by Raven Snow
“I guess.” Peony knelt down across from her, on the other side of the bag. “Do you recognize whose it is?”
Rowen shook her head. “No, but I wasn’t paying attention to the bags everyone was carrying.” She unfolded the top flap. It had a buckle and snap but neither were done. The bag itself was mostly empty. She found a couple rolls of mints, a notepad, a pen, and something cylindrical and smooth. She removed the last object and turned it over a few times in her hands. She mistook it initially for a big, fat permanent marker. A closer look revealed that it was too hi-tech for that. “What is this, some kind of e-cigarette?”
“Let me see.” Willow reached out and took the device from Rowen. It didn’t take her long to come up with an answer. “This is how rich kids smoke pot.” She sniffed at it for good measure then began to unscrew things.
“You look like you know your way around that thing.” Rowen watched as her cousin carefully disassembled the barrel.
“What? It’s not like it’s complicated.” That hadn’t been what Rowen was getting at, but she let it slide. “See?” Willow pulled the thing into two pieces and showed Rowen the insides. She didn’t have to look to know what it was. She could smell it from where she sat. “Weird.”
“What’s weird?” asked Rowen.
Willow jiggled the piece in her hand, rolling the contents around. “They didn’t finish their bowl.”
“Maybe they were gonna come back to it,” Peony suggested. “Maybe they were high enough. If it was Phoenix, maybe this is where he stashes his pot and comes to smoke.”
Was this where Rowen had seen him with Veronica the night before? She couldn’t be certain, but she didn’t think so. She hadn’t pressed this deep into the woods. “Inconvenient place to stash your stuff. At an unmarked location off the main trail? In a bag just lying on the ground? Besides, there’s no marijuana in here.”
“I doubt all he came with was in this.” Willow had reassembled the device in her hand. She waggled it for emphasis.
“All right, but the bag is still empty.” That wasn’t entirely true. Rowen recalled the notepad as she spoke. She reached in to retrieve that next. It too was an expensive little accessory. The surface was a smooth fake leather and there was a zipper on the side, though it was already open. Rowen flipped to the first page and found… doodles. They weren’t even very good doodles. Flowers, trees, boobs. “I think this belonged to Phoenix.” Between the notebook and the pot, it felt like an educated guess. Her guess was confirmed when she turned a page and saw some notes written out in chicken scratch handwriting. It looked like a list of things to pack for the retreat. The idiot had even listed weed. Not only that, he’d underlined and put a star next to it.
The list didn’t just contain personal items. He had supplies listed too. At least this showed there had been some planning in the retreat. At the end of the list, there were more personal items, albeit of a different nature. “Non-vegan chocolate - Veronica.” Rowen could go for some non-vegan chocolate right about now.
“Um.” It was Willow. She cleared her throat. When she spoke up again, her voice was shaking. “What’s that over there?”
Peony and Rowen both followed her gaze. It took Rowen a few seconds to realize what it was she had seen. She had to stand and really strain her eyes to make it out herself. “I…” She saw it in the distance. “I don’t know.”
But Rowen was afraid she did know. She had seen it before, and it had only been a matter of time before she would see one again. Peony was less reluctant to come right out and voice her fears. “That’s not… That’s not a body, is it?”
Rowen didn’t answer right away. She walked toward the shape Willow had seen, praying that their fears were all wrong. It wasn’t a body. It was a pile of clothes or a lumpy trash bag or a scarecrow. A scarecrow could show up in the middle of the woods. Sure, why not?
It was definitely a body. Rowen was about fifteen feet away when it became impossible to deny. There was a body face down in the dirt. It had been covered by dirt and pine needles to an extent. Unlike the bag, there were more piled atop it than seemed natural. Someone had tried to hide the body. They hadn’t done a very good job of it, though. Maybe they had intended to come back later and take care of things more efficiently, or maybe they hadn’t anticipated someone wandering off the trail and finding the corpse. Maybe they thought their secret would be safe out there.
“Hey,” called Peony. “Hey, are you all right?”
Willow rolled her eyes. “Does he look all right to you? He’s dead, Peony.”
“You can’t know that. Maybe he’s still breathing.”
Rowen closed the rest of the distance between herself and the body. It wasn’t like they were going to check. There was no sense in sitting around and listening to them argue some more. She did her best to jostle the body as little as possible. It might have been better to brush off the leaves and roll him onto his back. She was considering that but changed her mind the moment her fingers brushed his clammy skin. She grimaced. “He’s dead, guys.” No pulse, no heat, no movement. “It’s definitely Phoenix, and he’s definitely… gone.”
Peony swore and sank down to the ground like her legs refused to support her anymore. “How… how did he die?”
“He was murdered,” snapped Willow. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know!” Peony snapped right back. “And neither do you! Maybe it was natural causes.”
“Yeah, right. When is it ever?”
“Maybe it was a drug overdose?”
“From pot?”
“I don’t know!”
“I think he was strangled.” Rowen didn’t want to touch the body more than she had to. She was no expert, but she thought she saw ligature marks. “See his neck?”
Peony leaned in close to inspect the bruises. She paled. “Oh, geez.”
Willow began to pace. “So, what now? Do we leave the body and go for help? What if whoever did it is nearby? What if they get rid of the body as soon as we leave? Everyone will think we’re insane. Does someone stay here to keep an eye on things? What if the killer kills them and hides both bodies.”
“Calm down,” said Rowen. It was a bold thing for her to say given how she was rather shaken up herself. Between all of them, she had probably seen the most dead bodies. She reminded herself of that before continuing. She solved murders all the time. This one was no different. “Did anyone bring along their cell phone?”
Peony shook her head. “Mine is dead,” muttered Willow, miserably. “I was playing games on it last night.”
Rowen took a deep breath. She had expected as much. Her own phone was back at the cabin. “All right… You two stay with the body. I’ll see if I can catch back up to the hiking group.”
“What if someone comes after us?” asked Willow.
Rowen didn’t sense anyone out in the woods with them, at least no one nearby. It didn’t feel like anyone was watching them. “I think you’ll be okay. Buddy system, remember?”
“What about you?” asked Peony.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll hurry.” Rowen watched as Willow and Peony exchanged uncertain looks. They didn’t like the plan. They weren’t alone in that. Rowen didn’t see any way around it, though. “You won’t even know I’m gone.”
“I know you’re gone!” Willow called at Rowen’s back as she headed back for the trail.
“Are you sure you’re going in the right direction?” came Peony’s voice.
Rowen didn’t answer, partly because she wasn’t sure. The further away from her cousins she got, the more uncertain she became. There was Phoenix’s messenger bag. She could find that at least. From there, though? They had walked a rather long way to get from the trail to where they had ended up.
Rowen had spent a good ten minutes walking before she admitted to herself that, at some point, she had gotten quite thoroughly turned around. She only hoped that she could find her way back to her cousins. Willow would be waiting with that ‘I told you so.’
/> ***
“Where’s everyone else?” Peony asked, looking around Rowen as she approached, like she might be hiding people behind her back.
Rowen crossed her arms over her chest. She found her gaze drifting to the ground before she spoke. “I can’t find the trail.”
“Huh?” Peony stood.
Rowen had spoken quietly and maybe between teeth that were clenched. She took a deep breath. “I can’t find the trail.”
“Oh my god.”
“I told you so!” Willow threw her hands into the air. They landed on her hips as she began to pace again. “We’re stranded out here now! Now the killer is going to come back and find us and—”
“Willow!” snapped Rowen. Peony’s eyes were growing wider with her sister’s every word. “You’re overreacting. It’ll be fine.”
“Fine?!” Willow didn’t lower her voice. She motioned emphatically to the dead body a few feet away. “What about any of this looks fine?! It didn’t start off fine!”
“We shouldn’t have tried to go back to the cabin.” Peony shook her head slowly. “It’s our fault for going off by ourselves.”
“If you hadn’t then we wouldn’t have found the body,” Rowen pointed out. “It’s good that we found him. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but… I mean, we all figured something bad was going to happen eventually.”
“Yeah, but this is like really bad.” Willow hadn’t stopped pacing for a second. “We’re out in the woods alone! We’re lost! What are we going to eat? Where are we supposed to sleep? We don’t have to sleep next to the dead guy, do we? I don’t think I could handle that.”
“Calm down.” Rowen didn’t think Willow actually would, but she felt like she should at least suggest as much again. “We can’t be that far from camp.” She looked up at the sky. “And we still have hours until it starts getting dark. We have two choices. We can stay here and wait until someone finds us or we can try to find our way back to the camp together.”
“I don’t want to stay here,” Willow answered immediately.
Peony was slightly more pragmatic. Only slightly. “I’m hungry and I don’t want to sleep next to a dead body. I mean, no one even knows we’re lost yet. They might not figure it out until tonight. I say we find camp.”
Rowen nodded. “All right.” She wasn’t sure that was the best choice, but it was what she was leaning toward herself. She didn’t feel like sitting by a corpse in hopes that they’d eventually be found either. “Willow?”
“Yeah!” Willow finally stopped her pacing. “Obviously. Sitting around here is silly. The trail can’t be that far, right? Which way did you go last time? We just won’t go that way this time.”
Rowen looked back the way she had come. They had crossed one direction out, only a dozen more to go. That wasn’t even taking into account the fact that they had probably taken a few twists and turns while Rowen followed that “feeling” of hers. After that Peony had even pointed them in a new direction when she’d spotted the bag. Yep, Rowen was thoroughly turned around. She did her best to sound self-assured anyway. “All right. Let’s get going then.”
“What about him?” Peony pointed at the body. “How do we find our way back here?”
“I’m not too worried about it.” Rowen was quick to rephrase. “I mean, I am, but we have to find our way back to camp and tell people first. As soon as we do that, we can get Ben up here. He’ll have his men canvas the area or something. They’ll find Phoenix.”
Peony was chewing on her bottom lip, eyes still on Phoenix. “Poor guy… Is he… Is his spirit still around? Did you check?”
Was it Phoenix’s spirit that had led her to his body or the death itself? Heck, maybe she was just drawn to murder, period. “I don’t sense him around. If he hasn’t moved on yet, he’s not spending his afterlife around here.”
“Maybe he got lost in the woods too,” Willow muttered. “Come on. We’re losing daylight, and I refuse to sleep out here.”
“She’s right.” Rowen motioned for Peony to come along. “If we’re going to try and find our way back to camp, we need to get started now.”
“Hang on.” Peony walked away from all of them. Rowen wasn’t sure where she was going at first, then she realized. “We can at least bring this with us.” Peony held up the messenger bag. “It’s kind of proof, right?”
“Sure.” They had already poked around inside the bag. It wasn’t much of a clue left out in the elements, out where the guilty party could come back for it. “Good idea.”
Chapter Six
This had been a bad idea, a very, very bad idea. They had not found the trail. They had not found anything remotely like a trail. Not that they would even be able to see a trail in the dimming light. They needed to throw in the towel, but Rowen didn’t want to say as much. Willow and Peony were still determined to find the camp. No one wanted to believe that they might be lost for the night, that they might have made things worse by trying to find their way back. For all Rowen knew, they were further away than ever. All they had to go by were Peony’s lackluster trailblazing skills.
Peony had filled Phoenix’s messenger bag with large rocks early on. “To make a breadcrumb trail,” she’d explained. Marking where they had been seemed like a good idea in theory. In practice, rocks that would stand out on the ground were hard to come by. The few they did find weighed Peony down. They had to take frequent breaks so that she could rest her shoulder and gather more rocks. It ate up a lot of daylight.
Rowen tried to take the bag from Peony for a while, but she refused to let that happen. “I have a system,” she insisted, arms wrapping protectively around the lumpy, rock-laden bag.
Unfortunately, it had become impossible to see the rocks. Rowen found that out when she kicked one out of place by accident. Her toe collided with it and she swore. “We’ve already been this way.”
“No we haven’t,” Willow insisted.
“No, she’s right.” Peony was bent over and squinting at the ground. “I see one of my rocks.”
There was no way around stating the obvious. Continuing to do so was just plain irresponsible. “It’s getting too dark.”
“So?” Willow challenged, even though she had to know what Rowen was getting at. “We’ll just have to pay closer attention to where we’re going.”
“We should probably stop for the night.” It was Peony who came right out and said it. “We’re super lost. We’re going to get even more lost.”
“No.” Willow started walking with renewed purpose, forcing the others to hurry after her. “We’re finding our way back. It can’t be far. You said it couldn’t be far. I’m not sleeping out here.”
Rowen was about to argue but Peony beat her to it. “Stop being an idiot!” She reached out and grabbed her sister by the arm, yanking her around. “You’re gonna trip and fall or lead us off a cliff or something. Stop it.”
Willow yanked her arm away, but she did stop marching on ahead. “Fine,” she relented, spitting the word. “But I don’t like it.” She dropped where she was, taking a seat on the ground.
So this was it. They were so lost they were officially spending a night out in the woods. Rowen hadn’t wanted to sleep under the stars when they came to the retreat. Now she wished she knew a little more about roughing it. She didn’t know anything about surviving in the woods. Peony must have been thinking something similar. “Are we supposed to like… make a shelter or something?”
Willow glared up from the ground. “Do you know how to make a shelter?”
“No.” Peony looked to Rowen.
“No,” said Rowen.
“Then we’re not building a shelter.” Willow fell back onto the ground and gazed up at the sky. “This sucks.” Succinct. True.
“What about a fire?” asked Peony.
“Again, do you know how to make a fire?”
“With, like, a lighter or matches, sure.”
“Do you have either of those things?”
“No.”
; “Well, there you go.”
Rowen sat down. Soon Peony did the same. In the silence, someone’s stomach growled audibly. “I don’t suppose anyone has anything to eat?” Rowen asked. None of them had had anything since breakfast. It hadn’t been a particularly filling breakfast either.
“If I did I would have eaten it hours ago,” said Willow.
“Same,” Peony added with a sigh.
“We’re going to starve to death out here.” Willow was no longer on Rowen’s short list of people to take with you on a desert island.
“I think we’d die of dehydration first.” Peony wrinkled her nose. “Oh, man. We don’t have to drink our pee, do we?”
“They only do that on TV.”
“Yeah, but on reality shows. Reality.”
“Well, I’d sooner die than drink pee, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Will you two stop it?” Rowen didn’t need her cousins working each other up. The situation was bad enough as-is. “Let’s shelve the pee concern for a while.”
“I brought a water bottle,” Peony announced.
Willow’s attention snapped to her sister. “You’ve had water this whole time? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because there wasn’t much left in it.” Peony opened the messenger bag and reached inside.
“Is that why you wouldn’t let anyone else touch that stupid bag?!” Willow made a grab for it.
Peony pulled the bag from Willow’s reach, wrapping her arms around it once more. “We need to ration it.”
“Can I see it?” Rowen held her hands out, hoping Peony might trust her with it. “Not drinking it at all isn’t rationing it. After all the walking we did, I think we’re all pretty dehydrated.”
Peony hesitated but finally nodded. She reached into her bag and removed a teal squeeze bottle. She offered it to Rowen, careful to keep it out of the reach of Willow. “I don’t get why you’re looking at me like that,” she grumbled at her sister. “I’m the only one who even thought to pack a water bottle. It’s not my fault you guys didn’t. You knew we were going on a hike. We had time to get ready for it.”
