It was Joey’s idea.

"What, you a baby or something?" he told me. "Baby wanna play dress up and go trick-o-treat instead?"

He balled his hands up near his cheeks and mimed a tantrum.

"You know what Aunty says about the river," I warned.

"That’s the point, stupid," Joey said. "Don’t you want to see if it’s true?"

Joey wasn’t from here. He thought Aunty’s stories were kids’ stuff. Make believe. Goose pimples. He didn’t know chicken skin like I did.

Aunty knew the mountains and the things that lived there. She told me about the man and the river. Aunty said that he was a hunter; that he had many faces and forms; that his family had hunted there for generations; and that he had guarded the land for almost as long.

"This isn’t a good idea," I told Joey as we neared the tear in the fence.

One kid who tried to climb through said he had seen the man, and that the man had changed into a mountain of matted fur with eyes as black as dread.

"And his face? Unreal," he said, before describing the creature’s teeth — mammoth spearheads that came out of the man’s mouth. The kid had run away before he could see the man change back.

Joey started to bok like a chicken. "Bok, ba-bok, bok," he teased me, flapping his arms like wings.

"Fine," I conceded. "We go down there, check it out, then we’re gone, OK?"

Joey gave me a smile and held the fence back, opening it wide for me. "After you," he said.

There was no beast at the gate, no mountain of fur waiting for us. We walked down the trail, my eyes darting every time I heard a sound, but there were only crickets and toads disturbing the darkness, no dead stares or jagged tusks. I stepped out to the riverbank. There was no monster here.

"I told you," Joey said, and then tapped my shoulder. "You’re it."

"No way," I said, "let’s go."

But Joey was already gone, his laugh echoing across the water.

I crossed the river and peeked into the bushes.

"Joey," I called out. "I’m not playing around."

Snap. I heard him laugh. "Joey, I’m going to leave you in a second." Snap. "Joe—."

The snarl shook the breath from my lungs.

I turned and tripped. My head hit the mud. I tried to stand, but everything was spinning. I stumbled forward, trying to run. I heard a scream. "Joey!" I called out, but the thing was coming toward me, its hooves shaking the ground, thrashing through the bushes.

I made it across the river and headed back toward the trail, but I wasn’t fast enough. I grabbed the biggest rock I could find, ready to defend myself, but then something grabbed my hand and pulled me back.

"Be quiet," Aunty whispered to me, looking past my head.

She brought me to her chest and held me there, hiding me from it. Its wet snout clung to Aunty’s hand. I could feel its breath on the back of my neck, sniffing through Aunty’s fingers. She started to speak in words I couldn’t understand. To my surprise, the beast answered in a man’s voice, and a moment later, he disappeared between the trees.

"Go home," Aunty said, when we got back to the street. "Wait for me there."

"But … "

"Go," she said, and then slipped back through the fence.

It was morning by the time Aunty finally came home with Joey, both of them covered in mud and sweat. She said the river was sacred ground. She said we had trespassed. She said we were lucky to be alive.

"How did you know that we were there?" I asked her.

"I felt it," she said, leaving it at that.

After that Halloween, Joey never made fun of Aunty’s stories again and I made sure to listen when she spoke. The two of us never talked about what had happened that night. But the truth is, we didn’t have to. We knew what we had found, or what had found us, down by the river.