Jack shuddered. “Thanks.”
“I tell it like I see it.” Boris shrugged. “So, you think this body is gonna lift your curse?”
“It’s a theory I’m working on.”
“Maybe you could just try leaving again tomorrow.”
“You won’t believe me, but I already tried that.”
Boris shrugged again. “Maybe I do”
Jack stared at him, incredulous. “What, really?”
“Yeah, sure. You seem like you know what you’re talking about.” He leaned back in the chair and folded his arms behind his head, entirely too relaxed. Finally, he looked at Jack and said, “I’m done in an hour. I’ve got a shovel in my trunk. Let’s go.”
“Wait, are you serious?”
“Sure.” Boris rolled his eyes. “I’m fucking cursed, too.”
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Jack followedBoris to the parking lot, heart in his throat. A light rain misted down around them. The streetlamps reflected on the asphalt.
A part of him worried that Boris might just hit him over the head with the shovel and call it a night. But Boris was silent, reserved when they met in the lobby and only said, “You coming?” when Jack hesitated.
Jack scrambled after him.
Boris’s car was ancient and dented. One headlight looked like it had been bashed by a baseball bat. A crack reached from one end of the windshield to the other like a creeping vine. The passenger seat headrest was mummified in duct tape. Jack doubted there were any seatbelts.
Scraping noises. Swearing. Then the driver’s side door swung open, and the pin tumblers clicked. Cautiously, Jack pulled the door.
A beer can rolled out.
Ugh. Next time, he’d ask someone else for help.
“We doing this, or not?” Boris grunted. Something crunched as he sat down.
“Uh, we’re doing it,” said Jack, sliding onto the vinyl seat, trying not to worry about the origins of the stains, and whether or not they might be sticky.
“Good,” said Boris. The engine wailed to life, and they screeched out of the parking lot.
The trailhead was only a couple of miles away, but the minutes ticked on sluggishly. Trees blurred past, barely illuminated by the streetlamps. A thick, white mist obscured the lines on the road, crawled beneath the cars parked along the sidewalk.
The radio station kept going staticky, rock music and weather updates overlapping. Boris banged on the dashboard. The static intensified into something that sounded like microphone feedback. Jack reached over and turned it off just as Boris prepared to punch the dash again.
The sounds of the rain and road accompanied them into the woods, where the streets wound tightly and the fog grew thicker.
“So, uh,” said Jack, trying to disguise his burning curiosity as polite interest. “You’re cursed?”
Boris’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Something like that. I dunno.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Dreams,” said Boris. “Weird fucking dreams.”
“What kind of?—”
