The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

Hidden and unseen, Jamie’s hand returns the favor, traveling up your leg. You feel the center of yourself unclench, just a little. Just enough. Raising the map again, you peek at the word. After all these years and so many silent pleas, has something finally heard? Face flush with shock, you bite your lower lip so as not to smile. You stare out the window, eyes hidden behind sticky sunglasses, watching the decayed ends of Port Townsend dribble away into the trees, watching the woods rise up to meet the road, the prickly skin of an ancient beast, slumbering and so very, very ready to awaken.

You want to believe, but you shouldn’t. Belief is an empty promise. Belief just leads back to the void. You shouldn’t want to believe, but you will. This time, just this once, you will.

“Yes,” you say. “Yes, I do.”

The beginning of a journey is always deception. The beginning always appears beautiful, as a mirage. Once you fold the map away, there’s laughter and music, jokes and gentle pinches, and the heady anticipation of traveling someplace new, all of you together, a family like any other family in the world. Sunlight drenches the windows and you laugh at the sight — so many prisms and prickles of color, glitter-balling the camper’s dull brown interior into a jewelry box. After half an hour, your mother unbuckles her seat belt and makes her way across the porta-potty, wedged in between the small refrigerator and the tiny bench with its fake leather cushions that hide the bulk of the food.

“Something to eat — a snack? We had lunch so early.” Your mother raises the folding table up, fixing the single leg to the camper’s linoleum floor, then pulls sandwiches and small boxes of juice from the fridge, passing them up to Father. She’s a good wife, attentive. Jamie drinks a Coke, wiping beads of sweat from its bright red sides onto his t-shirt. You pick at your bread, rolling it into hard balls before popping them into your mouth. The camper is traveling at a slight incline, and the right side of the highway peels away, revealing sloping hills that form the eastern edge of the Peninsula. You think of the ferry, of all that cool, wide ocean, waters without end, in which all things are hidden, in which all things can be contained.

“Can we stop?” You point to a small grocery stand and gas station coming up ahead to the right, overlooking a rest stop and lookout point.

Your mother points to the porta-potty. “You need to go?”

“No.” You feel yourself recoil. “No, I just — I just thought we could stop for a while. I’m getting a little queasy.” It’s true, you get carsick, sometimes. You think of the curved slope beyond the rest stop, and how easy it’d be to slip over the rail guard as you pretend to be sick. You think of the water, so close you can almost see it. “While we can.”

Your father doesn’t slow the camper. “Sorry, June-Bug. We need to keep going.”

You nod your head. “Sure. No problem.” You think about what you’ve just said, and decide that it’s not a lie. Running away would mean you didn’t really believe that the word moved, that something out there in the mountains is weaving its way to you, some beautiful, dangerous god coming to save the queen. You want to stay. Just this once, you want to see your miracle.

Outside, 101 splits off, part of it flying off and up the coast to Neah Bay as the newly-formed 112. Now the landscape morphs, too, sloughing off yet more buildings and houses. A certain raw, ugly quality descends all around. The highway curves away, and with it, the store, the land. You’re going in a different direction now. No use to think of ferries and guard rails anymore.

Jamie pulls out a deck of cards. They fan out and snap back into themselves as he shuffles them again and again. Your mother leans back against the small bench, watching him deal the cards. Go Fish — their favorite game. You’ve never liked games. You don’t believe in luck or chance. You believe in fate.