Canyon Echoes

by Miranda Nading

  Now she wondered if there wasn't something more to it than that.

  As another connection was made, Gracie bolted out of the bed, sending Fred and Ginger rolling across the mattress. That fever-bright glare in the woods, directed at Kari and Corny. If Kristi had killed Lester, what would she do to them?

  She snatched up the phone in the kitchen of her motorhome, but hesitated to punch in the number for the rangers. Fred and Ginger waited next to the table. Fred standing on his back legs while Ginger sat beside him. Both had their heads cocked as if listening to her internal debate, waiting to see the outcome of her indecision.

  “If I call for help,” she told her fur-babies, remembering the way the ranger out front had glowered at her, “they'll think I'm just trying to pin it on someone else. They'll take me away from you.” She had never seen such pure hunger, unadulterated hate, as that ranger had aimed at her.

  Ranger Matthews had been bad. The man being yelled at on the grounds as she looked out the window would be a nightmare. He was the one she really needed to worry about. That look said nothing on earth would stop him from tearing her apart.

  She dropped the phone back down on the counter and poured a cup of coffee. Her hands shook, making the glass carafe rattle and clink against the edge of her coffee cup. She sat down at the table and made room for the puppies. No sooner had she planted herself than the dogs were with her, pressing their bodies against hers, waiting for reassuring hands to comb through their fur.

  Not knowing what would happen to her was not the only thing stopping Gracie from picking up the phone again. As much as she hated it, there was a very small, very dark part of her which thought Kari and Corny deserved whatever happened to them.

  For a while at least, the voices were quiet. Stunned into silence by the intrusive reality she'd stumbled upon tonight, the connections being made. They were still there, though. Never far away and always ready to throw in their hateful two-cent's worth. They remained silent, giving her a chance to hear the voice that was truly hers. Because, at that moment, reality was far worse than any poison they could possibly whisper in her ear.

  There should have been a sense of relief. It should have been proof that Gracie wasn't the killer—in her own mind—if nothing else. The certainty that Kristi was responsible was still too shaky after everything she'd seen and felt over the past few days.

  Still trembling, inside and out, she took a careful sip of her coffee and opened Chrome on her laptop. Within minutes, she was online and slipping in backdoors to the National Park Service. If she could contact them that way, it wouldn't lead them directly to her.

  First things first: the ranger, the hate she had seen in his eyes. She needed to find out who he was. Even if she could get past her own fears and believe she wasn't the murderer she feared, she would have to find a way to convince him. Being ripped away from her puppies, stuck in a cell or a hospital ward, even for a short time, was too terrible to risk.

  She would never go back to being a lab animal. Prodded, tortured, and medicated until there was nothing left inside but the void. No thought, no dreams, no Gracie. She had been nothing more than a husk, with only brief periods of light penetrating the darkness right before the pain, before the nightmares.

  Never again.

  Once in the network, she found the directory and NPS personnel documents. Without a name, she had no choice but to scroll through file after file until she found a picture she recognized. After so many years in the park, she knew quite a few rangers and was able to skip over their files, opening only the ones that were unfamiliar to her.

  So many years. This was her home, her family. And it was teetering on the brink of ruin. Tell the truth and shame the devil, she thought. Truth. A universal joke. Home, family. When you got down to it, it was nothing more than a façade, an illusion to keep the demons at bay.

  Life before the court system had taught her that home was nothing more than an open-air asylum. Family was just another class of orderlies, nurses, and fellow patients. The only difference was their choice of abuse and the implements they used to carry it out. Somewhere along the way, she had convinced herself otherwise. Wrapped herself in the false belief that someone like her deserved happiness, love.

  Security. That's what happiness and love boiled down to. Take away the frills, the flowers and the plants on the front porch and that's what you really had. Security. That's what she had really been holding on to. Like the march of her daily life to the beat of the clock, she had finally discovered a life she could count on, where nothing unexpected, nothing out of the ordinary ever happened. Even the voices in her head had marched along with her, driving her creative venture.

  Until now.

  She gathered her dogs up with one arm, pulling them to her chest and cuddling them. In the blink of an eye, it had all fallen apart. She had spent the past couple of days lying to herself. Pretending that if she kept her head down, everything would be okay.

  Welcome to universal joke number two, boys and girls.

  She laughed as she scrolled through pictures and the shrill edge to the sound was unnerving. It was her laugh, but it wasn't. It was the Other. The cynical bitch who was always waiting in the shadows, ready to push and push until it was Gracie who ended up in the shadows, watching while all hell broke loose. Waiting until the party was over and only surfacing again when it was time to pay the piper.

  The last time she had heard that sound, denoting the Other's emergence, she had stepped back willingly. Beaten and exhausted, there was a sick satisfaction as the Other pushed her way forward and made the old bastard pay for everything he had done to them. Most of the time, the Other was just a voice, whispering in her ear, warning her about the people around her. Warning her about what they were planning, what they were scheming.

  She hadn't been this close to the surface in so long, Gracie had come to believe the Other was nothing more than that—a voice whispering in her ear. She laughed again. This time, it was all Gracie. That old devil again. Self-deceit seemed to be engineered into the human genome. They needed to pretend, needed to lie, just to keep up the façade of normalcy.

  Ignore that boogieman under your bed; he's not real. Never mind the other woman in your head or the blood on your hands. It isn't real, just a dream. All is well, go back to sleep. All manner of things are well.

  If she could get out of this, she would disappear. Her books sold well, she didn't need much. There were still places in this world where a woman and couple of dogs could disappear. Step out of the world and wrap up in solitude until their clocks finally ran down.

  What about Julie? The Other asked.

  “Whose side are you on?” she asked. Kari betrayed her best friend. She had seen murder in Kristi's eyes. If all that had been right under her nose, how could she possibly trust anything?

  The emerging argument was silenced before it could begin as the ranger's picture filled the screen. She knew at once that it was he. The man in the picture was younger, his blue eyes sparkling like a young boy on the verge of getting up to mischief. A smile played on his lips as if he didn't know the meaning of the word hate.

  The man she had seen from the window hadn't merely been seething hatred, he was hatred personified. He looked as if he had born from it, molded by it. The pinched eyes, the snarl, seemed as natural to that man as inner joy seemed natural to the young man on the screen in front of her.

  Ranger Hudson Foster. It was his picture, but it was a different man. He was older, yes. Silver did more than pepper his temples. He had been angry when she saw him standing on the hillside, but the difference between the two was far more stark than just a temper.

  There was a hardness to him, a darkness inside. It was in the set of his shoulders and eyes, and it looked as if it wasn't something new, like a shirt he'd just bought at Target. It was a well-worn suit, built stitch-by-miserable-stitch until the young man in the photo had ceased to exist.

  Armed with a name, she went digging for his records. The
first record went a long way toward explaining his anger. His application had been submitted with several letters of reference. The first of which was from none other than Ranger Michael Garrett, the ranger killed the night before and Hudson's partner for the past ten years.

  NPS files gave her the surface waters that were Hudson Foster. Google search gave her the deeper currents. Newspaper articles in Wyoming, Montana, and Utah dated five years earlier whispered that her problems were bigger than she thought. Much bigger.

  Decorated Ranger Investigated Following Death of Wife.

  21

  The killer was surprised to find what she was looking for in the trunk of Kari's Honda. A small backpack filled with the tools necessary for a single, independent woman to take care of the nuisances involved with owning a car. With the men who flocked to her at both of her seasonal haunts, the killer had assumed there was no end to manly help when something needed repairing.

  By the time she made it back into the cabin, Kari had regained consciousness. Her struggle to crawl to the cell phone that waited on the nightstand had only succeeded in gaining her one small foot of carpet. She whimpered and buried her damaged face into her good arm as the killer closed the door.

  “Going somewhere?” the killer chuckled.

  “Leeese, leeese le ee go!” Kari's damaged mouth kept her from forming hard syllables, making her sound like a penitent child suffering through the Terrible-Two's.

  The killer smiled and kneeled down in front of her. “You've been naughty, dear. You have to be punished. Don't you see that?”

  Kari sobbed and looked up. One eye was swollen shut, sunken. Something wet leaked from under the blackened lid. “Uck ou!” she hissed, spraying spittle.

  The killer backhanded the intact side of Kari's face and smiled, satisfied, as she screamed out and her one good eye rolled back to show the white. Grabbing her by hair matted with blood, the killer gave her a little shake. “Don't pass out on me, now. I want you wide awake for your punishment.”

  When the hazel iris slid back into view and she was confident Kari wouldn't pass out anytime soon, she grabbed the backpack and headed toward the small heater. She dumped the tools into the floor and selected a Phillips screwdriver to pull off the plating. “How long have you been screwing around with Corny?”

  Kari forced out one word slowly, clear enough to get her message across, “Di-d-n't.”

  “Liar!” The killer spun and stabbed the screwdriver into the calf muscle of the closest leg.

  Kari screamed, rolling with the pain, trying desperately to pull the leg up towards her chest. The undamaged hand fluttered above it like a moth trying to keep from touching the killing flame, but unable to stay away.

  While she writhed on the floor and sobbed, the carpet soaked with her blood, the killer found an adjustable wrench and went to work on the copper tubing that fed propane to the heater. When her cries quieted, the killer turned to look at her. “How long have you been screwing around with Corny?”

  Kari trembled, but didn't speak. Fear and hatred fought for residence in that one good eye and the killer's smile grew. “I'm not going to lie to you. Regardless of whether or not you talk, you're going to die tonight. Painfully, I might add. But I would like to know how long that little sonofabitch has had you on your back. Was it worth it? Worth destroying our family? Worth this?”

  Kari took her time speaking, each syllable seemed to cause her pain, but she forced it out, stopping between each sentence to grab a rattling breathe. “Doctor last month. I sick. Didn't want to tell anyone. Corny figured it out. Helping me adjust. No sex. Just friend. Better friend than you.”

  Seething with each word that left her pathetic, lying face, the killer's grip on the screwdriver tightened. Everything in her wanted to launch herself at Kari and ram it into her lying, betraying heart until she was dead, dead, dead.

  She turned back to the heater, finished pulling the copper free and fought for control of her temper. The lying, backstabbing little bitch would get hers. She wouldn't mess up this grand finale just because the defiant little whore was goading her.

  When propane began hissing into the cabin, the killer stood and made her way to the small writing desk in the far corner. Right on top was the latest novel written by none other than Gracie O.

  Perfect.

  She slid it to the edge of the desk and pulled a Zippo out of her pocket. Another Gracie special, the likeness of Scar Face, his damaged ear obvious, stood out beautifully in every etched detail. The killer had pocketed it last season. Despite her reticence toward talking to people, Gracie had made her way across location, asking everyone if they had seen it. If it were found in the rubble, everyone would know who it belonged to.

  Kari's small cry of desperation as the killer struck the lighter was thrilling. She savored it as she stared at the flickering yellow tongue of fire. But time was short. The smell of propane was growing stronger despite the drafty old walls and windows.

  She turned to find Kari making a feeble attempt to pull herself toward the door and laughed. When she stepped over her, Kari screamed incoherent words and swiped at her ankle with her only useful hand.

  The open door pulled propane passed her, out into the night, but it didn't worry her as she turned back to watch the frantic little bug pull herself an inch at a time across the blood soaked carpet. “I still love you, Kari. But the infection must be cleansed.”

  She closed the door on Kari's final, outraged scream and stepped off the porch. Now that was satisfying. Even more so than Lester. It went a long way toward making up for the ranger's quick, useless, death.

  As she set her feet on the path, she smiled. She quoted her favorite poet, Robert Frost. “Miles to go before I sleep.”

  She wanted to savor this moment, savor Kari's death. She'd been defiant to the last, but Corny was weak. He'd beg for his life and tell her anything she wanted to know. “Miles to go before I sleep.”

  One more apple to pluck from the tree. One more traitor in their midst.

  Maybe Corny would be the first to visit her special place.

  22

  Gracie had skimmed through the articles by date, enough to discover that despite the death of his wife being ruled an accident, suspicions of Hudson's involvement continued to linger. It just didn't add up.

  Janette Forester had been an experienced rock and ice climber. More experienced even than the husband she taught to climb. The weather had been perfect for it, no sign of wear and tear or damage had been found on her gear that could explain the cause of her deadly fall.

  So what happened?

  Before she could do more than skim the article, the small, feather soft hairs on the back of her neck raised as gooseflesh peppered her skin. The Other spoke with more tenderness than Gracie was used to. Fear edged her whispered warning. Someone is watching.

  Gracie's fingers froze on the laptop. Without turning her head, she glanced at the windows of the RV, watching for movement. When night fell, she usually pulled the blinds down. It unnerved her to think someone, unseen in the darkness, could watch her without her knowing.

  Fred and Ginger were still curled in their seats against her thighs, their noses raised. Their dark eyes watched her as if they could hear the Other's warning and feel Gracie's sudden unease. Their attention was focused solely on Gracie, so whoever was watching, they weren't close enough to alarm her little guardians.

  It's the killer, the Other whispered.

  “Kristi…Or Hudson?”

  Now that the seeds of doubt had been planted, she couldn't bring herself to rule him out. Too many times during her life, those in authority—those who were supposed to protect, used the protected positions they held to hurt.

  Perhaps Kristi was just another victim of this strange summer. Learning about the betrayal of her husband and best friend tonight may be the only part she had played so far. But there was no denying the hatred, the murder Gracie had seen burning in her glare. Who, in her place, wouldn't feel the same way? />
  Hudson, on the other hand, was no stranger to death. His position as a valued member of the National Park Service would give him the freedom to work above reproach. The park was his, year round. Despite the grandeur of Yellowstone, death was a natural part of this wilderness. It happened all the time, during the summer season, and winter. How many had he had a hand in, other than his wife's?

  The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became of his guilt.

  What about the blood on your hands? A new, but familiar voice asked. Though it sounded clean and clear– free of the drugs that had found a constant home in the woman, Gracie still recognized her mother.

  Stunned by this sudden intrusion, torn by her own conflicted emotions over the woman, a tear slid down Gracie's cheek. Fred and Ginger were up. Their soft tongues tentatively caressing her face. “That's not fair,” she whispered.

  Her tortured voice acted as a catalyst to her little friends and they whined and pawed at her, desperate to get her attention on them so they could comfort and calm her. She pushed them away and held up one finger to signal 'no' when they readied themselves to launch back into her lap. They whined, but settled down on their haunches, obedient, at least for the moment.

  Gracie had spent so much of her life fighting the voices in her head, fighting the fear and paranoia they engendered. She was tired of fighting, tired of trying to live despite them. For the past ten years, she'd learned to direct them, channel them, into her writing.

  Isn't it? Look at your hands. Are you free from sin?

  Gracie's eyes slid slowly towards her lap before she clinched them shut. Her hands, fingers clasped to keep them from trembling, were covered in blood. “I didn't have a choice,” she sobbed.

  Lie to everyone but yourself, dear. Never to yourself.

  The other voices began to drift through, weighing in with their own judgments, their own opinions. Several stood out in the chaos.