My eyes are narrowed and hawklike as I speed down the dusty desert highway on my motorcycle. The roar and rumble of the engine is the loudest sound for miles and miles in any direction, maybe even the only sound. I turn my head from left to right, taking in the desolate surroundings I have been driving through for hours. It’s strange; this part of the world is sequestered away between several large cities. Vegas, Salt Lake City, Sacramento. None of these big cities are entirely out of reach. They’re only a few hours’ drive away if you travel hard and light. And yet this stretch of desert seems ancient and separate, like a secret city built by hands of a long-lost civilization. Everything is quiet. Everything is flat and barren for as far as the eye can see. The reddish clay earth dries and cracks like chapped skin, only now and again broken up by a pattern of low, prickly shrubs.
There is nothing hospitable about the world out here. This is not a place that fosters great ideas or great minds. I can see why Lauren’s old hometown has been gradually dwindling away to a ghost town all these years. I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to live out here, on the bare border between Nevada and California, the red rock formations rising like watchful giants now and then in the distance. It is so quiet and empty, and yet I feel the distinct sensation of being watched. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My hands tighten over the steering bars until my knuckles go pearly white with tension. I have to keep reminding myself to stop clenching my teeth. It feels as though at any moment, I could turn my head and barely catch someone looking over my shoulder. Just a glimpse. A shimmer of mirage that disappears when you look directly at it. This land feels heavy with ghosts, with dead-end dreams that never even got off the dusty ground. Bad things happen here. I can’t help but wonder morbidly if the reddish dirt is stained that color with years of spilled blood.
And when I start to roll through the outskirts of town, it only gets worse. This place is barely breathing these days. People have realized there is much more to the world than suffering in claustrophobic silence in the town where you were born. Nobody chooses their birthplace. And if they could, they sure as hell would not pick a place like this. Your past, your origins are out of your hands. But your future—that belongs to you. Nobody wants to live out their future here, and I don’t blame them. Every building I ride past is in some degree of dilapidation and abandonment. The old downtown saloons and hair salons and diners sag under the oppressive glare of the desert sun. The windows are either shuttered or smashed, with glittering bits of broken glass shards all over the weedy pavement. There are potholes and disintegrating sidewalks, brick foundations crumbling to dirt with the weight of propping up a town which has been dead for a long time. I cannot imagine there was ever a time when this place was a desirable location. I suppose at some point it must have had something to offer, or people would never have attempted to build a town in a hellscape like this. And if they were so inclined to live here in the first place, despite the isolation, despite the hostile climate, then what could it have been that drove them out in the end?
I have to wonder if it has something to do with the murders.
That seems like a fair enough reason to abandon your home, your memories. Once they’ve been stained with someone else’s blood, what good are the sepia-toned recollections of a youth spent desperately searching for something to pass the time, in a world that has little to offer and everything to take. I pull over to the side of the bumpy, unmaintained road for a moment, the engine idling while I take out the well-worn road map I brought with me. I unfold its fraying pages and my eyes scan the lines of highways and small residential streets until they land on the money spot—the address of Lauren’s old childhood home. There it is, circled in bloody red. I look up and around. This is the downtown area, where businesses once survived (I can’t imagine they flourished, but at least survived for a while). This is the hub of activity. And yet, no matter where I look, I see only degradation and desolation. No stir of car engines. No chattering families downtown for a good afternoon of shopping and dining out. There is nothing left here to suggest life has gone on after whatever death it was that took the town down with it.
I am not a man who is easily spooked, but even I have to admit this is one hell of a ghost town. With renewed confidence in my directions to Lauren’s old house, I start up the engine again and roll out onto the main road through town. As I drive through, I continue to tally up the number of dead, scraped-out husks of old public buildings and homes. It looks almost as though some horrific natural disaster has cut through here, but I know that’s not what killed the town. Not here. Disaster isn’t necessary; this place was doomed from its conception.
I make a few turns, every now and then catching sight of a light on in a window, telling me that there are still some stragglers stubbornly trying to stick it out here in desert purgatory. I hesitate to call them brave souls. More foolish than brave, I would say. But I have to give them some credit for managing to survive in a town that has long stopped supporting them back. I follow the road map image in my head until finally I roll up to the front of a small, sagging bungalow with a crooked, damaged roof and a very unsafe-looking front porch. The front steps are missing a stair, and the windows are nearly black with dust and grime. The house looks utterly cursed and clearly abandoned. But I can tell by the broken, rusted tricycle lying on its side in the driveway that it wasn’t properly cleaned out when its tenants moved on.
“Oh, Lauren. What a shitty start to your life,” I murmur grimly to myself as I turn off the bike engine and slide off to walk up the crooked driveway.
I look around just in case there are any nosy neighbors watching me about to break into an empty old home, but I don’t see anyone around. In fact, this whole street might as well be torn down. There are no signs of life to be found here. In the red-dust front yard filled with cracked and parched brown grass, there is a rusting FOR SALE sign sharing a stake with NEW PRICE! It only adds to the forlorn appearance of the place, especially because anyone in their right mind would know this place will never sell. Nobody wants to live here. There is something dark and ominous in this house, like the filthy windows are a pair of unblinking, vigilant eyes.
I deftly climb up the broken front steps onto the creaky front porch with its missing planks and gaping holes. I move cautiously up to the front door and listen closely, holding my breath. There’s no sounds from within, just as expected. Still, I’m not totally keen on the idea of just bursting into this abandoned old house just yet, so I take out my cell phone and decide to attend to some other business first. I dial the number for Ironsides, listen to the line ring twice, and then he picks up.
“Yeah?” he answers in typical gruff fashion.
“Any new leads on the frat guy situation?” I ask in a lowered voice.
“You mean Brandon? Yeah. I talked to the guy. Real skeevy kid. Skittish like a little weasel. I don’t like him,” Ironsides says.
“And? Did he listen to reason?” I prompt him.
“Sure did. We came to an, uh, agreement,” he replies.
“What about Lauren?” I ask. “Was she around there?”
“No. No sign of her. And Brandon, dumb as he may be, seemed to be telling the truth about this mess. He has no idea about anybody getting abducted. That’s not the topic we met up to discuss, though,” he relays.
I groan and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Alright. Well, did you at least convince him not to press charges?” I ask.
“Eh, we’ll figure that out when you get back here, yeah? That’s not important right now. You went out there to find your girl, right?” Ironsides says.
“Yes,” I sigh.
“Good. Keep looking. Focus on that. We’re busy back here, too, looking for Diesel and his slimy gang,” he grunts.
I can feel anger rising in my chest. I’m impatient. I want all the shattered pieces of this mess to fall into place already so I can find Lauren and get her back to safety. But I know Ironsides is right: I need to stay focused on the task at-hand and keep my rage at a safe distance. I need to remain calm. I have to do this right.
“You good, man?” Ironsides says, shaking me out of my thoughts.
I clear my throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. Listen, I’m standing on the front porch of Lauren’s old house she grew up in. I’ve got to go,” I explain.
“Say no more. Go ahead. Just be careful. That place may be a ghost town but you still don’t want a breaking and entering charge over your head,” he warns.
“Got it. I’ll be careful,” I tell him. “Talk later.”
“Yep. Later,” he says, and the line goes dead.
I slide the phone back into my pocket and tentatively try the front door knob. I fully expect it to be locked, but to my surprise, the door just creaks open. I am instantly hit square in the face with a putrid smell and I wrinkle my nose as I step through the threshold.
This place is a damn pigsty. Books with pages ripped out. Clothes stained and holey draped all over the floor and dusty, moth-eaten furniture. A cockroach scurries away from my heavy footsteps to take refuge under a sagging lounge chair. The place looks even smaller and more cramped on the inside than it appeared on the outside. I can’t imagine a lot of positive memories happening in a house like this, even before it was abandoned. These people left in a hurry, that much is clear. They didn’t pack up well. The house is still littered with stuff, as though they only took some clothes and valuables and hightailed it out in a rush. On the molding rug there’s a doll with one glassy eye missing, the other half-lidded and staring right at me. Her plush little body is naked, a fly crawling on her porcelain cheek.
I walk through the foyer to the little kitchen area. There are still pots and pans on the stove, dishes collecting mold and grime and flies in the parched sink. I have to cover my face to walk through it, the smell is so foul. I step into a small living room, where an empty entertainment center takes up the bulk of the space. There’s a red velour sofa stained and sticky with age. The pillows are ripped open, with little bits of cottony fluff scattered across the creaky floorboards. On the coffee table, caked with years of thick dust, is what looks to be a scrapbooking binder or maybe just a photo album. I gingerly pick it up, feeling the dust sink in under my fingernails as I open the front cover and begin to flip through. It is a photo album, but only a sparse number of photographs are in here. Most of them depict Lauren’s father and mother, only rarely showing photographs of Lauren herself as a child. And to my horror, I realize that in the majority of those, Lauren’s sweet little childish face has been burned out, probably with a cigarette. It fills me with rage to know how unfairly she was treated, how little her own family thought of her. It amazes me how strong and kind and resilient she has become, despite the terrible upbringing she suffered through. These people, her supposed parents, gave her nothing to go on. They did not prepare her for the world. Hell, they didn’t even protect her from it. I shake my head, clenching my teeth and fists with bitter anger.
I feel a strong sense of resolve for my mission once again. I have to save her. Nobody else will. She just has to hold on and stay strong a little longer. I will find her and I will set her free. I only hope I can get to her in time.
I set down the photo album and think for a moment. Where should I look next? I recall Lauren telling me briefly about the shed out back where her slimeball of a father kept his young victims captive. I stomp through the house to the back, scraping the sliding glass door open to step out into the blistering desert sun. In the back corner of the yard, sure enough, surrounded by years of stacked pine needles in varying shades of red, brown, and green, is a shed. However, I can tell by the positioning of the shed that it must have been removed for a time and then brought back. I don’t know if it was the police that did it or somebody else. Either way, it’s there.
I notice then that even though I can’t hear anything amiss, there are relatively fresh tracks on the ground through the pine needles and sandy mud. With adrenaline starting to pump through my veins again, I take out my gun and slowly begin to approach the shed. I stop at the door for a brief moment, looking around to make sure nobody can see me. It’s dead and empty out here. Quieter than a tomb. So with no further hesitation, I clutch my gun and kick down the door.