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‘I’m intrigued,’ I say, my chin resting in my hands. Laney seems into it, too, but she’s more focused on her food than I am.
‘As you should be,’ River teases, taking another bite of his burger. ‘About three days in, we were lying in our tent, side by side, trying to sleep, when we heard footsteps. We both lay there, wide awake, nudging one another with each new noise. It sounded like someone was circling our tent, crunching branches and leaves on the forest floor but never getting closer. It was unnerving. Eventually, Dax got up and attempted to sneak to the tent door. It took him a couple of seconds to psych himself up, but finally he did. He unzipped the door and blasted out with a spotlight in his hand.’ He pauses, working on his burger and keeping us in limbo for so long Laney can’t stand it.
‘And then?’ she says impatiently.
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ I ask.
‘Zilch.’ He holds his hand in an O. ‘There was nobody and nothing out there.’
‘But you heard something.’
‘We did,’ he confirms.
‘What do you think it was?’ I ask.
‘What the hell does this have to do with a dare?’ Laney talks over me.
‘I’m getting there,’ River says with a chuckle. Clearly, he wants to tell this story in a certain way. ‘It was for sure a dude because we found a trail of boot-prints over-stepping one another around our tent. He was circling us, just like we thought. As we hiked the next day, we concocted a plan in case it happened again. I would sneak out of the tent this time because I’m smaller, quicker, and probably quieter than giant Dax, so we agreed we’d try it.’
‘Did it happen again?’ I ask.
He nods. ‘Again, nothing.’
‘What?’ Laney’s voice is high-pitched. ‘You’re making this up.’
‘I’m not,’ River says. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die; it happened.’ He turns to the burger he’s only a quarter through, eating between sentences.
‘Continue talking,’ Laney orders.
‘Alright, bossy,’ River says as though she annoys him. ‘That next morning, Dax and I started fighting. Over nothing, really. We’d hardly slept two nights in a row, hiked all day, and were exhausted. We couldn’t understand what we had heard. No way could we be having the same dream. And how could there be actual footprints if nothing was there? We argued back and forth, like brothers, as we hiked. He blamed me for being heard exiting the tent, and I blamed him. He started mouthing off while walking in front of me, something about how maybe I could get out faster, but he’d have to protect me from whatever it was, so he might as well go first tonight. That pissed me off, so I reached down, grabbed a pebble, and chucked it at the back of his pack. Brotherly love style.’
Laney laughs. Yes, she’d for sure do this to me.
‘Only it didn’t hit his pack,’ he laughs. ‘It hit him in the side of the neck as he turned around to “apologize”, which, for the record, he never did. “If you think you’re so damn tough, I dare you to sleep outside the tent tonight.” Those were his words. Not exactly an apology. And I swear on everything – that dare almost got me killed.’
Both mine and Laney’s eyes go wide. ‘You did it?’ we ask in unison.
‘Of course I did it. It was a dare, and I’m a guy who needs cool stories to tell my future kids so I can pass this nonsense down through the generations.’
‘Perfect reasoning,’ I joke.
‘So, you lived to tell the tale. Nothing’s even happened yet,’ Laney says, clearly not impressed. ‘When’s this story get good?’
River shoots her a glare. ‘I’m getting there, Miss Impatience.’ He returns to his burger for a while, looking increasingly tired of it with each bite, but he’s halfway through.
‘Dax had what looked like a hickey on his neck for the rest of the trip, which gave me ammunition for endless jokes that he did not think were amusing. With every single step of that day’s hike, I prayed to the universe that there was a god, then prayed that we’d hiked far enough away from the original two spots and nothing would happen that night. I was bargaining with God, scared out of my mind that this “thing” would be some forest cannibal, just waiting to get us to the right place and then turn us into a stew he’d feed to his village of forest people.’
Laney points his way, but her eyes are on me. ‘He watches true crime!’
‘I watch horror; there’s a difference, as no one really dies.’
‘Technicality,’ she says, clearly not agreeing.
‘Anyway, Dax was bitching all day that I insisted on hiking at full speed, with few breaks, so we were really under one another’s skin at this point. Finally, at dusk, I chose a spot for our tent, and we set up camp. The fire was maybe five feet from the tent, facing the door, so if we heard this “person” getting close to me, I could jump up and shove him, her, or it, into the fire.’
‘Willingness to commit a homicide; mark that down as a red flag,’ Laney informs me nonchalantly.
