“I’m sorry we’ll never get married,” Jack said.
“Oh God, Jack. I’m sorry, too. I love you. I always loved you. You were the one I should have married. We would have had kids—a family. We would have been so happy.”
Jack smiled, shut his eyes, as if envisioning her words, exhaled deeply, and died.
Chapter Eighty-Six
Susan thrashed out of the tent, screaming. She flailed her arms in all directions, as if trying to ward off invisible attackers. After a few seconds of quiet, she caught her breath and looked around.
Over the treetops, a few morning stars hung in the pink sky.
The walls of the tent were shredded. A splattering of blood surrounded each punctured hole. She examined the bottom third of the tent walls and tried to pick out the exact blow that had killed Jack.
Where are the others? The campsite was empty and still. She hesitated to call their names out loud, for fear that her assailant still lingered in the woods, watching her moves. She remembered hearing a tremendous barrage of gunshots in the dark.
Did Scott shoot the murderer? Did he shoot Sheriff Adams? Considering Scott’s deteriorating mental state, it was difficult to determine what decisions he would have made in the dark.
She realized she didn’t care about him anymore. Didn’t care about anyone but herself. She simply needed to get out of the woods. She’d be more than happy to do that by herself.
Waiting near the tent left her too vulnerable. She pulled her clothes on and gathered some basics: tent, extra clothes, a few cans of food. She couldn’t help but remember only a few days ago, standing in her living room, looking at all the camping supplies. The beer. The condoms. The maps.
What a fool I was. The woods aren’t a playground, they’re hell. And I’m in the middle of it.
She heaved her backpack onto her shoulders, grunting a little, then slowly walked onto the trail. The sun was higher in the sky now, and she didn’t have to rely on the reflective markers on the trees. She could see the white blaze signals on the trunks. She was clearly on the trail.
After a while, she stopped to rest beside a small creek. She removed her backpack, rubbed her sore shoulders, and opened a small can of tuna. The sun throbbed white. It warmed her bones and filled her with a sense of calmness. Daylight. Everything is going to be okay.
Something troubled her. She scooped the last of the tuna fish out of the can and thought, People. Where are all the other people? It’s a beautiful day, and this is a major path, but I haven’t seen anyone at all.
She put the empty can back in her bag and started down the trail again.
Twenty minutes later, she saw an old wooden lean-to; a sort of rudimentary three-sided cabin meant to offer shelter to hikers. Susan remembered Scott talking about these structures after one his wilderness trips.
She approached the lean-to and peered inside. On the center of the floor a mouse nibbled on a wilting apple. The mouse looked up, undisturbed, then continued its breakfast. Susan shooed the mouse away and entered the lean-to. The familiar smells of camping filled her nose: burnt wood, beer, dead cigarettes, and mold.
All things considered, it’s better than that tent, Susan thought. She decided to rest here for a bit.
Attached to the wall was a wooden mailbox. Susan remembered Scott had said that the mailboxes along the trail contained notebooks filled with hiker’s comments. These trail journals usually consisted of everything from weather reports to bad jokes. Susan reached inside the mailbox, and sure enough, a journal was in there, sealed in a Ziploc bag to thwart the morning dew. Susan liked this trail tradition of writing an update about your adventures for other hikers to read. She thumbed through the book.
7/19- Great hike. Clouds rolled in, but rain held off. Staying here tonight, pushing on for Maryland line this week.
—Timber
7/24- Just out for the weekend. Never hiked PA before. Nice hike. Trail markers a bit confusing.
—Jim & Linda (West Virginia)
7/28- Good hike. Had fun with Mountain Man and Big Pack. (Too much fun!) Watch the white blaze markers, they’re all wrong!
—Wingman
Susan wrote, in a shaky hand, beneath the most recent entry:
8/13— HELP! SOMEONE IS TRYING TO KILL ME!
—Susan Ginder
Chapter Eighty-Seven
The two men walked side by side, only yielding to let the other take the lead on narrow paths. As the trail funneled to almost nothing, the men began to hike single file.
“I’m sure this is it. I think I remember that ridge,” the one wearing a baseball cap said, pointing vaguely into the distance.
“I don’t know,” the other said. “I don’t remember the path getting this narrow.”
Truthfully, Alex didn’t remember any of this. It had been nearly a decade since he hiked this way. Nearly a decade since he and the guys had all graduated college and hiked the trail together. He knew a lot about himself had changed. Was it possible that even the trail had changed?
They had invited the rest of their college crew to join them on this trip. Jerry’s wife just had a baby and he couldn’t make it. Steve was away on a business trip. Kevin simply never returned their e-mails. It was getting like that. The old gang was falling apart. They vowed after college to never lose touch, but it was happening. Even with Facebook, e-mail, cell phones, and text messaging, the gang was falling apart.
Sure, they stayed connected in little ways. Announced the births of their children. Trash-talked when their local sports teams clashed. But these blips amounted to nothing more than feeble attempts at connection.
Maybe it was supposed to happen this way, Alex thought, walking down the trail and swatting away branches that crosshatched his path. You’re supposed to grow apart. It would be weird if we didn’t grow apart. Growing apart means growing up.
A branch slashed Alex’s face. “This isn’t the way, man,” he blurted out. They weren’t on a path anymore. There were just stomping around in a tangle of thorns.
“It’s right through here. I know it.”
He doubted Ryan, but he followed anyway. He would have protested more if it were Kevin or Steve, but with Ryan, he decided to let it drop. He didn’t know Ryan as well as the others. Sure, they all went to college together. Sure, they knew each other well. But he had never really hung out with Ryan one-on-one. Their friendship had always stayed within the context of the group.
In fact, he had been surprised that Ryan wanted to go ahead with the planned hiking trip at all, given the anemic response from the others. Alex had really wanted to quit when Kevin and Steve bailed, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. He didn’t want Ryan to think that he was quitting because it would be just the two of them. So he pushed on, gung ho, talking trash to the others via e-mail, and hyping the trip more and more as the date approached.
Now he was here, in the woods, with Ryan, and possibly lost.
He wished he’d bailed.
“There it is!”
“What?” Alex asked.
“Look, you can just see the roof.”
Alex stood on a rock and peered in the direction Ryan pointed. Sure enough, the pitch of a brown-shingled roof poked over some large bushes.
“The lean-to,” Ryan said. “That’s the place!”
“You’re right!” Alex admitted. He didn’t know how Ryan had led them here, but somehow he did.
They crashed through the brush and arrived at the front of the three-sided structure.
“Looks the same,” Ryan said.
“Yeah, it does.” But we’re not the same, Alex thought. He looked down at his slack gut—twenty pounds heavier since college.
Ryan removed his hat and Alex noted his salt and pepper hair. The lean-to was the same. They had changed. Maybe that’s why they had wanted to return. To see a place they knew when they were young.
Ryan stepped into the structure. Alex followed and immediately recognized the smells of an old campfire and stale beer. A few squ
irrels darted out of the lean-to.
“Check out the trail journal,” said Ryan. “It’s open right there on the table.”
Alex thought it was odd that the book was not sealed tight. Damn lazy hikers. He scanned the last few entries, then glanced up at Ryan.
“Alex, what is it? What’s wrong?”
Alex jabbed a shaky finger at the last entry. The one written by Susan Ginder.
Before Ryan could read the entry, they both noticed the puddle of blood on the floor.
Chapter Eighty-Eight
Ryan retched.
“It’s okay, man,” Alex assured him, tossing the book aside and focusing on his friend. “It’s alright.”
“Dude, that’s fucking blood on the floor!”
“It’s alright, man. It might be blood. It might not. Who the hell knows? This place is nasty.”
“It’s fucking blood, dude. You know it’s blood!”
Alex bent down and examined the wooden planks. “Animal blood. Probably deer blood from a kill. These hunters are crazy around here. They clean their game anywhere.”
Ryan remembered the trail head earlier today. He had noticed a few pick-up trucks with gun-racks. He wasn’t sure if it was hunting season. He never paid attention to that sort of thing. He never needed to know.
It was possible that the blood was from a deer. Anything was possible in these woods.
He loved it here—no, he had used to love it here. He had loved coming to the lean-to with his college buddies. Admittedly, it was strange hiking with only Alex. He missed Kevin’s leadership. Steve’s jokes. Alex was cool enough, but still…he wasn’t the gang.
Ryan had continued to push for the hiking trip even when the majority of the guys had declined. Ryan just wanted to hike. To get out in the woods and leave his “mature” life behind, if only for a few hours.
Alex wasn’t married and didn’t have any kids. That was the difference. Ryan had a wife and three kids… sometimes he just needed to get away. If Alex had bailed on the trip, he would’ve lied to his wife and said that all of his friends were in, and then hiked alone. Although he loved his family, he needed the woods that much.
Ryan looked down at the blood again. I’m glad I didn’t come alone, he thought.
“Okay, so maybe it is from a deer,” Ryan said. “It’s still creepy as shit.”
“Yeah, it’s definitely creepy.”
“Hey, remember when Kevin used to tell those horror stories when we’d camp out here?”
“Sort of,” Alex said, glancing down at the tattered logbook on the floor.
“Come on, Alex! You remember. The one about the circle of trees and the dead cow in the middle. The one about the killer with the hunting knife. And the cults and shit that Kevin said haunted these here woods.”
Alex smiled but said nothing.
“Don’t you remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. They were good stories. Kevin had quite the imagination.”
Alex peered down at the book again.
“What’s in that book?” Ryan asked. “What the hell did you read? You looked like you were gonna shit your pants earlier!”
“Nothing’s in there. Hike updates, that’s all.”
“No, come on. You read something!”
“It was the blood. The blood on the floor got me sick.”
Ryan grew serious. “It wasn’t the blood. What’s in the book?”
Alex didn’t say anything.
“Give me the book.”
Alex didn’t move.
Ryan slowly walked to the center of the lean-to, never taking his eyes off Alex. He bent down, grabbed the book, and started flipping though the pages.
Ryan’s eyes fell upon the last entry.
“Jesus Christ.”
Chapter Eighty-Nine
The afternoon arrived sunny and warm in the woods surrounding Crenson. Forty-eight hours ago, four campers had begun their journey westward for a weekend camping trip. Now, two of them were dead. A third was presently being stalked. A fourth teetered perilously between hunter and hunted.
The man in the red shirt was enjoying himself tremendously.
The two dead had been killed with extraordinary violence. One girl’s head had been split by a cold blade. Later, the knife had struck again, slashing though the walls of the tent and snuffing out the life of a man.
The bodies were left untended, mutilated.
Nearby, two young men were out for a poorly attended college reunion hiking trip that was quickly turning into a nightmare. They were trying to convince themselves that the blood on the lean-to floor was from an animal. They knew it wasn’t. They tried to persuade themselves that the hastily scrawled message in the logbook was simply a bad hoax. They knew it wasn’t.
There were lots of dead bodies in the woods around Crenson. Hikers. Tourists. Locals. Bodies dotted the area like a new type of fauna. Some deteriorated in the black waters of the lake, their bones picked clean by fish. Others rotted under moldy leaves, with perhaps one twisted finger poking up through the brush, like the first flower of spring.
Still other bodies rested in elaborate states of gore. Guts spilling out of abdomens. Hooks suspending flesh. Shotgun holes as big as tires.
Not all of the dead had been killed by the man in the red shirt. Some had been killed by fear. Mistrust. Darkness. There were always accidents in the woods at night. Accidents people hoped would never be found.
Cops were involved in the murders. One, a sheriff, sought to solve the mysteries. The other, an officer, wanted to hide more accidents. Always more accidents.
The sheriff was stumbling through the woods, unarmed, his police uniform tattered and bloody. With his swollen face and beaten appearance, he barely seemed human, let alone an officer of the law. He walked aimlessly, frantically, unaccustomed to the woods. He hated the woods. He was in love with a widowed waitress. He doubted he would ever see her again.
The other cop was a city boy who had moved to rural Pennsylvania in search of an idyllic life, like the Norman Rockwell prints in the library he’d admired as a boy. But he found that country living wasn’t like those prints at all. The woods were menacing. The people were secretive. And the nights, the nights went on forever. The city boy had met a priest who offered an alternative. Something different from country monotony. Something with an edge. He joined.
Now he was beginning to realize that the priest only offered lifetime memberships.
The gaunt high priest strode the dirt floors of his subterranean lair beneath the church. He twisted his hands together, thinking about the two cops, the man in the red shirt, the hunting knife, the bodies. So many bodies. Too many bodies. It was all coming apart around him.
* * * *
Susan Ginder followed the trail up the side of an embankment and across a dry riverbed. When she stopped to catch her breath, her inhales jerked in ragged succession and her exhales resembled an infant in the throes of apoplexy. She slumped against a tree and cried. And prayed. Schoolgirl prayers, etched in her memory from a different time. Our Father… Hail Mary…
Near the lean-to, the man in the red shirt also prayed. His lips barely moved. His words were inaudible. His murmured incantations descended straight to hell.
Chapter Ninety
“Jesus Christ,” Ryan repeated, pointing at the trail journal. “What is this?”
“It’s just someone fucking with us.”
“No way. Did you see this?” Ryan jabbed a finger at the entry.
“Yeah, some shit about Susan Ginder. Look. Nobody’s trying to kill her. Nobody’s trying to kill us. It’s like you said before, about how Kevin used to tell us all those stories about murders and stuff. He was just messing with our heads, man. This journal is the same way.”
Ryan thought about Alex’s suggestion. Perhaps it was possible that the message was just a joke from some warped hiker. It was possible. But he kept looking at the pen marks, the formation of the letters. Wild strokes and quick slashes. The handwriting ap
peared panicked, rushed. Not like a kid trying to fake a ransom note in a childhood game of hostage. Ryan detected legitimate fear in the message.
“I guess it’s possible,” Ryan admitted. “Only that message looks so real. And I’ve been hiking for a lot of years, and I’ve never read something like that. Someone talking about getting killed and shit. I’m mean, that’s fucked-up.”
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