Mr. Nirvana had said he’d be camping tonight at a favorite spot, so maybe …
The problem: Chris hasn’t been there in years, and he doesn’t remember how to get to the cave. He recalls a dirt road. The drone of vehicles on the overpass. Up ahead he sees headlights shimmering on the elevated highway. He’ll keep driving until he recognizes something.
The thought hits him again. What if the traveler isn’t Vince? And if it is Vince, why hasn’t his brother reached out to him? Maybe he tried. Chris isn’t easy to track down. A new last name. A new school. A new life. He doesn’t use social media and has no contact with friends from before. Sure, he’s inexplicably returned to the area for work. But no one remembers a kid who moved away in middle school. He’s been through the old neighborhood on the still-dangerous patch of misery in Linden only once, hoping their house had been demolished. But it’s still there like a ramshackle haunted house from the movies. It is haunted.
Chris opens the window and the wind whooshes inside the car. He hears trucks barreling along the overpass now, and he feels like he’s getting close. Slowing, he scans each side of the road, looking for anything familiar.
Then he spots the narrow dirt road. He reduces speed, takes a sharp turn, the sound of rocks under the tires. He spots the barbed-wire fence and flashes to a memory of them scaling it, Vince helping his little brother avoid the sharp, twisted metal.
He pulls to the side of the narrow road. What is he doing? This is foolish. Yet something compels him to continue. He locks the car, then trudges through the tall grass and muck to the fence. He removes his new suit jacket, throws it over the rusty barbed wire, then carefully climbs over. He has another memory: Vince leading the way through the stand of trees ahead and over a knoll to the cave.
He follows the same route now, making his way through the thicket of trees. He hears the crack of a twig and freezes in place. It’s just an animal, right? A deer or something harmless. He doesn’t recall worrying about any predators back when they were kids—there was only one predator they feared.
Chris sometimes wonders what he’d do if he ran into Rusty now, and has even fantasized about giving his biological father the beating he deserves. But he’s resisted the urge for two reasons: one, Clint and Ms. May wouldn’t approve; and, two, he might just kill the old bastard.
The tree line comes into sight ahead. The cave is on the other side, through a path.
He picks up his pace and makes it to the opening. And there it is.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The entire area has been cleared. It’s now a field marked with NO TRESPASSING signs. The cave is gone.
He imagines Vince showing up here after all these years, disappointed that the place where they’d taken refuge was no more. Chris is about to head back to the car when he spies an orange glow coming from beneath the overpass—a campfire.
He’s come this far.
Soon, he stands in front of an abandoned fire.
He sees a bottle, convenience-store wine, by the looks of it. And some trash. He must have just missed whoever was there.
“Vince?” he calls out, his voice bouncing against the concrete support beams. He yells his name again, though he knows his brother isn’t the camper. It’s the stench—urine and filth—that gives it away. Vince is a neat freak. Cleanliness was his way of exerting control in their chaotic lives. Mr. Nirvana also values hygiene and orderliness, another clue that he’s Chris’s brother. The smell, the mess by the fire, that’s not Vince.
“Who’s Vince?” the voice says.
Chris turns, a shot of adrenaline coursing through him. A man, a teenager, actually, emerges from the pitch-black area under the bridge. The kid has a bandage covering his nose. He’s holding something. Chris’s pulse quickens when he realizes that it’s a knife.
“Sorry,” Chris says. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I was just looking for someone. I’m on my way.” He holds up his hands to show he’s no threat.
“You’d better go, motherfucker,” the kid says.
Chris keeps his hands up. The kid is just scared. Chris would be scared too.
As he starts backing out of there, the kid says, “I’ll be needing your wallet … and that watch too.” The watch Clint and May had given him for graduation.
Chris says, “Look, I don’t want any trouble. I’ve got like twenty bucks. You can have it, and I’ll be on my way.”
Chris’s senses are heightened now, burning. He experiences another lightning bolt in his chest when he sees movement in the shadows from behind a support beam.