Rain had stopped an hour before dark but the ground around the lower slopes of Mount Kanlaon still held the water. It turned the path into a strip of red mud that clung to the soles of Elias’s boots and made every step heavier. He had come down from the higher fields to check the goats. Three of them had not returned with the rest. The others were already in the pen behind the house, quiet except for the occasional restless shift of hooves on wet wood. He found the first goat twenty minutes from the trail. It lay on its side beneath a low overhang of rock. The belly was open from sternum to hip in a single long tear.
The intestines had been pulled free and lay in a pale pile beside the body. Something had eaten through them. The edges of the wound were not ragged the way teeth left them. They were straight and the skin around them had been scored by something long and thin. Elias crouched and touched one of the marks with a fingertip. The cut was clean enough that the blood had not yet fully clotted. He stood and wiped his hand on his trousers. The second goat was farther up, closer to the old lava cuts. It had been opened the same way. This one still had its head turned toward the slope, as if it had seen what came for it and had not been able to run far enough.
Elias did not touch this one. He looked at the prints in the mud instead. They were large, wider across the ball of the foot than a man’s, and the toes ended in points that had dug into the ground. Between the toes the mud held strands of pale hair. He picked one free and held it to the light. It was coarse and light-colored, almost white where the rain had not darkened it. He heard the sound while he was still looking at the hair. It came from higher on the slope, a low wet tearing, like cloth being ripped under water. Elias turned toward it. The trees above the cut were thin, mostly secondary growth that had come back after the last eruption.
Between them he saw movement. Something white moved against the dark rock. It stood on two legs, its arms hung low. When it shifted, the light caught the ends of its hands. The nails were long enough to catch and hold the last of the daylight. They curved slightly at the tips. The creature’s body was covered in the same pale hair Elias had pulled from the mud. Its face was turned away, bent over something on the ground. The tearing sound came again. Elias watched the shoulders work. He watched the long nails dig and pull. He did not call out. He stepped backward until his heel found the edge of the path, then turned and walked.
He did not run. Running made noise. The creature did not follow. When he looked back once, it was still bent over the remains, the white hair moving with the motion of its arms. Elias kept walking until the house lights showed through the trees. His wife was waiting on the porch with a lamp. She saw his face and the mud on his boots and did not ask what he had found. She only stepped aside so he could go inside and close the door.
In the morning he went back with two neighbors. They carried bolos and one old shotgun that had not been fired in years. The goats were where Elias had left them. Nothing had returned to them during the night. The tracks led higher, toward a narrow opening in the rock face that the older men said had been there since before the last big flow. The opening was dark. The ground in front of it was torn. Pale hair clung to the edges of the stone. One of the neighbors shone a flashlight inside. The beam caught the curve of a shoulder and the glint of a nail against the wall.
The creature did not move. It simply watched the light. Its eyes reflected red for a moment. Then the light shifted and the reflection was gone. They did not go inside. They backed down the slope and did not speak until they reached the lower trail.
That night Elias sat with the shotgun across his knees and listened to the wind move through the eaves. Around midnight the goats in the pen began to shift and stamp. He stood and went to the window. The yard was empty. The pen was empty. The gate stood open. He had closed it himself. In the mud between the gate and the tree line, he saw a single line of prints leading away toward the slope. They were still wet. He did not follow them. He closed the shutters and sat again with the gun. In the dark he could still see the white hair and the long nails working.
He could still hear the wet sound of something being opened and emptied. The sound stayed with him until morning, when the light came and the tracks had already begun to dry.
