Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Six and a half hours.
That’s how long the GPS said it would take to drive from my place in the city to the tiny town of Goldwood. Staring at the map on my phone, I let out a long breath.
Then another.
Hitting the road before sunrise meant beating Silicon Valley morning traffic. So, if I didn’t leave now, I’d have to tack on another hour of drive time. Maybe more.
Even so, my hand stayed frozen on my keyring.
This was madness.
What was I thinking? I couldn’t just pack up and leave on a whim. And not just because I was a grown woman with adult responsibilities.
It would be ridiculous to give this dream any more control over my life. It had already taken so much from me—my sleep, my money, my sanity.
There was no denying that last one anymore. Because, make no mistake, driving up to a town that was less than ten miles away from the Wall for no damn reason wasn’t something a sane person would do.
I’d spent my whole life nearly four hundred miles away from that cold, towering slab of concrete and razor wire, and most days it still felt too close. If I had a single shred of sense, I’d be fleeing another four hundred miles to the south. Somewhere near LA
But nothing would change if I ran away.
Just like nothing would change if I stayed here.
No matter where I went to bed, the nightmare would find me. Whether it was here, Goldwood, or LA
So I might as well go to the place where I could find a few answers.
And with that decision, I turned the ignition in my twelve-year-old economy hatchback.
Somewhere past the hundred-mile mark, I remembered I needed to call my boss, Jeanine, and let her know I wouldn’t be coming in today. Not wanting to talk to her directly, I skipped her cell phone and dialed the studio. No one would be there at seven in the morning.
“Hi, you’ve reached Treasured Memories Portrait Studio. Our regular business hours are…”
The sound of my pulse hammering in my ears drowned out Jeanine’s recorded voice as I waited for the voicemail to get to the dreaded beep.
I wasn’t sure why I was so nervous. It wasn’t like I was doing anything shady.
None of the photographers who worked at the studio were regular employees. To save money on taxes and benefits, Jeanine had hired us all as independent contractors. While having to take care of those things on our own sucked, the upside was we got to make—or break—our own schedule.
Usually, I was one of those hustling to keep my schedule full. Today would be my first call out.
“Hey Jeanine. It’s Hannah,” I said after the beep finally sounded. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be in today. Something important came up, and I had to travel out of town.”
That was nice and vague, yet still sounded somewhat professional.
At least, it was a hell of a lot better than, “I saw a bar in a dream last night, and it turned out to be real. So, now I’m heading toward the Wall to see if something up there can cure my chronic nightmares.”
As for how long I planned to stay—I wasn’t sure.
For all I knew, I might be driving up there just to discover the tavern had closed down years ago. Hell, maybe the whole town was abandoned.
Or, on the flip side, the place could be packed with people who had my same dream. There was just no way of knowing until I arrived.
But I still had to give Jeanine some kind of timeline, so I quickly calculated how long I could skip work without needing to raid my savings account.
“I’ll be back by Monday.”
That was five days away. More than enough time to figure out what the hell was going on, then get my freak ass back home.
“I’m sure Elisabeth would be happy to take any of my clients that don’t want to reschedule,” I added. Elisabeth was a photographer who had just returned from maternity leave a couple of weeks ago and was hungry for clients. I knew she’d be grateful for the boost. “Thanks, and I’ll see you Monday.”
I ended the call and tossed my phone onto the passenger’s seat. It was a coin toss whether or not Jeanine would call me back when she got the message. While I wouldn’t describe us as friends, our work relationship was friendly. And even I knew I was acting weird.
Usually, I was the reliable type. The one other people called when they wanted to run away for a long weekend. And sure, a lot of that work ethic came from needing the money, but not all of it.
I just wasn’t a spontaneous person…never mind the fact that I was currently speeding down the highway toward a place I’d only seen in a dream without a particular purpose or plan.
This was different. I wasn’t sure how. I just knew that it was.
The urge to get up and go, to climb into my car before dawn, and make a beeline for the highway had been too powerful to resist. Like a calling I felt in my bones. A kind of madness. An inescapable compulsion.
All I knew was that I had to keep driving. I had to get to Deke’s Goldwood Tavern, and then…
And then…
Yeah, I had no clue what came after that. But there was only one way to find out.
After a stop at a big box store on the fringes of civilization to pick up snacks and sundries, I rolled into the little town of Goldwood right around lunch time.
I’d made good time most of the way, especially when the highway was a smooth, four-lane ribbon of pavement running through flat valley farm land.
But the farther north I went, the narrower the road became, and the more traffic peeled away.
Eventually, I found myself driving down a pitted country road that rose and fell with the steepening terrain.
I remembered hearing somewhere that all the hills and mountains up here used to be covered in trees. That everywhere you looked was a dense forest filled with towering redwoods and sturdy oaks, and so much greenery that you couldn’t see the dirt beneath your feet.
Just like in my dreams.
But that was a long time ago. Before the logging teams were sent in to harvest the lumber and clear the land for ranching and agriculture. Now, massive herds of cattle and sheep grazed the grassy slopes. I whizzed past dairies and chicken farms and miles and miles of wide open nothing.
I’d never been this far out of the city before, and it was a strange sensation being one of the only cars on the road.
Every now and again, I’d pass a tractor or a semi, hauling goods as it headed south toward civilization. But the only vehicles I ever spotted coming up behind me in the rearview mirror were military ones.
That wasn’t surprising. The only people this close to the Wall were farmers growing the food and the soldiers protecting us from the ferus. Everyone else knew better than to get too close to the Wilds.
Everyone but me, apparently.
But once I passed the rusted Welcome to Goldwood, population 103 sign that looked ready to fall off its post, it was too late to turn around.
Even though I still had half a tank, I pulled into the gas station at the beginning of Main Street and stopped at a pump.
An ancient-looking man sitting on the folding chair in front of the repair garage glared at me from a distance. His skin was thin and his body gaunt, and he cocked his chin curiously to the side as I stepped out of the car. The equally old hound lying at his feet didn’t even lift its head.
Not seeing a credit card reader on the pump, I made my way over to the pair.
“Excuse me. Can I get some gas?”
The man’s eyes narrowed, the skin above his nose crinkling even more as his bushy white brows pulled together. “Don’t know what the hell else you’d do here.”
His tone was as caustic as his voice was crackly.
I tamped down the nervous chuckle that tickled the back of my throat. I’d never met anyone who lived this close to the Wall before, but of course I knew their reputation.
The kind of person who chose to live with literal monsters in their backyard needed to be tough as nails. Screw manners and pleasantries, these people only cared about survival. But somehow I didn’t expect them to be quite so brusque in person.
“Right…” I said, opening my wallet. “Do you prefer cash or—“
“Ya’ don’t pay me, missy,” he scoffed. “Do I look like a cash register to you?”
“No, but—“
“Inside.” He jerked his head in the direction of the door. “My son’ll take yer money.”
Okay, then.
I craned my head around the corner, peering into the dark and dusty garage.
An old tan sedan was up on the hydraulic lift, and, judging by the dust covering the windows, it had been up there since the mid-nineties.
The thick layers of cobwebs hanging between the frayed cardboard boxes and hanging in the corners looked to be just as old.
“Hello?”
My voice bounced off the corrugated metal walls, coming back to my ears thin and tinny. For a second, there was no answer, and I thought that the summer sun had scrambled up the old man’s memories.
But a moment later, someone startled me by stepping around the outside of the garage.
“Hey,” he said, wiping his greasy hands off on a rag. Given that he looked thirty years younger and a hundred pounds more robust than the guy in the chair, I figured this was the man’s son. “Whatcha’ need?”
Before I could answer, the old man gave a disgusted grunt.
“What the hell do you think she wants? Tickets to the damn opera?” He rolled his eyes. “The girl needs gas.”
The son didn’t respond to that. Instead, he snapped the oily rag over his shoulder and crossed his arms as he looked at me. “You got cash? We don’t trust credit cards up here.”
“Uh…yeah. Sure,” I said, pulling out a twenty.
I always kept a stash of cash at home for emergencies. And while I wasn’t exactly sure this technically qualified as an emergency, it was the closest I’d come to one in the last seven years.
“That won’t get you much,” the man said as I handed the money over.
“That’s okay,” I told him. “I have a small tank.”
Pocketing the bills, he shrugged. “I’ll unlock the pumps for ya.”