Into the Sublime Read online

  “Dray. You’re trying to.”

  He glanced at the girl, back at Vargas. Relented. “Fine. I’ll radio and see if Soustracs is at the hospital yet. When those girls are able to talk, we need someone ready to listen.”

  “Okay.” Vargas nodded. “And hey, if it gets crazy, I’ll make sure it can go on record.”

  “It’s already crazy,” Draker muttered as she turned away.

  Vargas approached the girl again. She had her head bent in thought, one foot tapping a rhythm on the boulder. Her initial distracted demeanor had vanished; now she was present. She was thinking. Vargas took up Draker’s perch, sweat beading on the back of her neck. “Amelie, I know this is overwhelming. Anything you can tell us about what happened here would be helpful.”

  “Right.” Amelie nodded as she chewed her upper lip. “Yeah.”

  “We left off talking about the fourth girl?”

  “We left off talking about Nietzsche,” she corrected. She recited: “The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger, and play dice for death.”

  “And that’s relevant?”

  “Well, yeah. That’s how we know one another. It’s exactly why we came.”

  “Nietzsche is why you came for a hike in the woods?”

  “We didn’t come for a hike.” The girl shook her head, twisting her small body to look at the forest. She stared into the dense rows of trees, cocking her head, as though she was listening for something.

  Or to something.

  When she turned back, she regarded Vargas earnestly. “We’d heard about a subterranean lake.”

  Bingo. “An underground lake?” Vargas clarified. “Part of the Spring Cave system?” It was the most well-known of the systems in this part of the national forest.

  “Maybe. Maybe a new system entirely. It was just a rumor. The Sublime.”

  “Sorry?”

  “That’s what they call it: the Sublime.”

  “Right. Okay.” Something about the way the girl said it bothered Vargas, though she couldn’t put her finger on why. She smiled encouragingly. “And you came out here to find it.”

  “We wanted to be the first.”

  “And were you?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “You didn’t find it.”

  “We weren’t the first,” the girl clarified, tapping one blood-caked finger on the inside of her opposite arm. “But we found it.” Her finger paused. “That’s why three of us came back.”

  Vargas felt a cold sensation sluice through her. She reset, affecting a casual stance, both hands on her belt, trying to emit confidence. She did it. Amelie did it. “Can you tell me what happened?” The girl was a sprite of a thing, hardly a physical threat to anyone. But she was covered in someone’s blood.

  “Yes,” the girl said. “But I need to tell you the whole thing. From the start.” She looked at Vargas intently, dark eyes searching Vargas’s face, seeking understanding there.

  Or was it forgiveness?

  “I’m listening.”

  The girl’s brow knitted, as though she was thinking back. “Gia picked us up at the places we’d told our parents we were going to be. For me, that was home.”

  Vargas waited.

  “We all pitched in money for gas, packed what we thought we’d need for a trip to the Sublime.” A soft, rueful smile. “We had no idea.”

  SEARCH

  The girls in the car with me were a mix of nerves and hope—I could see it on their faces. The nerves were a good thing; it meant that they were into this. The hope, well, the hope was making me a little uncomfortable. For one, I didn’t want them to blame me if this whole thing turned out to be fake. For two, it was contagious, and I was trying not to get mine up too high.

  “How much further?” H, in the passenger seat ahead of me, squinted at Gia’s phone, which was clamped to the dash, maps app open.

  “A half an hour? An hour?” Gia guessed, drumming the steering wheel. Her eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.

  I shrugged and nodded, like that would’ve been my guess, too, like there was no possibility this place didn’t exist. “Probably not long.”

  The trip had required no small effort on everyone’s part: lying to four different sets of parents and juggling part-time jobs (H and Devon) and extra goalkeeper training sessions (Gia) to free up this one day we could all scream out into god knows where … They wanted it to be worth the hassle. I wanted the Sublime to exist, too, though the possibility I was wasting time I didn’t have was the least of my concerns. I had lots of time.

  Fortunately, the directions had been legit so far. That was a good sign.

  H went back to playing a crossword on her phone, black nail polish tapping at the tiles. “What’s a seven-letter word related to ‘awe, elevate consciousness, power.’”

  “That’s the clue?” Devon, beside me in the back, frowned. “Two verbs and a noun?”

  “Could be one verb and two nouns. They’re ‘adjacent words’; it makes it more difficult.”

  We thought for a minute.

  “Impress?” I suggested just as Devon said, “Deceive.”

  H craned her neck to side-eye Devon.

  “I mean, anyone who tells you they can elevate your consciousness…” She shrugged.

  “Hmm. It does end with an e,” H admitted. “But maybe it’s not a verb.”

  Gia tilted her head. “Sublime?”

  H’s eyes widened. She looked back at us, excitement sparking on her face. “That would be a crazy coincidence.” She peered at her phone again. “Oh. No.” Her face dropped. “S is the third letter.”

  “Boo,” Gia said. Devon lost interest and noisily opened a package of red licorice.

  By coincidence H had meant omen. Of course she was looking for one. I’d told them about the lore—just enough to pique their interest, answer their “How come we’ve never heard about this place?” query. I’d told them stories about the Sublime were hard to find if you didn’t know where to look. The only mentions of it cropped up in old peoples’ recollections of their childhoods, scary stories that were passed around the remote communities living out this way. That was because the Sublime wasn’t just any subterranean lake; it was a local legend, complete with supernatural activity and, wait for it, a body count.

  It’s a subterranean lake in the White River park system. Finding the Sublime changes something important for those who dare to seek.

  The location of the cave entrance was secret, known only to certain locals, so finding it would be nothing short of a miracle without directions.

  But I had directions.

  “Is that all you brought to eat?” Gia asked, glancing in the rearview. Devon was annihilating the bag, one string of fluorescent-red candy at a time.

  “Of course not,” Devon replied. “I have Skittles.”

  Unsurprising. A picture of Devon at Dissent flashed into my mind: standing with arms crossed, blowing a bright pink bubble of gum, looking bored as some kid scrambled onto the tracks on the Sixth Street bridge, between trains, and lit his designated firework. She was the only one of them I remembered clearly from those nights, mostly because of that lack of concern. And the candy.

  Dissent was not the place for serenity. Or snacks, for that matter. It was an “elite gathering of thrill seekers” doing borderline-illegal challenges to “create chaos and control reality.” Which Sasha had said sounded ominously frat-house-ish, but it actually wasn’t some amplified version of truth or dare, where some idiot is pressured into doing something disgusting in front of everyone, or a girl gets slut-shamed for answering honestly about her “wildest night.” It was about finding interesting thrills, something visually spectacular and exhilarating. The suggestions for the challenges were anonymous—fed to the organizers via DM.

  All four of us had been participating in it for months, before the police investigation. Then Dissent shut down—a voluntary thing by the organizers, done out of respect for the victim, not on account of any police
action. What could the police have done? Dissent was secret. The gatherings occurred in different locations every time, and the only way you knew where, was if you were pinged by the organizers. The only way you could post about them after the fact was secretly, using blurry, indistinguishable shots with hashtags only other Dissenters would understand (#beautifulsurfaces, #terribledepths).

  It took about a month after the accident for another forum to crop up—no ghost of tragedy haunting this one—and I rejoined because I needed backup for this trip. There was no way I could do it alone. These three were the only ones who’d responded to my cryptic post about a major thrill out in the wilds of Colorado. We’d taken it to DM, exchanged info. That’s when I realized these girls were true thrill seekers. I’d combed their socials and found out that none of them had been using the hashtags; they weren’t there for the insiders’ club. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, I was just grateful I hadn’t ended up with some skeevy weirdo looking to hook up. I would’ve been okay with a non-skeevy weirdo looking to hook up, but that wasn’t likely. The truth was, I had no experience with either scenario.

  “You won’t get carsick?” H asked Devon.

  Devon shrugged, but I wasn’t worried. She seemed too—was the word controlled?—for something as dramatic as throwing up. She had wild auburn hair that contrasted sharply with her cool but understated clothes and weird, ever-present calm. She could raise one eyebrow effortlessly—something I’d never been able to do—but it was one of the few indications of an emotional response. She never filled dead air with chatter; she spoke when she wanted to, paid attention when it interested her. It would’ve made me envious if I hadn’t been a little unnerved by it all.

  “It’s just that I have a kind of vomit phobia.” H—which is how she introduced herself and was also her username for every account (thankfully she’d mentioned her high school so I could track her down online)—was also weirdly intriguing. She had these isms that she was unapologetic about; the vomit phobia was new to me. Her socials had been full of posts about her “parasomnia,” which manifested as night terrors. She’d told us that Dissent had been “medically necessary”: My doctor said I should elevate my adrenaline levels. It increases melatonin production, which helps you sleep. She also had flawless skin and an amazing RBF that dissolved into a wide grin at surprising moments, which was strangely charming. “Like, vomit makes me vomit.”

  “Um, I just had my car detailed?” Gia said. “No one is vomiting in it.”

  Gia was easier to dislike. She was an early-acceptance-to-Duke, skipped-a-grade, elite-club-soccer-goalie with perfectly straight teeth and glossy black curls and—by the looks of her lavish quinceañera last year—a doting family. Not that I disliked her. She was a bit extra, but she wore it well. The fact she’d been at Dissent added an unexpected layer to her perfect veneer.

  “I’m good,” Devon said, eating another piece of licorice.

  They had to have remembered me. I was frail, pale, and looked completely out of my element at Dissent, which is why it was always such a big deal when I’d complete a challenge. Word had gotten around about my childhood health issues, so everyone knew how much I was overcoming by being there. I was a bit of an anomaly.

  What they didn’t seem to know: I was the cousin of the girl whose accident had shut Dissent down. Probably because they’d never noticed Sasha. She was quiet around people she didn’t know. She wasn’t one to put herself out there, talk too loudly, or insert herself in conversations. And she also wasn’t one to complain; she had a kind of stoic determination. Maybe because she was from a small town or something. She completed the challenges, sure, but she wasn’t memorable like me. Plus, it was always dark, and there was always a crowd.

  I wondered when I should tell them.

  H went back to her crossword, and Devon turned to stare out the window at the trees rushing past. I pretended to scroll through my messages.

  Sasha was the only reason I knew about the Sublime. She’d been obsessed with the idea of a trip out here ever since she’d found an urban legends website graffitied on the back of a No Trespassing sign at one of the Dissent gatherings. She’d contacted “Henrik”—the owner of the website—and started making plans, insisting this was the perfect trip for us.

  I’d told these three I’d stumbled on his site in some dark, thrill-seeking corner of the interwebs. Because, you know, we were just four thrill seekers … seeking a thrill.

  I shifted in the back seat.

  This trip wasn’t about finding a new thrill, for me; it was about Sasha. It was for her. But that wasn’t something I was going to explain to three complete strangers.

  “Absolve!” H said suddenly, startling us. Right. The crossword. “It’s absolve.”

  “That is the most random collection of adjacent words,” Devon observed.

  “It’s supposed to be difficult,” H said. “It’s more satisfying when you win.”

  Exactly the kind of energy this trip needed.

  “Hey, my maps app isn’t working anymore.” Gia squinted at her phone.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  We’d driven another ten minutes into the middle of nowhere, and the landscape looked exactly the same, but this was an expected development. When I’d followed up on Sasha’s plan, contacted this Henrik for directions, he said it was likely we’d end up in a dead zone. He admitted he wasn’t sure because he never checked out the places he researched and posted about—something about bad karma. But all he needed from me in exchange for his directions was an honest account of what happened in the caves. It seemed like a fair trade. An honest account didn’t need to include the fact that, deep down, I was harboring a tiny, wild hope that the lore was real. “I don’t think our phones will even have service once we start hiking in.”

  “That’s not ominous,” H said, but she sounded good with that.

  “We’re going the right way to the staging area, though, right?” Devon asked.

  “I mean, I followed Amelie’s directions exactly?” Gia said. She slowed then, squinting at a cluster of buildings coming into view on our right. We peered at a wooden sign that had been repainted recently at the side of the road: WELCOME, FRIENDS.

  “Want to stop and ask?” H gestured to the buildings we were approaching. “We are welcome, apparently.”

  Gia slowed further. “Is that a … summer camp?”

  The buildings were intersected by a narrow dirt road. A large, ranch-style building sat to the left. Behind it, across an expanse of lawn, were several log cabin structures with tin roofs—they seemed to be part of the same outfit, which was either deliberately rustic or super run-down. There were antlers attached to the front door of one of the cabins. A hummingbird feeder full of sickly looking red liquid hung on a pole in a tidy flower bed.

  “Looks deserted,” I said, even though the landscaping was pristine.

  “Looks haunted,” H said.

  Gia brought the car to a crawl but didn’t turn in. We peered at the eerily still scene.

  “Um, is the tune from Deliverance running through anyone else’s head?” H asked.

  “What’s Deliverance?” Devon asked.

  “A hillbilly horror flick from 1972,” H said. “There’s a famous banjo refrain.”

  Banjo. Yes. I was definitely getting a backwoods-and-proud-of-it vibe the last little bit. We’d taken 70 out of Denver, turned north at some nothing town called New Castle, and had been following a country road for at least an hour. The backwoods were everywhere: from the battered, tin mailboxes that fronted the occasional drive, to the cobbled-together houses with additions built from a variety of materials—one had a plywood roof that extended to incorporate an actual RV—to the privately constructed billboard proclaiming IT’S ADAM AND EVE, NOT ADAM AND STEVE in a field of bored-looking cows. The rolling hills had been getting steeper, the rows of spruce denser, the farther west we drove. This resort seemed to be the frontier of the absolute middle of nowhere.

  “I think I see
someone,” Devon said.

  “What? Where?” H craned her neck, and Gia slowed further. We were practically parked, though with the amount of traffic we’d seen in the last hour, which was exactly zero cars, it didn’t feel particularly dangerous.

  Devon pressed a finger to the window. The cabin nearest the road had two identical windows on either side of its door, obscured with white lace curtains. “On the right,” she said.

  Okay, there was a shadow behind those curtains. Maybe human-shaped, maybe …

  “It’s a zombie,” H said decisively. “It’s a zombie lair.”

  “It’s a bunk bed,” Gia said. “It’s a summer camp.”

  “Zombies like summer camp,” H protested.

  “I think we’re good,” I said. “No need to disturb the campers.”

  Gia accelerated, peering into the rearview and scanning the scene behind us. “Seriously. Who comes here for vacation?”

  “I already told you,” H said. “People from Rifle.”

  “You said zombies.”

  “Yeah.”

  Gia hid a smile, refocused on the road. “Pretty quiet for high season.” Was she unnerved by that? Gia didn’t seem the type.

  “Well, maybe they took a field trip to the Sublime,” H suggested. “Maybe we’re going to find them down there. And maybe they’ve been down there so long, searching for the lake, that their flesh is opaque and their eyes don’t work. And maybe they’ve resorted to cannibalism to survive.”

  “I thought they were already zombies?”

  “I’m talking a different kind of mutant humanoid. There are several.”

  Gia glanced at us in the rearview, her brow wrinkled comically.

  “Some are faster than others.”

  “Should’ve brought a pickax,” Devon remarked.

  “Or a flamethrower,” H said.

  “Or a sandwich,” I said. “Throw it, and while they’re fighting over it, run away.”

  “I think I’d be all right mano a mano,” Gia said, rolling her neck. Her curly ponytail bunched against the collar of her Adidas jacket. Yeah, that didn’t surprise me. She looked strong, capable.