After cleaning some of the blood from my face and hair in the bathroom, I went outside and found an old truck parked next to the cabin, with the keys still in the ignition. I hopped inside and started the engine.
“Where the hell am I?” I mumbled, trying to find a way out.
The woods were dark but my eyes now seemed to adjust very well to nightfall. I quickly found the road and began driving, although I wasn’t sure where in the hell I was even going. After driving north for a good forty-five minutes, I found a gas station and went inside. The moment I entered, the smell of pot and bubblegum engulfed my senses.
“Can I help you?” asked the stoned cashier who looked at me like I was some kind of freak.
I touched my face, wondering if I’d missed any blood. “Um, where am I?”
She smacked her gum and smiled. “You lost?”
I nodded.
She sighed and pushed a road map across the counter. “You’re in Wolf Creek.”
“Can I have this?” I asked, holding the map up.
She nodded. “Yeah, for five dollars.”
“Well, can I at least just take a look at it?”
She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
I moved away from the counter and began studying the map. When I noticed I was only two hundred miles south of Shore Lake, I sighed in relief. I’d be home in less than three hours.
“Thanks,” I told the girl, handing her back the map.
“Um, just keep it,” she replied with a grimace, pushing it back towards me.
It was then I noticed the blood smudged on the paper. “Oh, sorry,” I laughed weakly. “I… um hit a deer and had to push it off my vehicle. It was pretty gross.”
“Bummer,” she said, smacking her gum again. She then returned to some fashion magazine she was reading.
When I got back into the truck, I looked at myself in the mirror and winced. I’d missed wiping the blood from my neck. I sighed and started driving.
***
When I finally made it back to Shore Lake, I went straight to the cabin, which had first appeared breathtakingly beautiful and serene but now appeared dangerously ominous. As I climbed out of the truck and approached the front porch, my stomach knotted up. My brother’s car was now, surprisingly, parked outside of the cabin and I had no idea what was waiting for me inside. The realization that he might already be dead wasn’t new to me, but it definitely was hard to swallow. I said a silent prayer and made my way up to the porch, trembling the whole way. As I got closer to the front door, I noticed it was slightly open.
Crap.
I placed my hand on the knob and took a couple of deep breaths before I finally had the courage to push it open. Of course it made a small creaking noise that seemed to echo more loudly than any gunshot I’d heard the past few days.
I stood in the entryway and was immediately met with an entourage of magnified smells – cedar, Pine Sol, and stale fruit. Fortunately, I didn’t smell anything else, including blood.
I let out a sigh of relief and began searching the house. When I found nothing in the lower level, I walked upstairs to search the bedrooms and started with Nathan’s, which was a mess. Clothes were strewn all over the place, someone had emptied out most of his drawers, and his model cars were broken and scattered. Someone had clearly done this in spite and anger. Seeing this mess added to my own rage.
I left his bedroom and searched my mother’s, but didn’t find anything unusual. My room was still a horrific mess, but I didn’t seem to care about it anymore.
As I walked by my dresser mirror, I was again surprised to find an actual reflection, which looked pretty horrible at the moment. I seriously needed to get out of the dreadful clothes and clean up. I decided to risk a quick shower and then head over to Caleb’s to see if I could find something that would lead me to my mother or Nathan.
I grabbed a towel and then jumped into the shower, washing my body as quickly as possible. As I rinsed the shampoo out of my hair, I thought of Ethan and my eyes welled up again. I still couldn’t believe he was gone, killed by a simple shot to the head. I forced the image from my mind and finished up in the shower. When I was done, I wrapped the towel around my body and went back into my room.
“You’re alive.”
“Duncan!” I gasped, tightening my towel. “I thought you were dead!”
“Surprise, I’m not.” He moved towards me and grabbed my arm. “Where is he?”
I shrugged him off. “Ethan?”
“Yeah, Ethan. Where’s that bastard?”
I glared at him. “He’s dead.”
He laughed. “Right.”
“He is dead!”
Duncan’s eyes softened a little as he stared into my eyes. “I really thought you were dead, too,” he murmured. “God, I was so worried about you.”
I raised my chin. “Well, I almost died, no thanks to you.”