The Dirty Ones

Hayes presses a button to make the divider window go down. “Stay here and wait for us,” he tells the driver. “Keep the heat on high back here. We’re gonna be freezing when we get back.”

Sofia and I share a worried look.

“Come on,” Hayes says, getting out and pulling Sofia along with him. I scoot over, take his hand and let him pull me out as well. We walk in silence to a slight break in the trees where the path to the tower is and hands me a flashlight.

He has one too, but Sofia doesn’t. We talked this over earlier. We will hold hands the entire time. Hayes will have a light. I will have a light. And Sofia will not let go of us.

I turn on my light and look at him.

He doesn’t give us a chance to turn back, just pushes aside the bare branches with one hand, making creepy shadows with his flashlight, and drags Sofia into the woods with him. I have her hand, so she drags me along behind her.

“What the fuck are we doing?” Sofia whispers into the silence.

“Just relax,” Hayes says. “I told you, it’s not bad.”

“I don’t like this,” I say. “It’s so fucking creepy. I feel like I’m in a horror movie where the stupid teenagers do everything wrong. We’re gonna get killed tonight.”

Hayes stops so abruptly Sofia bumps into him and I bump into her. “Stop it, Kiera. We’re fine. There’s nothing out here but us. I promise you.”

“He’s the creepy outsider who lures the stupid girls into his diabolical plan,” Sofia says.

“Yeah. He’s got like… a lair out here. Some shabby cabin filled with doll heads and shit.”

Sofia laughs. “And he wants to dress us up like dolls.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hayes says. “Stop writing a story. Nothing’s gonna happen, but this is serious.”

Sofia shoots me a look over her shoulder, but then trips over something and goes back to paying attention.

“Where’s the fucking gate?” I huff a few seconds later. “It should be here already, right?”

“There is no gate,” Hayes says. “At least not out here.”

“Hmmm,” Sofia says. “They took it down?”

“Just come on.”

We keep going. My feet are freezing because my knee-high shearling boots are really more for looks and not made for winter trekking, so they’re soaking wet now. The snow is very deep in some places and by the time Hayes pulls us through the last of the trees into a clearing, my pants are covered in those annoying ice balls.

“Where are we?” Sofia asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “None of this looks right. Things sure have changed in ten years.”

Hayes turns to us and I flash my light at his chest, trying to see his face, but not wanting to blind him in the eyes. “I just want you to look around, OK?”

“What are we looking for?” I pan my light around and realize exactly where we are.

“Oh, my God,” Sofia says. “We’re in a cemetery?”

“When did they put this in?” I ask. So weird.

“It’s always been here,” Hayes says. “Look.” He pans his light onto a nearby headstone. “The date.”

“Eighteen seventy-nine?” Sofia asks. “What the hell?” She looks around. I look around. “Where’s the tower?”

“There is no tower, Sofia. There never was a tower.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask, thoroughly confused. “We came here all the time. Hell, I came here every fucking week all of senior year. Of course there’s a tower. It’s where we… did that stuff and I… wrote the book.”

Hayes swallows hard, looking at me intently. “You did write a book that year, Kiera. But not the one you think. And it didn’t happen in a tower. It happened in the top floor of the theatre.”

“What?” Sofia says, letting go of our hands and spinning around. She grabs my flashlight and begins walking away.

“Sofia!” I say. “Where are you going?” I run through the deep snow to catch up. Hayes right behind me.

“There’s no tower, Sofia,” he says.

“It’s here. Or we’re in the wrong place. It’s got to be here. I remember it.”

“Sofia,” he says, his long legs taking him past me so he can grab her wrist and make her stop. “It’s not here. It was a fucking lie, OK? The whole thing was a fucking cover-up.”

“A cover-up for what?” I ask.

“Think hard, Kiera,” Hayes says, staring into my eyes. “Think very hard about what really happened that night. You were here, remember? In the cemetery. We were all here. Bennett and I were here with Emily. You were here with Camille and Sofia. And Connor… Connor was here with his father.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Sofia asks. Loudly now. “No. That’s not how it happened. We were…” But she stops and looks at me. “We were…”

“We were all here,” Hayes says. “But not for the reasons we thought. There is no tower, you guys. There never was a fucking tower. That’s not what happened that night.”