What the Mountain Kept

WHAT THE MOUNTAIN KEPT

Some Secrets Never Leave the Woods

CHAPTER ONE

The dark came down faster in the Notch than it had any right to.

By six o’clock the ridge had swallowed the sun whole, turning the sky the color of a bruised plum, and by seven the spruce and hemlock had moved in close, walling off the dirt road, the campsite, and the narrow dirt turn-around where the two cars sat nose-to-tail like sleeping beasts.

Briony sat on an overturned log just far enough from the fire pit that the smoke didn’t sting her eyes, her knees drawn up under her oversized cable-knit sweater. The sweater smelled of cedar shavings and her mother’s laundry detergent—comforts from two hundred miles south in Northampton that felt, in the damp chill of the Green Mountains, thin as gauze.

Across the clearing, Sienna threw her head back and laughed. It was her party laugh: sharp, bright, and loud enough to scatter the crows that had been roosting along the stream bank.

“You’re full of shit, Nick,” Sienna said, swatting at the chest of the tall boy leaning over her shoulder. “There’s no way you walked across the reservoir spillway in the dark.”

“I swear to God,” Nick said. He had a beer clamped in one hand and the brim of his Red Sox cap turned backward, his forearms pale and corded in the firelight. “Two in the morning. Half a bottle of Captain in me. Hank had to fish my sneaker out with a stick.”

Hank, sitting on a rusted metal cooler with Marissa between his thighs, grunted in confirmation. He had his chin hooked over Marissa’s shoulder, his fingers casually hooked into the belt loops of her cutoffs, working the denim with a slow, proprietary rhythm that made Briony look down at her own wool socks.

Marissa caught Briony’s eye through the rising heat-shimmer of the flames and winked. It was the same look Marissa had given her at fraternity tailgates, at dorm pre-games, at the graduation mixer three nights ago in Amherst: Loosen up. We made it. Nobody’s taking attendance anymore.

Briony offered a tight, polite smile and held both hands around her enamel mug. There was only warm cider inside it, spiked with a thimble of spiced rum she hadn’t asked for and had no intention of finishing.

She had loved them for four years—Sienna with her sudden, storm-front rages and ferocious loyalties; Marissa with her easy beauty and the careless confidence with which she let men touch her—but out here, with their diplomas rolled into cardboard tubes in the trunks of their sedans, the distance between them felt sudden and vast. They moved through the world as though it were a room built entirely for their pleasure. Briony had spent twenty-two years suspecting the floorboards were rotted through.

“You’re awfully quiet over there, Cole,” Chris said.

He stepped around the perimeter of the fire and sat down on the other end of her log. He was the quietest of the three boys they had run into at the gas station off Route 100—Hank’s cousin, or a high school buddy, Briony hadn’t caught the exact pedigree. He wore a faded Carhartt jacket with the collar turned up against the mountain draft, his brown hair curling damply against the nape of his neck.

“Just thinking,” she said, shifting an inch to make room without seeming rude.

“Dangerous hobby,” Chris said. He popped the tab on a fresh can of seltzer, offering her the first sip with a brief, tentative lift of his brows. When she shook her head, he set it between his boots. “You don’t like the woods?”

“I like them fine,” she said softly. “They’re just... bigger up here than I thought.”

“Bigger than western Mass, anyway.” He looked around the clearing. Beyond the fire’s orange halo, the black trunks of the pines stood shoulder-to-shoulder, thick and impenetrable. “My uncle’s got a cabin about twenty miles north of here. You get off the logging roads, you can walk three days in any direction without crossing a telephone wire. Just rock and moss and deadfall.”

“That doesn’t make you nervous?”

Chris considered it, watching the sparks climb into the branches above them. “Used to. When I was a kid. Then you realize nothing in the woods really gives a damn about you. A bear just wants the berries. The cold just wants to be cold. It’s not personal.”

“That’s supposed to be comforting?”

He smiled—a small, crooked thing that softened the blunt line of his jaw. “I guess it depends on what you’re running from.”

“We’re not running from anything,” Briony said, though the words tasted faintly false even to her. “We’re celebrating.”

“Right,” he murmured. “The grand commencement.”

Over by the four-person tent, Hank whispered something in Marissa’s ear. She giggled—a wet, breathy sound—and let him pull her to her feet by her wrists. They disappeared through the tent flap without a backward glance, the zipper teeth screeching like an insect as Hank sealed them inside. A moment later, the nylon wall shuddered as someone’s shoulder hit it from within.

Sienna tossed her empty can into the brush. “Come on, Nick. You promised you’d show me where that trail goes down to the swimming hole.”

“It’s pitch black, Si,” Nick said, though he was already grinning, his hand sliding under the hem of her fleece.

“That’s why God invented flashlights, genius. Move.”

They stumbled into the tree line together, their flashlight beam bouncing crazily against the hemlock boughs until the undergrowth swallowed them, leaving only the dry crackle of twigs under their sneakers and Sienna’s stifled laughter drifting back on the wind.

The clearing went suddenly, sharply quiet.

The fire popped, spitting a shower of orange embers into the dirt. The smell of woodsmoke was heavy, almost suffocating, mixed with the sharp green scent of damp ferns and crushed pine needles.

Briony set her mug down on the log. Her neck felt cold where the wind had worked its way under her hair.

“You want another cider?” Chris asked gently. “I could heat some up on the camp stove.”

“No,” she said, pulling her sweater sleeves down over her knuckles. “No, thank you, Chris. I think I’m just tired. The drive took a lot out of me.”

“Sure. Of course.” He stood up, hands tucked into his jacket pockets, looking suddenly awkward in the silence left behind by the others. “It was nice talking to you, Briony. Seriously. It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t feel the need to yell over the music.”

“It was nice talking to you too.”

She stood, brushing bark dust from the seat of her jeans. She didn’t look toward the large tent where Marissa and Hank were already rustling, the rhythmic creak of an air mattress audible through the thin polyester.

Her own tent—a narrow, lime-green one-person wedge she had bought at an outlet store specifically so she wouldn’t have to share—was pitched twenty yards away, tucked under the low-hanging branches of an old sugar maple near the edge of the clearing. It looked terribly fragile from here, a little nylon cocoon surrounded by miles of ancient granite and dark timber.

“Hey,” Chris called after her, his voice low.

Briony stopped, turning. He was still standing by the fire, the orange light carving deep shadows into his face.

“Did you guys see a truck pass by earlier? On the access road?”

Briony frowned, trying to remember the drive up the switchbacks. “Just that white county cruiser down by the reservoir bridge. Around four o’clock.”

“Right,” Chris said, rubbing the back of his neck. “The sheriff. Thought I heard an engine idling up on the ridge road a half-hour ago, but... probably just a logger heading back to town.”

“Probably,” she said.

Yet as she turned away, a strange prickle traveled up the marrow of her spine—that ancient, irrational sensation of being measured from behind.

She paused before unzipping her tent and looked out past the yellow circle of the maple leaves.

The woods were utterly still. The wind had dropped, leaving the spruce boughs heavy and motionless against the black sky. Between two pale birch trunks fifty feet up the rise, the shadows seemed denser, thicker than the rest of the night—a solid wedge of dark that didn’t tremble when the fire flared.

Briony squinted, her breath hitching in her throat.

For a second, half a heartbeat, she thought she saw the faint, dull reflection of firelight caught on metal—a button, a buckle, the clean curve of a lens.

Then an owl called from somewhere deep in the ravine, a low, hollow who-who-who, and the illusion broke. It was only the knotted burl of a dead spruce, black and wet with mountain rot.

Get inside, she told herself, shivering violently as the damp air settled into her clothes. You’re being stupid. You’re twenty-two years old and you’re still afraid of the dark.

She unzipped the tent flap, crawled onto her sleeping pad, and zipped the nylon shut behind her, pulling both metal pulls together until they clicked.

Inside, the world smelled of polyurethane and her own cold breath. She didn't light her lantern. She stripped down in the dark, her skin goose-pimpling instantly in the mountain air, and pulled her dry flannel pajamas from her pack before sliding deep into the mummy bag.

Outside, thirty yards away, she could hear the low murmur of Chris’s voice as he spoke to himself, the scrape of a camp shovel tossing dirt onto the coals to bank the fire for the night. Further off, down toward the creek, came the brief, high gasp of Sienna’s voice, swallowed almost instantly by the rush of water over stone.

Briony rolled onto her side, pulling the drawstring of the hood tight around her ears until only her nose and eyes were exposed.

The nylon overhead was thin as paper. Above it, the mountain stood immense, cold, and entirely indifferent, holding them all in the palm of its hand while the last red ember went black in the dirt.