The Trail Page 21

  “I know it is. It’s definitely fucked-up. But that doesn’t mean it’s real. The person who wrote that just wanted to mess with people. Just wanted to mess with your head. And look at you, Ryan. Look at you, man. I’d say it worked!”

  Ryan grinned sheepishly and laughed. “It’s just weird, man.”

  “Mission accomplished.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened to you, Ryan? You used to be a tough guy. You never used to spook on our hiking trips.”

  “I don’t know, dude. I’m getting soft.”

  “Naaa, not you! I’m glad you decided to push on with the hike, even after so many of the guys bailed.”

  “Yeah, well. I wanted to go hiking. I love it out here.”

  Alex smiled. “Me too, dude. Me too. This is nice. You know who else loved the great outdoors?”

  “Who?”

  “Susan Ginder.”

  “Oh! Shut the fuck up, man! Haha! What’s the matter with you?”

  “I wish I knew!”

  “Oh man. So how long do you think we have before we hit the lake?”

  “Well, I think it’s about another half hour or forty-five minutes up the trail. I don’t know. Everything seems longer now that we’re older. It feels like—hold up!”

  “What?” Ryan asked. “Did you hear something?”

  “Shhhhhh, hold up,” whispered Alex.

  They listened silently. Then Ryan heard the sound as well. Low-pitched murmuring, like the sound of an old engine in the distance. A sudden sweat broke on Ryan’s brow and his heart started to thump again, harder and faster than before.

  “It’s a voice,” he whispered. “Someone’s coming.”

  Both men crept into the back corner of the lean-to. A large brown rat scampered up the wall of the structure.

  Ryan strained his ears. “It’s someone chanting or something.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “He’s getting closer! What do we do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He’s getting closer.”

  They heard something scraping against the lean-to walls. And murmuring. Murmuring and laughter.

  “He’s behind the lean-to. He’s coming around the front.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “He’s getting closer.”

  “Oh shit!”

  “He’s getting closer!”

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Martin peered inside the lean-to. Two hikers cowered in the corner. Martin laughed. He dug his knife into the wound on his left leg. He worked at the wound, enjoying the pain. He felt excited, confused, aroused. Pus had crusted to his pants. The gash was angry with infection.

  “What do you want, man?” asked one of the terrified hikers. He was dressed in lightweight moisture wicking gear and shock absorbent boots. Martin was vaguely aware of the stylistic details. The hiker was wealthy, and not from Crenson. Those two infractions alone were enough to warrant an execution.

  “What the hell are you doing to your leg? Look dude, we don’t want any trouble. We just wanna get the fuck out of here.”

  Martin did not fully comprehend the hiker’s words, but the cadence and tone told him that the speaker was pleading for his life. Martin had heard so many cries for help, so many last words. The phrases blurred together in his mind.

  Martin stepped into the lean-to and stood in the center of the floor. His thick, curly hair fell lank on his face. His skin was smeared with mud. He looked down at the blood on the floor. Blood from his own leg. He had slept here last night.

  “What do you want? Is this your place or something? We can leave.”

  Martin picked up the journal and flung it across the room.

  “Ryan, what do we do?”

  Martin lunged at the one called Ryan. He clutched a fistful of hair and smashed the hiker’s face against the wall. Blood spurted like a geyser.

  He went for the knife but stopped short. He was bored with the knife. He remembered the chains he had brought from his own cabin. He reached under the sleep planks and removed the heavy manacles. He pummeled Ryan again, this time delivering brutal blows to the young man’s stomach. He could feel Ryan’s intestines collapse, and saw blood dribbling from his shattered mouth. Ryan wheezed a wet exhale, and looked up at Martin, anticipating the next strike.

  Martin grabbed the chains and went about hanging Ryan from the ceiling beams like a slab of beef. He raised the knife and thrust—splitting the belly open, spilling guts to the floor.

  Meanwhile, the other hiker burst past Martin and ran from the lean-to. Martin continued to admire the chained corpse. The body flailed and kicked. Martin remembered the slaughterhouse at his grandfather’s farm. He recalled how the animals would twitch after expiring, still moving in some half-world between life and death, their bodies fulfilling some final command that their dead brains failed to abort.

  * * * *

  Alex sprinted up the trail, trying to put as much distance between himself and the lean-to, between himself and the images in his head.

  He came around a corner and nearly tripped over a girl kneeling on the trail. She was blonde, bloody, and shaking with fear.

  “Susan Ginder?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Susan sobbed. The man bent down to comfort her. He put his arm around her shoulder and held her close. She accepted the gesture, too stunned to resist. Her mind was far away.

  He said, “I think we need to move. We need to get off the trail. He may be coming.”

  Susan nodded but did not budge.

  “Come on, Susan. I know you’re upset, but we really have to move.”

  “He killed Jack.”

  “What? Jack? Was Jack your friend?”

  She nodded.

  “Susan, I’m sorry.”

  “He killed Kim, too. Jack and Kim.”

  “Jesus, I’m sorry.” The man rubbed her back. “That just means that we really need to get out of here.”

  “Jack killed someone, too. But it was an accident. He shot someone in the dark.”

  “Okay, Susan. It sounds like you’ve had quite a camping trip. We need to get you out of here.” The man hooked his arms around Susan’s waist and tugged her to her feet. Susan swayed and smelled the woods again. She recognized the ground below her. She was coming out of a dream. A nightmare. A nightmare in which the waking was worse.

  “Oh, my God,” Susan said. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Alex. I was on a hiking trip with my friend Ryan when that guy with the knife came after us. My friend is dead. At least, I think he’s dead. I ran away before I could see for sure. Who is that guy? What the hell does he want?”

  “His name is Martin Levy. And he kills people. I don’t know why.”

  He got her to start moving. They walked off the main trail and onto an alternate path marked by yellow blazes. At first, Susan clung to Alex for stability. But with each step, she gradually regained her strength and sanity.

  Where are Scott and Sheriff Adams? She wanted to find the sheriff. He’d help. Now that it was daylight he’d know what to do. Where to go. Scott, she wasn’t so sure about. Would he help me or kill me? What have these woods done to him? Or was he always a killer, and the woods are simply allowing him to act on his impulses?

  She thought about her life after this trip—if she ever returned home. Would Scott stalk her even then? Or would he be in jail? Or dead? Susan decided that she wanted him dead. That would be the easiest thing. Dead and gone.

  “You’re doing better, Susan. Listen, we’re gonna get out of this.”

  Alex reminded her of her younger brother. Helpful but naïve. Susan knew they weren’t getting out of this.

  Ahead, the trail split into two. Alex decided on the overgrown path. Susan agreed. She didn’t want to think anymore. She just wanted to be led to safety.

  “Did you hear that?” Alex asked.

  “No. I don’t know. What?”

  “It sounded like s
omething in the woods over there.” Alex pointed.

  “I don’t think I heard anything.”

  “Maybe just a squirrel.”

  They continued hiking. Up ahead, Susan could see a clearing.

  “I think the lake is up ahead,” she offered.

  “Yup,” Alex said. “I believe you’re right. See, we’re gonna make it.”

  For the first time since yesterday afternoon, Susan believed it.

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  The lake sparkled in the warm afternoon sun. Sparrows flitted across the surface, occasionally dipping their beaks in the water, rippling the glass. A light breeze cut through the trees and pushed the water slowly sideways toward the bank. The wind also lifted the charred tent flaps clinging to the gnarled aluminum poles from the previous evening’s fire. Susan remembered this spot too well.

  “This where you camped?” Alex asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is that when he showed up? Or was it safe here?”

  “No one died here. But one of the tents burned. I’m not sure how it started, but I wouldn’t call it safe here.”

  Susan looked out at the water. The lake, she thought. The lake was the first sign that something was wrong. She remembered the gross, stagnant water. Kim had walked into the lake in her bikini and cut her foot. That was the first bad sign. Or maybe there were more. Those three crosses on the hill as they drove here. Three bloody crosses. One for Kim. One for Jack. Is the third for me?

  Or maybe things started off wrong from the beginning. Her poor cat Jeffery, dead on the floor. Her dead relationship. Her dead-end job. Her life.

  Alex cut in, perhaps sensing Susan’s morbid introspection. “I used to come to this lake all the time with my friends.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’d party it up. Girls. Drinking. Skinny-dipping. I had some great times here.”

  Susan thought of her own college friends. Although she was only a few years older than Alex, she felt so much older. The past two days had aged her greatly.

  “Where are your other college friends?” Susan asked. “Didn’t they make the trip?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well,” Alex said. “Most of them have kids now.”

  Susan felt the ache in her belly again. She didn’t want to know any more, but she pushed on.

  “And you don’t want any kids?”

  “It’s not that I don’t want them. It’s just that I haven’t found the right person to have them with.”

  “I can understand that,” Susan said. Her mind drifted to Jack. Jack in the tent, so gentle and caring as a lover. And then later, Jack, poor Jack, screaming and kicking as the knife ripped through the walls over and over again.

  I’ll never see Jack again, Susan thought. She began to cry.

  “Susan, it’s okay. I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about friends or kids or any of that.”

  “No, it’s alright. I brought it up.” She sniffed and wiped away tears with her sleeve. “Let’s walk down to the lake.”

  “Sure,” Alex said. “And if I’m not mistaken, we can pick up the trail to the parking lot from there.”

  In a minute they were standing by the bank of the water. A dragon fly hovered silently above the surface.

  “It’s beautiful,” Alex said. He rubbed Susan’s back.

  “It sure is.”

  Susan’s feeling that they were going to make it out of the woods intensified. Somehow the sight of the lake had given her strength. The sun overhead, the wind, the ripples. They were going to make it.

  “Jesus!” Alex said. “Is that what I think it is? Over there, in the water?”

  “Oh, my God!”

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  At first, Susan couldn’t quite comprehend what she saw—not just one body in the water, but a cluster of bodies, fused together like debris in a whirlpool. Arms and legs and torsos bobbed silently like a single organism.

  This latest death, this flotilla of gore, was horrifying, but failed to scare Susan further. She’d reached her threshold of fear with Jack’s death, when the knife drove into his flesh. Everything beyond that was just another nightmarish detail in this merciless dream.

  Susan flung herself to the ground. Alex hovered above her, groaning. She looked up and saw that he too had suffered psychic damage beyond repair. The veneer of the virile caregiver was disappearing. Alex stood above Susan, shivering.

  The bodies were joined by a thick rope, covered with slick algae. Feet and hands were bound together haphazardly, giving the organism the look of a monstrous birth defect. The bodies were bloodless, pale, and bloated with lake water. A man’s torso slowly rolled over, exposing his empty eye sockets.

  A few of the bodies were stripped so far down that only protrusions of skeletal structure breached the water. Others still had flesh and features intact. Susan stared at the body of a girl around her age, whose face was ravaged from water erosion. A giant gash had ripped the girl’s abdomen open.

  Susan saw herself in the lake, her own barren belly torn out. She saw herself floating silently, as her friends began to realize that she had not returned from her camping trip. Susan tried to imagine the chain of phone calls.

  First would be Margaret. Her best friend. Tomorrow Margaret would realize that Susan had not returned. She would call Susan repeatedly, initially leaving bright and breezy messages inquiring about her whereabouts, intimating a massive hangover.

  Later that night, Margaret’s messages would grow more curt and serious. “Susan, it’s Margaret. Where are you? Call me.” The next morning, before work, Margaret would try again, alternating between leaving messages and simply hanging up. Margaret’s final voice mail would threaten to call Susan’s mother if Susan did not return her call instantly.

  Susan would not return her call, because her body would be floating in the middle of the lake, dead, tied to a grisly octopus of strangers. Margaret would make good on her promise and contact Susan’s mom, Betty. Margaret would attempt to conceal the panic in her voice, but Betty would detect that something was wrong immediately, and both women would trump the other in anxiety.

  Betty was unaware of the entire camping trip. Susan did not always tell her mother of their plans, especially after Scott claimed that Betty “meddled” in their marriage.

  Susan’s father would tell everyone to calm down, but secretly he wouldn’t be able to breathe. It would be another hour until they called the police. Over thirty hours since Margaret’s initial inquiry. Another three hours until the police called Scott’s contacts and determined the location of the camping trip. Yet another two hours before the police arrived at the correct camping area, considering the unannounced change of location.

  During this time all four of their cell phones would ring ceaselessly. Their signals were out of range. The calls to Jack, Scott, Susan, and Kim would exceed one hundred in under an hour. Every call would be greeted with either a dead line, or a maddening voice mail message.

  After more phone calls, the parents would begin their journey toward central Pennsylvania. All except for Kim’s, who would assume she had skipped town or overdosed, and discourage the cops from continuing their search.

  Right now, as Susan sat moaning on the ground, no one was coming to find her. No one was searching. No one even knew that something was wrong.

  But something was very, very wrong.

  And it just kept getting worse.

  “Susan, look out!” Alex yelled.

  Susan turned and saw Scott emerging from the woods, pointing a gun at her head.

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  Scott was now just a couple feet from both of them, and quickly spun and turned the gun on Alex. “Who’s this? Your new boyfriend?”

  “Leave him alone, Scott! He helped me.”

  “I’ll bet he helped you.” Scott jerked the gun and pretended to fire the weapon. Alex cowered to the ground.

  Susan stared at Scott. Her husband was almost unrecogn
izable. His shirt was ripped and filthy. His face, once friendly and warm, now appeared hardened and distant. Although it had only been two days in the woods, Scott appeared gaunt.