by Val Crowe
She opened it right away.
Inside the cabin, she’d laid out a sleeping bag and an LED lantern. She had her cell phone laid out on the sleeping bag, plugged into a portable charger. “Deacon,” she said, smiling at me.
“Uh, I wanted to offer to bring out a mattress that I keep in the camper.” I pointed at the Airstream.
“Oh, that’s yours, huh?” She looked it over appraisingly. “I’m fine here.”
“Look that floor’s got to be hard and cold, not to mention the chance of splinters. It’s no big deal for me to go and get it.”
She shrugged. “Okay, fine. Thanks.”
“Sure,” I said.
I turned and started down the steps.
She called after me. “Hey, you get any service here?”
I halted and turned back. “No. Rylan didn’t tell you that it’s a dead zone out here? No cell service. You have to go all the way out to the other side of the bridge, I think.”
“Oh, that sucks,” she said. “Guess there’s no point in charging my phone, then.”
Probably not, I supposed. “I’ll be right back.”
She nodded.
I walked through the darkness to the Airstream. I could hear the sounds of the forest. Insects calling to each other, leaves rustling. It was starting to get chilly. I huddled inside my shirt, and then I stepped into the Airstream.
With no electricity, it was dark inside. I had some battery-powered lights that I used, though. I tapped one that was above the counter in the kitchen.
Mads was leaning against the counter there.
“Hey,” I said.
“You’re giving her a mattress?”
I let out breath, regarding her for several moments, not even sure how to react. Then I pushed past her to go get the mattress. “You’re spying on me again?”
“Oh, come on, Deacon, you know I’m always around, watching.”
“Do I know that?” I said. The mattress folded up and stored behind the table. I yanked it out and maneuvered it toward the door. It wasn’t really designed to be taken out of the Airstream. I had made the thing myself, though, so it would do whatever it was I needed it to do.
“Yes.”
“Whatever,” I said. I thought it was rich, really. She was jealous, when she was the one telling me there could never be anything between us and trying to wear clothes that covered her from head to toe. I grunted as I angled the bed toward the door. “You can’t have it both ways, you know.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Fine,” I said, pushing open the door.
“Fine,” she said.
Now, I was in a shitty mood. I dragged the mattress back over to Dominique, who was impressed. “This looks great. It’ll be much more comfortable than sleeping on the floor. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” I said. “Not a problem.” I started to leave.
“Have you always seen ghosts?” Dominique asked.
“Not always,” I said. “Something happened when I was a kid. It changed me.” I cocked my head to one side. “How about you?”
“Yeah, pretty much always. When I was a little kid, it was really worrisome for my mother. She thought I was schizophrenic or something. I learned how to ignore them enough that she would stop worrying.”
I hooked my fingers into my belt loops. “Must have been tough. I find them hard to ignore, and I’m not a little kid.”
She shrugged. “Practice makes perfect, I guess.”
I backed out of the door. “I should, uh, go, I guess.”
“You’re a little jumpy, Deacon,” said Dominique, looking me over.
“I’m not,” I said. “Uh, good night.”
I went down the steps of her cabin and back into the Airstream.
Mads was sitting on the bed. “She’s gorgeous.”
I yanked my shirt over my head and threw it at her.
Mads dissipated in black smoke and then reappeared a second later, glaring at me.
I glared at her too.
She licked her lips. She scooted over the bed until she was right at the edge. She lifted her hands and reached out until her fingers were a fraction of a inch above my bare skin.
I sucked in breath.
And then she disappeared again. This time she didn’t reappear.
* * *
I had a hard time getting to sleep that night for whatever reason. Maybe it was Mads, who was giving me whiplash, or maybe it was being out in this strange place. Maybe it was Dominique, who I couldn’t figure out.
She was gorgeous, as Mads said, but there was tension between Dominique and I, and not the girl-and-guy kind. Something else. Something that had to do with our respective connections to the supernatural. I really got the impression that girl knew more than she was letting on. I didn’t know what I was going to do to find out about what she knew, however.
Before, I’d pictured her as some innocent, doe-eyed flower or something. I thought I could just pull the wool over her eyes and get her to give up all the information I needed. I guessed I thought of her that way because my mother had described her from those pictures when she was a little girl. It made me think of her as small and young and in need of protection. Now, I was pretty sure that Dominique was just as dangerous as Negus himself. I didn’t think that it was a good thing that I had brought her here.
When I did fall asleep, I had bad dreams about that creepy cabin in the video that Dominique made. The wood itself seemed to be sighing and whispering to me, telling me things I didn’t want to hear, unspeakable secrets.
In the dream, I turned and ran from it, thrashing through the woods, desperate to get free. I fought through the trees and underbrush until I came to a clearing.
Our clearing. Where the cabins were all set up in the shadowy light of early dusk. They looked hollowed and empty. Ancient and knowing.
Dominique was sitting on the steps of one of the cabins, leaning her head back against the post that held up the porch. She was pale and still, clad in a dark dress that flowed down over the steps and brushed the tall grass next to the steps. A fly crawled out of her mouth and up towards her ear.
Was she dead?
No.
She moved.
She turned to look at me and her pupils had swallowed her irises. Just gaping twin pools of black emptiness there, calling out to me.
I backed away from her, and I hurried to the next cabin. I clambered up the steps and banged on the door. There was no answer, so I pulled it open. Inside, there in the darkness, were Scout and Cat. They had an air mattress, too, but it wasn’t like the fancy double-height one that Rylan had. This was just a small mattress on the ground.
Scout was getting up out of the bed. He fumbled on the ground for his glasses.
“Sorry,” I said to him. “It’s Dominique. I had to get away from her.”
Scout didn’t answer me. He didn’t acknowledge that I was there. He found his glasses and put them on his face.
Cat rolled over, making a sleepy sound.
Scout got to his feet. He slipped into his shoes, but didn’t bother to tie them.
“Babe?” said Cat from the bed.
“I’m going out to take a piss,” he said back in a soft voice. “Stay asleep. I’ll be back.” And then he walked—right through me—out the door.
I looked down at myself, and the panic that I had felt earlier in the dream doubled. What had happened? Why had he gone through me? What if…? What if this wasn’t a dream, and I was somehow dead? Maybe I was a ghost and—
I wasn’t in the cabin anymore. I seemed to be attached to Scout. I was bobbing along behind him, like a balloon on a string.
He was going into the woods, flashlight bouncing ahead of him. He stopped and put the flashlight into his mouth while he adjusted his pajama pants.
Okay, seriously? I looked up at the night sky. What kind of a dream was this? Why was I dreaming about watching another dude piss in the woods? I was fairly good at psychoan
alyzing myself sometimes, but this? I had nothing.
Finished, Scout turned to go back to the cabin.
There was a noise from deeper into the woods, like the sound of a branch breaking. Probably an animal of some kind. But I was already freaked out, and the sound sent a splinter of adrenaline through me.
Scout seemed to react the same way, turning in the direction of the noise. He raised his flashlight, but his flashlight was shaking.
There was nothing to see. The woods was dense and full of growth, even at this point of the fall.
Scout waited for several moments, looking around warily.
All the while, my heart beat furiously in my chest. Assuming I still had a chest that was. We were leaving aside the fact that Scout had gone right through my chest.
It’s a dream, I told myself. Great, so I was having another lucid dream. Well, the last time I’d had lucid dreams was at Point Oakes, and that hadn’t turned out so well. The idea of it being a dream wasn’t exactly calming.
And what if it wasn’t a dream? What if—
A figure emerged from the woods behind Scout. I could make out that it was male, and that it had extremely broad shoulders. I couldn’t make out his face, but he seemed to be bearded and his hair hung shaggily over the tops of his ears. He was holding a gleaming serrated knife, and he was heading right for Scout.
“Watch out!” I yelled.
Scout didn’t hear me. He just kept walking.
And then the figure with the knife came up behind him and drove the knife right into Scout’s back. It went under his ribs and came out the other side.
Scout let out a strangled yell.
The figure clapped a hand over Scout’s mouth. He stabbed him again.
CHAPTER FIVE
I awoke with a start, bright sunlight streaming in the windows of the Airstream.
Immediately, I bounded out of bed, climbed out of the Airstream, and ran across the clearing to the cabin where Scout and Cat were sleeping. I didn’t bother banging on the door, I just threw it open.
Cat sat up in the bed, obviously just having been awoken. “What the hell?”
“Where’s Scout?” I demanded.
“He…” She looked at the place next to her on the bed. It was empty.
“Damn it,” I muttered, rushing out of the cabin and down the steps. I started to head into the woods, down the path that I remembered having gone down with Scout in the dream I had, but I realized that I was barefoot. “Damn it,” I said again and ran back for the Airstream.
Dominique came out onto the porch of her cabin and looked me up and down. She raised her eyebrows.
I was only wearing my pajama pants, since I hadn’t bothered with putting on a shirt after throwing mine at Mads last night. Where the hell was Mads, anyway? She might know what to do about Scout. She might know if that dream I’d had meant something.
“Mads?” I called when I entered the Airstream.
Nothing.
Whatever. I yanked on a shirt and put my feet into my boots sans socks. Then I stalked back across the clearing to the path next to Cat’s and Scout’s cabin.
Cat was at the bottom of the steps, her shoes on. Together, we started down the path. Cat was babbling about how she remembered that Scout had gotten up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, but she didn’t remember him coming back, and what did I think had happened anyway—
There.
Scout was lying face down on a bed of dry leaves. There was blood everywhere.
“Fuck,” I murmured. Were we in time? He obviously had paid no mind to the little PSA that Rylan had given the night before about mind-over-mattering the ghost’s tricks away. I knelt next to him. Distantly, I was aware that Cat was screaming.
Maybe I should have felt for a pulse, but I just turned him over instead.
He grunted.
Alive.
I let out a relieved breath. “Hey, come on, Scout. It’s not real.”
His eyes opened in slits. “What?”
“It’s not real,” I said again. “The ghost stabbed you, but ghosts can’t stab you. They can only trick you. Your own mind is doing this to you. Come on, snap out of it.”
Scout grunted again. He shut his eyes.
“Scout,” I said in my most stern voice.
But in a second, he was sitting up, and all the blood was gone, and he was fine. He touched his chest, breathing hard. “Holy shit, that is so weird.”
Cat was sobbing. She fell down on the floor of the forest and grabbed Scout, holding him tightly.
“Hey, it’s cool, babe,” Scout said, but his voice wasn’t strong.
I dragged a hand over my face. Now that I knew he was all right, I was angry. “Didn’t you hear what Rylan said last night at the campfire? And don’t go off on your own again, either.”
“I was just taking a leak,” said Scout.
“Not by yourself,” I growled.
Cat looked up at me. “I think we should leave.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “This isn’t a party. It’s not a fun trip. When ghosts get close to me, they get nasty.”
Together, they got to their feet. Arm in arm, they headed back to the cabins. I walked behind them, shaking my head. Honestly, I was beginning to think this whole trip had been a bad idea.
When we got back to the cabins, Dominique was working on getting the fire burning. “Who wants coffee?” she called cheerily.
“We’re leaving,” Cat announced.
“What?” came Alice’s voice from the doorway of her cabin.
“You don’t understand,” said Cat, who wouldn’t let go of Scout. “Scout got stabbed.”
“He looks fine to me,” said Alice, gesturing at Scout, whose only sign of anything amiss was a few leaves in his dreads.
“Well, he is now,” said Cat, “but he was bleeding to death.”
“It was all in his head,” I said. “Remember, ghosts can only trick you.”
“That’s dangerous advice,” said Dominique, who was bent over the fire, blowing on the coals, trying to get them to catch some dead leaves and twigs.
I strode over to her and stood at the edge of the campfire circle. “Yeah? What do you know about it? What are you doing to this place?”
She stood up. “Me? What are you doing? Everything you touch seems to wake things up here. And whatever’s waking up has an appetite.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “I’m not doing anything. I can’t help what happens around me.”
“What makes you think I can?” she said. “I’m warning you.” She raised her voice. “I’m warning all of you. It might not be a trick next time.”
“What do you mean?” Cat rushed over.
Dominique turned to her. “Exactly what I said. Ghosts like this, vengeful spirits, they can be stuck in violent loops. And next time, they could do real damage, hurt someone, even kill someone.”
“We are so leaving.” Cat’s voice was shaking.
Alice was now coming across the clearing to intercept Cat. “I don’t want to go yet. We came in my car, or did you forget? I have to blog about this, remember?”
“Oh, screw your stupid blog,” said Cat. “Since when are you too good to work food service like the rest of us?”
“I do work food service. You know that,” said Alice, voice rising. “But I don’t want to do it forever.”
“Well, no one’s going to work anything if we all die out here,” said Cat. “I’m sorry, but I’m not calling your mother and telling her that you died because you needed to blog.” She started back towards the cabin she was sharing with Scout. “I’m packing up.”
Scout spread his hands. “Babe. I’m fine.”
Dominique arched an eyebrow. Then she knelt back down and blew on the coals. The flames suddenly sprang to life.
* * *
By the time that Jonah and Kennely were awake and Mundy and Rylan were out of their cabin, things had devolved into shouting between Alice and Cat. Cat was insistent that they
leave. Alice didn’t want to go. She refused to let Cat and Scout borrow her car. She was adamant that she was staying.
Rylan had Jonah and Dominique with cameras—small, black cylinders with swivel screens and boom mics attached—filming all of this. Afterward, they split us up to talk to the cameras about what had gone down.
Dominique interviewed me. I had a cup of coffee that she had brewed, and I was still in my pajamas. I probably looked like hell. I sat on one of the logs around the campfire and answered her questions.
“Do you have dreams like that very often?” Dominique was saying from behind the camera.
“No, never,” I said. I hadn’t told her that she’d featured in my dream earlier. I didn’t see how that was relevant. I wasn’t even sure why I was consenting to have all this filmed. This was going to be released to the public on the internet where anyone could see.
“It’ll probably help her if you put the question in the answer,” said Dominique. “Like, ‘No, I don’t ever have prophetic dreams.’”
“I don’t think it was prophetic. I think I saw it while it was happening,” I said. I took a drink of my coffee. It wasn’t very strong, and I was going to need another cup.
“If you never have dreams like that, how’d you know this one was real?”
“I didn’t know it was real. I hoped it wasn’t. I hoped that I’d go into their cabin and Scout would be there, fine,” I said. “But he wasn’t, so I went looking for him in the woods.”
“Right,” said Dominique.
“Hey, can I ask you a question?” I said.
“Well, that might be strange,” she said. “You want to put the camera on me?”
I rolled my eyes. “It doesn’t have to be on camera.”
“I bet Rylan would want it on camera.”
“Well, who cares?” I said.
“I bet Rylan would care.”
“Look, why do you keep saying that stuff about ghosts being able to actually hurt people? What do you know?”
She sighed. And then she switched the camera off and set it down next to her on the bench. “When I was a kid, okay, there was a babysitter I had. I didn’t like her. She wasn’t a very good babysitter.”