“Are you okay, Mom?”
“Sure, honey. I was just checking on something in the kitchen.”
“I thought I heard you talking to somebody.”
Had Katy spoken? She couldn’t be sure. A horrified part of herself wondered if she had actually answered the Voice’s bare and bald question. But the Voice wasn’t real and the house was quiet and it was always easy to lie to yourself when you didn’t like the truth. What she couldn’t avoid was her daughter’s stare. Katy had never been a prude about nakedness, but there was an unwritten rule that you didn’t go starkers around your kids once they passed the toddler stage.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Katy said. “Go on back to bed. You have school tomorrow.”
“It’s not even ten yet, Mom. That’s pretty lame even for Solom.”
“Well, go read or study or something. Listen to some music.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Jett stepped back into the light of her doorway. Her dyed-black hair was tied back in a ponytail, her face bare of make-up, braces glinting silver. A sweet, round-eyed child. Not a drugged-out potential menace to society, as Gordon saw her, and not a disruption to learning, as her teachers claimed. Just a sweet little girl. Her baby.
“Whatever,” Jett said. “It’s not like we get through problems together or anything. That’s just a line we use for the counselors, right?”
Jett was about to close the door, but then stuck her head back out and said, “By the way, what’s that smell? Like somebody farted flowers or something.”
The door closed with a click and the hallway went black and Katy slid down the newel post and sat on the top stair until her tears had dried.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Elliott was being a total dick. Carolyn Everhart didn’t like to think of her husband in such bald, crude terms, but he’d taken the whole vacation as a measure of his testosterone levels. From booking the rental car (“Let’s go with the guys who try harder”) to deciding on restaurant stops on the trip down, Elliott always had a snappy answer for her every question, and a good reason why he knew best. As they’d followed the Appalachian foothills south, Elliott seemed to have grown wax in his ears and a fur pelt that hadn’t graced humans since they’d started shaking their Neanderthal origins.
Solom had been picked almost at random. Elliott worked at PAMCO Engineering with a guy who’d attended Westridge University and said the North Carolina mountains were relatively unspoiled (“A perfect place to get away from it all while still having it all”). An Internet search and credit card reservation later, and they were booked in the Happy Hollow retreat for a week, and since September was leaf season, the cabins cost a premium. A two-day drive from White Plains, with a Holiday Inn Express layover (“Complete with a ‘lay,’ what do you think, honey?”) in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and they had arrived with not a single argument over road maps.
But here in the failing light, she couldn’t get Elliott to even look at the map, much less admit they were lost. The pocket map they’d picked up from the outfitters’ had been fine as long as they stuck to the river road, which was flat and gently curving. But Elliott had insisted on what he called “a little off-roading,” though after two hours her legs had begun to cramp and the air temperature dipped into the low 40s. Instead of complaining, she pointed out that the bikes were geared for road racing and not mountain climbing. Too late. The name “Switchback Trail” had intrigued him. Besides, he’d complimented her on how the biking shorts snugged her ass, and that had bought him a little slack.
Elliott chased down a forest trail barely wide enough for a fox run, and that trail branched off twice, crossed a narrow creek, and cut around a cluster of granite boulders that had risen like a backwoods Stonehenge from the swells of the earth. Two forks later (“The road less traveled or the road not taken, what do say, you liberal arts major, you?”) and he’d juddered over a root in the gathering darkness and been thrown over the handlebars. No bones broken, but some serious scrapes that would require antibiotic ointment.
Now they stood in a cluster of hardwood trees whose branches were nearly devoid of foliage. If any houses were around, their lights didn’t show. Small, unseen animals skirled up leaves around them and darkness was falling harder and faster than a Democratic presidential hopeful’s poll numbers. Carolyn, a homemaker, Humane Society volunteer, member of the Sands Creek subdivision bridge club, and devout Republican, resisted the urge to say “Well, we really got away from it all, didn’t we?”
Elliott pulled a pen light from his fanny pack and played it over the bicycle. “I think the front wheel’s warped. We’ll have to pay for the damage when we get back.”
“You mean ‘if’ we get back.”
“I know exactly where we are.”
“Show me, then.” She pulled out her copy of the fourfold pocket map. It was bordered with ads for area tourist attractions, fine dining establishments, and investment realtors. The river road was marked by a series of arrows, and the Solom General Store and Mother Nature Outfitters were marked with red x marks. State highway 292 leading from Windshake was clearly delineated in thick black ink. Tester Community Park, about five miles from the outfitters’ judging from the scale of the map, was the last recognizable landmark they’d passed.
“We’re right about here,” Elliott said, running the beam over the pen light in a printed area that represented two square miles.
“There aren’t any lines there,” Carolyn pointed out.
“Sure. But we were headed east, remember? The sun was sinking behind us.”
Actually, Carolyn recalled only vague glimpses of the sun once they’d left the relatively familiar flatness of the pavement. What bits of scattered light did break through the gnarled and scaly branches seemed to originate from a different position with each new slope or fork. When the sun had settled on the rim of the mountains, the entire sky had taken on the shade of a bruised plum, and Carolyn was thinking by then that even a trail of bread crumbs out of “Hansel and Gretel” wouldn’t have led them home before midnight.
“Can the bike roll?” she asked.
“Sure, honey.” Elliott lifted the bike by its handlebars and spun the wheel with one hand. The wheel made three revolutions, the rubber sloughing erratically against the tines, before it came to a complete stop. “Well, it can work in an emergency.”
“At what point does this become an emergency?”
“Take it easy, Carolyn. We can walk out of here in no time. Once we find the river, we’ll be home free.”
“Do you know where the river is?”
“Sure, honey.” He took the map from her, and fixed the pen light on the place he’d decided as their present location. With the beam, he traced a line to Blackburn River on the map, which was conveniently marked with a sinuous swathe of blue. “We’re here and the river’s there. A half-hour’s hike, tops.”
“I see the river on the map, but where’s the river out here?” Her voice took on the tiniest bit of sarcasm despite her best efforts.
“Water runs downhill. Ergo, we walk downhill, and there will be the river.”
“Ergo” was one of those annoying, know-it-all, engineering-type words Elliott occasionally sprang on her when he was feeling defensive.
“I’m glad we wore athletic shoes and not moccasins,” Carolyn said. Elliott had stopped at a little souvenir stand when they crossed the North Carolina border, one with a fake moonshine still by the front door and a wooden bear that had been sculpted with a chainsaw. She’d talked him out of buying the Rebel flag window decal and the Aunt Jemima figurine-and-syrup-decanter (“Just wait till the guys at PAMCO get a load of these!”), but he’d gone for the jen-u-wine hand-stitched leather Cherokee mocs at $29.95 a pair.
“Do you have any water left?” He’d used up the last of his water rinsing his wounds.
“A little,” she said. Though she was under no illusions that they’d be back in the comfort of their ren
tal cabin within the hour, she didn’t think they were at the point where they’d need to conserve water to survive. She handed him her bottle and he dashed some in his mouth and swallowed.
“Okay, let’s rock and roll,” he said, walking his bike back down the hill. There was just enough daylight left to see the darker cut of the trail against the thick tangles of low-lying rhododendron. She tucked the map in the tight pocket of her biking shorts and followed, the bike leaning against her hip.
They had gone fifteen minutes before the invisible sun slipped down whatever horizon led to morning on another side of the world. Elliott switched on the pen light and its weak glimmer barely made a dent against the walls of the forest.
“Remember those big rocks we passed?” Carolyn asked, the first time she’d spoken since they’d started their descent.
“Yeah.”
“We should have come to them by now.”
“They’re probably uphill from us. We’re at a lower elevation now.”
“‘Probably’?”
He flicked the beam vaguely to his right. “Sure, honey. Up there. We’ll come to that creek soon, and then we can decide whether to follow it down to the river or stick with the trail.”
It was the first time he’d hinted that any decision would be mutual. That should have given her a cheap glow of victory, but it actually made her more nervous than she wanted to admit. She looked behind her, hoping to recognize the trail from their earlier passage, but all she could see were hickory and oak trees, which stood like witches with multiple deranged arms.
“Let’s hurry,” she said. “I’m getting cold.”
The colorful nylon biking outfits gave a pleasant squeeze to the physique, but they were designed to let the skin breathe so sweat could dry. Breathing worked both ways, though, and the soft wind that came on with dusk made intimate entry through the material.
“I think I remember this stand of pines,” her husband said. He gripped the pen light against one of the handlebars as he walked, so the circle of light bobbed ahead of them like on one of those “Follow the bouncing ball” sing-a-long songs on television. Carolyn thought the perfect tune for their situation would be AC/DC’s “Highway To Hell.”
It was maybe a minute later, though time was rapidly losing its meaning during the interminable trek, that Carolyn heard the sounds behind her. At first she assumed they were the echo of her own footsteps, or maybe a whisper generated from the bike’s sprockets. She breathed lightly through her mouth, or as lightly as she could, given the fact that she was bone tired, a little bit pissed, and more than a little scared. Leaves rustled. Something was moving, larger than squirrel-sized, churning up dead loam and breaking branches.
She edged her bike closer to Elliott’s, until her front tire hit his rear.
“Jesus, Carolyn. Are you trying to run me down?”
“I heard something.”
“I hear lots of somethings. Didn’t you read the guidebook? The Southern Appalachians are home to a number of nocturnal creatures. Don’t worry, all of the large predators are extinct, thanks to European settlers. Ergo, nothing to fear.”
“Can we stop and listen for a minute?”
“Every minute we stop is another minute we’re lost.”
“I thought we weren’t lost.”
“We’re not. We’re just reorienting with our intended destination.”
“Try the cell phone again?”
“No bars. Signal’s deader than a mule’s dick.”
Ten minutes later and they reached the creek. The gurgling of the water and the cold, moist air alerted them to its presence before they blundered into it, because the pen light’s beam had begun to fade. Carolyn welcomed the discovery not because it was the first definite landmark (if, in fact, it was the same creek as they had crossed earlier), but because the white noise of the rushing water masked the sounds of the footsteps that followed their tracks a short distance behind.
“The creek, just like I said.” Elliott pointed the light into Carolyn’s face. It was barely bright enough to make her squint. “The question is, do we follow the water or stick with the trail?”
Carolyn was tempted to remark that he was finally asking her opinion, now that the situation had reached the south side of hopeless. Instead, she allowed him to retain a sliver of his pride. After all, there would be a later, and the politics of marriage, just like the politics of a republic, were constantly swinging from one party to another. And the pendulum was going to be weighted to her side big time for the rest of the vacation.
People didn’t wander off and die in the Appalachian Mountains. There was just too much development. Maybe in Yellowstone, where grizzly bears still roamed, or the Arctic Wildlife Refuge with its sudden snow storms and sub-zero temperatures. Here, the worst that could happen was a miserable night in the woods, with granola bars for supper and a surly husband.
Except something had been following them. No matter what Elliott said.
“We shouldn’t follow the creek,” she said. “It looks like the rhododendron get thick down there, and all those rocks are probably slippery. One of us might fall and break an ankle, then we’d be in real trouble.”
“Good point.”
Another blow for girl power, but Carolyn didn’t think the creek was that dangerous. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to hear the footsteps over the rushing water. “Why don’t we leave the bikes here? We can’t ride them, and they’re slowing us down.”
“We paid a deposit.”
“We can come back and get them tomorrow, once we figure out where we are.”
“I know where we are. I’m an engineer, remember?”
“Ergo.” Carolyn didn’t mean for the response to sound so bitter, but she was cold, her rump was sore from the ten-speed’s narrow seat, her calves ached, and branches had scratched at her face and arms. “In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t a goddamned circuit board or something you can solve with quadratic equations.”
Elliott’s widened eyes doubly reflected the pen light, as if she had slapped his face. She savored the victory for a mere second, then decided to finish the coup. She grabbed the light from his hand and swept the beam against the surrounding trees and underbrush, like Luke Skywalker slashing down Empire storm troopers.
“I heard something out there following us, and I’m good and goddamned scared.” She hadn’t used two expletives in the same conversation since her days at Brown, and it gave her a sense of what the feminists called “empowerment.” It was frightening. She would give up power for security any day. But she had a feeling she needed the adrenaline and anger if she was going to get them out of this mess.
“Okay, okay, calm down,” Elliott said, and the patronizing tone was suppressed but audible. “You’re right. We should leave the bikes and stick with the trail. Let’s cross here and hide the bikes in that thicket, then keep walking.”
“Fine.” She trembled, and she didn’t know whether it was from the chill mist of the creek or her anxiety. She held the light while Elliott guided his damaged bike through the water, carefully choosing his steps on the mossy stones so his shoes would stay dry. He slogged through the mushy black mud of the opposite bank and stood above her, lost in the dark web of wood and vines.
“Come on, Carolyn. I can’t see anything.”
She took one look behind her, half expecting to see a crazed black bear or a red wolf or even a mountain lion, then navigated the rocks and headed up the embankment. She slipped once, going to her knee in the lizard-smelling mud, but Elliott grabbed her upper arm and tugged her to solid ground. Then he dragged the bike up and wheeled it into the bushes.
“Do you want to have a snack?” he asked. “An energy bar or something?”
“I want to get out of here.”
“Let’s look at the map one more time.”
Carolyn nodded and gave the pen light back to her husband. She recognized that she had literally and figuratively passed the torch, but she didn’t care. Truth
be told, she was nearly in tears. So much for her run as Margaret Thatcher or the Republican Hillary Clinton.
They moved a little away from the water and gathered around the pen light as if it were a battery-powered campfire. Somewhere above them, the moon had risen, but its reassuring glow was filtered into a teasing gauze by the treetops. Elliott was studying the map when Carolyn heard the scrape and rustle of leaves.
“Did you hear that?” she asked, her heart a wooden knot in her chest.
“Just the wind. Or maybe a raccoon.”
“The wind’s not blowing. And raccoons don’t get that big.” Carolyn was struck by the image of a mutant, man-sized raccoon, reared up on its hind legs, crazed yellow eyes blazing from a bandit mask. The image should have made her chuckle, at least on the inside. Instead, the tension increased its grip on her internal organs. And, goddamn, she suddenly had to pee.
She didn’t relish peeling down her nylon shorts and squatting in the darkness, further exposing herself to whatever was out there.
“Okay, if we’re right here, and can make three miles an hour, we should make it to the main road by eleven o’clock. Then we can find a house and call for a cab or something.”
The idea of walking up on a stranger’s porch and knocking was almost as scary as the thing that was or wasn’t following them. “I don’t think they have cabs out here.”
“Maybe the police. Or the Happy Hollow office.”
Elliott must be scared, too. Otherwise, he’d never admit to others that he’d made a mistake. Carolyn’s knowledge of his failure was one thing, he could gloss that over in the coming week and eventually have her believe getting lost had somehow been her fault. But here he was ready to tell the local sheriff’s department or the rental cabin management that he’d wandered off with no respect for the wilderness, that his modern-day James Fennimore Cooper act had gone bust, that a Yankee engineer with a wristwatch calculator couldn’t navigate the ancient hills. Carolyn couldn’t wait, even if it meant he’d be surly until they made it back to White Plains.
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