All That We Carried Page 7

  Melanie turned back to where she had come from and scanned the trees. She could see her breath. She couldn’t see Olivia or the tent. Suddenly she realized that she had stopped making a point to mark her progress. And even if she had continued to purposefully notice this tree or that, she was surrounded by trees. Trees that had all started to look the same, especially as the light, which had seemed sufficient when she left without a flashlight, began to fade. She felt a spike of panic stab up her spine and almost called out to her sister—she couldn’t have wandered out of earshot—but no. She was an adult. She should have been more careful. Olivia should never know that she got herself all turned around and quite possibly lost.

  She’d been moving so slow she couldn’t have gone far. And she had been going slightly uphill. The campsite, therefore, had to be downhill. Keeping a firm grip on the sticks and branches she had gathered, Melanie walked swiftly in the direction that felt the most downhill. The long branches trailing behind her caught themselves on a bush. She wrenched them free, stepped into a sudden depression, and nearly twisted an ankle. When she stopped for a moment to right herself and pick up a dropped stick, she thought she heard movement to her left.

  Olivia? Or something else?

  Sudden fear froze her to the ground. What was it? A bear? A wolf? Had the cougar from Trap Falls been tracking them all this time?

  Melanie’s breath came in little white clouds of vapor, puffing out of her open mouth in swift succession. What was she doing out here? She didn’t know anything about the woods. She’d been on just one hike—the one—and it had been led by Olivia’s friend Eric, who had been an Eagle Scout. That trail had been in a far more populated area and was visited by many more hikers and tourists. On that hike, a ranger had found them easily. Out here in sixty thousand acres of wilderness covered in a blanket of trees, who would find her? Who would find her if she really was lost?

  Melanie nearly screamed as something leaped across the leaves right in front of her feet. She breathed once, twice. A chipmunk. Just a chipmunk rushing to get ready for winter. She had to get ahold of herself. And she had to get back to camp.

  “Mel?” Olivia’s voice came from a little ways away, behind Melanie’s right shoulder.

  She’d been going the wrong way.

  She rushed in the direction of the voice. “Coming!” After a minute, she could just see the blue and gray tent through the trees, and relief flooded her body. She broke through the underbrush back into the campsite, dragging her sticks and branches behind her.

  “Nice job,” Olivia said, taking in Melanie’s haul. “How far did you have to go?”

  “Not far,” Melanie said with a carefully placed smile.

  “You should have taken a flashlight.”

  “I needed both hands to carry the wood.”

  Olivia and Melanie set to work breaking the branches down into sticks for the fire ring.

  “I found the bear pole so we can hang the food bags after we eat,” Olivia said.

  At the word bear, Melanie stiffened. “Maybe we should eat in the tent so bears won’t be attracted to the smell of food out here.”

  Olivia leveled a look in her direction. “That’s absolutely the worst thing anyone on a hiking trip can do—other than start a forest fire. You never, ever bring food into a tent.”

  “Okay.”

  “Not even gum or mints in your pockets. Nothing. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “A tent isn’t going to mask the scent of food to a bear. That’s why there are bear poles, so you can store your food far away from your tent and up off the ground where bears can’t get to it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Melanie, I’m serious. Don’t ever bring food into the tent.”

  “Okay! I got it!” Melanie snapped a large branch under her heel. “You don’t have to talk to me like I’m an idiot.”

  Olivia began making a tepee of sticks in the fire ring. “I’m not trying to make you mad, but the people you read about getting attacked by wild animals, usually they are idiots. They do dumb things that could easily have been avoided if they’d just educated themselves a little. I’m not saying you’re dumb,” she hastened to say as she struck a match, “but bringing food into a tent is dumb.”

  “Yes, I’m well aware of that now. Thank you.”

  It took a few tries, but the fire finally caught. They stood on either side of it, alternately warming their hands and the backs of their legs, and eating their supper in silence. Melanie didn’t know what Olivia was thinking about, but she could not stop the thought that was rampaging through her own brain over and over and over—that were it not for her sister saying her name, she would have been lost in the woods in the cold at night with no food, no water, no shelter, no compass, no flashlight.

  She was dumb. She was one of those idiots who might end up on the news someday. She, quite simply, had no idea what she was doing. She never really had. She’d been walking through life dealing with each day as it came, never planning, always reacting. She’d stumbled onto some things that made her happy, at least on the surface—but she’d always admired how Olivia set about conquering a task, how she always seemed to know what was coming next and what to do about it. Melanie would give almost anything for that kind of certainty.

  When they were done eating, Olivia hung the food bags on the bear pole and went out into the woods with the trowel and the toilet paper—and a flashlight. The fire had died down, and after they brushed their teeth and washed their faces, Olivia smothered the remaining embers. They took turns in the tent changing into their pj’s—not so much for modesty’s sake but because changing clothes in a small tent required so much contortion that only one person could comfortably do it at a time. Once they were both inside, Melanie could feel Olivia assessing the level to which she’d adhered to the command on the packing list to bring warm pj’s, but to her credit Olivia said nothing.

  Melanie brought her journal and a pen into the tent, but once she’d crawled into the downy sleeping bag, a wave of exhaustion overtook her. She set the book aside, turned off her flashlight, and snuggled down into the reassuringly constrictive warmth of the mummy-style bag and zipped it up from the inside.

  Day one was done, and it hadn’t gone as well as she’d hoped. Tomorrow was a new chance to connect with her sister. A new chance to help her heal. A new chance to gather enough courage to tell Olivia what she could no longer avoid telling her.

  Melanie closed her eyes and listened to the silence outside the tent. And within minutes, she was asleep.

  nine

  OLIVIA LAY ON HER STOMACH, flashlight trained on the map in front of her. Compared to today’s, tomorrow’s walk looked easy. The black dotted line of the Little Carp River Trail led south and west of Mirror Lake on what looked to be fairly level ground much of the way. Two and a half miles to the bridge at Lily Pond, where they would break for snacks. Another half mile to the spot where they would ford the Little Carp River. Two more miles to Greenstone Falls, where they would eat lunch. Then a pleasant afternoon along the river until they forded it again and made camp at Trappers Falls.

  Or should they eat lunch earlier?

  A small snore from her sister told Olivia that Melanie was not about to be engaged in conversation about when and where to lunch the next day. She glanced at her watch. 9:30. Today had been kind of a mess, but they had managed to deal with the unpleasant surprise of going the wrong way. The tent had been up before dark. They were fed and safe and warm in the sleeping bags she had purchased expressly because they were rated for five degrees Fahrenheit. She folded the map, clicked off the flashlight, and zipped herself snugly into place, pulling the bag’s built-in hood over her head and cinching it shut until only her eyes, nose, and mouth were showing.

  It felt good for a moment to lie so flat on the ground, which was hard despite the sleeping pad beneath her. Within the confines of the mummy bag, she rotated her feet to stretch her leg muscles and pulled her shoulders down and in
, stretching her upper back. Her spine decompressed, her bones settled into place, her breath came slow and regular.

  But she didn’t fall asleep. It was too quiet. Too dark. Too still. She opened her eyes but could see nothing at all. Wrapped as she was, flat on her back, hands crossed over her stomach, she began to feel as though she were in a casket. Like she was not on the ground so much as in the ground.

  Olivia sat up with effort, bringing the sleeping bag with her. If she could sit up, she was not in the ground. She tried to think of something else, anything else, before her mind could go to the last caskets she saw—those of her parents. But trying not to think of them only made her think of them all the more.

  It had been a closed-casket funeral. They hadn’t had a will that specified end-of-life matters, so circumstance chose for them. The accident had been bad. Their bodies were not in good shape. Olivia wanted them to be cremated and the ashes scattered—no keeping them in a jar on the mantel or in a box in the closet. She didn’t want the memory hanging about. Melanie wanted them buried so there would be a place to visit them and to bring their grandchildren someday.

  In the end, Olivia conceded, and her parents were given a Christian funeral at the church they had attended for Christmas and Easter and at which her father had tutored refugees in reading and writing in English. The service, though well attended because of the tragic nature of the accident and the relatively young age of its victims, offered Olivia little comfort. Her parents had never talked about their religious beliefs. They had never prayed before meals or before bed. Never taught their daughters to. She knew they’d both grown up going to church, but other than the holidays, they’d never taken their own children. If God hadn’t mattered all that much to them, why should they matter all that much to God?

  And yet the minister seemed to say that they did matter and that they were safe with God and all the saints who’d gone on before. Did he know something about them she didn’t? Or was this just the standard thing he said at all funerals? She’d wanted to ask him then, but there was no time. Over the years she’d thought about calling up the church to talk to him, but the longer she waited the less it seemed to matter. Until one day she realized it had all been for show. Nobody knew what happened after death except what you could observe from this side of it—that the organs shut down and the body broke down into its component parts according to predictable patterns. Religion was just there to give people something to do, to keep their minds off death, or at least to make death seem not so permanent.

  The only thing, in fact, that had stuck with Olivia from the service was a snippet of Scripture the minister read. Something about doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly. He’d said her parents did those things, and she guessed that at least was true. But so what? It hadn’t kept them from harm.

  Olivia lay back down and twisted herself and the mummy bag onto her side like a worm. Oof. Not that side. She turned over. That was better. She could fall asleep like that. She lay there listening to Melanie’s soft breathing and tried to match hers with it, to slow her body down and trick it into sleep. Whether she actually did fall asleep before she heard the scream was anyone’s guess.

  It came from somewhere back in the forest, back where Melanie had been searching for wood for the fire. Every hair on Olivia’s body stiffened, and she stopped breathing for a moment, listening intently to the silence. Listening for some other sound to make sense of the first one. But there was nothing.

  “Melanie?” she whispered. But Melanie was asleep. How? How could someone sleep through that unearthly scream?

  Olivia wrenched her hand up inside the sleeping bag and unzipped it enough to get her arm out. Outside the bag the air was cold. She turned her wrist and her watch glowed out the time. 11:45. Had she really lain there awake for two hours? She must have slept. Must have been dreaming.

  But there it was again. It had to be an animal. Maybe a screech owl? Didn’t they make terrible noises? Or maybe it was a rabbit that had gotten caught by something. She’d heard that terrified rabbits screamed. And weren’t cougars said to scream? Hadn’t she read that in some book as a child? Whatever it was, Olivia now understood why the woods used to frighten people, why so many fairy tales involved witches or creatures of malice lurking in the shadowy spaces between the trees at night.

  A third scream rang out, exactly the same as the others. It was an animal, she decided. A person being attacked wouldn’t scream three separate times in exactly the same way. This was an animal noise, whatever it was.

  “Melanie?” she tried again. But still her sister slept soundly.

  Olivia zipped herself back into the mummy bag and listened, but there were no more screams. Eventually the adrenaline that had been coursing through her body dissipated and she was able to breathe normally again. She shut her eyes and tried to settle her heart. She tried not to think of how tired she was going to be the next morning if she couldn’t get some sleep.

  Somehow, miraculously, she did manage to drift off. And she could only be sure of it because she was definitely awakened sometime later by another sound. If the scream had been loud and sharp and distant, this sound was low and lumbering and close. This sound was breathing. And footsteps. And it was right outside the tent.

  Instantly Olivia’s mind pinpointed the exact location of the knife she had purchased back at the gas station in Indian River. It was in the little zippered compartment on the front of her pack. Outside. Her pack was outside, hanging from the broken branch of a pine tree about six feet off the ground. Why hadn’t she brought the knife in with her?

  More footsteps. More heavy breathing. Olivia waited for the sound of a zipper, the sound of their tent being opened. Those screams had been a person. They might have been three people. Someone was going campsite to campsite, murdering people. She struggled to get to the zipper of her bag again, to get an arm free, to get out of the bag so she could protect her little sister. But what could she do? She had no gun, no knife, not even one of her hiking poles. And if somehow she survived whatever was about to happen, she couldn’t call for help because there was no cell signal. She felt her heartbeat tick up another notch. Her breath was coming faster. She had to keep her head. Had to stop herself from hyperventilating. She braced herself and waited for something to happen.

  But the sound of the tent being unzipped never came. The footsteps had stopped.

  The breathing had not. In fact, it was closer than ever, just inches away from her face on the other side of a few microns of nylon. Something was there, outside the tent. It was not leaving, but it also was not coming in. In fact, it sounded like it had lain down.

  It wasn’t a deer. The heavy footfalls and heavy breathing weren’t in the least deerlike. It wasn’t a porcupine or a raccoon—they slept in trees, and this sounded bigger than that. The footfalls were too loud to be a fox, a coyote, or even a wolf. And a cougar, if there were any around as Melanie believed, would have been completely silent. The only thing left was a bear.

  There was a bear on the other side of the tent fabric. Its head had to be less than a foot from her own, because she could clearly hear it breathing, deep, capacious breaths.

  Had Melanie brought food into the tent despite Olivia’s stern warning? Did her own fingers smell like beef jerky? She snuck a hand to her face. It just smelled like hand sanitizer.

  Olivia waited another minute for something to happen. But the breathing outside the tent never changed, except perhaps to get slower. She settled back down into her mummy bag as quietly as possible, drawing the zipper closed again. Even if there was a bear outside, it wasn’t doing anything. It wasn’t nosing at the tent, wasn’t scratching at the food bags. Maybe it was just chilly, and their tent, with its two warm bodies inside, was a smidge warmer than the cold black woods. Maybe it was lonely and just needed a friend. Someone with whom to share the dark night.

  Olivia slowed her breathing to match the pace coming from outside the tent. And finally slept.

  ten
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  “RIGHT HERE, SEE?”

  Melanie bent over the spot that Olivia pointed out.

  “You can see the lines where his claws dug into the ground,” Olivia said. “Maybe when he was getting up.”

  Melanie studied the marks while Olivia got out her phone and took a few pictures.

  “If it was a bear, it was a small one,” Melanie said.

  “It sounded big,” Olivia said. “Well, it sounded heavy and slow, and that says big to me.”

  Melanie stood up and poked through the ashes in the firepit, looking for any leftover heat. It was cold. She could see her own breath, and her hands and nose were freezing. “And what about the scream?”

  “Oh,” Olivia said, standing straight, “that was just unearthly creepy. I’ve never heard anything like it before. I’ll have to look it up later. I can’t believe you slept through all of this.”

  Melanie couldn’t believe it either. She wasn’t allowed to have her cougar, and now Olivia got a bear and a . . . whatever that was? The double standard was irritating enough, but what really needled Melanie’s mind was the fact that the bear had gone to Olivia’s side of the tent rather than hers. She’d always prided herself on her connection with the animal world. Animals could tell she was a kindred spirit. They were drawn to her. They weren’t drawn to Olivia. Olivia who once pushed a pony away at a petting zoo. Olivia who had said her eagles were vultures.

  “I’m going to get the food bags,” Melanie announced.

  “I’ll start rolling up the pads and bags, and then we can break down the tent,” Olivia called after her.

  “I’m eating breakfast first.”

  Melanie stalked off to the bear pole. The long, hooked pole with which she was supposed to get the bags down was surprisingly heavy and hard to maneuver into the loop of the bag ties. Once the first bag was finally on the hook, Melanie lost control, sending it to the ground with a thud. She hoped it was Olivia’s. The next one came down more softly, but Melanie’s arms were so tired it took her three tries just to hang up the hook.