Reed looks just as he always has in my mind. A boy of eight, thick brown hair swept across his forehead, still long from the summer. I was there when Ashley’s mom was threatening to cut his hair for the first day of school, and I remember how hard Reed begged her not to.
My eyes burn, but I flip to the next page. Ashley sucks in a breath at the photo of her dad with Sam and Reed in the woods. The next several pages are hard. More photos of the crime scene. I tilt them away, trying to protect Ashley from the sight of her dead father’s body, but I know she’s already seen them. Photo after photo of blood, destroyed camping equipment, and large rocks littering the ground. I’ve seen all this before, but it’s still a shock.
It was late on Sunday afternoon when we knew something was wrong, long after they should have been back.
By five o’ clock, they had found the destroyed campsite with Mr. Hutton’s body, his head bashed in with a rock, and the boys gone. I can still remember with vivid clarity what those words felt like to hear. It was a nasty, violated mix of fear, gut-wrenching pain, and total helplessness that took root and never went away. I remember wanting to run, somewhere so far that I could escape the words I’d heard. The boys are gone.
I didn’t know it could get worse. I didn’t know that “gone” still meant “hope.”
Not until four days later, when I heard the word “dead.”
At that point I realized how much I’d lost. Our inseparable group went from five to three. We were told a man did it. They said they had evidence, but the man got away.
The bodies were unsuitable for open caskets. I didn’t know what that meant at seven years old. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that my older brother and my best friend were lying in cold white boxes at the front of our church and I couldn’t even see them. The last time I’d seen their faces was when they were laughing in Mr. Hutton’s truck as they pulled away. It was closure I couldn’t have. The funeral did nothing for me. I still waited for them to come home. In my heart those were just empty white caskets.
I come to the newspaper clipping, the front-page story of their deaths, with a drawing of a scruffy, bearded man at the bottom, the killer who was never found. There are only a few pages after this, and I suddenly wonder what I was supposed to see. “Why are you showing me this?” It feels like I’ve been staring at these pictures for eternity.
“Keep going,” Ashley whispers, gripping my knee tightly.
I take a deep breath and flip the page over. For a moment, I just stare, trying to understand what I’m seeing. Then I feel the pieces fit together in my mind with a click so visceral I’d swear it was real. “Oh my God.”
Ashley is silent, a tightening on my knee the only sign that she heard me. It’s another flyer for a missing person, but this one has been altered. On the left is Sam’s first-grade picture, and on the right . . . on the right is a computer-generated picture of what he would look like at twelve. And then another one at eighteen. It is so eerily close to what Matt looks like that it could have been his picture, except for the darker hair.
It’s long in the picture, past his shoulders. Sam never wore his hair long. I can feel my brain on the verge of overloading. I slide the paper aside with a trembling hand, needing to finish this before I can’t think anymore.
I know what’s coming next. Somehow, I think I’ve always known. I look at Ashley and understand why. I love her like my own sister. We might as well be, for all we’ve been through since day one. I love her thick brown hair and her stunning green eyes and the way her mouth quirks up when she’s up to no good.
I think the first time I saw the boy tilt his head like Ashley so often does, something deep inside me recognized him.
But to acknowledge the truth would be to accept that all we’ve been told has been a lie, that maybe we suffered more than we had to, or perhaps not enough. Either way, I ignored it for the consequences it would bring. And now they’ve come, regardless, all because I couldn’t stay away from the boy that was once my hero. The boy whose name I used to draw inside red crayon hearts, who gave me tiny white flowers and held my hand at the bus stop.
I move Sam’s page aside and let out a ragged breath at what lies before me. Ashley sniffs, wiping at her eyes, the same ones that stare up at me from the page. The computer-generated picture of Reed is astonishingly close to the real thing. But the picture feels wrong. They’ve got him on a white background, when all I’ve ever seen behind him is green. The Reed in the photo has light skin and more bulk, like an athlete. The boy from the woods is all muscle, and the picture doesn’t show how his tan skin glows when the sunlight hits it through the forest canopy or the way it highlights his sun-streaked hair.
It’s close enough, though. Guilt washes over me. This is one secret that has come back to haunt me tenfold. “Ashley, I’m sorry.”
Her hand slides from my knee. “Did you know?” Her voice is trembling with faint accusation.
I can’t tell her no, because that would be a lie. Some part of me knew, but it was so small I could flip the switch, just like I did for everything else. But to say yes, it doesn’t feel like the truth either. I’ve fallen somewhere in the middle, and it’s not a place that I’m used to being. “I . . . I didn’t want to know, Ash. I wanted something in my life that had nothing to do with . . . this.”
I glance up at Matt to find him pressing the palms of his hands to his eyes. He doesn’t move from that position, and I wonder if he’s mad at me or just in shock. Ashley stares down at the picture of her older brother with tears in her eyes and nods, accepting my flimsy excuse. “But it has everything to do with it, doesn’t it? You found the truth; you just didn’t know it.”
I meet her eyes, seeing the green flames that burn within. “So what do we do now?”
“Ben,” Ashley barks. “Get over here.”
Ben shuffles forward, looking both mutinous and broken.
Ashley glares up at him, meeting him stare for stare. “Tell her, Ben. Tell her the truth.”
He holds my gaze for the longest time. “I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“About this.”
“How long?”
“That night at the party. I stopped off at the house before I met y’all there. Dad left the folder out. He didn’t think I’d come back home so soon.”
“Is this why you suddenly saw me? Because your dad wanted you to spy on me?”
“No, Leah, I swear. It wasn’t like that. He just wanted me to find out if you’d seen anything in the woods.”
“So you thought making me your girlfriend would accomplish that?” Suddenly my guilt for knowing I’ve been leading Ben on vanishes. He’s been doing the same thing.
“It didn’t start out that way. But I realized the only way to find out what you knew was to get to know you. I needed you to trust me. And I just . . .”
“What? Thought you’d kill two birds with one stone?”
Ben glares. “I fell for you, Leah. And that’s the truth, like it or not. And apparently while you were falling for someone else.”
Matt pulls his hands away from his eyes long enough to give me an I told you so look.
“Like you said, it didn’t start out that way.” I press a hand to my head, feeling the pain coming through. “I just . . . didn’t know what to do. I thought you were a good guy who didn’t deserve to get hurt.”
“I still am, Leah. I care about you.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell any of us? You’ve seen what’s in this folder and didn’t think we should know?”
“You found Reed and didn’t think they deserved to know?” Ben points at Ashley and Matt.
“I wasn’t sure! Why would I tell them if I wasn’t sure? That would be horrible.”
“But you suspected. And you kept it to yourself. Isn’t that wrong too?”
I glare, the pounding in my head almost unbearable. “Leave off, Ben. She already feels like shit and you’re making it worse.” Ashley squeezes my
hand and takes the folder from me. “If we’re doing this, we need to go.”
Ben sighs, defeated. “We’ll take the RZR. It’s the only way we’ll ever get there ahead of them.”
chapter twenty-six
“I still don’t know what the hell you think you’re going to do when we find him,” Ben yells over the roar of his shiny black four-by-four RZR. “If we find him. This might as well be like searching for a needle in a haystack.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ashley yells back. “We just have to find him.”
I glance at Matt, sitting next to me in the backseat. He looks somewhere between sick and mind-blown, and I feel the exact same way. Except my painkillers are starting to wear off, so I have the added benefit of cringing in pain with every bump we hit. The RZR is built for speed, not comfort, and Ben is making use of it.
“You said it was a cave?” Ashley asks from the front seat, grabbing for a bar when the RZR dips down a hill.
“Not a cave, exactly, more like a sinkhole or depression. But it had a pool at the bottom,” I answer, watching the ground below us like I’m on a roller coaster.
“Yeah, I’ve seen that place,” Ben says. “We tracked an injured buck there about three or four years ago.” He looks at me from the rearview mirror, and I ignore the stab of guilt. Ben was hiding even more than I was, and he had so many opportunities to tell me.
“Can you find it?” Ashley says impatiently as she is flung around on her seat.
“Probably. It’s not close to any of the trails, so it’ll be a hike if we can’t get the RZR through.”
Branches slap at the bars around us as we whip through the trees. I strain my eyes for any sign of human or Bigfoot, but the forest is too dense here. I’ve been gone from the hospital for four hours now. My parents will likely never let me see the light of day ever again. Ben left his phone at his house so we couldn’t be tracked, but who knows if Sheriff Hanson has any kind of traceable GPS device on this thing. Knowing what I know now, there could very well be one inside my cast. I just don’t understand how he could have kept all this from us.
The brush suddenly clears up as we pass through an open fence, signaling the beginning of the national forest land. Ben jerks the RZR to the left, leaving the trail and tearing across the woods. Ashley squeals as we go over a fallen tree, launching us airborne for a few moments. I can’t stop the grunt of pain when we land. Matt glances over at me, his gaze bordering on frantic. “You should have stayed behind.”
“Not an option.”
“We may never find him.”
“You don’t know—”
I never get a chance to finish. The first rock slams into the hood of the RZR, bouncing up and cracking the plastic windshield. The second splits it apart.
Ben swerves and Ashley screams as chunks of Plexiglas fly everywhere. Matt throws himself across me as much as he can with the harness across his chest. We narrowly avoid slamming into a pine, but Ben overcorrects, and the RZR flips onto its side and slams against another tree. The roll cage is the only thing that keeps us from being crushed.
Ben cuts the motor, and for a moment all is quiet. Then the silence is ripped apart by an unearthly roar from only yards away. My side of the RZR is on the ground, and with some effort and only one good hand, I manage to unbuckle the harness and slide out. I thrust my fractured arm out to break my fall, forgetting about it in the drop, and scream.
“Leah, don’t you dare,” Matt groans as he fumbles with his harness. His weight is pulling against the straps, making it hard for him to snap it loose.
I don’t answer him. I crawl out through the roll cage to check on Ashley and Ben, using my good arm to lift myself up. All I can think is that I hope they aren’t covered in blood. “Ashley? Ben? Are you okay?” I whisper.
No one answers me. At first I think they’re knocked out, but their eyes are wide open and their attention is definitely not on me. They’re looking straight ahead with identical expressions of surprise and terror. I turn, knowing what I’m going to see.
The male stands motionless as he watches us, all eight feet of him poised and ready.
“Leah, what do we do?” Ben asks, afraid for the first time in my memory.
“It’s okay, just don’t move.” I get to my feet slowly, ignoring the pounding pain in my head from the rush.
Ashley reaches for my hand through the bars. “Don’t. Don’t go.”
“He won’t hurt me.” If I say it, maybe I’ll believe it too.
“Leah, the rocks.”
“What?” I try to pull my hand away, distracted by the Sasquatch. He reaches down and grabs a chunk of wood, then swings the heavy stick against the trunk of the nearest pine. The crack echoes through the forest and Ashley jerks her hand away to cover her ears. Within seconds it’s answered. I turn toward the east, where the sound originated from. “Reed.” The Sasquatch turns and walks away, in the opposite direction from where the sound came. In another minute I can’t see him at all.
I start walking, my only goal to reach the source of that answer. “Leah! Where are you going?” Matt yells, still struggling with the harness. “Leah, stop! Dammit, Ben, give me a knife.”
I can hear them grappling with the straps and the cling of metal on metal. My feet are running before I realize it. Ashley screams for me to come back, but I can’t, not when he’s so close now. I run until I can’t hear them anymore.
“Reed!” I scream, knowing he’ll come if he can hear me. Saying his name out loud is shocking, and for a moment I wonder if I’ve lost my mind and we’re all wrong. I mean, I’m calling out the name of a boy we buried ten years ago.
I pick up a stick and start slamming it against a tree until it snaps in half. My good arm burns with the effort, and I throw the rest to the ground and wait.
Unable to stand still any longer, I start to walk, only running when my body can endure it. If I pass out, I wonder if anyone will ever find me out here. I think of the wolf at the grotto and wonder if I would die from the elements or from predators first.
“Leah.”
I gasp, all too aware of how my head and arm are beating painfully in time with my heart. Turning slowly, I find him two steps behind, as still as the forest around me. I open my mouth to speak, but the words won’t come. And there are so many of them. So many things I want to say to him, things that I never imagined I’d get the chance to speak. Now that I have it, I don’t know what to do.
He looks older; I can see it in his eyes, the way he watches me. It’s as if he’s more aware now.
The skin of an animal is draped over his shoulders and wrapped around his body, brownish gray and smooth. It’s familiar, like it might have been on the wolf that tried to eat me recently.
I run my fingers down the fur, just along his shoulder. He tenses, watching my hand in frustration. “You shouldn’t be here.” He frowns, and something in my chest feels like it’s slowly ripping apart. I step back, but he reaches for my hand, pulling me close. “No,” he says harshly. “That’s not . . .” His eyes narrow on my green cast, and then he reaches out to touch the edge of the bandage across my forehead. They had to shave part of my hair to stitch it, which means my trademark ponytail won’t cut it anymore. “You’re crazy, you know that? You should be resting.”
“I’ll go,” I say, remembering why I’m here in the first place. “I just came to warn you. The sheriff knows about you and the Bigfoot. He’s here now, hunting them.”
“Sheriff?”
“You need to leave. Take them away, somewhere safe.” A branch snaps in the distance, but the boy seems unfazed.
“This is our home.”
“I know, but the sheriff will kill them or, worse, capture them and take them away.”
He smiles, like I’ve said a joke. “They can’t be caught.”
“But they can be shot.”
Something flickers in his eyes, and he shakes his head like something’s bothering him. Does he remember something?
“Reed,”
I say softly, squeezing his hands. His eyes widen like they did when Ashley called his name. “Don’t you remember? That’s your name. Reed. Reed Hutton. Your sister is Ashley, and we used to live across the street. You were best friends with my brothers, Matt and Sam.” He jerks at Sam’s name, blinking fast. “You went camping with your dad and Sam. And then . . .” I can’t say it. Truthfully, I still don’t know what happened.
I pull the crumpled photo I took from the file out of my pocket, the one of them all smiling in the woods with the distant face of a Sasquatch in the background. “You don’t remember this?”
With trembling hands he takes the picture, leaning over it with a blank stare. I start counting seconds, getting really antsy when I get to forty-five. “Reed?” He doesn’t answer. “Do you—”
“I remember,” he whispers hoarsely.
“What do you remember?”
He shakes his head. “I can’t . . . Just pieces, flashes. My dad . . .” He shoves the picture back at me, eyes full of anguish. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“What do you mean? Your dad’s?” Before he can answer, a deep howl echoes in the distance, sending chills down my arms.
Reed pulls me close and whirls around, standing in front of me as he faces the direction of the noise. “Don’t move.” His voice is so quiet I can barely hear him, but I do what he says, staring over his shoulder at whatever is coming.
When the baying of hounds echoes from the same direction, I realize who the danger is from. Not the Sasquatch but the sheriff. “Run,” I say, pushing at him. “You have to protect them.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“I’ll find my way.”
He spins around, his face inches from mine and full of disbelief. Something snaps in his eyes, and suddenly the words flow from his mouth, like they’ve been pushing against a dam for days, or years.
“Leah. I thought of you and my family until I forgot I was human. Until I forgot there was anything else but them. And then I became them, and I was okay with that. Until I saw you. Then what I was wasn’t good enough anymore. You’ve brought me back. I’m not leaving you again.”
The Shadows We Know by Heart Page 19
