The Dead and the Dark

by Courtney Gould

  “I hope it helps,” Ashley said. She pulled her black cardigan tight around her chest to block out the wind. “I just thought if Tristan knew we were still looking for him, maybe he’d come home.”

  Mrs. Granger nodded. “I hope you’re right.”

  A stand at the front of the vigil held a photo of Tristan for everyone to see. It was Ashley’s favorite picture of him—unkempt sandy blond hair, a ratty black hoodie, and the same basketball shorts he’d worn every day since freshman year. His chin rested on his hands, his smile easy and warm. The picture would be cheesy if it was anyone else, but nothing looked cheesy on Tristan. Ever.

  Today marked six months since Tristan’s disappearance. Five months since the application deadline for the University of Oregon closed. Three months since Owyhee County police stopped looking for a person and started looking for a body. A month and a half since Tristan missed his high school graduation. One month since Sheriff Paris had called the disappearance of Tristan Granger a cold case.

  Today was their four-year anniversary.

  Ashley tried not to think about that.

  “You two were so good. I know he loved you,” Mrs. Granger said. “You’ve got your mom’s spirit, though. I wish I was that strong.”

  Ashley said nothing and looked across the vigil. Tammy Barton stood at the refreshments table with a plastic cup of lemon water in hand, gently managing several conversations at once. It wasn’t the first time today someone had compared Ashley to her mother, but each time she was reminded of how untrue the comparison was. Tammy’s expression was a careful balance of warmth and grief, her stance inviting and solemn all at once. Ashley wished she had even half her mother’s poise.

  As if on cue, Tammy turned and caught her gaze. She made her way from the refreshments and delicately placed a hand on Ashley’s shoulder, softening her practiced smile into a small, sympathetic frown for Tristan’s parents. “Greg, Susan, I’m so sorry about all this. You know we’re praying for you and your family every day.”

  “Tammy,” Mrs. Granger said. “Thank you for everything.”

  By everything, Susan Granger meant money. Whatever Tammy Barton couldn’t provide in emotional support, she made up for tenfold in financial support. Over the last decade, Barton Ranch had almost completely taken over Owyhee County. The vigil, the food, the decorations—it was all on Ashley’s mother’s tab. Tammy reached out and took Mrs. Granger’s hand. “We were practically family. I wish there was something I could do.”

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Mr. Granger said. His gaze shifted to Sheriff Paris, who stood alone at the front of the vigil, quietly eyeing Tristan’s photo. “There’s something he could do, though.”

  “Frank is doing everything he can with the evidence he has, Greg.” Tammy put a hand on his shoulder. “People can point fingers all they want, but he has to prove it.”

  Ashley grimaced. Since Tristan’s disappearance, she’d had this exact conversation a thousand times. The vigil was supposed to be a time to just think about Tristan, but even here, people only wanted to talk about Brandon Woodley. Until a few months ago, Ashley had never heard of the Snakebite-resident-turned-TV-ghosthunter, but the moment he arrived in town, it was like everyone forgot how to breathe. Like everyone forgot how to talk about anyone else.

  Some of the suspicion made sense. Brandon Woodley was apparently here to film an episode of his show, but he refused to tell anyone what mystery he was here investigating. He hadn’t brought any cameras or crew. As far as Ashley could tell, he’d just been wandering around Snakebite for the last six months with no intention of leaving. That might not make waves somewhere else, but Snakebite wasn’t the kind of town where people lingered. In Snakebite, you were either fleeting or permanent. People who came to town always left, and people who left didn’t come back.

  Except Brandon Woodley. According to her mother, Brandon had been gone for almost thirteen years and no one had paid him a single thought since the day he left. He was an unknown entity—a ghost from a version of Snakebite that existed before Ashley. Just the thought of him made Ashley uneasy.

  And then, a week after his return, Tristan vanished.

  “I’m gonna get some water,” Ashley said.

  “Careful, the lemons aren’t great. I think they might be old,” Tammy said. She gave Ashley’s shoulder a single pat.

  Across the service, Fran Campos and Bug Gunderson chatted quietly. Ashley drifted toward them and it felt as if she were finally coming to shore. Everyone else here was bent on asking her a thousand questions about Tristan—When was the last time you saw him? Did he say where he was going? Did he ever mention Brandon Woodley?—but Fran and Bug were better than that. They were her best friends and the only comfort she’d had in the last six months, like twin beacons in a night that refused to end.

  Fran spotted Ashley and pulled her into a tight hug, honey-colored curls bobbing at her slender shoulders. Bug hovered behind them with a glass of lemonade clutched between her fingers. Her freckle-smattered face was distant, her little mouth a frown, eyes trained on the lake.

  “Say the word and we can go,” Fran said. She tucked a wisp of Ashley’s hair behind her ear. “You don’t have to stay the whole time.”

  “I kind of do.” Ashley squished a dandelion under the toe of her black flat. “It would look weird if I left, since I planned it.”

  “Yeah, you planned it, so they already owe you.”

  Ashley groaned. “I can’t just—”

  She was interrupted by a car door slamming at the base of the hill. A white minivan was parked haphazardly at the side of the valley highway with one tire on the road and the other sunken into the gravel shoulder. Ashley couldn’t quite read the lime-green writing on the side of the van, but she was almost positive it involved a cartoonish drawing of a ghost. A lanky man with brown skin and dark hair stepped out of the car, stretching his arms to the sky. He leaned into the passenger window, muttered a few words, and ambled to the gated dirt patch at the bottom of the road with a fistful of lilies.

  Ashley had lived in Snakebite her entire life, but she’d never seen someone visit Pioneer Cemetery on purpose. Where Snakebite Memorial was a rolling hilltop of gold grass and neat headstones, Pioneer Cemetery at the bottom of the hill was nothing but mounds of gray dirt over unnamed bodies. It was a historical landmark, a dedication to those who died on the Oregon Trail more than anything else. A stone slab stood at the front of the lot with an approximation of who was buried there—Gunderson Baby, Mattison Girl, Anderson Boy—but no one really knew who they were. Anyone who belonged to Snakebite was buried at the top of the hill, beneath supple lawns, facing the wide-open valley.

  The man knew exactly where he was going, though. He strode past the stone key and approached a mound of dirt somewhat isolated from the rest. He paused there, eyes closed in a silent prayer, before gently laying the flowers over the dirt.

  The graves were only names without memory, but the man mourned.

  It twisted in Ashley’s stomach like a knot.

  “Who’s that?” Bug asked.

  She wasn’t looking at the grave or the lilies or the mystery man. Ashley traced Bug’s gaze back to the parked van. A girl had climbed out of the passenger seat and now stood in the road, propped against the car door to pop her back. Ashley tried to get a better look, but the girl’s face was half obscured by a pair of overlarge sunglasses. Her hair was a shoulder-length straight crop with the black sheen of crow feathers. Even from a distance, it reflected the thin sunlight overhead.

  “This is so rude,” Fran said. She folded her arms over her chest. “Not really the time for a pit stop.”

  “I don’t think it’s a pit stop,” Ashley said. She watched the man at the grave. His posture was solemn; it was grief. “Maybe he knows someone buried there?”

  “Who?”

  Ashley shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s like they don’t even realize there’s a funeral up here,” Fran said.


  Ashley gritted her teeth at funeral.

  Around them, there was silence. The sound of the crowd mingling was gone, replaced by the hushed hissing of the wind. The rest of the vigil had stopped talking and joined them at the edge of the cemetery, peering down the hillside at the newcomers with an eerie sort of knowing. It was like Brandon Woodley’s arrival all over again. The silence was pointed like a weapon. These strangers weren’t strangers at all.

  They were enemies.

  The girl on the road noticed the crowd. She stiffened and stared up the hillside, frozen for a moment like an animal who’d just realized she was on display. She called something to the man at the grave then quickly clambered back into the van.

  The man turned and looked up the hill, but he was unfazed. He looked at the crowd like it was a challenge. Like he dared someone to say something. The man’s face was familiar. Ashley was sure she’d seen him before.

  The man remained in the cemetery for a few more moments before wordlessly making his way back to the van. The strangers pulled away from the highway shoulder and puttered south toward Snakebite itself.

  “Well, there’s a face I didn’t expect.”

  Sheriff Paris stood next to Ashley, but he wasn’t talking to her. His uneasy smile was aimed at her mother.

  Tammy pursed her lips. “Yeah.”

  “Who was that?” Ashley asked.

  Paris and her mother eyed each other. After a moment, her mother shook her head. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  Whispers erupted around them and Ashley felt sick. This was all wrong; the vigil was supposed to be about Tristan. It was supposed to be a way to bring him home. Even if everyone here thought he was dead, Ashley knew he wasn’t. She could still feel him here, like there was a line connecting them. Wherever he was, he just needed someone to find him. He just needed someone to bring him home.

  “Mrs. Granger,” Ashley said, sharp enough to cut through the crowd. “I know you asked everyone to bring a memory of Tristan. I think we should share now.”

  For a moment, all eyes turned to her. The morning smelled like soil and hurt, and the inside of Ashley’s mouth was swollen with unspent tears. The crowd slowly gathered around Tristan’s photo. Shakily, Ashley pulled a notecard from the pocket of her dress.

  Before she could speak, Sheriff Paris cleared his throat.

  “Ashley,” he said, “I hope you don’t mind if I start us off.”

  Ashley blinked.

  “Right. This isn’t so much a memory as a promise. I know we’re a pretty small town and when something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us. And I know it’s easy for us to point fingers at people who’re different.” Sheriff Paris cleared his throat. His blond hair was bright and slick in the summer sun, eyes clear and blue as the sky behind him. “I love Tristan like he’s my own kid. Even if we’ve officially called the case cold, I’m not done looking. I won’t stop until we find him alive. I won’t stop until he’s home.”

  Ashley took her mother’s hand. In front of her, Mr. and Mrs. Granger nodded solemnly. They had their problems with the investigation, but Sheriff Paris was right. He couldn’t arrest someone on suspicion alone, and even if he could, arresting Brandon Woodley wouldn’t solve Tristan’s disappearance. No one wanted to find a killer—no one wanted Tristan dead. Ashley just wanted Tristan home.

  Paris gave a tight-lipped frown and a terse nod, then motioned to Ashley.

  “All yours.”

  Ashley took a deep breath. The crowd of people in the cemetery turned to face her. Ashley shakily held up her notecards and studied them. She’d practiced her speech all night in front of her bedroom mirror, but with dozens of eyes trained on her, the words suddenly felt far away.

  This wasn’t for the crowd. This was for Tristan.

  “I hope you guys don’t mind if I, uh … if I say something to him.” Ashley looked up and caught her mother nodding at her. She cleared her throat. “Tristan, when we were in second grade, you asked me to marry you. You took me out to the field behind the track and made a ring out of dead grass. I turned you down because we were too young and because I said if I was gonna marry you, it had to be for real.”

  The crowd laughed softly at that. Cool lake wind brushed Ashley’s ponytail across her back. She stared at the words on her notecard until they swam and she had to stitch the memory together.

  “You didn’t give up. That’s how you are—you see the way things should be and you make them happen. You asked me to marry you again in third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade. In eighth grade, you compromised. You said we could just go to the spring social together. I would’ve said yes to you then, but my mom said I was too young to date.”

  Tammy Barton sheepishly raised her hand and took a long sip of lemon water.

  “It didn’t matter to us. We didn’t have to be on a real date. I went to the dance with my best friend and had the night of my life. Freshman year, you asked me out to dinner. No marriage, no dances, just cheeseburgers and milkshakes. I sat in that booth across from you and we laughed for hours. You and me were just two people who already shared everything. It was the easiest thing we ever did.”

  Tears stung the corners of her eyes. It wasn’t a memory, it was an ache. The memories were Tristan, but more than that, the memories were everything she was. Mrs. Granger pressed her face into her husband’s shoulder. Sheriff Paris held his cap against his chest and looked at her, face steely with grief. Fran and Bug eyed her, wiping their faces.

  Ashley closed her eyes.

  “Some people might think you’re never coming back, but the Tristan Granger I know would never give up. Snakebite is our home. This is where you and me started and it’s where we’ll end. So Tristan, wherever you are, please come home.”

  3

  The Murder Hotel

  In a sad but unsurprising turn of events, Alejo parked the minivan outside a rundown motel. The sun glared through the front windshield as the van’s humming engine finally puttered to sleep.

  “Wow,” Logan groaned. “The motel looks great. I feel like a kid again.”

  “You are a kid.” Alejo gave her a look. “Your dad’s waiting outside. Please smile when you see him.”

  Logan turned in her seat. Brandon Woodley, her second and all-around less effective father, waited for them in the center of the motel parking lot, hands shoved in his pockets as he paced the sun-bleached pavement.

  A towering, rusted sign in the parking lot read BATES MOTEL. The name was promising, though the motel wasn’t nearly creepy enough on the outside. The marquee on the dilapidated office building flickered the word VACANCY; the NO looked like it’d never been lit. An abandoned pizza stand was squat in the center of the parking lot with its window permanently boarded up. The letter board simply read WELCOME TO THE BATES. COME HAVE A SLICE.

  “My family,” Brandon called, strolling toward the minivan like he’d spent the last six months at sea. “Together at last.”

  Alejo hopped out of the front seat and met Brandon halfway across the parking lot, pulling him into a hug so tight Logan was surprised it didn’t break him in half. She thumped her head against the passenger seat and closed her eyes. Maybe she was being overdramatic. If she was, it was because she’d learned from the best. Brandon and Alejo looked into each other’s faces like they hadn’t seen each other in years, never mind the fact that they’d FaceTimed every night they were apart.

  It was like they were back on TV; their reunion was one violin solo short of an Academy Award.

  Logan paused her podcast and climbed out of the van. The sun felt hotter in Snakebite than in LA. It felt closer, as if it were only feet overhead. Logan patted the back of her neck with her sleeve to soak up the sweat. It was the kind of weather that would usually call for a dip in the pool, but Logan doubted she’d find one here. The Bates hardly seemed like the kind of motel that had amenities.

  “I hope there’s blood in the shower,” Logan said. “They can’t just waste a name like that.”
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br />   Brandon looked over Alejo’s shoulder and smiled uneasily at Logan. Surprisingly, he looked better than he had on FaceTime the day before. More awake. His dark brown stubble had lost its usual peppering of gray hair and his cheeks were fuller. He scrunched up his nose and cupped a hand over his brow to block out the sun.

  Logan hadn’t seen him look this alive in years.

  It was unsettling.

  Brandon scooted around Alejo and stood in front of Logan without offering a hug. His loose-fitting button-up was patterned with palm trees and pineapples that glared in the summer sun. He cleared his throat. “How’s it been down south?”

  “Boring,” Logan said. “This is where we’re living? I thought Oregon was supposed to be green.”

  “Oh, uh, yep. This part of Oregon is more like … well, it’s kind of its own thing.” Brandon motioned to a pair of doors on the inside corner of the motel’s L-shape. “We’re rooms seven and eight. The deluxe suites.”

  “Deluxe…” Logan muttered. She pulled off her sunglasses and cleaned them with the hem of her shirt. The outside of the motel was painted white, clouded with brown rust stains. The parking lot was half gravel and half pavement, riddled with potholes and the butts of used cigarettes. This wasn’t the kind of place that people sought out, Logan guessed. It was more the kind of place where people crash-landed when they couldn’t make it any farther down the road. She’d stayed at hundreds of these places over the years. At a certain point, they all blurred into one.

  “I get my own room, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Brandon said. “I thought the three of us sharing a room sounded fun. Like a nonstop sleepover.”

  Logan stared.

  “He’s joking,” Alejo cut in. He joined their triangle and put an arm over Logan’s shoulders, laughing the strained laugh of a man who’d just prevented a bloodbath. “Take the girl out of the city and she suddenly forgets what jokes are.”

  Logan offered a half-smile. She wished that Alejo didn’t always have to translate for them. Talking to Brandon was supposed to be easier than this. Before they sat her down for the you’re adopted talk, she’d just assumed Alejo was her birth father. They had the same dark hair, the same sharp sense of humor, the same coolheadedness. Alejo had always made sure that, no matter where they were, Logan felt wanted. Even if she was alone.