c h a p t e r f i v e .
Roman Godfrey
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ROMAN FINALLY UNDERSTOOD THAT Jude was dead. It came like a pin drop, like a sudden realisation of something his brain had refused to let him acknowledge before now. It felt much like a sudden jolt, like the ceiling had fallen, like a sudden blow to the gut that ripped the air from his lungs like a parent snatching a toy from a misbehaving child.
Staring down a tunnel of trees, he felt something shift in his chest, something that squirmed around, rotten and sickly. All of a sudden he didn't want to do this, but Peter was already out of the car and Roman wasn't about to pussy out and leave him to walk this trail alone.
As he got out of the car, lingering at the start of a dingy forest trail, it hit him in the face as though a wall of air had slammed up, begging him to stop, begging him not to go any further into the trees.
He had not been expecting the sadness that came with standing here in this moment, not the or terror the disgust. Somewhere along this trail, his best friend's body had been left to rot. It left him disturbingly interested in a single question- was she still alive when she reached that ditch?
He thought about the dreams, the woods, the torch, the deer. He wondered if she had felt like he did, trapped in place, surrounded by an unseen enemy, unable to run until it was too late. He wondered if it was quick.
He swallowed thickly and followed Peter like a lost dog into the night.
It was just like the dream. Pitch black on all sides with the occasional glimmer of town lights over far-off back fences. The reserve trail began on the outskirts of one side of town, and cut all the way through to the other, separating the trailer park from the rest of civilization for a good few hundred metres, establishing a clear divide between those who belonged and those who didn't. The Godfrey Estate was on a hill, a spectator, floating above it all, removed from everything and always watching.
The rhythm of the crickets was jangly and distorted as though they were screaming over the top of each other, like a broken record or a scratched CD. The moon was an icy claw in the sky and not enough light could tear through the foggy pine needle canopy, so they ended up walking in near-complete darkness.
Roman tried to ignore the ball of ice in his gut, the way his skin prickled every time Peter's flashlight swept through the underbrush.
"So what are we looking for exactly?" he asked, trying to squash out the tremor in his voice.
"I'm not sure," Peter said again, the same answer he had given the past four times Roman had asked the question but forgot he asked it. "A clue, feeling, sign, scent. Anything that just feels off".
"I don't know about you but this whole thing feels off man," Roman answered as he rummaged through his coat pocket, "might wanna be more specific."
His fingers shook and he almost dropped the cigarette as he lifted it to his lips, fumbling to get the lighter working.
They found the ditch after about twenty minutes. The police tape was gone, but flowers remained there against a nearby tree with a score mark on it. The cheap fake ones that looked nice but meant nothing, not the real ones. Jude didn't even like flowers. They died every time she tried to grow them, she always thought they brought her bad luck.
The two boys stood up on the ridge and looked down.
"Fuck!" Roman cursed, stumbling back, his heart in his mouth.
He was staring at Jude's body.
She was lying on her side, her auburn hair muddy and knotted. Those wide eyes stared back at him but saw nothing anymore, blood spilling, maggots worming through grey flesh. A jagged sob tore from his throat when it flashed into view.
It vanished when he blinked his eyes open again. Like a glitch, a snag in the folds of reality, she was gone.
He did not want to blink again.
"You okay?" Peter asked.
"You...you mean to tell me you didn't just fucking see that?" Roman paced, dragging a hand over his face. He sucked on the cigarette, his heartbeat skittering. He wanted out he wanted out. Away from that fucking ditch, away from where he would have to see.
He felt sick, and his hand fell to his stomach as though to soothe himself.
"What? See what?" Peter placed his hands on his shoulders as if to shake him out of it.
"She was here she was-" he gulped. The ditch was still empty when he looked back down. "She was just lying there. For a second I swear to god I saw her."
"I've seen her before too. The first day you dropped me home I saw her sitting in your car," Peter told him.
They looked at each other in silence.
The shared dreams and the shared visions.
"Shee-it."
"Shee-it."
Roman and Peter exchanged a tense look before Peter dropped his gaze, searching the ground as though the answer would materialize in the dirt beneath his boots. He moved a few steps away from the ditch and crouched, combing his flashlight over the area, inspecting every twig, every scuff in the mud. Roman kept his distance, standing with his back to the ditch just in case he saw it again.
"The grass is flat right there," Peter said, rising from a crouched position. He jumped down into the ditch, the ridge at about knee height, and stepped up onto the other side where the grass blades were crumpled, crushed in a distinct line that led further into the trees. He gestured for Roman to follow, and he clenched his jaw, hesitating before hopping down and following Peter's lead.
They didn't go very far along the path of flattened foliage, just far enough that they could still see the path behind them if they turned their flashlights back in that direction. The further they moved, the more far apart the trees seemed to be, the more darkness that swelled between them.
Eventually, Peter smacked his flashlight as its beam began spluttering in a weak glow, before it died.
"It's dead," he muttered, shaking it.
Roman flicked his own flashlight off and back on, but it only gave a dim flash before it went dark too. Both of them stood frozen, his breathing shallow. "Oh you've got to be fucking kidding me," he cursed, anger coinciding with his growing fear.
He strained his eyes, peering into the darkness, but there was nothing—no movement, no sound, just the dense weight of shadows pressing in around them.
He saw them, outlined only by the moon straggling through the canopy.
A line of deer. They stood silently and still in a small bit of clearing, staring out from between the trees with blank, glassy eyes. Five of them, their bodies rigid, all too aware of the two boys sharing their presence. Beside one of them, standing by a doe's legs was a smaller shape—a small fawn.
Roman took a step back, his heel crunching against a twig, and the animals darted off once again and back into the trees as though that moment of limbo, that moment in which the deer had seemed so grotesquely aware, had never occurred.
They made their way back to the walking trail and the flashlights stuttered to life again, neither of them in possession of the words to explain it as they walked back the way they came. Something in the air was telling them to leave, and for the first time in his life Roman was happy to listen.
When the two of them got back to the car, Jude was standing beside it.