I probably should have left when I finished it. Gone back to the parking lot and checked in on Mom to figure out where the hell the emergency response was. Or if she’d even called.
My stomach sank as I realized she’d probably messed that up somehow. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t accounted for her dropping the ball. I thought of how often she repeated herself lately. How confused she got.
Fuck.
Now, standing at the split in the trail where the harder hike branched from, it was too late. Not only was there no cell service here, but the flashlight had died twenty minutes ago. I was using the flashlight on my phone. I’d charged it on the drive after hanging up with Mom since there was no service by the time I got to the road that led out here either, but there was less than twenty percent of my battery left.
I was trying very,veryhard not to freak out.
“Dad!” I called again.
He had to be on the ridge trail. The alternative—that he was on the one I’d already traversed but incapacitated or worse—was too much to think about.
I headed up the trail.
I’d heard a few sounds as I’d traipsed through the woods in the dark, mostly made by me tripping on roots and smashing through branches. At one point a branch had hooked itselfinto my shirt, scratching me on the ribs deep enough I could feel the wet of blood. I barely felt it now. My hip took over all the pain receptors in my body.
But there were creatures out here too.
“Dad!Are you there?”
Little things that scurried through the brush. I’d heard the haunting call of an owl a few times. The close whoosh of bats.
My ankle rolled on a rock.
“Fuck,” I cursed, taking a moment to regain my footing.
About an hour back, there’d been something bigger. A deer, or maybe a moose. It could have been a black bear. Whatever it was, when I’d shone my light at it, the bulky shadow had vanished. I didn’t love it.
“Dad!”
I hadn’t heard any birds, though, besides the owls. Of course I hadn’t, because it was the middle of the night.
Now though, twenty minutes up the trail, sweaty and breathing hard, I paused.
A minute ago, I swore I’d heard something like a woodpecker.
Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack!
Except woodpeckers didn’t tap that slowly.
“Dad,” I whispered.
“Dad!” I shouted. Using my voice felt like I was swallowing broken glass at this point, my throat ravaged from yelling constantly.
But I was desperate to locate the direction of the sound.
Nothing. Then:Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack!
My heart seized. It was him. It had to be: it was our signal. Four hits for help.
My heart thundered in my chest. “Dad! I’m coming! Do it again!”
It took me ten more minutes to find my father.
He was lying just off the side of the trail, in a patchof grass, like he’d been taking a nap. If it were daytime and you were looking, he would have been easy to find. Even at night, his jacket had reflector strips on them that were so bright in the light of my phone I had to squint.
“Dad!” I dropped to my knees, confusion and relief too deep to notice the way my hip screamed in pain.
