The Skin-Walker's Pelt

Midnight patrol. Ranger Elias found a stiff, mangled coyote carcass on the fire road. It looked grotesque—limbs bent at impossible, rigid angles, wrapped loosely in a burlap sack. He tossed the bundle into his truck bed, but as he drove down the mountain, he heard a sound that made his blood run cold: the distinct, frantic scratching of fingernails against the truck's metal bed. He sped home, heart pounding. His wife, Sarah, was standing on the porch in the moonlight, obsessively scrubbing dark, wet earth from her hands. She was wearing their daughter's favorite floral Sunday dress—the one that had gone missing a week ago. 'I turned the soil,' Sarah hummed, her eyes wide and glassy, staring right through him. 'The bad roots are gone. I planted something new. Come, the stew is ready.' Elias froze. The house was dead silent. For the first time in months, their daughter—who claimed 'bugs were crawling under her skin'—wasn't screaming.