The Dead and the Dark

by Courtney Gould

  “Your mother called and said she would be here.” Brandon dug into the drawers again like Ashley wasn’t there. His hair was disheveled, fingers fumbling over sticky notes and highlighters like he was running out of time. “Didn’t even say what she was arrested for. I swear to god, this town never fails to—”

  “Did you find it?” another voice called.

  This was Alejo from somewhere in the back of the station. Guilt bunched up in Ashley’s stomach. While she’d been wallowing in her grief for the last two weeks, Alejo had been stuck here.

  “Not yet.” Brandon pulled open another drawer and scanned its contents. “Becky would have the keys, right?”

  “I don’t know.” Alejo laughed. “They don’t really show prisoners where the keys are.”

  Brandon gave a short, strangled laugh.

  Ashley cleared her throat. She’d seen keys before, but not at Becky’s desk. She made her way back into the station, past the wooden desks, and into Sheriff Paris’s office. The holding cell was carved into the wall behind her. She felt Alejo watch her through the bars, puzzling through where she was going. A mounted rack near Paris’s desk held several sets of keys. Ashley plucked the ones labeled HOLDING CELL from their hook and stepped back into the lobby.

  “How about these?”

  Brandon stared at her, then wordlessly snatched the keys from her grasp. He frantically undid the lock on Alejo’s cell and stepped aside. Alejo ambled out into the light and rubbed his eyes. In a blur of motion, he tumbled forward and threw his arms around Brandon.

  Brandon hugged him back, releasing a ragged breath into Alejo’s shoulder.

  The guilt in Ashley’s stomach tightened.

  “Can’t wait to leave a one-star review for this one.” Alejo chuckled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. Dark shadows bored deep into his face. He let go of Brandon and stretched his arms. “The bed was really uncomfortable. No complimentary pillows.”

  “You look pretty okay for a guy who’s been in jail for two weeks,” Brandon said.

  “You flatter me.” Alejo straightened. “Becky brought me food and shower stuff from home. I’m supposed to be waiting for a transfer to county jail next week.”

  “Well,” Brandon said, but he didn’t finish the thought.

  Alejo gave the station a cursory glance. “No one came in recently. If Logan’s not here, where is she?”

  “I don’t know, but we need a plan.” Brandon adjusted his glasses. “We have to get out of here. We just broke you out of jail, which is an actual crime. I don’t think Paris will overlook that one, even if you guys are friends.”

  Alejo shrugged. “We reinvented ourselves before. We can do it again.”

  Ashley looked at the two men in awe. This was the same Brandon and Alejo she’d seen on TV, but now they were here in the flesh. They weren’t full of darkness and secrets and pain like she’d thought. They spoke to each other like any two people did. Brandon rubbed the back of his neck. Alejo touched Brandon’s shoulder to comfort him, and Ashley felt like a monster.

  “Let’s go,” Brandon said. “We find her and then we pack up tonight.”

  “Wait,” Ashley said.

  Both men turned to look at her like they’d just remembered she was there. She couldn’t blame Brandon for the disdain plain on his face, but it was Alejo’s expression that was more difficult. It was calm, like he wasn’t even angry. Like he didn’t blame her for the last two weeks. Maybe he didn’t know it was her.

  “I wanna help,” Ashley said. “I wanna find her. I was with her when she…”

  Brandon’s eyes narrowed. “When she what?”

  “Paris might’ve taken her to the hospital in Ontario.”

  “Hospital?” Alejo asked. “What happened?”

  “We were kind of attacked,” Ashley said. “Well, she was.”

  “By who?” Brandon asked. Rage flamed behind his expression. “Is she hurt?”

  “A little. I don’t know.” Ashley swallowed. “I didn’t get to talk to her before Sherriff Paris took her. It was John Paris and Paul Miller. They tried to … drown her.”

  Brandon met Alejo’s eyes. Ashley watched their hearts break. She clenched and unclenched her fists.

  “Me and Logan were trying to find out who’s doing all of this. Who’s hurting people.”

  “And you landed on Alejo?” Brandon asked.

  “I’m so sorry.” Ashley shook her head. “I know it isn’t you. Me and Logan think it’s … we don’t know what it is. I don’t even think it’s human.”

  Brandon and Alejo were quiet again. They communicated in a silent language Ashley didn’t understand, then slowly nodded.

  “Come with us,” Alejo said.

  They exited the police station and crowded into the minivan, Brandon and Alejo in the front with Ashley in the back seat. The sky above the parking lot was speckled with faint starlight. Silence filled the tiny space, searing and thick.

  “Why do you think it’s not human?” Brandon asked.

  “I … we went out to the cabin a lot. The one across the lake. And we kept seeing things there.” Ashley swallowed hard. It was too late to skirt around the truth. “I’ve been seeing people that died. Tristan, Nick, Bug … they’ve been trying to tell me something. Logan told me you see them, too.”

  Alejo gave her a small smile. “No fun, is it?”

  “What does it mean?” Ashley asked. “If we can find out what the thing is that’s killing people, we can stop it. I just don’t know—”

  “We’ve been looking into the same thing this whole time,” Brandon said. “Tracking the same deaths. The same killer.”

  Alejo fixed his hair in the passenger-side mirror. “Maybe we should’ve swapped notes.”

  “What did you find?” Brandon asked.

  “It’s something to do with the cabin. I think the thing comes from there. When Logan … when she was underwater, I heard a voice saying we had to go back to where it all started. Maybe if we figure out how it started, we can get rid of it.”

  Alejo watched Brandon, but Brandon continued to stare out the windshield with a grimace. His eyes were wide, fingers clenched too tight around the steering wheel. “Finally,” he said, “something I can explain.”

  “Brandon,” Alejo warned.

  Brandon looked at Ashley and the shadows on his face were sharp as a knife. “The thing you’re looking for is called the Dark, and I created it.”

  35

  The Dead And The Dark

  1997

  Brandon Woodley was a ghost in his own life.

  Moontide Diner was unusually busy for a Sunday morning. Brandon sat in a red vinyl booth opposite his parents as they split a Moontide Breakfast. Like usual, they smiled at each other and ate in gross, contented silence. Brandon ate a singular waffle and wished his parents had just let him stay home. The diner radio played something upbeat and swingy. It smelled like hot grease and burned meat.

  “Baby, you don’t have to sit there all bored,” his mother said. She popped another bite of egg into her mouth. “Why don’t you talk to your friends over there? We’re just figuring out the move, anyway.”

  Brandon shrugged. He didn’t have friends. You had to be a person to have friends, and he was pretty sure he didn’t count. He was a shadow on the wall, a thought that never quite surfaced, a phantom of what a boy should be. He was like a stranger posted outside the room that the rest of the world lived in, and no matter how hard he pressed his fingers to the window, he wasn’t getting in.

  He wasn’t an outcast; he didn’t exist at all.

  Brandon looked across the diner anyway. In a booth identical to theirs, Tammy Barton and Alejo Ortiz shared their own Moontide Breakfast. They looked disgustingly happy together, a study in contrasts. Tammy’s hair was platinum blond and fell in loose curls down her back. Alejo’s hair was cropped close on the sides and, as always, he looked like the kind of person who meant it when he smiled. Frank Paris sat opposite them, shoulders broad as a brick wall.
He said something to Tammy and Alejo and all three of them erupted into laughter.

  That was the problem—they were too perfect to hate.

  Brandon’s mother frowned. She glanced across the diner at the golden trio and her expression hardened. “Well, I guess I’ll say hello.” Before Brandon had a chance to stop her, she waved across the diner to the other booth. “Tammy Barton, is that you?”

  The three teens stopped eating and looked over. Immediately, Tammy’s face lit up and she climbed out of her booth. “Mrs. Woodley, how are you?”

  “Doing just great. You?”

  “So great, Mrs. Woodley. I love that you guys go for family breakfast—it’s so cute. God, we haven’t caught up in forever.”

  Brandon looked at his plate.

  His mother reached out of the booth and pulled Tammy into an amiable side-hug. “I don’t think we’ve really caught up since I was your sitter. You’ve grown so much. How’s the ranch?”

  “You know, lots of cows.” Tammy clearly had no idea how her own ranch worked. And she didn’t have to yet. Her mother still ran the ranch—Tammy had a whole lifetime to learn. She turned around and motioned for Alejo and Frank to join her. “You guys know these two, right?”

  Alejo joined them with one of those smiles that went all the way up to his eyes, and Brandon’s heart sank. Alejo turned to Brandon’s father. “I haven’t met you, Mr. Woodley, but you taught my brother algebra. I love the boat shop.”

  “And it loves your business,” Brandon’s father mused. He sat a little taller in his seat, reaching out to give Alejo a firm handshake. There weren’t many people who still visited Woodley Fish and Boating. It was one of several things Brandon’s parents planned to sell before they left this town behind. “You all go to school with Brandon?”

  Tammy, Alejo, and Frank all turned their eyes on Brandon, and he wanted to fall through the floor. He took a deep breath, fixed his glasses, and extended his hand to Tammy to shake. Which was stupid, because he already knew her and this wasn’t an introduction.

  Tammy turned to his parents, button nose wrinkled up in a silent laugh. “Yeah, we know Brandon. He’s so funny.”

  “Hey, man,” Frank Paris said.

  “I don’t think you and me ever talked,” Alejo said, shaking Brandon’s hand with an easy smile as if socializing weren’t the hardest thing in the world. As if he weren’t everything Brandon wished he could be. “I see you around all the time, though. Hard to miss anyone in a class of twelve.”

  Brandon’s mother leaned across the table, nearly spilling her coffee in Brandon’s lap. “Kids, honestly, Brandon is painfully shy. I thought I’d call you over, make some introductions, see if I can get him out of the house. I know he could make some friends if he just branched out more. And you three are so nice.”

  Brandon thought his heart might stop. “Mom…”

  Tammy and Frank blinked at him, their expressions so full of pity it stung. But Alejo laughed, smooth and bright as running water. “Your mom is a killer wingwoman. You should take her everywhere.”

  Brandon’s mother smiled, graciously accepting the compliment.

  “Well, Brandon, you’re welcome to hang out with us whenever,” Tammy said. But her voice was hollow. She was already skipping ahead to when they got to sit back down and talk about how weird this was. How weird he was. She glanced over her shoulder at the half-eaten breakfasts on her table. “We better go before our food gets cold. It was so nice to catch up.”

  She and Frank made their way back across the diner.

  Alejo lingered a moment longer. He clapped Brandon on the back, then half turned to his table. “Seriously, let me know if you wanna hang.”

  “I will,” Brandon lied.

  He didn’t.

  It didn’t matter. Within the year, Alejo Ortiz left Snakebite for college in Seattle. Tammy Barton took over Barton Ranch. Frank Paris got a job with the Owyhee County police. Brandon’s parents moved to Portland to get away from “small-town politics.”

  And Brandon stayed in Snakebite because he didn’t know how to do anything but remain. He remained like a stone stuck to the bottom of a lake. Currents washed over him, rolling him haplessly against the muck, but never to shore. Never to the sun. It was easy this way. He imagined how simple it might be to walk into the trees and disappear. He would be a pinprick of disruption, and then he would be gone.

  His loneliness was a darkness. It spread over him like shadows at dusk. He felt it under the earth, under his skin, wrapped delicately around his bones. Snakebite held him in place.

  Because no matter what time unleashed on Snakebite, it would never change.

  Until Alejo Ortiz came home.

  2001

  For the first time in years, it was raining in Snakebite.

  Brandon squared his hips and kicked another log onto the industrial saw, smearing a mix of sweat and rain across his brow. While most of the other men in the yard shuffled to the shed to mingle and sort wood, Brandon kept running the saw. He preferred working, even in the rain.

  He preferred working alone.

  His parents had long since made good on their promise to get out of this place. They’d sold the store to a local—Gus Harrison—who’d reopened it as a pub. Brandon spent most nights tucked into a booth at the back of the Chokecherry. He pictured the old kayaks his father had nailed to the walls, now replaced by football jerseys and stuffed fish. The building had changed faces, but it was all the same.

  That was Snakebite; they painted over it, but it never changed.

  His parents had superficially offered to bring him along, but Brandon had decided to stay. He could only picture himself here. The dark, shadowed feeling that crept under his skin like ink blots on paper told him that this was where he needed to stay.

  If he was going to be lost, he might as well be lost in Snakebite.

  Barton Lumber fell quiet, pulling Brandon back to reality.

  Through the dust and the rain, Brandon could just make out the person who’d shocked the others into silence. The man stood just outside the woodshed dressed in an oversize sweater, straight-legged jeans, and a deep green parka. His hair was longer than Brandon remembered, tied in a low ponytail that ended just between his shoulder blades. He wiped the rain from his face and tenderly pulled a bundle of papers from under his sweater.

  The yard foreman approached Alejo cautiously and snatched the papers from his hands. Behind him, a handful of men stifled laughter. The foreman gave the papers a cursory look—not long enough to read even the first page—then shoved them back into Alejo’s chest.

  Brandon didn’t need to hear to understand what’d just happened.

  For a moment, Alejo stared at the group of men, all facing him like they hoped he’d retaliate. Like they hoped he’d make a scene. But he didn’t. Alejo’s shoulders slumped. He pocketed his papers and trudged out of the yard, away from the men, into the rain.

  Brandon’s heart came alive with a strange fear. For a reason he couldn’t pinpoint, it was like he knew Alejo. It wasn’t as though their brief talk in the diner had made them friends, but in the blur of his memories, Alejo stuck out. Brandon was different from the rest of Snakebite, a fact he was painfully aware of. He was different in a way that went deeper than being awkward, being poor, being quiet. He was different in a way Snakebite would never allow. But something told him Alejo might understand.

  He left the saw and scrambled down the ramp, through the muck, and farther into the rain. Outside Barton Lumber’s domineering wood fence, Alejo paused in the parking lot and stared up at the sky, letting thick drops of rain coat his face.

  “Hey,” Brandon called. “Hey, I’m sorry about that. They shouldn’t have … well, I don’t know what they said. But I’m sorry.”

  Alejo turned and cupped a hand over his brow, blinking away the rain. He was just how Brandon remembered. He cleared his throat and said, “I appreciate it.”

  Brandon held out a slightly damp hand. “Brandon Woodley.”


  “From the boat shop.” Alejo shook his hand. He smiled in the way a person smiled when they were waiting for a better explanation. “I always wanted to buy a boat there. Seems like lots of things are different around here now.”

  “I don’t know.” Brandon looked away from the yard toward town. “It feels about the same to me.”

  “Ah,” Alejo sighed. “Maybe I changed.”

  “What was that about?” Brandon asked, motioning back to the yard.

  “You didn’t hear?” Alejo mused. “Snakebite’s never seen a queer before. There’ll probably be a mob at the motel when I get back.”

  Brandon’s eyes widened. Before he’d left for college, Alejo Ortiz was Snakebite’s golden child. He had everything: perfect grades, a perfect girlfriend, a perfect life. He had a laugh that lit up a room. When people talked, he actually listened. Alejo was the promise of everything Snakebite should be. He was the kind of person Brandon wished he could be around. The kind of person Brandon wished he could become.

  Alejo looked different now. His expression was darker, like he was always one step from a frown. But his eyes were the same. His laugh made Brandon’s stomach drop.

  “Well,” Brandon said, “I think you’re really brave. That’s all.”

  “Cool.” Alejo’s expression soured. “Did you run out here just to tell me that?”

  “I…”

  The rain continued to fall around them, soaking the parking lot in a sheen of black. He wasn’t sure why he’d come out here. He could’ve just let Alejo leave. He didn’t need to stand here, soaking wet with his heart jumping up his throat. He’d always known he was different—he’d always known he was gay—but for the first time, he wasn’t alone. There was someone else like him. Someone who’d gone out into the world and come back alive.

  “Why did you come back?” Brandon asked.

  Alejo eyed him warily. “I can’t tell if you’re nosy or if you’re trying to tell me we, uh … have something in common.”

  Brandon took a deep breath. He was going to be brave. Just for once in his life, he was not going to roll under the tide. He was going to reach for the shore. “I just want to talk to you. I guess I have for a long time.”