The Dead and the Dark(50)

“I don’t think this is someone just killing people,” Ashley said. “The voices I heard outside were … what if they’re connected to all this?”

“You think something paranormal is behind it.” Logan said this like a statement, not a question.

“It wouldn’t be weirder than everything else going on.”

Logan pinched the bridge of her nose. “I know it looks like Brandon is involved, but … let me talk to my dads and see what I can find out. I don’t wanna jump to any conclusions. Please.”

Ashley’s frown was involuntary. There was desperation in Logan’s face, but she wasn’t sure if it was desperation for Brandon to be innocent or desperation because she thought he wasn’t. Logan’s straight black hair rippled with the wind. She cupped a hand over her mouth.

“Okay,” Ashley said. “I can ask my mom some more stuff, too. But we don’t know how long it’ll be before someone else goes missing. There’s not that many kids here. It could be one of my friends. It could be one of us.”

“Promise me you won’t do anything until I’ve talked to them,” Logan said. “Just trust me.”

Logan’s eyes narrowed, glassy like she might cry. Ashley looked beyond her to the cabin. The cold under her skin was almost gone now, but the weight in her stomach still pushed her down. It felt like she was sinking. She closed her eyes.

“I promise.”





20


A Whisper Soft And Staying


At the end of all of this, Snakebite would never be the same. A piece of Ashley already knew that, even if she pretended otherwise.

The sky was open wide and bright blue with morning. From the peak of the massive hill on the eastern edge of the Barton property, the rest of the hills were only gentle ripples reaching out to the horizon, the lake twisting between them like a vein. The wind carried the sweet scent of juniper up the hillside. This was the Snakebite etched into Ashley’s bones. It was the one she saw when she closed her eyes. It was her Snakebite, just out of reach as darkness rolled into the valley like an impending storm.

It was just another thing she was losing.

Ashley had climbed to the grassy cap of this hill for picnics with Bug and Fran since they were in middle school. It’d been months since they’d been here together, but even with everything else changing, this was exactly how Ashley remembered it.

She was nervous about coming here. She was nervous about seeing Bug and Fran. She’d spoken to them a few times since Nick’s funeral, but this was different. Nothing between the three of them had ever made her nervous before. There was a silence that settled between them, holding them an arm’s length from one another, wordlessly seeding doubt into Ashley’s chest. With everything going on, hanging out with friends felt like a lie.

Ashley’s horse reached the crest of the hill. Bug and Fran trotted up behind her on borrowed Barton horses. Quietly, the three of them made their way to a knotted juniper that stood alone on the hill’s bald face. Bug laid a blanket across the dead grass, and Fran unlatched the picnic basket from her horse’s saddle. They assembled turkey sandwiches and mason jars of lemonade like they had every summer, lying back on the blanket under the shade of the juniper tree. The air was crisp and clear and Ashley immediately wanted to sink into the ground if it meant she could stay here forever.

“I miss you guys,” she said between bites of sandwich. “Like, so much.”

“Whose fault is that?” Fran laughed. “You’re the one always hanging out with Logan now.”

“She means we miss you, too,” Bug said.

“Yeah, sure.”

Fran’s attitude was justified, but Ashley had hoped everything would just be normal. Bug was harder to read—she was the nicest of the three of them, which meant she was the least likely to say how she really felt. Both she and Fran looked up at the sky and not at Ashley. She wondered how many worried conversations they’d had about her over the last few weeks.

“Sorry I’ve been weird,” Ashley said. “There’s just been a lot going on.”

“Yeah. But you can talk to us,” Fran said.

“I know.”

“Good.”

Ashley grimaced up at the withered branches overhead. It wasn’t like she didn’t trust Bug and Fran. It was just that they were her last patch of normalcy in Snakebite. They were the last thing left that was untouched by this looming shadow.

Ashley closed her eyes. “Okay. You know I’ve been out of it since Tristan. And you know I told you I was still kind of … sensing him, like he was still around.”

“Sure,” Fran said.

“Well, I think I can kind of … I don’t know. I think I can see ghosts?”

Bug and Fran were silent.

“Not literally,” Fran said.

“Literally.”

She could feel Fran’s frown radiating from next to her. Fran shifted onto an elbow to stare at the side of Ashley’s face. “You wanna elaborate?”

The sun burned through the blue morning as Ashley explained it all, from the first sighting to the cabin to the body at Pioneer Cemetery. She explained the way she had smelled Tristan in the woods, the way he’d told her where to find Nick’s body, the way he lingered with her, even now. She explained it while Bug and Fran listened and sipped their lemonades. She couldn’t look at either of them. Her heart raced up her throat and tasted like iron. “I thought I was just losing it at first. So I asked Logan for help. Because, I don’t know, she knows about this stuff.”