Dark Roads

by Chevy Stevens

  “She’s angry you had to leave. She told him that if anything bad happened to you, it was his fault for being so controlling and that he should take meditation classes.”

  I stared at him openmouthed. “He is going to freak.”

  “He’s got a lot going on. There have been vigils, your poster is all over town, and you’re on the news. The highway is all anyone talks about now. Girls are scared to be alone.”

  “Did he question you?”

  “Thompson interviewed everyone at the party, so I’m in the clear, but Vaughn’s been following me around. I don’t even go one mile over the speed limit.” He watched Wolf as he dug at a section of log. “Cooper was talking about a dog at the search. I thought he meant the puppy, but he was telling one of the cattle ranchers that he’d had a stray turn up and then disappear.”

  “What does Cooper care?”

  “He said he was really smart, and if he showed up at any of the other farms, he wanted him back.” Jonny must have seen the jolt of fear cross my face, because he added, “That’s good news. He’s a stray, so when this is all over you can say the dog followed you.”

  “How is this all going to be over? I can’t just walk out of the bushes now.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. You can say you got away from the killer. You never saw his face—or you can make up a description. It’s not too late.”

  “It’s way too late, Jonny. They’d never believe that.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “Stick with the plan. Maybe it’s better that Vaughn thinks I’m dead.”

  “How will you get your money?”

  “I’ll figure it out when I’m eighteen. It’s not my fault if they think I was abducted. I ran away, hitchhiked north or something. I didn’t read the news.”

  Jonny gave me a skeptical look.

  “I’m not coming back now. Even if it means I get in trouble. You don’t know what it’s like to sit at the table with a man who has taken photos of you naked.”

  Jonny rubbed his hair and made a frustrated sound. “I hate him so much. I hope he gets busted one day. He’ll get his ass kicked in jail.”

  “Yeah, me too.” It was a nice idea. Vaughn being held accountable. Then he’d feel that sick shame that I’d carried around with me since I’d seen those photos. But I didn’t think it would really happen, and I couldn’t tell Jonny that. I needed him to believe justice was possible.

  We talked for a while, about dirt bikes, the cabin, Wolf, and Amber. We made a plan for the next time Jonny and I would meet. I wanted to know about his last race, but he said it had been postponed because of my going missing. He was evasive, though, and I worried that he’d really just skipped it. After he left, dust hung in the air, the faint smell of gasoline. Wolf and I jogged after him, following his trail through the woods. I stopped partway and listened to his bike fade.

  CHAPTER 11

  The summer stretched into late August. My skin was golden brown, my freckles like nutmeg. Wolf filled out—and spread out. Each night he moved farther up the bed, gradually taking over my pillow and pushing me with his paws until I woke crammed against the log wall. I’d have to roll over and nudge him to the other side, while he grumbled and huffed, and we eventually settled with my body curved around his back. So tight I felt like his heartbeat was my own.

  Jonny and I met one more time near the river. He snuck away from the guys at the campground, telling them he was fly-fishing the upper pools. He didn’t like us not being able to text in case of emergencies—it was impossible to get a signal on most of the mountain—so he bought handheld VHF radios. I’d be able to pick up a weather station, music, and listen in on the logging companies. It had a decent range, but if there was a thick cloud cover or bad weather, he might only hear static from me. We found a private frequency and came up with the code names H150 and H250—the numbers on our bikes.

  The searches were over, and most people had decided I was another victim of the highway killer, even though the police hadn’t confirmed it one way or the other. I felt a strange mix of relief and guilt. Jonny said missing posters were spread around town, on telephone poles, gas stations, mailboxes. He hated walking past them. Mason had two in the diner’s window.

  Amber and Jonny talked, and he assured her I was okay—I wasn’t a murder victim. I figured by the middle of September it might be safe for me to reach out. I could write her a letter. We might even be able to meet. The idea filled my dreams. I’d be able to touch her, hold her.

  Jonny heard rumors that Vaughn had officers patrolling the highway twice a day, in case the killer struck again or my body showed up. Volunteers had searched the ditches on both sides of the highway. Jonny went to Thompson for updates. We figured that was what he would have done if this was real. Not that Thompson had much to say other than, “It’s still an active case.”

  Those weren’t the only rumors. Emily, the girl I’d seen in the diner the day Vaughn walked me out, showed up at the lake one night.

  “A few people were sitting around Andy’s camper drinking beer,” Jonny said, “and she kept asking me if I wanted to buy anything stronger than weed. Pushing, you know?”

  “So she’s a dealer?”

  “I think she’s in deep. I checked around about her later and someone said she was a narc. She’s working for Vaughn. Ratting people out for money.”

  “Serious?” Maybe it wasn’t fear I’d seen in her face. Maybe it was something darker, an anger of sorts. Like a person might get if someone was controlling them.

  “Yeah, and she asked me whether I thought you were still alive, which pissed me off. I don’t care how drunk she was. Don’t worry. I’m keeping her away from my new place.”

  In a stroke of good luck, Jonny’s grandparents found an available spot at a retirement home and moved out of their old house. They offered it to Jonny to rent. It used to be a sheep farm, with a workshop, gardens, fruit trees, and chickens. He could keep his dirt bikes in the shop; the neighbors were miles away. Behind his house, trails connected with the maze of logging roads. In the future we’d be able to meet with less risk, but he still got security cameras.

  “Maybe you should make friends with Emily.”

  “No way.”

  “She might know something.”

  He groaned. “I’ll think about it.”

  * * *

  I sped down the logging road with Wolf behind me in his seat—a milk crate that I’d fixed to the back. He was a good rider, shifting his weight when I took corners. When he was really excited, he’d stand in the crate and rest his front legs on my shoulders, huffing the wind in long snorts that he would then sneeze all over the back of my neck. Sometimes he preferred to run in the woods parallel to me, weaving in and out of the trees. Once, he was running on a high bank, and he launched himself into the crate, which nearly sent me into a crash. After that, I drove slower and learned how to brace for the impact, and he learned how to time his landing better.

  First week of September, and my classmates had gone back to school. I thought about how I had once been like them, getting textbooks, finding my locker. I was glad to be free but worried about the mountain. It was hot, no sign of autumn coming. Fires were still burning up north and the air smelled of charcoal. Each morning I checked the VHF radio for the latest reports. The sky was shaded gray, while ash fell like snow through hazy sunbeams. Twigs and leaves crunched under my feet as I traveled toward the lake area. The river was running low and the timber was so dry it would only take one spark to set the forest alight.

  It was early in the day, but the air was already stagnant with heat as I hid my dirt bike a mile up the mountain. I walked the rest of the way, crossed the highway through a culvert, then climbed the ridge on the other side. I wanted to check the wind and see from which direction the smoke was blowing.

  By the time I reached the top—where I could look down on the highway, the entrance to the lake, and the mountain range—I was out of breath, sweaty, and gaspi
ng with thirst. Wolf and I shared some water. As he slurped from his bowl, I stroked the hot fur on his side. He’d filled out with better food. I couldn’t feel his ribs anymore, and his haunches were hard muscle. When he’d drunk enough, he flopped down in the shade of a fir tree, his tongue out as he panted.

  “We won’t be long, buddy.” He sighed, stretched his head across his legs, too lazy to even sniff around for squirrels. I studied the sky, used my binoculars to narrow in on the haze in the distance. The clouds were low and dark, drifting to the west. At the moment the wind was in my favor, but I’d keep checking the weather channel on my radio. The biggest risk was stupid people, smokers on the highway, and campers who thought they were immune to the danger.

  I crawled closer to the edge of the cliff and aimed my binoculars at the lake campground. I wouldn’t be able to see much through the dense canopy of trees, but I wanted to make sure no one had left a fire smoldering overnight or decided that they just had to have one for their morning bacon and sausages. So far it looked clear. I swooped the binoculars to the left, scanned the long-yellowed grass alongside the highway, the dust-covered bushes. I studied bits and pieces of garbage, take-out containers. Glass bottles in ditches could also start fires.

  Through a thin crop of trees, where an old logging road ran parallel to the highway, I caught a glimpse of something shiny. Metal? I pulled the binoculars away from my face, wiped at the sweat dripping into my eyes, and refocused. The circle view bounced up and down. I steadied my hand, thinking it had been a trick of the light, but then a shape came into sight. The straight lines of a silver car. I scanned the binoculars down the side of it, trying to see in between tree trunks. The car was sitting at an angle. The back end low. Something wrong with a tire?

  The owner was bound to come back, but they might have left something inside. Clothes, spare change, food. I grabbed my backpack and made my way down the ridge with Wolf slinking beside me. When I reached the highway, I listened for oncoming traffic, then bolted across.

  It took me a few minutes to weave through the brush and follow along the logging road until I came around the corner and could see the front of the car, the silver grille shining. Tucked behind a tree, I lifted my binoculars and zoomed in on the windshield. Something dangled from the rearview mirror. I focused again. White plush, silver horn. A unicorn.

  Amber’s car?

  I gripped the binoculars, swung them around, searching for her. Just trees and brush and the distant gray of the road. I turned back to her car, sharpened the focus. No sign of her inside the car either. Had she had a flat tire on her way back from the lake and gotten out to walk? The thought of seeing her, even for a brief instant, thrilled me.

  Staying within the trees, I moved closer until I could see the full side of the car—carefully placing my feet in between fallen branches and twigs, avoiding anything that would snap. Wolf followed close with his breath hot on my legs.

  The back tire was flat, a spare lying on the ground beside it, and the trunk was gapped slightly. A tire iron lay in the dirt. It was like she had just up and walked away. I crouched low, wondering if I should take a closer look inside the car—she could have passed out—but all the windows were up, and it was unlikely anyone could sleep in that heat. If I stepped out from the woods, my boots would make tracks on the dusty logging road. I gnawed on a fingernail.

  A guttural birdcall, loud and familiar, ripped through the air. Ravens—fighting over something. I wheeled around, trying to gauge where the sound was coming from, but it was distorted and echoing. I found an old fir tree nearby, shimmied up the trunk, swung myself onto the first branch, and climbed until I could see over the canopy of trees.

  Three ravens spiraled in large circles near the highway to the north, past the campground and on the other side of the road. They had company. Vultures. A deer carcass, maybe. I swallowed hard, clinging to the branch, bark biting into my fingers. I began climbing down.

  Wolf met me at the bottom, circling around my legs and pacing, a low whine coming from his throat. I headed toward the birds, but he stayed back. His ears were down, his tail tucked between his legs. As I got farther away, he barked at me, then trotted to catch up. He followed behind my knees, brushing my skin with his nose. He was panting hard.

  I had to cross the highway again and travel through the woods until I passed the campground. Within minutes, I smelled it. It hit me hard, came in on a breeze, and I bent over, clutching my stomach. Wolf whined louder, long, plaintive moans. I ignored him, pushed through the branches. They slapped at me, tore my arms, caught in my hair. My eyes watered. I breathed heavily through my mouth, tugged the bandanna from around my forehead and knotted it tight around my nose and mouth. It still wasn’t enough. Tears ran down my cheeks.

  Sunlight knifed through the gap between two tall fir trees, revealing an open area ahead. The ditch alongside the highway, a low bank rising on the other side. I froze. I wanted to run back into the forest, pretend I had never spotted the car. The birds screeched back and forth, driving me forward.

  I stepped into the long grass. Two more halting steps, and I looked down into the space between a cluster of shrubs, to the bottom of the ditch. Cherry-red glistening strands of hair fanned across the dirt. A white hand stretched out, frozen into a claw, a raw mark around a bruised wrist, where there used to be a bracelet.

  CHAPTER 12

  The ravens perched on a branch above me, the vultures in another tree. Quiet and watchful. Wolf barked. The ravens screamed and rose into the air. The vultures stayed.

  I looked at Amber, my hand over my mouth. Broken fingernails. Dark red streaks down her arm. Flies filled the air with an incessant buzz. My face stung with tears and I was making a strange garbled sound. Wolf took a few cautious steps toward her, sniffing the air.

  “No.” I held his bandanna. “Stay.”

  He dropped to the ground beside me, his low whine blending with the hum of flies.

  Birds had been pecking at her face. She didn’t look real. Like a mannequin in a horror movie, a prop in someone else’s nightmare. Her skin was too white, the puncture holes and claw marks too gruesome. Her mouth was stretched in a wide grimace. She was wearing a lacy white bra, blood turning the edges brown, and her black tank top was tied around her throat. Her beaded necklaces were wound in the fabric. One hung between her breasts.

  She’d been wearing jeans shorts. They were nearby, lying in a small patch of dirt as though they’d been set out that way. The top button was ripped off. I didn’t want to see everything, didn’t want to know the agony that she’d endured, but my eyes couldn’t stop taking it in. The way her legs were spread wide, bruises on her hips. Bite marks down her side and across her chest—the slope of her breasts. One sandal dangled from her foot. The other was buried partway in the dirt. She’d dug her heels into the ground, fighting for her life, trying to push him off her dying body.

  The heat and the smell were too much, my sight gone hazy and gray at the corners. I’d never felt so much evil in one place. It paralyzed me. My head and eyes pulsed from it. My blood hammered through my heart and veins all at once, a panicked stampede. Her pain and fear were imprinted in the molecules of the air. Her screams lingered.

  A fly walked across her hip bone, the discolored skin. Her flat stomach was bloating with gas from her decomposing body. I wanted to brush the fly off, but I couldn’t get closer to her. There would be hair fibers, boot tracks. She had to have been out here for a couple of days for the smell to be so strong. Maybe Friday night. I bit the fleshy part of my palm to hold in my cries, the hiccupping sobs. The fly settled above her groin, on what looked like a tattoo.

  A small running unicorn, mane and tail blowing in some imagined wind. I’d never seen it before. But it would have been hidden by her bikini. I thought about the unicorn dangling from Amber’s rearview mirror. Then I remembered the photos on Vaughn’s computer. The edge of a tattoo showing on a woman’s stomach. The bright colors. It had been Amber’s stomach.

&
nbsp; My heart was beating too fast, stabbing pains across my chest. Spasms. I sucked at the air, but nothing came into my lungs. I pressed my palm to my chest, hit my ribs. Black dots danced in front of my eyes. I sank to my knees, head bowed. Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out.

  Wolf jammed his wet snout into my neck, dropped onto his stomach, and tried to squirm under my arms, licking my face. I took small breaths. I had to get it together. I had to think.

  People were probably looking for her. She had a landlord, a job, friends. Her family. I didn’t want search and rescue going through the woods or flying over with helicopters. And I didn’t want her lying out here alone until someone found her. With the heat and the animals.

  Wolf and I hiked back up the ridge. The sun beat on my shoulders, the rocks hot to the touch. I guzzled my water, poured some for Wolf. I moved to the right side of the cliff so I could see past the lake easier, checked the spot with my binoculars. The highway was quiet. The vultures and ravens had swooped back down but I couldn’t shoot them from the ridge.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

  I put my hand over the speaker to muffle my voice. “I was driving on the highway and I noticed vultures circling a ditch. It smells really bad. I think it’s something big.”

  “Would you be able to describe the location?”

  “Just after the campground, heading away from town.”

  “And your name?”

  I ended the call. Wolf and I waited at the top of the ridge—he under a tree nearby, me sprawled across the hot rock. With my binoculars I watched each truck and car that came past.

  Wolf was getting impatient, whining and huffing. I tossed him part of a protein bar. He snatched it out of the air, then his body stiffened, his head cocking toward the south.

  I aimed the binoculars at the bend of the road. Chevy Tahoe. White. Lights on top. The truck slowed as it drove past the campsite, then pulled onto the side. He was near Amber. Either the driver had seen the birds—or it was Vaughn, and he knew exactly where to stop.