by Sergio Gomez
“What?” Fred finally asked.
Gavin leaned against the car and crossed his arms. “I gotta bring my little brother with me. He called my mom last night. My parents are down in Mexico and he gave them some sob story about how he’s going to get lonely all by himself in the house so now they’re making me take him.”
Another collective feeling went through the Jeep, this one of relief that it wasn’t anything serious. Fred looked over at Fletcher and rolled his eyes.
“So, what? What’s the big deal?” Fletcher said, grinning.
“He’s annoying,” Gavin spat.
“What else? You get a hangnail or something?” Fred said.
Fletcher and Noelle laughed, and even Gavin’s scowl disappeared from his face. He got off the car and glanced at Noelle in the backseat. “Uh, no. It’s that Brooke’s cousin is a guy. Dalton. His name is Dalton, like from Roadhouse.”
“Oh God,” Fred said, throwing his hands up in frustration. “Gav, are you guys ready to leave or what?”
Gavin ignored his question and barreled through with the point he was trying to make. “Glad you’re here Noelle, otherwise we’d be taking too many sausages to this party.”
“Well, nice to see you, too, Gavin,” Noelle said.
“Let’s stop wasting time,” Fred complained. “We have a long drive.”
“Alright, alright,” Gavin said. “But hey, Fletch, can you do me a favor?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“Can you take Wayne with you?”
Fletcher shrugged. “Sure.”
“Sweet. Thanks. I don’t need his ass in the same car as me for the next eight hours.”
Funnily enough, Fred was thinking the same thing about Gavin. At least Gavin’s little brother, who was only fourteen, had an excuse for his immaturity.
“Any of you want to come inside? Hit the bathroom or anything?”
They shook their heads no.
“We’re good,” Fletcher told him.
“Alright, well, we’re all packed up and loaded, so I just gotta round everyone up. Then we’re off to the cabin.” Gavin slapped the side of the Jeep and started for the house. Halfway up the driveway he turned around, threw his arms up in the air, and yelled, “Get excited, fuckers!”
Fred hoped the eight-hour drive would sap him of some of his energy…but knew that probably wouldn’t be the case.
Four hours later, they were stopped at a gas station built on a hill that overlooked the vast wilderness surrounding them. They’d left behind the suburbs three hours ago for farmland and left the farmland behind for woods an hour after that. Every now and then, they would drive by a small town or a remote house, but even those were being left behind the closer they got to Lakewood Cabin.
Fred stared out at the seemingly endless wilderness. Every cliff, valley, and hill he could see was covered with trees that had little to no separation between them. It was all so dense that if someone was down there and waving for help, he wasn’t sure he would be able to see them.
The gas pump clicked, announcing that it was done filling up the Jeep’s tank, but he still couldn’t take his eyes off the beautiful landscape.
Gavin clapped him on the shoulder, startling him and making him spin around.
“Fletch put you on gas-attendant duty?” Gavin asked.
“I guess so,” Fred laughed. “He’s inside getting extra snacks.”
Gavin looked over at where the girls were taking pictures for Vanessa’s Instagram, using some of the scenery that Fred had been appreciating a moment ago for the background, and said, “Man, Noelle’s looking fine as wine with that hair. No wonder you’re so into her.”
“Ugh, dude, come on. Don’t fuck this up for me by being all…weird and aggressive,” Fred pleaded.
“I won’t, I won’t. I’ll be chill, man.” Gavin clapped him on the shoulder again. “For real, though, Fredster, I’m glad you came. It wouldn’t have been the same without you.”
Fred caught the slurring at the end of his last sentence. “Gav—have you been drinking?”
Gavin put an index finger up to his lips. “Shhh. They don’t know. They think it’s just Pepsi in my cup.”
“Jesus, dude.”
“What?” Gavin stood straight. “I’m not drunk or anything. Just feelin’ good. It’s not like there’re any cars on the road all the way out here.”
“I don’t care, it’s still dangerous. And we’re on the road with you, dummy.”
“Okay, okay, fine. I’ll ask Brooke to take the wheel. Alright?”
Fred scanned his face to see if he was telling the truth or not. He knew him well enough to know when he wasn’t. Usually a flicker in his eyes gave him away, but this time he wasn’t lying.
Before they could say anything more, Wayne yelled out from the pump in front of them that the Honda was done being filled up.
“Put the pump back in its place and put the receipt on the car seat,” Gavin called to him. “Then go into the store and get me a Gatorade.”
“A-are you serious?” Wayne asked, crossing his arms.
“Yeah, shithead. Now hurry, I’m thirsty.”
“Fine,” Wayne said, then started putting the pump back in its place.
As punishment for making their mom bring him, Wayne had to do everything Gavin told him to do or else he wouldn’t let him drink on the trip. Wayne wasn’t entirely sure if his brother would hold up his end of the bargain, but for now he was playing along. He’d be pissed if his brother snubbed him, but if he didn’t, the payoff would be huge. He’d get to brag to his friends (both on Xbox and in school) that he got to drink beer and hang out with hot college girls in the woods over the summer. Shit, if he got lucky enough, he might even get to see a pair of boobs.
That was the only reason Wayne decided not to make a bigger fuss and headed into the store.
“Idiot forgot the receipt,” Gavin said, watching the receipt flap in the wind. Then to Fred he said, “Don’t be mad at me for drinking and driving. You know I’m always screwing things up.”
“It’s alright,” Fred said. “It’s cool, man. Don’t get all sentimental on me.”
Gav let out a chortle before starting back to his car. “I’ll kick your ass if you tell anyone I got like this—there’s something in the air out here that’s got me acting funny.”
They laughed at this, then Gavin was at the other pump, taking his receipt and complaining about how much it’d cost to fill up the tank.
Fred turned his attention back to the valleys and mountains in the distance. Gavin was right, there sure was something different in the air out here. Something that told him they were part of a small number of people who’d ever ventured this far into the wilderness.
Noelle and the two other girls were returning from their impromptu photoshoot, so Fred brushed these thoughts away, straightened up, and tried to act normal. But it was hard to do, especially since the headline about the missing couple popped into his head: Couple never returns from ‘most secluded cabin in PA’.
Chapter 14
“Eight…six…five…eight…” Ignacio had to say the combination out loud, it was the only way he would put it into the lock correctly.
His brain didn’t work like other peoples’. It never had.
He opened the locker and stripped out of his coveralls. They smelled, so he set them on the bench behind him and grabbed his gym bag from the locker. Ignacio took his regular clothes out from the bag. Today, his regular clothes were a beige shirt and his homemade leather pants. They were the same ones he’d worn when he hunted the young couple in the woods the other day. Ignacio slipped them on.
As he was putting on his shirt, there was a knock on the door. Martin Barter, the man whose name Ignacio couldn’t remember but knew as “the Boss,” opened the door and came into the room carrying an envelope in his hand.
“Hey there, Ignacio. How was work?” Martin asked.
Ignacio didn’t say anything, just nodded to let the Boss know it w
as good.
“Great,” Martin said, then extended the envelope out to him. “You weren’t going to leave without taking this, were you?”
Ignacio grabbed the envelope. “Yes. I forgot.”
“That’s okay,” the Boss smiled, showing white teeth underneath a blond mustache. “Glad I caught you before you left. Joey said to thank you again for the help.”
“Joey…?” Ignacio thought he’d asked the question under his breath to himself but realized he hadn’t when the Boss answered it.
“Yeah, the cafeteria manager. Remember? You cleaned the kitchen for him the other day?”
“Yes,” Ignacio said.
“He was quite impressed. Said you left that place spotless.”
Ignacio nodded. “Yes.”
“Well, Ignacio, I better get going.” Martin started heading for the door. “Taking the family up the mountains this weekend. You have any plans?”
Ignacio nodded. “Party. Party for my mamá.”
“Oh,” Martin said, taken by surprise because up until now he had no idea the man had family. Actually, he didn’t really know anything about the guy except that he was a hard worker. “That sounds exciting. Lots of people coming?”
More thinking. Then he said, “Yes. Lots of people. Mamá likes people.”
“Wonderful. Hope you have a fun time.” Martin started out the door. “And remember, payday is every fifteenth and the last day of the month.”
“Yes, Boss,” Ignacio said, but he knew he wouldn’t remember. It was hard for him to remember stuff.
Just as that thought crossed his mind, he did remember something.
“Boss!” Ignacio called out.
Martin stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Yes, Ignacio?”
“Ignacio has present for you,” he said, smiling proudly.
He opened the side pocket of his gym bag where there were two sandwich bags packed with dried-out meat sticks. One bunch was darker than the other, and Ignacio couldn’t remember which one was his and which was for the Boss.
Uh-oh. Ignacio thought. Should’ve marked them, tonto.
He wracked his brain, trying to figure out which one was meant for the Boss, but couldn’t. His brain had done him good up to this point, and now it was back to not working right. Worried that the Boss would be angry at him for taking too long, he committed to grabbing a bag and handed it over to him.
Martin took the sandwich bag. It was packed, almost to the point that the bag could burst it was so full. “Beef jerky?”
Ignacio shook his head, grinning. “Deer. Homemade. It’s good for you, Mamá says.”
Martin took a whiff of it. “Smells spicy.”
“Oh yes,” Ignacio nodded. “Dried peppers.”
“This’ll be a great snack for the mountain trip. The kids love jerky. Thank you, Ignacio.”
“Yes, Boss.”
Martin headed out the door.
A few minutes later, Ignacio had all his stuff packed and headed out of the building. The whole time hoping he’d given the Boss the right bag. If not, he’d just given him the last of his special meat sticks.
He would be bummed out if he did.
Deer meat tasted good. But human meat was better.
Chapter 15
Emeril was in his hotel room, looking over the maps he’d just paid Harold Buckley for. They were scans of existing maps with handwriting on them. For a brief second when he’d opened the files and saw what they were, his old heart fluttered at thinking he’d been duped.
But the more he inspected the maps, the more convincing they came to be. The drawn-on paths weren’t just random scribbles as he first assumed. They seemed to be deliberately drawn, and when he compared them to the existing printed paths, he saw the geometry was similar.
His laptop binged, alerting him that a new e-mail came in. It was from Harold.
From: [email protected]
I think the most promising one is file 3. How do they look to you, PI?
Emeril closed the browser tab with Gmail open. He wouldn’t have an answer for his question until they investigated the sites.
And, at the same time, depending on the dangers the maps may lead them to, that might mean he would never answer Harold’s question.
Chapter 16
“Whoa,” Fred half said, half gasped as the Jeep pulled into Camp Lakewood’s driveway behind the Honda.
Everyone climbed out of the vehicles and met in front of them. They all stared at the solid, two-story wooden cabin in amazement. Being that they were suburban and/or city folks, they’d never seen anything quite like this.
But it wasn’t just the sight of the place, either. It was the smell. The air was crisper, fresher, filled the lungs easier. Out here there weren’t many cars to pollute, and plenty of trees breathing oxygen into the atmosphere. They could almost feel the cleanliness on their skin.
“This is beautiful,” Brooke said.
“For once, Gav, you weren’t blowing smoke up everyone’s ass.” Fred said.
The group had a small laugh at this, then they fell back into awed silence, listening to the songbirds in the treetops and the buzzing crickets in the bushes.
“It’s nice alright,” Gavin said, breaking the silence. “So are you guys planning on just staring at the cabin or are we going to start unpacking sometime soon?”
Despite his disruption of the serene moment, he was right, and the group started to move. Except for Dalton and Vanessa, who were posing for selfies in front of the cabin, everyone went to the back of the vehicles to unpack their bags.
Gavin scowled at those two, and then headed up the driveway toward the cabin.
“Where are you going?” Brooke said, seeing him climbing the porch steps.
“Inside,” Gavin told her without turning around. “I’m not unpacking shit. Wayne’s pulling my weight.”
“What the hell, Gav!” Brooke said.
“Eh, I wouldn’t bother,” Fred said to her. “He won’t change his mind.”
Brooke nodded. To Wayne she said, “Bring his shit in last.”
Wayne looked over to see where his brother was and saw him at the front door fidgeting in his shorts pocket for the keys. Sure that his brother wouldn’t see, he gave Brooke a big smile and a thumbs-up as his response because he was too tongue-tied that a college girl was talking to him to speak.
“Attaboy,” Brooke said, rustling his hair, and then heading over to the back of the Honda to grab her own stuff.
Twenty minutes later the cars were mostly unloaded, and everyone was inside picking their rooms and unpacking. Wayne came back to the Honda, where the only bags left were his brother’s.
Brooke’s spiteful plan didn’t turn out to be very effective, because Gavin had been in the kitchen drinking beer while the others unpacked and couldn’t have cared less about his bags. He had booze.
And if Gavin didn’t screw him over, he’d be drinking some of it tonight, too.
The excitement of the thought helped Wayne find the strength to grab both of the duffle bags with one hand and carry them inside.
Chapter 17
By the time Ignacio was returning to the farmhouse from his errands downtown, it was nighttime. The full moon hung in the air like an over-sized balloon, and constellations glowed around it.
But the stars weren’t the only thing that were glowing. The souls that lived on the campgrounds glowed, too. Some of them were nothing more than harsh orbs of light that floated between the cabins and the trees. They were too bright to look at for long periods of time, not that there was much to see in these amorphous souls to begin with. Others, though, Ignacio recognized. He recognized them very well, actually.
Because on some level, he’d brought them here. They were the souls of the victims he’d killed over the years—of the ones whose bodies had become a part of him when he ate them. The souls of his most recent prey, the young couple he’d ambushed last week, were here already.
Ignacio saw them as he w
alked through the campgrounds. The woman was underneath a tree, hugging her knees up to her chest. Tears ran down her eyes in streams that sparkled like glitter. They were tears of the damned, of the ones trapped in an existence that was neither living nor dead. The poor girl likely didn’t know where she was, or even what she was anymore.
The man who was her boyfriend when they were living was out front of one of the big cabins. He had his hand on his chin, and he stared up at it like it was the greatest puzzle he’d ever seen. Really, though, the puzzle was somewhere else—on a plane Ignacio couldn’t see.
In the living world there existed people who—like Ignacio—could get a peek into the afterlife and see spirits roaming about. But they couldn’t see the world the spirits lived in. They were like a person who could open a blind and see what was outside but couldn’t see anything beyond the scope of the window.
Ignacio didn’t know any of this stuff, and didn’t even know he had a special power, all he knew was that there were ghosts—fantasmas, as Mamá called them—and that he felt closer to his mother here than anywhere else in the world.
Ignacio finally made it past the part of the campgrounds where the spirits usually gathered. He sighed as he walked past the barn, glad to be away from the fantasmas. The truth was, if it weren’t for Mamá, he wouldn’t have stayed. But in this special spot in the woods, he could always feel Mamá’s spirit all around him. Like she was hugging him, watching over him, kissing him all the time.
And that made putting up with the fantasmas worth it.
Ignacio went around to the back of the farmhouse first. There were several clothing lines set up in the open grass, but only a single vest made from the skin of Chad Richardson hung from one of the lines.
Ignacio touched the vest. It was still moist. It needed a few more hours in the sun before it would be good enough to wear.
He was disappointed, but at least that meant he would have something new to wear for Mamá’s birthday tomorrow.
