But it never came.
A week later, under a nearly full moon, I gathered enough courage to walk back down the road—my eyes darting into the woods, listening for the sounds of trees splitting open, bark peeling back—and when I reached the palm-size stone, I walked five paces past it, placing another stone in the dirt at my feet.
I’ve repeated this every night for the last year: walking five more paces up the road, then leaving another stone to mark my progress. I’ve been risking my life for something I’m not sure of, just to see a little farther, to know what lies beyond the next rise in the road.
And tonight, when I reach the last stone in the line, I look back at the gate, the little hut, both still visible in the dark. But ahead of me, the road makes an abrupt left turn, and I’ve never been able to see what’s beyond it. I squeeze the rock I plucked from the tall grass, and silently count off my paces. One, two, three, four… I swallow down a breath. Five. I’m not quite around the bend in the road, I can’t quite see what’s beyond it, but I set the stone on the ground at my feet—my heart a drum. I’m so close. In the trees, I hear a cracking sound, like someone running a hooked claw down the rough bark of a tree, peeling it away to reveal the soft white center inside. Like flesh. Like the parts of a tree you shouldn’t see.
The trees are separating themselves.
But I don’t run, I don’t turn back. I take another step forward, beyond the last stone.
Curiosity does this: It prods at the gut; it pushes fear aside and causes smart men to do stupid things.
I look back at the gate as it slips from view, and I round the bend in the road, my mind no longer counting my paces—my legs carrying me forward, one after the other—and then I see something ahead. Resting just off the side of the road.
A vehicle.
A truck.
* * *
There’s a feeling sometimes, when you wake up from a deep, deep sleep and your eyes flash open and for the briefest half moment you can’t remember where you are—the room and the movement of the curtains against the open window all feel foreign in that distant, not quite lucid way. Like you might still be asleep.
That’s how it feels, looking upon the truck.
A felled tree is lying across the road, limbs shattered and broken apart, effectively blocking the path. The truck is parked askew, between an opening in the trees, as if the driver had tried to steer off the road then gotten stuck—in deep spring mud or even deeper winter snow.
I move closer, ignoring the fear clamping down inside my chest. I shouldn’t be here.
The windshield and hood are covered in golden leaves and rotting pine needles, a couple seasons’ worth. The truck hasn’t been here long. The two driver’s-side tires are sunk into the earth, buried. Stuck. I touch the door handle and a shiver of northern wind passes over my neck, a quick gust, and then it’s gone.
I pull open the door and take a step back, expecting something to lunge out at me, or to find a calcified body slumped against the floorboards—frozen or starved or rotted to death. But there’s no corpse. No scent of decaying flesh.
The truck looks generally undisturbed. A layer of dust covers the bench seat, the dashboard, the radio dials, the steering wheel. The kind of dry summer dust that seeps through cracks in windows and doors and floorboards.
There’s not much inside, no obvious clues about why the truck is here, and when I flip down the visor, several papers drift down around me: insurance card, three years expired; a coupon for a discount oil change at Freddy’s Oil & Lube in Seattle, also expired. I pick up a truck registration card and scan the details: The vehicle is registered to Travis Wren, a name that falls flat in my mind.
I reach across the bench seat to open the glove box. Inside, I find a wool cap with MERLE’S TREE FARM printed on the front, a few wadded dollar bills, a toothbrush, a pocket knife—the blade dull—a road map of the West Coast (Washington, Oregon, California), and a photograph.
A crease runs through the center of the photo, like it had been folded in half at one time, and most of the image has been obscured, damaged by water that must have leaked into the truck during wetter seasons, the colors of the photograph now puckered and warped.
I straighten, holding the picture toward the moonlight and running a thumb over the partial face I can still make out, staring up at the camera. The water has distorted all but the woman’s left eye, a cheek partly turned away—like she was uninterested in having her photo taken—and her cropped, sunflower-blond hair. I can’t tell much from the image, but there is a starkness to her, a seriousness you can only see in the lidded eye.
I run my thumb over her face, and a throbbing pulses above my left ear, an itch beneath the scalp. I flip the photograph over, where a name has been scrawled in hasty letters, as if written while the person was driving. Bumping over potholes, trying to keep from driving off the road.
The name is Maggie St. James.
CALLA
I’m standing in Bee’s bedroom doorway, the morning sun diluted through the curtains, watching her nostrils swell with each dreamy exhale. Her knees are drawn to her chest atop the threadbare quilt, like a pale-skinned nautilus shell. I have a memory of us when we were little, when we would sleep in the same bed, hands clasped, afraid of ghosts hiding in the closet, monsters beneath the bed frame, forest goblins at the window. But it’s a watercolor memory: nebulous, faded with age, hardly there at all.