“Are these tofu too?” Trey asks, nodding at the bag.
“No.” Leslie laughs as she pops one into her mouth. “Pure sugar and cornstarch, but gelatin- and gluten-free, if you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t,” Trey says.
“Tell us about the missing sisters,” Willa says as she sits down next to Dominic. “What happened? I’m dying to know.”
Trey slowly twirls a marshmallow over the fire, watching it turn from white to a golden brown.
“My dad was there when the first girl went missing,” Leslie says. Her skin glows in the orange firelight. “I just found out a month ago. I found this file on his desk at home, and it was filled with newspaper clippings about the college kid who disappeared a year ago. Under those articles were some others about a girl named Louise who disappeared when my dad was in high school. And there was a police report that named my father as a suspect.”
“What?” Willa says.
Trey looks at the dark woods behind Leslie. He sees a shadow, but then it is gone. Just the campfire smoke, he thinks.
“What happened?” Willa asks leaning closer to the fire.
“My father and Louise and a bunch of kids headed to Lake Helen in the summer of 1984. There were, like, four or five of them—there’s a picture of them all standing on the lakeshore. They all look like they were having a good time.”
“No vampire flies back then?” Dominic says.
“Shhh,” Willa says. “I want to hear the story.”
Leslie pokes at the fire with a stick and continues. “That night they all gathered around a campfire on the shore of the lake, and according to the newspaper article, just after midnight, Louise Richards got up and went into the trees for more firewood, and she never came back. Gone. Just like that.”
“People don’t just disappear,” Trey says.
Orange sparks rise up from the crackling fire.
“They searched for her for three days. No sign of her. And after questioning my dad, the other kids, and the family, the sheriff determined that the disappearance was a hoax to cover for Louise running away.”
“Why would she run away?” Trey puts another marshmallow on his stick.
“I guess she was really smart and focused on becoming a doctor, but her father was really cruel and told her that he wasn’t going to sink money into a girl’s education when all she was going to do was end up getting married and having kids.”
“No. Way,” Willa says. “I’d run away too.”
Trey feels for Louise. His parents are great, but part of him wishes he could just take off, leave the family business behind, and do all the things he wants to do. But that’s hard without money.
“I know, right?” Leslie says. “Makes sense. Plus, I found letters and notes from Louise to my father. They were in love. They’d dated for over a year, and in her last note she told him she’d gotten some kind of scholarship—enough money to pay for college. She was set. She had the money, she could’ve gone, but she never claimed the scholarship. She never even showed up to the school.”
“So your father thinks someone took her?”
“According to an interview, the day after Louise went missing, my father returned to Lake Helen and set up camp in order to continue searching for her. On the third night, my father heard something just after midnight, and when he went to investigate, he saw a strange man standing at the edge of the woods. Dad tried to question him, tried to ask him who he was, but the man turned away and disappeared.”
“Who was he?” Willa says.
“The Woodsman—that’s what my father wrote under a picture he drew of the man, but the sheriff refused to take him seriously. He was convinced my father helped Louise plan the hoax, but then a year later, Louise’s younger sister, Sarah, went to the woods to honor Louise, and she disappeared too.”
“What?” Willa says, leaning closer to the fire. “That’s crazy.”
“I know,” Leslie continues. “But the sheriff believed that she ran away to be with Louise. That the two of them started new lives somewhere else.”
“Did anyone find evidence of this?” Trey asks. Strange that three teenagers could just disappear without leaving any trace.
They are all quiet for a moment, and then Trey turns to Leslie.
“And they never found any clues? Footprints. DNA. Anything?”
“The cases were all closed after the sheriff declared them runaways.”
“Wow,” Willa says. “That must have broken your dad’s heart—having his girlfriend disappear like that.”
“It changed him forever,” Leslie says. “In his letters, before Louise disappeared, he sounded like such a different person. Gentle. Kind. He wanted to be a teacher.” She shakes her head. “I don’t think he ever got over her. That’s why he never left Middleton. I think he still comes here in secret to search for her.” She stares at the fire for a moment. “And I think that’s why my parents got a divorce. Louise haunted their marriage.”
“That’s so sad,” Willa says. “I’m sorry.”
Leslie throws a stick into the fire. “I’ve wondered lately what my dad would be like if Louise had never disappeared.”
“Maybe he’d be happy,” Trey says. “But then you wouldn’t be here.”
She looks at him. “True, I wouldn’t be here.” She throws him a marshmallow.
“What time is it now?” Dominic says.
“11:11,” Willa says, checking her phone and then giving it a shake. “Weird. The battery is nearly dead. I swear it was fully charged before we left, and I haven’t even used it.”
A sudden breeze stirs the flames.
Chapter 10
Willa stands up, stretches her long arms, and looks at all of them.
“How about a game of Truth or Dare?” she asks. “It seems like the perfect night. The perfect setting.”
“Really?” Dominic says.
“Really.” She rummages through a bag and holds up a blue water bottle. “I’ll spin the bottle, and whoever the bottle points to has to either answer a question or do a dare.”
She spins the bottle, and it points to Trey. He hesitates and then looks at her. “Truth,” he says. He doesn’t feel like getting up, and he doesn’t want to have to do something stupid.
“Who were your top three high-school crushes?” Willa asks.
Trey feels his face turn red. Suddenly doing a dumb dance or whatever doesn’t sound so bad. “Um . . . ” He swallows. “Toni Evans, freshman year,” he admits. Safe enough, she moved to Salt Lake City two years ago, so she’ll never find out.
“Two more! Did you ever have a crush on Leslie?” Willa teases him.
Everyone stares at him.
“I never really knew her before.”
“You never liked me—admit it,” she says.
“It wasn’t you,” Trey finally says. “I just never liked how your father treated my parents. He’s been a tough landlord.”
“He’s so focused on money,” Leslie says. “I’m sorry.”
Trey looks across the fire at her. “But you’re not like him. Not at all. You’re really nice and funny, and I wish we would’ve known each other better a long time ago.”
“Aw, Trey, you’re off the hook with two crushes. This is better than therapy!” Willa crows. She spins the bottle again. This time it points at Leslie.
“Truth or dare?”
“Truth,” Leslie says.
Willa looks at her, thinking.
“I know,” Dominic interrupts, leaning forward, “do you think your dad had anything to do with Louise’s disappearance?”
“No,” Leslie says. “No. Way.”
“Are you positive?”
Leslie looks a bit shaken. “I know he can be cold and calculating and controlling, but he’s not evil. He’d never hurt anyone.”
Clouds move across the moon, and it suddenly seems darker than before.
“Of course he didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance,” Willa says, touching
Leslie’s back. “Why would you ask that?”
Willa sits back down and spins the bottle again. This time it points to her.
“Truth,” Willa says, but then she shakes her head and jumps up. “No. I’m going to mix this up and take a dare instead. And to be truthful, I’ve never done anything really daring. Not once. Everything I’ve done has been safe. Good grades. Smart choices. So, I’m going to dare myself to do something . . . I’m going to dare myself to enter the woods and stay there until after midnight.” And with that, she suddenly laughs, turns, and sprints into the woods.
“Willa!” Leslie calls after her. But Willa disappears into the darkness before any of them can even stand up.
“Not funny,” Dominic says as they walk toward the line of trees after Willa.
“Willa? Answer us!”
“I’m fine,” they hear her say. She’s not far away, but they can’t see her in the darkness. “I just want to make it until after midnight. I can do this.”
“Don’t go any farther,” Trey says. “You’ll get lost.” He grabs a flashlight out of his backpack and shines it into the woods.
“Come on,” Leslie says. “This is dumb. Please come back to the fire.”
They listen for Willa’s answer, but the woods are silent except for the crackling fire.
Then, “What time is it?” Willa asks. Her voice is coming from another location. She seems to be farther away.
“Willa?” Dominic says. “Seriously. Not funny. Not funny at all.”
Trey looks down at his phone. It is nearly midnight.
“Come out,” Trey says.
“Not until after midnight.”
Something moves through the forest. They hear breaking branches and then, from far away, a muffled scream.
“Willa?” Dominic yells, already running into the woods.
Trey shines his light into the forest, and he and Leslie follow, all three of them calling Willa’s name.
Chapter 11
“We have to find her!” Dominic yells. Branches and tree roots grab at their arms and legs. Trey tries to shine his light up ahead, but thick underbrush blocks the light after only a few feet.
“This way,” Trey calls. His flashlight shines on a figure moving quickly through the forest. “Willa!” he yells, though he knows it isn’t Willa—the shoulders are too wide, the arms are too long. It looks more like the Woodsman.
“Did you see her?” Leslie says.
“I saw someone,” Trey says.
“Shhh,” Dominic says. “We need to stop and listen for her.”
The three of them freeze, but they can only hear the sound of their breath and their beating hearts.
“Willa!” Dominic yells again. “Say something. Make a sound.”
But there is nothing. It is as if she has just disappeared, and then Trey’s flashlight glints off something hanging from a tree branch. It’s Willa’s silver bracelet, still swinging back and forth, as if it just fell from her wrist.
Dominic takes the bracelet from Trey.
“I gave her that for her birthday,” he says.
Leslie declares, “I should’ve never let us come here. I should’ve listened to my father. He knew. He knew!”
Trey tries his phone again, but there’s no reception. “We have to get help,” he says.
“We aren’t leaving her. Not alone,” Dominic says.
Just then they hear a muffled, faraway scream.
“This way,” Leslie shouts, leading the way. They move as fast as they can, deeper into the woods, but Trey’s flashlight only illuminates a narrow path.
They stop to listen again, and the flashlight flickers and goes out. Trey looks around, blinking in the sudden darkness, and realizes they are lost. There is no sign of their campfire, not even a whiff of smoke. He has no idea what direction to go.
Dominic checks his phone and turns it off almost immediately. “No reception. And my battery is really low,” he mutters.
“Mine too,” Trey says, almost whispering. “We need at least one phone. So shut yours down and I’ll use mine as a light, and maybe if we get to higher ground, we’ll get some reception and be able to call for help.”
“Do you have a compass on your phone?” Leslie says. “We need to follow a straight line or we’ll just end up going in circles.”
Trey opens the compass application. “It doesn’t work,” he says, “the arrow just spins around and around.”
“We have to keep searching,” Dominic says, moving between trees.
“But we don’t even know which way to go,” Trey says.
From even deeper in the forest, all of three of them hear the sound of someone chopping wood again. Chop. Chop. Chop. Slow and steady.
“This way,” Leslie says, and Trey and Dominic follow her. They don’t know what else to do. They move through the forest, trying to follow the sound, but after a few moments the chopping stops, and it is quiet again.
Chapter 12
They’ve walked for nearly an hour. Trey leans against a tree, rubbing a deep scratch on his arm from a tree branch, and looks up at the dark, cloudy sky. He can’t even find a star to follow.
“What are we going to do?” Trey says.
“Look,” Leslie says, pointing through the trees. “Do you see it? That silvery light?”
Dominic squints. Trey follows her finger and spots a sliver of light. It is far away, but it is there.
“We need to walk straight toward it,” Leslie says. “Try not to blink, or we’ll lose it.”
They push slowly forward, eyes on the silver trickle of light. Trey hears something, the babbling of a creek somewhere close, but where? Suddenly Leslie trips, and Trey catches her arm.
“Thanks,” she says, sounding shaken. “There’s a drop-off there—the ground just went out from under my foot. If you hadn’t caught me . . . ”
Trey raises his phone, and the dim light shows that they have been moving along a ravine that now curves across their path. As they back away, something slithers across leaves in the darkness.
“Snake!” they hear Dominic hiss.
“Look out!” they call, but it’s too late. Dominic shouts once as he goes over the edge of the ravine, crashing through the brush into the darkness below.
“Dominic!” Trey yells, shining his dying phone down into the ravine. “Are you okay?”
“Oh man,” Dominic says, sounding strained. “I think I broke my arm.”
“Turn your phone on so we can see the light.”
“I don’t know where it is. I can’t see it anywhere . . . and my arm. It really hurts.”
“We’re coming down,” Trey says. “Don’t move. Just keep talking.”
“I’m just going to count,” Dominic says in a weak voice. “One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . . ”
The dirt is loose and rocky. Trey and Leslie slip and slide toward Dominic’s voice, but as they reach flatter ground, he stops counting.
“Dominic?” Trey shouts. “Keep counting. Keep talking.”
There is no response.
“Dominic? Say something, please!” Leslie pleads.
Trey and Leslie stop and listen, but all they hear is the sound of something being dragged through the woods.
“Dominic!”
No answer.
“The Woodsman has Dominic too,” Trey says, shining his phone in the direction of the sound.
“Put it away! Turn it off,” Leslie says, “or the Woodsman will see us and we’ll be next.”
They crouch behind a tree, staring into the darkness, but they can’t see anything and there is no sound other than the running creek.
“Look,” Leslie says. She points to a twinkling light now not very far away.
Chapter 13
The light grows brighter until Trey and Leslie step out past a ring of felled trees into a small clearing. In the middle is a wooden shack. The light is coming through a rip in the curtain that covers the window.
“He must have t
aken them here,” Trey whispers as they quietly approach the structure.
“We need a plan to get them out.”
“First we need to get a look inside,” Trey says. He’s afraid of what he’ll see, but he has to find out what happened to his friends.
As quietly as they can, they move to the back of the shack. There are no other windows or doors. From inside they hear movement and then a grinding sound. They freeze and listen, trying not to breathe.
Trey finds a crack in the wall, covered with a piece of tar paper. He peels it back and peers inside, and he slides his other hand over his mouth to stifle a gasp. The Woodsman is right there! He’s rocking in a chair, sharpening the blade of an ax, and on the ground in front of him, unmoving and limp, are Willa and Dominic. At first he thinks they are dead, but then Dominic opens his eyes and gives Willa a terrified look, and Willa opens her eyes and returns it.
The Woodsman rhythmically slides a dark stone against the silvery blade of his ax. Rasp, rasp, rasp, the stone slides along, and on the third stroke the Woodsman’s green and amber eyes—the ranger’s strange eyes—look up from his ax and directly into Trey’s.
“Run,” Trey whispers to Leslie. “He saw me. Go. Hide yourself. Now.”
Leslie takes off and hides behind a woodpile as Trey tries to grab his pocketknife, but a slithering black thing grabs it from his hand. Then something loops around his wrist, and another “something” snares his foot so he can’t run—he can’t even move.
“Another one,” the ranger says as he comes out, sounding pleased.
“Who are you?” Trey says as the man pulls something out of the pocket of his worn jeans—a red leaf.
“I am the Woodsman,” the man says. He puts the leaf over Trey’s mouth, and though Trey shakes his head, he can’t get away. When the leaf touches his lips, Trey loses his voice and all his strength. He looks up at the man standing above him.
“Yes, I will feed you soon,” the Woodsman says, and Trey realizes he is speaking to the trees rising up behind the shack. The Woodsman grabs Trey’s shirt, and suddenly his arms and legs are free and the things that grabbed him are wiggling back along the ground. Those aren’t snakes. They’re the roots of the trees!
Truth or Dare Page 3
