Wasp Canyon

by Danielle McCrory

  “It only gets more beautiful the further you venture inside. Sometimes I feel like I’m on the east coast and not in the desert at all. The foliage gets so green, and the temperatures so cool!”

  “Yeah, I noticed how much cooler it was in there!”

  “Very much so. All I can say is that Wasp Canyon is a wonderful escape. I like to go sit in a certain spot—I have my own special rock, you see—and listen to the wind. It’s very peaceful.”

  “Yes, I imagine it would be.”

  “However, you make sure to be careful in there, young lady,” he said. He smiled, but she could see a touch of concern in his eyes. “If you get caught in a downpour in there the water can come rushing through the center of the canyon. And with the rainfall we have been having, that can be very dangerous. You also must make sure to provide yourself with plenty of time to get back. The canyon can be a very scary place if you find yourself there alone in the dark.”

  “You’ve been in there at night?” Jessica gasped.

  “Not on purpose, of course! As a younger man I was not nearly as cautious as I am now. I went exploring the canyon and lost track of the hour. I find it’s easy to lose track of time in there. Anyway, I ended up having to stumble all the way back through the dark. It resulted in a sprained ankle and a very stern lecture from my then-wife. Like I said, I was a much younger man then. And much more foolish.”

  “Well, as much as I would like to explore the canyon, I definitely don’t want to be stuck in there at night.” Jessica thought nights in the desert could be creepy enough as it was, with all the wildlife coming out—either crawling, slithering, or stalking. “That reminds me, do you see any wildlife out here? Or in the canyon? It seems so . . . quiet, I guess.”

  “Well, I like the quiet, that’s for sure. But to answer your question, no I have not. Not recently anyway. Seems a bit odd now that you mention it, but I suppose I never noticed it before. Perhaps the different climate inside the canyon makes it less desirable for the likes of our typical desert critters.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s possible. Anyway, it was wonderful to see you again. I really must be going now, though.”

  “Of course, being accountable at work is very important. And that advice is coming from a big deal,” he said with a wink.

  “Goodbye Cameron. Enjoy the trail.”

  “Of course, Jessica. I always do.”

  Chapter 15

  The monsoon rain continued through the rest of July with no sign of stopping or slowing down. Jessica worked at the restaurant, hung out with Claire, and ate dinner with her mother at least once a week. She had put on some weight, and a golden tan now spread across her face and shoulders. A few freckles had appeared on her sun-kissed cheeks and her hair had faded to a lighter shade of blonde from so much time in the sun. Her father was still often on her mind, but the mind-numbing despair she had struggled with each and every day was starting to fade. Like the sharp pain of a cramp that slowly eases off while running, the pain from her father’s passing had now faded to a dull ache. It was always there, but it no longer felt like she was being constantly stabbed by the loss with a sharp blade. At first it had felt like she was suffocating, bleeding out from the constant despair, unable to ignore the replay of her father’s last few weeks—days—hours—in her mind. It was like a movie reel in her head that she could never turn off, or even pause. Helping him walk when he no longer could on his own, holding his hand while his wasted body lay in a hospital bed and he no longer knew who she was, the midnight phone call from her mother, the frantic drive to the hospital in the middle of the night, kissing his cheek before they wheeled him away and feeling how cold his skin felt against her lips. These thoughts used to run through her head on replay, an endless home movie—nightmare—that she was forced to watch again and again. Now when the projector in her head woke up, lights flickering and the reel beginning to slowly turn on its spool, she was able to gently turn it back off. The projector light would fade, and so would the image of her father’s wasted frame in the hospital bed. She was beginning to realize that this was what they called acceptance, knowing that the film reel in your head would always be there—that the pain would always be there—and sometimes it would turn on and the film would play, and sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes it would turn on at very inopportune moments, like when she was serving a table. And sometimes days would go by and the projector would remain dormant, sitting quietly in her mind and starting to collect dust on the reels.

  The running helped. As much as she hated to admit it, it really was helping. Dr. Wyatt was right, and in turn her mother was also right. After all, she was the one who suggested—no, insisted—that she start seeing Dr. Wyatt in the first place. When she was running and the film reel turned on, sometimes she would just let it play. Hospital bed, midnight call, hospital room, kissing his cheek. In the last couple weeks, something amazing started to happen, though. Every now and then, when the film reel coughed and sputtered into life and images started projecting on the screen of her mind, she found that sometimes she could change those images. She could switch the memories out for something better—something brighter. Instead of a hospital bed, it was her dad squatting next to a barrel cactus and pointing out the barbed, pink spines when she was eleven. Instead of a midnight call that awoke her in the dark, it was her dad calling her at the exact minute she was born on her birthday each year. Instead of driving to the hospital in the night, shaking and drenched in cold sweat, it was her family driving to San Diego for summer vacation, her parents arguing over music stations while she sat in the backseat and watched the mountains roll by. Instead of kissing his cheek that last time, it was giving him a big hug and a kiss after she got soaked in the monsoon rain. Oh Jess, you made me a mess. Sometimes these new, brighter memories on the projector screen made her smile. Sometimes they made her cry so hard she had to stop on the trail, sit in the dirt, and sob until she had no more breath. Either way, she preferred these memories to the dark ones that had been on replay for eleven months. These memories might make her cry, but they didn’t make her suffocate. They didn’t make her bleed out. And for that, she was grateful.

  Chapter 16

  Push it. A little harder. A little further. A little faster. Be stronger. Be better. Be more.

  Miles: 4.3

  Speed: 4.8 mph

  Time: 1 hour, 7 minutes

  Heart rate: 134 bpm

  She was inside the canyon, a stiff breeze rushing all around her. Her breathing was heavy but controlled. Her muscles ached but didn’t cramp. Goosebumps covered her bare arms and shoulders, where her skin was damp with sweat. She had been making great progress, getting a little further each run.

  She pressed on, her goal being to make it a mile and a half inside the canyon today. The trail was thin, narrower than three feet at times. The trees were plentiful this far in and a heavy layer of bushes covered the ground. Berries grew on some of the bushes, a splatter of red mixed in with the greenish-gray leaves. All the cacti were gone.

  She glanced at her QuikFit, saw she had made it to 5.5 miles, and slowed to a stop. That’s it for today, time to turn around. She stood in the soft earth and leaned from left to right, stretching her hips and torso. She could feel her body getting stronger and her endurance improving. Her legs didn’t ache like they once did, and her throat no longer threatened to collapse. She took a deep breath of the cool canyon air, closing her eyes and listening to the breeze wisp through the trees.

  Got lunch with Mom today. I really need to get going, she thought. She took a sip from her CamelBak and began walking back along the trail, following the footprints she pressed into the earth only moments ago. The soft soil held her prints well, unlike the hard caliche outside the canyon. A light rain had drizzled on and off for most of the night, leaving the trail smooth and unblemished. Her footprints from yesterday morning had already been washed away.

  She walked along the trail for half a mile, planning to then run the rest of the way back to the
mouth of the canyon. She could then pace herself for a mile or two and catch her breath. Her goal was to finish strong with a two mile run clear to the parking lot—no stopping allowed. Her endurance really was improving. Small victories, she thought. Or maybe not so small after all.

  She started running again, setting her breathing into a rhythm and letting the wind be her guide. The closer she got to the entrance, the stronger the wind became. Her mind started to drift off, the movie reel in her head slowly turning. She had become so engrossed in a memory of a childhood Christmas that at first she didn’t register the foreign object lying across the trail up ahead. Her eyes saw, but her mind did not engage. She was watching her mom open a Christmas gift from her dad, seeing her mom’s smile grow and grow as she opened the tiny jewelry box. As a child, she didn’t understand why her mom could be so excited about such a small box.

  She was watching the memory of her mom opening the tiny box when her eyes finally took over her mind and brought her back to the present. Something was in the trail. Before she could register what it was, her left foot collided with something hard. She was mid-stride and hit the object at full force. Jessica felt a sharp pain in her toes, heard more than felt a crack in the front of her foot, and then the pain shot upward into her ankle. Her foot was yanked violently to one side as she continued to move but the object did not. Her arms flew out in front of her as she catapulted forward, and suddenly the soft soil of the canyon floor was against her face. It had all happened so quickly.

  Jessica lay on the ground, dumbfounded. Slowly she started to register what was injured and how much. Her palms stung from protecting her face when she hit the ground. Her shoulders ached, probably from absorbing the impact. Her arms weren’t what worried her, though—what worried her was much lower than that. Her left foot and ankle, which had been an eye-watering pain only seconds ago, now felt strangely numb. She did not like that. Where did the pain go? She vividly remembered the exquisite pain she felt when she hit the object, but now she felt very little from her ankle downward. Just a slight ache, and numbness.

  She carefully pushed herself up from the damp soil, dirt clinging to her cheek where she landed face down in the dirt. Her shoulders ached with the effort and she heard a groan escape her lips. What the hell did I just run into? She sat up in the dirt, her legs stretched out in front of her, and looked down at what had caused this unpleasant turn of events.

  A rock. A big one. It had to be the size of a beach ball. Definitely not the same consistency, though. The rock—make that a small boulder—was lying smack-dab in the middle of the trail. Now how the fuck did that get there? Jessica stared at the rock—boulder—for a long time. Her mind ran through countless explanations, but none of them explained how a boulder materialized in the center of the trail. Or how the hell she didn’t see it on her way in. Could I have run right past it? I was so engaged in my daydreams that I just ran right past it? Doubtful. The boulder was in the center of the trail, and the trail was only four feet across. No way in hell would I have missed that.

  Her thoughts shifted to her ankle. She had forgotten about it since the pain miraculously subsided. She felt a flutter in her stomach as she looked down, not wanting to see the damage that was done. Finally she allowed her eyes to focus on her left leg.

  It took Jessica a moment to figure out what exactly she was looking at. It didn’t look like her ankle at all. For one thing it was twice the size of her other ankle, the skin stretched taut and shinier than normal. The skin was also changing colors before her eyes. She was wearing capri leggings that stopped at mid-calf. Her skin was a light tan where her leggings stopped, but the closer it got to her ankle the more the color changed. Purple, she thought. Not pink, or even red. But a deep, almost bluish, purple. The color was patchy and mottled, and she could tell the purple was spreading.

  Jessica took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Stupid. So. Fucking. Stupid. I was thinking about stupid Christmas for God knows what reason and I tripped over a rock. No—a BOULDER. Stupid stupid stupid. Her mind went blank for a moment. Something was missing in her memory, like a small piece of her movie reel had been snipped out.

  The boulder wasn’t there when I came into the canyon. No, that wasn’t it. That was disturbing all on its own, but that wasn’t it. Why didn’t I see the boulder? It’s rather obvious, sitting in the trail like this. And what the hell put it there? It must weigh a gazillion pounds. But no, that wasn’t it either. Something else was missing, something on the edge of her mind.

  When she remembered, a small gasp escaped her lips. There’s something up ahead in the trail, she thought. Something she recognized. It didn’t belong out here, but she knew what it was all the same. It had distracted her, and that’s why she tripped on the boulder—she didn’t see the rock because she was looking up ahead.

  Jessica’s hands clenched into fists, handfuls of soil sifting out between her fingers. She let go of the soil and pressed her scraped palms against the ground, turning her upper body to look behind her. When she sat up from her fall she was facing into the canyon, looking at the where-the-fuck-did-it-come-from boulder. Now, she twisted through her back and craned her neck to look behind her at the way out of the canyon. Her breath was stuck in her throat, refusing to go either in or out. She could see the trail now—it extended fifty feet before veering left and disappearing around a bend, swallowed by the branches and undergrowth. Right at the bend, right before the trail disappeared, she saw what had distracted her. The bushes obscured most of them, but she knew what they were all the same.

  Feet. Somebody’s feet. One foot was bare and the other one was wearing a hiking boot. There were legs, but that was as far as she could see. The feet weren’t moving. Whatever they were attached to wasn’t moving either. She knew this much, though: there was a body up ahead in the trail. A body that wasn’t there when she ran into the canyon. A body that had to have shown up in the last half an hour. The breath that had been caught in her throat came out in a long, shaky exhale. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she last breathed. Her eyes stayed fixated on the feet—the unmoving feet. There was a body in the trail, and her only way out of this place was to go toward it.

  Chapter 17

  Jessica tried to stand. What choice did she have? She needed to get out of here. She needed to get out of here immediately. Suddenly, it seemed absurd that she ever wanted to come out here in the first place. Suddenly, it seemed absolutely insane that she ever started running at all. It was all insane. This canyon was insane. Running was insane. Her dad dying was insane. A couple years ago she was a happy twenty-something girl still trying to figure out what she wanted to do “when she grew up.” Now she was a young woman, alone in the wilderness, with what was very likely a dead body. A dead body that wasn’t there half an hour ago. And an ankle that she very likely couldn't walk on. What the fuck is happening?

  She pressed herself up from the ground, grabbing a branch from a nearby tree. The bark rubbed against her scraped palm, sending a bolt of pain up her arm. She hadn’t even bothered to look at her palms to see how badly they were injured. Ha, you think some scraped hands are your biggest priority right now, Jess? I can think of a lot of other things that matter more than your fucking hands right now.

  Jessica stood upright with the help of the tree branch. She balanced on her right leg, her left hovering over the ground, dreading the moment when she would step down on her left foot. Well, at least it is the left foot. If I ever do make it to the car at least I will be able to drive. Thank God for small favors. She giggled. It sounded odd and unsettling inside the canyon. The only other sounds were the wind and her heart thudding in her chest. After all that work to lower her heart rate, here it was beating out of control.

  Jessica stepped down with her left leg and cried out, part swear and part agony. Well, that fucker is shot, she thought. She tried again, gritting her teeth together and exhaling as she did so. The ankle sent lightning bolts of pain up her leg, stretching all the way
to her groin and making her stomach churn. It might hold me up, she thought. She pressed down with her left foot. The pain brought tears to her eyes and her periphery faded toward black, but the ankle held. By some act of God, the ankle held. Jessica focused on her breathing, concentrating on not holding her breath. Don’t pass out don’t pass out don’t pass out.

  She began limping in the direction of the feet. Check it out Dad, I’m Jack Nicholson in The Shining. She put her left leg in front, then lurched forward with her right leg. Left, then right. Left, then right. The unmoving feet were getting closer—in a moment she would make it around the bend in the trail and see what they were attached to. Maybe they just passed out. Maybe someone was hiking the trail after me and passed out. That’s why they are there now and not before. Just passed out. With one shoe on. It fell off when they passed out. That can happen. It definitely can happen.

  “Hello?” Jessica called out. “Are you alright?” No response. “I—I hurt my ankle . . . Hello? Are you hurt?” Nothing. Just the wind.

  The bend in the trail loomed ahead. Just a few more lurches and she would be there. She had the sudden, almost uncontrollable urge to just sit down in the center of the trail and wait. Someone will come and get her. She can just sit down right here by the feet and wait for rescue. They will be looking for the feet, and when they find the feet, they will find her. She doesn’t have to go around the bend. She doesn’t have to see what they are attached to.

  Stop being freaking stupid. She could feel the anger rising in her chest, and giving in to it wasn’t something she could afford to do right now. She needed to stay focused. And calm. With some effort, she pushed the anger back down.

  Left, then right. Left, then right. The knees appeared, then the hips, then the torso. Jessica stopped just short of the feet, finally able to see who they belonged to. She grabbed her stomach, her other hand going up to her mouth. She leaned over and threw up everything she had eaten that morning. And anything that might have been left over from the night before. In that moment, bent over on the side of the trail with her eyes squeezed shut, she wished she would throw up until she passed out. Just so she wouldn’t have to look at it ever again.