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Chapter One – Ash
My head pounded, and I asked myself: did you really think this was a good idea? Of course shit was going south. You saw the warning signs, and you chose to ignore them. You get what you get, and you deserve it all.
My body didn’t want to cooperate with me as I ran from the cabin. Spend the weekend at my boyfriend’s cabin in the middle of the woods. Right. Because absolutely nothing could go wrong. I’d told Mom that I was staying with Kelsey for the weekend, proud of myself that I was finally eighteen. An adult. I shouldn’t have had to lie to her about it, but if she knew the truth, if she knew my boyfriend was thirty-five years old, she wouldn’t have approved.
For good reason too, as it turned out.
My heart pounded in my chest as I pushed open the screen door and emerged into the crisp, clean air of the hilly mountains around us. In the middle of nowhere, basically. Shit out of luck in every way, no matter how you looked at it. Didn’t have his car keys, didn’t have my phone—everything was in the cabin, left and abandoned, as I hadn’t had enough time to grab it. All I had was me.
I would have to do.
I sprinted off the steps of the cabin, running as fast as I could away from it, full force speed I didn’t even know I was capable of. I went around the back, knowing he’d probably think I went straight out. The road was right ahead, a few miles away, but I knew it curved and winded in these mountains. I’d come across the road soon enough in the valley. I was ninety percent certain there was a gas station somewhere along the road, though once I reached the road, it was anyone’s guess which direction.
This was all a guessing game, a game of prediction. Who would win? I couldn’t say, but I hoped it would be me. If I lost…I just might lose more than my life. My dignity, my sanity. Everything I had.
It was a miracle my clothes were clean, even more of a miracle that I was still running, given the state of my anxiety. What I saw…it was real, and what’s worse, Ray was serious. I’d known he had a bit of a bad streak, but I never thought…never imagined he—
I was maybe an acre away from the log cabin when the ground became uneven, and the tip of my shoe dug into the dirt. I was moving too fast to catch myself, and before I knew it, my body tumbled to the dirt below. My hands caught myself, but not before I saw what lay around me…what was before me.
All around me. Seemingly going on for miles—but that was just my frantic, freaked-out brain. In reality, it didn’t go on for miles on end; it was big enough to hold them, though. He must’ve cut down the trees in the area, for this was the one spot the sunlight was able to stream through, to illuminate just how much shit I’d gotten myself into.
What I’d tripped on? A big mound of dirt.
To be more specific, a huge-ass mound of dirt, surrounded by other mounds of dirt, that seemed to be exactly the size a human would be, if they were dumped unceremoniously in unnamed and unmarked graves. And after what I’d seen in the basement, what Ray had tried to make me do…I knew that was exactly what they were.
Graves.
Fifteen of them, arranged in three rows of five.
The one in the basement would be sixteen…or I would be, if I didn’t get my ass up and moving.
I didn’t want to be number sixteen. I didn’t want today to be the last day of my life. What eighteen-year-old woke up and thought: today’s a great day to die?
Though I was behind the house, I still heard the front door burst open. Ray called for me, obviously in pain, “Ash, amorcito, where are you? These woods are no place for a girl like you.”His shouting was labored, and it was because of me.
A girl like me.
Because he knew me so well. In a way, I supposed he did, although I used to think I knew him, too. He was fire, he was life. He was the reason I got up in the morning and the reason I often went to bed upset. He was hot and cold, and we pushed and pulled against each other like polar opposites sometimes. We might break up, but we always got back together. Foolishly, at some point, I thought he was the one.
Hah. The one. There was no one for me. If I survived this, I’d be forever alone. It’s what I deserved.My instincts always led me down the wrong path, the opposite direction of where I should be going. Mom would be ashamed of me.
No more boyfriends. No more crushes. No more fluttery hearts and flirting. No more anything. If I survived this day, if I managed to make it wherever the hell I was going, I was going to turn a new leaf. That scholarship at Hillcrest might help. I’d be surrounded by boys, which, yes, might go against the whole no boyfriends thing, but they’d all be spoiled rich brats, and those guys just weren’t my type.
I liked the psycho ones, apparently.The liars. The ones who hid things behind their handsome smiles and you were too lovestruck to realize it. I liked the ones whose sanity was questionable.
I rushed to get to my feet, tripping on my clumsy toes only once before I stood up. I tossed a quick glimpse over my shoulder to make sure he hadn’t come around the cabin while I fell, and then I was gone, running as fast as I could through the graves, hightailing it like I’d never hightailed it before.
The air might’ve been clean around me, the trees and lack of human civilization the reason, but a part of me still smelled it. The rank, stale air in the basement. The stench of dried, metallic blood, not to mention the body odor of his latest victim.
She was supposed to be our victim, something shared between us. He wanted to introduce me to his way of life, make me a killer, just like him, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t a killer. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I might like it wild and rough, but murder was where I drew the line.
I wasn’t a killer. Ray and I could never be. He had to get locked up for what he’d done, for the things he’d continue to do unless someone stopped him.
And he would. I knew he would. Ray wasn’t the type to give anything up. He did what he wanted—in the beginning, I’d thought it was an attractive trait. A man who’d fight for me, who’d do anything for me. The stuff of swooning daydreams, and yet here I was now, on the run from the same man in a place where no one knew I was. Not my mom, not Kelsey, not anyone.
If something happened to me right now, they’d never know the truth.I’d become one of those missing girls, headlining the nightly news. The police would search for me for a while, ask anyone with tips to come forward. Try to track me. And, hey, maybe they’d track my phone…or maybe by that time, Ray would’ve already tossed my phone somewhere else, somewhere far away from where he stashed my body.
Maybe that’s what kept me going. Maybe that’s what made me push through the pain as I darted through the woods, running for miles even when my legs burned and my lungs couldn’t catch a breath.
