Ashes, Ashes

15 - SOS

Dawn and Richard followed the rutted tracks in the snow, trudging out past the gate and vanishing around a bend. I stood in the cabin's doorway, watching after them, and I might have just stood there all day -- frozen in inaction -- if Abby hadn't come behind me, hand on my shoulder. 

"We were going to find a phone?" 

"Yeah." I tried to shake myself out of my reverie. We needed to call for 

(Hi 911 yes please I need help I think my friend swallowed some pills) 

help. We were in the middle of nowhere, but it was New Mexico nowhere, not the Alaskan tundra or something. There were towns, county sheriffs. A couple hours, tops, and someone would be here to rescue us, and all we'd have to do is just sit tight. 

Sit tight and try not to think about the carved-up body in the bathroom. 

"Do you really think...you know. That Parker did that?" Abby asked, as if reading my mind. 

I shrugged, stiff. "You never know what people are capable of," I said, and I was thinking about myself, and the way Laurel had gone cold and boneless in my arms before I called 911. "Or what's going on in their heads." 

"What happened last night, anyway?" 

"I wish I could remember." I sighed, and started outside. "Come on. Let's go look for the office." 

The manager's office was, thankfully, on the opposite end of the campground from the bathroom. The building crouched near the front gate, a little out-of-the-way outbuilding that looked more like a shed than anything. I hadn't even noticed it when we came in despite driving right past it. 

"Whatever happened to visitor centers?" I grumbled, circling the building to look for the door. "This looks like a dump." 

"Beats me. Parker was the one who..." Abby trailed off, as if just realizing something, and a spike of chill rammed up my spine just as she said it. 

Of course. Parker was the one who had made the arrangements. I'd called him to talk about the plan, because however we all felt about him, Parker had known Laurel the longest. And he was the responsible one, the planner, the one you could trust to know all the details and plan for all the contingencies. 

And if he had killed Liza -- and was that really a question? did I honestly doubt that at this point? -- then it was a killer who had made all of the arrangements that brought us to this place. A killer who had selected this particular campground, knowing there would be no manager on-site and no other campers. A killer who had insisted on bringing us here in his only vehicle. 

Suddenly it seemed so obvious, so painfully clear. 

I turned, meeting Abby's eye, and both of us just stared at each other for a minute. 

"Let's hurry," she said. 

I agreed. 

I tried the door, and of course it was locked. It rattled in its frame but refused to budge. I scooted sideways, rubbing the frosty window with my sleeve and pressed my face against the window, hands cupped on either side as I tried to get a good look inside. My breath fogged against the glass. 

"I think I can see a phone in there," I said. "If we break the window or something, we can probably get in there and call for help?" 

Abby joined me at the window, standing on her toes to peer through the fog-dampened glass. "Seems like as good an idea as any," she said. 

I pulled away from the window and looked around for something to use. My gaze landed on a large stone, its gray surface peeking out from the snow on the path, and I nudged it with the toe of my shoe before bending to retrieve it. It was heavy and slick in my hands, which were already going numb from the cold. I wished I'd thought to pack gloves. 

Cradling the heavy stone close to my body, I lurched back to the side of the manager shack and, with a grunt, twisted to heave it sideways, flinging it at the window like a misshapen discus. 

The glass shattered. The sound made me wince, cringing back from the open window. In the snowy silence, it seemed like the sound could carry for miles, like a shout: Here we are. Come and get us! 

I looked over my shoulder, paranoid and shivering, but there was no sign of Parker. 

Abby tugged on my sleeve. "Hey. Come on. Pay attention." She pointed at the window. 

"Right." I shrugged out of my jacket, gooseflesh rising up on my arms immediately as cold air touched the skin. I folded it over the broken glass, providing a safe ledge to climb through. I gave Abby an apologetic look. "I don't know if I can climb through that." 

She managed to hide her irritation, only barely, before sighing. "It's fine. I'll climb through and get the door open." 

"You don't have to," I said. "You can just climb in and test the phone..." 

"And then climb back out the shattered glass death trap for the fun of it? No thank you." 

She had a point. Despite my jacket laid over the windowsill, the broken edges of glass looked dangerous, hanging down from the top of the frame and glinting like so many sharp teeth, a mouth ready to bite down and devour. 

"Come give me a boost." 

I helped to hoist her onto the windowsill. She balanced awkwardly on it for a moment before lurching forward, gracelessly sliding down into the room. My jacket snagged on the sill, tangling in the broken glass, and I could hear it rip, stuffing leaking out of the newly torn wounds. 

"Okay?" I asked. 

Abby crouched on the floor, straightening slowly. "Yeah. Except, ugh, it stinks in here." 

I leaned forward, sticking my head inside, and the odor caught my nose immediately. It smelled like necrosis. I've smelled the same odor clinging to the scrubs of nurses coming down from the cancer ward, that rancid stench of dying tissue. My eyes watered, and I held back a retch. 

"Oh, fucking gross," Abby cried. 

"What?" 

I leaned forward again, scanning the room, trying to make out what she was seeing. 

The light that came through the small side windows was barely enough to illuminate the small outbuilding, and I squinted into the semi-darkness. There was the cluttered desk, a mess of scattered papers and food wrappers and the phone I had seen through the window. There was a cluster of cleaning supplies crammed into a corner. And, beyond that, in the gloom, I could just make out the toe of a pointed shoe, the hem of a trouser leg, poking out from the opening of what might have been a closet. 

I swallowed hard. 

"Abby," I warned, as she ventured closer to the body. "Just. Just try the phone, okay?" 

I leaned forward into the window frame, thinking of climbing over onto it, considering trying to heave myself up through it and knowing it would be pointless. 

"There's nobody supposed to be here," Abby was saying, in a tone that was edging dangerously close to hysteria. "Parker said. Parker said the manager wasn't..." 

"Parker lied," I said, breathing the words aloud that I knew we both had been thinking. "About a lot of things. Please. The phone."

But even as she drew herself reluctantly away from the body -- the manager, I figured, the custodian, whoever was supposed to be here keeping an eye on this place, I knew it seemed weird to think that somebody would let us stay here without supervision no matter what our special circumstances might be -- I felt any hope of rescue slip away. 

And, sure enough. I watched as if in slow motion as Abby lifted the handset from the receiver, holding it up to her ear. I didn't hear a dial tone in the breathy silence. She looked across the room at me, an expression of despair in her large dark eyes. She set the handset down and lifted the phone itself, a business model, out of date by over a decade. The cord trailed down from it by about six inches before breaking off, the ends torn and ragged.