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“You’re not getting murdered—well, at least not tonight,” Bristal says. “My point is this; you can hear insects, and an owl, because they’re all just chilling out and doing their night business.”

“Oh God!! Oh my Gooooooooood!”

“Shit!” I yelp, and grab Bristal’s arm, the cry all the more terrifying now that I’m not inside the car. “I don’t care about nocturnal animal business, I want to go—”

“They’re still doing it,” Bristal says calmly. “Listen. The insects, the frogs, the owl . . . they’re still doing their thing. They’re not scared of that noise, because it’s something they’re accustomed to.”

“If you bring up bigfoot, I swear, I am knocking you over and taking your keys.”

“Good luck,” she says. “Besides, keys are in the ignition. And no, it’s not bigfoot. That’s a fox. A female fox.”

“It’s not,” I say firmly. “They don’t speak English.”

“It’s not saying anything,” she tells me. “You know how if you close your eyes you start to see shapes in the dark?”

“Yes,” I say. “MacKenzie had this whole thing in sixth grade where she was certain her dead grandma was trying to materialize in her bedroom every night, and I had to explain to her how our brains are constantly working, looking for familiar patterns to identify, even if there’s nothing actually there.”

“Exactly,” Bristal says. “That fox isn’t calling out to God . . . unless she landed a really awesome mate this time around.”

“Gross,” I say, letting go of her arm and wrapping myself in my jacket as the breeze kicks up.

“Not gross—nature,” Bristal says. “And that’s precisely what I’m pointing to. There’s not someone out there yelling for help. Animals get real quiet around humans. Sadly, I have to admit that it’s probably not a bigfoot, either, because I think they’d shut that shit down for him, too.”

“I’m sorry all your hopes of bigfoot have been dashed,” I tell her, a chill tripping down my spine as the call comes again.

But Bristal is right; without my brain attempting to force the sound into human words, it doesn’t sound like a person screaming for help. It comes again, and with the layer of fear removed, I can make more observations.

“It’s the same every time, too,” I tell her. “If it was someone who actually needed help they wouldn’t yell the same thing, over and over, at the same volume.”

“’Specially if they’re bleeding out,” she says helpfully. “You’d get quieter, real fast.”

“Beautiful,” I tell her. “So what was the whole point of this?”

“I just wanted to bring you out here,” Bristal says. “This lot that we’re sitting in is where Randall Boggs’s trailer used to be. The neighbors”—she points to the three houses I had passed—“are all the same people that lived here back in the nineties. Things don’t change out here.”

“Yeah,” I say, my eyes wandering to the dark outline of the barn built in 1889, in the distance—but far away. “Somebody could’ve taken their time with Boggs and nobody would’ve known.”

It’s a depressing thought, that an old man had died out here—slowly. Even if neighbors had heard his cries they might have dismissed it for the lonely calls that sound like a plea for help, coming all too perfectly from a place called Far Cry Road.

“So what’s the plan for tomorrow?” Bristal asks as I slip Bristal’s neatly lined notepad into my pack.

“Our meeting time with Dover is at eleven, right?” I ask, and she nods. “Nearly an hour to drive to the prison . . . so, we’ll pick up you up at nine thirty?”

“So MacKenzie is really driving us?” Bristal asks, flopping into the driver’s seat. “I can’t vape in front of Jo-Jo’s Mac-Mac; she’ll rat me out.”

“Probably,” I tell her, slamming the passenger door shut. “So maybe just don’t do it.”

Bristal considers this for a second. “Do you think if I told her I’d kill her for squealing she’d believe me?”

“Yes,” I say, getting into my own car. “And then she’d report it to her mom, and you’d be in even more trouble.”

“Ugh!” Bristal punches the roof of her car, making the plastic protector of the dome light fall off. “I get grumpy when I can’t vape.”

“I consider myself warned,” I tell her, turning on my car and cranking the heat. I roll down the window for my parting blow.

“But you still have to be nice to MacKenzie!”

Twenty-Eight