The Dead and the Dark

by Courtney Gould

  They drove out of town on the lakeside highway. The evening sky was the color of bruised knuckles as night crept in. The still lake glimmered white with moonlight, holding up the jagged black hills on the other shore. Orange blips of campfire radiated from the campground across the water, but it was all worlds away.

  Ashley cleared her throat. Quietly, to Logan, she said, “So, the cabin … I asked my mom about it.”

  “What did Tammy say?” Logan asked, tapping idly at her phone.

  “I found out who owns it—technically, we do.” She waited for Logan to look up. “My grandma bought the land from the state, like, twenty years ago? She wanted my mom to turn it into a resort, but my mom didn’t think it would make any money. She let some family build on the property back in the nineties.”

  “The nineties?” Logan asked. “It looks like it hasn’t been touched since the Oregon Trail.”

  “I know. She doesn’t know why it looks like that, either.”

  “Huh.” Logan leaned into the back of her seat. “She hasn’t gone out to see it?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Then it looks like we’ll have to investigate.”

  “You…” Ashley scowled, eyeing Nick and Elexis through the rearview mirror. Softer, she said, “Do they know what we’re doing?”

  “They don’t care,” Logan whispered. “I’m pretty sure they think I’m joking. Seriously, relax about them. They’ll probably hang out with each other the whole time. I just didn’t wanna be totally alone at this thing.”

  “You wouldn’t’ve been alone,” Ashley said. “You’re with me.”

  Logan said nothing.

  By the time they pulled into the gravel turnout at the end of the highway, John’s white Silverado was already parked. Through the trees, Ashley spotted the faint yellow glow of camping lanterns inside the bones of the old cabin. It felt like she was putting Logan on trial, or like she was putting herself on trial and Logan was the damning evidence. Either way, she was about to face the jury.

  “Okay, guys,” Ashley said. “It might be kinda weird at first, but that’s just—”

  Logan threw open the passenger door and hopped out of the truck. “Because we’re losers? It’s usually just you and your mean friends and you don’t like outsiders. We appreciate the heads up. We’ll be fine.”

  Elexis followed her out of the truck, but Nick remained buckled in the back seat. He looked at Ashley and cleared his throat. “I was listening to you.”

  Ashley flashed a tense smile through the rearview mirror. “Thanks, Nick.”

  The four of them made their way through the woods, following the thumping sound of country music to the cabin. Ashley shouldered her way to the front of their small group to open the door. She prayed it would be just another get-together and no one would bat an eye at the LA socialite and her accompanying nerds.

  A wave of heat and beer smell greeted them on the other side of the door. For a moment, the cabin fell silent. John, Paul, and Fran were all crowded on the sofa in the corner of the room. Bug stood next to them, leaning on the old piano with a can of PBR and wide eyes. All four stared at Ashley with matching creased brows, waiting for some kind of explanation. She’d barely gotten permission to bring Logan—bringing Elexis and Nick was a mistake.

  Maybe this whole thing was a mistake.

  “Oh, it’s literally a gathering of friends,” Logan said, bouldering through the silence. She pushed in front of Ashley with a broad smile and hoisted a box of beer over her head. “Greetings, rednecks. I come in peace.”

  Ashley braced herself.

  The silence in the cabin stretched for one more excruciating moment before Fran jumped up from the couch with a bright grin. She took the beer from Logan and pulled her into an awkward hug. “You look cute. I hope we’re not too boring for you.”

  Logan laughed, short and sharp. “Anything’s better than the motel.”

  Fran laughed too, brushing a curl behind her ear. She didn’t want Logan here, clearly, but she was putting on a good face and trying to make it work. Ashley hoped everyone else would do the same.

  They made their way back to the ratty sofa with the beers, Elexis and Nick trudging along behind Logan like they were lost. Ashley sat on the arm of the sofa, and Logan, Elexis, and Nick sat on the floor. There were usually six people, but now there were eight. Ashley wasn’t sure how it was possible for the cabin to feel so empty and so overcrowded.

  “I should probably introduce everyone,” Ashley said once everyone was settled in. “Logan, this is Bug, Paul, John, and you know Fran.”

  Logan nodded with the vacant stare of a person who has not retained anyone’s names. She gestured to Elexis and Nick. “Do you guys all know each other?”

  “Yeah, kinda,” Elexis said. “We go to school together.”

  John checked the time on his phone.

  The tension was so thick Ashley could cut it with a knife. She pulled a beer from the pack in the center of their little circle and popped it open, eager to wash away some of her discomfort. Bug eyed her and shook her head, but Ashley didn’t need the reminder. She’d caused this by inviting Logan. By not putting her foot down about Elexis and Nick. A Barton would’ve found a way to make this whole thing run smoothly. Her mother would’ve made this work. Country music thumped from John’s Bluetooth speaker on the piano, not quite playing loud enough to cover up the awkward silence. Logan pulled a beer free and took a long drink.

  “God, why is it so awkward?” Fran laughed uneasily. “Let’s talk about something interesting.”

  “What kind of guys do you like?” Bug asked Logan.

  Logan traced the lid of her beer can with her pointer finger and didn’t look up. Somehow, Ashley understood the answer before Logan said a word. Logan’s nose wrinkled up and she said, “Uh, none?”

  Fran and Bug looked at Ashley with the quickness of vipers.

  “Like…” Fran drawled.

  “Like none. I’m a lesbian.”

  All at once, everyone took a drink. Blood rushed to Ashley’s cheeks. For a moment, she thought Logan was kidding, but it felt true. It felt right in a way Ashley couldn’t quite untangle. It was probably normal in LA, but people in Snakebite just … weren’t gay. Ashley bit back her surprise and donned a smile.

  “Wow, that’s—”

  She didn’t have time to finish. John folded his arms over his chest and asked, “So, what, you like girls?”

  “Yeah. That’s generally what a lesbian is.” Logan took a drink of beer without breaking eye contact. How she’d gone so quickly from semiembarrassment to unrelenting bravado was a mystery to Ashley.

  “Is it … like, do you think it’s a genetic thing?” Fran asked. She wrinkled up her nose and looked around. “Is it okay to ask that?”

  “First, I’m adopted,” Logan scoffed. “Second, no, it’s not.”

  “It’s not genetic or it’s not okay to ask?” Paul asked.

  “Both.”

  The cabin was silent.

  Bug looked at Ashley like she was going to be sick. Ashley closed her eyes and pictured her mother sitting in this circle. She tried to picture the perfect Tammy Barton solution.

  “Hey, I have a party game for us to play,” Ashley said. She put a hand on Bug’s wrist to comfort her. “Let’s all just drink until we’re having fun, okay?”

  Somehow, this worked.

  Paul turned up the music on the speaker and everyone drank. Within an hour, it was a party just like any other before Tristan’s disappearance. As it turned out, the best way to make a room of people get along was to blur their heads with cheap beer until they couldn’t remember why they were different in the first place. Fran ended up on John’s lap, Bug seemed to actually enjoy talking to Paul for once, and Logan, Nick, and Elexis drifted into their own conversation about god knew what. It was all effortless again. The apprehension about Logan and the others melted into easy laughter, and everything was okay.

  Ashley could almost picture Tristan
here, laughing along with the others. She could imagine him and Logan joking together.

  Everything was the same again, but Tristan was gone.

  Quietly, Ashley moved to the cabin’s old, worn-down kitchen. It was more like a crumbling wooden tunnel given the missing back wall. Wind whispered between the decayed planks, ruffling Ashley’s hair against her neck. She hadn’t had more than two beers, but the room felt distant. The whole world felt distant. If she wandered into the woods right now, she wondered how long it would take the others to notice she was gone. Just as easily as they were moving on from Tristan, they’d move on from her. She could slip into the night and be a ghost just like him. The thought made her heart slog an empty rhythm against her ribs.

  Under the sounds of the party, there was another noise. A quiet hum, throaty and low. When Ashley closed her eyes, it was all she could hear. It danced between the shifting trees. Almost like it was getting closer.

  Without warning, the kitchen door burst open.

  “There you are,” Logan declared. “I was looking for you.”

  Logan staggered into the kitchen and ripped open another can of PBR. She’d smudged the corner of her lipstick, but she was otherwise surprisingly put together. She wasn’t sharp and sarcastic like she’d been when they arrived. She seemed comfortable—happy, even. She fit in a little too well, like parties were her first language.

  “Seems like you’re having fun,” Ashley said.

  “Seems like you’re not.” Logan leaned against the decaying counter opposite Ashley. “You find anything interesting?”

  Ashley arched a brow.

  “The investigation. The whole reason we’re here. Did you see any ghosts?”

  Ashley exhaled. “Oh, yeah. Uh, no. I haven’t seen anything.”

  “Have you been looking?”

  “No. Not really.”

  Logan narrowed her eyes. The bass from the song in the main room thumped in the silence between them. After a moment, Logan looked out the collapsed kitchen wall into the black night. “What’ve you been doing in here, then?”

  Ashley shrugged. The thing she’d felt before—the loneliness that welled like a tide in her chest—was gone as quick as it had come. The junipers outside the kitchen rustled in the cool wind, and Ashley was back to earth. She fixed Logan with a look. “It’s not like you’ve been investigating, either.”

  Logan scoffed, indignant. She held out a closed fist. “I have, too. I even found something.”

  “Are you gonna show me?” Ashley asked.

  “I don’t think you earned it,” Logan slurred. “You didn’t even look.”

  Ashley rolled her eyes. Against her better judgment, her lips curled into a reluctant smile. This Logan was different from the one she’d expected. For a moment, she was warm and open. Her laughter was real, dark and smooth as velvet.

  “Please,” Ashley said, “can I see what you found?”

  Logan smirked. “Since you asked nicely.”

  She turned her fist over and revealed something small and shining on her palm. It was a thick gold ring with a cursive inscription inside: Mark 10:9. Ashley plucked it from Logan’s palm and studied it. “What God has joined together let no one separate.”

  “It doesn’t say that,” Logan said.

  “That’s the verse.”

  Logan snorted. “I knew you were a church girl.”

  Ashley playfully shoved Logan in the arm. The ring was nondescript—no embellishments or jewels on the outside, and only the inscription on the inside. “It’s not really a clue.”

  “Yes, it is,” Logan said. “Look, there’s no dirt on it.”

  “So?”

  “So that means it was here recently.”

  Ashley handed the ring back. Someone had been to the cabin recently. Someone else had walked the decaying floors. Someone had crept here and lost a piece of themselves. “You think whoever was out here saw what we saw?”

  “Maybe,” Logan said. She tilted her head back, emptying the rest of her beer. When she finished, she crunched the can down and discarded it in the cracked kitchen sink.

  “Are either of your dads missing a ring?”

  “No. And they wouldn’t have Bible shit on theirs, either.” Logan’s eyes widened with a sudden realization. “Oh, I found out something else.”

  Ashley waited.

  “Breaking news—you’re not the only one who can see stuff. Ghosts.” Logan wiped her mouth, smearing her lipstick the rest of the way across her cheek. “My dad sees ’em, too.”

  Ashley’s chest tightened. “What?”

  “Yeah. He says he’s always seen ghosts.” Logan put on a mischievous smile. “Not so special now, are you?”

  Ashley waved away the comment. “That’s … a big deal. You’re sure?”

  Logan nodded. Before she could answer, she tripped over a loose plank in the floor and stumbled into a collapsed counter. Her eyes were glazed over, dark as the night outside and hazy. She was too drunk to talk about the disappearance; Ashley was pretty sure she was too drunk to be here at all. She propped a hand under her elbow and helped her sit down. The night wind skirted Logan’s hair into her mouth and across her eyes.

  Ashley pushed Logan’s hair out of her face.

  Something strange snagged her breath.

  “I’m an amazing detective,” Logan said, eyes half lidded. “I did a great job. Way better than you.”

  “Sure,” Ashley breathed. “You did amazing.”

  Logan reached up and took Ashley’s shoulder. The wind through the gaps in the kitchen walls grew colder by the minute. Logan’s eyes watered in the crisp air. “Why’re you in here by yourself?”

  “I’m not by myself. I’m with you.”

  Logan blinked, then laughed. “Before that. You looked so sad.”

  “I…” Ashley trailed off. She looked back at the main room of the party. No one was looking for them, no one was listening in on them. She closed her eyes. “Honestly? I’m having a really hard time. I’m just really…”

  “… lonely,” Logan finished.

  Her eyes were closed when she said it. The word sounded too natural on her tongue. Too quick. Ashley recognized the same look on Logan’s face that she’d seen in the mirror for months. They were adrift in the dark, senselessly paddling for shore.

  “Yeah,” Ashley said.

  In the main room, someone thumped into a wall. Ashley recognized John’s voice bellowing something about my truck or my dad. In approximately thirty seconds, he and Paul would start throwing punches. Fran would cry because she’d told John not to get so worked up. Bug would shut off the music. The party would be over.

  Ashley took a sip of warm beer.

  It already felt like it was over.

  Ashley hooked Logan’s arm over her shoulders. “Hey, let’s get you some water.”

  “Get off, straighty,” Logan moaned.

  Ashley shook her head, biting back a quiet laugh. She poured out the rest of her beer and walked Logan out of the cabin toward the lake. She’d babysat Fran and Bug at a thousand of these parties; she was used to the fussy and unmanageable. The farther they walked from the cabin, the more sober she felt.

  The walk had the opposite effect on Logan.

  “Where’re you taking me?” she said, all in one dump of words.

  “To get water. And fresh air.” Ashley readjusted Logan’s arm on her shoulder. “Then sleep.”

  Logan’s head lolled back against Ashley’s shoulder, eyes closed. Her smoky gray eyeshadow was cloudy with sweat now. “We’re going so far,” she slurred. “Ohmygod, are you the murderer?”

  “That’s not funny.”

  They reached the lakeshore and Ashley propped Logan against a tree trunk. She filled her empty beer can with lake water and tilted it against Logan’s lips. Logan drank slowly until her nose wrinkled up and she spat at Ashley’s feet.

  “Tastes like pee and grass,” she said. “I’d rather have a hangover.”

  “C’mon,” Ashley w
hispered. She pressed the can to Logan’s lips again. “You don’t want your dads to see you hungover.”

  Logan waved a dismissive hand. “My dads don’t care.”

  Something in the way she said this made Ashley think she wished they did.

  Farther down the shore, Ashley spotted Elexis and Nick making their way to the water. She waved them down. “Hey, I’m taking her to the truck. Meet me there when you’re ready.”

  Nick gave her a thumbs-up.

  Ashley helped Logan to her feet. In the dark, they walked back to the gravel clearing where the trucks were parked. Ashley pulled a sleeping bag from the storage box in the back of the Ford and laid it across the bed of the truck. It was tradition to camp out for a few hours on nights when she was still too drunk to drive home. Logan was already most of the way passed out as Ashley tucked her in, muttering something about calling a “yeehaw Lyft.” By the time Ashley climbed into a second sleeping bag, Logan was out cold. The quiet of the woods settled in and Ashley’s heart stopped racing.

  She’d spent countless nights in this truck bed, in this clearing, in this sleeping bag looking at the stars with Tristan. She’d spent more time than she could measure lying with him in silence just like this. She’d never felt as far away from him as she did now. She’d never felt so far away from everyone.

  She would find him. They would have more nights under the stars.

  They had skies left to see.

  Interlude

  The host is getting stronger.

  Waiting in the woods tonight is his idea.

  The night is wide and warm and full of wondrous noise. Voices echo through the trees. The host pushes his way through the dark, dodging roots and boulders with ease. Part of his quickness is memory—he has come out here a hundred times in the last few months—but the host is lither than he seems, too. He looks as unassuming as most humans do, but most humans don’t have a viper coiled in their chest, hiding just under their skin. Most don’t hunger like the host does.

  This host’s hunger is all his own.

  He lurks in shadow, silently watching the cabin. Like a snake never regrets swallowing its prey, the host is learning to set aside his guilt. Before the Dark leaves him, the host will be unafraid of the shadowed corners of his heart.