Gone Wild Read online

  Gone Wild

  A novel by Ever McCormick

  Published by Barefoot Publishing

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Ever McCormick

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  To my mom

  1

  I'd been driving the curvy country road for what felt like two hours when I began to see signs for the mountain. I flicked on my high beams even though the sky was still partially lit up by dusk. I'd need to stay alert to spot the entrance judging by the lack of any signs of life on the long drive. To my right and left, all I sensed for miles ahead was the single lane road and the thick brush and forests on either side. In the distance I saw the lights from a prison burning up the otherwise unlit sky. I turned down my music to silence and opened my window. My dark hair caught in the breeze and whipped out the window.

  Catching sight of a worn plywood sign ahead, I slowed and put on my blinker. The loud tick, tick, tick made me laugh to myself. Who the hell was I signaling to anyway? The deer? The bunnies? They were the only living beings I'd seen since this afternoon when I'd first left the frantic highway.

  I took the turn and the pavement gave way to a bumpy dirt road that felt like it hadn't been used in a decade. Thick green leaves canopied the road and I was happy for the light from my high beams. The all-to-familiar waves of doubt that seemed to cloud every decision I made lately started their ebb and flow in my head. Had I taken a wrong turn? Maybe this was a different mountain than the one I'd been trying to find. Not likely.

  Another rustic plywood sign appeared up ahead: Cabins one through three located five miles ahead. I was at the right place. I'd rented cabin three because it was my lucky number. The gruff man on the phone had said "good choice" without much enthusiasm. I glanced down at the single key resting in the cup holder. When I explained the reason for my getaway, individual soul searching where no other human beings could bother me, he seemed to understand.

  "We get a lot of that out here," he'd said. "I'll mail the cabin key. You won't even need to see me."

  I'd laughed and argued politely, but he insisted. I'd gotten the impression he wanted complete isolation too. A hand-scrawled envelope arrived in the mail a few days later without any accompanying note, just a receipt and key.

  After about four miles of slowly driving down the wooded road, I saw an empty parking lot to my right with another faded sign: No cars past this point. Park and hike. Assuming that note was for hikers, not cabin-renters, I kept driving. No way I was hiking my huge backpack—stuffed with not only clothes, but food and toiletries—up to the cabin in the almost-dark.

  I smiled. I was exactly where I needed to be. I mean, I had felt nothing but confusion, hurt, and utter FAIL for the past month. The nature sounds, and more importantly, the lack of any human voices telling me what I should be doing and feeling felt great. Whether in my mind or for real didn't matter, my blood pressure was dropping. I took a deep inhalation of fresh air. My cell phone chirped so loudly I jumped, and my seatbelt clenched me back down to my seat.

  Sighing, I fumbled on the passenger seat through candy wrappers and maps until I found my phone. My mom's name showed on the screen.

  "You called a half hour ago," I answered. "What could have possibly happened in the last thirty minutes?"

  "Are you there yet?"

  "Almost." I gripped the wheel with one hand and used the other to hold the phone to my ear. I thought about switching to speaker, but I was hoping I could get off the phone in under a minute.

  "Have you heard from Michael?"

  "Negative, Mom."

  She sighed into the phone. The only thing worse than breaking up with your boyfriend was having your mom act totally devastated about the whole thing. It was like she'd been broken up with, and she wanted me to make her understand why.

  "Well, what's it like, Ina? Is it safe? Are there bears? You've never done anything like this. I'm worried about you."

  I made a face. I told myself she cared about me, and that her questions shouldn't get on my nerves. I closed my eyes to regroup and when I opened them, I thought I was hallucinating.

  A huge, muscular dude seemed to have stepped out of an action movie and into real life, and he was walking up the middle of the road toward my car. Two seconds from running him over, I slammed on the brakes. "Hold on, Mom," I said.

  "No vehicles allowed on this road," the man said. He didn't seem the least bit fazed by his near-death experience. His voice sounded like my tires on the gravel, low and rough. He wore a dark blue flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, worn jeans, and work boots that had seen better days. With a thick dark beard and a weathered face, he seemed like as much a part of the forest as the trees and dirt. He looked and acted like he wasn't used to coming across civilization. Most striking, his pale blue eyes bore right into mine as he approached my open window.

  I swallowed. This trip was not about being scared. I hit end call on my phone and stared right back into the man's eyes.

  "I'm renting cabin three," I explained. "According to the signs, it's still another mile."

  "I know where it is. No cars allowed past the lot." He pointed to the road behind me. "Go back, park, and hike to the cabin."

  I stared up at him in disbelief. I figured I'd hike while I was here, but not now. I remembered about the tough girl I was trying to be—the kind of woman who could self-reliantly live in the woods by herself. That chick did not take crap from random men she met in the wilderness. "Who are you to tell me to hike to my cabin? I want to unload my stuff first."

  A strange grin pulled up his lips. I think it was a grin. It was hard to tell with the facial hair. Fear bubbled up into my throat as he leaned closer.

  "I own this mountain, and I don't want vehicles rushing through here ruining everything—especially not vehicles driven by distracted, cell phone-using drivers." He raised his eyebrows to emphasize his point.

  My mouth shot open ready to deliver a comeback, but he sort of had me there. "Okaaaay," I said, embarrassed. I looked all around me and in the rear-view mirror. The road was barely wide enough to turn around.

  "Go back and park," he said. "I'll help you carry your gear to the cabin." He slapped the roof of my car.

  I waited for him to get in, but he just watched me, so I turned the car around, turn signals and all—he shook his head at that, I noticed—and drove back to the lot. My blood pressure had shot up to civilization levels again. In the rear-view mirror, I saw the man walk into the woods and disappear from my sight.

  As I carefully parked, I mumbled some curse words under my breath. My car was the only vehicle in the lot. I gathered my items from the passenger seat into my purse and popped the trunk. The man emerged from the woods into the parking lot as I was attempting to balance my over-sized hiking pack on my back.

  "Is that all you have?" he asked. I sensed disbelief in his voice.

  "Yes." I struggled to speak under the weight of my stuff.

  He took my hand to steady me. I must have been ultra-sensitive from the long lonely drive and lack of human interaction because his touch sent the equivalent of an electric shock up my arm. Aside from the tiny flinch in his eyes when he touched me, he easily lifted the pack from the one shoulder I'd managed to get it onto.

  "I'll carry it," he sai
d, hoisting the pack onto his back. At first I wanted to argue, but I could imagine falling on my butt under the weight of that thing. That would be very embarrassing, and I was already embarrassed enough. Besides, he wasn't struggling with the weight at all.

  My couple of attempts at small talk were met with grunts or silence so I let myself go back to enjoying the woodsy noises as he walked ahead of me. Despite the fact that it felt odd to leave my car so far away from where I was staying, I had double checked that it was locked, and hiking in actually felt right. I could better examine the scenery this way. It felt more like my adventure had officially begun. Plus, the man—who hadn't introduced himself—was introducing me to the worn trails that connected the different locations on the mountain. Arrows had been carved into trees to help hikers find their way. Cabin three with an arrow was carved into a large tree that marked a fork in the trail. My spirits lifted as we approached my new home in the woods. I was impressed at first sight.

  The cabin was even better than I had pictured it in my mind. It sat perched on a hill with a wrap-around porch crafted from logs. Adirondack chairs surrounded a fire pit out front and two more chairs sat on the porch. A series of stone mosaics decorated the front of the cabin.

  "Wow," I said as the man deposited my heavy bag on the porch. "This place is amazing. Thank you for carrying my bag. This artwork—wow." I stepped onto the porch to get a closer view.

  Instead of telling me about the cabin or the art, the man simply nodded and watched me. From the corner of my eye, I saw his eyes examining my face and sweeping down my body. He seemed surprised by my enthusiasm.

  "You're welcome," he said after a few moments. He walked past me, blocking out the sun as he did, and returned to the trail we'd just come from without another word. He moved into the thick tree path and didn't look back. Once he was out of my view, I slipped my key into the lock and entered my new temporary home.

  *

  The inside of the cabin was just as amazing as the outside. Blond wood had been cut, sanded, and covered in a protective glaze that gave the whole main room a dull sheen. The cabin was sturdier and newer than the website described and the condition of the road in had suggested. Big windows let wide shafts of light into the sparsely furnished open space—no television, no computer, no advertisements anywhere. Everything looked like it had been carved just to fit there in the middle of the woods.

  I crossed the giant throw rug and leaned into the bedroom to find a large four-poster bed made from the same wood as the walls. The posts were sanded down logs. The bed was so big it must have been built right there in the cabin. It was covered in clean white sheets as well as a thick, spotless white down comforter. Just looking at the bed made me tired, which was really saying something since I ran on coffee and adrenaline and always slept less than necessary so I could get work done.

  Well, that's who I had been up until a few weeks prior. I wasn't quite sure who I was when I arrived at the mountain. That was the point. It was a time for me to figure a few things out.

  I walked out to the porch and drug my extra large backpack inside. I placed it in the bedroom, letting the contents spill onto the floor, and I sunk into the bed. God, it was comfortable. Maybe I'd teach myself how to enjoy sleep on this trip.

  Or not. I sat up a few minutes later when I felt a breeze and remembered I'd left the front door open. I went back out to the porch. The sun had dipped even lower, and I could really see the view from the cabin, a bright watercolor of purples and pinks. It made me want to grab my journal, sit on the porch, and write about it.

  After rifling through my bag for what I wanted, I sat in one of the Adirondack chairs and cracked open my brand new journal, but I was too distracted by the view. I shifted my gaze between the sunset and the artwork that decorated the front of the cabin. Mosaics hung around the door and window, and on closer inspection I noticed they were made up of hundreds of small stones. I was noticing how the artist had allowed their fingerprints to settle into the plaster between the stones when my phone chirped loudly. Mom again.

  "Hello?"

  "Is everything all right? You never called me back!" I let my gaze fall away from the artwork and back to the sunset.

  "It's fine. I was just settling in."

  "What is it like? Is there a lock on the door?"

  "Yes, Mom." I pulled the door open to get a better look. "There's even a dead bolt on the inside. It's a great place, lots of personality." I could've gone on, but she broke into my description with the question I was waiting for.

  "Why don't you call him, Ina? I really think this is something you two can work out, but it's not going to happen if you run off into the wilderness and hide."

  "That's not what I'm doing. I'm not hiding. I'm figuring things out."

  "And you can't do that at home?"

  How could I tell her that I couldn't, that if she kept telling me I should run back to Michael I might just do it? It would be easier to keep wishing for the dreams I'd been daydreaming until now—the big house that I'd share with Michael, the family we'd create, but after the past few weeks—all that had changed. And I couldn't stand to listen to my mother tell me that it hadn't. She might convince me, and I didn't want to go back to Michael just because other people thought I should.

  "I need to figure this out myself."

  "Okay. One month, Ina. I'll give you one month to do this crazy, irresponsible, and possibly stupid thing because you are twenty-two. So technically I can't stop you."

  I laughed at her honesty.

  "Thanks, Mom. Love you."

  "I love you, too, honey. Be safe."

  We hung up and I flicked through the various apps Michael could have used to get in touch with me had he wanted to stop me from going on this trip, had he wanted to stop me from giving up on our relationship.

  There were no Facebook messages, no emails, no missed calls, no texts from Michael. I had said I needed space, and I guess he was giving me what I wanted. But still, whether my mom liked it or not, he was letting me go without a fight. I stared at the silent phone for a minute and then shoved it into my pocket.

  I took a deep breath. The noises of the bugs grew louder the longer I sat there in silence. A cool breeze blew by, making the trees creak and moan. Goosebumps sprung up on my legs. I got the strangest feeling, like I wasn't alone, like someone was watching me from afar, but I was pretty sure the only person around was the man who'd helped me hike in. Strange as he seemed, I didn't get the vibe he would hurt me. Still, the feeling made me shiver. And I felt stupid for shivering. Maybe I wished someone would watch over me, but the truth was I was all alone out here. I had to protect myself, so I reentered the cabin, and as I closed the door, I slammed the dead bolt.

  2

  Settling in was tough. My first instinct was to turn on the TV, but there wasn't one, so I tried to get Pandora through my phone. No wi-fi shot down that plan. I shuffled around in silence, getting sidetracked by the different pieces of artwork on the walls, the messily scrawled index cards that let renters know what was what. And all the while, I kept checking my phone for updates, texts, emails, missed calls. I was getting annoyed with myself, so I tuned it off completely and stuck it in a drawer. I told myself I wasn't going to look at it for the entire trip, but even as I said it, I doubted I had the willpower.

  I delved into one of the paperbacks I'd brought, wrote in my journal about my feelings on arriving at the mountain, and did some yoga. I even sat and thought for a while, mentally listing what I wanted to get out of this trip and what I wanted to figure out about myself.

  I'd like to say that I provided myself with plenty of distractions from my phone, but the distractions weren't strong enough. I looked at the black screen at least once an hour despite the fact that I had turned the thing off.

  At one point, I panicked myself by daydreaming that if a nuclear disaster had happened in my hometown, I'd have no way of knowing about it. The chances of a nuclear disaster occurring in my parents' suburban neighborh
ood was pretty unlikely, but the point was that I had no idea what was going on in the world, and even though that was partly why I'd come here, it now felt scary and disconcerting. However, I told myself I could wait until midnight to check my phone. I had to stop relying on my gadgets to distract me from my self-reflection.

  And I made it. My powers of determination were stronger than I had thought. As the clock shifted to one minute after midnight, I smiled, did a little happy dance, and finally let myself turn the phone back on. I'd successfully spent my first night inside the cabin connection-free.

  Quickly remembering there was no service in the cabin, I unlocked the door and walked out onto the porch, but the phone still displayed the no service sign. Venturing up the path where the mountain man had walked, using only the flashlight app to guide me, I kept checking the screen and then looking back to the lit-up windows of the cabin. I didn't want to venture out too far. That became more and more obvious with every step I took. I was wearing only a thin pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, and the night air brought out chilly bumps on my bare arms. I rubbed them and felt the reassuring vibration of my phone sucking in the contact I'd missed for the past few hours.

  I glanced at the screen: no missed texts, no missed calls, just a couple of spammy emails in my inbox. I hadn't even received any FB likes. I'd been off the grid for six hours and not one person had missed me? How depressing.

  I pressed the home button and turned around, feeling like an ass.

  I let out a long sigh and then sucked in my breath when I heard a branch crack somewhere in the dark woods. I hit the button on my phone and spun around, shining my dull light into the trees, but I couldn't see more than a couple of feet in any direction as I spun.

  My heartbeat sped up and my breathing stopped. My ears perked up to every single sound. I glanced at the cabin. I was about 20 feet away. I decided to make a break for it, but my first step left me sprawled across the trail. I'd tripped over something. I lay there in the dark wanting to scream.