Grizzly Rock

by Leon Dixson

Yesterday, the police called off the search for Wally Arkin, who disappeared five days ago in this remote part of Colorado, just north of Rocky Mountain National Park.

I’m Kenny, Wally’s best friend, and I know he always takes the steepest, hardest route when hiking. That’s why I’m searching where the police didn’t.

Small rocks and loose shale give way and tumble like bouncing balls down the steep mountain as my feet stab and jab for a foothold. I grasp tree roots and underbrush to pull myself to a narrow deer trail. My palms look like a cat’s scratching post.

I follow the deer trail as it weaves up the mountain. When it turns downward, I abandon it and claw, grab, and scratch my way two-hundred yards higher until I reach a level plateau ahead of the next steep climb. Thirty feet in front of me stands a sheer granite cliff with a crevice at the bottom. A smile crosses my face as I watch a squirrel dig pine nuts from a cone twenty feet to my left. Beyond him, the ground falls away to a downhill animal trail. In the past, a small landslide had deposited a six-foot-high pile of boulders thirty feet to my right.

I sit on a fallen pine log to rest. Wind whispers through the towering trees surrounding this small clearing. Scents of pine and yesterday’s rain fill the air.

After resting, I walk toward the crevice, but stop to inspect a pile of grizzly scat. It’s black and smelly, meaning the bear had eaten meat. Gleaming metal catches my eye, and I pick a gold ring from the still-moist dung. Human meat!

My heart is a herd of stampeding cattle, and their pounding hooves ring in my ears. I retrieve my .357 magnum from my backpack, knowing it may be useless against a grizzly bear. Stupid me—I left my bear spray sitting on the kitchen table. I left in a hurry to find Wally and forgot about it.

I need a safe place to hide if the bear returns. There is none, except for the two-foot-wide crevice in the wall. Step by step, head in constant motion, I approach the wall. Kneeling by the opening, I peer in and cover my nose and mouth as the stench of rotting meat assaults me.

Wally said bears can enter most openings large enough to get their head through. Get out of here now, Kevin! I climb over the boulders to my right and freeze. A nine-foot-tall figure looms in the shadows fifty feet away. It resembles a standing grizzly bear. Its realistic detail makes me wonder if human hands sculpted it.

The legend of Grizzly Rock began a hundred years ago. A babbling man stumbled into town and told a tale about a granite bear possessing evil powers. The townspeople dismissed his ravings as that of a madman. Since then, people have facetiously blamed Grizzly Rock for the fate of persons missing in this area. But no one actually believed it.

I walk to it and touch its rough surface. Though I’m facing the statue, I see the jumbled boulders behind me in a fierce rainstorm. I pull my hand away. What the hell was that? I saw what someone else saw at a different point in time. Curious, I touch the rock again. Once more, I share the other person’s vision.

***

Wind howls through bending, whipping pine trees. The dark sky flashes bright and thunder roars an ominous warning. Heavy drops sting his face. He turns to Grizzly Rock, pulling with all his might to remove his hand from its surface. I feel his dry throat and ragged breathing and hear his incoherent mumbling. A growl behind him flash freezes his innards. He turns to see an enormous bear towering over him. He throws his left arm in front of his face. I hear his screams and suffer the pain as giant jaws sever the arm in one bone-crunching bite. A massive paw slaps his head and ends his misery.

***

The cattle in my chest screech to a halt, then race downhill, hooves pounding harder than before. I jerk my hand from the rock, and the scene disappears. I’m frozen inside; like thirty-degrees-below-zero frozen. I had lived through someone’s last memory. I saw, heard, and felt what he experienced. Why couldn’t he pull away from the rock? Placing my hand near the granite statue, I’m surprised by a gentle tugging sensation I hadn’t felt before. It must have gained strength through my contact with it.

I touch it again, knowing I can overcome the slight tug. I experience more memories of the person as if our minds were one. Recent memories like packing his Jeep to come to the mountain. It looks like Wally’s Jeep. Happiness washes over him as I see a wedding. The bride is Erica, Wally’s wife. She slips a ring on his finger. The same ring I found in the bear scat. I wipe my eyes, then my nose with my sleeve. My best friend is dead. Before I pull away from the rock, Wally’s childhood memories play movies in my mind. I see myself through his eyes as we chase my dog, Tippy, trying to get our ball back when we were seven years old. I smile and wipe away more tears.

For an hour and a half, Grizzly Rock projects memories of six other men and one woman into my mind. Every sequence starts with them being killed by the bear. I live through their petrifying fear and agonizing pain. But I see other memories, too.

 Disco lights, reflected by a mirrored ball flash to the beat of the music. A soldier in a jungle looks at his bloody hands as he presses hard on the wound in his side and waits for a medic to return.

James Dean brings Rebel Without a Cause to life on a drive-in theater’s outdoor screen, while a guy lusts for the girl beside him and the brand new 1955 Chevy convertible parked in front of him. A female fur trapper dressed in buckskin sits astride her horse and inhales the frosty mountain air as she rides toward the trading post with her pelt-laden mule beside her.

When I try to separate from the rock, it sucks my hand tight against it. My heart, lungs and throat burn. The mesmerizing images made me forget the rock gains strength through human contact. Pulses pound from my brain, through my body, and into the rock. With every pulse, one of my own experiences flashes before my eyes. Now the damned thing is downloading my memories!

I have faith I can free myself and hope I can spare others from the carnage I’ve witnessed. Grizzly Rock appears to replay the last images first, starting with the most recent victim. The next person will see my memories in time to make an escape. I make a memory of everything I know about Grizzly rock, and a pulse travels from brain to statue.

The bear roars behind me. His head and shoulders appear over the boulders as he stands on his hind legs. I see his nose twitch and hear his huffs and woofs as he surveys his surroundings. I wet myself and sink to my knees. He turns his head and focuses on me.

He drops to all fours, but reappears as he climbs over the boulders and stops and growls. The vile taste of vomit fills my mouth as I expel not a little, but every morsel, every drop of fluid, and everything else that’s not tied down. The bear ambles forward a few feet. I try to break free by bracing my left foot against the rock, leaning back, and pulling, but its hold is too strong.

My right hand is stuck to the rock, and I’ve never shot the revolver with my left hand. My unblinking eyes bulge as my body trembles like the last leaf on the tree during a late fall windstorm. I’m almost paralyzed. It takes all my strength to raise the weapon.

The bear walks within twenty feet of me. My hand is shaking like a paint mixing machine. I fire two shots, not knowing whether they hit or miss.

The bear’s dark, menacing eyes stare into my soul. He closes half the distance between us. I fire three more times and hear the bullets ping off rocks. One shot left and I’m saving it for myself. 

From two feet away, the bear bellows in my face. A gut-grinding, lung-shredding, poop-in-your-pants terror consumes me. He sniffs me as if deciding whether to kill me now or keep me fresh until later. He knows I’m not going anywhere. I raise the gun to my temple.

A shot coming from behind the landslide surprises me. The grizzly’s left hindquarter dips and lurches to one side. He turns to face his attacker.

“Shoot him again!” My voice is a hoarse whisper.

The hunter works the bolt action and slams another cartridge into the chamber. He fires again as the bear charges him. He must be unnerved because the bullet misses the bear and strikes Grizzly Rock.

The mass of granite thrusts my hand away like a toddler spitting broccoli onto his plate. I’m free! The hunter chambers another round. The bear is almost upon him.

***

I never knew what happened between the grizzly and the hunter. I neither saw a muzzle flash nor heard a rifle report. I didn’t know his third bullet missed the bear and pulverized my brain.