There’s a punch of anxiety when the road isn’t where I expected it to be. It’s a good thing I decided to check, as I’d started to veer away from it and into the mountains. It takes longer than I’d like to find it, and when I do, it’s almost as if I want to put my feet on it, just for the comfort of knowing it’s there, and not leaving me behind.
Once on the road, I look up and see another house. My case of crazy brain clears a little, giving way to a new sharpness.
The house is dark, but then, it’s the middle of the night. There might be people at home. If I’m lucky, there are people home. The Logans be damned, I refuse to be afraid of asking for help. I choose to believe that the Logans are one in a million, that most people would help me. Even so, the fancy lines of this new house make me nervous. It’s an expensive mountain lodge, like the Logans’ place. I distrust it on a gut level.
The problem, more than my newfound irrational fear of high-end mountain homes, is that this house is way over to the left, while the road is clearly arcing to the right.
Do I stick with the road?
Or do I head for the house?
I believe the road is headed toward civilization, that it’s the main road out of here, but that’s just a guess. It could turn back toward the mountains and go on and on forever without getting anywhere useful at all.
The house, meanwhile, is a guarantee. It’s definitely there. There’s no denying that.
Perhaps in part to prove to myself I’m not scared of people, I head for the house. And force myself to hope that someone is home.
The house is on the second ridge away from me. Keeping on the ridgelines would take out the intense climbing, but once I’m into the trees, it’ll be that much harder to find my way. If I go straight, I think I can get there without getting lost. There’s a giant oak on the first ridge, and I aim for that.
“C’mon, Moon,” I whisper, and head downhill.
The descent down to the valley floor is longer and far more difficult than it looked from the road. At least there’s a nice stream down here. I pause for a drink. I’m tired from the climb down, and I’m dreading the climb up.
As I scoop the water into my mouth, something moves in the woods far above me.
It’s not the wind. It’s big. Living. And it hasn’t stopped moving.
It’s to my left, and I hear it for about three seconds before the forest falls back into silence.
My heart thuds at a million miles an hour, but I haven’t moved. I’ve frozen in place, like a deer on a busy road. But I’m not sure moving is a good idea. If it’s him, moving will only serve to tell him where I am. My mud camouflage almost completely covers me. I must be hard to spot down here in this streambed. Even so, a part of me is certain that a bullet is about to end everything. The silence goes on and on.
As my heartbeat slows, reason drifts back into my thinking. I am in a huge wilderness area. There will be deer here. Bears. -Coyotes.
No, that was no coyote. It was big.
Well, bear, then. Or deer. Thing is, not every sound in the forest will be the Wolfman. Whatever it was, it was a good distance away from me. If it was him, the sounds would continue and head in my direction. After a long wait, I begin to climb uphill. It’s extremely steep, and I take breaks every couple of minutes in order to rest and to listen. I hear nothing else on my long, long way up.
Reaching the top of the ridge is all kinds of wonderful. My thigh muscles burn from the climb, and it’s nice to simply stand and rest for a second. Far better than that, however, is the sight of how close the house is. Another hike down and back up again would have been almost impossible, but now I can work my way to the house along the ridgeline without any fear of getting lost.
Yay for no more climbing, and I’m closer. Closer than I thought.
“Look at that, Moon,” I say. “Good news.”
Then something catches my eye. It’s a long ways off, and at first I don’t know what it is. It’s red, blue, red, blue.
Sound, always on the heels of light, reaches me next. It’s faint, barely audible, but I recognize it as rubber rolling on rocks.
It’s a cop car, on the gravel road I left behind. Left so far, far behind.
So, the Logans called 911 after all. Something crumbles and dies inside me as I watch the cop car travel the lane. I could have been there, could have intercepted them. My rescue could be happening this very second. Energy drains away from me, as though my feet had holes in them like a sieve, and my energy is pouring out onto the ground. Of course, my feet do have holes in them.
My gut told me the Logans would call 911. Why didn’t I think that the road would be a good place to meet a cop? Especially when I also believed that the road was the way back to civilization? Why am I not connecting these dots?
I’m exhausted.
I’m so exhausted I’m impaired.
I don’t know what to do. I wonder if I should turn around and head back to the Logan house.
Beneath my feet is a nearly vertical hillside. Climbing up it was hard. Negotiating the path down without taking a nasty fall would be even harder. With a huge climb to follow. It’s too much; it’s overwhelmingly too much.
The house is close.
That means a phone is close.