“I found something,” I called, and the others shuffled over. The camera was heavy, old-fashioned, the kind that belonged in a tourist’s fanny pack. I pressed the power button. Nothing. The screen stayed black.
“Try the card,” Henry said, reaching for it. “They always use SD cards. Even when the battery’s dead, the card still holds everything.” He fumbled with the little door, hands shaking, and popped out a sliver of blue plastic.
Beth lit up. “We can use mine! It takes the same kind of SD card.” Beth dug through her bag, produced a digital camera, and slid the card inside. It beeped, screen glowing faintly.
Beth grinned. “Oh, it’s got video.” She thumbed the controls, scrolling through images of the woods, a man’s dirty nails, blurry shots of the sky. Then she hit play on a shaky, dark clip.
She muttered something, and the image jumped, suddenly projected onto the side of a birch tree. The rest of us crowded in, watching as the movie flickered to life.
Onscreen, Cody stumbled through the trees, panting. The angle was weird. He was clearly pointing a camera at himself from an arm’s length away. The forest was wilder, thick with shadows, but you could see he was being careful, not running but picking his way through. He talked as he walked, but the mic didn’t pick up most of it. The timestamp in the corner ticked forward.
Then the camera lurched, and Cody fell. The lens went crazy, showing only brown leaves and flashes of blue sky. He must have dropped it; the picture steadied on a tangle of branches. There was a scraping, a groan, and then a close-up of Cody’s face, smeared with dirt and terror.
“I don’t know where I am,” video Cody whispered. “If you find this, tell my mom I’m sorry. I was just planning to explore a little. To spend some time alone in the woods with nature, but I took a wrong turn, or maybe there’s something wrong with these woods, I’m not sure. I just can’t find my way back. I–I–”
He crawled away from the camera, but still in perfect view of it, dragging a leg behind him. The video jumped ahead in little bursts. At one point, he tried to stand, failed, and screamed. The sound cut through even without the volume. His hands moved to his ankle and came back up, covered in blood. He curled into a ball and just lay there, breathing ragged, until night fell.
A raccoon snuffled the camera. Its beady eyes reflected the light, then it toddled away. In the background, we could see Cody, still not moving. His shirt was covered in blood, but there was no dramatic attack from a predator, just a slow, inevitable sinking into the ground.
The last shot was of him still laying there, but he was still, deathly still, and then nothing.
We all just stood there for a minute, watching the frozen image of clouds.
Beth was the first to speak. “That’s it? He just died? There’s no murder, no secret?”
The ghost watched his own movie, lips pressed tight. “I didn’t remember,” he said, and for the first time he looked like a person I could have known in real life. “I always thought I was killed. But I just got lost.”
Daniel grunted. “Happens more than you think. Nature’s not very forgiving.”
“I can go, then? My business is finished?” the ghost asked, almost to himself. “It’s okay?”
“You said you’d help us find Alice’s grandma,” I reminded him. “You keep that promise, then you’re free to go wherever.”
He nodded. The light seemed to change around him, softer now.
Daniel circled the remains, big hands brushing the tree bark, the ground, the air. It looked random, but I knew him well enough to see the pattern. “I’ll tell the sheriff where to find you,” he said to the bones. “Somebody will bring you home.”
The ghost gave a thin smile. “Thanks.”
He led us deeper into the woods, past a gully and a stand of pines that looked exactly like every other stand of pines in this part of the country. We walked for a while, nobody saying much, the mood like after a funeral where everyone’s waiting for sandwiches and cake.
Finally, we saw a structure. A shack made of tin and tar paper at the edge of a clearing. Alice stopped, breath coming in little hitches, and Henry squeezed her hand.
The door opened before we could knock. A woman stood there, older than I’d expected, her hair in a wild halo. She wore a patchwork robe, and her eyes were milky, but sharp. She saw Alice, and her face broke into a thousand wrinkles of joy.
“Alice!” she shouted. “Is that you?”
Alice ran to her, and they hugged tightly. The woman petted Alice’s hair, kissed her cheeks, said her name over and over.
We hung back, not wanting to crowd the moment. Daniel stood guard, arms folded, while Beth wiped her eyes. Henry grinned at me, sheepish.
The ghost hovered near the porch, watching. His edges were already blurring, lightening at the corners.
“Thank you,” he said, nodding to me. “For helping me remember.”
The fog was gone. The trees didn’t look haunted, just regular old trees with leaves about to drop for the season. The weight I hadn’t known I was carrying melted away, replaced by something lighter.
“That’s what we do,” I said. “We help people find their way home.”
