by Dan Rix
Do it now.
I slipped around to the backdoor, unlocked, and slipped inside. I’d made friends with the Golden Retriever, and he greeted me in the laundry room, tail wagging. He couldn’t see me, but he could smell me and lick me and paw me and hear me, and apparently four out of five senses was more than enough for a dog.
I found Emory in the bathroom upstairs, brushing his teeth, humming a song to himself. Instantly, an ache spread through my heart and lungs. Helpless against the rush of emotions, I slumped against the doorframe and clamped my hand over my mouth to stifle a wave of shallow, frantic gasps. The adrenaline subsided, leaving only the desperate need to get it over with.
I have to do this.
I have to show him.
A shaky breath filled my lungs. First I needed to get his attention, let him know I was here in such a way that he thought I was Ashley’s ghost.
For that I had an idea.
I took hold of the door and eased it further into the bathroom. It shuddered on its hinges and creaked loudly. The sound made me cringe.
Emory’s shoulders tensed and his hand stopped brushing. Slowly, he pivoted at his hips to peer behind him.
Heart in my throat, I backed into the dark hallway, deliberately putting all my weight on my heel so the floor creaked. He continued to stare at me, through me, not an ounce of fear in his eyes. Curiosity, defiance, but not fear. Maybe when you’ve already lost the person you love the most, you don’t feel fear.
He continued brushing his teeth, though his eyes stayed alert.
He was watching me.
I had to do more.
I glanced around, an agitated tension rising in my throat. What would a ghost do? Something subtle, something spooky, like writing in a fogged up mirror. Hmm . . .
My eyes gravitated to the picture frames lining the wall. Perfect. I tiptoed to the closest one and hooked a finger behind it, ready to dislodge a photo of Emory smiling sheepishly at a gas stove with a spatula in hand.
So he cooks, I noted, tugging the frame.
Wait, wait, wait.
This had to be something symbolic. I moved to the next photo instead, a picture of Ashley grinning in a kayak, hair dripping wet. Yes, she would dislodge a picture of herself.
I nudged it off the hook. The frame dropped, bounced on the rug, and clattered against the wall. The sound resounded through the quiet house, jolting my already frazzled nerves. Surely that got his attention.
Silence in the bathroom.
“Carter?” he called. “Carter, you up here?”
The dog didn’t answer.
I heard the sound of spitting, the ruffle of a towel, and then footsteps emerging from the bathroom, heading right toward me. I flattened myself against the opposite wall just in time. He emerged from the bathroom and came to a halt at the fallen picture, a foot in front of me. The breeze from his motion sent my hair swaying across my face, tickling my cheeks, my breasts, my heaving rib cage.
I held my breath.
He picked up the frame and went to hang it back on the hook, but then he saw the photo . . . saw her . . . and his arm stilled. For a long time he stared at it, and his other hand went to his face to squeeze his jaw. I used the opportunity to slip out from behind him and edge up the hall.
Toward her room.
He was still gazing at the picture when I reached for the knob. The latch clicked, and ever so slowly, I pushed the door into Ashley’s bedroom. He caught the motion in his periphery and glanced up, stared right at me. I pushed it open further, sweat slicking under my palm on the knob.
He glanced between her photo and her room, and awareness dawned on his face.
Now he understood.
Eyes locked on his, I backed into her bedroom, the floorboards creaking under the carpet with each step.
He took the bait. Hastily he set the picture back on the wall and followed my footsteps to her open bedroom. I retreated to the middle and stopped, hardly daring to breathe. Leaning inside, he scanned the empty bedroom, then flicked on the lights.
I flinched, fearing he’d seen me, but his gaze continued to pass over my body.
“Ashley?” Voice soft, he stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him. Then he came toward me, reaching out his hand.
Shut in the room with him.
No choice but to go forward with this.
I sidestepped him as he edged closer, now fully aware of the risk. Any sound could give me away. If he swept his arm to the right or spun toward me, he’d contact my body. My naked body, made of flesh and blood and bone and skin. Ghosts didn’t have bodies. One touch and the jig was up.
He passed in front of me, and I exhaled as quietly as I could. He heard. His entire body stiffened, neck muscles rigid. He glanced around. “Ashley? Is that you? Where . . . where are you?”
I stood on tiptoe and leaned over his shoulder, positioning my mouth next to his ear, so close I nearly choked on the spicy cologne rising off his neck and shoulders.
Cologne meant for me, I realized. Meant for tonight, for a walk along a moonlit beach with a girl named Leona Hewitt.
It was time to change our plans.
Tonight, he would be taking a walk into his worst nightmare with his sister’s murderer.
I whispered into his ear, “I can show you.”
He jumped at my voice and spun toward me, eyes wide. I shrank back, but not fast enough. His palm came at my face like a freight train. I ducked to the side and twisted my body out of reach, but his fingers swiped through my hair and caught the end of a long lock, latching on like clamps. I froze.
Caught.
But he let go, too shocked to hold on, and my hair slid the rest of the way through his fingers. Teetering off balance, I skirted away and fell. I softened the impact, landing like a cat on fingers and toes, not a sound. Dusty lint billowed up my nostrils, blood pounded in my ears.
My hair.
He’d touched my hair.
Hair was okay. A ghost could have hair.
Emory seemed to realize he’d lost me, because his expression changed to sheer panic, and he barged forward, grasping at the air. His feet thumped the carpet next to me, and I leapt out of the way just in time, whipped my hair behind me so it didn’t touch him. My shoulder bumped the bed frame, wobbling the double bunks.
He veered toward the sound, and I rolled away from him again, then scuttled backward like a crab, my heart nearly leaping out of my chest.
I had to stay under control, had to look under control. Like everything was intentional. My back hit the door with a sickening crunch. He jerked upright.
I rose trembling to my feet and opened the door, then walked into the hallway, willing myself to stay calm. My footsteps moved toward the landing.
“Wait . . . wait!” he said, bounding after me. “Ashley . . . wait!”
I descended the stairs, wood creaking underfoot. Wild, exhilarated breaths tore through my lungs. Yes, he was following me. At the bottom, Carter jumped to his feet and bounded toward me, tongue flapping.
Uh-oh.
Ghosts could not be licked by dogs.
I ran toward him and hurdled him like a track runner—he passed underneath me—and landed on my toes, cushioning the impact as I sprinted through the foyer. Behind me, the dog cocked his head, confused.
“It’s okay, boy,” said Emory. “It’s her . . . it’s Ashley!”
At the front door, my hand fumbled with the latch, unlocked it. When Emory wandered into view, glancing side to side—he thought he’d lost me again—I pulled it open and slipped out into the cold night.
“Ashley, wait!” He ran after me.
I veered down the driveway and knelt in the street to wait for him, gasping to catch my breath. But he’d stopped on the porch,
gazing out in wonderment. He thought the ghost encounter was over.
“C’monnn,” I muttered.
I clomped my feet on the pavement to get his attention, but outside, he couldn’t hear my footsteps and I only ended up bruising my heels. He just stood there, a little smile on his face as he scratched Carter’s ears. Then he turned around and reached for the handle.
My heart lurched.
No! He was going back inside!
Without thinking, I sprinted back up the driveway. My toes burned from the friction on the concrete, and wind rushed past my ears and lashed my hair across my neck.
Emory pushed the door open, and Carter slipped inside. I flew past him and yanked the door shut, nearly crushing his fingers.
He flinched and stared at the door for a second, dazed.
I leaned into his personal space and hissed, “Follow me.”
Then I walked very obviously across the lawn, leaving footprints of trampled grass.
This time he followed.
No wonder ghosts got so pissed off. They were just trying to communicate. I trudged through the landscaping, shaking the fronds of a baby palm, and stepped off the curb into the street.
Emory stopped in the middle of the lawn, confused.
This was going to be way harder than I’d thought.
At the neighbor’s lot, I thrust my arm into a hedge and gave it a good shake.
An arch formed in his furrowed eyebrows.
“Oh, come on,” I whispered to myself, stripping one of the branches of its leaves, which I then scattered on the ground in the shape of a big fat arrow pointing up the street.
He wandered over and studied the arrow for a long, looong time. At last his eyes brightened with understanding. He nodded smugly to himself, as if he’d just cracked a tough clue—he was adorable—and began walking in the direction of the arrow.
But now I hesitated, my plan beginning to unravel. It was a several mile walk across town. There was no way I was going to lead him like this across the busy commercial district and into the hills. I couldn’t be shaking hedges and drawing arrows in the leaves and making footprints around other people. Even if no one saw us, he would probably get tired and return home.
Growing anxious, I scanned the street for inspiration, for an idea. My eyes zeroed in on his black convertible, top still down.
Change of plans.
I jogged up next to Emory—still walking purposely up the street—and leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Go to the Rattlesnake Canyon trailhead.”
He halted midstride, face frozen. “Rattlesnake Canyon,” he muttered, as if he’d had the thought himself.
I nodded vigorously, even though he couldn’t see me.
He dug through his pockets and pulled out a smartphone. Over his shoulder, I saw him open a new text message to a girl named Leona—me, I realized belatedly—and tap out, Gotta cancel tonight. Something came up.
My own phone was sitting at home in my bedroom, unreachable. Too bad. A text message back from me would have been the perfect alibi.
His text would go unanswered.
Next he typed Rattlesnake Canyon into a search bar. Looking up directions. He would realize it was too far to walk. While he was occupied, I sprinted back to his car and scrambled into the backseat, wedging myself in the hollow behind the seatbacks.
A moment later, his footsteps jogged up to the car, and the door opened and slammed. He fumbled with keys. The engine roared and we pulled away, sloshing my insides sickeningly. At once, icy gusts battered my bare skin and set my teeth chattering, while every bump in the road dug the center hump into my hip. Wincing, I curled up into a ball and suffered the twenty minute drive to the Rattlesnake Canyon trailhead in shivering agony.
From the base of an old stone bridge, Rattlesnake Canyon Trail plunged into a dense, shadowy tunnel of oak and sycamore trees. Emory careened over the bridge, saw on his GPS he’d overshot the trailhead, and slammed on the brakes, squashing me into the seatbacks. He reversed his convertible into a rocky turnout, tires skidding and kicking up dust.
Then silence.
Terrifying silence.
I wanted to stay in his convertible wedged in front of the red leather seat cushions forever rather than face what lay ahead.
His door opened, and a broad back appeared silhouetted against the ghostly trees.
He was wondering, Now what?
I had to do this.
Taking care not to shake the car, I eased myself onto the backseat and slinked over the door, my body hugging the chilled metal. Another violent shiver. I planted my feet and gradually lessened my weight on the door, drawing out a tiny squeak from the suspension. Then I was free.
He didn’t turn around.
Jaw clamped in grim determination, he peered intently at the trailhead. “Ashley, where are you taking me?”
I didn’t answer.
Three months ago, around this time of night, I had stood at this very trailhead with Megan, Ashley’s body slung between us. The memory made me sick. A quiver started deep in my gut, spread out inside me, and surfaced in needle-like prickles all down my back.
Soon it would be over.
I stepped up to the trail and peered down it.
A pitch black tunnel receded away from the road, lined with dried stalks and knotted, slithering roots, all lurking in ambush. From out of the forest wafted the earthy smell of decay and the sound of distant crunching leaves. A breeze moaned out of the opening, and it seemed to slice right through me, blowing like ice through my rib cage and sinking icicles into my quivering organs.
What if her actual ghost haunted this trail?
Trying not to think about it, I turned around and whispered, “Emooory . . .”
My voice merged with the creak and moan of ancient trees. I clambered off the road into wilderness, where I waited. A troubling thought stirred at the back of my brain.
What if her body was gone?
His cell phone flashlight blazed to life, and he shuffled after me, jerking it this way and that at every skittering shadow. I continued up the trail, staying twenty feet ahead of him.
The riverbed dropped away on our left, dappled in moonlight. It had been a hot, dry summer, and only a few muddy puddles remained, sprouting ferns. Thorny chaparral had taken over everything else. Emory panted behind me.
Every so often I tousled a low branch or cracked a stick or whispered his name.
Just enough to keep him going.
Otherwise, my bare feet made no sound.
Deeper into the wilderness. The trail crossed the riverbed down in a grotto, where the dense canopy plunged us into an even blacker night. Only a ghostly blue glow remained, illuminating piles of dried leaves deep enough to wade through. I hopped from boulder to boulder to avoid crunching them. On my right, a rock face slanted out of view, cut with a deep fissure, on which moss and algae grew in slick, oozing sheens.
The cold numbed my fingers and toes.
Soon, the nightmare would be over. I could feel it now, smell it, the reek of nearby evil . . . which I had planted here.
Its tendrils reached into my lungs, welcoming me back.
Soon . . . soon it would be over.
The distance surprised me. A mile . . . two miles. The trail inched by, way longer than I remembered it. Megan and I had been carrying a dead body between us. We’d been frantic and terrified. The power of fear and adrenaline. At the time, it hadn’t seemed like far enough—they would find it, they would know where to look, they would send dogs.
But no one had found it.
No one had discovered our secret.
We got away with it.
That was the worst part by far.
But even as I marveled at how far our desperation had driven us, I
knew that each switchback brought us inevitably closer to that secret, deepening the pit in my stomach. I wanted to hike forever.
I didn’t want to show him.
A cluster of rocks came into view, and my breathing sped up. I remembered those rocks.
It would be soon now.
I waited for Emory to catch up before I ventured off the trail into the brush, pushing aside dry stalks.
The commotion caught his attention, and he flicked his cell phone left and right, torn between continuing along the trail and following a phantom rustle into the dark woods.
“Emory,” I whispered. “Emooory . . .”
He swallowed and carefully stepped off the trail, shining his light toward me. I foraged ahead, digging through vegetation and squeezing between branches, then climbed through a clump of barbed sticks, which gouged into the soles of my feet and raked my skin. I barely felt the pain.
Mud oozed between my toes on the other side. Emory breathed heavily at my back, forced to crawl on his hands and knees. He would have an easier time following me now that I had to whack my way through dense chaparral. I imagined what this must be like for him—bushes shaking and parting right in front of him, trying to follow something invisible as it slithered deeper into the forest.
If I were in his shoes, I’d be scared shitless right now.
We bushwhacked another quarter mile, clawing through wall after wall of tangled branches. If you looked closely, there was evidence. A cracked tree limb here, a trampled bush there, an uprooted fern that had long since shriveled into a husk.
But only if you knew what to look for.
How Megan and I had dragged her body this far, I had no idea.
It’s just up ahead.
My heart quaked deep in my rib cage, like a frightened animal trembling in its burrow. Something dry and sore hovered at the base of my throat, which I couldn’t quite swallow. As we drew closer, I began to feel sick to my stomach.
Just beyond this bush . . .