Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

We get on one of the Washington State ferries with the Mercedes and head across blinding blue water. The sun is out in full force, the breeze is mineral fresh, carrying the scent of pine and dried moss. It’s hard to imagine we’re about to leave this world behind. It’s the kind of day that makes you believe the Devil doesn’t exist.

Once we’re on the island, with sleepy towns, tourists, and anchored boats flashing past, I ask Jay how exactly he knows where he’s going.

“Instinct,” he says, taking off his shades as we turn off one of the main roads and head down a gravel one blanketed by forest. “Doesn’t it feel right to you?”

It does. Because the more I’m on this island, the more it looks familiar. The trees, the darkness of the forest. Out by the shore there are cliffs of quartz and tan-colored moss, dried out by the sun, the very cliffs I’ve stood on in my dreams.

“We’re going to a pond, aren’t we,” I whisper, staring out the window as the dark trees roll past down the bumpy road.

“Yes. I do believe so.”

I shudder, feeling as if a black cloud has come over us, shedding sticky tears of tar.

Jay puts his hand on mine before he abruptly takes it away, remembering he shouldn’t touch me. “You’re going to be okay. You’ve got me and I’m not going to let a thing happen to you. You hear me?”

I try to make a noise of agreement but it comes out more as a squeak, words compromised by fear.

We keep driving, deeper and deeper into the forest. The sky starts to darken, even though sundown is hours away. It’s like the further we drive, the closer we are to night, to a place where light can’t enter.

Or perhaps a giant cave that will swallow us whole, take us straight to Hell before we even know what’s going on.

“I don’t like it here,” I tell him, my gut pierced by a corkscrew of unease, thin and sharp and winding its way into the heart of me. “It’s wrong. This is all wrong.”

“And that’s how we know we’re going the right away,” he says. “Because in no way should this feel comfortable to you. Then I’d really have to worry.”

I glance at him. “Does it feel comfortable to you?”

He gives his head a grim shake. “No. It doesn’t. Every part of me is telling me to turn the car around now.”

Every part? Or just most of you?

I don’t want to dwell on it, especially as the forest here seems to be more than just trees. It seems . . . sentient.

When I was younger, a child of six or so, before the subdivisions and developments started popping up in our neighborhood, Perry used to take me to the nearby woods to play. In reality it was probably the size of a block but when I was younger it was a huge, carnivorous beast. I’m not sure why I feared the forest. Perry was thirteen at the time and fearless, a few years away from losing her marbles and shutting herself away from me. But Perry loved that forest and would take me there often.

Normally we just stayed at the area closest to the street, but sometimes Perry would take my hand and lead me through the scaly trees to where the forest skirted the edge of the lake. She liked to try and catch the frogs, often wading up to her knees trying to find them. What can I say, she was a weird girl.

I did as she told me because I liked her attention and I thought she was cool, even if catching frogs grossed me out. She would go into the water and grimace gleefully at how icky the bottom felt on her bare feet, then she’d yell at me to come do the same.

Again, I did it to please her. I took off my shoes and stepped in and squealed because the muck felt like fingers, holding me down.

And then one day, one hot, hot summer day, no different from this one, Perry went all the way in up to her bum, her shorts wet, a net grasped determinedly in her hand as she searched the water.

I stayed on the shore for as long as I could. The lake was shallow and had a very gentle slope in this section where you could walk quite far out without having to swim.

Eventually though, she was too far away and when I called for her, she didn’t listen, or maybe even hear me. She just swung her net at the water, lost in her attempts.

I didn’t want to stand on shore anymore. A cloud passed over and swallowed up the sun. The temperature dropped dramatically but I was the only who seemed to notice. And the forest, that black, seemingly endless forest was at my back. I could swear that every time I turned away from it, it crept closer. It wasn’t just a bunch of trees, it was a hungry, primitive beast that gobbled up girls like me. Of this I was sure.