From the depths of the forest, Neena whooped.
Josie smiled. She developed a routine—darting back and forth between preparing the curry and tending to the fire. It was nerve-wracking how quickly the flames wanted to die out, and it seemed silly to use the stove when they already had a fire. But to use the fire, they would have also needed a grill to lay across the rocks.
It was ridiculous how much gear was required for roughing it.
The sensation of falling light barely lingered on the fringes of Deep Fork, just beyond their shelter of pines. Neena’s headlamp bobbed like a lantern through the dark and quiet trees. Periodically she would stop to unload another bundle of sticks.
“That smells good,” she said on her final deposit.
Josie glowed in agreement. The little stove hissed, sending up threads of rising smoke. After dividing their dinner between two bowls, she lowered herself into a chair, closed her eyes, and groaned. Neena chorused beside her.
“I am never getting up,” Josie said.
“Mmm,” Neena said in agreement.
The girls ate ravenously, teeth and tongues and fingers and sporks. Every scrap was devoured. Neena’s parents were from Kolkata, and her mother’s Bengali cooking had been keeping Josie fed for years. She loved it. The pleasurable tear of tender meat, the nutty tang from the mustard seeds, the warming heat from the green chilis. Normally, she would have killed for a side of chapati, but she was so famished that flatbread didn’t matter. Lamb curry had never tasted so delectable.
The remaining water was wedged between their chairs, and Josie reached down for a sip. Neena was already glugging from the bottle.
“Hey,” Josie said.
Neena’s body slunk like guilty dog. She handed it over. “I know, I know.”
The water was tepid but refreshing. Josie drank mindfully. They needed enough to wash the dishes and brush their teeth—with an emergency ration still left over at bedtime.
Neena’s headlamp vanished with a faint tick. Feeling for the rubber button, Josie clicked hers off, too. Absolute night cloaked the forest. The cool mountain air smelled like woodsmoke and evergreens. Josie inhaled deeply. Her body grew heavy and relaxed. Her gaze zoned out, inert, at the fire. The flames crackled, hot and hypnotic. Smoke billowed in phantasmagoric shrouds.
“We did it,” Neena said after several minutes. Her voice was thick and slow.
“Yep. We did.”
“One day down. Two to go.”
Josie managed to laugh. So did Neena. They lacked the energy to set their empty bowls on the ground. The insects chirred, the fire spit.
Josie bit her lip. “Are you worried about tomorrow?”
“Nah. We’ve got this.” Neena hoped she sounded reassuring, but undercut her own confidence a few beats later. “At least it’s not uphill. That was the worst part.”
“Definitely.”
“And our return on Wednesday will be downhill.”
“Wednesday.”
The word enveloped Neena in the same melancholia. Wednesday meant the end. “Hump Day,” she trilled, because it was such an odious phrase.
But Josie didn’t laugh. The mood didn’t lighten.
“It sucks that we’re so close to the summit, but we won’t even get to see it,” Josie said. The top of Frazier Mountain was only a mile and a half away, but the trail to reach it was separate from the Wade Harte.
Neena frowned into the snickering fire. Still wanting to help. “Maybe we could hit it on the way back. We could stash our packs here so the climb wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Maybe that’s what the other campers did.”
Though they hadn’t discussed them since arriving at the campsite, Neena and Josie remained keenly aware of their neighbors. Neighbor? Simultaneously, the girls wondered if the other tent belonged to one person or two. They glanced up the slope, but the pitch black had long since swallowed the yellow gold.
An earsplitting crack exploded across the clearing.
The girls jumped and shrieked, but it was only the fire. They glanced at each other and finally started laughing again, punchy and shaken and tired. Their former classmates would have been partying by now, swapping ghost stories and urban legends. Or was that only kids’ stuff? Josie supposed they’d be drinking beer and smoking weed, but she had a better idea. She revealed a small Ziploc packed with something else entirely.
Neena perked up. “Marshmallows! I thought—”
“I refuse to let you move away without tasting a proper s’more.”
The ingredients were yet another thing Win had told them not to bring, which Josie had ignored to the detriment of her own back. But it was criminal that Neena had only ever made s’mores in a microwave. She tossed the bag to Neena and followed it with a bar of dark chocolate. The graham crackers had been padded inside a shirt to prevent breakage. Josie selected two sticks of scrubby underbrush from the reject pile, lounged back into her seat, and held a skewered marshmallow toward the fire.
“I like mine nearly burnt,” she said.
“You’re the best,” Neena said. “I thought we were going without dessert tonight.”
“Bite your tongue.”
After a leisurely minute toasting the sugary pillows, Neena’s forehead creased. “So . . . remind me. How does the chocolate melt?”
Josie’s brow folded into an identical frown. Years had passed since she’d made a s’more, and it had been with her parents’ help. “Huh.”
“Do we cook it on a separate stick?”
That didn’t seem right, but Josie couldn’t think of another way. She held Neena’s stick while Neena procured two more, pronged this time. Balancing the graham crackers on the pronged ends, the girls topped each with a square of chocolate. Immediately, Josie’s dropped into the fire. They erupted with more laughter, and she tried again, concentrating on steadying her exhausted arms.
Again into the fire. Their laughter grew loose and giggly.
Neena examined her chocolate, which had scarcely melted, and her marshmallow, which was golden brown. “Screw it. I’m going in.” She made a sandwich and took a bite. Her eyes closed with hedonistic delight. “Yes,” she said through a stuffed, sticky mouth. Yeth. “Oh!” Her eyes leapt open in surprise. “The chocolate is melting from the heat of the marshmallow.”
Tears of laughter pricked Josie’s eyes as she motioned toward the pronged stick. “I knew this was too hard.”
“I bet milk chocolate would melt even faster.”
“I actually remembered my dad using milk chocolate, but I brought dark—”
“Because dark is better.”
“Exactly. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I love it. My first proper s’more!” Neena’s shout reverberated throughout the forest, and Josie admonished her, still giggling. Like the boy earlier on the trail, Neena adopted the voice of a hackneyed redneck. “Quit yer worrying, girl. Ain’t nobody gonna hear us, not all the way out—”
She cut herself off. Her eyes darted to the woods.
Josie’s spine froze along its full length. The fire popped. Insects rattled. Josie glanced at Neena—overly stiff and riveted to the tree line—and then flopped back into her seat. Flush with embarrassment, she tried to hide her anger. “Ha ha.”
Without detaching her gaze, Neena lowered her voice. “Something is out there.”
“Smokey, right? Ooh, or is it Brother Bear?”
“Shh!”
The shush was piercing. Josie’s sinews tightened. Neena nodded toward the darkness ahead of them. “What is it?” Josie whispered.
“I don’t know. Something . . . large.”
They listened. Waited. With a thumping chest, Josie silently set down her twig. The burning marshmallow sank into the pine needles. Her hands gripped onto each other, her knuckles whitened. She twisted her stone ring.
; Neena’s eyes widened with terror. “There!”
“Where?” Josie hissed.
“You didn’t hear that?”
Josie turned frantic. “Hear what? What is it?”
“There. There it is again!” Neena bolted up. Her chair tipped backward and clashed to the forest floor. “Oh my God! Oh my God!”
Josie vaulted to her feet, hands clawing for Neena. She screamed.
“OW,” NEENA SAID, prying Josie’s fingers from her arm.
Confusion flickered within Josie’s dilated pupils as Neena burst into cackling laughter. Stunned, Josie was forced to reorient herself. Outrage swiftly replaced fright. “I knew it. I knew it!” Humiliation scorched Josie’s cheeks. “God, you’re such a bitch. Why do you always do that? When are you gonna learn shit like that isn’t funny?”
“Oh, come on. That was pretty funny.”
“No. It wasn’t. There really are things out there, and we’re alone. In the middle of nowhere.”
Neena’s tone corroded with derision. “Not the bears again.”
“I’m not making them up! They fucking live out here!”
“Yeah, and your yelling is scaring them all away.” The instant it left her mouth, Neena wished she could take it back. She knew she shouldn’t have tricked Josie even before she’d done it. But now she was already caught in the loop. “I don’t know why you’re so scared of them, anyway, when it’s people you should be worried about.”
“Do you see any other people around here?”
“Do you see any bears?”
Tears sprung to Josie’s eyes. She fought them. “Fuck you.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Maybe I should be afraid of people. Maybe I should be afraid of you. It’s not like mass shooters hang out in the woods.” Josie spread her arms in a wide and fuming gesture. “No masses.”
Neena shoved the barb aside. “I’m not talking about mass shooters. I’m talking about serial killers.”
“Please.” Josie stomped toward her pack. “Son of Sam, Zodiac, the Osborne Slayer—yeah, they’re all hiding out there, waiting to get us. Should I also be worried about the Slender Man or some other creepypasta bullshit? What about that guy with the hook?”
“Actually . . .” Neena said, her inner voice battling with itself, pleading that she didn’t have to prove her point. Shouting that it would be cruel to force any more horrific stories into Josie’s head. “Tons of crimes have been committed in national forests. Cary Stayner in Yosemite. David Carpenter, the Trailside Killer.” The examples burst forth, unwanted, like pop-up ads. Neena’s father was a lawyer who investigated claims of innocence for wrongful conviction cases. Neena knew a lot about the worst humanity had to offer. “Israel Keyes. That guy was really messed up. He hid kill kits in rural areas all across the country—”
“I don’t want to know—”
“Gary Michael Hilton! They literally called him the National Forest Serial Killer. When we were kids, he killed a man and woman right here in Pisgah, right in this area—”
“Why would you tell me this?”
“He’s in prison now, but do you remember that group of hikers who went missing a couple of years ago near Hot Springs? Two girls and a guy. They were found murdered only a week later.” Hot Springs was a rural town located in a distant area of Pisgah. It wasn’t close enough to be a concern, but it was close enough for Neena to make her point. “The guy’s body was untouched, but the girls had rope burns around their wrists and ankles.”
Josie looked up from digging through her pack. The shovel was clenched in her hand. “Four hikers went missing.” Win and his friends had volunteered in the massive search party. “The other boyfriend was never found, and they think he’s still on the run. The crime was personal. Not random. And I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Fine. Enough.” Josie was crying as she fled away, gait limping, with the shovel and a handful of toilet paper. “Are you happy now?”
No, Neena wasn’t happy.
The moon was sliced neatly down the center, half in darkness, half in light. It was close, and it blotted out any additional starlight that she had been expecting. No more glimmered here than what she might have seen in her own backyard. Perhaps they were still too close to Asheville’s electric glow. But this place didn’t look like home as Josie’s headlamp switched on and teetered between the skeletal shadows of pines.
Neena shuddered. Maybe it had been easier to attack Josie’s weaknesses than to face her own. But just because Neena didn’t like the darkness didn’t mean she couldn’t handle it. She grabbed a sanitary pad and some toilet paper from the smushed roll and then shuffled off in the opposite direction. Not wanting another scolding, she made sure to walk far enough away from their tent. According to Josie, the scent of urine appealed to bears because it carried the smell of whatever food the human had recently eaten.
The ground crunched underneath her boots. Neena’s lamp only illuminated enough to see one step at a time. The unlit woods meant that the summer fireflies—the only cheerful denizens of the night—were already gone for the season. But, away from the campfire, the mosquitos thickened. She swatted them sightlessly into her bare arms.
The missing and murderous boyfriend lurched into her mind. Until Josie had mentioned him, Neena had forgotten that he was a part of the story, but now it was easy to imagine him hiking south into these woods. She had to remind herself how unlikely that actually was. No doubt he’d hitched a ride somewhere or was hiding out at a friend’s house. Or was still hiding up near Hot Springs. Why hadn’t she been able to stop herself from trying to scare Josie? She had only angered Josie, and she had scared herself, instead. Her muscles ached as badly as her conscience.
At least she still didn’t need the shovel. Not yet.
After finishing, Neena returned to the fire. It had already weakened in the short time since they’d stopped feeding it. She burned the toilet paper and debated tossing the bloodied pad into the low flames with it, but the material was probably plastic or something awful like that, so she stuffed it into the trash bag inside the bear canister.
The cold night slithered over her. She rubbed her itchy, bitten arms and leaned toward the waning heat. The pit belched out a caustic cloud. Eyes stinging, she gasped soundlessly, determined not to alert Josie to her mistake. Josie would know better than to stick her face into the smoke. Neena blinked through the rush of tears.
Where was Josie? She strained to hear the shovel against earth.
The fire crackled and snapped.
“Josie?” she called out.
She waited a few seconds.
“Josie?” Her voice rose. “Is everything okay?”
Neena dabbed at her burning eyes with her shirtsleeve, which was salty and stiff from dried sweat. Fear gnawed. She couldn’t see Josie’s headlamp. What if, in her anger, Josie had walked too far? What if she was lost? All Neena knew about getting lost in the woods was that you were supposed to stay put until someone found you. Her parents had told her that when she was a child. But did the same strategy apply to adults? They had packed an emergency whistle, but Neena doubted Josie had taken it with her. Should she rouse the strangers in the yellow-gold tent to help her search? What if the murderous boyfriend was out there? What if he was in the tent?
She yelled Josie’s name again.
“Yeah?” a distant voice called back.
Neena’s arms curled around her stomach. She felt embarrassed at how quick she’d been to panic. A lamp bobbed into view. It approached slowly, bumpily, through the dark forest. Like being blinded by an oncoming car’s brights, she couldn’t see Josie herself until she finally stepped into the firelight. She looked broken. Depleted.
“I thought you were lost,” Neena said.
Josie tossed the shovel to the ground. “No.�
��
Worried that it might have sounded like she was suggesting a flaw in Josie’s navigational skills, Neena lied. “I got turned around out there, too. How are your feet doing?”
Josie gave a morose shrug but then sharpened with an accusatory thought. “Did you remember to bury—”
“I burned it. And I put the pad in the trash.”
“Ugh, that reminds me. We need to get rid of the canister.”
“No problem,” Neena said. But as she tried to add their empty bowls to the canister, Josie harped again.
“You have to wash them off first.”
“I thought we were running low on water.”
“Yeah, but we still have to wash them off. They’ll get gross. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted you to be careful with the water.”
Neena swallowed her irritation because she was still paying penance. They poured a splash of water into each bowl and scrubbed them with their sporks. When Josie grew agitated that hers wasn’t spotless, Neena physically removed it from her hands. “It’s fine,” Neena said, packing away the dishes and screwing the lid shut. “Good enough.”
Expecting Josie to snap back, Neena felt even worse when Josie remained silent. On the ground between them lay the remnants of Josie’s s’more. The shame sunk in deeper. With a timid voice, Neena asked, “Would you like a new one?”
Josie broke off the stick ends that had touched the food and tossed them into the fire. “No,” she said. The graham cracker, chocolate square, and marshmallow followed.
The flames burned and swallowed them.
Neena slunk away with the canister, which had to be placed far from their tent for safety. At least it wasn’t a bear bag, which she would have had to hoist into a tree. She had no idea how she would have managed that alone.
The Woods Are Always Watching Page 6