Page 58 of Mazywood

Uneasiness returned for the first time since dawn. The possibility yawned open that he had made a mistake to ignore the Jeep for so long. Someone might be missing. A family or group of friends might have come to use the ski trail—Hollman said he used to do it when he was a kid, with or without Mazelle’s permission—parking outside of the gate so they wouldn’t be obviously trespassing. And something might have gone wrong.

Johnny returned to the driver’s-side door, this time opening it without hesitation. He’d left the keys on the seat for the driver instead of in the ignition to prevent battery drain, and they hadn’t been moved. This time, Johnny scanned the car for any sign of children and was relieved when he only found the half-empty coffee cup from Joltz, the shop in McCloud where he had first met with Hollman, and rumpled old copies of The Sacramento Bee. He avoided the glove compartment because it felt too personal, as if someone would interrupt him while he was rifling through it. Instead, he picked up the white notebook on the passenger seat and flipped it open.

A professional flyer in royal blue was laminated on the notebook’s first page with a photo of a thin, middle-aged white man holding a magnifying glass and a logo in elegant script: The Yearning Skeptic: A Podcast for Would-Be Believers. The flyer identified the man as Rory A. De Santo, Investigative Reporter. He didn’t recognize the name or the podcast, although the flyer bragged that it was in the top fifty podcasts worldwide, but who could keep up with them all?

Flipping through the notebook, Johnny found a mixture of handwritten scribbles and printer pages, clearly a reporter’s notes. Some pages had printer-streaked photos of odd-shaped objects in the sky. What the hell? Johnny flipped back to the first page after the flyer, where the owner had written BEAR CREEK LODGE in blocky letters, but with no other information except his address and rudimentary directions from Route 89.

Dated on Thursday. Jesus—had the Jeep been parked here since then?

The uneasy feeling solidified in Johnny’s middle, a cramp.

He climbed out of the Jeep, feeling exposed. The woods around him were silent except for mild wind disturbing the treetops. No rustling in the snow. Still, he held the rifle in a defensive stance as he closed the door, stepping away from the Jeep. He tried not to infer too much from the idea that an investigative journalist had come to the lodge and vanished, but the notebook begged the question of why the hell a glorified UFO hunter had sought out his property. Hollman had told him that a lot of tourists believed Mount Shasta was a hidden haven for aliens, but this was the first sign he’d seen of the local folklore.

It felt all kinds of wrong. Every instinct roared to Johnny that he should go rouse his family and pack up the RAV. Once again, this was none of his business.

Instead, he walked around to the passenger side of the Jeep, which was precariously close to a ditch. A snowdrift there had a gap and spilled underneath the Jeep’s front tire. Like something burst out of it, a demon thought whispered, defying the daylight. Johnny’s heart jogged.

His eyes caught an odd-looking branch barely in sight near the front tire, which looked like a claw. Or was it a branch? The color was all wrong, a pale white, but a different shade from the snow. Because he spent so much time staring at it, it took a while before he saw the frozen bright red pool smothered in shadows beneath the Jeep.

Johnny squatted, in part because his knees felt as weak as they had at the generator. From that lower position, he found the right angle and shard of daylight to see the human hand. Because it was severed from the context of an arm, he might not have recognized it as a hand if not for a thick class ring glistening on the ring finger. Knuckles sprayed with thin dark hair. Blue-black fingernails swollen with blood. Fingers petrified as if they were reaching for him.

Johnny let out a surprised puff of air, losing his balance to fall back on his ass. He had heard the phrase I couldn’t believe my eyes all his life, but this unexpected appearance of a severed human body part gave him more cognitive dissonance than any experience with strange noises or animal tracks. For a time, he could only stare. His realization that the ground beneath the Jeep was slicked with a layer of frozen blood—and he might find more body parts there if he looked closely enough—made Johnny lean on his rifle like a cane to bring himself back to his feet, breathing in gasps.

Jesus. Jesus Almighty.

His ears amplified every sound. His sneakers crushed snow as he stepped back. His lungs rattled oddly with his excited breaths. And a swishing sounded from somewhere—not close, exactly, but close enough, from the stands of pines bordering the road.

Johnny flung himself away, running as fast as he could on legs that felt like vapor.

Twenty

TASHA WASHINGTON’S BODY ACHED AS if she hadn’t slept in days, a combination of interrupted sleep and her awkward position on the love seat, which was too small for satisfying rest. But once Johnny woke her on his way outside, her bladder compelled her to lace on her pink Danskin running shoes to go to the bathroom. In addition to her sweatpants and sweatshirt, she’d slept in Mazelle’s furred robe and tube socks because the lodge embraced its cold surroundings, so she hadn’t felt quite warm despite the fireplace and the central heat. By now, Imani’s fire had mostly burned out, the remaining logs glowing orange with the memory of flames.

Her stream in the bathroom was so strong that it felt angry. She’d held it in too long because she hadn’t wanted to leave the cozy nest in the living room with Johnny and the girls. With her bladder relieved, Tasha settled into peace again, admiring the decorative bottles on Mazelle’s counter, including the Chanel No. 5 she had sprayed herself with. She could still smell the remnants of the aged perfume on her skin, not exactly pleasant, tainted by time.

She would still write her book about Mazelle Washington, but Johnny’s story about her abuse had dampened her admiration. Never meet your heroes, as the saying went. She wondered if he would agree to share the story for her book, which would celebrate Mazelle’s talents, but also be unflinching in revealing her Mommie Dearest side. She wished Johnny had told her sooner so she wouldn’t have encouraged him to revisit his trauma before he was ready. Now the whole family had shared his trauma here. Even if the girls looked back on their wildlife scare as an adventure, they had seen Johnny lose his shit over a childhood nightmare.

She hoped Johnny would recover quickly once they were back at home, but her best friend, Johnita, had told her on her wedding day that marriage was a series of seesaws, one of them up when the other was down. She had taken the emotional reins many times before, especially when he had setbacks at work. Hollywood wasn’t good for Johnny’s mental health, just as it surely had not been good for Mazelle’s.

At least her pregnancy wasn’t a secret anymore. Tasha hadn’t realized how much the secret was weighing on her, how close she’d been to resenting Johnny for fanning her doubts instead of soothing them. Hell, she might not have had any doubts if he’d fixed a smile on his face from day one instead of treating her like a problem.

The anger was peeking out. But then it whiffed away, gone.

Johnny was doing his best. More than his best. She smiled as she remembered how self-assured he’d looked loading that rifle, an image of him she hadn’t even known she would relish. And their family was entering a new phase. Sharise would be going to college soon, so she wouldn’t be home often, but Imani would be a great big sister. Their new baby would always have family even long after Tasha was gone. And Johnny, who would be seventy when their new baby was only ten.

Thoughts of the years ahead that could vanish in a blink made queasiness lurch in Tasha’s stomach. She left Mazelle’s regal master bathroom to go back to the kitchen. She resisted the urge to clean up the mess on the floor—Johnny had hired a man who could do that—so instead she pulled the two-liter bottle of ginger ale out of the fridge, where she’d stashed it. She took a few swallows straight from the bottle before she remembered that they had left a stack of red plastic cups on the dining room table.

Tasha was entering the dining room with its three-paneled picture window showcasing the cabins and the woods when she saw Johnny running to the lodge from the road, toward the front door. She might not have known him if not for his olive-colored puffer jacket because his gait was so sprawling and uncoordinated, more like falling than running. He nearly tripped as she watched, using the rifle butt to catch his balance like a walking stick.

“What now?” she murmured to herself, convinced—or maybe hoping—that Johnny had worked himself up over another old memory. She would insist that he return to therapy.

But a closer glimpse of Johnny’s face loosed Tasha’s fingers from the ginger ale bottle, which fell to the tabletop and spilled over. He was terrified. She raced to meet him at the front door as he burst inside with so much force that the door almost hit her.

Johnny moved her aside, not gently, and slammed the door closed behind him.

“What?” Tasha said.

Sharise and Imani, newly awakened, popped their heads up from the sofa bed. “What the fuck…?” Sharise murmured, half asleep. Tasha winced at her profanity, but instantly forgot it.