A Curse So Dark

by Heather Davis

  Fawn sashayed over, rolling her pom-poms in her hands. “He’s not playing. I heard someone say Coach wouldn’t start him.”

  “Uh-oh. That’s not good.”

  A fumble on the play elicited a roar from the Granite Hills crowd. Fawn jogged back over to her squad, rallying for a cheer.

  I found my seat again and turned to look for Kyle in the crowd, but he wasn’t there, either. He’d never missed a game in all the time I’d known him. I pulled out my phone and texted him a quick where-are-you note. Then, for the rest of the game I sat waiting for my phone to buzz with his reply.

  Finally heading out of the game after the crushing defeat, I decided not to even look at my phone for the rest of the night. Bailing on me and now the team, Kyle was obviously having some issues. But I couldn’t manage them for him, not with all I was dealing with. Just once, I needed someone to be there for me. Kyle, it seemed, was not going to be that guy.

  ***

  The wind whistled through the cracks in our old house that night, reminding me that even the sturdiest structures have weaknesses, places the cold can permeate. I slid out of bed, checking that my window was closed. It was, but when I pulled back the curtains, I saw movement outside. A couple of shadowy figures near one of the large maple trees that lined the street. I half-expected to hear the wheels of a skateboard, thinking maybe Alex was out messing around. But it wasn’t Alex. He wasn’t that clueless to be out on a cold, windy night like this.

  The figures paused, ducking behind a tree. I had that feeling of being watched again, as I had in the parking lot at the football game. I pulled on a bathrobe over my cami and pajama pants and went downstairs. From the living room window, I might be able to see who was outside better.

  I didn’t need to click on a light. At the formal dining table we seldom used, Rose was working on invitations with a thin calligraphy pen. She had one of Dad’s old concert T-shirts on, this one with a poufy-haired lead signer screaming into a microphone. Her hair hung in a messy braid at her back.

  “Can’t sleep?” I asked, peeling back the drape at the picture window. The sidewalk out front of our house was empty now. Whoever it was must have gone. Maybe they’d seen me in the upstairs window, spying on them spying on us.

  “Fawn misspelled a word on the invitations.” Rose set down her pen and blew on the wet ink. “She should’ve let me write them.”

  “At least you caught them before they went out.”

  “True, but you know, sometimes, I wish she’d slow down.” Rose brushed loose glitter from the table into her hand and then deposited it into a little paper bag.

  I sat down next to Rose and picked up one of the invitations, noting Rose’s tiny correction on the word “celebrate,” which Fawn had thought contained an “i.”

  “I don’t think anyone’s going to notice. You did a good job fixing it,” I told her.

  Rose capped her pen and gathered up all the papers on the table. “Is it true?” she asked, her blue eyes serious, focused. “What you said in the truck? You’d give everything up and stay here in town, if Dad isn’t found.”

  I handed her the invitation in my hands. “I think I’d have to.”

  “But if you get accepted to the university, will they let you defer a year or something?”

  “Yeah, maybe. But it might make a lot more sense to stick around here, anyway. Let’s not give up on Dad, though, okay?” I was still hopeful we’d find him, that my efforts in getting the word out and my search the next day were going to yield some results.

  Rose put all the corrected invitations in a plastic bag. “Will we have enough money for college, you know, if Dad’s really gone?”

  “I haven’t found any life insurance papers or anything, but maybe we could sell the house.”

  “And how long would that last us? College is really expensive,” Rose said. “I mean, there’s my undergrad first, of course. But medical school after that.”

  I blinked at her. “You want to be a doctor?”

  She nodded and leaned her elbows on the table. “I’m thinking about it, but not if we couldn’t afford it.”

  “There’re student loans, scholarships,” I said. “That’s awesome, really. Did you ever tell Dad your dream?”

  “Once. He said something about the long hours, the hectic schedules. I don’t think he liked the idea of me living in the city and working at a big hospital. But small towns need doctors, too. I just want to help people.”

  “I think you’d be amazing at it.” I got up and gave her a side hug. “Come on, let’s get up to bed.” I turned out the light over the dining room table.

  “Hey, Lily. Don’t tell Fawn,” Rose said, pausing on the steps as we headed upstairs. “I haven’t told her yet, and I don’t want her to know I told you first.”

  “She doesn’t know? You tell her everything.”

  “Not this,” she said. “She’s still trying to figure out what she wants to do. She’s all over the place.”

  “But you can’t downplay your dream because she hasn’t found hers,” I said, leaning on the bannister. “You can’t let your star shine less because of someone else.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said and then headed up the stairs.

  It made sense now. All of Rose’s studying wasn’t just because she loved school, it was because she saw a bigger future, one maybe even more important than my dream of working for a city newspaper someday. She’d make a great doctor, especially since her heart was always in the right place of wanting to help others.

  How we’d manage all the college bills, I had no idea...

  There was too much on my mind to sleep, so I went back downstairs and pulled the maps from my bag and spread them out on the kitchen table. I had to find Dad. I couldn’t do this on my own. I needed him as much as my sisters did.

  Chapter Five

  Saturday afternoon, rain danced on the windshield of the truck as Alex and I zigzagged through the hillside roads. I was glad he’d offered to help me navigate the maps he’d printed of the Forest Service roads. It turned out his dad didn’t work for the Forest Service, but for a consortium of scientists studying the ecosystem. Still, Alex claimed he knew all the back roads since he’d driven them so often with his father. Even if he was hanging out because he had nothing better to do, at least Alex cared enough to do something. He was decent company, though he peppered me with questions about Rose. The guy was definitely in crush mode.

  Green enveloped us until we hit patches of clear-cut, where loggers had left snags and brown stumps. It’s the dark side of living in the Cascades, where the logging business is the lifeblood of the economy. The clear-cuts are as much a part of the landscape as the rain and fog. I always thrilled at the sight of replanted saplings rising from those fields of brown, though, when the forest was managed. The entire area needed more of that.

  My head began to clear the deeper we went into the hills. The acres of pine and fir trees were like a balm. I’d always felt calmer in the woods. All the hikes I’d taken with Dad and my sisters came to mind, him teaching us that nature connected everything. He’d loved the area—the high-elevation lakes, the secret caves that led deep into the glacier-cut hillsides, the trails and paths that led to ridges where you could see the whole valley below. I understood why my father had chosen Pioneer Falls as our home. There was no way the view from a band’s tour bus could compare with the beauty of this area.

  If we did have to sell the house and leave town, I didn’t know how we’d survive without the woods. In Seattle, you have lakes, the sound, and mountains in the distance, but Pioneer Falls is pure wilderness—a town founded around the creek, the hills, the endless green. Running in a city park or taking a long walk in cement-covered neighborhoods wouldn’t be the same. I hadn’t realized what that might be like, or how much the wild felt like home.

  As the hours wore on, the soothing effect of the forest began to dissipate. Alex and I stopped at every trailhead and truck turnout on the route that he had plo
tted. After checking yet another empty dirt and gravel parking lot, I pulled over on the side of the road and rested my head against the steering wheel.

  “Are we crazy for thinking this was a good idea?”

  “No. You have to do something. I would, if it were me. Hey, how about trying the road to the hot springs? I heard that was a town favorite.” Alex pulled another map from his bag. “Or maybe there’s a familiar trail he’d cling to?”

  “How do we even know where to stop and look?” I really didn’t want to cry in front of Alex, but I could feel frustration building.

  “Did he have a favorite spot? Somewhere he used to come up here?”

  “Maybe Alpine Lake Road? We hiked there a few times.”

  “Yeah, okay. I see it here on the map,” Alex said, pointing at his printout. “Well, come on. Let’s go.”

  “Really? You don’t mind all these dead ends?”

  Alex shrugged. “Alpine Lake Road. You need to turn right in about a mile.”

  “If this is all a ploy to get in good with Rose, it’s working.”

  As we neared the turnoff, the rain splashed down in bigger raindrops. I clicked the wipers up a notch and slowed the truck. “Maybe we should go back.”

  “No way, the trailhead is only a hundred yards away,” Alex said, zipping his rain jacket. “You can’t be scared of a little drizzle. Aren’t you from here? It rains all the time, doesn’t it?”

  “No.” I managed a smile. “Not all the time.”

  Outside the truck, I pulled up my hood and fought back the sense that the search today had been worthless. Like a fir needle in a mossy haystack. But at least I was doing something, like Alex said. And besides, I was sure if the roles were reversed my dad would be out looking for me.

  Raindrops streamed across my cheeks, mixing with the hot tears gathering at the corners of my eyes. This could be a good trail to check. Familiar. If there was even a remote chance he’d run up this way...or been driven...or was hiding up here for some reason, it might be worth it.

  “You okay?” Alex asked.

  I nodded and zipped up my jacket.

  The trees provided some cover from the rain as we moved along the trail. Clumps of moss that hung in the trees always seemed like living creatures, forms that were nearly human, more than plant life. They were creepier today somehow, not like how I remembered. Shadows played tricks in the filtered light around them.

  Alex stopped under a large cedar tree, shifting the edge of his hood to catch my gaze. “How long is this trail?”

  “I think about a mile. Dad used to end up carrying Rose part of the way.”

  “Um, I need to pee,” Alex said. “You gotta go? I think I’ll veer off the main path here.”

  “I’m fine. I’ll just walk this way for a second,” I replied, moving toward a side trail marked by an arch formed by branches overhead. I marveled at the perfect symmetry of the branches. Moss hung down from the trees nearby, forming silent observers. I walked slowly, taking it all in as I swept my gaze side to side.

  Then the breeze shifted and there was a smell of sulfur and pitch and something metallic in the air. The odor of blood. How come I was smelling it so strongly?

  I took a few more steps, trying to place the source of the scent. Was there another deer around? Something wounded? I reached a hand to my stone pendant, its familiar shape a lump at my collarbone beneath my sweatshirt. The smell faded. Maybe the wind had shifted, but I still felt uneasy.

  “Lily!” I heard Alex moving down the trail toward me. I turned.

  “Wait!” he yelled. “Don’t move!”

  I froze. Out of the corner of the eye, I saw a metal device on the ground in the exact spot I would have stepped next. Jagged teeth rimmed the sides of the thing. Brown streaks crusted the sharp edges. Dried blood?

  “It’s a snare,” Alex said, making a disgusted face. “My dad’ll have a fit this is on public lands.”

  “And it got something.” Warily, I bent down and inspected the trap more closely, keeping a respectful distance away from it. A wave of anxiety hit me. Small tufts of gray littered the ground around it. Was it fur? I swallowed hard and moved away from it, trying to stop the nausea that was rising with the worry. If the stuff about the family was true, then what if my father had been up here? Maybe he’d come up seeking solace in his wolf state and been injured.

  I shook my head. How could I be thinking the curse was real?

  “Yep, likely caught some kind of predator.” Alex snapped a shot of the trap with his phone, then grabbed a fallen branch from a nearby pile of brush. “Fox, wolf, maybe badger.”

  “But whatever was caught isn’t here anymore.”

  Alex winced. “Yeah, some of the animals chew their paw off to escape. Or it could be that the trap never fully engaged.”

  “That’s awful!” I took a deep breath.

  “Right? Humans are barbaric.” Alex cautiously threaded the stick through the side of the trap, then lifted it.

  “Wait,” I said, panic in my voice now. “What are you doing with it?”

  Alex turned, shaking his head at me. “We can’t leave it here. It’s evidence.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Right.”

  “My dad can get the sample analyzed.”

  “Analyze the sample?” An icy prickle ran down my neck, along with a cold raindrop.

  “Yeah, if they can figure out what species was in this trap, that makes it easier to trace back to the illegal fur trade.”

  “Okay, but...” I held the words for a moment before voicing them. “What if it’s something they can’t identify?”

  “Seriously?” Alex let out a laugh that echoed off the trees around us. “Lily, don’t tell me you believe in Bigfoot. Do we need to have a talk about reality and fantasy in cryptozoology?”

  I smirked. “Yeah, that’s it,” I said, raising my hand. “Super sasquatch fan here.”

  “Well, if they find some aberration, I’ll let you know. Looks like dog hair to me. Maybe it’s from a wolf or coyote.”

  I drew in a sharp breath. “Or wolf-dogs?” I suggested, kind of nervous that he’d mentioned wolf.

  Alex smiled at me, the trap dangling at the end of the branch in his hand. “You could be right. I forgot about that local breeder.”

  I nodded, taking a deep breath. “C’mon, let’s get back to the truck.”

  Behind the seat, I found a garbage bag for the snare. I still felt weird about letting Alex take it to his father, but couldn’t figure out how to argue him out of it. We tucked the snare into the bed of the truck and climbed in the cab. The rain pinged on the metal roof, sounding more like hail than simple drops. It increased steadily, flooding the windshield.

  “Does this heater work?” Alex asked, rubbing his hands together.

  “Yeah, let me get it going.” Something shiny caught my attention on the floor mat. “Hey!” I held up a silver cross on a chain. “Is this yours?”

  He closed his palm around it. “Thanks. I didn’t know where I’d lost it.”

  “Didn’t take you for the religious type.”

  He paused, then showed me a worried, thin smile. “My father is.”

  It didn’t seem like he wanted to say anything else about that topic, so I switched on the headlights as we motored back out onto the road. My mind was working on how I could distract Alex from testing the blood on the trap.

  When we pulled up in front of his house, I forced myself to keep breathing, slow and steady. “Thanks for your help today,” I said as Alex gathered his backpack from behind the seat.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry we didn’t find any sign of him.”

  “Me too.” Windshield wipers sloshed against the steady downpour. I could make out Alex’s place, a one-level green house that blended into the mossy trees that surrounded it. No light on over the porch. Windows dark.

  He seemed to notice my glance. “I’m used to it,” he said, shrugging. “When he’s home, it’s not much different than when he’
s away. He’s always busy.”

  “And your mom?”

  “Country life isn’t her thing.” Alex slid out of the passenger seat and paused, holding the door for a second. “Text me if you need anything,” he said before shutting it.

  I started to pull away, but Alex waved for me to stop. “Almost forgot the evidence,” he said, climbing into the bed of the truck to retrieve the wrapped-up snare.

  Swearing under my breath, I watched him disappear inside the house with the trap. If there was the slightest chance the werewolf story was true, then maybe I’d made a huge mistake in letting the snare be analyzed. What if the blood on the trap belonged to my father, who was, inconceivably, a wolf?

  Bang-bang-bang! Someone knocked hard on the glass of the passenger side.

  My foot slipped off the clutch, killing the engine. “What the hell?” I said, leaning over to open the passenger door.

  Kyle slid into the truck. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been texting you for hours!” His blue Mariners ball cap was dark with rain and his gray jacket was soaked through.

  “Holy crap, you scared me!”

  “Likewise. It’s dark and you’re outside some dude’s house. What is going on?”

  I set the parking brake and clicked the key back. “I was driving in the hills looking for my dad. The reception’s spotty up there.” I bit the inside of my lip, holding back the anger that threatened to replace surprise. “Anyway, after how you’ve been this week, I didn’t want to ask you for help. What happened with the football game? You wouldn’t even answer my text last night.”

  “So you asked this loser?” Kyle’s jaw twitched.

  “He’s not... Look, I don’t want to fight,” I said, holding up my hands. “I’m desperate to find my dad and now I need to get back home.”

  “I know you’re really worried.” Kyle took off his hat and wiped a hand across his wet hair. “I didn’t mean to be an ass. I care about you. You know that.”

  “What are you doing out here? Were you standing in the rain or something?”

  “I was, you know, walking the neighborhood,” he said, his voice low. “Looking for you. For your dad, too.”