by Dan Rix
The entire world was empty.
Enough. My butt hit the dirt, and I uncapped my water bottle and tilted it up. Only a splash wet my tongue.
I studied the empty bottle, chewing my dry lips.
Last night, I’d found twelve juice boxes and three bottles of water. At the time it had felt like stumbling on Eldorado, but now in the light of day the stash seemed hopelessly meager. I’d downed four juice boxes right away, and I’d polished off the first water bottle this morning. Now I’d just used up the second water bottle.
I’d lost too much sweat during the hike.
I tallied it up. I had one 16.9 oz. water bottle and eight kid-sized 4.23 oz. juice boxes left, for a total of 50 oz. of drinkable liquid.
One day’s supply. Two if I stretched it.
Then it was back to dying of thirst.
Well, no use lingering in the hot sun. I heaved the telescope over my shoulder and trudged back down the trail toward the road through patches of dusty shade.
A dead lizard lay belly up on the dirt, baking in the sun and leaking black blood from a hole in its side. My nose wrinkled as I stepped way over it. More lizards slithered away and dragged their sickly bodies into the shadows. Flies and beetles squirmed in the dirt, wings sputtering uselessly, antennae wriggling weakly in their dying efforts.
Could they not fly?
My gaze rose to the canopy of sycamore branches, the dappled haze beyond. Empty. Not a bird in sight. Maybe they couldn’t live off ash, either.
Oddly, the trees seemed healthy.
An uncanny stillness blanketed the woods. No chirping, no clicking, no birdsongs. Just my breath scratching in my throat, my heart thudding in my ears. It was so quiet out here . . . as quiet as the woods had been that night we’d dumped Ashley’s body.
I swallowed the mucous coating the inside of my mouth.
That had been near here, in fact. Rattlesnake Canyon, just down the road where the wilderness dropped into a ravine. It would be an impossible hike from this side, like Megan and I had intended—you’d have to hack your way down a steep mountainside overgrown with thorny chaparral to find a body hidden like a needle in a haystack.
What if it was still there? The police had seized Ashley’s body after I’d shown Emory, but that had been back in the real world. This was a different plane of existence. Down here, the body could still be there.
Not that I wanted to go back and check.
Still, Ashley’s final resting place . . . the more I thought about it, the more the place took on unsettling significance. What would I find there? What if it had become a link between the world of the living and the world of the dead?
A portal, maybe . . .
Forget it, Leona. There’s nothing there. I didn’t have enough water, anyway. By the time I made it down to the trailhead and hiked the several miles back up Rattlesnake Canyon Trail to Ashley’s grave, I’d be a prune. The mere thought seemed to suck the moisture out of my mouth. I sucked on my teeth.
I couldn’t waste what little liquid I had left on a wild goose chase—
I halted.
Ashley’s grave.
The riddle . . . that was the answer to the riddle! Her final resting place, her grave. My pulse hiked at the realization I’d finally solved it. The last place I would ever go.
She’d meant it literally.
I waited until evening to do the hike so I wouldn’t sweat away all my fluids to the blistering afternoon heat. Still, by the time I’d reached the rock cluster after the streambed and started whacking my way through the undergrowth with my shovel—in case I had to dig—I’d used up the rest of my juice boxes and half of my last water bottle.
The answer is hidden in the last place I would ever go.
This better be worth it, Ashley.
Rays of magenta and crimson stabbed through the trees before the sunset was swallowed by the thickening vegetation. Dusk fell fast, closing in from all sides.
I shouldn’t have waited so long.
It’s just up ahead. A nervous lump rose in my throat as I seized the last clump of weeds and shoved them aside.
At the base of a spiky clump of chaparral lay a pile of branches.
Exactly as we’d left it.
I dropped to my knees and tossed them aside, uncovering a swath of white fabric. Deep in my heart something stirred at the sight, and I sucked in a sharp breath.
I’d thought she’d looked like an angel that night—white robes, long blonde hair . . . pearly skin glowing in my headlights.
But it hadn’t been an angel, it had just been a girl in pajamas.
Moving fast, I uncovered more of the white fabric, a flash of pale skin, an ankle. I paused, breathing heavily.
Why was her body still here?
In the real world, they’d moved it. Why was it still here? Feeling a twinge of uneasiness, I lifted the last of the sticks off her face, and at last her blonde head came into view—
I jerked back, heart slamming at the base of my throat. Huh?
Her smooth cheeks caught the last blue of twilight like a wax figurine. She looked . . . perfect. No sign of decay. Like she’d only been dumped here hours ago.
Like she was only sleeping.
Slowly, the skin all down my forearm formed gooseflesh. Had time in this world simply frozen on the night we killed her? Or was this something else . . . an omen, maybe? Or the answer to her riddle? The forest darkened around me, leaving a numbing cold. Only a dim blue filtered through the trees.
She’d left a clue here. I had to move fast.
I did not want to be stuck in these woods after dark.
I moved in a circle around her corpse, raking my fingers through the chaparral and digging through the top layer of dead leaves, but came up short. What was I looking for?
In her pockets, maybe? I hesitated, then darted into her pajama bottoms. My fingers brushed a folded scrap of paper in her left pocket. Aha. I snatched it out, hurriedly wiped my hand off on my shorts, and unfolded the paper. Holding it up to the dying light, I made out two words.
Go down.
My heart leapt. Proof I was on the right track, at least. I pocketed the scrap and stepped back to assess the clearing. If the clue wasn’t on her body or around her body, then it had to be under her body.
Go down.
Well, I’d brought the shovel for a reason.
Lips pursed, I grabbed Ashley’s shirt and dragged her to the side. I raked my fingers through the leaves underneath. Nothing there.
I plunged the shovel blade into the earth and started digging, rationing the precious glow from my cell phone as the last traces of dusk faded to black. I stomped on the shovel, prying off shavings of dense clay and tossing them aside. As the hole widened, icy sweat slicked on my skin. Panting, I raised my water bottle to my lips and gulped it down until the plastic crinkled under my fingers.
The last drop wet my tongue.
Empty.
I shook it. No more water.
I quit digging and wiped my damp brow, chest heaving from exertion. Panic nipped at my lungs.
Something didn’t feel right.
I shined the light down in my hole. Hard-packed adobe soil glinted up at me, polished and faceted like crystal. As I stared, the night’s foreboding quiet crawled deep into my ears.
This was all wrong.
If something was buried here, the ground should have been loose. Not densely compacted.
A shiver tumbled out of me, and I swept the phone around the clearing. The gnarled stalks of thorny underbrush blazed in and out of focus. My gaze gravitated to the pitch black slivers where light couldn’t penetrate, and my pulse edged up a notch.
There was nothing hidden in these woods but fear.
I’d deciphe
red the riddle wrong . . . obviously.
It was a stupid kind of obvious.
How could she have know where her own body was buried and written about it in a riddle before she was buried? That didn’t even make since.
She couldn’t have possibly known about this place.
She had been dead when we dumped her here.
The only people who knew about this spot were Megan and me . . . her murderers.
As I slogged back down the trail, I ran my dry tongue along the roof of my mouth, now pebbled and rubbery. How was I already thirsty again?
It was hopeless. I’d used up the last of my water chasing a false lead, and now I had nothing. I wanted to scream.
Of course Ashley couldn’t have planted a clue where we’d dumped her corpse. She’d been dead. It would have been some kind of paradox if she had.
How could I have been so stupid?
The strange logic of this world had rubbed off on me, apparently.
The answer is hidden in the last place I would ever go.
Well, I could cross off the literal interpretation of the riddle, as in her grave. She only could have planted a clue in a place she knew about when she was alive.
Her words swirled through my mind.
The last place I would ever go . . .
I thought back to her standing in the middle of the road right before I hit her. Technically, Foothill Road was the last place she had ever gone. But she couldn’t have known that either. Her death had been an accident. She’d been sleepwalking that night.
It had to be somewhere else . . . a place she knew would be the last place she would ever go, so she could plant something there in advance.
There was another disturbing possibility, of course.
Maybe she had literally been on her way to plant the next clue when I hit her with my car, killing her before she could.
I swallowed the sticky phlegm in my throat. If that was the case, then there would be no answer waiting at the end of the riddle, no explanation of how to escape, and I would remain trapped in this parallel world until I died of thirst.
Thirst . . . I sucked saliva into my mouth and wet my cracked lips.
What about the note in Ashley’s pocket?
I pulled it out to distract myself from my dehydration. I couldn’t read it by starlight, but I remembered what it said.
Go down.
This note had to have been in her pocket the night she died, as if she’d intended someone to find her body. But that was the same inconsistency as before. She couldn’t have possibly known to put a note in her pocket because she had no idea she was going to die that night.
Unless she had known.
I sped up without thinking, chewing my lip as comprehension stirred in my mind.
Could she have known?
A memory surfaced from somewhere deep. Back on Earth, Ashley had appeared to me as some sort of projection, first in my bedroom when she’d told me to avenge her, then at Tina Wilkes’s party, and again outside Megan’s bedroom. That last time she’d appeared, something she’d said . . . pieces of it were coming back to me.
Find my diary, and you will know what to do . . . I estimate it is now June first . . . If you are receiving this, then hopefully I am already dead.
I’d dismissed it at the time, hadn’t processed it.
She had known.
But the only way she could have known—and the realization set my heart galloping—was if she hadn’t actually been sleepwalking that night, but had gone there purposefully to die.
I halted in my tracks, and my jaw fell open.
On July first, Ashley Lacroix had deliberately stood herself at a blind curve on Foothill Road at midnight, waiting for my speeding car.
She had committed suicide.
Chapter 9
A ghostly quiet hung over the blind curve on Foothill Road. The weed-infested hillside rose sharply on my left, and a huge oak tree jutted out over the asphalt, cutting off line of sight. Its gnarled branches loomed against the starry sky like enormous black claws.
I’d hit her right here.
I hadn’t visited this spot since the accident, refusing to set foot anywhere near Foothill Road.
But now I needed answers.
I panned my cell phone light—battery half drained—over the pavement. The stain was barely visible, long since dried and faded. Like any other oil stain.
I knew better.
Drip . . . drip . . . drip . . .
The sound her blood had made as it trickled onto the asphalt. I clicked off my phone and stood in the darkness, straining to draw in air.
It was a dead end riddle.
There was nothing here. Even if she had come here to die—or to leave behind a message—she couldn’t have ensured that whoever found her riddle would know to look here. No one but the person who hit her—me, in this case—would know about this location, and what use was a riddle that could only be solved by her murderer?
Just as easily it could have been a balding forty-year-old who never looked into it.
No, that wasn’t true.
I tried the logic again, putting myself in her shoes. Ashley would have assumed her death would be all over the news—and reported as a suicide—so technically anyone might be able to solve her riddle and poke around where she died.
Except they never published where she died. Because they never found out. Because the driver who hit her turned out to be a reckless sixteen-year-old girl who hid the body instead of reporting the accident like a normal person.
I cradled my head in my hands and groaned.
Why, why, why, Leona?
This was the place.
The riddle had been meant for someone else—for Emory, for her parents, for anybody—but because I’d hidden the body, no one had ever solved it.
A painful ache rose at the back of my throat.
I had to get back home, I had to confess. I had to tell Emory.
Where was this fucking answer hidden?
My car had knocked Ashley’s body at least ten feet, so the blood stain didn’t mark the spot. I walked forward a few paces, and my tennis shoes clanged on a manhole cover.
She’d been standing right here.
I peered around the deserted street, then veered to the side of the road and rummaged around in the shrubs, eyes peeled for a shoebox, scraps of paper, evidence of digging, anything.
Nothing.
It had been four months. Any clues she’d left behind would be long gone. But maybe not. Maybe not here. Maybe in this timeless realm, everything would be just as she’d left it.
I strained to remember details from that night, anything out of place, anything that might have been a clue. My mind shut me out, refusing to relive the nightmare. Not that I’d ever recall anything. Megan and I had had tunnel vision that night. We hadn’t lingered, hadn’t thought to search the bushes at the side of the road. Why would we?
A glimmer of white caught my eye, and I lunged for it, plucked a crumpled receipt out of a tangle of roots. Front and back, nothing written on it. I threw it down, frustrated.
She had to know this was impossible.
You couldn’t just leave a gum wrapper on the side of the road and call it a clue. Then again, she’d barely finished freshman year, she was fifteen.
She probably didn’t know jack.
My hopes deflated. Maybe the other side of the road, tucked between the roots of an oak tree, perhaps. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I straightened up, taking in the cool night air in slow, deep breaths.
This didn’t feel right.
Her first clue had been obvious. Huge, bright red letters painted on her bedroom ceiling. Had I gotten it wrong again?
My gaze rose a
bsently to the night sky, and I found myself staring at the same spiral-shaped anomaly of stars I’d seen last night. A galaxy? What was it about that thing? If I didn’t know better, I’d have said the sky had been pinched together in that one spot. Focus, Leona.
I went back to middle of the street, back to where she’d been standing the moment she died. Just an empty section of pavement. My feet banged on the manhole cover again.
I froze, as the sound echoed into the night.
No, it couldn’t be . . . could it?
Surely she hadn’t been standing directly on top of the manhole. I brought my heel down hard, and the metallic gong reverberated in a hollow space beneath.
I clicked on my cell phone and lowered the shaky beam to my feet. The manhole cover bore the word storm in stamped iron letters.
I fingered the scrap of paper in my pocket that I’d found in her pajamas.
Go down.
That clue had been meant for here.
She’d hidden the answer in the sewer, and she wanted me to go down and get it.
Hell. No.
Turned out you couldn’t just lift it off. The manhole cover weighed a ton. I withdrew my fingers from the rusted holes and rubbed my sore wrists, peering around the dark road for a solution.
The solution turned out to be leverage.
I found an unlocked toolshed behind a hedge at the top of the nearest driveway. Rope, bolts, long steel pipe, steel bucket—I gathered what I could, fighting cobwebs.
Back at the manhole, I tied the rope around the bolt and slipped the bolt through the hole, wiggling it until it caught. Then I tied the other end of the rope to the pipe so it was taut, and balanced the pipe on the upside-down bucket.
I stepped up on the pipe’s long end, and as my weight pressed it down, the manhole cover lifted and swung to the side. The pipe shot out from underneath me and I landed painfully on my butt. With a deafening clang, the iron cover clattered to rest a few feet away, leaving a pitch black hole in the street.
How had Ashley accomplished this?