by Willow Rose
"I don't get it," I said, puzzled. "How did we use two packages of eggs in just one day?"
"There are a lot of kids in this house, Jack."
I could hear she was exhausted by the way she said my name and realized I had to save the day. I rose to my feet and grabbed the car keys.
"I'll go get some at the gas station. I think they're the only place open at this hour. Even the restaurants close at nine. But they ought to have eggs at the gas station, right? Don't try and answer that. I’ll see for myself when I get there. And don’t you worry. If they don’t have them, I’ll go someplace else. I won’t stop till I find some."
She smiled, then approached me and threw her arms around my neck. "Would you do that for me? Would you really do that?"
I smiled back, tired but feeling good. I liked taking care of my family. "Of course, I will. Now, you go to bed, and I'll take care of the egg issue. I'll be right back."
I kissed her again, then sent her a comforting smile as she walked up the stairs. I grabbed my coat and put on my boots and readied myself to go back out into the freezing cold again. As I reached the Cadillac and got in, I looked at the house next door. I thought I saw the mother in the tower window again like I had on the first day we got there, but as I looked again, I couldn't see anyone there. I shivered, then cranked up the heat in the car before I took off.
54
Savannah stormed out of the trailer and left the door open behind her.
"Savannah? Come back here," her mother yelled from inside. "We need to talk about this."
But Savannah didn't stop. She didn't believe there was anything more to talk about. She wanted to get away as fast as humanly possible. She never wanted to see her mother again.
"Savannah!" her mother called from behind her in the darkness, but it was too late. Savannah was already on Soco Street, running as fast as she could, tears streaming across her cheeks.
How could you do this to me, Mom? How?
A car passed her from behind, rushing so fast past her that it slung snow into the air. The snow splashed onto her back, but Savannah barely noticed or even cared. All she could think about was what her mother had just told her and how to get as far away from her as possible.
"I hate this place," she mumbled into the night with a deep sniffle. "I really, really truly loathe this place. Everything went wrong from the second we got here."
I miss you so much, Dad. Why did you have to leave us like that? Why did you have to die? None of this would have ever happened if you were still around. Nothing has been good since you died. Nothing will ever be good again. I just know it won't.
Savannah stopped when she reached the old Ghost Town, or Ghost Town in The Sky, as it was officially named. She stared at the big sign out front and wondered about it. It used to be this amusement park but had closed down before Savannah moved to Maggie Valley. She had seen pictures of how it used to be, and many people in town still talked about it. Apparently, there was a chairlift that would take you up the mountain to an entire Wild West village with saloons with can-can dancers, a jail, and businesses along the main street that was the site of hourly gunfights. There had been rollercoaster rides and merry-go-rounds, trains running through town, and live country music playing in the Silver Dollar Saloon. It was built in the sixties, and it quickly became one of the largest attractions in the country, but after some visitors got stuck in the old rides, it had closed down some years ago. New owners had recently bought it intending to renovate and reopen it, but so far, it had been delayed because of some financial problems that the local paper wrote about a lot.
Savannah stood at the foot of the mountain by the building where you used to buy tickets to get up there and could see where the chairlift started when her phone vibrated in her pocket. It had been doing that ever since she stormed out of her mother's trailer, and she assumed it was her trying to get her to come back. She looked at the display and saw that she had called five times, but she didn't care. There was something else on her display, though, that caught her interest. It was a text from an unknown number. The words in it made her heart sink, and she read it over and over again, the phone shaking in her hand. Savannah dropped the phone into the snow, the screen cracking as it sunk through the wet snow and hit a small rock underneath. Savannah saw this through a curtain of tears, then turned her back on the phone that was still lit up in the darkness and walked past the sign and up the wooden stairs.
55
I had to drive almost to the neighboring town in order to find the eggs. The gas station was out, they said, and so I had to go a little further, outside of town, where I found a CVS that had eggs. It took an extra fifteen minutes, but I did so gladly. I knew it meant something to Shannon, and so I didn't mind. I had told Shannon to go to bed, so I assumed she was sound asleep.
I was listening to Lady Gaga singing with Bradley Cooper in my favorite song from their movie A Star is Born and cranked the volume up to its max and sang along. I had watched the movie with Shannon, and we had loved every second of it. The chemistry between those two was mesmerizing. I knew that Shannon believed they had to have a thing going in real life, but I believed they were just excellent actors. I didn't really care if they were an item or not; it was none of my business and shouldn't be anyone else's either, but it pleased me that Shannon wasn't touring at the moment. Part of me wished she would give it all up and just be with her family, but I knew that wasn't fair to her. She loved performing and writing music, and going away on tour was just a part of it. I just didn't like sharing her with the world.
As I drove back into town and down the main street, I slowed the car down. There were no other cars on the road, and everything was closed and left in complete darkness. Except for the chairlift behind the old Ghost Town in the Sky that I had heard so much about from locals, who were so proud of the place and still waited for it to reopen. The chairs were completely lit up all the way up the side of the mountain, and even more strangely, the lift was moving.
I drove past it, gaping at the lights all the way up the mountain. In the days we had been there, I hadn't seen that lift in motion or the lights turned on at all. Why would they turn it on at night? Were they testing the lift? As far as I knew, they hadn't even begun the renovation of the old Wild West town. Was someone going up there now? It was an odd hour to be turning on the lifts, I believed.
Thinking it was none of my business, I shook the thought for a few seconds and continued down the road. But even as I put it physically behind me, I still couldn't get it out of my system. Something was wrong here, and I didn't like it one bit. I pulled the wheel and turned the car around, then floored the accelerator and drove back into the parking lot in front of the Ghost Town in the Sky.
Heart throbbing in my chest, I killed the engine and got out. As my boot landed in the snow, I felt it kick something. I looked down to see what it was and spotted a phone in the snow. Puzzled at this, I picked it up and wiped the snow off, then pressed a button to make the display light up. The screen was cracked, but it still worked and had some battery left on it.
Whoever owned the phone had received a text from an unknown caller, but never opened it. I didn’t know the password but could still read it without opening the phone. The words in the text made me understand whose the phone was and what was going on.
Feeling my pulse quickening, I glanced at the lift, pondering how far she had gotten. I put her phone in my pocket, then rushed up the stairs toward the lift, zipping up my coat on the way to keep out the cold. I put myself in position and let the next chair lift me into the cold air, worrying that I was too late.
56
I set my boots down on top of the mountain as the chairlift reached the end. It was completely dark up there, and it took a few minutes for my eyes to be able to see anything. I used my own phone to light up the path in front of me, and soon the beam landed on a snow-covered street with old western houses on both sides of it. It was completely dark, and all the houses were abandoned, m
aking the title Ghost Town in the Sky more fitting than ever.
I walked down the street, lighting my phone on the wooden buildings with porches and swinging doors. There were about forty buildings that made me feel like I had just stepped inside of an old western movie. All I missed was the tumbleweed running down the main street and the gunfight, but instead, there was snow covering everything, making it even eerier.
"Savannah?" I called out. "Where are you?"
No answer came, and I continued walking, lighting up the buildings next to me, but not seeing any sign of life.
Come on, Savannah. Where are you?
I had never met the girl myself, but I had seen her picture in The Mountaineer several times where they wrote about the mystery of what happened to Benjamin Rutherford. The last time I saw it was after she had been arrested and the newspaper speculated that she might have kept him for days before finally killing him and putting him in the creek. How they could write that about a young girl and ruin her life without any evidence or police statement to back it up was beyond me. But I never understood the world of journalism much, and it was something I often debated with my friend Rebekka Franck.
"Savannah? Come on; speak to me. I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to talk to you for a few minutes. You don't know me, but my name is Jack Ryder, and I’m a detective. I don't think you killed Benjamin Rutherford. But I am scared of what you're planning to do to yourself right now. Please, don't do anything stupid, Savannah; please, talk to me instead."
The only answer I received was the howling wind. It hit me in the face and caused me to shiver. I really didn't want to be up there on the mountaintop in the freezing cold and darkness, staring at old abandoned wooden houses. I longed to be in my warm bed with my wonderful wife close to me.
"Savannah?"
I heard a sound coming from between two houses and gasped. I turned the light through the alley and spotted a viewing point behind it, with telescopes where you could probably see the spectacular mountain views in bright daylight. I also saw Savannah there, standing on top of a rock formation on the other side of the fence, balancing on the edge.
Oh, dear God, no!
I sprang forward and ran in between the houses, my heart racing in my chest "Savannah, no!"
She didn't notice me. The closer I got to her, the more I realized there was an abyss beneath her, and if she fell, she would definitely kill herself. She stood there like she was paralyzed and stared into the darkness.
"Please, Savannah,” I said as I approached her. "Please, don't jump. Talk to me instead. Tell me what's going on."
She didn't even turn to look at me. She stood like a statue, balancing, her toes already over the edge. She had taken off her shoes and socks and placed them at the foot of the rock.
"Don't let them win," I said. "If you do this, they will. They'll think they were right about you; they’ll always believe that you were guilty."
"And what if I am?" she asked.
"Excuse me?" I asked, puzzled. "You mean to say that you killed Benjamin?"
She paused a few seconds, then answered: "I might have. You don't know that."
"I don't know. You’re right about that. But I do know that the police released you. I also know that you received a text a while ago where some mean person told you to kill yourself."
She turned her head and looked at me. I lit her up with my phone, then pulled out her phone.
"How do you know?" she asked, her voice hoarse, her breathing ragged.
I showed her the phone. "I found this in the parking lot. I didn't have to be a detective to figure out you turned on the lift to get up here."
She swallowed. "There was a small shed down there. I had to break through the glass to get to the button. It was locked, but I used a rock to break it. I flipped on the power, and then it was the easiest thing from there. My dad used to work part-time at an amusement park in the summer, and he would sometimes take me when I was a kid."
She turned to look into the darkness again. I wondered if I jumped for her now, if I could grab her or if me moving even an inch would only prompt her to take the plunge.
"Savannah, I know you think of it as an easy way out now, but this is not the solution. I’m sure that once the real killer is convicted, then no one will think you killed Benjamin. I’m sure it hasn't been easy for you these past few weeks when everyone has been thinking this about you, but they'll come around once they find out you didn't do it. You don't have to hurt yourself. You didn't do anything wrong. Give it a few weeks, and everything will go back to normal. You'll be back in school, and people will have forgotten."
"Is that what you think, Detective?" she asked. "That life will be able go back to normal for me?"
"I’m sure it will, Savannah. I know you're devastated over having lost Benjamin, and I heard that your dad died a few years ago, but please, Savannah. No one wants you to do this. Think about your mother."
"She's exactly the one I am thinking about,” she hissed. "She's the reason I am even out here."
I lifted both eyebrows in surprise. "What do you mean? I thought she was happy to have you back?"
"She doesn’t care about me," Savannah said, pushing herself an inch closer to the edge, so half of her feet were dangling over the edge. "She doesn’t care about me at all."
"I think you're wrong about that," I said.
Savannah snorted. "She's pregnant; did you know that?"
I shook my head. "No, I didn't. But that only gives you another reason to stay here with us, with them, doesn’t it? I mean you can't just leave now and never get to know your brother or sister, right?"
That made Savannah laugh out loud for some reason. The sound made me feel very uncomfortable. There was something in the tone of it that told me she had already made up her mind and there was nothing I could say or do to stop her.
"You think I ever want to meet the bastard that my mother is carrying? You think I ever want to have anything to do with my dead boyfriend's sibling? I mean…how sick is that?"
And just like that, the pieces fell into place, shocking as they were. "You mean to say that…your mom and…the pastor?"
She turned her head and looked into my eyes for just a second. I saw so much sadness in them; it almost broke me apart. As she stared at me, a smile grew from the side of her mouth, and the next thing I knew, she jumped.
57
The dark figure was getting into position, clutching the rifle between their hands, eyes scanning the area, looking for movement in the darkness. The snow crunched under their boots while birds took off from treetops as the figure found the perfect spot.
The cloud cover that had lingered most of the night above spread out and gave room for the moon to shine down on the glittering snow, making it a bright night. The moonlight made seeing easier and, as the figure spotted movement, the rifle was lifted up to the eye and placed in position. Through the scope, the figure spotted a red fox in the snow, then lowered the rifle with an exhale while the creature turned around and disappeared in between the trees.
The figure put the rifle down on a rock formation, leaning their elbow on the rock to steady it, then peeked into the scope. The figure saw the girl as she balanced on the edge of the rock.
"Come on, sweetie. You can do it."
The girl stood for a few minutes, looking down, while the figure watched her, ready to shoot should she change her mind. The body would then fall into the abyss and be buried in the snow where it wouldn't be found till the spring. By then, it would have been eaten by animals to the extent that there wouldn't be much of her left. And most importantly, the town would have found justice. They would say it was suicide after reading the text on her phone, and most people would believe she got what she deserved. But most importantly, the girl wouldn't be able to talk.
"Come on, jump. Just jump. Go for it."
The girl stayed in place, and that was when something happened that the figure hadn't counted on. Another person showed up, someone th
at the figure hadn't counted on as a threat.
The figure lowered the rifle and stared at them both when suddenly the girl jumped…and the man leaped after her.
58
I was faster than lightning. As soon as I realized what her intentions were, I leaped into the air and reached out my arm. I grabbed her literally in the air, and with my weight, I managed to push her to the side. We landed on a plateau below, my back hitting against the cliff, Savannah on top of me, me holding onto her so tight that she couldn't move. The air was knocked out of me, but we didn't stop there. We rolled to the side and soon we started to slide down, rocks and snow and dirt skidding down with us. I felt pain in my neck and leg, but held onto Savannah the best I could, sheltering her from being hurt. She screamed as we slid and soon came to a halt as we hit another ledge below, where we finally stopped completely in a pile of deep snow. Panting in pain, I rolled to the side and finally let go of Savannah. She cried.
"Are you hurt?" I asked.
"No,” she said. "I scraped my knee and elbow, but that was it. How about you? Are you okay?"
I tried to sit up, but it hurt. I could barely move my back. "I am not sure. I think I might have hurt my back."
I blinked a few times and looked above us. We had to be about ten feet below the viewpoint. I had dropped both of our phones when I jumped for her. There was nothing but snow around us, snow and rocks.
"Oh, my God, I am so sorry," Savannah said, crying. "I can't believe I did this. It's all my fault. I am so so sorry. How will we ever get back up from down here?"
I tried to sit up, but it hurt terribly, and I had to lean back into the snow to ease the pain. I couldn't think straight. Savannah was about to panic. I closed my eyes and tried to think, but she made it hard.
