Into the Sublime Read online

  “Not me,” H said. “I definitely need something better than my Swiss Army knife.”

  “I don’t think we need to worry about mutant humanoids,” Devon said. She paused. “We’ll be enough.”

  H turned around again and eyed her. “Enough, like we’ll have no trouble, or enough, like we are the trouble?”

  Devon tilted her head. “Guess we’ll see.”

  H stared at her.

  Something about the weighty silence that followed struck me as kind of funny. I pressed my lips together and swallowed the urge—I’d told a weak joke; no need to look unhinged—until I locked eyes with H.

  There was a sudden sparkle of amusement there. I saw her mouth twist as she cleared her throat, which became a sort of half laugh, half cough. Gia glanced at her like she was concerned, which made her burst out with a loud guffaw. Gia snorted, and then all three of us were laughing. Devon watched with a bemused smile as our voices filled the small car in a cacophony of glee over flamethrowers and pickaxes and mutant humanoids. Over whatever awaited us below.

  Hilarious.

  It would never have crossed my mind at the time that our irreverence would end up being horribly ironic. I was too content with the idea that something unseen and unspoken connected us to realize that fact, itself, was the omen.

  The parking lot was deserted; it didn’t look like there were any other hikers in the area—at least none who’d entered the trails here. After the weirdness of the zombie summer camp it was a bit unnerving, but if it felt that way to the other girls, they didn’t show it. So I didn’t mention it.

  We piled out of Gia’s little red car and collected our things from the trunk, looking around at the dense woods, the faded trailhead sign. It was already three in the afternoon. The hike to the cave entrance was supposedly an hour, and the lake itself was another half a mile, but since we didn’t know for sure, they’d built in contingency overnight excuses so their parents weren’t expecting them at any particular time. H was “marathoning Romero”—whatever that meant—at a friend’s house. Gia was having a sleepover with a girl from her soccer team. Doing the math with the best-case scenario, we’d arrive back in Denver before midnight, and they’d sneak into their respective sleepovers. Devon was in the clear; her mom was out of town with her younger brother. Vacation or something.

  My parents were also out of town and, unbelievably, unreachable. After everything with Sasha, you’d think they might’ve decided leaving me alone and going “off the grid” in Colorado Springs was a less-than-stellar parenting decision. But the shock of all of that had worn off, and they were back to being preoccupied with their own problems. Namely, saving their marriage. They’d recently joined one of those hip new churches that meet at rec centers and have young pastors in distressed jeans on headset mics encouraging you to be confident and live your dreams, and had paid a lot of money to attend a several-day retreat for “uninterrupted connection.” It was pretty obvious their marriage was in its death throes, but I guess they wanted to make sure by hanging out with a bunch of people who’d given Jesus the wheel. The only upside was there was no way they’d know I left town.

  “Okay,” Gia said, shouldering her backpack. “Ready to play dice for death?”

  That was the Dissent mantra, a Nietzsche quote we had to intone at the start of every challenge.

  “It is the greatest devotion,” H said ironically, but she definitely looked ready. She had on actual hiking boots and had slipped into a Gore-Tex jacket that must’ve been sweltering—she even had a CamelBak attached to her backpack. It was all a bit incongruent with the sparkly tights, nail polish, and cropped tee, but she looked prepared.

  Devon, who was carrying her water bottle in her hand, was not. She was in a vintage cargo coat that had about a billion pockets, suede Blundstones, and boyfriend jeans—like she was headed out shopping at the consignment stores on South Broadway or something.

  My tennis shoes and messenger bag probably weren’t ideal for this, but at least I’d dressed in layers. That was a thing, wasn’t it? The truth was, I hadn’t given it a lot of thought—a side effect of being helicopter-parented most of my life, probably. Or maybe I’d been preoccupied with the why of this trip, instead of the how.

  But we’d be okay. Between us we had water, flashlights, some food, H’s backpack of “survivalist crap,” plus Gia’s obvious overachiever-ness, which had compelled her to pack a first aid kit, rope, and, by the look of her bag, a billion other “just in case” items.

  Gia glanced at her phone. “I barely have a signal.” She turned it off, opened the passenger door, and put it in the glove compartment. “Any other valuables?”

  I pulled my phone from my bag, switched it off, and handed it to her.

  The car beeped twice as Gia locked it. She glanced over at the trail, looking perfectly capable of anything you could throw at her: a woodland hike, a caving expedition, killing a wild animal with her bare hands …

  I watched H tuck a squishy rubber octopus into the top of her pack and pull the pack on.

  It was a nice day; blue sky was visible through the top of the forest, and the air was fresh.

  Creak. Pause. Creeeeak. The trees shifted slightly in the unseen breeze, rubbing against one another. The sound was like rusted hinges, or a knife scraping bone.

  “All good?” Devon asked.

  Gia pulled a piece of paper from her jacket pocket, which reminded me:

  “I have directions,” I said hastily, digging into my back pocket for a printout of my conversation with Henrik.

  Gia waved her paper. “I printed out what you sent me,” she said.

  Right. I’d sent her a different screenshot, containing the driving directions as well as directions to the cave. “I guess we don’t need two?”

  “Nope. I’ve got it.” She was already turning away, pocketing her instructions. She seemed the type who was used to being in charge. I’d wanted to lead—I mean, it made sense that I would—but I also didn’t want to look desperate.

  “Let’s do this.”

  I got rid of the paper and hurried after Gia, past the trailhead sign and into the trees, where the path rose in a gentle incline and the earthy smell of pine and moss deepened.

  The surrounding trees were suddenly, monstrously tall. They dwarfed us, blocking out the sun and dropping the temperature by degrees. I was used to being aware of my size, but it was different in this context. I had the sudden image of us as a line of ants, picking our way through a forest of grass, unaware of the surrounding larger world. Oblivious of forces beyond our control.

  I stepped carefully. Gnarled tree roots emerged from the earth now and again, like bulging veins from lumpy skin, crisscrossing the path in a kind of grotesque and hazardous hopscotch.

  We continued for several minutes before I realized that the soft creak of the trees had gone silent. Everything was still. The only sound was our trudging feet, navigating the root-veins, heading for the heart—

  “Yuhbear!” H yelled suddenly, stopping us dead and sending my heart rocketing into my throat. Gia whirled, and H, still walking, ran into her. She stopped and drew back like she was surprised at Gia’s reaction.

  Gia flung her arms wide. “What the hell?”

  “You’re supposed to make noise on forest trails.” H gestured around. “To ward off bears and stuff.”

  “Could you give a little warning?” Devon asked.

  “Or, like, a lot?” Gia scowled. “And does it have to be a Tarzan scream?”

  “Um, it was a banshee howl, thanks.”

  “You’re really supposed to make noise?” I asked, still thinking about the unsuspecting ants. “Seems like letting bears know we’re here is a bad idea.”

  “It’s a good idea, actually. They don’t like surprises.”

  “Neither do I,” Gia said.

  H shrugged. “We should make some kind of noise. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I want to stay alive long enough to see the Sublime.”

&nbsp
; “We can talk,” Gia said.

  “Talking’s not enough. We should clap our hands once in a while.”

  “Are you, like, a wilderness expert or something?” Devon asked H.

  “Hardly.”

  “You look like one,” I observed.

  “This?” H picked at a loose thread on her sleeve, which had the crest of a pterodactyl or something. “I googled ‘hiking’ and ordered the first outfit that came up.”

  “For real?”

  We started off again.

  “No. My sister used to do outdoor-pursuit-y things, which is how I know about bears. I borrowed this crap. She’ll never know—she’s at university in Austin.” H clapped her hands together three times. “I mean, unless I don’t come back. Then she’ll know.”

  “You’ll come back,” Devon said. “You’ll just be changed.” She looked at me. “Right?”

  “The lore says something will change,” I qualified. I hoped it sounded casual; my pulse had skipped with the thought.

  “That something will need to be my underwear if I end up fighting mutant cave humanoids,” H said.

  Gia rolled her eyes. “Those don’t exist.”

  “You sure about that?” H asked.

  Gia answered something I didn’t catch. A memory with Sasha was pinging in. We were in my parents’ car, driving back from that meetup in the woods.

  “What are you afraid of?” she asked.

  Blood was thrumming through my ears.

  “Seriously, Amelie—”

  “Peeling wallpaper,” I said sarcastically. “Creatures behind the walls.”

  “I didn’t mean that kind of fear.” Something flickered in her eyes. Resentment?

  “—fear?”

  “Hmm?” I snapped back to the present.

  “Spiders? Clowns? What?”

  I tried to reset. Focus. H was trying to get me to be specific about what scared me.

  “Fears aren’t always literal,” Devon said.

  Gia frowned. “They aren’t?”

  “No. What you’re scared of is usually a reflection of what you fear in yourself.”

  “Hmm,” Gia said, like she didn’t care to follow that thought any further.

  “You should spend some time in my nightmares,” H said to Devon. “You could analyze me.” She looked at me. “Hey, speaking of weird shit, I think it’s story time.”

  I blinked.

  “You said you’d tell us the lore when we got here?”

  Right. I had said that. I’d held it back on purpose. It wasn’t because I thought it would scare them off; they hadn’t seemed the sort, from our DMs. And now I felt like I’d gotten that right: Gia was too focused and logical, Devon too unflappable, H too … much of a horror-phile. None of them were going to be deterred by the story. The real issue: Info was the only thing that made me a critical part of this little operation. I had no spelunking skills; I’d never even hiked before. I’d acquiesced and given Gia the directions before we even left Denver. I couldn’t do this alone, and I needed something that made me a part of the team.

  “Okay,” I said. “Story time. I’ll warn you, though. It’s pretty messed up.”

  “I’m good with messed up,” H said. “So long as it’s not ‘old Indian burial ground’ or ‘ceremonial cave’ messed up.”

  “Ugh, yeah,” Gia agreed. “No ‘good white people disturbing the ancient, non-white evil’ please.”

  “Uh, it’s not … that.” It wasn’t, was it? I’d honestly never thought about scary stories that way before. “It’s more like an … outsider tale?” I added: “With mysterious disappearances, possibly murder.”

  We hit a wide, flat part of the trail where we could walk next to one another. I hurried to keep up with their strides.

  “I like outsider tales,” Devon said.

  “I like murder,” H said. We looked at her. “In my fiction, obviously.”

  Gia waved a hand. “Okay, so…”

  “So,” I said. “The legend is that decades ago, before this was a national forest there were small communities living out this way. People who preferred the edges of society.”

  “Think we passed by their summer camp?” Gia glanced up at the trees, half-interested.

  “Right. So anyway, there was this woman living alone in the forest out here. A witch. She hung wards around her property, talked to things that weren’t there, had a scar where one eye should’ve been.”

  H looked sideways at me, unimpressed.

  “Cliché outsider stuff, I know,” I said hurriedly. I increased my pace; they all had half a stride advantage on me. “But she was strange, even by backwoods standards. It seemed like she’d been around forever—no one could remember when she arrived or where she came from—but she never seemed to age. People would tell stories about her; kids would draw pictures of her to scare one another—one scarred eye, long stringy red hair.”

  “Red hair is terrifying,” Devon said blandly.

  I forced a smile. I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard. I thought back to my DMs with Henrik, the wording he’d used. “One day some brave soul went to see her and reported back that she claimed she’d lost her eye in a cave nearby. It was the price for her survival, because, as it happened, the cave was some dangerously mystical place. Deep in the cave was a lake that had the power to change things for those who dared to find it.”

  “Ah yes, the wishing-well part of the lore,” H commented skeptically.

  “It’s not a wishing well,” I said. “You don’t make a wish. It’s more like: Whatever you want deep down to change will change if you find the lake.”

  H wrinkled her brow. “It sounds like a wishing well.”

  “What changed for the witch?” Gia wanted to know.

  “Apparently she was dying before she went into the cave. Then she found the Sublime and … well, remember that ‘never seemed to age’ thing?”

  “So now it’s a fountain of youth?” H sighed. “This isn’t getting better.”

  “It’s not a fountain of youth, either,” I said. “Obviously she wanted the ‘dying’ part to change, right? It would be unique to … whoever finds it.”

  “How does the lake know?” Gia asked. “Like, do you say a thing? Do some ritual?”

  “Maybe you just need to know.” Devon looked at me to corroborate.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Oh, I get it!” H said. “The witch had cancer. Sarcoma in the eye. That’s why she needed to pluck it out—”

  “Ew?” Gia wrinkled her nose.

  “Just spitballin’ on this ‘unique to whoever finds it’ thing,” H said. “That’s good news. That means there isn’t an eyeball-gouging admission fee we all need to pay—”

  “Eyeball gouging aside,” Gia cut her off. “What’s the dangerously mystical part?”

  “Oh. Well, supposedly you have to, like, face yourself—your darkest fears.”

  “One and the same, usually,” Devon commented.

  I squinted at her.

  “This is pretty tame so far,” Gia commented. “You said it was messed up.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said. “The messed-up part is the murdering-people bit.”

  They quieted.

  “So, at first the locals chalked all of this up to crazy witch talk and were determined to ignore her. But then people got curious and started visiting her. And then people started disappearing.” They’d fallen into step with me. No more ironic glances; they were definitely paying attention now. “Some families were sure the old woman had taken them to this lake. Others started to believe the woman was murdering them and hiding their bodies in the forest.”

  We stopped, gathered into a small circle like playground girls sharing secrets. “But no one knew for sure because the bodies were never found.” The tops of the trees above us rustled with some unseen wind.

  H was rapt. “How many people?”

  “Half a dozen or so? Enough to make people pretty panicked.”

  “Enough to cre
ate a legend,” Gia observed.

  “By all accounts—newspapers and stuff—people did go missing.”

  “Who went missing?” Gia asked.

  “I don’t know names,” I said. “But—” I paused for effect. “It was all young girls.”

  There was silence.

  H blinked. “This is the part in the horror movie where people shout at the screen for us to turn around.”

  “Young girls,” Gia repeated. “Maybe they ran away?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.” I looked at H. “Are you turning around?”

  “Are you kidding? Turning around is for B characters.”

  “Perfect.”

  H grinned. Gia seemed a little nervous. Devon looked impressed with my delivery of the whole thing.

  “There’s more,” I said.

  They waited. I drew out the moment, making it look like I was trying to find the words because it was that scary. They leaned in, anticipating, and I drew a breath …

  “But I’ll tell you when we find the cave.”

  They broke apart with exclamations of protest.

  “Why can’t you just tell us now?” Gia demanded.

  “Trust me,” I said. “It’s better this way.”

  “There is an eyeball admission fee, isn’t there?” H said, looking at me.

  “Will you stop?” Gia grumped.

  “Hey,” I said to her. “It’s just an urban legend.”

  “I know,” Gia said a little defensively. “I just … need both eyes.” She gestured to herself. “Goalie?”

  “Fair enough.”

  We started off again, H and Devon more animated, Gia noticeably more reflective, and me feeling satisfied I was, clearly, a critical part of our trip. I needed their buy-in; I couldn’t do this alone, and I needed to do it. And if there was any truth to the lore …

  There isn’t.

  But if there was? If finding the Sublime—the place that could change something you really needed changed—was possible, then some descent into a damp cave was definitely worth it.

  We reached a fork in the path. There was a wooden signpost that indicated Elk’s Peak (7.2 miles) one way and Braden’s Ravine (3 miles) the other. The woods had gone from rows and rows of tall, spindly trees to denser brush and thick pine.