The Dead and the Dark Read online

  But everywhere they went—Flagstaff, Shreveport, Tulsa—she was an afterthought. To Brandon, she was sure she was another ghost lingering just out of sight.

  An elderly woman emerged from the office building of the motel, leaning on a knotted wooden cane. When her eyes locked on Alejo’s, she melted. “Chacho, you better get over here.”

  “¡Ay, Viejita! Hermosa como siempre,” Alejo cried. He bounded across the parking lot and gave the woman a kiss on both cheeks.

  “Mentiroso,” the woman said. “¿Que pasó, Chacho?”

  Logan smiled, but it was strained. Alejo fell into Spanish so easily, but it’d never come naturally to her. Alejo had tried to teach her growing up, but thanks to the show, he was hardly around long enough to practice with her. It was always stilted for her. She shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, suddenly untethered from the conversation and from Alejo. Next to her, Brandon was entirely tuned out. His gaze was miles away.

  “And this is Logan,” the woman said. It was a statement, not a question. She released Alejo and made her way to Logan, planting a firm kiss on her cheek. Her long ponytail was pepper-gray and streaked with silver. She wore a T-shirt that read THIS TOWN BITES BACK. “I’ve seen all the Facebook pictures, but she’s even prettier in person.”

  Alejo smiled. “Logan, this is Gracia Carrillo. She’s mi tía.”

  “Your daddy lived here when he was little,” Gracia said, motioning to Alejo. “We told him to come back and visit whenever. I didn’t think he’d wait until he was an old man.”

  Alejo scoffed.

  Logan put on her best pleasure-to-meet-you smile and returned Gracia’s hug. “Thanks so much for letting us stay here. It’s beautiful.”

  “A liar, too.” Gracia laughed. “Come with me. I’ll show you your room.”

  While Brandon and Alejo started unloading suitcases from the van, Gracia led Logan to room 7. The door caught on the frame, knocking chips of white paint to the pavement. Inside, it was a standard motel room—hideously patterned wallpaper, matching queen-size beds, a mini fridge, a TV mounted on the long wall. A door connected her room to Brandon and Alejo’s room. Not a feature she was particularly enthusiastic about, but the room was fine.

  “Home sweet home,” Gracia said. She gave the breakfast table a hearty slap. “You don’t hate it too much, do you?”

  “It’s perfect,” Logan lied. “Am I allowed to make changes?” Logan wasn’t sure how long they planned to stay in Snakebite. She needed one of those TV makeover guys—the ones that her fathers referred to as the “bane of reality TV”—to bring her aesthetic to life.

  “Of course.”

  Quietly, Gracia stepped inside and closed the bedroom door. She peeked through the curtains at Brandon and Alejo, who were only halfway through the unloading process, then turned to face Logan. “I’m so happy you and your dad are finally here. Happy the three of you are together again. I think Brandon has been very … lonely.”

  Logan arched a brow.

  “He wanders around here all day. He’s always gone at night. I sit there all the time and wonder what he’s doing. People ask me what made him come back here. I tell them I don’t know.”

  “Location scouting.” Logan inspected her nailbeds. “For the show.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s what he told me. I thought you might know something else.” Gracia smiled, warm and bright. “It doesn’t matter anyway. People might not be happy to see the three of you here, but I—”

  Logan squinted. “What do you mean they’re not happy?”

  She thought of the crowd at the funeral, gathered like crows at the edge of the hill, silently staring down at her. It’d been so eerie she almost thought she’d imagined it. They’d looked at her like she was trespassing. Like she’d stumbled into their town from outer space.

  Gracia waved a hand. “I have been wishing your dad would come home since the day he left.”

  Dad. Singular.

  Maybe Brandon was a mystery to Gracia, too. If she’d hoped to get the inside scoop, she’d picked the wrong source. Logan had spent years trying to get some kernel of truth out of Brandon. Gracia wasn’t the only one who found it easier to talk to Alejo.

  “Can I ask you something?” Logan asked. “I saw a funeral on the way into town.”

  “Oh.” Gracia’s voice was sharp. “It’s their service for the Granger boy.”

  Logan perked up. When she’d asked Alejo what exactly they were investigating in Snakebite, his answers were vague at best. The usual stuff—dead crops, cold spots, strange noises. A dead kid was the kind of creepy small-town thing he should’ve mentioned. She leaned forward and propped her chin on her fist. “How’d he die?”

  “He’s not dead, just missing,” Gracia clarified. “He probably ran away. Anyone you ask around here will tell you he was a good boy. They don’t think he would leave like that. The group he ran with, though … they’re not nice kids. They’re all rotten.”

  Logan was silent.

  “I hope he’s alive,” Gracia continued, “but a part of me hopes they don’t find him. If they finally lose one of those kids, maybe they’ll stop acting so high and mighty.”

  Logan blinked. Gracia’s expression wasn’t warm anymore, but Logan couldn’t figure out what it was. The way the people at the vigil had looked at her like she was arriving by UFO, and now this strange, whispered blood feud. Something was wrong here, and not in the usual small-town way.

  Outside, Logan could just make out her fathers’ voices.

  “You want my advice? Ease up on the jokes.”

  “You always joke with her. Why can’t I?”

  Logan turned away from Gracia and peered out the window through the blinds. Alejo pulled a suitcase from the back seat of the minivan and tossed it onto the pile in the parking lot. Brandon stood next to him, fiddling with the latch on one of his bags. His expression was hard to parse—maybe embarrassment, maybe discomfort. He looked more out of place than usual, like the sun and the hills and the wide-open sky somehow disagreed with him.

  Alejo paused and wiped sweat from his brow. “It’s just the three of us now. Just family. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

  “You know I was never good at that.”

  “At what?”

  “Being okay.”

  Alejo laughed, short and tense.

  Gracia stood at Logan’s back and put a hand on her shoulder, silver-gray brow furrowed as she watched Brandon unpack. She watched him like the crowd at the vigil watched them. Like she wanted to disassemble him just to study his parts.

  Alejo spotted them through the blinds and rolled his eyes. “What was it you said back home? If you’re gonna just stand there, can you at least help?”

  “We’re just catching up, Chacho,” Gracia said loud enough for Alejo to hear. She gave Logan a single squeeze on the shoulder and, quieter, said, “Go help your dads. And if you ever need to talk, remember I’m in room two.”

  Logan swallowed and nodded. Gracia left the motel room and Logan was alone with nothing but the sputtering air conditioner and the quiet. Just like every other motel on the road, she would get used to these walls. She would get used to the silence, to the absurd heat, to the loneliness. But there was something different about Snakebite. She’d spent years tuning out Brandon and Alejo’s “mysteries,” but something about this one tugged at her. It begged her to dig deeper.

  It didn’t matter. Even if there was something different in this town—something wrong—it was only a few months. She’d spent years enduring places like this.

  This wasn’t a home. It was just another place, and she would survive it.

  4

  Into the Wild Abyss

  Ashley Barton had lost people before.

  When Tristan first disappeared, all of Snakebite thought they were detectives. Everyone could’ve sworn they’d just seen him; Mrs. Alberts from homeroom saw him down at the lake, Debbie who ran the Laundromat said Tristan came and picked up his mom’s linens just that afterno
on, Jared from the gas station drove past Tristan playing catch with his little brother. All forty-three students at Owyhee County High joined the search parties. Finding Tristan seemed inevitable to Ashley at first—there were only so many places a kid from Snakebite could go. Up until a month ago, the search parties had been going strong. But once Sheriff Paris declared the case cold, the parties began to dwindle. Now, a week after the vigil with no new leads, Ashley doubted this could go on much longer. Soon, she’d be the only one left looking. She tried to stamp down the desperation in her chest.

  Ashley made it to the parking lot outside the Lake Owyhee campground at half past five in the morning, armed with a travel mug of hibiscus tea and her best walking shoes. The sun was minutes from breaking the horizon, warming the dark sky with a hazy pink glow. Sheriff Paris stood in the center of the parking lot with a map of the Lake Owyhee wilderness splayed over the hood of his police cruiser.

  “Morning,” Ashley said, stifling a yawn. “It might be just me today.”

  Paris shook his head. “John was just brushing his teeth when I left the house. He’ll be here with the rest of your pack any minute.”

  Ashley took a long drink of tea. Gray mist sat low on the water, obscuring the woods across the lake. They’d searched the area around town three times over, but the other side of the lake was untouched. A strange, cloying dread churned in her chest when she looked at the trees across the shore. She was sure something was there. It watched her, dark and hungry and waiting. Some mornings, she heard a low hum that seemed to echo through Snakebite. Bug and Fran swore they didn’t hear it, but even now, if Ashley closed her eyes it was there.

  She focused on Paris.

  “The vigil kinda felt like a funeral.” Ashley twisted the end of her ponytail between her fingers. “I was worried people would stop showing up to these.”

  “Do you feel like he’s gone?” Paris asked.

  Ashley pressed her lips together. She couldn’t explain what she felt. Some days, it was like the memory of him followed her just out of sight. She’d thought it was grief—conversations where she swore she heard him answer, the faint smell of diesel fuel right before she fell asleep, the constant anticipation that she would see him standing on his front yard mowing the lawn when she drove past. She’d felt grief when her grandma died, when they’d put down her first cat, when her father left town when she was in the first grade and never came back. This was different. She’d never felt this kind of longing before. It was like Tristan was standing next to her. She thought of him and a sadness filled her up, deeper and colder than any she’d ever felt. It was a sadness that breathed. It wasn’t final.

  “No,” Ashley said.

  “That’s what I wanna hear.” Sheriff Paris checked his phone. “Other people might give up, but you kids still care about him. That’s what’ll help you find him. And as long as I’ve got mornings off, I’ll be out here, too.”

  “Thanks.”

  Down the highway, an engine roared. John Paris pulled into the campground parking lot with Fran, Bug, and his best friend, Paul Thomas, crouched in the bed of his truck. Like usual, the five of them gathered around Sheriff Paris’s map for a rundown of the ground they’d be searching, and like usual, they split into two groups to cover more ground. For weeks, it’d been John and Paul in one group and the three girls in the other.

  This time, Fran immediately latched onto John’s arm. “I feel like we should mix it up. See if we come up with something new.”

  There was no arguing with Fran, so Ashley and Bug trekked into the hills beyond the campground alone. Once they were far enough up the steep incline of the nearest hill, Bug let out a sigh like she’d been holding her breath since she arrived. She plopped down on a rock and tied her hair into a bushy red ponytail. “She’s being weird, right?”

  “Fran?” Ashley asked.

  Bug nodded. Ashley cupped her hand over her brow and looked out at the next hill over. Fran and John walked side by side, playfully shoving each other back and forth while Paul tagged along behind them. They weren’t searching for Tristan; they weren’t searching for anything but a way to lose the third wheel.

  “She likes him,” Ashley said. “It’s whatever. I wish she wouldn’t use searches to flirt.”

  “You could say something.”

  “So could you.”

  Bug ran her heel through a loose patch of gravel. “But you’re better at it. She’d probably listen to you.”

  “She’d listen to you, too.”

  “She never listens to me,” Bug groaned.

  Ashley tightened her ponytail. “I’ll talk to her later. Maybe.”

  They both knew she wouldn’t say anything. Ashley had been friends with Bug since she was in diapers and Fran since the Camposes moved to Snakebite in first grade. There weren’t a lot of other kids her age in town, which meant that knowing everyone was a default. But as soon as Fran came to town, their trio was so much more than friends by default. They were a three-headed beast. There was no Ashley without Fran and Bug. Every party at the cabin across the lake, every summer road trip, every greasy dinner at the Moontide—it wasn’t Snakebite without Bug and Fran by her side. It wasn’t home.

  Now, things were changing. It wasn’t just Tristan. Fran was drifting away, hanging at John Paris’s side, finding ways to be alone with him. Which left Bug either jealous of John, jealous of Fran, or jealous of some combination of the two. Ashley was sure there was a piece of Bug that wanted to fuse them all together and stop the drifting before it stuck, but it wasn’t that easy. College was on the horizon for Fran, and the ranch was on the horizon for Ashley. Bug still had two more years of high school, and she was looking at facing them alone. Quietly, the three of them were pulling apart. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just time. Maybe that was worse.

  Ashley looked across the hilltops at Fran and John. They’d successfully broken away from Paul, tucked behind a lone juniper tree, apparently under the impression that no one could see them. The early morning sunlight caught them there and Ashley felt a pang of longing in her stomach. She and Tristan had stolen moments like this before, ducked just out of sight. When she closed her eyes, Ashley could still hear the raspy sound of their breathless laughter.

  When she opened her eyes, something was different. There was a third shadow with John and Fran. Ashley narrowed her eyes. It was another face, wedged just between them, staring across the hills. Staring at Ashley.

  The world was too calm, too still, too silent.

  A voice breathed in her ear. “I am—”

  “Ashley,” Bug said.

  The world snapped back into focus. Ashley blinked and the shadow between John and Fran was gone. The morning was as wide and bright as it always was. Ashley’s heart raced, her lungs aching for air. It was just her imagination, but for a moment, she had been sure the shadow was shaped like Tristan.

  “Sorry,” Ashley said, rubbing her eyes. “I spaced out for a second. I … I think I’m just tired.”

  Bug gave her a sympathetic frown. “I have some of my mom’s melatonin if you wanna try that.”

  “I’m okay,” Ashley said. “Thanks, though.”

  The morning rolled on, but they found nothing. Ashley and Bug scoured their assigned area, turning over every rock, rifling through every cluster of Scotch broom, checking every dusty ravine, but Ashley knew without searching that Tristan wasn’t in these hills. She knew the sound of his heartbeat, the pattern of his footsteps, the small hush of his breath when he was about to speak. If he was this close, she would feel him.

  He was just out of her reach, but he still was.

  He still existed.

  He wasn’t gone yet.

  5

  Eat The Blues

  A knock sounded from the door between Logan’s room and her fathers’.

  She’d successfully converted her bed into a comforter cocoon, surrounded by an array of her favorite depression snacks. Most hardships only called for one: embarrassment was chips
dipped in pickle juice, anger was vanilla ice cream drizzled with soy sauce, and loneliness was bananas covered in Cheez Whiz.

  But tonight was a true rock bottom. Tonight required all three.

  “Come in,” Logan groaned.

  She minimized her tab of US road trip ideas and clicked off the TV. They walked into the room—Alejo with Brandon at his heels—to survey the damage. The motel room was stuffy and hot with the smell of mold and sweat.

  “The holy trinity all at once, huh?” Alejo whispered, eyeing the snack buffet. He sat on her mattress and popped a slice of Cheez Whiz banana into his mouth. Instantly, his nose wrinkled up and he forced himself to swallow. “Kids today have no standards.”

  “I have standards,” Logan said.

  “We heard Judy through the walls,” Alejo said. “Judy reruns. And don’t tell me the plot sucked you in. You and me already watched them all.”

  Logan flopped back against her pillow and the stifling scent of dust clouded up around her. “We’re in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of MAGA hat–wearers. Everyone is creepy and weird and I don’t wanna leave my room. But also my room sucks. I’m literally gonna die.”

  She’d only been in Snakebite for a week and already felt like she was in the vacuum of space. There was nothing to do here. The walls of her room were too close. Her mattress was too hard. The night sky outside her room was too big and she was sure she’d fall into it if she wasn’t careful. She was going to suffocate here without people to talk to. The next closest town was hours away and probably just as bad. She was miles from help, and tonight Logan felt every mile like fingers closing around her throat.

  “I did tell you it was gonna be hard,” Alejo said. He brushed a strand of Logan’s hair from her face.