by Harper Lin
The trail cut along the eastern slope of Coal Valley, with trees uphill and below us. A few birds circled, level with us, before dipping out of sight to grab whatever mice or other small creatures they had spotted down there. The air cooled and smelled of rain.
The changing weather didn’t seem to dampen the kids’ spirits. They were all chattering away or darting off into the woods to chase each other. Angie kept calling them back, warning about pythons. Ms. Chipper called them back, too, if they strayed too far.
“Pythons you don’t have to worry about. There are more mines in this area, though.”
“Can we go in one?” Martin asked.
“We already had that conversation,” Ms. Chipper said.
“Just one,” Martin insisted. “And not very far.”
“Barbara,” Ms. Chipper called down the line. “You need to clean out your grandson’s ears. Go find a sharp stick and swirl it around inside. Root out all that wax.”
I snapped her my most military salute, which raised the eyebrows of a couple of the kids who saw me. Stepping away from the path a bit, I found a suitable stick and approached Martin in a fencing pose. My grandson cracked a grin then looked sidelong at Melanie and made a show of rolling his eyes.
“Don’t be embarrassing, Grandma.”
Thoroughly deflated, I followed “M&M” down the trail. They picked up speed to put a few people between me and them.
Rain began to patter down in big, heavy drops. Everyone donned their rain gear.
“I hope it doesn’t flood,” Angie said.
“Then we’ll have to worry about water moccasins,” I said.
Her eyes widened. “You think?”
“No.”
“Time for a head count,” Ms. Chipper said now that the column had stopped and bunched up as everyone changed for the weather. She began to count, dramatically bopping each person on the head with a fingertip.
“Where’s Thomas?” she asked.
Everyone shrugged.
“Mr. Cardiff always walks at the back to make sure no one gets left behind,” one of the kids said.
“Yes, but now it looks like he got left behind,” Ms. Chipper said.
“I’ll go look for him,” I announced. He had been acting strangely, and I had grown curious.
“You shouldn’t go alone,” Quinten said, moving to join me. His glasses were fogged and covered in raindrops.
“Can you see?” I asked.
“Of course I can see. Why do you ask?”
I shrugged. “Let’s go.”
We found Thomas just five minutes down the trail, around a sharp bend that took us to a fine lookout over Coal Valley. He stood on a rock, pointing his camera down the length of the valley, back the way we came. We had been following a gentle slope uphill toward Widow’s Peak, which stood swathed in fog.
“Oh, he’s just taking a picture,” I said.
“Who?” Quinten asked, tripping over a root and nearly falling flat on his face.
“Thomas.”
“You see him?”
“Right there.” I pointed.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Get a good photo?” I called out.
He jumped a little and turned. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Hello to you too. Angie is worried you got eaten by pythons.”
“No, just trying to get a good photo.”
“Not the best weather for it,” I said.
“No.” He put his camera away. “Sorry I slowed everybody down.”
He moved up the trail. I hesitated a moment. Thomas had not been pointing his camera at the center of the valley, as if to take a picture of the valley as a whole, but rather toward one side of the valley, and he had his big zoom lens out at maximum.
I looked where I estimated he had been focusing. The trail ran like a brown ribbon along the wooded slopes. I couldn’t see anything unusual.
“We should catch up with the others,” Quinten said.
Thomas passed us. “Sure. Let’s go.”
We went around the bend. Thomas was just disappearing around another bend up ahead, walking more quickly than he had all day. On instinct, I stopped and told Quinten, “I dropped something back there. I’ll catch up.”
“All right,” the librarian said and continued up the path.
I got to the bend and tried to hug the edge of the path, where a few overreaching branches and shrubs partially obscured me from sight. I stopped once I got a good view down the path and looked.
For a full minute, I stood, staring, although I did not know what I was staring at other than an empty path that grew more and more obscure as the rain began to fall more heavily. My eyes weren’t what they used to be, and conditions weren’t good.
But I could have sworn I saw something.
Under the shadow of a tree whose branches overhung the trail about a mile behind us, and about where Thomas had been pointing his camera, I thought I could discern a shape.
The shape of a person.
I could not say for certain that what I was seeing was an actual human figure or a tree trunk or even a trick of the shadow.
The best thing to do in that situation was to keep on looking.
The shape did not move.
A prickle ran over my skin. Being higher up and on a more sparsely vegetated stretch of the trail, I was probably much more visible than whatever it was I was trying to look at. My bright-red raincoat certainly didn’t help.
I should have gotten a camouflage poncho at Megaton Army Surplus, but I hadn’t wanted to embarrass my easily embarrassed grandson, and I hadn’t seen any need.
Now I wondered.
The figure, if figure it was, remained motionless. I began to think I was staring at a tree. We had passed a few trees that had died and fallen over, leaving only a stub of the trunk, as well as a couple of blackened trunks from trees that had been split by lightning. It could very well have been one of those.
Still, I waited. Thomas obviously thought it to be of some interest, and that blazing H from the night before had certainly spooked him.
“Barbara!” Quinten called. His voice echoed down the valley. I wondered how far it would be audible.
“Quiet,” I grumbled.
“Barbara, are you coming?” Quinten called from closer this time. I heard a thud and a quiet “ow.”
Making a very teenaged eyeroll (I had spent too much time with high school freshmen), I walked quickly back up the trail and found Quinten picking himself off the ground.
“Lots of roots and rocks and things,” he said once I got close enough for him to make me out through his fogged glasses. “They should clean this place up.”
“Nature can be very inconsiderate at times.”
The rain continued at a steady downpour. The column grew silent, leaving me to my thoughts. I told myself I was just being paranoid, that all those years in the CIA had made me jumpy. My attempt at self-reassurance did not last long, however. I caught Thomas glancing over his shoulder more than once, and I could not get that blazing H out of my mind.
“Something queer is going on here,” I murmured.
The boy walking behind me snickered.
Oh dear. I really did have to watch my choice of words around the Zoomer generation. Everything was funny or ironic to them. I supposed it had been the same when I was fourteen, but to be perfectly honest, there had been too many gunfights and coups d’état since then for me to remember.
At the next rest break, Thomas went off to “take some pictures.” I was trying to figure out an excuse to follow him when I noticed him scrambling up a boulder about twenty yards away that gave a commanding view of the valley. Butch, not to be outdone, climbed up too.
I sat down on a fallen log next to Martin, who was alone at the moment as Melanie chatted with some of her friends.
“Nice to be without your phone for a while, isn’t it?”
Martin rolled his eyes. “It’s okay, I guess. I just hope Boozy Bradford doesn’t lose it.”
<
br /> “I’m sure he’ll take good care of it.”
“He’ll probably fall down on it or something,” Martin said with a wicked grin.
A girl sitting nearby wrinkled her nose. “His breath stinks.”
I couldn’t argue with that, and since I didn’t want to criticize a teacher in front of the kids, I said nothing. Instead, I watched Thomas and Butch on the boulder.
Butch thumped his chest and roared. His deep voice echoed across the valley.
I elbowed Martin. “Wouldn’t it be funny if his voice cracked while he did that?”
My grandson and the girl laughed.
I smiled. Despite being passed over as poor company compared with Melanie, I was having a grand time, and the few moments I did get with Martin were proving to be fun.
Butch got on all fours and started howling like a wolf.
Thomas, standing right next to him, frowned but otherwise ignored him, scanning the valley behind us with his telephoto lens. He did not look as if he was trying to take a picture.
“Thomas, put that away,” Ms. Chipper said. “Some of the girls and I have to go say hello to some ferns, if you know what I mean.”
Thomas looked irritated but put his camera away and hopped off the boulder.
“I’ll stay up here,” Butch said.
“Oh, no you won’t!” one of the girls shouted. Everyone laughed. Thomas held up a hand to the boy, who shrugged and jumped off himself.
Our camp that night was in a little fold on the side of Widow’s Peak that gave us shelter from the wind but not the rain. Ms. Chipper solved this in her usual perky way by assigning two “monkeys” to climb the trees to fasten a tarp. Martin and Butch volunteered. While I would have liked to see one of the girls volunteer, I was still proud to see my grandson make it to the upper branch faster than Butch, who lacked Martin’s agility—gained from endless hours at the skate park—and simply lumbered up with raw strength.
Within a minute, a large tarp was stretched above where we would set up the campfire, high enough that it wouldn’t trap the smoke too badly and low enough that it would stop the rain from hitting the fire and the area right around it as long as the wind didn’t angle the rain too much.
It was another raucous night, with Ms. Chipper trying and failing to get everyone to sing campfire songs. The kids mostly ignored the rain and chased each other around camp, pelting one another with pine cones, while the adults sat under the tarp, out of the incessant drizzle. Quinten had caught a cold and kept sneezing. Angie was convinced a flash flood would wash us off the mountain. Ms. Chipper warned the kids not to stray too far. An old mine stood a little up the slope, and she told the kids not to go near it.
Thomas looked glum, checking out some pictures on the screen on the back of his camera. When I tried to look, too, he put it away.
Eventually, we all went to bed. I felt a bit sorry that this would be my last night in the country with Martin.
If only.
For once again, I was awoken by a scream, but this time it wasn’t Thomas who was screaming.
It was my grandson.
FIVE
“Help!” Martin shouted. “Mr. Cardiff has been hurt!”
Thomas? The photographer had been acting strangely since the first night. I scrambled out of my tent and straight into a heavy rain. I ducked back inside and grabbed my raincoat and flashlight.
When I got back out, the entire camp was in confusion. Several people had come out of their tents and were babbling all at once. A flashlight shined in my eyes, briefly blinding me before it moved elsewhere. I blinked and looked around.
“Martin! Where are you?”
A pair of flashlights came down the slope, wavering between the trees like will-o’-the-wisps. I shined my light in that direction and saw Martin and Melanie.
Both had terror stamped on their faces.
“What happened?” I said as I hurried over to them.
Martin was practically in tears. “We snuck off to see that old mine up the hill. When we got there, all the boards had already been pulled off, and Mr. Cardiff lay inside. I… I think he’s…”
“He’s dead!” Melanie wailed.
Ms. Chipper appeared. “You two stay here,” she told them. “I’ll go look.”
She headed up the slope. Everyone started to follow. “No! No! All of you stay back.”
“I know first aid,” I said then turned to the others. “Quinten, Angie, take charge of the kids. All of you get into the center of camp and do a headcount. Turn on all your flashlights and shine them out of the camp to illuminate the area.”
Quinten and Angie looked so shocked that they didn’t even question these unusual instructions. I was already concerned for the camp’s safety. Thomas had been afraid of something. If he had come to harm by other hands, it would be best if everyone stayed close together and lit up the area around the camp so that no one could approach unseen.
Ms. Chipper and I struggled up the slope. There was no trail, and our boots slipped on the wet leaves. We weren’t even sure where exactly to find the mine in the dark, and we wasted an agonizing few minutes searching the slope before we found it.
Then we spotted it—a black, squarish hole in the slope.
As my grandson had said, the boards had all been removed and stacked neatly to one side of the entrance.
“Thomas?” Ms. Chipper called. I gritted my teeth at the sudden sound and shined my flashlight all around me.
The body lay facedown just inside the entrance. The blood matted in his hair glistened in the beams of our flashlights.
I shined my light down the mineshaft. It sunk at a slope down into the mountainside, a dank passageway about six feet to a side. Rotted wooden beams struggled to hold up the ceiling. Here and there, I could see evidence of small cave-ins.
Ms. Chipper knelt down by Thomas and shook him.
“My God,” she gasped. “He’s dead.”
“Don’t move him.”
I studied the passageway again. Other than a few spots just beneath Thomas’s head, I saw no bloodstains as evidence that he had hurt himself—or been killed—at this spot. No spray of blood, no bloody stone or old pickaxe. Nothing. I studied the floor beyond the body. It had a heavy coating of dust and leaves that had blown in. There was a cluster of boot prints around poor Thomas, but they did not go more than a couple of feet farther into the passageway.
Trying not to disturb the scene, I measured one of the boot prints with my fingers and measured Thomas’s boot.
The boot prints were bigger than his.
It became all too clear.
“He was murdered somewhere else and his body carried here. The killer hid his body in here, hoping no one would find it.”
“Killed? Then… the killer might still be here. My God, the kids!”
She hurried out. While I wanted to stay to take a closer look at the scene, I followed. I could not leave her to make her way back to camp alone. That was what my son called Horror Movie Thinking. You let everyone go off one by one, and soon enough, you were the only one left alive.
As we made our way back to camp, I shined my beam around again, looking for tracks. It was hard to see anything in the rain and the dark.
We stumbled back into camp and into chaos. Everyone was shouting, and Angie was beside herself, wailing to the kids that pythons had eaten their photography teacher. Quinten, practically blind behind his fogged and rain-beaded glasses, was trying to keep everyone calm and together but kept bumping into people. His son Butch was shouting for everyone to shut the bleep up or he’d bleeping pound them until they did. Martin and Melanie stood in the midst of all this, hugging each other and crying.
“Is everyone all right?” I asked. The question sounded stupid considering the circumstances.
Quinten understood what I meant. “We did a headcount. Everyone is accounted for.”
“How did you count?” I asked. He wasn’t even looking at me.
He turned to me at the sound of my
voice. “I had them sound off.”
“Good. Everyone, quiet down. We all need to stay calm.”
“Thomas has been murdered!” Ms. Chipper wailed.
That did not help them stay calm.
Someone screamed, a couple of kids burst into tears, and it took a good five minutes to get everyone quiet and organized.
“Yes, I’m afraid that’s true,” I said. “Now, the best thing we can do is stay here in camp until it’s light.”
“No way!” Angie cried. “Wait around here for the murderer to pick us off? We need to get out as soon as possible.”
“We can’t go running off into the dark with it raining this hard. Someone will slip and fall or get lost. The murderer isn’t going to want to show himself. He’s probably already snuck away. We don’t want to meet him on the trail.”
We huddled together under the tarp, cold and miserable. It was three hours until dawn. Several of the flashlights began to dim as their batteries drained. I tried to get the kids to save their batteries by turning their flashlights off, but no one dared.
I kept mine off, even though I had spare batteries in my pack. I had a feeling I’d need them.
Once everyone had calmed down a bit, Ms. Chipper and I took Martin and Melanie to one side.
“So tell me exactly what happened,” I said.
Martin was too scared to lie and too scared even to worry about if he was going to get in trouble. He told me straight out. “I told Melanie we should go check out that abandoned mine. I had gone over to her tent to, like, talk after everyone went to sleep.”
Martin and Melanie glanced at one another. Even in the dim light, I thought I could see the two of them blush. I wondered if anything other than talking had gone on. Probably not much more, but that was not the issue at the moment and none of my business anyway.
“Go on.”
“We waited until we were sure everyone was asleep and snuck out. We had to wait for a while because we heard Mr. Cardiff cursing. We heard him walking around the camp, too, but he didn’t have any flashlight on, just a bit of light from the campfire, and that was almost out.”
“Was he talking to anyone?”
Melanie shook her head. “No, more like talking to himself. We couldn’t really hear much of what he said other than the curse words, except for the very last thing he said, because he said it right outside our tent.” She and my grandson exchanged glances. “I mean my tent.”