Font Size:  

“You asked about my parents.”

“I did?”

The surprise in his voice was comical. She could just make out his face against the suddenly lighter blue of the sky. The rain had slowed considerably; a few stars had begun to peek out.

“You asked what happened here.”

Understanding blossomed, quickly followed by regret. “The accident…,” he began, then paused. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s all right.”

Gina rubbed her wet hands against her wet jeans, sucking in a breath when her palms burned like fire. She’d scraped them—either when she’d fallen out there or when she’d fallen in here.

“What’s wrong?” Teo’s voice, which had been so lovely and calm, took on an edge of panic.

“Nothing,” she said quickly, then peered into the gaping teeth of darkness that lay behind her.

Everything.

“Maybe I should get a rope,” he said.

“No!” The thought of being left alone down here made her swear she could hear those teeth snap at the air far too close to her heels.

Teo would have to get a rope eventually, but if he did so n

ow, she just might cry. And if she started to cry, when would she stop?

So, while she’d just run from him rather than share the past of this place, Gina took a deep breath and set that past free.

“Isaac told us not to go here. He said at the end of Lonely Deer Trail was death. Everyone who’d ever come here had died.”

“Everyone?” Teo sounded as skeptical as she’d once felt.

“According to Isaac. Of course the warnings only made me want to see the place even more.”

“Of course,” Teo echoed, in a voice that said, Who wouldn’t?

She smiled against the darkness. “I bullied Jase into coming along.”

“McCord doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d be bullied by anyone.”

“Call him a wuss and a girl sometime and see what happens.”

“A broken nose most likely,” Teo muttered.

“For you, probably. For me…” Gina shrugged. “It took months, really almost a year, of constant badgering. The only reason Jase came at all was because I threatened to go alone.”

“Why so obsessed?”

“Good question.” One Gina didn’t have an answer to. All she knew was that this place had been the only one forbidden her and she’d been unable to keep herself from seeing it.

“What happened?” Teo repeated.

“We came over the ridge and…” She paused as her breath caught in her throat now as it had then. The vista that had spread out before them had been so irresistible she’d scrambled like a kid with a broken piñata for her camera. “I took that damn picture as the sun set.”

And even though Jase had wanted to turn back then—they’d found the end of the trail; now they could go—she’d been captivated by a tree that had appeared to be on fire.

“By the time we got close, the sun was gone; the moon was coming up.” She’d planned to return to the exact same place where she’d taken the sunset photo and take another of the moonscape, but by then her camera had been crap.

She lifted her face and received a few final plops of rain on her cheeks. “The horses threw us at about the same place ours did today. But those didn’t stop where Spike and Lady Belle did. They kept going. Jase and I walked around, trying to figure out what was so bad about the area. How could people die? It was flat. Nothing dangerous that we could see. Unless someone climbed the tree and fell on his or her head.”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
Articles you may like