7
It’s harder to fall asleep than I expected.
Not because I’m afraid, though. Ever since Parker’s death, my grief has been strong enough to filter other emotions out—even fear. So despite the gruesome details crawling around in my mind, my thoughts inevitably turn back to him. It’s Parker who keeps me tossing and turning.
The remote river brings his memory rushing in, flooding the voids I usually fill with work, or scrolling on TikTok. My heart aches more than ever for his presence beside me, but I feel closer to him here, too.
Trying to ignore the uneven lumps of sand beneath my thin sleeping pad, I study the wash of stars visible through the tent’s open rainfly. Through bleary eyes, I trace the line of Orion’s Belt and whisper, “Prove me wrong, Parker.”
I haven’t said those words for a while, and it’s a little embarrassing to say them now, even though no one can hear me.
It’s the whole “atheists praying in foxholes” situation, and I know it.
But what’s the harm? I said it every night for the first few months after he died, desperate for a sign that he was still out there in the universe somehow, desperate to see him again even if it was only in my dreams.
It never worked. Not even once. And after a while, I gave up.
There was one stage of my grieving process that involved diving headfirst down a rabbit hole of the unexplained: near-death experiences, communication from the other side, any kind of evidence that human consciousness somehow survived beyond the grave.
I watched documentaries about car accident victims who were clinically dead for five minutes and saw passages of light, their grandmother’s outstretched hand leading them into paradise.
I listened to TED Talks about Third Man Syndrome, a phenomenon where people in traumatic situations were inexplicably led to safety by a loved one, who appeared just when they were about to give up.
And I read obscure but peer-reviewed articles by scientists arguing that consciousness itself was evidence of a soul.
Then I watched the documentaries debunking all the so-called near-death experiences, explaining them away.
Those scientists insisted that it was the simple firing of neurons and dopamine, just a comforting projection in a time of need.
A hallucination. An evolutionary safety mechanism.
They claimed that the striking similarities among most near-death experiences wasn’t proof of life after death, but proof of a shared human hope across cultural traditions—the hope that no one is truly gone forever.
I came away resigned to the idea that consciousness was just complex, creative neural activity.
And our desire for meaning—our hope, even—was just a manifestation of our fear of death, an awareness of our own mortality.
Even the mysterious Third Man Syndrome was just the brain’s attempt to break through panic and terror, creating a hologram of a loved one to rally us for survival.
Still, my pain was so deep that even after my research deep dive, I still thought to myself, Let those neurons fire.
It’s what I’m still thinking now, as sleep finally coaxes me into unconsciousness.
And maybe it’s these thoughts, combined with the rushing of the wild river, that finally gives me my dream.
As it begins, I’m sitting at the front of a raft, tipping into the first spit of whitewater at the Devil’s Stairs.
But the canyon isn’t right. It’s changed, warped into something I don’t recognize.
Where earlier I’d seen neat stair steps from the portage trail, there’s now a wide, hungry river dropping straight onto a mess of boulders.
The water snarls around the black rocks at the bottom, frothing and churning, waves smashing in from every direction.
I know in an instant, before we even hit the drop, that we aren’t going to make it out alive. The rapid is way too steep, the waves too wild, too big. We should have portaged the raft while we still had the chance.
We’re going to die.
“Help!” I scream, knowing that no one can save me. There’s no way to turn back now.
I whip my head right, then left, searching for my fellow rafters—wondering how they can stay so calm while the raft bucks. But there’s no one. Just flimsy plastic paddles jammed into the raft, life jackets drooping limply off the T-grips like lowered flags. I’m alone.
Then I hear his voice.
“Kaia! Focus. You’ve got this. Give me five left, now!” he booms from behind me.
I spin around in disbelief.
Heaving the oars at the back of the raft is my Parker.
He flashes me a reassuring smile, his wide grin perfect except for the tooth he chipped while riding horses on his grandpa’s farm. He’s healthy. He’s strong. Nothing like the ruined, unrecognizable form they’d pulled from the cave after the failed twenty-four-hour rescue mission.
My relief abruptly sours. Even dreaming, I know he’s dead.
“No!” I cry, rage and grief welling up like a tsunami inside me. “You’re gone, Parker. You can’t help me.” I know I should be hugging him, clinging to him in what precious little time we have before the rapids swallow us. But all I can do is scream.
He looks at me tenderly, almost sadly. “I’m right here. And you’ve got this, babe.” He points to a life jacket. “Splinter Ridge isn’t so bad, if you know what you’re doing. Now, let the paddles do the work, baby. Head down, row hard. This river’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“We won’t make it!” I cry, my voice ragged with panic and heartache.
His mouth opens again, and I just know that what he’s about to say is important. I lean toward him as the pounding river drums louder, desperate to hear him over the roaring water.
To my horror, the only sound that emerges from his open mouth is a shriek.
It isn’t the shrill, startled cry of someone spotting a spider or slipping on ice. It’s an earsplitting, raw, gut-wrenching noise that makes every hair on my body stand on end—and yanks me away from my dream.
I clutch my chest in the dark tent, gasping for air and reaching for the pocket flashlight I tucked beside my pillow.
My fingers freeze mid-fumble as I hear the same scream trail off into whimpers.
What the hell is happening? My heart pounds and my cheeks burn with tears as my finger hesitates on the flashlight’s ON button. Is somebody hurt? Or are Josh and Bryan playing some sick prank, after scaring us with Kellen Stroop stories around the campfire?
My breath comes in short, fast spurts, blood pumping in my ears. Do I stay inside the tent or do I go outside?
In spite of myself, I suddenly picture Kellen Stroop, a shadowy figure stalking the line of tents with that camopatterned knife.
I pull my phone close, squinting at the screen. It’s three in the morning. A NO SERVICE icon blares in the corner, same as it has since halfway through yesterday’s van ride.
To my left, footsteps scramble past, a zipper rips open, then more feet thud across the sand. I strain to hear anything more over the low roar of the Devil’s Stairs. Now, voices, frantic and half-whispered, come from the right side of my tent.
“Should we look inside? What if she’s hurt?”
“Oh my god, I can’t stop thinking about Kellen Stroop,” someone cries.
“We need to check if she’s okay,” another hisses.
“I’m scared,” says Pam’s voice. “Let’s go get one of the guides.”
“But she was screaming, just like in the story …”
Nylon fabric rustles.
“Maybe she’s trying to scare us? I swear to god, if this is a joke,” a woman insists. It’s Deborah, I think.
My breath comes in shallow, shaky draws while I ease out of my sleeping bag, crawl to the tent entrance, and slip on my shoes.
I hear the sound of fingernails rapping against the nylon of a tent. “Allie? Allie, are you okay in there?” a quivering voice that sounds like Nikki’s calls out.
Silence. Then more muffled footsteps on sand, followed by the slow creep of a zipper.
“We should get a guide before we open her tent,” offers a voice I don’t recognize. She sounds terrified.
Grabbing my useless phone, I unzip my own tent flap—just in time to hear another scream split the night.