“You heard him,” Bailey said. “The gas station’s closed, and it’s getting late.”
“It’s still worth a shot though,” Chad said. “Rich and I could walk up and see if we can get some gas tonight. Shouldn’t take us too long, and you guys can scout out a campsite in case we strike out.”
“Better leave Rich,” Nia said, leaning up against his shoulder. “I won’t feel safe without a man here.”
“I’ll go with Chad,” Kimmy said. “I could use a little alone time with my man without your grubby claws all over him.”
Their food arrived shortly, and Bailey devoured a burger, a cheeseburger, a bacon cheeseburger, a grilled cheese sandwich, a chili dog smothered in onions, and a tuna salad sandwich that was surprisingly good after she doused it in chili, all in less time than it had taken to make. The others weren’t far behind her, and soon they were back at their car, waving after Kimmy and Chad while the pair disappeared up the road with a flashlight and empty gas can in hand. There was a little light left, and they would need every minute of it to find a suitable place to sleep out under the stars. It was nothing out of the ordinary—they had spent most of the trip sleeping outdoors.
Beyond the diner, a small, rounded mountain loomed in the distance, with little in the way of tree cover. The opposite side of the road was a gentle hill, sloping down to a small creek that snaked its way through the valley. There was a large, flat area dotted with a few trees not far from the water’s edge, and it seemed like the perfect place to sleep for the night. They all knew Chad and Kimmy would come back emptyhanded and long overdue—it was clear enough that it wasn’t the gas can they were out to fill.
Mia and Rich lugged the tent and cooler down from the car while Bailey and Nia cracked open a bottle of flavored vodka, enjoying themselves while the noobs did the heavy lifting. It had always been like that every year Bailey had ventured out with her sisters. She could still remember her first year when the older girls had driven through Texas, crossing the border down to Cancun. That had probably been one of the craziest trips in the history of their sisterhood, but Mexico had gone way downhill since then. They’d had a few close calls on that trip, and Bailey wasn’t about to put her girls in harm’s way, not on her trip.
In just under an hour, Mia and Rich had gotten the tent set up, and Bailey had started a fire. It wasn’t long before they were pounding back shots and passing around the brownies they’d picked up at a dispensary a few towns back with the fake medical cannabis cards she and Nia had doctored up.
A branch snapped somewhere in the woods nearby. “Hey,” Rich said. “Something’s out there.”
“Relax,” Bailey said, downing another shot, her face beet-red and sweating. The fire started to really take off. “Probably just a bear or something.”
“Oh good,” Nia said. “Glad it’s just a bear or something. We would’ve been screwed if it was anything really dangerous like a squirrel or a bird.”
“What the hell?” Rich exclaimed, jumping upright. Two figures slowly emerged from the trees, a man and a woman, both dressed in simple outfits heavy on denim and flannel. They shuffled through the twilight, walking right up to the fire without saying a word. Mia and Nia stood up and fell back behind Bailey, but she was feeling far too good to get up just now.
“Can we help you?” Rich asked, and the strangers suddenly stopped in their tracks, staring absently into the fire.
“Cold night,” the man said, without blinking.
“The lodge is warm,” the woman said. “All are welcome.”
“All are welcome,” the man repeated.
“You guys must be the freaks we heard about,” Nia said, glowering at the intruders.
“Hold up,” Bailey said, pouring herself another shot. “I want to hear about this lodge. We heard you have some killer dope.”
“The lodge has everything you need,” the woman said, her voice hollow and distant, like she was half-asleep and reading a script. “Transcend the ordinary.”
“Awaken the truth,” the man added. “Learn the secrets.”
“Beat it,” Nia said. “We aren’t interested.”
“Hold on,” Bailey said, rising shakily to her feet. “I want whatever you guys are on, because you are stoned.”
Come, a voice said inside Bailey’s head. She blinked, and in the darkness two white shapes moved like sheets fluttering in the wind, ghostly gray-blue eyes glowing in the void above them, a rhythmic ticking in the background. Tick-tick, tick-tick. Bailey opened her eyes and it was gone.
“Come,” the woman said, and the odd pair began to wander up the hill towards the road. Once they were out of sight, Bailey dropped back down to her chair, and Nia and Rich joined her by the fire.
“Where’s Mia?” Rich asked, and Bailey did her best to shake herself sober once she realized her youngest roommate was nowhere to be seen.
“Where did she go?” Bailey asked, frantically digging through her backpack for a flashlight. She pulled it free and began waving it around.
“She didn’t go with those weirdos,” Nia insisted. “I was watching them the whole time.”
“She was right next to me,” Rich said. “I was holding her hand, and then she let go, and the next thing I know, she’s gone!” The three of them scoured the woods between the little campsite and the creek, but there was no sign of Mia anywhere. They called her name endlessly, but the only answer was the hoot of an owl.
“Let’s go back up to the diner,” Nia said finally. “Maybe she slipped up the hill when those freaks were talking. Ugh, I wish we had our phones.”
“You know the rules,” Bailey said. “We have to rely on ourselves, not technology. We’ll find Mia. It’s not the first time someone’s wandered away from the group.”
“Chad and Kimmy should be back by now,” Rich said. “It’s been two hours.”
“Dude,” Nia said, shaking her head. “We both know Chad and Kimmy didn’t get half a mile down the road. They’re probably getting it on behind some bushes right now.”
“Don’t worry,” Bailey said, trying to sound reassuring, although she was beginning to feel a tingle of fear creeping up in the pit of her stomach. Mia was their freshman, and it was supposed to be Bailey’s job to keep her safe. They hadn’t lost a freshman in three years, not since Bailey herself had wandered off alone in Mexico after drinking twenty-one shots of tequila in a single day.
They reached the road, only to find the diner locked up tight for the night. Chad’s SUV was also empty, and there was no sign of Mia anywhere.
“Okay,” Bailey said, waving her hands to clear her head. “This is getting a little ridiculous. Rich, stay with the car while Nia and I go up the road.”
“You sure we should split up?” Nia said. “What about those weirdos?”
“They seemed harmless enough,” Bailey said. “The cook said they were strange, not dangerous. Besides, I’ve got mace for days.”
“Go for it,” Rich said. “I’ll hold things down here.”
Bailey and Nia trudged up the road, keeping to the shoulder. Their flashlights lit the way. “Man, I had a bad feeling about Mia from the start,” Nia said. “The girl doesn’t know how to chill.”
“You know we take a little getting used to,” Bailey said. “She’s a little flighty, so what?”
“It just doesn’t feel right,” Nia said. “Something about this place is off. I mean, those hippies show up and Mia just vanishes? Tell me that wasn’t connected.”
“We know they didn’t take her,” Bailey said. “That’s literally the one thing we’re sure of.”
“Yeah,” Nia said. “She’s probably hiding.”
“Why would she do that?” Bailey asked.
“Come on,” Nia scoffed. “For attention. She doesn’t like you and me and Kimmy hooking up with her boyfriend right and left.”
“Uh, but those are the house rules,” Bailey said. “You date one of us, you date all of us. Mia understood that before she joined.”
“Yeah, it always sounds great at first,” Nia said. “That’s why most of us are usually single.”
“Kimmy and Chad are almost to two years,” Bailey reminded her. “They’re making it work.”
“Because Chad knows how to dodge us most of the time,” Nia said. “They both know how to play it cool and keep things simple. Mia likes drama, I’m telling you.”
“Maybe,” Bailey said with a shrug. “Either way, I know what it’s like to get left behind.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nia asked. The road started to curve upwards, the shoulder shrinking to a narrow stretch of gravel just wide enough for them to skirt the edge of an increasingly deep ravine so long as they walked single-file.
“My first trip,” Bailey said, shuddering against the memories she usually kept so well-buried. She held her forearm up to the flashlight, illuminating a column of six names tattooed across her arm in flowery script. Every member of their sisterhood got the same kind of tattoos, accumulating seven names over their time together. Her own name was the fourth down, followed by Kimmy and Nia, while the names above hers belonged to the three girls that had recruited her.
“The den-mother who picked me wasn’t the nicest person,” Bailey said with a frown, rubbing the first name on her list with her forefinger. “Rochelle was her name. She was tall and tan and everyone loved her, but I don’t think she ever loved any of us back. We used to have an infraction system, and if you broke the rules, she made you do shots. I managed to break every rule in the book on our summer trip, and she made me do more shots than you’ve ever dreamed of doing. I blacked out, and the next thing I know, I’m lost in the middle of a desert in Mexico, no phone, no purse, nothing. It took me three days to crawl back to our camp. No one ever looked for me.”
You were lost, a voice said in her mind. You are lost. We can help you. Find your friends, find yourself. The two ethereal figures she’d seen before flashed through her mind again, an enormous pendulum sweeping through the darkness behind them. Bailey shuddered. She really shouldn’t have had all those edibles.
“Harsh,” Nia said with a frown. “Can’t believe you stuck around after that.”
“I swore to myself I was going to quit,” Bailey said. “It was all I could think about the entire time I was out there alone. But the second I got back, it was like I’d never left. I went right back to carrying their bags. I don’t know what came over me, but by the time the trip was over I knew I was never going to leave.”
“You’re a good den-mother,” Nia said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Mia’s lucky to have you looking out for her.”
“I’m no angel,” Bailey said. “My second year in I was rough on Kimmy. I tried to be as hard on her as Rochelle was on me—harder even. But our den-mother that year, Kerry, she pulled me aside and made me understand I was taking things too far. She helped me realize I’m supposed to make things better for you than I had it, not worse.”
“Hey, you have,” Nia said. “I was scared to death moving away from the farm to go to school, but you and Kimmy took me in and gave me a family. I’ve been lucky.”
“This isn’t right,” Bailey said suddenly, stopping in her tracks. “We’ve been walking a long time now.”
“It can’t be much farther,” Nia agreed.
“Yeah, but where are Kimmy and Chad?” Bailey said. “We should have passed them by now. They’ve been gone way too long.”
“Here,” Nia said, pointing ahead to a lonely building of whitewashed cinderblocks. A single gas pump sat between it and the road, without even an awning overhead to shield customers from the elements. The two of them sprinted the rest of the way, and Bailey spotted their empty gas can sitting next to the pump.
“That’s not good,” Nia said, and Bailey approached the building, banging on its door. There was no sign of life inside, and the lights were all off.
“You were right,” Bailey said, turning back to Nia. “We shouldn’t have split up. We have to get back to Rich. Whatever we do, we do together.”
“Hear, hear,” Nia said, glancing around at the trees lining both sides of the road. “This place is as creepy as they come.”
They ran the whole way back, and Bailey was out of breath by the time they got to the diner, her legs aching with every step. Nia was barely breathing hard, but the tall, thin girl was on the track team, so she had a lot more practice at it. Bailey nearly collapsed when she reached Chad’s car, bracing herself against the hood to catch her breath.
“Oh, hell no,” Nia said, staring at the empty vehicle. Bailey realized there was no sign of Rich anywhere, and she groaned.
“Maybe they’re all down the hill waiting for us,” Bailey suggested, hoping it could somehow be true.
“They’d better all be in the woods being chased by psycho killers,” Nia warned. “Because if they just punked us, they’re going to get these hands.” They quickly made their way across the road and back down to their campsite, only to find the tent empty and the fire burned down to embers.
“Oh, that is it,” Nia declared, kicking over the cooler in frustration, her braids swinging wildly through the air. She grabbed a half-empty bottle of vodka and threw it into the fire. The flames surged up for a brief moment. “Ugh!”
“Calm down,” Bailey said, taking the younger girl by the shoulders. “Let’s just check up at the diner. If we can’t find anyone, we’ll lock ourselves in the car and sleep there tonight. In the morning we’ll find a way to call for help.”
“Ugh!” Nia growled, her body spasming with the same frustration Bailey was feeling. One of them had to hold it together though, and Bailey found herself wondering when she’d become the strong one. Three years ago, she would have never guessed it would be possible.
They trudged back up the hill and made their way to the diner, but it was closed, as dead inside as the gas station had been.
“Cold night,” a voice said, sending Bailey nearly jumping out of her skin. She and Nia spun around to find the cook from earlier standing in the parking lot, staring off into space. Bailey waved cautiously, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Uh, sorry,” Bailey said. “Have you seen our friends?”
“Sure,” he said, smiling awkwardly, exposing his yellowed teeth. “Headed on up to the lodge. Goin’ that way myself.”
“That can’t be right,” Bailey asked. “Why would they go there?”
“Same reason we all go, sooner or later,” the cook said. “When you feel the call, you don’t have a choice anymore. They come to you at night, find you in your dreams.”
“Who does?” Nia asked.
“The sisters,” the man said, shuffling towards the back of the parking lot, where a dark void marked the beginnings of a trail up the mountain. “You haven’t seen them yet? They’re so beautiful, white robes fluttering against a black sea. Those perfect gray eyes watching us from the shadows, staring right into our souls. Every night they’ve come to me, and every night I turned them away. But I can’t fight it anymore.”
“I don’t want to creep you out any more than he just did,” Nia said, whispering to Bailey once the old man left. “But I’ve been seeing things—hearing things. Just like he said.”
“The eyes?” Bailey asked, remembering those four steely-blue orbs smoldering in the void.
“Yes!” Nia exclaimed. “At first I thought it was just the weed, or this place, but… I don’t know.”
“We’ve got to be dreaming,” Bailey said. “There’s no way this can be real.”
“Let’s follow him and find out,” Nia said with a shrug. “If the others saw what we saw, maybe they went looking for these sisters or whatever.”
“I think I’d rather sleep in the car,” Bailey said, shivering. A cold breeze blew down from the mountain, carrying the smell of burning wood. “But I don’t think we have a choice at this point.”
They hurried after the old cook, keeping a careful distance back while they followed him up the winding mountain trail. The trees fel
l away after a while, and the vegetation faded to small shrubs and hearty moss. Bailey had no idea what time it was, but a full moon lit up the night sky, staring down at the sprawling wooden fortress someone had built into the mountainside. Seven stories of decks connected by an intricate series of stairs looked out on the valley below, and smoke poured up into the sky from the lodge’s innumerous stone chimneys.
“Somebody’s home,” Nia said, coming to an abrupt halt. She stood there for a moment, staring blindly off into the distance.
“Uh, Nia?” Bailey asked, waving a hand in front of the other girl’s eyes. “You okay?”
“I’m great,” Nia said absently. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Bailey asked. “It’s just us here.”
“The ticking,” Nia said, never blinking. “The closer we get to the lodge, the louder it gets.”
“We need to go back,” Bailey said, realizing that whatever madness had claimed the cook was now settling upon Nia. “This was stupid. We have to get help.”
“No,” Nia said calmly. “Everything is fine.”
Nia began drifting towards the lodge, her eyes locked straight ahead. “Nia, wait!” Bailey shouted, racing after her friend. She caught up to the lanky girl and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Where are you going?” Bailey demanded. She gave Nia a rough shake, praying she would snap out of whatever spell she was under.
“Home,” a voice said behind her, and Bailey spun to find Mia standing right behind her. A little further back, Kimmy and the boys lurked in the shadows, their wide eyes gleaming in the moonlight.
“We’re all going home,” Kimmy said. She and Chad and Rich moved forward, encircling Bailey on the mountainside.
Come, the whisper in her mind said again, and she saw the two fluttering white specters hanging over a black lake. Tick-tick, tick-tick, the voice said, summoning a clicking that threatened to drown out Bailey’s thoughts.
It feels bad now, the voice said, and Bailey realized it wasn’t one voice, but two, speaking at once. But once you relax, you will understand. Just surrender and let yourself sink into it. Tick-tick, tick-tick.
Demi Mondaine: Volume One Page 11