They slip out into the night. Riley slides her thumbnail into the crack and tries to ease the locket open. It stays firmly closed. It has never opened, and she kind of likes that about it. She can imagine whatever she wants inside.
Oliver walks slowly. He’s already tired. Riley breaks off pieces of a Powerbar and feeds him in fragments as they go. Earlier this evening, she broke the lock off the pantry and the storage cupboard and raided them.
She has made it final. They can never come back to Cousin’s house.
They catch the bus on the corner of Front Street, blinking in the neon glare. The driver has a kind, pouched face like an old orangutan. Riley feels Oliver wanting to talk to him. He doesn’t get much company. She draws him gently to the back of the empty bus. ‘If the demon is looking for us,’ Riley says, ‘we should try not to attract attention.’
It’s a twenty-minute ride to the edge of the Rocky Mountain National Park. Riley feels the driver’s eyes on them in the rear-view mirror. She knows that she and Oliver are too young to be out alone at this time of night. As the bus pulls up to the dark gates he looks at her and says, ‘Someone meeting you?’
‘Our mom’s just started as a maid over there,’ Riley says brightly, clutching Oliver’s hand tight. She points at the blocky stack of a motel. Behind it, the Rocky Mountains rear. ‘Her shift finishes now and she’s got the car. Got to give the keys back to my aunt Mimi, she doesn’t drive no more ’cause she don’t know her left from right, never did since the boom hit her head, on that TV show she did catering for back in—’
‘All right, all right,’ the bus driver says hastily. Riley does have this talent – has it for days. She can lie.
Riley bends and pretends to tie her shoe until the red eyes of the bus are closed by dark distance. ‘Ok,’ she says. ‘Time to go!’ Oliver trots happily beside her. He doesn’t seem to mind about the demon anymore. Real life is always half made-up for kids, anyway.
They go quickly past the empty ticket booths, the ranger station. Oliver doesn’t even need to duck to walk under the traffic barrier.
Inside the park everything is different. Quiet but breathing – like it’s been waiting for them. A bird calls in the night.There won’t bemountain lions this close to the gate, Riley reminds herself.Or bears. There won’t.
She reaches into her pack and pulls it out. Oliver gasps. He’s shocked but also thrilled. ‘We don’t touch Cousin’s gun,’ he recites.
‘I do. You a hundred per cent don’t.’ Riley has watched Cousin enter the code to the gun safe through her eyelashes, over and over. She knew she might need it.
She makes sure the safety is on and slips it into her jacket pocket. It’s only a .22 but it could help.In the dark? Against a 700-pound bear? Shut up, brain.There were other guns in the safe, gleaming ranks of sheeny metal. Riley took this old one with its chipped wooden grip and its pitch to the left. She knows a little about how guns behave. Her mother always said,they’re always looking for something to bite and they don’t much care what.So Riley didn’t take a really powerful one with big jaws.
‘Is it for the demon?’ Oliver asks.
‘Yup. I’ll shoot it dead if it follows us.’
He nods, satisfied. Riley puts on the flashlight and it throws a wide beam up the narrow trail that leads away from the road. Uphill all the way, to above the treeline, to the ridge. Out of the forest they’ll be silhouetted against the moon but they’ll be able to see anyone coming too.
She takes the directions carefully from her pocket. Noon wrote them on paper already soft with wear. Riley touches it with care.
DAY ONE
WEST GATE – TURN RIGHT
CLIMB UP THE MOONLIT RIDGE
FOLLOW MARKED TRAIL
TRAPPER CABIN
DAY TWO
14 MILES
STRIKE WEST OFF MAIN TRAIL. LILAC IS THE DOOR
DEER TRAIL
PASS THE CLEARING BENEATH TREE LIKE A SHIP
DAY THREE
DEER TRAIL
OVER THE MOUNTAIN PASS WHERE PEAKS HAVE EARS LIKE CATS
