20. The Nerd
The Nerd
Levi stared out the window at the fog as he waited for Asher to come back from putting Tyler’s body upstairs and out of sight.
“I need to ask you something,” Levi said as Asher started down the steps towards him, “about the kitchen.”
Asher cocked his head a little. “Okay.”
“What was actually in there before you cleaned it?”
“Three dead people,” he said with a shrug. “Staff, from the uniforms. One of them had a knife, it looked like she attacked the other two and then…” he made a stabbing gesture at his neck.
Levi’s stomach turned. “You moved them?”
Asher gave him a bewildered look. “Of course, you can’t have a date with corpses as decoration, Levi.”
“Okay,” Levi said. Is it bad I still think it was romantic? Probably.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
When they returned to the lounge, Maddie was on the couch with Elliot beside her, a hand on her back.
Owen made tea — chamomile, he’d said when he’d pressed the mug into Maddie’s hands.
It’s soothing. He handled the mug with a carefulness that looked almost painful, like he wasn’t sure if the fragile thing was the cup or himself.
Jasper was on the floor near Maddie, not touching, not talking. Just there.
Levi pulled Zoe aside near the fireplace. “Did you find anything useful? When you and Elliot searched the ground floor.”
“There’s an office behind the front desk,” Zoe said. “Binders, guest records, local information. We didn’t have time to go through everything. I think there might be a number for a ranger station but I couldn’t find it, and the cell service is still dead.”
“We’ll check the office,” Levi said.
The office was small — a desk, filing cabinets, and a dead computer.
Binders collected dust on a shelf, guest ledgers marked by decades sitting in bank boxes.
On the desk sat a stack of pamphlets: Restorations Mountain Lodge — Your Mountain Retreat.
Levi opened the top drawer, looking for anything that might help
“Levi,” Asher said in a hushed voice, holding one of the pamphlets and staring at the map on the back. “This says Riverbend.”
“What?” Levi glanced up. That can’t be right…
“There’s no resort in Riverbend…It’s just the town, and the river, and the mines.” Asher set the pamphlet down, his jaw tight, his hand flat on the desk. “I don’t underst—” His head snapped toward the door. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“A lock.”
Levi listened. “I don’t hear anything.”
“It comes and goes.” Asher’s jaw tightened further. Then he shook his head and crouched beside the desk, tugging once on a drawer. It didn’t open. He started reaching into his boot.
Levi’s hand went to his pocket: the key from the carry-on... He pulled it out. “Try this.”
Asher took it, slid it in, and turned it. The lock clicked open.
He pulled out a worn manila envelope and handed it to Levi. Inside, there were dozens of newspaper clippings, organized chronologically, the oldest ones brown and brittle at the edges, the newest one from 2008. Someone had been collecting these for a long time.
Asher stood and cocked his head at the clippings. “Why would someone lock away old newspapers?”
The oldest clipping was from 1889, with a brief article about silver deposits found in the Riverbend valley — promising mineral wealth, suitable for extraction, and an advertisement beside it: The Hargrove Mining Company seeks able-bodied men for survey work in the Riverbend region.
Competitive wages. Room and board provided.
1891: Hargrove Mining survey abandoned. Three of five unaccounted for.
1903: Samuel Hargrove, found dead in his study. Family cites prolonged melancholia following silver survey.
1907: Consolidated Silver purchases mining rights to Riverbend valley.
1908: Consolidated Silver halts Riverbend operations following violent unrest among workers.
1923: Husk Development Corp. to acquire Riverbend site, seeking to survey unlucky mine.
1924: Husk boss and family of four found dead.
“This is weird,” Asher mumbled, looking at the articles as Levi put them down. “It’s always in August.”
Year after year, there was some mention of some group trying to access the mine and abandoning the project.
The last two clippings were from 2008, looking like they had been cut from a business magazine: Husk Development Group finalizing purchase of Riverbend unincorporated territory.
Margaret Husk, CEO, fulfilling family dream and CEO of HDG, Margaret Husk, still missing.
Attached to the clipping was a note, printed on official stationary that read “Riverbend Outpost”: Resort currently closes Aug 1-Sept 15. Do not change.
“The rangers’ number,” Levi said with a sigh of relief. “We can call and try to get some help.”
The landline on the desk was old, rotary, and utterly foreign to Levi. Asher huffed a small laugh and glanced at the number as he handed Levi the handset. “You have no idea how one of these works, do you?”
“How old do you think I am?” Levi rolled his eyes.
Asher paused while dialing. “25? 26? I’ve never really thought about it.”
Holy shit, we’ve never even asked each other our ages.
“Asher…I just turned 21,” Levi said, as he lifted the phone to his ear. “How old are you?”
Asher’s eyes widened before darting away and he mumbled something inaudible.
Before Levi could ask him to repeat himself, a voice crackled through the earpiece: “Riverbend Ranger Station.”
“We’re at Restorations Mountain Lodge, all of the staff is missing—” Levi began.
“The fog’s up,” the voice cut him off. “How many of you are there?”
“Seven,” Levi said, angling the phone so Asher could hear. “There were eight. We need help.”
The person on the other end sighed.
“I’m sorry, son. We don’t come up when the fog’s on the mountain,” the ranger said. “I told the new management not to open in August. The guy running the place understood that after the CEO lady disappeared. He just retired—” The ranger sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your friend.”
“What can we do?” Asher asked.
“Wait. Look after your people. Stay inside. Stay together. Talk to each other — don’t let anyone go quiet.” His voice dropped. “You hear me? Don’t let anyone go quiet. If someone stops talking, you reach into them and you pull them back. That’s the only thing that works.”
“What happens if someone goes outside?” Levi asked, adjusting his grip on the phone as his palm began to sweat.
“Then they belong to the shepard. Don’t go outside.” The line went dead.
Levi set the phone down.
He ran the lounge back through his mind…Maddie hadn’t spoken since Tyler. Jasper wasn’t talking, and Jasper always talked. Elliot said nothing. The only people he heard speak at all were Zoe and Owen...
Levi was already moving. “We need to go back. Right now.”
The lounge door was closed.
“Wait, we shouldn’t—” Asher grabbed Levi’s shoulder.
Levi put his hand on the handle and the metal was cold. “You heard what the ranger said. They were all quiet when we left. We have to try.”
He pushed the door open and the sound hit him before the door was all the way back — a deafening crack that punched through his eardrums and sternum at the same time, and his hands were over his ears as he dropped into a crouch.
His ears were ringing, a high thin note inside the bigger silence the gunshot had made of the room.
Asher hit the floor beside him.
Levi’s eyes tracked down.
Asher’s mouth was open. His eyes were open.
No. One eye was open. The other half of his face was — wasn’t — Levi’s mind refused the shape of it for a full second, kept trying to assemble a face out of what was there, and what was there was a wet red cavity and something pale and soft against the floorboards spreading outward in a slow dark halo.
A piece of skull sat on the rug an inch from Levi’s knee. Curved. Pink on the inside.
The smell arrived a second later — copper, and under the copper something cooked, gunpowder maybe, and under that the mineral wet of brain.
Asher never dies before me.
He looked up.
Owen stood in the center of the lounge with the hunting rifle from above the fireplace — the wall mount, the decorative piece, the thing nobody had checked because of course it wasn’t loaded, of course it was just there for the look of the place.
Owen’s hands were shaking on it hard enough that the barrel made small jerky circles in the air.
His glasses sat crooked on his nose, his eyes open too wide, and he was covered in blood.
Behind Owen the room arrived in pieces.
Jasper by the fire. On his back. Zoe slumped sideways on the couch, her cheek pressed into the cushion, hair fallen forward.
Her hand hung off the edge. There was a dark line running from the cushion down her wrist and dripping, slow, onto the rug.
Drip. Drip. The drips landed in a sound Levi’s ringing ears could somehow pick out.
Elliot by the wall, sitting up, almost. A knife was buried in his chest to the handle. His hands were in his lap, palms up, like he’d been about to ask a question.
Maddie on the floor by the couch. The mug of chamomile tea shattered beside her hand. The tea pooled on the ground and spread out toward something darker that was already there, the two stains meeting in a slow dark seam.
He did this while we were in the office.
“Owen,” Levi’s voice came from somewhere outside his body, thin and far away through the ringing. “Owen, what did you —”
“They laugh at me.” Owen said quietly. “They always have. Not to my face. Behind my back. Nobody listens. I share things because I think they’ll help and nobody —” A sob cut through the words. “Nobody ever listens.”
“Owen, I’m listening. I hear you. Put the gun down.” Levi held his hands out as he stood, trying to calm the shaking. Owen was the first person the fog affected.
“You weren’t here.” Owen pointed the barrel at Levi’s chest. “You were off with him. Everybody’s always off with somebody. Elliot told me to stop talking and nobody said anything and Maddie was crying and Zoe was busy and you were gone. I was sitting in this room with my book and nobody — nobody —”
His face crumpled. The rifle lowered an inch.
“I just wanted someone to listen,” Owen said. “I read these books, I learn these things and I share them because I think maybe — maybe if I know enough, if I have enough facts, someone will think I’m worth talking to. But nobody does...”
“Owen.” Levi’s hands stayed up, his eyes on the rifle.
Asher was dead at his feet and four people were dead behind Owen and the ranger’s words were still in his ears.
Reach into them and pull them back. “I’m here.
I’m listening. You made Maddie tea this morning.
Chamomile. You were the first person to help.
You boiled water and you brought it to her and she drank it. You did that.”
Owen let out a sob and the rifle lowered an inch.
“You told us about the fog patterns,” Levi said quickly. “That’s what you do, Owen. You find information that helps people. I heard you.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“The granite formations. The blockchain that wasn’t cryptocurrency,” Levi said, his voice cracking as he took a step forward.
“You told us all of that because you wanted to help and I listened, Owen. I just don’t always have anything to say back, because…
because I’m not as smart as you are. I don’t want to sound dumb. ”
Owen pursed his lips, lowering the rifle another inch. “What’s my last name, Levi?”
Levi opened his mouth and nothing came out. He didn’t know. Owen was an NPC, the nerd, the one who had facts that sometimes came in handy…he had never thought to ask. He was just…Owen.
Owen watched Levi’s mouth open and close on nothing. His face didn’t crumble. It settled.
“Nobody is listening,” Owen whispered, letting out a shaky breath. “Nobody ever was.”
He raised the rifle.
Levi felt the impact, the air leaving his lungs, the heat ripping through his chest, but his last thought was not about the game or the fog or the rules.
It was Asher’s hand near his shoe, the fingers not reaching for anything, and the sound of a heart monitor beeping three times in his ear, then stopping.
The darkness came.