A History of Wild Places
Shea Ernshaw
For Jess, my agent
There is always danger for those who are afraid.
—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
FOXES AND MUSEUMS
Excerpt from Book One in the Eloise and the Foxtail series The green eyes of a riddle fox peered into Eloise’s bedroom window.
It was a Wednesday, and the sun had long since dipped beyond the whispering evergreens. Eloise should have been asleep, but she kept thinking about the woods, about the lean-to fort she and her little brother had made at the base of a pine tree, and if it was strong enough to withstand the winter storms.
It was surely a dream—those eyes that stared at her through the glass, snow whirling and catching against the wool of its pointed face. Riddle foxes were rare this deep in the mountains. But dreams were nearly just as rare. Eloise never saw images when she slept anymore. They were fanciful and indulgent. The world wouldn’t allow for dreams.
Even nightmares were scarce.
PART ONE THE BARN
Death has a way of leaving breadcrumbs, little particles of the past that catch and settle and stain. A single strand of copper-brown hair, the follicle ripped from a skull, snagged by a door hinge or cold, clenched fingers. Drops of blood and broken skin, carelessly left at the bottom of a bathroom sink when they should have been scrubbed away.
Objects leave hints too: a bracelet broken at the clasp, dropped in the red-clay dirt; a shoe kicked off during a struggle, wedged behind a rear truck tire; a contact lens, popped free when the person screamed for help in some deep, dark part of a backwoods lot where no one could hear.
These things, these artifacts, tell me where a person has been. The last steps they took.
But not in the way you might think.
The past sputters through me, images reflected against my corneas, revealing the strained, awful looks carved into the faces of those who’ve gone missing. Who’ve vanished and never returned home.
I see them in a sort of slideshow staccato, like the old black-and-white nickel films. It’s a terrible talent to hold an object and see the likeness of the person it once belonged to, their final moments shivering and jerking through me as if I were right there. Witnessing the grim, monstrous ends of a person’s life.
But such things—such abilities—can’t be given back.
Snow blows against the truck windshield, icing it over, creating a thin filigree effect—like delicate lacework. The heater stopped working three days back, and my hands shake in my coat pockets as I peer through the glass at the Timber Creek Gas & Grocery, a tiny, neon-lit storefront at the edge of a mountain town without a name. Through the gusting snow, I can just make out a collection of homes sunk back in the lodgepole pines, and several businesses long since boarded up. Only the small firehouse, a tow truck service, and the gas station are still up and running. A stack of cut firewood sits outside the gas station with a sign that reads: $5 A BUNDLE, SELF-SERVE. And in smaller print: BEST PRICE ON MOUNTAIN.
This town is merely a husk, easily wiped off the map with a good wind or an unstoppable wildfire.
I push open the truck door, rusted hinges moaning in the cold, and step out into the starless night. My boots leave deep prints in the fresh two inches of snowfall, and I cross the parking lot to the front doors of the gas station, sharp winter air numbing my ears and nostrils, my breath a frosty cloud of white.
But when I pull open the gas station door, a tidal wave of warm, stagnant air folds over me—thick with the scent of motor oil and burnt corn dogs—and for a moment I feel light-headed. My eyes flick across the store: the shelves have a vacant, apocalyptic feel. Dust molders on every surface, while a few solitary items—starchy white bread, Pop-Tarts, and tiny boxes of travel-size cereal—seem almost like movie-set props from another era, their logos sun-bleached and outdated. At the back wall of the store sits a droning cooler lined with beer, cartons of milk, and energy drinks.
This place isn’t haunted—not in the way I’m accustomed to—it’s paralyzed in time.
At the front counter, a woman with feathered gray hair and even grayer skin sits perched on a stool under the headache-inducing florescent lights. She’s tapping her fingers against the wood countertop as if she’s tapping a pack of cigarettes, and I move across the store toward her.
To the left of the cash register sits a coffee maker coated in a heavy layer of dust—I’m tempted to reach for one of the stacked paper cups and fill it with whatever stagnant, lukewarm liquid is waiting inside, but I suspect it will taste just as it looks: like oily truck tires. So I let my gaze fall back to the woman, my hands clenching inside my coat pockets, feeling the burn of blood flowing back into my fingertips.
The woman eyes me with a nervy-impatience, and a hint of suspicion. I know this look: She doesn’t like me at the onset. The beard I’ve been cultivating for the last month doesn’t rest well on the features of my face, it makes me look ten years older, mangy like a stray dog. Even after a shower I still look wild, undomesticated, like someone you shouldn’t trust.
I smile at the woman, trying to seem acquiescent, harmless, as though a glimpse of my teeth will somehow reassure her. It does not. Her sour expression tugs even tighter.