“What the … ?”
“Yeah.”
“The fuck is all this?”
“No idea.”
The room was small and dark, and from where he stood, light in hand, Parker could just make out the small ceremonial table—altar?—standing in the middle of it, stacked high with odd decorations. He could see feathers and ancient, tied-off bundles of herbs, piles of carved animal skulls and tarnished silver flatware on top of neatly folded scraps of yellowing paper. From the back of the altar sprouted a fan of thin wooden rods, so tall that it nearly scraped the ceiling, adorned with various trinkets suspended by rough lengths of brown, waxy twine. There were iron nails, battered crucifixes, stoppered phials filled with hair and teeth, more and more and more and more. There were dozens of them, all different ages, all crafted and mounted by different hands. Were these … offerings?
“Well ain’t this some shit,” Nate mused beside him. “The hell was going on down here?”
“I have no idea,” Parker said, his eyes searching the altar. “I don’t …”
It took Parker a minute to see it, but once he did, he had to stifle a yelp. Hanging from one of the wooden poles, between a small, rust-spotted knife and a headless doll, was a watch. Not an old pocket watch or whatever they had used back when there were still people in this town, but a silver-and-black Seiko with a rubber strap, 200m standing out on its face in the flashlight glow.
Parker knew that watch. He’d grown up admiring that watch. More than once he’d asked his dad about it, and more than once, his dad had given him the same answer: There are some things that, if they’re done right, only have to be done once. I bought this watch for myself back when I was in college, and I’ve never needed another one. No battery, no electronics, nothing. Just springs and gears inside. The thing runs perfectly too. Long as I keep taking care of it, it always will.
Parker would’ve known that watch anywhere—the little bends and creases in the strap, the scuff marks and scratches on the metal, the blocky rectangular markers behind the glass. The hands stood still inside the case, the spring inside the old mechanical stopped dead at 6:15:32. Park reached out to touch it, but at the last second, he hesitated. This watch—his dad’s watch—shouldn’t have been here. There was no reason for it to be hung in this place with all these other offerings. Touching it, holding it—that would make it real. And if it was real, that would unlock so many other questions that he didn’t have the answers to.
But he couldn’t not touch it. He had to. It was his dad’s. Closing his hand around it, Park ran the pad of his thumb around the dial, feeling the dull, notched edge, the metal cold from being left underground like this for … well, for however long it had been since his dad had strung it up and abandoned it here.
Standing there, inspecting the watch and the altar around it, something else caught Parker’s eye. There was a folded note left beside the others, but this one was new, written on a page torn from a spiral notebook, the paper shock-white in the dark, creased down the middle. With shaking fingers, Parker scooped it up and unfolded it, holding the light on the drawings scribbled across the page in hard-pressed black ballpoint.
It was a map. He could make out the town, and the lake beside it, and yeah, there was the church too. But reeling off from the rear of the church was a dotted line, a sort of curling path that led away into the woods, snaking through the little stick-forest to meet up with a crudely drawn car in between a cluster of sharp, wretched white trees. Atop the car, the artist had scratched a thick, panicked X, marking the spot. Across the bottom of the torn page, they’d scratched something else. It was another drawing, an all-too-familiar black hatchet engulfed in the flames of a campfire. Down in the corner, he’d even signed his work: DAC.
There was a high-pitched whining inside Parker’s head, the pressure building in his veins as the blood raced through his skull. He felt a sort of strange jigsaw sensation in the air around him, as if the pieces of the puzzle were tumbling into place in slow motion, not yet betraying the whole picture. Still, he knew where he had to go next. Hell, his dad had drawn him a map to it. He had expected this; he’d planned everything.
“We have to go,” Parker whispered.
“Go?” Confusion muddied Nate’s voice. “Why go? We just got here. I mean, look at this shit, this is crazy. You don’t want to, like, look? Why would we go? … Parker?”
Snapping his father’s watch from where it hung above the altar, Parker turned and sprinted out of the little room, barreling past Nate’s ghost and up the rickety wooden stairs at top speed.
13
It didn’t take Nicky long to pile the rocks they’d gathered all the way over Josh. She started like Chloe had explained it yesterday: a ring of stones around the outside, then building up off of that outline until he was completely covered. She’d expected the act itself to be hard, and it was, but it felt right, her being the one to do it.
It felt good, taking care of him one last time—even if the cold emptiness that moved through her once it was done made her want to die.
After she’d set the final few stones across his torn, battered face—admitting to herself that the body on the ground didn’t even really look like Josh anymore—Nicky slumped down next to her backpack and fished in the side pocket for her Newports. Jabbing one between her cracked lips and saying one last silent Sorry to Josh, she sparked the yellow lighter to life and dipped the end of the cigarette into the little flame. Breathing in deeply, she let the sweet menthol smoke fill her lungs; after a few more puffs, she felt a plastic kind of calm start to work its way into her brain.
Nicky reached a hand down to the bottom of her jeans and rolled one of the cuffs up, exposing a wide stripe of olive skin. She could feel the little hairs starting to poke through the surface; she would need to shave when they got back to their lives. Cuffing her pant leg up another turn, she fantasized about the shower she was going to take when she got back. It was going to be decadent; she’d make it last hours, scrubbing all the filth and woe from herself, hiding in the steam, alone and safe. The shower had always been a kind of sanctuary for her, warm and soft and clean and peaceful. She’d give almost anything up to get back to that right now. She supposed the next best thing was her and Chloe getting the hell out of this forest as soon as they possibly could.
And, speaking of, where was Chloe, anyway? It wasn’t like her to stay away this long, even if Nicky had asked her for space. She clicked her phone on to check the time—she’d been gone more than an hour now, closer to two—then glanced hopelessly at the bar indicator at the top. No Service. Still. Of course.
Taking one final drag and blowing out a thin cord of smoke, Nicky clenched her teeth and ground the lit cigarette into the bare patch of skin between her rolled-up pant leg and the top of her shoe, relishing the sting as the ember bit into her flesh. The heat sizzled against her like the fizz inside a can of Coke, a sound she knew she could hear only because of how quiet it had gotten out here.
She held the smoke in place until the glowing cherry guttered out and she felt like she could breathe again. Unbidden, her mom’s voice bubbled up inside her head, an echo from the first time the old woman had caught her hurting herself: You’re such a pretty girl, Nicoletta—I don’t know why you’d want to ruin that.
Dropping the dead butt to the ground, Nicky brushed the ash from the blistering red divot above her ankle. Then she drew a deep breath and, gazing up at where the trees started to scrape against the sky, burst into tears.
Parker barreled out the big front doors and around the side of the church, running blindly for the cluster of trees that stood behind it. Somewhere in his wake, he could hear Nate calling out.
“Parker? Parker, what the fuck, man!”
But he wasn’t listening to Nate’s bullshit right now. He hadn’t even stopped to pick up his pack as he’d dashed out of the main hall. All he had with him was his flashlight, the watch, and the hand-drawn map he’d found on the altar. Everything else he’d
left where he’d dropped it by the door in the floor, but that was whatever. He could go back for his stuff later, but right now he had to move; he was too close not to. He could feel it all the way down to his bones—that same sensation he’d gotten when he’d found his dad’s initials cut into the burned homestead. It was like walking into a house that you could just feel wasn’t empty.
He wasn’t alone in this forest. His dad was out here, somewhere, and Parker was going to find him.
He pushed through the trees until he found the path, a foot-worn dirt trail just as coiled and winding as it had been on the map. Up ahead, there was another cluster of those weird white trees, and as Parker drew close, Nate stepped out from behind them, materializing himself from nothingness again.
“What are you doing, man?” Nate asked.
Parker charged past him at full speed. The ghost could keep up if he wanted, but Parker wasn’t going to stop for Nate or anybody else. Not now.
“He’s here, Nate. I know he is.”
“Who, your dad?”
“Yeah. My dad.”
“Do you know that for sure, or are you just hoping it’s true? Because, and no offense or anything, but it seems to me a watch and a shitty little treasure map aren’t much to go off of.”
The words hit Parker like a cold spear driven through his heart in a single, brutal thrust. Tears prickled at the corners of his eyes, and he wiped them away with the back of his hand, no longer caring if Nate saw or not.
The real Nate was gone. Whatever this thing was, whatever remnant piece of the boy he’d known, Parker didn’t answer to it. He didn’t owe him anything.
“Fuck off,” Parker growled at his dead friend. “I know what I know.”
Nate smirked. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Fine. After you.”
The two of them snaked through the forest, following the path as it curled and cut between the trees, driving endlessly forward, propelled by Parker’s blind momentum. A barbed little ember had caught in his chest, so unfamiliar and alien that it took him a moment to recognize it: hope. For the first time in days, weeks, months, Parker actually felt like all might not be lost. And nobody got to take that away from him.
His dad was an experienced outdoorsman. Park had known that ever since he was old enough to know things about his parents. There were pictures all over the walls in their house from his dad’s myriad adventures—fishing in Colorado, hiking the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Trail, driving up the Hudson Valley in New York for two weeks of solo camping, biking the trails in the upper Pine Barrens … Dave Cunningham knew how to survive out in the wilderness, even through a savage winter like the one they’d had over the holidays. If anyone could do it, he could, and when Parker found his dad, he’d make him explain. Park would finally know why he’d run away like that, without a word or a note.
Maybe he could even convince him to come home.
Up ahead, the path curved away from the track it had been following for what felt like miles, weaving over a small hillock into another copse of those white bone trees. These were younger than the others, though—little more than saplings, really. They looked like they’d bend or maybe even break if Parker bumped too hard against them. He continued along the trail, in between the ashy white trunks. As he passed through them, he saw something that seemed so completely alien out here in the overgrown forest that it made him stop in his tracks.
There was a car lodged in the earth.
It was old, way older than any car Park had ever seen in his life. Broken down, faded, and left here to rot away, it looked like something out of the pages of a history book. The thing was boxy and sleek, its lines clean and sharp. Parker imagined that back in its day, it must have been a hell of a thing, like it had been carved out of solid shadow. These days, though, it wasn’t looking too hot. The metal along its black sides was battered and weatherworn, scarred with holes where the rust had eaten through. The windows had been smashed from their frames long ago and braced over from the inside with branches, tightly lashed together. Its wheels and most of its front end had sunken into the earth as the forest had calmly overtaken the old coupe, so only the hood ornament still poked up through the soil: a wheel shot through with a silver arrow, the word Pierce just barely legible in the metal.
Parker didn’t have to pull out the map to compare. How many cars had been abandoned this far out in the Pine Barrens? Leaning in closer, a cold chill ran through his body when he realized he recognized the way the branches had been tied together. They looked just like the ones his dad had shown him how to make when they’d been camping before, when he had taught Parker how to build a makeshift shelter.
Just like this, his dad had told him the first time, cinching waxy twine into tight knots, binding the wood together in an uneven plank. It won’t keep everything out, but it’ll do.
“…Dad?”
The word fell out of his mouth like an afterthought; he hadn’t meant to say it, but it boomed so loud inside the walls of his skull that it had to escape somehow.
“Dad!”
Parker ran for the sunken coupe like he was trying to race the sound of his own voice. Despite the exhaustion, despite the constant shuddering heartbeat against his ribs, despite it all, he ran for the battered car and curled one big hand around the handle on the driver’s side door, nearly ripping it from its hinges in his excitement.
He’d found him. He’d actually found him. He’d known he could; he’d known all along. After months of emptiness and confusion, Parker had really and truly found his father, and everything was going to be okay.
He was half-right.
The body that came tumbling out of the car was preserved, almost mummified; it was thin and withered and covered with a fine layer of grime, but it was definitely him. It wore his clothes, his boots, his tattoo—even though his skin had gone dry and gray, Park could still make out the globe, anchor, and eagle emblazoned with USMC above the deep gashes in his wrist and forearm. He could see that there was a matching set of slashes hacked into the other arm too. Wispy licks of gray-speckled black hair sprouted from the top of the half-bare skull, rendered feathery and insubstantial, but its color was still familiar to Park.
The smell inside the coupe was hideous; foul and cloyingly sweet, like bad chicken long gone to rot, it rushed out of the car and caught in the back of Parker’s throat, refusing to be spat out. He thought that he might smell that wet grave stink for the rest of his life.
Standing there, beside the ancient coupe, Parker didn’t look away. He wanted to, more than anything, but found himself held steady by some deep-down, grown-up part inside him that he barely recognized.
It can’t be for nothing, it whispered to him. He deserves to be seen one more time by someone who loved—loves—him.
Pulling the collar of his T-shirt up over his nose, Park knelt down beside his father and leaned in close to check the car and the body—for what, he couldn’t exactly say. Maybe just to see if he could figure out why Dave Cunningham had died.
The interior of the coupe was boxy and stuffy, all of its upholstery rotted away and turned to dust decades ago. There was a knife on the rust-stained floor, a folding blade with a red bone handle Park knew as well as the watch. His dad had carried that pocketknife wherever he went—right up until the end, it seemed. There was a sleeping bag spread across the back seat of the car; it seemed like maybe his dad had been hunkered down in here for a while before things went really wrong. His arms and legs were bent and drawn up close to his chest like dried-out chicken wings, the fingers on both hands braided into knotty, uneven points underneath a jaw that hung open far wider than Parker thought a human jaw could spread.
It looked like his dad had died screaming.
Somewhere in the distance, Parker could hear steady, rhythmic impacts, like far-off gunshots. Maybe it was hunters who had wandered blindly into the maw, about to be eaten by the Barrens—just like Parker, just like his friends, the town, his dad. Just like everybody and everythin
g.
“Holy shit,” Nate said behind him. “Is that a car?”
“It is,” Parker said, without turning around.
“How old is that thing? Like, honestly, it looks a hundred years old or something.”
“Might be.”
“How d’you think it got out here? Like old-timey bootleggers? Something like that?”
“Nate.”
“What?”
Parker shifted to the side, just enough so his dead friend could see the body that lay on the ground before them.
“Oh, shit,” Nate gasped. “Parker, is that … is that him?” Parker didn’t budge from where he was crouched. “Yeah.”
“Jesus, that’s fucked up,” said the ghost. “What about his stuff? We should check—maybe he left some of his things in there, like a pack or something?”
“There’s nothing in there.”
“I mean, you don’t know for sure, do you?”
“I know.”
“Well, did you at least look? I mean, come on—”
“Nate, I know,” Parker roared, rising to spin on the ghost, eyes wide with fury.
Nate shut his mouth with an audible click. The silence between the two of them swelled and contracted, a volatile, living thing that would explode into a storm if provoked.
“Can you please just get the hell away from me for a minute?” Parker whispered. “Please. I just need a few seconds alone right now. With him. Okay?”
Underneath his lips, Nate licked his teeth slow, his black eyes narrowed.
“Fine,” he said. “Whatever you need, friend.”
And then he was gone.
Dropping down to sit on the dirt beside the body, Parker reached out a hand to run his bare fingers across its withered, papery skin and the smooth parts where the scalp used to be. He was so dry, so brittle … like he was made of corn husks. Slumped there, Parker felt all his futures deflate, all the possibilities cut off at the wrists.
The Night Will Find Us Page 17
