1
This had to be a joke. Leave it to Cody to choose the road most likely to send me tumbling into a ravine. Every tendon stood out in stark relief as I wrestled the Jeep around yet another sharp bend, the tires skidding on loose gravel.
The grimace plastered on my face probably matched the cracks in this sorry excuse for asphalt. It looked like someone had slapped a thin layer of pavement over a deer trail with the world’s largest spatula, then tried to pass the resulting mess off as a road.
“This is how it starts,” I muttered under my breath. “No map, no cell service, and a gas tank that’s practically laughing at me. Cue ominous music.”
The woods pressed in on both sides of the road, thick and dark, like they were trying to swallow me whole. The late afternoon sun barely filtered through the branches, casting long shadows that danced across the windshield.
Cody hadn’t mentioned an off-grid trip when he’d roped me into this. “It’ll be fun,” he’d said. “A little ghost-hunting adventure to shake things up.” What he’d failed to mention was that his idea of “fun” involved driving halfway to Canada on roads that looked like they hadn’t seen maintenance since before I was born.
The car jolted as I hit another pothole, and I bit back a curse. If this road didn’t kill me, Cody might when I finally got to the lake and let him have it. Assuming I made it there.
Two hours of climbing, leveling-off, and twisting through turns, while Whiteface, Saranac Lake, and Vermontville faded in my rearview. More unmarked roads and more glimpses of unknown bodies of water came and went before I finally found the right turnoff.
Was it, though? I double-checked Cody’s last text, then tried shooting one his way, just to make sure.
Still no service. Great. I thought I’d left the cell phone dead zone back in Warrensburg.
I tossed the phone on the seat, then slumped back, sighing. Should I try it or turn back? The engine ticked in time with my mounting frustration. This looked like the right turnoff. Or the way to it… maybe?
Not that I could ask for directions. Nothing lay before me but a field of bedraggled weeds and frostbitten Queen Anne’s Lace. From now on, Cody doesn’t pick our locations. After making that mental note, I threw the SUV into gear.
Leaning over the wheel, I squinted at what looked like a clearing up ahead. Yellow tape fluttered in the breeze near the edge of the road.
I slowed down, but my pulse quickened as I neared the broken gate. Was that—crime scene tape? Torn pieces of it clung to the splintered gateposts. Though old and faded, there was no mistaking it—or what it meant.
Cody hadn’t said this was a crime scene—past or present—but then again, he wouldn’t have. He never told us what we were investigating, believing we’d be more receptive to paranormal activity as blank slates. No matter where we went, he’d recount its backstory only after we’d poked around—and only in piecemeal.
What kind of vibe was he going for here?
Although I’d never say it to his face—better for all involved to keep his ego in check—his eccentric approach had its merits. Well, it worked for me, anyway, even if the sound of that tape was setting my teeth on edge.
What was he getting us into this time?
I looked away, rubbing my face with both hands. Of all the places to look for ghosts! Would our site be in the same condition as the gate? Broken and abandoned, left to rot amid ragweed and goldenrod at the edge of a lake?
After freeing my ponytail from the headrest, I glanced over at it again.
The breeze rattled the tape, lifting the edges in a slow, ghostly wave. I tracked its movement, watching the way it curled and twisted, the sound sharp and papery in the otherwise still air.
I looked away for a fraction of a second. Maybe blinked, I don’t know. But when I turned back, the tape had vanished.
No slow unraveling, no snap of plastic drifting away on the wind. Just—gone.
A chill spiraled me, slow and insidious. I sat back, pressing my fingers into the worn leather of the wheel. Did I imagine that? No. I couldn’t have. I’d heard it. Seen it. I could still picture that tape plastered against the post, bright yellow against the gray splinters.
I shook my head. I was just on edge. That was all. Too much time spent in places where the past refused to stay buried.
Even so, I checked the mirror, scanning the road behind me before turning back to the gate.
No more tape. Just drooping weeds and dead grass.
Still, I knew I hadn’t imagined it. This wasn’t my first weird rodeo, or rubbing shoulders with what I liked to call “déjà boo.”
Usually, I’d get a glimpse, a flash of insight, there one minute, then gone like scent on the wind. The peculiar staying power and solidity of this premonition bothered me, however. Could it be a message? A warning?
Warning. The word rang through me, brassy and dissonant, its echoes radiating out like shockwaves from a gong strike.
The gate, the tape: a crime. This had been a crime scene. It all fit, which made me squirm in my seat. Murder or suicide? Either way, someone had died here. I didn’t have a sense of who yet, still queasy from the vision, but the spirits of those dead didn’t go quietly. If they left at all.
I closed my eyes and steadied myself against the door, hoping to stem the vertigo that always accompanied my déjà boo episodes. Once the uncomfortable sensation passed, I let out a slow breath and eased my Wrangler into the narrow space between the posts. My hands were still clammy against the wheel, my stomach unsettled, but I ignored it. The world had righted itself—mostly.
It never seemed fair for someone who had died horribly to be tethered, forever doomed to haunt the place they’d taken their last breath. Alone, forgotten in the wake of the next big trauma, pushed to the margins of the world to fade into obscurity. It was easy to believe how so many of those ghosts grew bitter and vindictive.
I paused just long enough to scan the dirt track that meandered through a meadow and into the woods. Something about its quietness, its utter lack of movement felt… off. It reminded me of a poem about things gradually disappearing until only their memory remained.
A shiver crept through me.
At first glance, nothing about this place screamed death or murder. The road, bathed in golden afternoon light, could have been plucked from a nature magazine. The birch and hardwoods here, still resplendent in their autumn coats of crimson and acid green, were postcard perfect.
And yet.
In the distance, evergreen peaks reared through a thinning and more withered canopy. I squinted, shading my eyes with one hand. No sign of a roofline yet, but then, there were so many trees.
Too many.
As if the forest wasn’t just standing there but standing in the way of something. Concealing it. Holding it back. The thought sent another slow, crawling twist through my gut, adding weight to the rock already lodged there.
“Sarah…”
The whisper threaded through the trees, the voice as thin and worn as the tape on the gate. Fraying and ragged at the ends, as if the throat voicing it had forgotten how to speak.
I jolted in my seat, the restraint biting into my hip as my torso twisted toward the sound. My pulse pounded in my ears, drowning out the rational part of my brain, the part that told me this was just the wind.
I leaned forward, straining to hear more.
Nothing. Only the rustling leaves and the distant creak of branches.
A coincidence, I told myself as the wind teased my hair. Just an auditory trick. The same way people hear voices in the static on an EVP, the way the mind connects dots where none should exist. The brain’s desperate attempt to impose meaning on life’s randomness.
The explanation should have reassured me. It didn’t.
A twig snapped—not far off. It wasn’t the gentle crackle of settling wood, but something deliberate, too close.
I reached for the door lock, my fingers trembling as I pressed it down, then rolled up the window. With one hand still gripping the wheel, I cranked the radio volume high enough to drown out whatever might still be listening.
My insides, a tangled wreck ever since Cody announced plans to spend the weekend here, were getting knottier by the minute.
