a moment, thinking. “I thought I heard something last night,” I said sheepishly. “I thought I might’ve imagined it.”
“Guess not,” said Annette.
“Guess not.”
That day, instead of horseback riding like we intended, was spent moving our campsite. We let the park rangers know what happened, and they let us get a permit for a different spot. They didn’t want us at risk from a nuisance bear.
It just didn’t feel right. Sure, black bears weren’t huge. But it wouldn’t be small enough to hide, when it sounded so close to me. When it was big enough to reach ten feet in the air and rip our bag open.
Nobody else seemed worried. So I dropped it. I dropped it and decided to have fun and the next night nothing happened and I thought that meant we were safe. I thought it meant I could relax. I thought I could ignore all my instincts telling me something is horrifically wrong.
Day four. We were going out to the lake near our new campsite. It was blue, icy cold, bordered by idyllic wildflower meadows and redwood groves. Picture perfect.
I was still tired and didn’t feel up for swimming. Instead, I decide to stay back and sunbathe on the beach, while my friends rented a couple of canoes and paddled up and down the lake.
When I say I was ‘sunbathing,’ what I really meant is that I was people-watching. It’s just a lot easier when you have sunglasses on and nobody realizes you’re looking at them.
From my vantage point on the beach, I could see a group of frat guys daring each other to do flips off a rock into the water. A family with two young sons splashed around in the shallows. At another spot, a middle-aged couple was making out, like nobody was around.
“Guess this must be their second honeymoon, huh?” A man’s voice said. I jumped, startled, and turned to see another sunbather on a blanket near me. I hadn’t realized anyone else was nearby.
“Probably hard to get a room out here,” I replied. I’m not usually one for talking to strangers, but he seemed nice. He was about my age, with sparkling hazel eyes and a bright smile. He was cute, I was single, and hey, technically this was a bachelorette party.
“I’m Laura,” I told him.
“Rowan.” He gave me another smile. We made small talk for a bit, and the subject of our camp’s invader came up.
“Sounds like a mountain lion,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t seem like it was a bear. And they can climb, so that might’ve been how it reached the bag.”
“I didn’t see anything that looked like a mountain lion,” I said.
“That’s the thing.” Rowan looked more serious, now. “A mountain lion will only be seen when it wants to be seen. If it’s out in the open, you’re safe. It doesn’t want to hurt you. If you can’t see it? That’s when you know you’re in danger.”
My skin prickled. I opened my mouth to reply but was interrupted by the sudden arrival of the rest of my group. “Who’s your friend?” One of them hollered to me.
Rowan waved, and then turned to me. “I’ve had a really nice time getting to know you. Would you want to meet for dinner tonight? I know it’s a bit of a longshot, but-“
“Yes!” I replied a little too quickly. I was the bookish girl, the quiet girl. I wasn’t the kind of girl who was asked on dates by charismatic, handsome men on faraway beaches. “I’d love to!”
“Great!” Rowan gave me the location of one of the restaurants in the park, and we made plans to meet up. In the background, I could see my friends teasing me, and I blushed. “Laura!” Annette gushed after he packed up. “I’m so excited for you! We needed something to make this trip a little more spicy.”
I swatted her on the arm playfully. “It’s not like that! Nothing’s going to happen. Where would we even find the privacy?”
“You never know,” she said, singsong. I rolled my eyes and helped my friends with the rest of their canoes, before we returned to camp.
-–
I didn’t have much to wear to dinner- just a plain white t-shirt and a pair of khaki green hiking pants. It’s not like I had planned to meet someone out here. But Rowan didn’t seem to care. He was absolutely charming, at dinner, and we laughed like a pair of hyenas over a bottle of Cabernet and plates of Italian food. I was shocked, honestly, at the quality of food in the park, and dazzled at the way he treated me. Flirty, but not pushy. Funny, but not annoying. By the end of his evening, he invited me back to his campsite.
Tipsy, I said yes.
It wasn’t that far from mine, maybe half a mile away, situated higher along the mountain, separated by a series of switchback trails that crisscrossed through trees and the remnants of rockslides. In the distance, I could see other fires, and hear other voices, but to me, it felt like the only people in the world were me and Rowan. We cuddled on a log next to his campfire, the night surprisingly brisk.
“I’m a little cold,” I said to Rowan, doing my best to bat my eyelashes at him.
“Do you want a sleeping bag?” He asked, a mischievous tone in his voice.
I nodded and stood, doing my best to keep myself steady after the wine. “I can get it,” I tried to sound flirty, and walked to his tent, hoping he’d follow.
His voice was rough. “Laura, wait-…!”
I unzipped the flap, and in the sleeping bag, there was unmistakably a woman, asleep. Her auburn hair was silky smooth and fanned out around her like a halo. My heart dropped into my chest.
I turned, blazing, face red and hot with embarrassment. “You had a girlfriend with you this whole time?” I roared. My limbs were shaking. The haziness from the alcohol was gone.
Rowan held his hands up in a gesture of appeasement. “It’s not-.. this is a misunderstanding. She isn’t-.. she wasn’t-….”
“I don’t give a fuck!” I backed away from him, trudging towards the path that would take me to my own campsite. “I can’t believe I fell for it.”
He called after me and I started running, tears in my eyes. Of course he was some weird player, or a swinger, or something. How could I have been so naïve? Did she know? She had to have heard us.
He kept yelling my name, but I didn’t turn back. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him standing in his camp, but this quickly faded from few. I just kept going into the now-dark forest, upset, wanting to put as much space between myself and that liar as possible. I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t have a flashlight. I just kept going. I heard coyotes. Wind in the branches. An owl.
Snuffling. The gentle footfalls of something trying not to be heard. I scrambled for my phone. There wasn’t any service, but I could use the light.
I slowed. Annette told me not to run from a predatory animal. It triggers their instinct to chase. Again, my voice failed me.
But this time, I saw something. A shadow against a tree. A flash of movement. Something was there.
And if I could see it, it could see me. My phone light, I realized briefly, was just a beacon to whatever was following me. I turned it off, trying to slow my breathing.
My lungs hitched, and I tried not to cry. I wasn’t on a trail. I didn’t know where I was. And now, now that I was listening, now that I was quieter, I noticed. Whatever it was, whatever was following me, it was matching each breath for mine. So I wouldn’t know it was there.
Panic overtook me and I once again took off into the woods, dodging boulders and trees only guided by the faint light of the stars. I was fast, I was athletic, but I couldn’t keep going forever. I was tired and had only had fitful sleep for several nights in a row. My body was protesting.
With a burning in my chest, I decided my best course of action would be to scramble up a tree. The branches of redwoods are thin and pliable, able to hold up my weight but ideally, not strong enough to withstand whatever was hot on my trail. Ignoring chips of bark underneath my nails and the scraping of wood against my palms I hauled myself up, fueled by a wild adrenaline, ignoring the fact I couldn’t tell how high off of the ground I was.
I could still hear it down there, crashing through the forest at first, before again slowing to a creep. Looking for me. It was so dark. I could only see the outline of the thing, vast and looming. Menacing. I held my breath. I waited, waited. I couldn’t tell what was movement and what was illusion. My brain filled in information that my eyes couldn’t see. Everything was something and it was nothing. I waited in that tree until morning, until I was sure what I could see was there and that nothing would be lurking in the dark. My hands were cramped, and my body ached but slowly, I lowered myself back to the ground.
Luckily, I had kicked up so many pine needles and so much dirt that in the bright of day, finding my way back to the trail was fairly simple. Finding my way back to my friends and our campsite was harder, but I did it. Hours of hiking, drinking from streams, asking strangers for maps, but I did it.
I felt near the point of collapse when I finally got there. I must have looked like a mess. I was dirty and bloody. I had been crying, in frustration and fear. My hair was tangled. But I was relieved to be back.
Until I saw there were strangers in our camp.
I finally found my voice. “Hello?”
Six faces turned to me, four familiar, two unknown. Annette rushed over and scooped me into a hug.
She pulled away for a moment, searching my eyes. I noticed it looked like she had been crying, too. Annette pulled me back into another hug.
“We thought-… oh my God, Laura. We thought-… we thought you were dead!”
I wiped a tear from her face. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I got lost, leaving Rowan’s camp after dinner. He was a scumbag. I should’ve just stayed with you guys.
Annette was wide-eyed. “No. You don’t understand… the police showed up.”
The two newcomers approached me. Men, in sharp uniforms with solemn voices. Police officers.
“Ma’am, we’re sure this is all very distressing to you,” one of them said. “But we need you to identify someone for us. Have you seen a man by the name of David Michael Whittle?”
He held up a photograph of a handsome, 20-something man. Of course I recognized him. “That-… uh.. He told me his name was Rowan. We went on a date last night.”
“Is this individual familiar at all?” He held up a second picture, a dreamy auburn-haired woman with a slight smile.
“Sure. That’s his girlfriend, or wife, or whatever. She was asleep in his camp. Why?”
The officer looked grim. “I hate to tell you this, but this is an employee of the park by the name of Alexis Fletcher. She’s been missing for about a week.
The man we are looking for, the man you had seen, was the last person Alexis was seen speaking with. He was a customer of the coffee shop she worked at. She had told her boss he had asked her to meet him after she got off her shift. You couldn’t have seen her sleeping.”
I wanted to throw up. “But I did. She was in his sleeping bag.”
“Laura,” the officer said. “This man, David Michael Whittle- Rowan-… he’s been on our radar for a while. He is a very dangerous man.
I’m not saying you didn’t see her. I’m saying she couldn’t have been asleep.
We found her body, a few hours ago.
She had been murdered yesterday morning.”
-–