THE TOPIC OF THIS CONTEST WAS:
Did she just see what she thought she saw? She stepped off the path, intending to only walk a few feet. It was only later that the group noticed she was missing. They quickly backtracked, yelling her name. Tensions rose as the sun began to set. And, that’s when they, too, saw…
(Stories need only touch on this topic in some way to qualify. And, they could not exceed 850 words.) Before you continue reading, take a moment to consider where you would take that story…
“They’ll never find her.”
The old man, dressed in his old-man uniform of flannel work shirt, overalls, and a trucker cap, is staring at the faded poster someone taped to the trailhead sign at the Andy Layne Trail parking lot.
I don’t have to look. I know whose face is on the poster. Kayla McMeekin, vanished from the Tinker Cliffs Trail, August of last year. The lamination protects the image and the words from the weather, but the sun has bleached her blonde ponytail white and the last remaining specks of dark are the pupils of her eyes. The blue’s leached away by twelve months of exposure, and her hiker’s tan is ghostlike ivory.
The poster, if the old man is right, merely echoes what nature herself has already done to Kayla McMeekin. Not quite; the poster, of course, can’t bleach away to bone.
“Not alive anyway.” This speaker is one of the two women who just got out of a Subaru with REI stickers on the back window, hefting a lightweight bag with just enough space for a day trip, and (if they’re smart) a bit more, something to keep them warm and fed if weather or poor timing forces them to spend the night in a shelter or along the side of the trail.
Or if they’re easily distracted, and forget which way is home. Kayla had gone off the trail, if not off the bluff. If she’d done that, someone would have heard, and someone would have found her down at the bottom. It was the first place a lot of searchers looked.
I took a swig from my water. “Not if she’s still up there.” I point up, though the climb isn’t as obvious from here. “If she came down, back to the road, she could be anywhere.”
“I read about it,” the woman who got out of the driver’s side said. She’s rail-thin like a marathoner, and she’s wearing trail runners instead of boots. It rained last night, so she’ll regret that footwear choice before they even reach the first wooden steps. “And there were a couple podcasts.”
I know the ones she means. Sure, the usual hiking shows, covering it as the serious topic it was. Even on the safest trails, wandering off into the woods can leave you lost in minutes, and most people don’t have the good sense to stop and wait for rescue. Step ‘only a few feet’ to look at a pretty flower or follow the flickering light from something shiny hanging in a tree, you suddenly are alone in the wildnerness.
You hope.
The other shows, though, the ones she’s talking about, are the ones I like to listen to for laughs. Bigfoot, aliens, ghosts, wendigos, skinwalkers, tears in the fabric of the universe, secret government projects, and all sorts of crazy theories on why someone would disappear in the mountains. Everything but the ones real hikers think of first: weather, terrain, illness, and predators.
All kinds of predators.
Of course, there’s the true crime ones, too. But Kayla hasn’t been on many of those. Except the ones with “unsolved” in the title.
The other woman from the passenger side isn’t dressed for the trail. She comes around to the driver’s side, and joins her friend examining the faded poster. “I don’t know how someone can just disappear like that. With all the people searchers and the technology, how can someone just not be found?”
I could tell her. I went with some of the search parties when Kayla was first reported missing. People searched the length of the trail, following spurs and animal paths and anywhere that looked like someone might have left the trail. We found patches of wildflowers, illegal campsites, and even a forgotten family cemetery whose newest marker was from 1911. We didn’t find Kayla.
I take another drink and don’t say anything.
The old man looks as if he’s thinking about taking the poster down. Instead, he shakes his head and goes back to searching the parking lot for litter. Eventually weather will wear the poster down, and one day when he makes his sweep through, it will be hanging off or lying on the ground, and it will finally go in the trash. But cynical as he sounds, he can’t bring himself to take it today.
The two women look at the poster a moment longer. Then the trail runner shakes her head as if shaking off the thought of Kayla and ways to get lost in the woods. “Here’s the keys. I’ll see you at McAfee Knob parking tonight. Thanks again for picking me up. I owe you dinner.”
“You’ll be the one who’s starving. Thirteen miles in a day is crazy.” She gets into the driver’s side and pulls out as her friend starts walking towards the trailhead, blonde ponytail bobbing in the sun.
I wait until the old man has loaded his bag and driven off, the old pickup rattling on the gravel, before standing up and following her into the woods.
They’ll never find her, either.
