Fourteen
Beck and I are the luckiest people in Kingston, California—in one regard.
There’s a mechanic shop within two blocks of the national park, something we passed while walking around town and remembered the location of.
With our signal as bad as it is, any other situation and we would’ve been royally fucked.
We still are, but at least we’re sitting inside the waiting room of Gerry’s Mechanic Shop waiting for Gerry himself to tell us how long it’ll take to replace a fuel line after he personally towed the car to his store.
The shop is small but overwhelmingly bright, huge windows lining the walls and offering a view into the mechanic shop as Gerry, a white man with a monster truck shirt, and his younger assistant tinker with Beck’s car.
The assistant speaks in Spanish and Gerry nods along, responding in English.
The only other person here is an older white woman at the cashier.
There’s no air-conditioning, and Gerry placed the plastic black seats right up against the windows, so I feel every inch of heat. Like we’re being cooked alive.
Beck fans herself with an old wilderness magazine, gaze steely on the mechanics as they work.
I can’t get myself to do the same. No, the only place I can look is the one door leading in and out of this place.
I watch as figures go by, muscles tense waiting for someone to turn in here with whatever they used to cut the fuel line, ready to cut our bodies to ribbons.
Because a fuel line severing doesn’t just happen.
“Are you ready to give a police report?” I ask Beck.
Beck leans back in her seat and looks over at me. “Do you think they’ll make us?”
“Rebecca Horne, could you come to the counter, please?” the cashier calls out. Beck had to use her real ID because of some paperwork thing and I can’t help but wince every time they say her name.
Beck rockets to her feet and strides over. I peel myself off too, ignoring the burn as my thighs unstick from the plastic. Beck immediately grabs a pen out of a cup on the counter.
“Whattaya got for me?” Beck asks. The cashier—Cheryl—slides over some paperwork.
While Beck writes, I look around at Cheryl’s space. She’s got some photos of her adult children on her desk and a calendar with a nature shot and tiny writing in the days in June.
My heart rockets to life.
She also has a framed poem on the wall. THE WITCH OF KINGSTON PARK.
And right beside that hangs a framed drawing, the one of the bare-chested woman with the goat legs. The same one Paisley mentioned in the first video.
Maybe we aren’t dead in the water yet. “There’s a witch in Kingston?” I ask, hoping my voice is even.
Cheryl looks up from her typing and nods.
“Old local legend. I keep telling the businesses that we can use it to help bolster tourism. There aren’t any witch things on the West Coast, much less in Southern California.
We could be making Salem money and then could finally rebuild those last few businesses that went down during the fires. ”
She pulls out a basket full of…hand carved figurines of that same witch.
“You want to buy one? Let me show Mayor Jamison I’m right?” she asks with a mischievous smile.
“Of course,” I say, picking one out. My fingers burn as I touch them, though, like they have some curse attached to them. I pay the couple bucks for the figurine anyway. Once the transaction has gone through, I start the real questions.
“What’s the story with this witch, anyway?” I ask. “People seem really obsessed with it here.”
“Well, she’s as old as this town,” Cheryl says, her eyes wistful. “And she’s not bad, like you’ve probably heard. She guards the forest around town. If she’s happy and respected, the land stays safe. We’re in a dangerous area, you know. We need a lot of protection.”
Beck hands Cheryl the paperwork. “What happened with the fire ten years ago?”
Cheryl sighs, her shoulders heaving. “Same story as they all are, I think. Some hooligans from out of town lit a fire outside of regulation during the dry season. We lost thousands of acres of forest,” her green eyes well with tears, “and it ravaged the town. All but a handful of buildings burned to the ground. Dozens of animals and human residents perished as well.”
My own throat grows heavy with emotion. “Was it on the news?”
“You two would’ve been too young to hear about it.
It was, but there was so much going on that year.
It fell under the radar. We built the town back up ourselves.
We’ve mostly gotten our buildings back up, but there’s no telling how long it takes a community to return emotionally.
We used to only have a handful of ghost stories from over the centuries.
Now, everyone’s seen something or other. ”
I clench my jaw to keep from saying anything I regret.
The fire is absolutely a tragedy and ghost stories are fun for what they are, but none of this connects back to the real murders that may or may not have taken place less than a year ago.
What kind of useless rabbit hole did the texter take us down telling us to ask about a witch?
Someone cut our goddamn fuel line and yet we’re still as ignorant as when we first came here.
We don’t need stories; we need evidence.
Beck inspects one of the wood carvings. “Do people really think this witch looks like some bad rendition of lady Satan?” She pauses. “No offense.”
My breath catches in my throat. What is Beck doing? We already pissed off someone in town, and we don’t need another.
Cheryl just shakes her head. “That’s her original form, missy.
She’s ethereal. She possesses people nowadays.
Only women and girls, though.” Her gaze falls on us, and suddenly the softness in her face goes stern.
“And she doesn’t like outsiders, either.
Especially not after what one did ten years ago. ”
I swallow, my hand itching to grab Beck’s and get the hell out.
“That’s kinda messed up to say, isn’t it?” Beck says. “Especially when those girls actually died here less than a year ago and didn’t start any fires?”
“They ruled that as an accident, didn’t they?” Cheryl says, her gaze suddenly moving away from Beck and me.
“An accident where the teeth of one of the girls were all broken.”
But Gerry steps out into the waiting area before we can dig any deeper. “Alright, girls, here’s the skinny: I’m gonna need a few more days for our replacement parts to come in. Are y’all good to go back to your camping until then?”
I grip Beck’s arm.
A few more days. Someone probably cut our fuel line and we’re supposed to sit here without even a car to protect us? No. No way. That’s exactly how people in horror movies die.
“Uh,” I say, my throat closing from the panic. “We’d actually like to get a taxi. Maybe you can ship the car to us or we can come back and get it later?”
Gerry looks at us with a blank stare. “I suppose you could. But we don’t really have taxis that leave the area. It’ll take a lot of trips.”
“Can the police come by and drop us off at the nearest area with Uber access, maybe?” I ask. “We have to talk to them anyway.”
Gerry furrows his brow. “Why would you need to talk to the police?”
A wave of dizziness hits me. What does he mean why?
“Our fuel line was cut.”
Gerry puts his hands on his belly and starts laughing.
“Oh boy, you girls nowadays watch way too much Dateline. The material in the fuel line was worn down. It split from the wear and tear. Some city cars start falling apart when you drive them on gravel and such. The heat only makes it worse.” Gerry looks over to Beck, who is keeping a straight face but has her thumb dug into her side. “What year is your car? Like a 2024?”
Beck looks away, her cheeks growing pink. “It’s my mom’s 2022.”
“Worst year for Jaguars and that brand doesn’t have many good years. Trust me.”
This cannot be real. I look around the room, trying to ground myself.
I feel the heat off the windows, see Gerry’s assistant shining Beck’s car with a rag, and feel the dig of my thumbnail into the meat of my hand.
I’m in a mechanic shop in a small mountain town in Southern California, investigating the deaths of my friends after an anonymous source sent us a video and abandoned us.
I’m here with Beck Horne, and someone just told her that her fuel line wasn’t cut but it broke because her mom’s car sucks.
I don’t know enough about Jaguars to confirm.
I can’t look it up, because service is so awful here. We’re so far out that there aren’t taxis or rideshares.
The grounding isn’t helping. Black dots appear at the edges of my vision. If I don’t get out of here, I could pass out in the store.
“Well, thanks,” Beck says.
“We’ll call you. You got bars here?”
“Not really.”
“You’re camping, right? I’ll have Cheryl call Natalie the ranger. She’s got a reliable landline.”
I need to go.
But thank god, Beck turns to leave then, grabbing my arm in a vice grip as we go.
Any lightness or sense of accomplishment we felt walking out of the general store a few hours ago has completely dissipated.
I squint against the sun; despite being in there for what felt like an eternity, it’s still the early afternoon.
A breeze against my skin helps push away the anxiety and claustrophobia, but Beck’s arm on me isn’t helping get all the way back to calm.
“Beck,” I say. “Please let go of my arm.”
If that’s even possible knowing what we know.
Beck lets go with a softening of her mouth. “Sorry.” She exhales. “Well, I guess we should just go back to camp, huh?” She rubs her arm. “Maybe Natalie will let us call the police. That mechanic is delusional.”
I look out toward the couple blocks back to the campsite. Maybe it’s naive, but the welcome center feels safer than anywhere in town. Just thinking about being back there and talking to Natalie slows my heart palpitations like the grounding is supposed to. “Okay. Yeah, that sounds good.”
It’s only three blocks. Maybe Gerry was right and the fuel line was just old.
I’ll believe it if it’ll get us safely to the welcome center.