He Started It

by Downing, Samantha

  I just wish she was still around. I wish she was on this trip, so she could see that I’m getting Grandpa back for her. I told her I would.

  I promised.

  We all knew the trip up to Kirwin was long and treacherous and the drive down wasn’t any better, but we also knew we had to do it. We worked under the assumption that our whole trip was being tracked.

  The reality was we had no idea, we just assumed, and no one wanted to chance breaking the rules just in case we lost our inheritance. For all we knew, there was a camera in the car.

  There were other reasons to go back, though. The first was the air. Nothing like it, at least not that I’ve experienced. This is pure clean air, high up enough to avoid any smog, exhaust, or any other sign of the modern world. If you’ve never smelled that kind of air, believe me when I say it’s different.

  However. I sure as hell didn’t risk falling off a cliff just to inhale air. We have a more interesting reason to be here.

  I point to a squat log cabin, the first one on the right. ‘Behind it. Fourth to the left, five back.’ It was all in the journal. Every place we visited was marked on a hand-drawn map inside the back cover.

  Eddie and Portia started walking. Felix looked at me and said, ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The tree.’

  ‘The tree?’ he says.

  I nod but don’t explain.

  It was Nikki’s idea. When we got tired of running around the abandoned town and started complaining about the lack of ghosts, she said we needed to leave our mark. ‘People will know we were here,’ she said. ‘Forever.’

  Eddie suggested carving our names on one of the buildings, but Nikki said whoever was in charge of Kirwin would get rid of that. This was a clean place – no garbage or graffiti – so we had to pick something that wouldn’t get erased. The best we came up with was a tree, in part because they were everywhere. The whole town was surrounded by giant evergreens that had to be twenty feet tall and a hundred years old. We went with the odds. Kirwin was in a national forest and you couldn’t just walk up and cut down a tree. We bet the tree, and our carving, would be here forever.

  ‘What did you say?’ Portia yelled. ‘Fourth to the left?’

  ‘And five back,’ I said.

  Before we carved anything, we all argued back and forth, like that old seesaw, about how big the carving should be, what the carving should say, where on the tree it should go. We wanted to be able to find it again, and to have others see it, but it couldn’t be so ridiculous that the park rangers would get mad about it. Maybe they’d scratch it out or change it. Then we’d disappear forever.

  ‘This is how we’re going to live forever,’ Nikki said. ‘It’s important to get it right.’

  No bad words, no weird pictures, nothing that looked offensive. The people in charge would get rid of anything like that.

  She made the rules.

  I had to give her credit, though. We were no longer thinking about ghosts; we were obsessed with living forever.

  ‘Think about it,’ Nikki said. ‘In thirty years, if you bring your kids here, what do you want them to see?’

  Not the symbol of some cartoon superhero. Not a slang phrase at the height of its popularity. Not a song lyric. One by one, we eliminated all the things we wouldn’t want our kids to see, even though it felt like lifetimes would pass before any of us had kids.

  Simplicity won the argument. We picked a tree, noted the location, and decided to put the carving at our eye level. Our initials, in order of our ages, in a straight line down the tree. Nikki started, then Eddie, me, and finally Portia. Nikki carved hers and ran off, back to Grandpa. He hadn’t been out of the van since we got to the top because he was still so nauseous.

  Below Nikki’s initials, we each carved ours. Deep, too. That’s what took so long – we had to carve everything deep enough to last forever.

  When we were done, I went back to the van to get Nikki. All the doors of the car were open to air it out, and Grandpa was sitting up in the back eating a box of crackers. Those pills made him do everything slow, even chewing looked difficult.

  Nikki sat beside him, and she was whispering in his ear.

  She looked up at me and said, ‘What?’ It sounded like a demand.

  ‘We’re done,’ I said.

  ‘Oh. Cool.’

  Nikki grabbed the camera and followed me, leaving Grandpa where he was. I hesitated at first, wondering if Grandpa would try to leave. But then, where would he go on top of a mountain?

  Nikki took a picture of the tree with the disposable camera, but I don’t have that photo. We split all those pictures up after the film was developed, and no one gave them to the police when Nikki was reported missing. We were the only ones who knew the cameras existed.

  It takes a while to find the original tree. Maybe because more have grown. Maybe because they aren’t in straight lines so counting four over and five back isn’t as easy as it sounds. Anyone who claims all trees are unique needs glasses.

  ‘We carved our initials on a tree,’ I tell Felix.

  He smiles. ‘That’s cute.’

  When he says things like that, I’m convinced I wouldn’t miss him.

  Eddie finds it first. The leaves and branches crunch under our feet as we all make our way through to where he’s standing. Or kneeling, because we were a lot shorter when we made that carving.

  Portia kneels down beside him. I come up behind the tree, so I can’t see the carving yet. I can only see Portia’s face.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  She looks up at me, points at the tree. I walk around and look at it.

  The carving is just how we left it, though it’s weathered. Discolored. Nikki’s initials at the top, followed by the others, and the year at the bottom.

  NM

  EM

  BM

  PM

  1999

  That should’ve been it.

  The last carving on the list is this year, 2019. It’s fresh and deep. Like it was added yesterday.

  ‘It was just some kids, I’m sure,’ Eddie says. ‘We’re near Yellowstone. Millions of people come through here.’

  We are on our way back down the hill because we have to make the drive before it gets dark. It’s September, still daylight savings, so we’ve got the time. In another month or two, it would be dark by now.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure,’ Felix says. ‘That carving could’ve been done a week ago. Probably a month ago. The place is probably swarming with kids in the summer.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Portia says.

  ‘Has to be,’ I say.

  Lie. Not for one second do I believe this is a coincidence. This is pure Nikki, just like the missing ashes. She’s playing with us.

  But I can’t say that in front of Felix.

  We let him believe the NM initials belonged to our grandfather. It hasn’t occurred to him that this was our maternal grandfather and his last name was not Morgan. And he’s not concerned at all about the extra carving.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says.

  But that’s Felix, always looking the wrong way. He continues to do this all the way down the mountain and even at the Barney’s Steakhouse, where we stop for dinner. The steaks are too big to eat in one sitting, the baked potatoes are saturated with butter, and the vegetables are scarce. We have big mugs of beer and we don’t talk at all.

  Felix is too busy checking the news or his e-mails or looking for the black truck outside.

  The rest of us are texting one another. Eddie sends the first one.

  Who was it?

  Portia answers.

  Well, since I’ve been with you for the past week,

  safe to say it wasn’t me.

  Eddie says:

  Wasn’t me.

  I cut off another piece of steak and put it in my mouth before answering.

  What about Krista?

  He scoffs.

  On a mountain? Not likely.

  I say:

  Nikki?


  We all pause to take a sip of beer, a bite of food.

  Eddie answers first.

  For Christ’s sake, it’s not Nikki.

  He has always believed she’s dead. A tree carving isn’t going to change his mind.

  I say:

  Then who? Who else would know?

  Portia says:

  Grandpa.

  Before he died, or as a ghost?

  Eddie says:

  He has to be messing with us. That’s why he set this whole thing up. The ashes, too. It’s all to get back at us.

  I say:

  Sure. Except Grandpa never saw the tree. He stayed in

  the car the whole time.

  That shuts everyone up.

  It’s my night to pay for the motel. Tonight we’re at the Coyote Run Inn. Eddie picked it on purpose, given that Grandpa used to call us the little coyotes.

  ‘Seems like a sign,’ Eddie says.

  A sign of what, he doesn’t say.

  The motel looks like all the others except for the coyote motif sprinkled everywhere, from the sign to the numbers on the doors. When I go in to pay for two rooms, it hits me that Eddie and Portia will have their own. She won’t have to stay with Felix and me anymore.

  This feels weirder than I expect it to. If nothing else, Krista was a buffer – a pawn, so to speak, kind of like Felix is. Since neither one knew the truth about the first trip, or about Nikki, we couldn’t talk about it in front of them. For Eddie and Portia, that barrier is gone.

  Felix leaves our room twice, no doubt to smoke. He must have bought a new pack. Vaguely I think about putting one of the packs I have into his bag, like he had missed it, but I don’t have any energy left for Felix’s smoking. Sometimes there are too many battles to fight, and his smoking is the least important.

  What I’m thinking about is Grandpa.

  At one point, we were alone together. We had just come down the mountain from Kirwin, and as soon as we hit civilization Nikki stopped at a gas station. Portia had to pee so bad she was almost crying, and she jumped out of the car as soon as it came to a stop. Nikki ran after her, and Eddie wasn’t far behind.

  That left me and Grandpa. He was slightly more lucid, given that he had eaten crackers and drunk some real water. At least he wasn’t sick anymore.

  I climbed to the back and looked over the seat at him. His eyes were sleepy but as clear as I’d seen them since Nikki took over.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Hi.’ He sounded hoarse, like you do when your throat is scratched from throwing up. He held up an empty bottle of water. ‘You have any more?’

  I hesitated, and then gave him mine. He drank what was left in one gulp.

  ‘Why’d you hit her?’ I said.

  He froze. As foggy as his head must have been, he knew what I was asking. His answer would reveal the truth. I trusted Nikki – more than anyone, ever – but I wasn’t stupid. She did know how to exaggerate.

  All at once, Grandpa’s face changed. A tiny smile. No, a hint of a smile. It was in his eyes. And it scared the hell out of me.

  What he said made it even worse.

  ‘Because I could.’

  ‘Because you could?’

  He blinked. His face changed, the smile gone, the eyes sleepy once again. ‘Because I couldn’t help it,’ he said.

  The first way was right. Because I could.

  I wonder how many bad things have been explained by such a simple phase, a simple idea. Because I could. Because no one stopped me. Because it was easy. All the same answer, and it really means because I wanted to.

  ‘I guess that’s why Nikki has done this to you,’ I told him. ‘Because she could.’

  He glared at me and I glared back. I wanted to tell him that I hated him and didn’t want to be anywhere near him. And I certainly didn’t want him around Nikki. Or her baby.

  But I kept that thought to myself, because I always kept Nikki’s secrets.

  Almost always.

  If you could live in a movie or TV show, which one would you choose?

  A week ago I would’ve said The X-Files but after seeing nothing at the watchtower, I’m pretty sure that aliens are BS and there’s no point. Then maybe I’d say Poltergeist except there aren’t any ghosts.

  Yesterday, I would’ve said the only answer is Buffy. Who cares if vampires are real? I just want to be a slayer.

  Today is different. Today I’d say Beverly Hills 90210, because if I’m going to be a mom, I want to be a rich one.

  In the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, someone blasts music so loud it makes the windows vibrate. I jump out of bed, convinced the end of the world is nigh.

  Felix sleeps through it.

  The music, I realize, is coming from a car. The headlights shine through the window as the car drives out of the motel parking lot, and then it’s gone.

  Silence returns, though not to my thumping heart. Sleep won’t come back anytime soon.

  I pick up my phone, which is facedown on the nightstand, right as it’s supposed to be. I haven’t found it faceup since that one time. I also haven’t gone on another morning walk with Felix.

  Coincidence? Perhaps.

  Still no text from Krista. She hasn’t responded to me at all.

  No interesting e-mails. Nothing new from him on Instagram. I check the news, which I haven’t looked at in days. Being on a road trip is like being in limbo, sort of like flying before they added Wi-Fi. I read about a celebrity wedding, hoping it will put me to sleep, when I hear the bass.

  The music. Same song, same volume, I recognize all of it. The sound is faint but getting closer.

  That damn song.

  I get up and stand near the window so I can see the car. Since whoever it is seems determined to wake everyone up, I feel obligated to see who it is.

  Yes, I do want to see if it’s the black pickup.

  Yes, Felix is still asleep.

  The headlights come first, along with the thumping music and rattling windows. Only when the car turns and drives through the motel, not into it, do I see it.

  It makes me gasp.

  Not a truck or a sports car or a sedan. The car blasting that music is at least twenty years old, with dulled paint and no license plate. A minivan.

  Exactly like the one Grandpa had on the last trip.

  I rush out, not even bothering to put on shoes, and flinging the door open so hard it bounces back at me. I see the back of the van as it drives out of the parking lot.

  I’m not the only one.

  Portia has come out of her room, also barefoot, and she looks like she just woke up. ‘Did you see that car?’ she says.

  I nod.

  Felix is finally awake. He comes up behind me, scaring me half to death when he says, ‘What happened?’

  I glare at him. Now he wakes up.

  The music fades into the background as the van drives farther away, and as it does, I hear the pounding of my own heart. ‘Twice,’ I say to Portia. ‘It came through twice.’

  ‘I know. I heard.’

  ‘Is Eddie awake? He’s supposed to be watching tonight.’

  She sticks her head back in the room. The light floods out when she turns it on. Pause. Her head pops back out. ‘He’s not here,’ she says.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Felix says.

  ‘You heard her,’ I say. ‘Eddie isn’t in the room.’

  ‘He’s right there.’

  Felix points.

  Eddie is across the parking lot, coming from around the back of the building. Dressed, with shoes on, at one o’clock in the morning. He stops when he sees us.

  ‘What?’ he says. ‘What happened?’

  Felix throws up his hands. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to find out.’

  ‘Where were you?’ I ask Eddie.

  ‘Taking a walk around the motel, keeping watch.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear that car?’ Portia says.

  Eddie shrugs. ‘What, that music? I heard it. The whole state p
robably heard it.’

  I step closer so I can look at his eyes. ‘You didn’t see the car?’

  Eddie is wearing his Duke baseball cap, but it doesn’t hide his blue eyes. The color is so strong, so clear, it looks fake.

  ‘No.’ He sounds offended, like he knows I’m accusing him of something but doesn’t know what. His eyes don’t move, his pupils neither contract nor dilate. ‘Why?’

  I turn to look at Portia. She’s looks at Eddie, who’s staring at me. Everybody watching everybody, like a game of Risk.

  We do not break eye contact until Felix speaks.

  ‘What are you guys doing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘We aren’t doing anything.’

  But what just happened is everything.

  The van. Same color, same make, same age. Not the same van, though. It can’t be. Grandpa got rid of his the second the trip was over. It’s probably sitting in a junkyard by now.

  The last time I was in Grandpa’s van was when we left the desert. It was late. We were all tired and dirty, and we all smelled like smoke.

  When I close my eyes and imagine it, I can still feel the heat on my face. From the sun, yes. The desert sun is the strongest I’ve felt, like I was being baked in a pan under the broiler. Day in and day out, the desert will wear you down.

  It wasn’t just the sun, though. On that day, the heat came from the fire.

  Imagine a giant fireplace, then multiply it times a hundred. You can’t get too close unless you want to lose your eyebrows.

  That was surprising enough, but even more surprising was the noise. Fires are loud. The cracking, the breaking, the sound of the flames being whipped up, the small and large explosions as everything that could burn did. I had to scream to be heard.

  Do you ever wish you could read minds?

  Obviously.

  But being invisible would be so much better. Imagine how easy things would be if you could just disappear and reappear whenever you wanted. You wouldn’t have to spend so much time strategizing or building allies and doing everything step by step.