by Val Crowe
Dominique pushed the camera close.
“No,” said Rylan, looking up at her. “Don’t. Not this. Don’t film this.”
Dominique hesitated, and then she stowed the camera. She knelt down next to Rylan and, business-like, picked up Scout’s wrist. She felt around for a few moments and then dropped his wrist. She put her hand up to Scout’s nose, feeling for breath. Then she dropped back, her shoulders slumping. “I’m not a doctor, you know, but I think…”
“No,” said Cat, sobbing even harder.
Dominique looked up at her. “You had to suspect—”
“No.” Cat’s voice was so loud it echoed.
“Shh,” said Alice. “He’ll hear you.”
I passed a hand over my face. I felt ill and faint and unsure of anything. Just recently, I’d been at Point Oakes, and a man named Oscar had killed himself. I’d found his body, but by then, the spirits in the place had started to influence me, and I hadn’t really felt the effect of the man’s death, not until later, and it had been blunted by then.
Now, here, the force of this, it was… there weren’t words.
“Should we move him?” I whispered.
“We can’t leave him,” said Cat.
“Maybe he’s still alive,” I said softly. “None of us can be sure. Maybe if we move him we’ll hurt him worse.”
“We can’t leave him,” said Cat again.
“Okay,” I said.
* * *
I needed to carry most of the weight of Scout’s body, though I had help from the others, who took turns holding his feet as we carried him back to the campground.
I hoisted him under his armpits, however, and his not-exactly-warm head lolled against my chest, and it was awful. He was bloody and clammy, and he smelled like dead flesh.
I knew he was dead, and I knew he was a person I’d been talking to just hours before. But carrying him was abhorrent and heavy. The longer I carried him, the more I thought of him as a sticky, messy, smelly object.
And I didn’t want to think that way about him. I wanted to have respect for the dead. Instead, I was tired and sweaty, and the muscles in my arms ached, and the stench seemed to have seeped into my nostrils.
By now it was late afternoon. The shadows were long, and there was a cold wind whistling through the trees.
As we carried Scout, we all realized that what we were carrying was a body. There was no life left in him. He was gone. Because of that, I insisted we leave the body outside the campground area. Cat didn’t like it, and I didn’t explain it to her in graphic terms, but I knew that there was nothing that would be good about having the body close. In fact, it was meat. I could draw scavengers out of the woods. Maybe just birds, but maybe there could be worse things. And eventually the smell would be oppressive.
We’d be gone by then, though, I hoped. We’d be coming back with the police to get his body and give him a proper burial. Everyone else would be safe.
I would have liked it if we could have simply left right then.
But I knew it wasn’t happening.
For one thing, when we got back, those we’d left behind seemed to have been afflicted with the same sort of thing that had happened before. They hadn’t packed a darned thing and had spent the whole time “hanging out” in the cabins. I suspected they’d been sitting in the cabins staring at the walls, switched off by the ghost somehow. I mean, I’d never seen anything like that before, but I’d seen a lot of bad stuff, and that was definitely within the wheelhouse of a powerful ghost.
This ghost had uprooted a tree and thrown it, so…
There was always a chance that hadn’t happened, that it was all in our heads and that the ghost was just tricking us. I really hoped that was it. But no matter what, Scout was still gone. That seemed to be real.
I had tried everything I could think of to think our way out of the situation, and I had urged the others to do as well. It simply wasn’t working.
Dominique assured us that these ghosts could affect us, that she somehow gave them that ability.
Anyway, about leaving. We weren’t packed, so that was a strike against us.
Additionally, Cat was a mess. Understandably. She was in shock and she couldn’t stop crying. She wasn’t in any shape to walk anywhere.
As for the rest of us, maybe Dominique, Rylan, and I could have rallied. The others were also tired and frightened and hungry. They were a mess too. And, hell, I wasn’t doing well myself.
Rylan, well, she’s the toughest woman I think I’ve ever met. I wouldn’t insult her to say that there was anything she couldn’t handle.
And nothing seemed to faze Dominique, who was calmly filming everything again.
I did have to admit that I was tired too, and that I had gotten the worst of the blood and sweat and smell of what was left of Scout on me. If I’d had any kind of power in the Airstream, I would have fired up the shower, but my batteries were all as dead as the one in my car, and the generator wouldn’t start. I had to settle for cleaning off as best I could with cold water. And once that was done, I didn’t have a lot of energy for anything.
So.
We were staying another night in the camping area.
There was no drinking of alcohol this evening, even though I thought maybe Cat could use a shot. She refused it. We didn’t make a campfire either.
But we did need to eat, so we assembled some sandwiches and ate them, washing them down with water. All of us huddled close.
We talked about how we were going to sleep that night.
Kenelly, who had helped us wrap Scout’s body in his sleeping bag and been crying a lot, said that no one should sleep alone.
Dominique and I both objected to this, claiming we’d be fine on our own. There was some push back, even Rylan managed to summon some weak dig about Dominique and I bunking up together, but it fell flat, and I think she could see that. Alice agreed she would stay in the cabin with Cat. Dominique and I said we would each take turns keeping watch throughout the night, and then everyone was volunteering to take a shift.
Well, except Cat, who wasn’t in any shape to do anything.
Everyone was taking it all surprisingly at face value. I had expected someone to be yelling about how it wasn’t actually a ghost, but some guy out there pretending to be a ghost.
Maybe we all realized that it didn’t really matter whether it was a ghost or not. We were in danger. End of story.
All of us were exhausted from the days’ events, so we retired to our cabins pretty much right after the sun went down. We planned to get up early and get out of there.
We’d hike down to the other bridge and then we’d go across it and hike out of this place to civilization. We’d send someone back for Scout’s body. Hopefully, we’d get to a place where we had cell service sooner rather than later. It would work. It had to work.
CHAPTER NINE
Dominique and I helped Alice with Cat.
Alice was trying to convince Cat to take something to help her sleep.
“No,” said Cat. “I can’t take that.”
“It’s just Benadryl,” said Alice. “It’ll knock you out, and you need your rest. After everything that’s happened today—”
“No,” said Cat, turning to me pleadingly. “It’s stupid for me to be groggy, isn’t it? What if we have to run?”
Well, she had a point. “I think you should go ahead and take it, Cat. Take it anyway. We’ll keep watch.”
“And you’ll fight him off?” said Cat. “He’s already dead. What are you going to do? We don’t even have weapons.”
“We need to find a way to cleanse this place of spiritual energy,” said Dominique to me.
“You can do that?” said Cat.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Yes,” said Dominique.
“Well, why didn’t you do that already?” said Alice, glaring at us. “Before Scout was killed? I mean, when you saw what had happened to him last night—”
“I tried to get us ou
t of here,” I said, glaring at her. “You’re the one who wanted to stay.”
Alice’s face fell.
“Leave her alone,” said Cat. “It’s not her fault.” She flopped back onto her sleeping bag and closed her eyes. She wouldn’t sleep on the air mattress that she had shared with Scout. Said it was too weird.
“If I hadn’t been such a bitch, though,” said Alice. “Maybe then—”
“It probably wouldn’t have made a difference,” said Dominique. “It wanted to keep us here, and with the power of Deacon and me ramping everything up, this probably would have happened anyway. Listen, to stop this, we need to understand Josiah.” She turned to Alice. “You said that he thought of his family as possessions, and that he killed them because he was killing himself anyway, and they were extensions of that.”
“Well, that’s a theory,” said Alice. “How do we use that?”
“I don’t know,” said Dominique. She turned to me.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.
“Scout can’t be dead,” said Cat. She sat back up. “It can’t be true. I can’t live in that world. How am I supposed to do that? I always talked to him before bed. If we weren’t together, we’d call or text. He should be sending me a text right now, telling me to sleep tight. He’s never going to do that again, is he?” And she crumpled into another bout of tears again.
Alice was crying too. When she offered Cat the pill again, Cat took it.
We sat up with her for a little longer, but eventually, she was nodding off, so Dominique and I left the cabin. Alice was going to bed too. She said that she wished she could take a Benadryl too, but she knew she needed to stay alert. I wanted to tell her that it would be okay, that she could sleep, but I wasn’t sure that was true.
Outside of the cabins, Dominique and I started to discuss who should take the first watch.
“You had a dream last night about the attack,” said Dominique. “So, you should go to sleep. If you dream about the killer, you’ll know where he is.”
“Yeah, but I’ll have to wake up, and I can’t do that on cue.”
“Sure, you can,” she said. “Pinch yourself or something.”
“That doesn’t work,” I said, thinking of the time outside of Point Oakes, when I couldn’t wake up until I went into the park and looked in on that maze.
“Well, whatever,” she said. “I’ll wake you up in a few hours, then. It’ll be better that way.”
I should have put up a bigger fight, but I was pretty tired. Carrying Scout through the woods had taken it out of me. So, I decided to let her have her way, and I went back to the Airstream.
It was dark inside. I hit one of my LED lights.
Wasn’t working.
Seriously?
I muttered a string of curse words under my breath and then made my way through the camper as best as I could in the dark. I tugged off my boots and lay down on my bed.
I stared at the ceiling. “Mads?” I whispered.
She flickered in, sitting at the edge of the bed. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I said. “Can you tell me anything about that bridge? Is it something we could walk across?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “It seems like a real tree. Real damage.”
“Damn it, that’s what I was afraid of. Have you ever seen anything like this? Ghosts taking corporeal form?”
She shook her head.
I sat up straight in the bed, suddenly. “Is it working on you?”
She shied away from me, flickering out of sight.
“Mads?” I called. I didn’t care if the others heard me talking to her. If she was corporeal, then—
She flickered back in again, sitting right next to me. She bit down on her lip and then she reached out her hand.
I reached out mine.
Slowly, we grew closer and closer. And then…
Her fingers went right through mine.
“Damn it,” I said. “Why isn’t it happening to you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m not like the ghost here. And I can’t get energy from you either. I also don’t seem to be affected by Dominique.”
I flopped back on the bed. “Everything is shit right now. Touching you would be one good thing.”
“No, it wouldn’t.”
I sighed. “How can you say that?”
“I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have been petty about Dominique. Honestly, the two of you have a lot in common, and she’d probably be a better match for you than—”
“She’s creepy,” I snapped.
Nothing from Mads.
I pulled blankets up over my body and rolled over. I wasn’t bothering to put on pajamas or anything, not if I was going to be up in a few hours to go on watch, anyway. “Why does everyone think I’ve got a thing for Dominique?”
“You don’t?”
“No,” I said.
“Oh,” she said.
It was quiet.
“Why are we talking about this?” I said. “You maybe noticed that a guy is dead? Also that we’re trapped here? Do you have any idea how we can get out of here?”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help,” she said. “But I don’t know anything that you don’t at this point.”
“Damn it,” I said again.
“The best thing you can do right now is to sleep, Deacon. You need your rest.”
* * *
I felt like I barely slept at all before someone was shaking me awake.
I blinked hard. There was a figure standing over my bed, but it was dark, and I couldn’t make out any features. It didn’t look tall enough to be the killer ghost, though.
“Deacon,” said the figure, and I recognized Alice’s voice. “Are you awake?”
“Yeah, I’m awake.” I sat up. “Why are you waking me up and not Dominique? Is Dominique okay?”
“She’s fine. She’s with Cat. Come with me. I want to show you something.”
Okay… this seemed a little creepy. Why was she waking me up? Why was she asking me to go with her somewhere? I sat up and swung my feet out of the bed. “Go with you where? If you try to take me out into the woods—”
“No, just back to the cabin where I’m sleeping with Cat. I found a journal. It was hidden up in the rafters of the cabin. It’s half unreadable due to water stains on the pages, but I think it belonged to one of Josiah Symonds’ kids.”
This? She was getting me out of bed for this?
“So, um, Dominique thinks we should wake up Rylan, but I said we should go to you first.”
“Why me?” I said.
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to bother Rylan and Mundy,” she said. “And you’re, you know, more approachable.”
I was?
“Just come and look at it, see what you think. And then you can go wake up Rylan.”
I rubbed my eyes and yawned pointedly. But I put my boots back on and came after her.
Inside the cabin where Cat was asleep, the camping lanterns worked. They were powered by batteries, so I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because Dominique was in there. After all, she could still work cameras. She was holding a camera and paging through a battered book, filming its pages.
“Hey,” she said when she saw me. “This is really interesting stuff. Josiah was a horrible father. He sexually abused his own daughters and tried to force his sons to participate. The one who wrote this journal, Macon, wouldn’t do it, and his father would beat him when he refused. There are all these entries about how Macon’s thinking about leaving, but then he realizes that if he left, no one would be there to protect his mother and brothers and sisters, so he stays. It’s horrible.”
“Okay,” I said. “Well, we knew this Josiah guy was a dick. This just proves it. Plus, if we’ve got sexual abuse in the mix, that only makes the haunting more powerful. That kind of perverse energy is strong and evil. With you and me adding to that, we’re in the middle of a disaster.”
“We can use this.”
Dominique held up the journal. “We can use this to understand the ghost. We can help it get released from this place.”
“Okay, great,” I said. “Is it time for my watch, because, if not, I’m going back to bed.”
“Oh, come on, don’t be like that,” said Alice, who had gone and taken the book from Dominique. Alice was carefully looking through the pages. “This is important stuff.”
“Right,” I muttered. “You can write a blog post about it.”
“When we get out of here, you better bet I’m blogging about this,” said Alice.
“If we get out of here,” I said. “There’s a body count now, or did you forget that?”
“Just go get Rylan,” said Alice. “She’ll want to know about this.”
My shoulders sagged. “You really want me to go wake up Rylan about this? Just show her in the morning.”
Dominique raised her eyebrows at me. “You’re not afraid of Rylan too, are you?”
“I’m not afraid of her,” Alice protested.
Dominique just kept staring at me, issuing her challenge.
I wasn’t even going to answer that question. “Whatever,” I said. “I’ll go and wake up Rylan.”
“Thank you,” said Alice, beaming up at me before going back to the journal.
I left the cabin.
Outside, it was pitch black. I went down the steps, and they creaked under my feet as I moved.
Above me, the stars were out, but they looked tired and faded, as if it was too much work to twinkle over us this late at night.
I peered around the campsite.
The cars all sat silently and uselessly, hulks of metal and tires that were of no help to us. The campfire area was dead and still. There wasn’t even a bit of a glow from the remnants of the fire. It had been a long time since we’d had anything burning. Even the coals had probably gone out. The cabins looked rundown as they squatted under the shadowy trunks of the forest.
This wasn’t a nice place.
As I moved forward, I felt a tickle at the back of my neck, as if something was watching me.
I turned around, looking for any movement.
Something hiding behind a tree? Something walking up the road? Scout? Not actually dead at all, crawling on ruined hands toward us while he coughed up blood?