CHAPTER ONE
I awoke to rustling outside my tent. The crunching of footsteps on
gravel, twigs and branches snapping. Was that a voice? I lay motionless inside
my sleeping bag, heart pounding, listening.
“Help.” A disembodied whisper. Was it right outside? I strained to
hear but the throbbing pulse in my head drowned everything else out. I sat up.
The atmosphere within the domed tent was wet, ripe with morning breath. The tip
of my nose was cold as an icicle.
“Help.” The murmur came a second time, more audible than the last. I
was sure it was a child’s voice. My heart skipped a beat. Could it be the voice
of the eight year-old, Jessica Crow, who had gone missing from the neighboring
Indian Reservation three days ago?
I thought of the drive out to the campgrounds when my friends,
Amber, Kate, and I had been listening to the radio report on the status of the
missing girl from the Wakina Reservation.
Poor Amber. Once
again, she’d cried at the reminder of her third cousin, Jessica, lost and alone
in the forest. Everyone in the community, including Amber, had been searching
for her night and day but had found nothing. I’d practically dragged Amber
along camping, telling her she needed a night off from her worries. It was a
hard sell, but she’d finally agreed.
I glanced at where Kate and Amber should have been laying, but their
sleeping bags and pillows were missing. The last I’d seen them had been around
the bonfire at two in the morning. They could have ended up crashing just about
anywhere, and I wasn’t about to go peeking into random tents to find them.
Having fallen asleep in my jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, I slipped
on my jacket and shoes, pulled the ponytail holder off my wrist and wrapped my
hair into a tight bun. I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. Then, unzipping
the door flap of the dome tent, I stuck just my head out.
Nothing was out of place. Empty cooler bottles atop the picnic
table, charred wood in the fire-pit, and the car we came in. Every campsite
around us was nearly silent. The sounds of late-night make-out sessions,
pounding music, and yelling were replaced by the occasional snore.
Using my empathy,
I focused on trying to pick up on the emotions of any lucid person around,
hoping I would hone in on Jessica’s emotions. Normally, the waking feelings of
others hit me like a gale force wind, without my even trying. In fact, it had
always felt like a bit of a curse that I was a walking sponge for other
people’s pain. But right now, all I felt was…nothing.
The voice had seemed
right outside the tent. Could I have imagined it?
I slipped out. A low, white fog blanketed the earth, enveloping the
world in silence. The temperature hovered around freezing, way too cold for
camping. And last night’s vodka was no longer taking the edge off. I shivered.
After checking around the cars and circling the campsite, I started
down the road. Inside the forest, the eerie glow of early morning and the cool
fog blanched the world a ghostly white. The moist nip in the air sharpened the
scent of pine needles that littered the camp ground. I continued down the road
for about ten feet until it led to the mouth of a hiking trail.
Now that I was half-frozen and shivering, the May long weekend at
the campgrounds of Greater Slave Lake, North Dakota, seemed like a very stupid
idea, even if it was the annual spring kick-off party.
“Help!” the diminutive voice called out again, this time, louder.
The memory of
Jessica’s face flashed through my mind when I’d met her last summer;
honey-brown eyes and springy hair that always stuck up around her head with
static, and her sweet smile, part baby teeth intermixed with adult teeth. She
was such a sweet, innocent child. If she had survived this long, she could be
dangerously close to death from cold. My heart battered against my chest wall,
and I fought off the urge to start running, directionless, into the bush to
find her.
The voice had originated from further within the tree-line, I was
sure of it. Closer now, yet still far away. I entered the trail and headed
straight.
“Jessica?” I called out. No response but the echo of my own voice
from the trees around me.
The trail was straight and narrow for well over a hundred feet, the
trees like two solid walls of green on either side of me. Then the trail began
to snake back and forth until it forked into several side-trails. I stopped to
listen.
A dry crackle emerged from the trail to my right, and I immediately
followed the sound. This far into the forest it was darker, the only light
filtered through evergreens and fog. I looked back. The vapor had closed in
behind me, obscuring the pathway like a curtain of white. Shivering transformed
into shaking.
Despite running these trails in the early morning numerous times,
today it looked different. I cursed under my breath and shoved my hands into my
pockets.
“Hello?” I called, my voice immediately diminishing, muffled by the
woods. Other than the odd bird chirp and frog croak, the forest was quiet. If
the voice really had been Jessica, she would need help and most likely immediate
medical attention. I forced myself forward.
The trail wound to and fro, the brush dense, the fog almost material
as it clung to the spruce needles. The path grew thin and sparse, barely enough
room to place one foot in front of the other, with the way the underbrush
encroached on the trail. I stumbled on twigs and logs as branches clawed my
cheeks and pulled my hair. I began to trip, reaching out for something to hang
onto. I fell, my hand forced into a thorny bush.
Damn it! I stood up and peered at my scraped hand, blood beading out
of paper-cut sized scrapes. I’d been out here for at least ten minutes, but
still, I heard nothing but the crunch of my feet snapping the twigs underfoot
and my breath echoing through my own head. Ready to turn around and head back
to my tent, the high-pitched voice rang out once again.
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