128. The Road Never Traveled

There are still unexplained mysteries, of course.

Starting with where my motorcycle went.

It’s midday, and I’m standing near the burnt remains of the church Pastor Marsh built. The upside-down stone cross is still upright, surrounded by the scorched woods. I think that Kinner ordered this church built. But Marsh wanted to get rid of Kinner and the rest of his followers with a mass murder, offering up everyone as sacrifices.

Everyone but me.

At least that’s the idea that’s been talked about. Five other people died in the fire, including Principal Harking.

What Marsh intended to do with me, had I accepted Kinner’s proposal and killed him myself … who knows?

It makes as much sense as the path I took to get to Marsh Falls. In the daylight, I can see that there really is no such path. It’s grown over with bushes and small trees. There’s no way in the world I could have ridden my bike through it. It’s as if the path suddenly disappeared.

Like the road to the Crag’s Inn.

Regardless of what happened to it, I head down the path into the woods on foot. Brick is waiting for me back at the burned-down church; he drove me out here because he wanted to see the wreckage himself.

I walk for a couple of miles before realizing that there’s no motorcycle to find. This isn’t the road less traveled by—this is the road long forgotten.

But I know I came down here, and I know that it took me to Marsh Falls.

When I get back to Brick, who’s leaning against his car and smoking a cigarette, he waits for a verdict on the bike. I just shake my head in disbelief.

“I saw you head straight ahead through those woods,” Brick says.

“So I’m not crazy?”

He takes a drag and shakes his head. “Nope.”

We look at the dense woods that surely hold many secrets.

“You don’t look surprised,” I say.

“I just rescued you from a pastor who torched his church and tried to burn off his congregation. So yeah, nothing much is probably ever gonna surprise me again. Like ever.”

I want to laugh, but everything is still too raw. People died in this fire right next to us. It could have been us. It could have been Kelsey.

“That’s just a shame,” Brick says to me.

“The church?”

“What, that? No. I’m talking about the bike. That thing was priceless.”

“If I still owned it, I’d give it to you. In a heartbeat.”

“You wouldn’t have to do that.”

“I owe you my life. And Kelsey’s life.”

“You don’t owe me. Think it’s the big guy in heaven that helped you out.”

“You believe in God?”

Brick rubs his buzzed head and then chuckles. “After this … yeah, definitely. But I think it’s going to take me a while before I want to hear another preacher preachin’ behind the pulpit. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah. I do. Unfortunately.”

Brick is the only one who knows that I took a bleeding and dying Kelsey into the woods to get to Marsh Falls. He’s only ever asked me how she’s doing—not how she survived.

Most people would want to know and then want it explained over and over again. But people around Solitary, people like Brick, don’t seem to need long explanations. I think they just get it.

I take a look at the upside-down cross still standing amidst the charred wood. I look at it for a long time, a symbol of something twisted and evil, surrounded by soot and ashes. Abandoned in the middle of nowhere.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say.