by Finley Aaron
“Mike Smith,” Dad repeats. “You knew him?”
“Didn’t know him. Don’t think as I ever saw him.” Dock shakes his head. “I delivered his mail. Delivered mail to a box right there on that spot, where the road curves north and the tracks lead east. There’s a mail box there, says, Mike Smith, Lizard Head Road. Can’t say I’ve put a piece of mail in there in a long time, not since he stopped picking up his junk mail and the box got full. That’s got to have been over a decade, maybe back to ’74.”
Dad’s leaning across the counter, studying the park service map, using his thumb and the legend in the corner to gauge the distance. “How far do the ruts go?”
“The ruts?” Dock looks slightly confused.
“The track?” Mom clarifies. “How far do they go beyond the mail box?”
“Oh.” Dock chuckles. “I have no idea. I never went past the mail box. Don’t know what you might find out there. Rugged as all get out, though, I imagine. Watch the weather, if you go. Storm comes up, you could get lost in a hurry, might no one ever find you again. For all I know, that’s what happened to Mike Smith.”
We’re quiet for a second, until Judy asks, “What do you mean? Nobody knows what happened to him?”
The younger postal worker clarifies, “Didn’t he fill out a change of address form when he moved?”
Dock shrugs. “He just stopped picking up his mail, so I stopped delivering it. Returned to sender, recipient unknown. I never saw the man, don’t know what he looks like, never went up the road. I just deliver the mail. Speaking of, I need to get going before I have to do my route in the dark. Good luck with your search. You’ve got four wheel drive?”
“Yes,” Dad affirms.
“You’ll need it if you’re going to try to drive on Lizard Head Road.”
Since everybody else looks dazed, I call out to Dock, “Thank you for your help!”
We stare at the map for a second, but a woman comes in with a package to mail, so we thank the young man for his help, and retreat to the Bronco.
Dad’s been doing some figuring. “It looks to be about twenty miles from here to where Lizard’s Head Road starts. From there, who knows how long it is? Looks like five more miles to Lizard’s Head Peak, and that’s assuming the road’s mostly straight.”
“The flurries are getting thicker. Dock said not to get stuck out there in the snow.” Mom’s clearly not in favor of driving out there. “Twenty miles on the map could be thirty or forty if the road twists and turns. If we get stuck out there—”
I cut in before she convinces Dad not to take us there. “We’re not going to get stuck. If the road looks really bad, we can always turn around.”
“We’ve come over seven hundred miles.” Judy pounces on the tail of my argument. “What’s twenty or thirty more on top of that? At least we don’t have to go back over the continental divide.”
Mom frowns. “It’s going to be getting dark out in a few hours. We don’t want to be lost out there, in the dark, in the snow.”
“You packed lots of extra blankets and snacks, enough food to last us for days,” Judy reminds Mom. “Absolute worst case scenario, we spend a night in the Bronco. It’s not like we can get lost. Those mountains make pretty good landmarks.”
“If you can see them,” Mom snaps back. “If the snow gets thick—”
Dad takes Mom’s hand. “If the snow gets thick, we’ll turn around and head downhill. We can’t lose track of which way is downhill,” he says calmly. “We came seven hundred miles. We’re not going to give up now just because of a few flurries.” He starts the Bronco and heads for 353 road.
“Thank you, Dad!” I pat him on the shoulder.
“It will be okay, Mom,” Judy insists as she buckles her seat belt again. “We won’t get lost. The worst that can happen—”
“The worst that can happen,” Mom cuts in, “is that we find something so terrible, somebody fled with two tiny babies, left them at a rest stop, and never returned. What are we going to find at the end of that road?”
Neither Judy nor I attempt to answer, but we exchange silent looks with one another that say it’s a good thing we didn’t tell Mom about our weird powers. She’s frightened enough about what might be out there. How would she feel if she knew about the freaks riding in her back seat?
The Bronco rumbles along at a good clip until we turn off 353 onto gravel. Then Dad slows down a bit out of caution. Still, the road isn’t bad—a little bumpy, but easily passable. And the flurries might be swirling thickly here and there, but they’re not sticking to the road. They’re just blowing around.
We’re not going to get stuck.
Dad’s watching the odometer closely. “We’ve come ten miles on this gravel. I still don’t see tracks or a mail box.”
“Slow down a bit,” Mom advises, her tone saying she’s not pleased with our decision to continue the search. “The mailbox might be overgrown if it hasn’t been used in ten or fifteen years.”
Though we’re creeping closer to the mountains, and here or there we see ravines and clumps of jutting rocks, the terrain is still pretty open. The road twists and turns around the dips and rises of the landscape, and there are trees growing in thicker and thicker clusters, so we can’t see clear to the end of the path. Still, I should think any mailbox accessible by this road would be clearly visible.
We round another bend.
“There! A mailbox!” Judy spots it first.
“Yes, and tracks leading past it.”
“I don’t see it yet,” Dad mutters, but speeds up to reach the spot, nonetheless.
“There—can you see it now? A metal mail box, sort of rusty, on a post?” Judy’s pointing past Dad’s head.
Mom’s squinting out the front window. “I need to get my eyes examined. I see a blur of something to the left of that scrubby evergreen. Is that it?”
Even as she asks the question, we bounce down the gravel road, closer, closer.
“That’s it,” Dad announces finally. He speeds up to reach it, then slows the Bronco to a stop alongside the mail box.
The letters are faded from time, but still fully legible.
Mike Smith
Lizard Head Road
“This is not a road,” Mom moans as Judy and I make gleeful noises in the back seat.
We found it!
“You’re not thinking of driving up those tracks, are you?” Mom asks as Dad turns onto the rutted trail and eases forward. “We’re going to get stuck. We’re twenty miles from that tiny town, and we’ll have to hike back in a snowstorm.”
“If it makes you feel better about it, I’ll put us in four wheel drive.” Dad makes it sound like he’s just doing it to appease Mom, but there’s a tiny quiver behind his voice that says he’s getting nervous, too. He stops the Bronco and hops out to lock in the hubs.
I’d help him, but frankly, he’s never shown me how to do it.
I can’t even recall when we last used four wheel drive. Maybe during the last big blizzard?
Speaking of blizzards, the snow is starting to stick. It’s not necessarily falling any faster, but there’s enough of it on the ground now, it’s gathering in white swaths across our path.
If it keeps this up, it could cover the trail completely.
But we’ve come this far. And it’s not dark out. We can still see the mountains. We can still find our way back to Boulder, assuming we don’t get stuck.
Dad hops back in, puts the Bronco in neutral, and throws the lever to engage the four wheel drive.
Then we’re rumbling forward again.
It’s slow going. The road, or track, or whatever you want to call it, is rough. We’re lurching around, and I’m starting to feel a little queasy.
I don’t think the Corn Nuts were such a good idea, after all.
On top of that, the path seems to be disintegrating in front of us. Maybe that’s just my perception because of the snow blocking parts of it from sight, but seriously, there have been a few times alread
y when I wondered if we were even still on the path, or just driving through random wilderness in the middle of nowhere.
I can still see the mountains. In fact, we’re climbing up into them now. The road/path/whatever is snaking back and forth, and the Bronco wheezes in complaint against the climb. It doesn’t like the altitude or the rough trail, or any of it.
Dad glances at the odometer. “That’s three miles since we left the gravel road.”
“We’ve got to be almost there,” Judy’s tone is pleading against Dad’s implied suggestion that perhaps we’ve come as far as we should.
“But where is there?” Mom asks. “Does this road lead all the way to Lizard’s Head peak? Are we going to drive right up the mountain?”
The Bronco rises on a rock in the path, then slams down hard into a washed out hole on the other side.
Judy and I exchange terrified glances.
Is this it? Are we going to get stuck here?
Dad guns the gas, and the rear tires heave over the rock, propelling the front wheels up and out of the hole.
We roll a few more feet before Dad puts the vehicle in park. “That’s it. We’re turning around.”
Chapter Five
“No, please! Please keep going,” Judy and I plead from the back seat.
But Dad’s already found a bit of clearing up ahead, wide enough for him to turn the Bronco around. “It’s too dangerous. There’s nothing out here. We’re going to get stuck and freeze to death.”
The front bumper nearly grazes a boulder, and Dad throws the Bronco in reverse, backing up just far enough that he can clear the boulder and turn us back in the direction we came.
I hear a click beside me, and look just in time to see Judy grab her backpack, open her door, and bail out while the Bronco is paused.
She starts running up the trail in the direction we were headed—toward Lizard’s Head Peak.
“Judy!” I fling my door open, secure the Velcro at the base of my hood, and run after her.
She’s fast. She may be a girl, weighed down by a backpack, climbing a steep, rutted trail into the mountains, but she’s fast.
I’m still holding tight to the notebook that was in my hand for most of the car ride.
“Judy! Rudy!” Mom and Dad are yelling behind us. From the panting sound of their voices, I imagine they’re running, too, but there’s no way they’re going to catch us. They’re just too old.
“Judy!” I leap over a big rock. Finally, I’m gaining ground on my sister.
She’s slowed down. Now she’s panting and pointing. “There.”
I come to a stop next to her. For the record, the air is way thinner up here than it is back in Nebraska, and my lungs are completely unused to the difference. Also it’s cold and windy and still flurrying.
“Where?” I ask just as I spot the thing she’s pointing at.
It’s a cabin.
It looks…abandoned. There’s no cheery tendril of smoke rising from the chimney, no candles in the window to welcome us home. Just some overgrown scraggly bushes nearly blocking the front steps, and a weariness to the wood that says it could have used a fresh paint job a decade ago.
“Judy!” Mom’s voice is closer now.
“Don’t you ever do that again!” Dad’s feet slap against the hard ground as he catches up to us and slows to a stop. “There’s nothing out here. It’s not safe.”
“But there is!” Judy insists, pointing at the cabin.
For one terrified moment, I’m afraid it’s going to be like the postal truck and the mailbox, where we can see it but our parents can’t.
But Mom finally catches up to us, wheezing tearfully. “There is. Something. Out here.” She pants. “There’s a cabin.”
“We’ve got to check it out.” Judy takes hold of Dad’s arm, ready to tug him toward the tiny house. “We came all this way.”
Dad’s still breathing hard, and for a moment I’m worried about him. He may be in great shape for his age, but he’s 61 years old and so is Mom. Are they up to this?
Dad looks at Mom. “It won’t be dark for a couple more hours. We can find our way back down from here even if the snow gets thick.”
Mom looks sort of teary eyed, like she’s afraid maybe whatever we find in that cabin is going to tear us away from her.
I’d love to assure her it won’t, but I don’t know what’s in there.
I do know Judy and I are different.
Weird.
Maybe not even human.
So I really can’t reassure my mom of anything.
Maybe Dad realizes that if he doesn’t agree, Judy’s just going to run to the cabin without him. Or maybe his curiosity is stronger than his fear. “We’ve come this far,” he reminds Mom. “We should check it out.”
Mom shakes her head, but walks forward with us. Dad had the good sense to turn the Bronco off and shut all the doors before he came running after us. We’re all wearing our coats, so there’s no need to go back to the vehicle.
We make the trek up to the cabin.
“Hello!” Dad calls, cupping his hands to his mouth.
The cabin’s two front windows stare back at us blankly, like two eyes on the face of a sleeping mountain troll. The door remains firmly shut.
A long double-stack of well-aged firewood functions like a fence out in front of the cabin. We step through the gap in the middle that acts as a gateway to the front stoop.
“Hello?” Dad calls again, but it’s clear to me there’s no one out here. Judging from the overgrown patches of tall grass and cedars, there hasn’t been anyone here for a very long time.
I step away from my family and peer around the side of the cabin. The back end of the building appears to be tucked into the side of the rising mountain—a sort of walk-out front to a buried earth home, with windows facing mostly south.
Very efficient for heating, I suppose.
Judy places one sneakered foot tentatively on the first of the three steps that lead up to the stoop at the front door.
The wood creaks wearily, but it holds her weight.
She rises to the next step.
“Do be careful, Judy.” Mom positions herself at the base of the stairs, in position to catch Judy if she falls.
“Hello?” Dad calls again. “We come in peace!” He chuckles uneasily.
Judy reaches the top of the stoop and extends her hand toward the door handle.
“Try knocking first,” Mom insists, as though someone might be home.
“Fine.” Judy pulls off her glove and raps on the wood frame of the screen door with her bare knuckles. The screen door rattles against the solid door just behind it.
The hollow sound echoes bluntly, buried by the wind.
“Now can I try the handle?”
“I’m sure it’s locked,” Mom says with a tiny, permissive shrug.
I’ve come around to the front side of the cabin again, and Dad and I are standing on the firm ground in front of the stoop. No sense testing its weight-bearing capacity with all four of us.
Judy pushes down on the button of the screen door handle. The clasp disengages with a click, and she pulls the door open.
It protests with a rusty creak.
She looks back at us with uncertainty flickering in her eyes.
I think by this point, even Mom is more curious than afraid. She takes hold of the screen door, holding it open against the wind while Judy reaches for the handle of the main door.
I brace myself, already wondering how far our parents will let us go toward breaking in if the door proves to be locked.
But I don’t have to wonder. Judy turns the doorknob without any trouble and opens the door.
“Hello?” Judy calls, her voice swallowed by the empty house.
Mom reaches past her, inside the doorframe, and bats her hand against the wall, looking for a light switch. “There’s no switch. No light.”
It’s not yet dark out, but with the clouds and swirling snow, not a whole lot of light extends
past the dusty windows.
“I don’t even see power lines,” Dad notes, looking all around. “It probably doesn’t have any electricity.”
Meanwhile, Judy’s peeled off her backpack and pulls out a flashlight. She clicks it on and shines it inside.
By this time, I’m getting impatient with standing outside. It’s cold, for one thing. But also, we’ve come all this way, and I just want to see what’s inside the cabin already.
Judy and Mom follow the beam of light a couple wary steps in.
I climb the steps and enter behind them.
Dad hesitates in the doorway behind me. “I suppose we should leave the door open, for light?”
“For now,” Mom agrees, crossing the room to a table. “It’s not like we’re going to let any heat out. Here’s a kerosene lantern. It still has fuel. Where do you suppose they keep the matches?”
“Here.” Judy hands Mom her flashlight. “Look for matches.”
Mom shines the flashlight on the fireplace mantel, and Dad joins her in her search.
Judy turns her back to them and shoots me a look.
Instantly, I know what she’s going to do. I step closer so that I’m standing between her and our parents—shielding her from their sight so they can’t see what she’s doing.
She removes the glass chimney from the lamp and blows a stream of flame onto the wick. It flickers and smokes, but the flame holds. Judy cautiously replaces the chimney.
“Got it.” Her voice is deliberately casual.
But Mom and Dad are hardly paying her any attention. They’ve got the flashlight beam trained on the contents of the fireplace.
“Bring the light here,” Dad requests. “There’s something in the fire.”
“Somebody tried to burn…something.” Mom holds the flashlight beam steady while Dad uses his gloves to pluck a bowl-shaped object, about the size of a deflated playground ball, from among the long-dead coals.
Dad carries the thing carefully over to the table, where we all gather around and stare at it. It’s a sort of oblong roundish shell, shaped almost like the bottom part of an egg, only much, much bigger. It’s leathery, and the part that isn’t so charred is slightly flexible.
