The Dead and the Dark

by Courtney Gould

  “Why are we here?” Logan asked.

  Alejo and Brandon looked at each other with identical half-frowns. It was a kind of telepathic communication that Logan had never been privy to, even back in LA. Even crammed in this tiny motel together, she was stuck on the outside. They didn’t mean to shut her out, yet here she was.

  “We’re here to help people,” Alejo said.

  “I thought we were here for the show.”

  “We are,” Alejo said. “And the show is gonna help people.”

  “How?”

  Brandon adjusted his glasses. “I know you might not believe in what we do, but there are things wrong with this town. You can feel it, right? Even when your dad and I were kids, things were wrong. Now we’re here to figure it out.”

  “Is it the missing kid?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No offense,” Logan said, “but you guys never solve anything.”

  Brandon grimaced. “This is different. It’s personal.”

  “That sounds so creepy.”

  “Not creepy.” Alejo laughed. “More like you grow up in a place and think it’s normal because it’s all you’ve ever known. We never really planned to come back, but with everything we’ve learned since leaving, we thought we might be able to do some good here. It’ll be like saying a real goodbye, anyway.”

  “Okay,” Logan said.

  Alejo squeezed her hand. “I promise, that’s all it is.”

  Behind Alejo, Brandon looked at his hands.

  “I wish you left me in LA,” Logan said.

  Alejo pulled Logan into a hug. “I know it sucks. We can’t leave, but your dad and I will do whatever we can to make it better.”

  Logan burrowed deeper in her comforter. The patterned floral wallpaper, the ’70s wooden tables, the chipped crosshatch ceiling, the buzzing fluorescents—it was going to drive her crazy. She cast her arm over her forehead dramatically. “I need art or something. String lights. New pillows.”

  Alejo eyed Brandon and nodded. “Decorations. We can do that.”

  He lay back against the pillows alongside Logan. On the end of the bed, Brandon sat up straight. He eyed them wistfully and Logan thought he looked so lonely it hurt. He leaned in for a moment like he meant to lie down next to them but couldn’t. This was how it always went. He was always simultaneously here and a thousand miles away. She’d seen him make this face more times than she could count, and it felt like this every time.

  “Hey,” Alejo whispered. He reached for Brandon’s hand.

  Brandon stood and offered a pained smile. “It’s getting late. I’m gonna turn in for the night. You’re better night owls than me.”

  Alejo said nothing. The door between rooms shut behind Brandon, and the two of them were left in an uneasy quiet. Logan cleared her throat. It wasn’t too late to make an appeal. “I feel like we don’t have to stay here.”

  “No. We don’t.”

  Alejo’s sweater rustled as he sank deeper into the mattress. Getting him to admit even that was a small victory. Alejo’s palm was pressed over his eyes, lips pressed in a taut frown.

  Logan sat up. “Then what are we doing here? Like, really?”

  “What do you mean?” Alejo asked.

  “It’s been six months. What are you still trying to figure out?”

  “Sometimes,” Alejo sighed, “it’s not about figuring things out. It’s about being a family. Your dad’s been dealing with this place all alone. The least we can do is come here and support him.”

  “Oh yeah, because he’s been super supportive of us.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Alejo stared at the ceiling with a difficult expression. After a moment, he rolled over and pushed himself from the bed. As if to reassure her he wasn’t mad, he smiled, but it was mournful.

  “It’ll look good in here with the string lights,” Alejo said. “Maybe we’ll go shopping tomorrow.”

  Logan nodded. It was like she was drowning, but these weren’t waters she’d ever been in with Alejo. He wasn’t Brandon—they’d never had this wall of silence between them. She wanted to ask why Brandon had been here for so long. She wanted to ask about the missing boy. She wanted to beg him to leave.

  Instead, she said, “Good night, Dad.”

  Interlude

  The Dark is not a monster.

  It simply is.

  It enjoys this world and its sorrows. It tastes the tang of fear on the wind. It has seen great and shining cities by the sea, lush forests absent of human life, deserts so wide they turn horizons to gold. But it likes Snakebite best of all. Snakebite is where the Dark was born. Snakebite is the Dark’s home.

  The Dark is hungry tonight.

  It is starving.

  The host sits alone. He often sits alone, silently oscillating between guilt and apathy. The TV is on as it always is, playing a sports game that the host does not watch. The host cannot watch. He thinks about blood between his fingers. He thinks about the sounds of strangled gasps and crunching bones. These things didn’t used to plague the host’s thoughts, but now death is the only thing on his mind. Not fear of death, but desire for it.

  The host needs death like he needs air to breathe.

  You want it, don’t you? the Dark whispers to the host when they are alone. You’re strong, but not strong enough. Why not do what you want?

  The host winces. “I will. Later. People are still scared.”

  It’s been plenty of time, the Dark breathes. Its voice gusts through the room like a warm breeze. No one is looking anymore. No one cares. They have moved on. The same will be true of the next.

  The host leans back in his chair. He doesn’t like being pressured like this, but the Dark has waited long enough for him to strike. It grows weaker with each passing day. It ebbs and flows in the shadows, swimming to stay alive while its useless host sits around and thinks.

  “What’re you getting from this?” the host asks. He kicks his feet up on the coffee table and closes his eyes. “Is this making you stronger?”

  It has nothing to do with me, the Dark reminds him. I came to you because you need help. Hosts before you have been too afraid to understand what I offer. Do not run away from yourself.

  The host looks at his hands.

  This is only temporary, the Dark says. As I told you in the beginning, when you have the strength to stand on your own, I will leave you. When your heart tells you what it wants and you no longer hesitate to act, you will not need me.

  The host likes this idea. He imagines himself roaming the country on a spree, too smart to be caught. He imagines news stations decrying his actions, horrified and fascinated by him in equal measure. He imagines the news articles written about him, trying to understand how he did it; how he got away with it. The Dark’s claws are sunken so deep into him he cannot feel them there. The host makes a contemplative click with his tongue. “What if you want me to do something I don’t wanna do?”

  Impossible. I can only want what you want. That is my nature. The Dark encases the host—he feels its warmth and is comforted. For as long as you carry me, I am you. I can be nothing more.

  The host clears his throat. “Partners, then.”

  Partners, the Dark agrees. To a certain extent, the host is not wrong. They are partners. The Dark presses into him, pulling at the piece of his heart that aches to strike again. Beneath his skin he is a viper, and vipers are not meant to spend their days waiting. The Dark breathes, Shall we do it again?

  The host smiles.

  6

  Country Roads

  When Logan imagined a shopping trip, this wasn’t what she pictured: cramming into Brandon’s rented Dodge Neon, peeling her knees from the dash in the boiling heat, puttering down Main Street to find a dinky antique shop that just happened to sell some art. Since arriving in Snakebite, Logan had learned that the center of town was the farthest a person could get from a McDonald’s in the contiguous US, the town proper was a whopping 1.5 square miles, and the nearest anything
meant it was at least two hours away in Idaho.

  Satan himself couldn’t create a more perfect hell.

  Brandon stayed quiet on the drive into town, eyes fixed on the flat gold hills that rolled out on both sides of the valley. It’d been years since they went anywhere without Alejo along to mediate. Given the months they’d been apart, Alejo apparently thought a trip into town—just Logan and Brandon—might generate some warmth between them. Maybe Alejo didn’t know them as well as he thought.

  Brandon had one hand on the wheel while the other hung out the driver’s side window, carelessly ducking under and over the current of the wind. Without turning, he asked, “When was the last time it was just us?”

  Without hesitation, Logan said, “Tulsa. When I was on the show.”

  “Ah,” Brandon said. He adjusted the square black sunglasses that sat over his regular glasses. “That’s right.”

  That’s right. Logan tried not to let the cool carelessness in his voice creep under her skin. To Brandon, Tulsa was just another spot on the road. It probably didn’t weigh on him like it did on her, hanging heavy in the silence between them. It probably didn’t linger at the back of his thoughts every time he closed his eyes. He probably didn’t see it like she did—the brick-walled tunnel under the city, the smell of garbage and fried food, the flat horizon that felt like everywhere and nowhere all at once.

  She’d only been allowed on ParaSpectors once in her life, and Brandon had made sure the opportunity never came up again. Maybe she’d asked too many questions, been too annoying, or maybe he’d just never wanted her there in the first place. At night, when it was quiet enough for Logan’s thoughts to really run wild, she could still hear his voice echo like a thunderclap from the alley walls. She pictured the way Brandon turned to her, stare full to the brim with hate, and said, Get out, Logan. Go home and leave me alone.

  And then nothing. He stared until the production team swarmed in, offered Brandon a water, a moment to sit, asked if he wanted to start over on the episode. They’d led Logan away from the set, back to the motel, and said, That was weird. Maybe another time.

  After that, it was radio silence between them. He didn’t say a word to her the entire week they filmed in Flagstaff. In Shreveport, he booked a room in a different motel so he wouldn’t have to be around her. Logan couldn’t wrap her head around how casually he’d moved on like the hurt didn’t rot under his skin. Brandon hadn’t spent sleepless nights scrolling through ParaSpectors forums, reading speculations about why Logan Ortiz-Woodley never returned to the show.

  She probably annoyed the shit out of them

  No one wants to babysit a whiny kid when they’re working

  Bralejo is perfect. Adding a kid would just make it weird

  For years, Logan had craved an explanation. Some kind of apology for the outburst and the subsequent silence. She’d expected Brandon to at least say it was an accident, it had been a long day, he was nervous without Alejo, he’d directed his anger at her on accident.

  But Brandon had said nothing.

  Even now, gliding along flat roads to nowhere, Brandon said nothing. Mired in humid, uncomfortable silence, he said nothing. Maybe he kept her at arm’s length on purpose, just waiting until she was eighteen so he could get rid of her for good. Maybe he wanted it to be just him and Alejo again. Maybe he’d regretted adopting her the whole time. Before Tulsa, their relationship had already been awkward and distant. But after, Logan had stopped trying to fix it. If Brandon didn’t care, Logan wouldn’t, either. She would live her life, and he could be a part of it if he wanted to.

  They parked outside Snakebite Gifts and Antiques and Logan went to work. She’d visualized how to improve her room, and had it down to a few well-placed art prints, some string lights, a new comforter, and a couple of potted plants. Gracia had a policy against candles in the motel rooms, but herbal incense and a stick lighter would do the trick. The store wasn’t exactly what she’d pictured—mostly old shelves littered with dust-coated antiques that hadn’t been touched in years—but she could make this work.

  Brandon wordlessly followed, quiet as a ghost. He perused the shelves they passed, badly pretending that he was looking for something.

  “Do you have something else to shop for?” Logan asked.

  Brandon laughed, quiet and dismissive. “Nope. I’m committed to the hunt.”

  Logan groaned.

  They made their way to a small section of art prints. Logan paused at a canvas photo of a rural road. It was a bit country for her taste, but it tugged at her. She pulled the canvas from the shelf and brushed her thumbs over the stitching. It was the kind of picture she would’ve made fun of someone for having back in LA—generic and impersonal—but its loneliness spoke to her now.

  “I like this one.”

  Brandon stepped to her side and admired the photo. “Not what I would’ve picked. How much?”

  “Twenty-five,” Logan said. She tilted the photo and narrowed her eyes at it. “I don’t know—is it ugly?”

  “No.” Brandon took the photo delicately and looked it over. In his sweater and glasses he looked like an art critic appraising a masterpiece, not a manufactured print from some random store. “What do you like about it?”

  “Um, I don’t know, I just feel like I get it,” Logan tried. Brandon was so casual now, like shopping together was a normal thing that they did. Logan pursed her lips. “It reminds me of when we lived on the road. I mean, it sucked. But there were moments. I remember Dad took me down to this river for an afternoon. I used to think…”

  Logan clenched her jaw. She used to think that home wasn’t a place, it was family. But the family she had then—their strange, broken trio of misfits—hadn’t felt like home in a long time. They were still three lost things, but they were infinitely far apart. Home wasn’t family now. Home was nowhere.

  Brandon looked at her, but his gaze was distant. He looked beyond her.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Logan said. “I want it.”

  She took the canvas print from Brandon’s grasp and tucked it under her arm. They carried on through the store, methodically working through Logan’s list of aesthetic improvements. In a few months, she would be loading this same haul of decorations into boxes before she left Snakebite behind.

  Brandon paused next to a shelf of tattered dolls.

  “Do you feel … safe in Snakebite?” he asked.

  “I don’t love it,” Logan mused, “but I haven’t seen any pitchforks yet.”

  “I mean more like…” Brandon stared into the cart wistfully. “I think about memory sometimes. How our mind rewrites our memories from scratch every time we think something up. If we wanted, we could forget a piece of our lives completely. Just … write over it.”

  Logan unloaded her pile of artwork with a scowl. “I hope I forget Snakebite when I leave.”

  “Fair enough.” Brandon was quiet. “Sometimes I wish I could forget it, too.”

  The gift shop front door rang. Logan stood on her toes to see over the shelves. A group of kids around her age wandered into the store, laughter following them from outside. It was three girls and two boys, all clad in summer dresses and cargo shorts and sunglasses, shoulders sun-kissed, hair damp with what Logan assumed was lake water. They weren’t like the kids from LA, but a sharp pang of longing still struck Logan at the sight of them.

  Next to her, Brandon’s expression darkened.

  “Someone you know?” Logan joked.

  “We should probably buy these and get home.”

  The group of teens rounded the nearest shelf, each of them idly touching items without really considering them like wandering through this store was just a standard part of their day. Logan couldn’t blame them—on her brief trip through Snakebite’s “downtown,” she hadn’t seen a single thing for kids her age to do for fun.

  A boy at the front of the group paused when he spotted Brandon. Sunlight filtered through the dusty store shelves, streaking the boy’s pale face sickly y
ellow. His lips twisted into a grimace.

  “They multiplied,” the boy said. He motioned to Logan, unnervingly square jaw clenched. “What’re you doing here?”

  Logan looked to Brandon for an explanation, but Brandon only stared. He adjusted his glasses, then turned like he meant to leave.

  “Hey,” the boy said again. “I asked what you’re doing here.”

  The other teens gathered around the boy were silent. Logan recognized them from the vigil the day she’d arrived. This was the same group of kids who’d stared at her and Alejo like they thought their glares could kill. Logan began to understand Brandon’s quick retreat, but she wasn’t one to run away.

  “We’re shopping,” Logan said. “What’s your problem?”

  The boy’s glare shifted from Brandon to Logan. “My problem is this guy shows up here and my friend goes missing. I wanna know why.”

  Maybe she’d spoken too soon on the pitchforks. Logan looked to the front of the shop for backup, but the woman behind the register only watched the argument unfold with vague interest, like it was a bit of theater on a slow afternoon. Truck engines stammered outside, voices trickled in through a crack in the door, and Snakebite carried on. No one was coming to their defense.

  “How about you mind your own business?” Logan snapped. She adjusted her art prints under her arm, but she didn’t budge.

  The boy at the front of the group took a step forward.

  Before he could say anything, another of the teens slipped in front of him. Her bright blond hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, cheeks dappled with freckles, eyes unnervingly wide. She’d been standing at the edge of the cemetery on the day of the funeral; Logan recognized her same blue-eyed stare, like the girl was trying to pull her apart.

  “We don’t want a fight,” the girl said, voice obnoxiously appeasing. “Why don’t you two just go?”

  “Who’re you supposed to be?” Logan asked.

  “Stop.” Brandon put a hand on Logan’s shoulder like he meant to quiet her. He wasn’t focused on the group of kids harassing them. His stop was meant for her, not the bullies. In classic Brandon form, he was already on the run, retreating from the situation like he retreated from everything else.