“He doesn’t. He left me, remember.” The words squeezed against my heart.
“And yet he keeps saving you,” she muttered bitterly. She stabbed the radio on, music filled the car. She turned up the volume so loud we couldn’t talk.
“That’s rude,” I said.
She smirked and turned it up even louder.
I thought about Karson.
I always thought about Karson. Every time I thought of him, or specifically the loss of him, a tendril in my heart snapped.
The road was deserted. The woods seemed desolate. I watched the fog smother everything, even the darkness couldn’t escape its gloomy clutches. Like some visual metaphor was purposely sent to shape my mind, a profound revelation flared. If I was the darkness, Karson was the fog. I might have long moments of respite but while I remained here he’d come back, again and again, wrap his mist around my soul, seep into my heart, rush through my veins, filling every part of me until there was nothing left but him, and then disappear again. Leaving me distraught and empty.
I can’t do it. I’d had enough of people walking out of my life. I had to take charge. I had to leave Church Heights if I was to feel like I had some type of power over my own life. If I stayed I was guaranteed more pain. I could train anywhere and come back when it was required. I’d pack my bags as soon as I got home and leave in the early break of dawn while they slept, before Ethan could change my mind.
The thought of leaving everyone I loved was gut-wrenching. I’d come to this town a few short months ago, alone and broken, on the wistful hope that this was the place to start again. For a moment, a flickering moment in time, it was perfect and wonderful, but I lost that. Perhaps I was destined to always lose that. Destined to be alone. My life up to this point, all thosepeople who threw me to the curb, were merely preparing me for it. I’d leave as I’d come, alone and broken, but changed, stronger. Yet, mercilessly, still not strong enough. But for my own sanity it had to be done. I’d always love him. Maybe when I came back next I could face him without feeling pain and searing emptiness; although, instinctively, I doubted it.
The sign sprung to my mind, like a name you’d forgotten at the time but which springs up out of the blue later on.
A place of no return.
I moved my eyes back to the road. Over a bank there was something white and solid, much thicker and sharper than fog up ahead. I squinted into the dark. We drove closer, our headlights torched the night. I realized what it was. My heart leaped and began to boom in my chest. The back end of the white car emerged from the mist. Its headlights shot forward, sending a frozen, pale wash into a graveyard of gray. It’d slammed into a tree. The windscreen was smashed. The bonnet was caved in, the middle pushed back. It was a small car without much leg room even before the bonnet had crumbled up. Someone would be seriously injured.
“Stop the car,” I cried out. Monique stabbed the music off and slowed, but she didn’t stop. We drove past slowly, our heads twisted to the wreckage like morbid observers. A driver was slumped over the wheel.
We drove past.
“Monique, stop the car right now,” I yelled. The engine died and the car stopped abruptly. Monique pumped the accelerator three times with a thud, thud, thud. The car didn’t move. Did I just stop the car? I had no time to think about it, I got out and ran toward the wreckage.
“Amy, no. Stop. It could be a trap,” Monique called out.
“Call 911, the driver’s hurt.”
Monique grabbed my arm, wrenching me to a stop, not even two steps from the car.
“Wait in the car, lock the doors, I’ll check it out,” she snapped.
She disappeared like a spirit into the fog. I didn’t go back to the car. I didn’t completely trust Monique to help. They’d be bleeding and I didn’t know her well enough to know how she’d respond.
The fizz of leaking radiator water cooling in the mist and a ticking from the engine were the only sounds. No owl hooted, not even crickets chirped tonight. They were silent, as if even the forest held its breath.
The mist swirled and writhed as if it was partaking in a sacrificial dance. There was no wind to drive it . . . it was almost as if it was alive. Fear began to creep through my veins, filling me softly. Chilling my skin.
It is said Hialeah’s ghost haunts the mountains.
I was being foolish, a ghost didn’t cause the car crash. The driver was speeding.
Run.
I couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. I turned a slow circle. My mouth dried. I couldn’t see anyone but I felt it, a cold prickle across the nape of my neck. The feeling of eyes on me. We were not alone. A tsunami swept down my spine.
“Monique,” I croaked.
Run.
“Get back to the car,” Monique shrieked.
A whip of wind fluttered past my ears. There were three quick snapping sounds. Monique’s shape appeared from the white mist. She began to stagger, as if she were blind drunk onboard a swaying vessel. Her hand shook as she reached for three darts poking from the side of her neck. She hit the ground hard.
