by Bea Bledsoe
“Look.” She whispered. There, written in small white lettering written across the back windshield, was a message. It stretched along the top of the window, invisible to the naked eye unless you were looking in the rearview.
Rattlesnake Range. 4:00 p.m. Come alone.
Leigh met Henry’s eyes. “The son! He must have written it when we were inside.”
Henry’s face broke into a cautious smile.
“Looks like we aren’t dead in the water after all. What time is it now?”
Leigh glanced at the dashboard, already putting the car in reverse. “It’s 3:28. He must have left the message and taken off. If we leave now, we should be able to make it. I think Rattlesnake Range is just outside of Cody.”
Leigh spun the wheel and sped away from the house, the lace curtains moving ever so slightly as they drove away.
They passed the outskirts of town and plunged into a landscape of vast, raw nothingness. Leigh drove faster than she should have, but there was no one around to record her speed. Ahead, dilapidated signs appeared for a town called Encampment, but when they passed through, the only thing remaining were the skeletons of old buildings. Leigh gave a shiver as they passed the empty windows, soulless eyes that stared hungrily at passersby.
The road began to climb into a series of ridges that pushed the prairie upwards. Leigh opened her window and was hit squarely in the face with the smell of sagebrush. It smelled like home and for a minute she pretended that she was just home for a visit. Her mother would be waiting for her on the porch with fresh raspberry cookies, and her dad would be reading in the living room, his dirty feet propped up on the couch. She allowed the fantasy to play out in her mind for a few minutes, before sitting up straighter.
“I think we’re almost there.” She muttered to Henry. “Look.”
About a half mile down the road, she could see some sort of manmade landmark rising out of the ground. Leigh slowly pulled the car forward, crossing under a huge arch made of white antlers. At the top of the arch, two rattlesnake skeletons were crossed over each other, making an X with their long, spine-like bodies. “That gives me the creeps, Leigh.” Henry whispered. She ignored him as she pulled the car forward, passing under the shadow of the antlers.
They wound up the gravel road with bare hills rising around them, soft green grasses waving in the wind. About a half mile beyond the entrance, an old abandoned church sat tucked back from the road. It had a single broken spire, and its wood was a weathered gray. The front door was missing. In front of it stood a figure in a black hoodie. Leigh jerked the car to a stop and climbed out.
“Ford?” She asked uneasily. The figure reached up and pulled back the hood, and Leigh couldn’t have been more surprised as a thick tumble of blue hair fell out. A young woman, probably about two years younger than Leigh, nodded nervously as she stepped forward.
“Named for my dad’s favorite car.” The girl said. She was a short and full-bodied high school student, with unruly curly hair dyed a sky blue. She wore ripped jeans and a black hoodie with bright rainbow combat boots. Leigh could see from here that she had a tattoo on the top of her hand: simply the words “We Resist” in a bold font. She was already the coolest person Leigh had ever seen.
As they approached, she held out a hand. “Stop here.” She ordered in a low, nervous voice. “I’ll only talk to her. Clark Kent here needs to stay outside and keep watch.”
“We’re not here to hurt you.” Said Leigh gently. “We just want answers.”
Ford remained motionless. “He stays out here.”
Henry looked nervously at Leigh, but she nodded. “It’s fine.” With a frown, he took a few steps back. Ford motioned for Leigh to follow her inside, never guessing Leigh was the one with the gun that Leigh was she was the one she needed to be afraid of. They stepped inside the church. She could tell it had once been lovely. Beyond the broken altar, a small rose window overlooked the overturned pews and bare sacristy. The eaves above them were marked by holes and rot. As they made their way up the aisle, their steps made footprints in the dust. Ford’s hands shook slightly as she walked.
“Rattlesnake Range is private ranch land, but aside from the massive lodge thirty miles from here, no one ever stops by.” She sighed and looked around. “I’ve always liked this church; I photograph it a lot. It’s pretty, but don’t go searching under the floorboards. There’s a reason it’s called Rattlesnake Range.”
Leigh turned to her, shifting her weight to fold her arms. “I figured. I grew up here, in Wyoming.” That was enough small talk for now. “Why did you ask us to meet you out here?”
Ford looked around anxiously, picking at her fingerless gloves. “I had to pick somewhere isolated. Because you never know who is watching, or who is listening. I run a drone company; I know.”
“What do you know about Blackriver?” Leigh looked right at her, her eyes pleading. “Please. My parents lived there. I’m not above begging. If there weren’t snakes, I would get on my knees.”
There was a fluttering overhead and Leigh watched a sparrow fold itself into a corner above the altar. Ford paused for a second before holding up her palm.
“No. You don’t need to beg. Talking to you is what’s right. You’ll have to forgive my father; he’s afraid for all of us, and he has good reason to be. He’s a good person, I promise.” Leigh didn’t blink. Ford took an uneasy breath. “They came for our drones, for our pictures. They took it all, every computer, every strip of film. Then they sat my dad and me down and told us that if we talked to anyone about what we had seen, that there would be consequences. My mom was away at a quilt show that weekend, so she doesn’t know.” Her voice broke softly. “Doesn’t know that they told my dad they would kill her first if we talked.”
“Who is they?” Leigh hissed.
Ford lowered her voice. “Don’t you know? Men in black. FBI, probably.”
Leigh’s head was spinning. “Are you sure? Did you verify their identification? Did they have badges?”
Ford gave a quiet laugh. “They didn’t exactly knock. The only thing they had on them was a patch...I’ve tried searching it through government websites, but I haven’t seen it anywhere, which is why I believe it’s real. The patch had mountains on it, and then like a circle of wavy lines. I didn’t look closely because at the moment all I could see was their guns.” Ford’s hands were shaking as she recalled it, and Leigh didn’t hesitate before reaching out and taking them in her own. She was delaying; Leigh could see it.
“Ford.” She said slowly, their eyes meeting. “I need you to tell me what happened to Blackriver.”
The girl’s face crumpled. “I wish I knew more. I can only tell you what I saw. Let’s sit.” She led Leigh over to a creaky pew. Henry’s shadow passed other them as he nervously paced in the doorway. Ford took a deep breath. “I used to fly my drones in that area about once a week. It’s a great area for photography because it’s so isolated. Great views, minimal people, hard to get to. You’ve got the basin in the background, the river, and the waterfalls …anyways, I’ve been photographing Blackriver for a year or two.”
She pulled her hands away from Leigh.
“On March eleventh, I sent a drone out over Blackriver in the morning. I mainly took some sunrise landscape shots and then just a few of the town as I passed overhead. You know, sometimes people buy aerial shots of their town. I didn’t review them until March seventeenth, six days later.” Her voice dropped. “But what I saw was…really strange. The morning of the eleventh, when my drone flew overhead, the entire town was gathered in one large group on the main street, and they were just…” Her voice faltered.
“Standing there. Standing in a crowded circle, all clustered together.” Leigh clenched her teeth nervously. “I could see that there was something or someone in the center of the circle, but I couldn’t see what because of the angle of the photograph.”
Her voice became smaller as something in the corner of the church slithered over dried leaves. “Those
pictures were strange enough, but nothing compared to the images that I took later in the day. Five hours later, when I was done taking my pictures, my drone passed over Blackriver on its way home.” She leaned forward. “Leigh, the people of Blackriver were standing in the exact same position that they were five hours before. And I don’t mean in the same area. I mean each person in the Exact. Same. Spot. My dad and I compared the pictures side by side. No one had gone to the bathroom, no had walked a few feet, gone home or even shifted their body position in the slightest way. It was so bizarre. It was like…. they were afraid to move. Like they were frozen in place.” She rubbed her hands over her unruly blue curls, and Leigh noticed that he had a hint of gray at the temples. She was so young to have graying hair.
“As soon as I my dad and I saw the pictures, I sent the drone back and called the nearest police department to Blackriver.”
“Tensleep?” Asked Leigh cautiously.
“Yeah – how did you know? I talked to Sheriff Lacombie. He said he would check on it immediately.” Ford continued, oblivious. “After that, I sent my best drone, the Falcon, one capable of connecting remotely to cell towers to transmit information back to me live.”
Leigh sat forward. “And?”
“That was on March seventeenth, the same day I reviewed the photos. I wish…I wish I would have reviewed the footage earlier. I’m so sorry.” Ford’s face crumpled, and Leigh gave her a moment to compose herself, trying her best to wait patiently. Ford took a breath. “When my drone got back there, everyone was gone. Vanished. I sent it in low, right down Main Street, and every single person in Blackriver had vanished. It was deserted. What I saw was unnerving: all the doors to the houses had been left open. I was able to fly the drone into houses and it was like they had just…left. There were dishes on the table with food rotting. Beds unmade, windows open, tons of abandoned pets roaming around. It was like the people had just left,” she repeated.
“Or were taken.” Leigh choked out.
“I’ll never forget it, not ever.” Ford sniffed. Leigh could see the horror of what she had seen written on her face. The girl looked anxiously towards the door. “I can’t stay much longer. They could find us here.” Her next words came fast and frenzied. “I was still flying my drone through the town when the trucks came, dozens of them: dump trucks, huge bulldozers, and wrecking balls; an entire construction rig. I pulled my drone back into the trees, and I watched them tear down the town, home by home.” She shook her head. “It only took them a day to tear Blackriver to the ground. It was late in the day and I was so focused on filming the destruction that I missed a man approaching the drone through the trees.” Her face paled. “He shot down the Falcon with a sniper rifle.”
Leigh sat back as Ford went on. “That’s when I knew that they were going to come for me, and two days later they did. Three men in black and one woman, all packed to the hilt. They sat my father and me down and told us we could never speak of what we had seen, or that they would kill our family. They took every piece of evidence I had. I hadn’t even thought to make copies yet.” Ford shot to her feet. “Okay, that’s it. That’s what I saw; that’s all I know, I swear it. God, I shouldn’t even be here.”
Leigh stepped toward her, needing so much more. “Please! You must know something else. What happened to all those people?”
Ford shook her head. “Don’t you understand? I don’t know, and I don’t know want to know. I already can’t sleep at night.” She turned to go, a dark flicker in her eyes. “Something was wrong with that town. It didn’t feel right; I could feel that something was off, even through the eyes of my drone. It was like I was being watched, even though I was the watcher.” She brushed off her jeans and adjusted her glasses. “You should go back to wherever you came from. Go home.”
Leigh trained her eyes on the floorboards, worn thin from years of worship. “Blackriver was my home.” She said.
Ford nodded, speaking as she walked quickly toward the exit. “I’ve been flying in those skies ever since, looking for clues. I won’t go near where the town was; just the area around it, and…I’ve seen someone.” The girl in the woods, thought Leigh. “I’ve never gotten a clear shot of them. They’re good at hiding and staying in the trees. They’re fast. But I think…” Ford raised her head and Leigh saw that underneath her fierce exterior there was just a scared high school student, dealing with something far outside of herself.
“I think that someone survived whatever happened there, and I think they’re hiding in the woods. You should find them before they do.” With that, Ford walked out of the abandoned church, leaving Leigh faithless.
14
Leigh walked outside the church just in time to see Ford disappear over the edge of the range; she had no doubt had parked her vehicle somewhere on the other side. Whether Ford’s paranoia was warranted, Leigh believed every word that she had said. The fear on her face, the horror in her words…it had been real for her. Henry was standing with his back to her with his hands on his hips as he looked out over the barren land. “Did you get some good information?” he asked hopefully.
Leigh nodded. “I’ll tell you in the car.”
On the drive back into Cody, she told him everything, feeling insane as she went. His eyes stayed steady on the road in front of him as she spoke, and after a long silence, he turned to her.
“This is good, Leigh. I know it’s not what you wanted to hear, but at least now we know that the people of Blackriver went missing between March eleventh and March seventeenth and that the town was demolished that same day.” He tapped his lip. “And I bet afterwards, more trucks returned with trees and natural landscaping, trying to cover up what had once been.”
Leigh closed her eyes, her head swirling. She kept seeing Ford’s terrified face, kept hearing the utter shock of her words. “It was like they were afraid to move.” A cold rain began lightly splattering on the window pane.
“I don’t think we are going to make it back to Blackriver tonight,” Leigh said softly, not mentioning that she couldn’t bear the thought of being out there right now, with the pitch-black closing in all around them.
“Thank God. I was thinking the same thing,” Henry answered with palpable relief. “Let’s find a hotel.”
They pulled off at a small motel on the edge of Cody, with a neon sign advertising free cable and clean rooms. Henry offered to pay, and she let him, at a cheap veneer desk manned by a guy who looked like he was a serial killer in his free time. From above the desk, a yellowing deer skull stared down at her. Henry led them down the hall to their room and pushed open the door before sighing with happiness at the sight of the bed. Leigh stayed frozen in the hallway. There was only one bed.
“I asked for two,” she mumbled, tripping over her bag as she walked inside. Henry collapsed onto the bed, which creaked on impact. “Honestly, I don’t care what size the bed is, I just want to sleep in a bed. Although…” Without saying anything, Henry leapt up and lifted the mattress, peering underneath it. “Okay, sorry. Had to check for bed bugs.”
“You going to be okay, Harvard?” Leigh let the tired ghost of a smile drift across her face.
Henry wrinkled his nose. “I mean, it’s not the Langham, but it will work. Keep your socks on when you walk around.”
Leigh carefully sat on corner of the bed, hyper aware of the small space between her and Henry. “You can take a nap, if you want to. I just have a lot to process.”
“You want me to stay awake with you?” he asked, but as soon as she shook her head, he closed his eyes. Soon, her thoughts were interrupted by snores. Leigh went to the bathroom before walking to the sink and splashing her face with the freezing water, relishing the bite of it. Her mind ran over everything Ford had said, until it latched onto one sentence: They looked like they were afraid to move. Something about that sentence was stirring up a memory inside of her; something about it was vaguely familiar. What was it Ford had said about the way they were standing? Clustered, in a circle, standing aro
und something or someone. Leigh’s exhausted brown eyes widened in the mirror as a previously insignificant memory crept forward from about a year ago. It had been nothing, she thought. But now…they were clustered in a circle, standing around something.
Leigh had seen the town of Blackriver do that once before.
It had been late spring of last year, about four months before she had left for Harvard. Leigh was restless - always restless - wandering through the town and the woods around it. She didn’t want to be home with her quiet mother or her stoic father right now, didn’t want to see their disappointment, the hurt on their faces. She and Napoleon had been meandering around all morning, a single word playing out in her mind to the beat of his hooves: Harvard. Harvard.
When Leigh had finally returned home for lunch, every person in Blackriver had been standing on Main Street in a messy half circle, including her parents. Leigh tied Napoleon to a fence post and went to see what was happening.
“What’s going on?” she asked, approaching the circle from behind. Her mom reached out and wiped a smear of dirt off Leigh’s cheek. Sometimes she forgot to be angry at Leigh for leaving.
“It’s just a census, honey. Every once in a while, Wyoming has to count how many people live in these small towns. He’s coming around counting, so just stand by me.”
And Leigh had obeyed, just as a widely built man wearing a black suit – which she remembered thinking at the time was strange – approached them. He stopped in front of Leigh and her parents, looking down at her through thick black glasses, his face hard. He looked down at his clipboard and then back up at her. “Well, you’re quite young,” he stated. “How old are you, girl?” Leigh frowned at being called a girl, but her mother softly elbowed her in the side.
“Eighteen,” she responded sharply.