The Night Will Find Us

by Matthew Lyons

  “I’m telling you, the path is gone, Chloe.”

  “It’s not gone. Paths don’t just vanish.”

  “Then you try and find it.”

  Chloe gestured vaguely to the far side of the campsite. “It’s somewhere over there. That’s where we came in, right?”

  “You’re not sure?” Nicky asked, incredulous.

  “Are you?”

  “No, I’m not, and I’ve been looking for it for an hour.”

  “Nicky, it’s just dark, okay? It’s going to be okay.”

  Dark was an understatement. Night had closed in over the forest like an executioner’s hood, blotting out everything but the shadows of the trees that stabbed up at the stars shining in the sky. Nicky turned her light toward Chloe, the little LED blinding in the drowning blackness.

  “I’m not crazy, Chloe.”

  “I never said you were.”

  “You thought it.”

  “No, Nicky, I didn’t. All I said was that paths don’t vanish.”

  “But it’s not here.” There was an edge razoring into her voice, the first signs of panic starting to bubble up to the surface. Chloe stood and went over to her, trying to keep her expression kind, despite how annoyed she was beginning to feel.

  “I don’t think you’re crazy, Nicky. But I don’t think the path vanished, either. It’s just dark. Things get lost in the dark all the time. That doesn’t mean they’re gone. I know you’re scared, okay? I’m scared too.”

  Nicky’s lower lip twitched, and her eyes widened, just a little bit.

  “Why are you going through the food again?”

  Chloe shrugged. To distract ourselves so we don’t freak out. So we have an anchor. To pass the time. All or none of the above.

  “Just … to have something to do,” she said.

  “What if we’re out here all night?” Nicky whispered.

  “Then we’re out here all night. We have food, we have our tents and our gear, and Josh is going to get that fire going any second now. We’ll be okay until morning. When that happens, we’ll find the path again and walk on out of here. I promise.”

  Nicky made a face and nodded, then went back to walking the tree line. As if she just wasn’t looking hard enough. Chloe hadn’t told her about the missing keys yet—what would be the point? Without a path back to where they’d parked, what good would the keys do? The plan had already gone to shit, and the three of them were already wound up nearly to the breaking point; anything else might just shatter them completely. Shamefully, she was actually a little thankful that the dark had swept over them so fast. It bought her time. Maybe by morning she’d have a chance to get her bearings, find a different way out of here. Maybe she’d wake up and magically know how to hot-wire a minivan.

  “Guys, I think I’ve got it,” called Josh. He stood back from the firepit, arms raised in triumph, a stupid grin cut across his face. By his knees, the little pyramid of gathered wood he’d assembled there had finally caught, a flash gathered in shadows blooming into something more substantial. The wood crackled and burned, a real campfire.

  They all huddled around it for safety as much as for warmth. There was something comforting about a fire in the dark. Nicky folded herself under Josh’s arm, while Chloe got in close and hunkered down, holding her palms out to absorb as much heat as she possibly could.

  “Thank you for this, Josh. Really,” said Chloe.

  “It’s no problem. Nothing I couldn’t do again given another thirty or forty tries. I’ve basically gone full mountain man at this point.”

  Chloe closed her eyes and kept them shut. She appreciated the attempt at humor, but kneeling only a few feet away from their friend’s body, jokes seemed destined to fall flat.

  “What do we do now?” Josh asked.

  “Stay put ’til morning,” said Chloe. “We’ve got food and our tents and a fire. It’s not going to do us any good charging ass into the trees if we don’t know where we’re going and can’t see shit.”

  “So what? We just go to sleep, try again in the morning?”

  “Honestly? Kind of, yeah,” said Chloe. “You guys okay with that?”

  “No,” Josh said. All the humor had gone from his eyes. “Very, very no. But it’s not like we have any other choice.” He sighed. “I’m going to go try and close my eyes. My head hurts, my back hurts, my everything hurts. Sleep will probably do us all some good, and maybe if we’re lucky, tomorrow will be less screwed up than today.”

  “Hope you’re right,” Chloe said.

  “If you two need anything, let me know? And be sure to feed the fire, otherwise it’ll go out.”

  “Will do,” Chloe said. “Sleep well.”

  Josh nodded to Chloe, hugged Nicky and kissed her on the cheek, and then went to their tent and climbed inside, burying himself underneath one of the sleeping bags until all they could see was the general shape of him beneath the green polyester.

  Chloe raised her eyebrows in Nicky’s direction.

  “You heading that way too?”

  Nicky looked around, giving a final, half-hearted search for the trail out of the woods. “Yeah, I guess. You going to stay up?”

  “For a little while, yeah. Just have to make a pit stop, and then I’m getting in my tent and not coming out until it’s daylight again. Hopefully there will be sleep somewhere in there too.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea? Just going to sleep like that?”

  “Given the lack of options, I’d say it’s probably fine, yeah,” said Chloe. “Why?”

  “Shouldn’t one of us stay up, and … you know, keep watch?”

  “Watch for what?”

  The fear in Nicky’s face was unmistakable; it seemed to have taken up permanent residence there over the course of the last few hours. Still, Chloe understood what she was really asking.

  “Nick, I don’t think he’s going to come back.”

  Nicky gave her a distrustful look.

  “How can you be sure?” Her voice was a blade-sharp whisper.

  More than anything, Chloe wanted to reassure her. She really did. Except she didn’t know any more than Nicky, and given the circumstances, she could hardly blame anyone for freaking out. But someone had to be the grown-up right now.

  “Because if he was going to, he probably would have already.”

  Nicky made a strangled noise in her throat, probably trying to hold back another round of sobs, but she didn’t say anything. She just wiped her eyes and nodded. Chloe reached an arm out and gave her shoulder a squeeze, hoping the gesture was comforting.

  “You go on ahead and get into bed,” Chloe told her. “I’ve got to go pee, and then I’ll stay up for a while longer, keep watch, feed the fire.”

  Nicky nodded. “Don’t go far, okay? I don’t think we should go much past the tree line if we can help it. Feels weird out here.”

  Chloe squeezed her shoulder again. “I’ll be fine. You get in there and spend some time with your boyfriend. I’ll be right back.”

  Tears twinkled at the corner of Nicky’s eyes.

  “Where are you going, exactly?”

  Chloe pointed. “Just right over there, a little ways into the trees so I can pee in private.” She tried to give Nicky a confident smile. “Not far at all. And I’ve got the fire to lead me back, don’t I?”

  Nicky scrunched her face and neck up, then shook it off. “Fine. Just be back soon.”

  “I will. I’ll shout if I need anything. Anything at all.”

  “Promise me you’ll come back.”

  Chloe held back a sigh. “Of course I’ll come back.”

  “Promise me.” Nicky’s eyes were like saucers in the flickering light.

  “Alright, I promise.”

  “Okay.”

  She watched Nicky turn and climb back into her tent to lie down beside Josh, zipping the tent flap up behind her. A second later, she thought she could hear a faint, muffled sob, but it faded out as soon as it had come. From the pile Josh had gathered, Chlo
e tucked a few extra branches into the blue heart of the campfire, watching them catch and burn. For a second, she could almost forget all the myriad ways this trip had gotten so completely fucked up. For one fleeting moment, it just felt like she was camping. Then the feeling passed, a cloud drifting across the thumbnail moon, and all she was left with was the horrible, shitty reality. No escaping it now.

  Chloe headed out into the shadows and trees.

  Adam saw the tree before he saw the cave.

  It rose like a broken bone from underneath the earth, bare and jagged and so white it nearly glowed in the dark. At first, he thought he was hallucinating it, so different was it from the black, imposing pines that surrounded him on all sides. It didn’t have any branches to speak of, just a bent trunk that split in two imperfect halves near the top, like a pair of broken fingers.

  He’d been on the ground for what felt like forever, feeling worse with every six inches he dragged himself forward. First it had been the space between his shoulders knotting up, then his stomach had started to churn, followed by chills and a fist of pain throbbing behind his forehead, opening and closing over and over, rough fingertips scraping the meat and bone inside his skull. Having to endure all of it together was almost worse than his knee, which had gradually ebbed back to a constant, swollen agony instead of the screaming death grip it had been before. Looking down, he saw that he was still bleeding, though it had slowed from a constant surge to a heavy trickle. That was something. Still, he hadn’t stopped feeling like he was going to puke again at any moment, or shit himself, or maybe both.

  He crawled toward the white tree, gawking. He’d never seen anything like it. It stood at the mouth of a low cave cut into a rocky hillside, like it was guarding whatever was inside. He’d initially thought it was some sort of aspen, but aspens had branches, features, those textured stripes that came from scores in the bark. This tree didn’t have any of that; it was totally smooth, except for the tiny knots and grain grooves that Adam only saw once he got in close.

  The thought that it might be some ancient elephant bone sticking out of the dirt came back to Adam twice as hard, but as he drew closer, he could see clearly that it was certainly a tree, definitely dead, maybe even petrified, though he didn’t know how that would be possible. He ran a hand along the trunk, feeling the ashy dryness of the wood with bloody fingers, leaving red smudges behind as his hand came away dusted white and gritty with some sort of spore or something.

  He wiped it away on his shirt. So weird. So totally alien.

  Adam turned his attention to the cave. It was dark, wet, and rough, but it might do for the night. Not like he had any other options at this point. He stopped and dug in his pocket for his phone. The screen was cracked and falling away in chunks from his fight with Parker, but it looked like the flashlight was still working. The white light exploded in his face, and he turned it toward the stone interior. The cave wasn’t very deep, but there was a bend down near the back that he didn’t like the look of. There could be anything—or anyone—hiding back there behind the rocks, just waiting to do him in.

  “Hello? Hello!” he shouted, pained, into the cave, trying and failing to keep the words from cracking where his mouth met his throat, like a creaky seesaw. His voice bounced off the damp, mossy stone, reflecting back at him in a fun house mirror version of itself: hEllOooO … HeLLoOoOo …

  Adam waited there for a while, laid out on the rocky earth, trying to fight back the hurt and summon up the energy to crawl inside.

  When he started to drag himself forward again, every little movement was agony. Hot coals in his knee, rotten teeth in his guts, a dripping fist of fever in his skull, knives up and down his back. He only had a few feet to go, but he already knew he wasn’t going to make it all the way. It was too much, too hard. He’d done all he could do, gone as far as he could go. He’d burned everything he had in him, getting here. He wasn’t smart like Chloe or Josh, or resourceful like Parker. Everything he had that was worthwhile had been taken away from him, and now he was going to die right here, right now.

  No one would find him. He was lying in a grave carved just for him.

  Halfway inside, Adam twisted and tried to get a better look around, but his phone slipped free from his numb fingers and went skittering across the cave floor, making bizarre, warped shadows dance and coil all around him. Pulling hard against the pain, he reached for the phone but it was too far, all the way across the rough stone floor, the light pointed straight up, illuminating the cave like a cold white campfire. At least he wouldn’t die blind.

  Something rustled behind him.

  Contorting to look over his shoulder, he tried to get a better view, but there was nothing there that he could see past the tree. Everything beyond had been blotted out, as if reality had been stained over with ink or paint. Feeling uneasy, Adam shifted in place, trying to get comfortable. He laid his face down against a cold, smooth spot on the stone floor, and the relief that followed was incredible, maybe the best thing he’d ever felt in his life. Sleep, or something like it, was already grasping at him from the depths with thick, banded tendrils that he knew wouldn’t let go once they took hold.

  He heard the rustling again, louder now, closer. He rubbed at his eyes with grimy, bloody fingers, but he couldn’t see anything. Holding his breath, he tried to stay as still as the night around him. He didn’t want to be killed by some awful unseen thing. He didn’t want to die at all.

  The last thing he glimpsed before he passed out was the bone tree starting to shimmer and bow in the wind.

  * * *

  Using the hatchet, Parker sheared branches from trees and wove them into a sort of curtain that he braced between the dirt and a cluster of trees on the edge of the clearing where the trunks had grown closest together. The little lean-to wasn’t perfect—it wouldn’t keep out anything but the lightest rain, if it came to that—but he figured it would do for the night. At the very least, it might stem some of the wind and the cold. It was a hell of a lot better than whatever he’d left Adam with.

  Jesus, Adam. A swirling chemical mix of shame and anger pulsed through Parker’s system as he stopped and thought about what he’d done to his best friend just hours before. Adam hadn’t deserved a bullet to the knee, no matter how he’d acted, no matter what he’d said. He was just trying to help, and when it didn’t work, he’d got angry, he’d got desperate. Anyone could understand that. Parker, on the other hand—well, Parker had shot two of his friends today; killed one and left the other for dead. Parker was the bad guy. Parker was the fuckup. No matter what happened now, no matter how he felt about it, there was no coming back from that. Ever.

  He leaned his broad back against one of the trees and sank down, scraping a curtain of bark dust free to fall across his broad shoulders. His ass hit the dirt with a quiet whump, and he let his head tilt back, his eyes looking up at a small window punched through the distant treetops, the darkness beyond filled with stars. He focused on them until they were all he could see, and imagined himself drifting among them, lost in an empty sea speckled with spots of distant white light. He felt cold and adrift, alone in an escape capsule ejected from some larger vessel, the control panel off and the engines long gone dead. Nothing to do but float here, through the absolute dark, and wait for time to pass. Nowhere to go but forward now—wherever forward led him.

  Right now, he supposed that meant sleep. For a little while, at least. After that, he’d figure out his next move.

  Down on his hands and knees, he crawled into the little shelter, angling his giant’s frame to fit in the small space he’d afforded himself. For any normal person, it would probably be pretty comfortable, but it fit Parker like a coffin. Parker positioned his backpack on the ground to use as a pillow; it was lumpy and wet and cold, but it was better than a rock or nothing at all. Beside his head, he laid the black hatchet down on a bed of dried pine needles, right where he could grab it if he needed it.

  Tomorrow he’d start looking for his da
d. He was out here somewhere, and Parker was going to find him. He had all the time he could ask for now.

  On his hip, Parker’s walkie-talkie crackled to life.

  “Parker, are you there?”

  He snapped the radio off his belt and held it up in front of his face, eyes slitted and suspicious. He’d forgotten he was wearing it, or that he’d left it on. A second later, the red light on top of the handset fluttered with signal, and the speaker crackled again, that same familiar voice coming through as clear as a church bell.

  “Park, it’s me. If you’re there, please pick up.”

  Once she was far enough away from the clearing, Chloe sat down on a log and hung her head, trying to breathe. In the distance, she could still see Josh’s campfire dancing inside the circle of stones, casting jagged shadows through the trees as much as it did flickering orange light. She knew for a fact that the moment she got into her little secondhand tent she’d have no problem falling asleep. At this point, she could probably sleep through a forest fire. Exhaustion was in her muscles, in her spine, in her eyes and the back of her head. If she were to lie down right here, right now, she’d be out before she took her next breath. But she couldn’t do that. Not yet.

  Sitting alone in the dark, Chloe counted to 120, then unhooked her walkie-talkie from the waistband of her pants and held it to her lips, pressing the talk button down with her thumb.

  “Parker, are you there?”

  Nothing.

  “Park, it’s me. If you’re there, please pick up.”

  More static silence, then:

  “I’m here.”

  Chloe sighed, relieved despite herself.

  “Are you okay?”

  There was a long pause on the open channel.

  “Not really.”

  “Yeah, there seems to be a lot of that going around right now,” she said.

  “How are you guys?”

  “Not good, Parker. Really not good at all.”

  There was another pause. “Yeah.”