“I say you're a bigger idiot than I ever thought possible.”
He clutched at his damp chest in mock delight. “You're so sweet, it brings a tear to the eye!” Approaching the bank carefully, he turned his gaze further upstream and pointed to a narrowing in the flow. “There. See that? We could probably make a running jump and cross from there. I think we can make it.”
He'd indicated something of a choke point in the creek, a section bottlenecked by two outcroppings of land several feet apart. The water flowing through this bit was every bit as dirty and furious as the rest, but I supposed that bridging the gap with a solid jump was possible. That didn't make it an intelligent thing to do, however. “Are you stupid?” I asked. “No way. What if we fall in?”
He shrugged. “So what if we do? Where's your sense of adventure?”
“I think I left it back at camp.”
“Come on!” he pleaded. “Who knows what else there is to see out there! Let's cross here and do some exploring. After that, we'll go back to camp and grab the fishing gear. I promise it's safe.” He kicked at a clod of soft earth near the bank, which dissolved beneath his heel and tumbled into the creek. “Just get a good running start.”
“I dunno...”
“Here, watch!” Taking several steps back, he set his sights on the opposite bank and then began to run.
“J-Jared, wait!”
He jumped. His leading foot searched for purchase and carved a boot-shaped chunk of waterlogged earth from the bank opposite as he landed it. For a moment he looked poised to slip, but after a shaky step, he turned and grinned at me. “See? Nothing to it!”
I was vaguely impressed; I was also furious. “You jackass. Get back over here! You really expect me to try and make the jump?”
Carl Lewis over there just kept grinning and nodding.
“Jared, this is so dumb.” I sucked in a deep breath and paced a few steps back, trying to gauge the distance. “If I fall into the water, I'm never going to let you hear the end of it.” Making sure that my boots were tight, I stretched my legs and then broke into a sprint.
The moment my feet met the edge of the bank, I shoved off against it and began sailing through the air, arms and legs flailing. Mist rolled up from the churning waters beneath me as I struck the opposite bank—and immediately began to slide. The soles of my boots sank into the muck, and it was only by throwing myself forward that I managed to grab two fistfuls of grass and stop myself from tumbling into the creek. “Shit!”
Jared rushed over, trying to stifle his laughter. “See? That wasn't so bad, was it? You did great.” He held out his hands and helped pull me into the grass.
My poncho was slick with mud and my pulse was thundering in my ears, but I was otherwise no worse for wear. Sitting on the damp ground and wiping the muck from my hands, I shook my head. “I can't believe I did that.”
“It's the spirit of adventure!” replied Jared, helping me to my feet. “Ready to explore? This is what the trip is all about, Penny!”
I looked across the creek, at the gap I'd just jumped over. It seemed further away from this side than it had from the other, and unless it was merely my imagination, the flow of the water seemed more vigorous now. Looking past Jared, who was now leading me away from the water by the hand into the woods, I spotted the tottering ruin in the distance and wondered what else we'd find. “Are you sure it's OK?” I asked, sparing one more look at the creek. “To leave the paths behind and go into the woods like this? What if we get lost?”
Jared shook his head. “No chance. We won't go too far. Promise.” He drew me up to his side and slung an arm around my waist as we advanced. “Let's see what's out here!”
I felt a twinge of excitement as we bound off into the great unknown, but there was another feeling, too, simmering just beneath the surface.
“OK, let's go!” I said, wondering if my smile managed to mask my dread.
Nine
The thing we'd spied from across the creek was in fact a wall; the only remaining wall of some long-toppled structure. The mortar between the stones—which were somewhat fuzzy around the edges for years of weathering—had been worn away, and numerous fractured bricks owed to the same construction were scattered about the site in varying states of disrepair. Jared and I walked a few circuits around the wall, trying to figure out what it had been a part of, but ultimately found no clues.
“I have a feeling a lot of what we find is going to be like this,” I said, looking past the rubble. “What could possibly survive out here after so many years?”
“You'd be surprised,” was Jared's reply, and maybe it was just me, but there was something about the way he said it that set me on edge.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, people back then knew how to build things that lasted. I'd be surprised if a few buildings didn't still exist out here. It can't all be ruined, can it?”
“Oh.” I wasn't sure I agreed with him, but dropped the conversation there. My mind was fast-overcome by a different course of thought—that of other survivals in these myth-touched woods. Sure, it was possible a cabin or stone building could conceivably survive over a hundred years in this wilderness without falling to pieces. Older, more impressive things like the Pyramids, or the Colosseum, had been preserved since ancient times. But what about human will? How long could that persist? As we wandered, I began thinking about the events of the night before. I thought, too, about the date—September 14th.
Could a dead woman, murdered in cold blood over a century ago, still influence these woods? The people who'd once lived here—who'd set down the very stones Jared and I presently walked over—certainly believed it possible, and after the figure I'd seen the night before, I almost felt myself on the verge of believing it.
“Babe?”
I looked to Jared, who'd gone a fair bit ahead. Without realizing it, I'd paused near a heap of fallen bricks, and had been running my fingers over the timeworn grooves in them.
“You coming?”
“Yeah, sorry.” I jogged to him and we resumed our hike.
Thick vines shriveled by the recent cold hung across the canopy overhead like lengths of rope. Every tree trunk in sight was splashed in moss, and in the grey light the stuff seemed almost too green to be real. The scent of wet earth, and of decomposition, tinged the cold air with sour sweetness, and the smell only grew stronger as the two of us shuffled through the carpet of soggy leaves, dredging up still tangier notes of decay. Several minutes passed; the two of us made small talk, but discovered nothing of note in our surroundings.
The rain slowed until finally we only had to contend with the occasional drip from the canopy. With the passing of the rain came renewed forest sounds—I heard a number of birdcalls from the tress all around us and hoped that their chattiness meant there was better weather on the horizon. While ambling past a handful of half-buried chunks of stone, Jared pointed out a passerby in the woods. It was a lone doe, munching at the underbrush and sparing us a wary glance. For a time, we held a staring contest with the animal. Finally, it grew bored and moseyed on towards the creek.
Though we'd found little in the way of intriguing ruins, Jared was all smiles. He lowered the hood of his poncho and rambled on about the hikes of his youth. He detailed family trips to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, or the hilly regions of southern Ohio, and though I'd heard the stories many times before, I'd never heard them told with such joy and enthusiasm.
I remained silent for much of the time, having little to add. Now that the rain was ebbing, I was happy to continue on this little hike, though the arches of my feet were starting to get mighty sore. There was another thing, too, that kept me contemplatively silent as we pressed on into the uncharted wilds—something that had nagged since the very onset. I'd done my best to ignore it, but now that the sound of the creek had faded entirely, it resurfaced with a vengeance.
I was uncomfortable at having left behind all established paths. I didn't doubt Jared's prowess—and
to hear him talk about his many childhood adventures in the woods, you'd have thought him a regular Percy Fawcett—but this was so outside the scope of my preferred activities that I couldn't help but fret. It seemed careless—downright stupid—to have gone off-trail when we might have stuck to established paths and seen plenty of lovely sights. And yet, here we were—and we were going deeper still.
Worst of all, whenever silence would reign between the two of us, however brief, my thoughts would give quarter to the most horrific scenarios. What if Jared gets injured and he can't lead you back to camp? What if someone is hunting out here and accidentally shoots one of us? What if we get mauled by a bear? The odds of such things actually occurring were awfully slim, but the possibilities haunted me all the same.
“Guess there isn't much to see out here,” I chimed in after a lengthy lull in conversation. “It's pretty, but there's just not much to see. Hardly a ghost town. Just a lot of rubble. We should go back.”
“Not at all,” he countered. “The rain just quit and we've still got a long way to go! So much of this area is unexplored; I'll bet there's something impressive to be found yet!”
“How far do you plan on taking us?” I asked.
He didn't answer, except to do one of those coy half-shrugs I took to mean, “Let's play it by ear.”
I bugged him into letting me rest a few minutes. We leaned against trees and tightened our bootlaces. He tolerated me, but only barely, and when I could no longer stand his fidgeting, I told him I was ready to go on. He practically sprang from the rest spot, breaking into a full-on march.
“You were talking about that witch who died here, remember?” He looked at me from the corner of his eye, a grin spanning his lips. “What was the story about that?”
Just then, in the middle of what had once been Newsom's Landing, I didn't really feel like talking about it. “Eh... Some people in town thought she was a witch. Before they could hold a trial, some locals got together and murdered her. They tossed her body into an unmarked grave, thinking that was the end of it, but every year, on the anniversary of her death, strange things would happen. The townies decided the cake wasn't worth the bake after a few years and they left.”
“Right, yeah. Pretty savage. I'll admit, if I was a real-life witch and I got murdered, I'd definitely stick around. I'd haunt their asses!” He laughed—rather louder than he should have, it seemed to me—and the sound crashed throughout the quiet woods. “What was her name?”
I blinked at him, wanting to pretend like I hadn't heard the question. The name fought its way up my throat and settled heavily on my tongue, but I didn't dare part my lips and utter it. It didn't feel right to do so, not here. Invoking the witch, in the place she'd lived and died—and on the anniversary of her death, no less—struck me as most unwise.
“Ellie something, right?”
I nodded. “Ellie... P-Pomeroy.”
He was about to say something else when he stopped abruptly. Looking down at his feet, Jared pointed out something with the toe of his boot. “Hey, now. Is this what I think it is?” Kneeling to brush away many a season's worth of moss and grime, he revealed the smooth edge of what looked like a flat stone—a grave marker. “I'll be. Someone was buried here, look!”
I didn't want to look, admittedly, and the timing of the find, mere moments after having name-dropped the dead witch, seemed unutterably sinister to me. But I knelt down and studied the slab, nodding in agreement. “Y-Yeah, looks like it.”
For a bit, the two of us worked at clearing the stone of debris, though even when we had finished, we couldn't make out any identifying mark. The letters had long been worn away. “Damn, could be anyone down there,” muttered Jared. Then, with a waggle of his brows, he added, “Could even be Ellie Pomeroy, I suppose...”
I rolled my eyes. “Shut up.”
Jared paced around the stone, stopping now and then to tap at the ground with his boot heel. Pausing, he glanced down at minor breaks in the moss, only to discover still more stone. “Whoa, there's more!”
There were other stone markers buried in the earth; we were standing atop what looked like an abandoned graveyard.
“No kidding,” I said, trying to feign interest. “That's interesting.” As he went to brush the debris off the others, I tugged at his poncho. “Let's leave them alone, yeah?”
“Hold on, I want to see if any of them are still readable!” In the span of minutes, Jared kicked and plucked at the moss and dirt, revealing three other grave markers located mere feet from the first. These, it turned out, were all in more or less the same condition. “Damn,” he said, wiping his hands on his pant legs. “Can't read a thing. The names are all too faded.”
I staggered around, now keenly aware of every step. I didn't feel comfortable standing on a grave—much less on a cluster of them. I backed up towards a leaning tree and pressed myself against its cool bulk while Jared whetted his curiosity.
He sighed. “It's a shame to see it all abandoned like this. Look, the stones have sunken into the ground, and after all these years you can't read a thing on any of them. No telling who's buried here at all.”
I scanned the uneven lines of revealed stones and wondered just how many corpses resided under our feet. Startled at the very thought, I urged Jared on. “Let's get out of here, yeah? I'm getting kind of tired. Can we go back to camp?”
“Already?” The whiny edge in his voice made him sound like an outraged eight year old. “But we've barely cracked the surface.” He waved into the distance. “If we go another few miles, we're sure to discover more!”
It was getting harder to fake enthusiasm. “Are you serious?”
“Come on! I just want to go a little further,” he pleaded.
I clawed my phone out of my pocket and glanced at the time. “I'll give you another thirty minutes. How's that sound? After that, I absolutely want to head back to camp, Jared. I'm serious.”
He gave a quick nod. “Yeah, yeah, OK. But if we've only got another half hour to explore, I want to make it count.” He stretched his legs and then broke into a mock running stance.
I struggled to keep up as he began rushing through the brush. He wasn't running, but his long stride was in full effect, and if I didn't beat my tired feet I was going to be left behind. Just thirty more minutes of this, I thought. I'd never longed more to return to a tent than I did in that moment.
My boyfriend kept several steps ahead of me. He hopped over fallen trunks and raced onward almost as though I were some dangerous animal chasing him. I struggled to maintain an even speed. Here, my boot was caught in a puddle of murk; there, I nearly tripped over a tree root half-obscured by the leaves. Every few minutes I checked the time, watching with annoyance as the minutes—and my phone battery—were depleted. I didn't care if we stumbled upon the Ark of the Covenant out here—when that thirty minutes was up, I was going to drag him away by his ear.
Jared cut his speed in a hurry and stood squinting into the distance.
“What's up?” I asked, thankful for the slowdown, but he threw his hand out as if to shush me.
He shifted a few steps to his right, then moved several paces ahead.
“Jared...?”
He turned to me with wide, wild eyes, and then started scrambling forward. “Whoa,” I heard him utter. “Get a load of this!” Without warning, he took off at full speed, galloping through the woods.
Cursing at him, I gave my legs a shake and took off after him. Thankfully, I didn't have to run far. He'd stopped some fifteen yards ahead, and was presently gawking at something in the distance—something that I, too, could now make out.
A house.
Truthfully, “house” is a poor word to describe the building we'd discovered. It was enormous, palatial. It towered at two, possibly three stories, and its width was remarkable. It called to mind McMansions I'd seen on television shows, but was built in a much older style. Columns of what looked to be stone fronted the yawning porch, and a dip in the landscape had allowed s
everal inches of standing water to accumulate before it. The house was surrounded on all sides by trees, and though the long-grown trunks intruded upon it from every direction, the stubborn old house had not been significantly damaged by their ingress.
Staring at the place, I echoed my boyfriend's earlier sentiment. “Whoa.”
“I'll say! It looks like a friggin' castle! I told you there was stuff to see out here! Those old pioneer types were superstitious as hell, but they knew how to build solid stuff.” Jared laughed aloud, starting towards it with a clap.
“Wait—” I snatched at the back of his poncho and nearly pulled him to the ground. “What are you doing? You're not really going in there, are you?” I divided my gaze between him and the house, all while trying to swallow back the dread that now toured my esophagus.
“Well, obviously. Don't you want to get a look at it?” He yanked his poncho out of my grasp, looking kind of annoyed. “This is what it's all about!”
He had a point; this was the kind of relic we'd come out here to find. “Sure, but the whole front of the property is all flooded. And who knows if it's safe inside? A house that's been sitting empty so long is probably all rotten. You could fall through the floors, or breathe in some kind of mold, or—”
Jared placed his hands on my shoulders and grinned. “Relax! I'm not moving into the place—not taking out a mortgage on it. I just want to poke around a little. Cool?” Sensing further protest on my end, he continued. “How about this... you come along with me, just to make sure I don't do anything stupid. We don't have to go inside, but I want to get as close as possible. After that, we can hightail it back to camp.”
I wanted to say no, but his insistence, coupled with my hope that he'd get this out of his system, saw me agree. “Just a few minutes, OK? Then we head back.”
“Promise.” He kissed me—more passionately than he had in some time—and gave me a wink before leading me towards the property by the hand.
Ten
The Splendor of Fear Page 6