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Chapter 1: The Broken Door

The wind did not just blow over the mountains. It screamed.

It was a violent, blinding storm. It stripped the warmth right out of your bones and buried the world under an ocean of freezing white snow. It was mid-January. The local weather stations had spent three days warning everyone about the “Storm of the Decade.” They were not wrong.

I know this mountain better than I know my own face. My name is Caleb Mercer. I am sixty-two years old. I have a silver beard and scars all over my hands. I spent twenty years working as a mountain rescue ranger. I know exactly how to survive. I know when to fight the mountain, and I know when to hide and let it win.

But these days, I do not fight for anyone except myself.

I live completely alone in an old fire lookout tower. It sits high up on a dangerous cliff at six thousand feet. I wanted the isolation. I built a wall between myself and the painful ghosts of my past. Specifically, the ghost of my relationship with my only daughter, Hannah.

Three years ago, we had a terrible fight. She wanted to join the elite, highly dangerous county Search and Rescue (SAR) team. I had pulled too many frozen bodies out of avalanches. I told her it was too dangerous. She accused me of letting my grief turn me into a coward. She walked out of my house. We had not spoken a single word since that day.

So, when the deadly blizzard hit on a Tuesday, the temperature dropped to twenty below zero. All radios and cell phones stopped working. I did what I always do. I chopped extra firewood, locked my heavy oak door, and sat in the quiet.

The silence lasted until 2:14 AM.

I was sleeping in my heavy leather chair by the warm fire. Suddenly, a loud sound cut through the roar of the wind. It was not a falling tree branch. It was a heavy, purposeful crash against the outside of my cabin.

I opened my eyes. Twenty years of survival instincts woke me up instantly.

THUD.

My heavy oak front door shook in its frame. I stood up. My bad knee hurt, but I ignored it. I grabbed my heavy hunting rifle from above the fireplace. I loaded a bullet into the chamber. The metal clicked loudly in the quiet room. I thought it was a starving black bear, driven crazy by the storm, trying to find heat.

CRACK.

The metal lock broke into pieces. The heavy door burst open. A violent tornado of snow, ice, and freezing wind blew right into my living room.

I raised my rifle. I aimed right at the doorway, my finger resting on the trigger.

But it was not a bear.

Standing in the doorway, blocking the storm with its massive body, was the Timberline Phantom.

Chapter 2: The Bloody Harness

My breath caught in my throat.

Every person in the valley knew the scary stories about the Phantom. It was a giant wolf-dog hybrid. It stood almost three feet tall at the shoulder. It had a thick coat of dark gray and black fur. It was covered in old scars, completely wild, and very dangerous.

For the last eight months, local farmers blamed the beast for killing their animals. A cash bounty had been placed on its head. Hunters had spent weeks trying to track and shoot the monster. But it always vanished into the dark trees like a ghost.

And now, the monster was standing inside my living room.

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