The Dead and the Dark(67)

BRANDON: I don’t know what we’ll find down here. But I bet you’ll be less scared than your dad.

LOGAN: Anyone would be less scared than Dad.



Ashley wasn’t sure why she was watching this. It burrowed into her like claws, reminding her of what she’d done. How she’d taken Alejo away from his family. How she’d probably ensured that this happy, excited Logan Ortiz-Woodley would never exist again. Her mother said that the Ortiz-Woodleys were a poison.

Ashley wondered if Snakebite was the poison; if she was the poison.

[Logan smacks the SonusX against her palm. They stand in the basement of a Tulsa hotel waiting for the voice-detection box to power up.]

LOGAN: It doesn’t work.

[Brandon crouches beside her.]

BRANDON: It’s a button on the side here. It gets jammed all the time.

[Logan slides her finger along the side of the device and the noises begin. She jolts back. Brandon laughs.]

BRANDON: It still scares me sometimes, too.



For Ashley, it had been two weeks of radio silence. She’d gone to Bug’s funeral with her mother and spoke to no one. It was two weeks of no Logan, no Fran, no anyone but Tammy occasionally bringing meals to her room to make sure she was still eating. She wasn’t sure what made her turn on this episode of ParaSpectors other than an aching, rotting sense of loneliness. She wasn’t sure what the Logan-shaped hole in her chest meant. This episode was the thing that ate at Logan, and Logan was the thing that ate at her.

Ashley missed her old world. She missed Logan.

She wasn’t sure how to reconcile the two.

Tonight, Tammy was at a community dinner to raise money for the cattle ranchers outside town, which meant Ashley had the ranch to herself. Normally, it would’ve been her curled up on the couch between Fran and Bug watching something stupid on TV until they all fell asleep. Before that, it might’ve been her and Tristan planted in the chairs on the lakeshore roasting hot dogs over the firepit. She wasn’t supposed to be alone like this. She’d never been alone like this.

She couldn’t take being alone like this anymore.

She scrolled to Logan’s name in her contacts and hovered there a moment too long. She’d considered calling Logan a dozen times since their fight, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. If Logan’s life was ruined, it was her fault. But losing Logan felt like another death. Another person who she’d never get to talk to again. Just like Tristan, Logan would be another person gone and Ashley had spent their last moments saying all the wrong things.

Ashley scrolled away from Logan and pressed Fran’s name. Almost immediately, the other end of the line clicked. “Ashley?”

“I didn’t think you’d pick up,” Ashley breathed.

“I didn’t, either.” Fran was so quiet that, for a moment, Ashley thought she’d hung up. Fran cleared her throat. “It’s late.”

Ashley glanced at the clock on her nightstand. It was only 6:32 p.m.

“Sorry.”

After another pause, Fran sighed and said, “I’m gonna go, then.”

“Wait.” Ashley knotted her comforter in her fist. “I just wanna talk. We haven’t talked since—”

“Since Bug, yeah.” Fran’s inhale was sharp. “I can’t talk about it right now.”

The surge of tears behind Ashley’s eyes was sudden and overwhelming. She bit her lip to keep from crying. Just like everyone else, Fran was going to slip away like water between her fingers. “Do you think it’s my fault?”

“God, I don’t know.” Fran sucked in another breath and Ashley realized she was on the verge of tears, too. “What were you doing there?”

“I—”

“Visiting Logan, right?”

“Yeah…” Ashley sighed. “I was with Logan. And Bug called me so many times. She texted me. I didn’t see until after … I was right there. I don’t know what happened.”

Fran was quiet.

“Why didn’t she call me?” Fran asked. “I would’ve gone with her. Or talked her out of it, or … It’s because I said I didn’t believe any of it. She thought she couldn’t ask me for help. She thought I wouldn’t care.”

“She only went because of what I said.”

Fran was silent.

“Fran—” Ashley started.

“I’m sorry,” Fran said, sharp as a knife’s edge. “I can’t talk to you about this.”

“Fran, I’m…”

“’Night, Ashley.”

There was a beep, and the call ended.

Ashley sank to her mattress and stared at the window. She couldn’t remember what it felt like to breathe without this knotted mess of anxiety between her lungs. This town was wrong; this world was wrong.

There was a shift in the air of the room. It brought the quiet close to Ashley’s throat, smothering the sound of the wind. Ashley turned to face the door. She couldn’t quite see him, but Tristan was there. In the weeks after Bug’s death, his spirit lingered all the time, watching her, waiting for something she didn’t know how to give him. Maybe he wanted to lead her somewhere again. Maybe there was another body. If so, she ignored it. She’d found enough bodies in this town—someone else could find it this time.