I scraped it away, leaving a smudge of my blood. I found two more on my other leg and flicked them back into the river. If I wasn’t lost, I was certainly off course, which meant I’d have to find higher ground to regain my bearings. I continued upslope, damp pants clinging to my legs, the pass growing steeper and steeper until I had to lean forward and use my hands to pull myself up a rocky rise.

Would you climb mountains?

If they were between me and you, those mountains I would climb.

At last I reached the top, tumbling over the lip, landing in a mud wallow. My muscles gave out under the burn, and I sprawled there panting in the soothing wet.

It felt so pleasant lying here. It would be so easy to rest, to drift off, to give up.

Would you crawl through mud for me?

I shoved myself up to all fours, shook my head hard, drew in a deep breath.

If mud needed crawling through to get to you, I would.

I stood, sludge caking my hands and knees. Staggering with exhaustion, I drifted into the thickening pines. The branches drew denser and denser, needles crowding in on me from all sides until it felt like I’d be skewered alive. Finally I broke into a clearing, scratching at my aching arms.

At first I didn’t register where I was. Then I saw the ring of Rocky Mountain Douglas firs around me, the forked road beyond, the three cleared spaces on the ground.

The spaces where Patrick, Alex, and I had slept that night we’d made it to the top of the pass.

Though I’d taken a different route up the rock face, I’d wound up in the right place after all.

North and down to Stark Peak.

South and up to Lawrenceville.

I took a moment there at the fork, staring up the dirt road winding to the very top of the pass. I cast a glance at the two rectangles in the pine needles that Patrick and Alex had cleared.

If ever absence had been made visible, it was in those patches of dirt where my brother and his girlfriend had slept just last week.

Stepping from the ring of trees, I peeled south up the fork to Lawrenceville. As my legs carried me onward, a pulse beat in my temple. I realized the obvious: I was terrified of what I might find there.

It turns out I wasn’t terrified enough.

Entry 34

ENTRY 34

I moved cautiously up the south fork, weaving through the trees to the side of the road. As I neared Lawrenceville, I came aware of a suctioning noise.

First the smack of some sort of impact. Then a moist yielding.

I froze in my tracks and listened.

A moment later it came again.

Thump. Squelch.