Page 3 of Soul of Shadow
“You’re already drinking alcohol at an underage party,” Lou pointed out.
Abigail’s eyes widened. “Christ,” she said. “You’re right. I shouldn’t evenbehere. I should never have let you convince me to come. I—”
Lou reached down and yanked Abigail to her feet. She pushed her friend toward the tree line. “Shut up and run.”
The girls hurried after the rest of the party. Lou took Charlie’s and Abigail’s arms, linking them with hers and skipping forward as if they were off on a picnic, not to investigate a potential crime scene.
“This is messed up,” Abigail whispered loudly. “We’re caravanning to see if we can find Robbie Carpenter’s body.”
Charlie had to agree. Itwasmessed up. In all likelihood, Robbie’s mother was curled up on the sofa at home, sobbing, while a bunch of kids made investigating a potential piece of evidence into a party game. No doubt Robbie’s father, the local sheriff, would want to locksomeoneup for what was happening right now. And yet Charlie couldn’t bring herself to turnaround. To tell herself to stop. Her feet propelled her into the woods as surely as if attached to a motor.
She glanced to the side. Through the trees, she saw a few other kids running forward, bare feet getting caught in roots and sand and dirt. Their path was lit by an unusually bright moon. It filtered through the oaks and pines whose branches tangled high above, lush and deep green and swollen with summer.
Her eyes had just begun to turn forward again when she saw it.
It was only a flash. An outline set against the moonlit trees, as brief and blurred as the blink of an eye. A deer, or large dog, or maybe even a panther, standing stock-still, partially concealed by the brush, watching them sprinting through the woods. Dark silhouette. Glimmering eyes.
Charlie twisted her body, trying to get a better look. For a brief moment, its eyes seemed to lock with hers. As if it were staring at her, too.
Then she tripped over a thick root.
“Je-sus!” Lou’s arm slipped out of Charlie’s elbow as Charlie flew forward, the wind knocking from her chest as she hit the forest floor.
“Charlie!” Abigail whirled around and ran to her friend’s side. “Are you all right?”
Charlie blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision of the stars that danced so eagerly about its periphery. She groaned and rolled over onto her back, pressing a hand to her chest. It throbbed where it had collided with the ground. “Yeah.” She blinked several more times. “Yeah, I’m fine.Jesus, that hurt.”
“Good.” Lou bent over and wrapped a hand around Charlie’s forearm, hauling her up to her feet. “Because it sounds like they found the tree, and I’m not missing this unless you’re dying.”
“Nice of you to show some empathy,” Abigail said as she tripped along behind them.
Charlie didn’t dwell on her best friend’s typical lack of concern. Her thoughts were too consumed by what she had seen hiding in the woods. Whatwasthat thing? An oversized animal? A wildcat that had strayed too near civilization? It would be a bizarre sighting if so. Wildcats normally ran as far from humans as they could. Not only had it not run, whatever it was had stared right at Charlie, as ifitwere the one challengingher.
“Over here!” Lou tugged her friends toward a clearing.
The stars faded from Charlie’s vision, allowing her to see exactly where they were headed. She recognized it immediately: the old ash tree where she, Lou, and Sophie played when they were little girls. A place they had brought dolls and journals, built houses from sticks, dressed as pirates or zombies. It was a place of boundless imagination, back when Charlie had still dared to dream.
A deep desire rushed through her: to run full speed at the tree and leap as high as she could.
But that would be impossible. The clearing was completely full. People clustered together around the trunk, squinting into the moonlight, which only partially illuminated the tree. It wasn’t enough light. One by one, they lit their phone flashlights and pointed them up at the tree. The combined effect was that of a single spotlight shining bright and revealing into the darkness.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Mason was the first to break the silence.
“Holy shit.”
2
By the following morning, the whole town had seen the tree. Those at the bonfire took photos of what they found, sending them to friends or showing them to their parents once they got home. At first light, around five a.m., the local news van arrived. Video footage of the tree was pumped into every home in Silver Shores, close-ups and wide-angles that caught every leaf, every inch of bark.
The tree was no longer just a tree.
Its trunk was entirely carved up, riddled with symbols: slashes; arrows; waving lines; a circle with an X inside, almost like a compass; a crude impression of a bird. The police were brought onto news broadcasts, queried as to what they thought the symbols might mean. No one could make any sense of them.
But the biggest symbol, the one that stuck out from all the others, carved huge and deep at the very center of the trunk, was this:
The broadcasters spent most of the morning debating what they thought the tree might mean. Was it a ransom note? A map leading to Robbie’s location? Pure gibberish?
