A horrific supernatural tale about a haunted road!
Join a college filmmaker for a walk down the most haunted road in Ohio. Supernatural thrills for fans of Stephen King and old-school horror/ghost stories.
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Preface: The Bridge
He stepped into the darkness of the covered bridge and told himself: Only a few more miles to go, if only your nerves and your sanity hold out, that is.
The inside of the bridge’s enclosure smelled of mold, mildew, and the unseen waters that ran beneath it. It had the dank, black feeling of the bottom of a well.
As he placed one foot down on the first creaking plank of the bridge, he half-remembered a nightmare: a dream of an evil presence that was vaguely female—or no, that pretended to be female. She (it?) might be a ghost or possibly something much worse. And she was lying in wait for him, like the evil witch in the children’s story, Hansel and Gretel.
He took another step into the all-consuming darkness. The wood creaked again, practically groaned this time. She’s waiting for you, he thought. Whatever she (or it) is, you’ll find out before you reach the other side of this bridge.
Now why would the sound of that creaking wood trigger such thoughts?
Then he remembered: Because she had told him that she would be waiting for him here. At the bridge.
He looked ahead and saw the moonlit pavement of the open road not a stone’s throw away. He could not go back now. Even worse things were waiting on the road behind him. He had to move forward.
Just walk, he thought. Take some long strides and you’ll be out of here in no time.
And so he walked, observing how narrow the bridge was, and reflecting that surely two cars coming from opposite directions could not pass through here at the same time.
The wood beneath his feet continued to creak, but that was nothing to worry about. The bridge supported the weight of cars, after all.
He heard a sound above him, from the rafters of the enclosure. It was like a hiss, like air escaping from a poorly tied balloon. Then he heard another sound: the sound of weight shifting, of something moving around up there.
Don’t look. Just keeping walking. If you look up there, what you see will drive you mad, even more so than the other things you’ve seen this night.
He was now in the middle of the bridge; the open, starry sky and the solid pavement were only a few paces away. He could make it in a short dash.
The thing above him seemed to sense his impending flight. He heard it scratch against the wood overhead.
And now he had the feeling that he must look upward and confront it—that this was the central task that he had set out tonight to face. It would also be true to say that the malevolent presence aroused his darkest curiosity. Like Lot’s wife fleeing from the burning wreckage of Sodom, he felt compelled to see the worst, and suffer the consequences.
Slowly and deliberately, he stopped his forward trek, steeled himself, and looked up into the rafters of the covered bridge.
Chapter 1
Four days earlier…
The portly, fortysomething stranger hailed Jason Kelley in the corridor of the University of Cincinnati’s Old Chemistry Hall, just as the latter was exiting Video Journalism 201. And Jason, oblivious, walked right by the unknown man without even slowing down.
Jason’s thoughts were still lost in the lecture that had just ended. The professor who taught Video Journalism 201, Dr. Reinhold, was a transplanted Californian, a PhD who had worked for a time with Universal Studios. Dr. Reinhold had feverishly lectured the class through the end of the hour, even though it was the last week of classes, and everyone was feeling lazy in the early June heat. That was Dr. Reinhold for you: He was passionate about his subject matter, unlike so many other profs, whom you could tell were only going through the motions.
But school was not the only thing on Jason’s mind; and he immediately began to daydream about other matters. (This was why he did not hear when the stranger addressed him by name a second time amid the hum of the crowded university hallway.)
Jason was daydreaming about Molly Russell. Molly was a coed who on one night several weekends ago had quite unexpectedly spent the night in his apartment. Thoughts of Molly simultaneously stirred feelings of deep longing and unease. Jason was aware of the paradoxical and contradictory nature of this combination of feelings, and was wondering how it could be so.
Jason was thinking about the way he had treated Molly since their encounter, and feeling guilty about it. Jason knew that he had been a bit of an insensitive jerk lately. He was also thinking about his mother and father; that meant even more feelings of guilt.
And his sister, Amy—no, he didn’t even want to think about Amy now.
Jason was about to walk around the corner of the hallway—the one that led to the main exit—when the stranger called out yet again.
“Jason Kelley! Excuse me!”
This time the sound of his own name snapped him out of his reverie. Jason stopped, turned around, and saw the source of the voice: an older man who looked somewhat out of place in the swirl of late teen and early twentysomething students.
“Hello?” Jason responded. Jason knew immediately that he had seen this man somewhere on television—or perhaps on the Internet. Jason was barely twenty-one years old, and he could count his middle-aged acquaintances on two hands—not including professors and relatives. This man, who was balding and had flecks of gray in his beard, was neither of the above.
“I thought you were going to keep walking,” the man went on. “I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to run you down and tackle you.” These words were phrased as an offhand joke; but Jason could detect a slight ripple of irritation beneath the observation. This was obviously not a man who was used to being ignored.
“You are Jason Kelley, aren’t you?” the stranger said, when Jason continued to look confused.
“I am,” Jason said neutrally. “And you are—”
Where have I seen this guy before? Somewhere, I’m sure. But I have no idea where.
“Ah,” the man said. “Allow me to introduce myself.” Clearly he had expected Jason to recognize him on sight; so he was obviously some sort of a celebrity—albeit a minor one, in all likelihood.
“Thank you.”
“My name is Simon Rose. Does that name ring a bell?”
Simon Rose! Now Jason got it:
“It sure does,” Jason said, brightening. “Of course I recognize you: Ghost Hunting with Simon Rose.”
“Guilty as charged,” Simon Rose said. He removed a business card from his shirt pocket and handed it to Jason. The business card contained Rose’s contact information, plus a little logo that featured a stylized cartoon ghost. “And I know this is strange, approaching you like this, but Dr. Hoffman said that I could find you here. With this being the last week of school and all, I wanted to make sure that I caught up with you before you took off for the summer.”
Jason nodded, his excitement growing. Now this was starting to make sense. Dr. Hoffman was his academic advisor. And this was indeed one of his last classes of the school year. He would be exiting his campus apartment in a matter of days, though his residence during the summer was still a contentious issue. That made him think of his parents again, and he quickly stifled those unpleasant thoughts. This was Simon Rose who had sought him out. Simon Rose of Ghost Hunting with Simon Rose.
Students milled about them, their pace and conversations buoyed by early June levity. A warm summer breeze swept into the corridor through a set of metallic doors that were propped open to allow a flux of students in both directions. To Jason’s surprise, no one else seemed to recognize Simon Rose, either. Cable television and the Internet had minted a lot of second-tier celebrities in recent years, Jason knew.
Simon Rose’s domain was cable TV. Ghost Hunting with Simon Rose was a regular staple on the Biography Channel—or possibly TLC. (Jason couldn’t remember which one for sure.) And, of course, both authorized and pirated clips of the show could be found throughout the Internet.
“I was very impressed with those two short films you entered in the Southern Ohio Regional Scholastic Film Competition last month,” Simon said. “No—I didn’t attend the actual event; but I saw them on the Internet. You’ve got real talent, Jason. Now, I have a proposition for you. Would you, by chance, be free for lunch so that we might discuss it?”
“Absolutely,” Jason said. His next class was not until the late afternoon. And he would have gladly skipped it anyway. It wasn’t everyday that a man like Simon Rose paid a personal visit to an Electronic Media major at a public university in Ohio.
“Perfect,” Rose said. “How does Indian sound?”
***
Grand Taj India Restaurant was located in the Gaslight District of Clifton, the inner-city neighborhood that was home to the University of Cincinnati. They made the short drive in Simon Rose’s car, a sleek red Audi S5 Cabriolet that attracted numerous stares along the way. When Jason made an appreciative remark about the car, Simon seemingly could not help adding, “This is the car I use when I drive in the flyover states. When I’m in California, I drive an R8 GT Spyder.”
Jason had been told numerous times that a display of excessive eagerness was one of the worst mistakes that a young person could make, so he contented himself with small talk during the ride to the restaurant. Once there, they were efficiently seated by a sari-clad hostess; and each of them placed an order for lunch. Simon Rose didn’t come to the point until he was digging into his appetizer, a beef-filled pastry called keema samosa.
“You entered two films in the competition we talked about,” Simon said.
“Yes, sir,” Jason said. The first of these, Community Portrait, was a sort of inner-city community immersion film—arguably low-hanging fruit for a student who lived within the confines of the city. The film had been well received in the competition. In retrospect, however, Jason was less than proud of it. Community Portrait, with its preachy script and stilted portrayal of the lives of the urban poor, now struck Jason as sanctimonious and self-serving. He had intended to produce a Film with a Message. He had ended up looking like just another affluent white film student who pesters the residents of the inner city for “material.”
The second film, A Haunting at Travis Books, was a bit more interesting. A bookstore owner in a nearby Cincinnati neighborhood had complained of paranormal activity. The one-hundred-fifty-year-old building in which Travis Books was housed had a troubled history: Sometime around the First World War, a young woman had apparently hanged herself in the attic. This woman, it seemed, was dead but not yet departed. The bookstore’s owner and a handful of his patrons had reported hearing the creaking sound that a rope makes when it swings back and forth with a heavy object attached to one of its ends. Cold spots suddenly chilled the air without warning, even during the height of summer. Books and other objects would occasionally disappear from the main downstairs store area, only to appear later in one of the bookstore’s back offices. According to the owner, these missing objects sometimes even made their way to the very attic where the long-dead woman had taken her own life.
Jason had learned of the allegedly haunted bookstore when he read a brief article about the place on one of Cincinnati’s news websites. He had sensed immediately that the bookstore’s owner’s predicament had short film potential. Moreover, he believed that he could take the story itself to another level, one that the local journalist who had written the ho-hum article could never grasp. So he contacted not only the bookstore’s owner, but also a representative of one of the many ghost-hunting organizations in the Cincinnati area. These groups, Jason had heard, were always eager for exposure.
Jason began A Haunting at Travis Books with a series of interviews with the bookstore’s owner and several customers who were willing to participate. He included a short sketch of the woman who had hung herself—a woman whose name turned out to be Lena Caudwell. But the main portion of the film consisted of an onsite paranormal investigation, complete with EMF readings and EVP recordings.
The results, as Jason had half-expected, were inconclusive; and the tormented spirit of Lena Caudwell failed to oblige him with a dramatic appearance. Nevertheless, Jason knew that he had nailed both the subject matter and the presentation. He had woven a piece of local lore into a compelling human interest story, then combined it with a detailed study of a textbook ghost-hunting investigation. A Haunting at Travis Books contained no irrefutable proof of paranormal activity. But then, no films about the paranormal contained such proof.
“I assume that you were most interested in the second one,” Jason said now. A waitress in a colorful Indian sari brought them their entrees—tandori chicken with naan and saffron rice.
“Good guess,” Simon said with a smile. “You showed a real intuitive grasp of the subject matter. Tell me, do you have a special interest in the supernatural?”
“Not really,” Jason said honestly. It was tempting to lie; but Jason figured that a man like Simon would be able to instantly spot a response that was sycophantically or opportunistically dishonest. “I have a special interest in making good films.”
“Fair enough,” Simon said, before putting a forkful of tandori chicken into his mouth. “But the project I have in mind for you is—as you might expect—supernatural in nature.”
Jason felt a pleasant tingle of excitement. Rose was finally coming to the point.
“Have you ever heard of a stretch of road called the Shaman’s Highway? It’s located in Carey County, just a little past Osborn Lake State Park.”
Jason shook his head. “Can’t say as I have. But then, I’m not from around here. I grew up in Columbus. I’ve heard of Wagosh, though. Isn’t that in Carey County?”
“Another good guess,” Simon said. He removed an iPhone from his pocket and manipulated its screen for the better part of a minute. Then he laid the phone down on the tablecloth and scooted it toward Jason.
The phone’s screen was filled with a Google Maps view that showed a stretch of U.S. Route 68 running south from Wagosh, Ohio. Jason picked out Osborn Lake State Park on the map view, as well as a few small towns lying south of Wagosh. “This is the Shaman’s Highway,” Rose said.
“It looks like a pretty remote area,” Jason observed.
“It is,” Rose said, taking the phone back. “About sixty miles northeast of here. As you probably know, central Ohio is fairly unpopulated to the east of I-71 between Cincinnati and Columbus. The area you would be walking through is rural. Note that I specified that you would have to complete the entire study on foot, for reasons that I shall explain shortly. There are houses and towns along the Shaman’s Highway, but you’d be a long way from the city—a long way from anything resembling a comfortable, brightly lit suburb. And you would be walking at night, through an area with a reputation for paranormal activity. Would that be a problem for you?”
Jason sensed a slight air of baiting in the question. “I’m not afraid of the dark.”
“That’s good, Jason. Mighty good, because a lot of people living in Carey County have been scared by the Shaman’s Highway late at night. And from what I hear, the majority of them were anything but cowards. When my team was conducting its initial research, we spoke to a 38-year-old man who had done two tours of duty in Iraq. He told us that nothing—not even a midnight patrol in Fallujah—had scared him as much as what he saw on that little stretch of U.S. Route 68. Now, are you still interested?”
Jason smiled. “I’m very interested, Mr. Rose. Let’s hear what you have in mind.”
* * *
Text entry entitled “The Shaman’s Highway”, from the paranormal website, HauntingsinOhio.com.
“Between the small city of Wagosh, Ohio and the town of John’s Mistake, there lies an eleven-mile section of U.S. Route 68 that locals refer to as ‘the Shaman’s Highway.’ Over the past one hundred years, there have been numerous reports of paranormal phenomena along this roadway. These include unexplained voices and sounds coming from the surrounding woods, and sightings of ghostlike apparitions, hellhounds, and various other unidentified creatures. Near the southern terminus of the Shaman’s Highway, there is a nineteenth-century covered bridge that is believed to be haunted by the spirit of a witch. The witch reportedly lived in the area around the time of the Civil War.
In 1997, a Carey County Sheriff’s Deputy was interviewed by the Columbus Dispatch regarding the road’s reputation. “South of Wagosh, Route 68 drops off into a remote part of the countryside. It’s a section of road that will play games with your imagination if you aren’t careful,” Deputy John Porter stated.
There are several theories that are commonly cited as explanations for the disturbing occurrences. Carey County, Ohio was home to multiple Native American tribes prior to widespread European settlement of the area—most notably the Shawnee. When Route 68 was paved in the early 1930s to accommodate vehicle traffic, workers reported finding Native American artifacts, including arrowheads, shards of clay pottery, and stone amulets. There are also unconfirmed reports of skulls and other human bones being unearthed during the roadwork. This has led to speculation that a Shawnee burial ground may have been located in the area.
Another theory links the strange sightings to rumored satanic cult activity during the 1960s and 1970s. In the mid-1970s there were persistent stories about satanic rituals being carried out in an unspecified part of the woods along the same portion of the highway. These reports, like those of the unearthed human remains and the burial ground, were never confirmed.”
* * *
As Simon Rose finished his description of the Shaman’s Highway and its history, Jason feared that the hint of a repressed smile would show on his face. Jason did not define himself as a coldly rational atheist. To the extent that such matters occurred to him at all, he supposed that he would have acquiesced to the existence of God and the human soul. However, Simon’s story was over the top.
“I sense a skeptic in the room,” Simon said without a trace of resentment. No doubt the ghost-hunter was accustomed to dealing with skeptics.
“Well, I—” Jason began, struggling to decide how honestly he should respond.
“No hemming and hawing,” Simon preempted him. “Just so you know, your belief in the supernatural—or lack thereof—is in no way a prerequisite for your participation in this project, which I’ll outline in detail shortly. For now, I want you to tell me what you think. Be honest.”
“Okay, then,” Jason said. “Here goes: I can accept the idea—in theory, that is—of a wayward spirit, or some sort of residual energy from a past event producing a rapping on a wall, or maybe even traces of an apparition. I can deal with the notion of words being articulated on EVP recordings, and unexplained cold air pockets in rooms where a person was murdered or committed suicide. But dead witches and a who’s who assembly of spirits haunting a highway? And hellhounds? I’m sorry Mr. Rose, but it all strains my sense of credibility. I don’t know exactly what a hellhound is, but it doesn’t sound like something that’s likely to exist in the woods of Ohio.”
Simon laughed indulgently, his good humor not yet flagging. “The hellhound,” he said. “Is a universal element in folklore. In one form or another, the creature can be traced all the way back to the Ancient Greek myths. Have you ever heard of the three-headed dog known as Cerberus? The Greeks and the Romans believed that it guarded the gateway to the underworld, and kept those who had crossed the River Styx from escaping back into the world of the living. Multiple iterations on the theme of the hellhound can be found throughout the world, from the Barghest of northern England, to the black cadejo of Latin America.”
“Fair enough,” Jason said. “But hellhounds in Ohio? You’ll pardon me if I say that it all sounds a little bit hard to accept.”
Simon chuckled. “I can see that I don’t have to worry about you being overly credulous. That’s okay. I’ve often found that some of the best ghost hunters are skeptics, anyway. And certainly there would be a problem if you were too eager to believe. But let me tell you now what I have in mind, exactly. Are you physically fit, Jason?”
The question surprised Jason somewhat. “I ran track in high school,” he said. “My event was the two-mile. I went to the state finals my senior year.”
“Excellent,” Simon replied. “Then you would have no trouble walking eleven miles. And an eleven-mile walk is exactly what this project entails. My crew will drop you off just south of Wagosh shortly after dusk on the day of the film project. Then you’ll hike the eleven miles to the end of the Shaman’s Highway. Along the way, you’ll document your findings with notes, video, and whatever sound recordings you can gather.”
“I’ll be walking by myself”? Jason asked. “Without a crew?”
Simon smiled. “I thought you said that you didn’t believe in any of this stuff.”
“I’m not scared,” Jason clarified. “What I’m worried about is the video quality. As you know, you can’t shoot a good film without the proper equipment: a professional camcorder with a 64-gigabyte or so hard drive, boom mics, lighting, etc. I can’t carry all of that with me.”
Simon shook his head. “Don’t worry about that. What I have in mind is more like an eyewitness video, the sort of thing you see uploaded onto sites like YouTube. I understand going in that the footage you’ll be able to gather will be fragmentary and incomplete. I figure you should be able to carry a prosumer camcorder with you. You’ll need something that has night-vision capabilities, though.”
“My Sony has night vision,” Jason said. “But it’s like you said, ‘prosumer’—not the sort of camcorder that you would ordinarily use for television. The audio is decent but not completely clean. There may be some static. And the hard drive isn’t big enough to record the three to four hours that it will take me to walk eleven miles. I’ll need to be selective about what I capture.”
“That’s fine,” Rose said. “Do what you can. The point here isn’t to generate hours and hours of footage. Film as much as you can. Just get me something. Hopefully something that I can use on the show.”
“I don’t understand, Mr. Rose,” Jason said. “Why are you doing it this way? I mean, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because I am. This is an excellent opportunity for me. But why don’t you simply bring in your regular crew, and have them do a walk under full lights, with all the video equipment you need in a pickup truck?”
“An excellent question,” Rose replied. “When I saw those films of yours, I knew right away that you’re a young filmmaker who knows how to identify and ask the proper questions. And so I’ll give you an answer: I filmed the Shaman’s Highway last year with a full crew, and we saw nothing. Just a dark wooded highway that was a little spooky, but completely devoid of any concrete phenomena.”
“So why not have a member of your crew complete the walk solo?”
“It all comes down to manpower, logistics, and scheduling. If you watch our show, it might seem that we function in an ad hoc, random sort of way; but that really isn’t the case. We plan projects out months in advance. Our second attempt at the Shaman’s Highway—what I intend to hire you for—has been on the schedule for nearly nine months. It isn’t the only project on the schedule, though. This week most of my team will be shooting down in Tennessee, investigating a house where a man murdered his wife and two children in 1965. The house is said to be crawling with malevolent presences. So the Shaman’s Highway project, while important, is not at the top of the priority list. I can spare only two crew members for Carey County. One is a pregnant woman; and the other is a somewhat overweight and out-of-shape man who would be unable to complete an eleven-mile walk. You can see, then, Jason, why I want to outsource this job to you: You have the right mix of video and journalistic skills, physical fitness, and, I hope, availability.”
“I should be available,” Jason said. “What is the timing for the project?”
“This weekend. Friday night, in fact. The timing is important because the road is said to be more spiritually active during the full moon. The full moon arrives this Friday night—about a hundred hours from now.”
Jason contemplated the upcoming weekend. What else did he have going on? That reminded him of Molly Russell; and now he had one more reason to accept Simon Rose’s offer—provided that the pay was right, of course.
“Everything sounds good,” Jason said. “I can be available this Friday. I have only one question, really.”
Rose smiled. “Of course you do; and I know what it is: Your compensation as a subcontractor on this project will be $2,000, plus expenses,” Simon said. “The walk itself should take about four hours, with an additional hour for the post-walk interview.”
That’s $400 per hour, Jason thought. It was money that he could definitely use. His financial resources were minimal—a combination of loans and part-time work, and a partial scholarship that he had cobbled together. His parents, despite their declaration of best wishes for his educational endeavors, had been unable to provide him with any financial assistance. The two of them were barely able to take care of themselves, after all.
“That will be satisfactory,” Jason said, recalling again those admonitions against displays of excessive eagerness.
“Excellent,” Simon said. The waitress brought the bill for lunch. Jason reached for his wallet and Simon waved him still. “Lunch is on me,” the semi-famous filmmaker said.
Chapter 2
Jason spent the rest of the afternoon in a daze, unable to fully believe his good luck. He even had difficulty concentrating on the content of his three o’clock lecture—which was usually one of his favorites. While the professor droned on, Jason found himself planning his attack on the Shaman’s Highway. He even began a bit of initial research, furtively using the Internet connection on his smart phone. He abandoned this effort when the lecturer abruptly stopped talking and gave him an imperious stare, accompanied by a you’ve-been-caught look. Jason nodded apologetically and returned the phone to his pocket. Real research on the Shaman’s Highway would have to wait until later. The professor harrumphed and resumed his commentary on the impact of citizen journalism on professional filmmaking.
After his three o’clock class, Jason began walking in the direction of his off-campus apartment, a little cubbyhole on Martin Luther King Avenue. The apartment consisted of one main room plus a kitchenette and a bathroom, tucked away in the rear of a partially renovated row house that was at least seventy years old. It was not the best neighborhood. Jason’s car, a creaking, rust-dappled 1997 Ford Taurus, had been broken into on two occasions. The one thing that kept the Taurus free from further break-ins, Jason guessed, was that a car so old would not be expected to contain anything worth stealing. Even inner-city thieves would be able to discern that much.
He was mounting the concrete staircase leading to his apartment when his cell phone began to ring. As he half-expected and half-feared, the number that showed up on the cell phone’s incoming call screen was his mother’s.
“Jason?” his mother asked when he pushed the talk button.
“Sure is. How are you doing, Mom?”
“I’m doing fine, Jason. How about you?”
“Great. Just finishing up the school year.” He focused on making his tone as measured and neutral as possible. He knew that at any second, his mother would subject him to the full barrage of a guilt trip.
“I haven’t heard from you for a while,” she said. And there it was: the guilt trip. So predictable.
“I’ve been sort of busy, Mom. A lot’s been going on. Finals and all.”
“I see. I see. That’s all right, son. Your father and I want you to focus on your schoolwork. That’s the most important thing at this stage of your life.”
“Thanks for being so understanding.”
“Like you said, though, the school year is coming to a close, and I was wondering if you’ve given any more thought to coming home for the summer. Your room is still open.”
Jason had known even as he answered the phone that this would be the purpose of her call. She had been alternately pestering and cajoling him about this since March.
“Well,” Jason said. “I was actually thinking of staying here in Cincinnati for the summer. I have to give up my off-campus apartment in another week; but one of my buddies has arranged for a place just north of town. There will be four of us, so the rent payments won’t come to much.”
This much was true. Ethan Radloff, one of the guys he had made friends with at UC, had secured a lease on an apartment in the Kenwood section of Cincinnati. Jason had stopped by one afternoon to check the location out. On this first and only visit, he had immediately noticed the apartment complex’s pool, and the half dozen or so twenty-something females sunbathing on its concrete banks. The apartment looked like a winner—at least for summer digs.
“And I was still hoping that you might come home for the summer,” his mother went on. “Remember our old neighbor—Bob Marsh? Well, he’s the news director at WBNS now. I sent him an email the other day, telling him about that film competition you entered. He looked up your films on the Internet, and he was very impressed. He said that he can get you a paid summer internship in the video department at the station, if you’d be interested.”
Jason thought for a moment. He had lined up a summer job working on a landscaping crew. This was about as far removed from the worlds of film production and video journalism as one could possibly get; but the pay was decent and he would get paid for spending the entire summer outdoors.
Still, what his mother was proposing was, in fact, a better opportunity. But that would mean spending the summer in close proximity to his parents and their problems—his father’s alcoholism, and his mother’s inability to deal with his father’s alcoholism.
“I know what you’re thinking,” his mother added hastily. “I know that your last few years of high school were less than pleasant, with your father’s drinking.”
“No,” said Jason. “My last few years of high school were hell. My father was a history teacher at the school I attended, and he was fired for coming to work intoxicated.”
“Your father is really trying,” she said. “He’s been going to AA meetings every week for six months now. He hasn’t had so much as a single drink in all that time.”
I’m glad for him, Jason almost said in his most biting tone. Maybe he can manage not to get fired from his next teaching job for coming to work with the smell of Jim Beam on his breath.
But instead Jason said: “That’s good to hear, Mom.”
“And that’s all the more reason why I was hoping you’d be able to come home for the summer, so that we could all be together. Like a real family again. Amy is going to be here.”
This last remark was another predictable form of emotional leverage. His sister, Amy, was also a student at UC. Jason found it impossible not to love Amy, and impossible not to be constantly annoyed by her. Amy was two years younger than him, and yet she persisted in playing the role of the older, more responsible sibling. She had seemingly followed him from Columbus to the University of Cincinnati; and on more than one occasion Jason had flirted with the idea of transferring to another university—just to get away from her.
Of course my sister Amy is going to be there, Jason thought. Amy is majoring in sainthood and minoring in martyrdom. She’ll let you and Dad emotionally leech off her until she’s old enough to collect Social Security.
“It’s just that we would really like to have you here,” his mother said. “And I know that it would mean a lot to your father to have you around.”
“Mom,” Jason said. “You’re forty-five years old and Dad is forty-seven years old. You’re adults. You should be able to handle your own problems. I’m barely into my twenties. Cut me some slack here, okay?”
“I understand,” she said. Jason could sense that his last remark had stung. “And we have had a tendency to sort of dump our problems on you over these last few years.”
I’m glad you at least realize that, Jason wanted to say, but held his tongue.
“Let’s just forget about that,” he said. “I survived. You guys did, too.”
“And now we have a chance to be a family again, to pick up where things left off.”
Jason fumed silently. Could his mother not understand that he didn’t want to “pick up where things left off?” He was out of their house now; and he was making a start on an independent life. He didn’t want to revisit the sorry dramas of his recently expired adolescence—the late-night screaming matches between his parents, the sinking feeling he sometimes felt during family meals, when he would look across the table at his father and know that his old man was drunk again, counting the bites until he would have his plate cleaned and could excuse himself to the solace of his bedroom.
“Let me get back to you on that, Mom,” Jason said. “But I’ve got to be going now, okay? Someone is waiting for me,” he lied. There was no one waiting for him. But he didn’t want to talk to his mother any longer.
The discomforting conversation with his mother over, Jason opened the door of his apartment. As always, the lock required some jiggling. The apartment’s air was tinged with the musty old smells that predictably accompanied cheap studio apartments in the campus district. Students had been living in this tiny space since before he was born—before his parents were born, for that matter. That meant decades of cheap meals being cooked without adequate ventilation, and insufficient housekeeping. Thousands of cigarettes—both the legal as well as the illegal kind. Not to mention all the sex that had probably taken place within these walls.
Then he thought about Molly Russell, and felt himself drifting into another guilt trip—this time a self-inflicted one. He would not go down that path, he decided. Not now.
The green threadbare carpet, the second-hand furniture, and the pockmarked plaster walls all suggested a living quarters where there was nothing of value that would interest a thief. It was an image that Jason took pains to preserve, given the relative likelihood of a break-in in this neighborhood. In the far corner of the main room was a folding card table that appeared to be a way station for laundry, piled as it was with towels, gym clothes, and similar items. This was an artifice that Jason hoped would dissuade a burglar from engaging in further investigation. Walking over to the table, he pushed the stacks of folded laundry aside and removed the item lying beneath the clothing: a silvery MacBook Pro that had cost him about two months worth of a student’s meager wages.
The MacBook Pro was essential for filmmaking. It contained the software that he used to edit and develop digital movie files. It contained Adobe Photoshop for still graphics, Premiere Pro and After Effects for video production, plus several more software programs that modified audio files, and facilitated the burning of professional-quality DVDs.
As he carried the computer to his kitchen table, he savored its heft and reminded himself to handle the MacBook with care. There was a lot of money in this little six-pound package—an investment that he could ill-afford to lose to an accident or a thief.
For his present task, however, he would need nothing but the MacBook’s wireless Internet capabilities. He typed a Google query that included the terms “Shaman’s Highway,” “Carey County,” and “Ohio.” The results included a full page of links to various websites—mostly independently run hobbyist sites. While doing some preliminary research for A Haunting at Travis Books, Jason had learned that most of the supernaturally oriented Internet consisted of such amateur endeavors. Nevertheless, the spirit gurus and weekend ghost hunters were dedicated amateurs, and their websites were often treasure troves of information.
A website called HauntingsinOhio.com contained extensive entries about the eleven-mile section of road, spread out over several pages. A ghost-hunting group based in Columbus had documented their investigation of the Shaman’s Highway on their website as well. Like Simon Rose, they had attacked the road with every available implement of modern technology, including professional video equipment. But the hellhounds and the other spooks had not shown, almost as if they were camera shy. The Columbus ghost hunters had nothing to show for their efforts but some EMF readings that were ambiguous at best.
This would further explain Simon Rose’s plan of sending him on his hike without a backup crew and with minimal equipment. It was almost as if Simon were trying to fool whatever supernatural forces might exist on the Shaman’s Highway into showing themselves.
“They probably didn’t show themselves because they don’t exist in the first place,” Jason said aloud to himself. While agnostic on the issue of the supernatural’s existence, Jason believed that the lurid tales that showed up on sites like HauntingsinOhio.com were nothing more than urban legends. Certain places were naturally spooky, either because of their history or their isolation. Then all it took was a semi-plausible story and gullible legions of ghost enthusiasts who were eager to believe in this stuff.
The websites (and a few Wikipedia articles that he scanned) told Jason that Carey County, Ohio, had been settled around 1810, mostly by Quakers. The Quakers, though, had not been the first people to inhabit Carey County. In ancient times, Carey County had been part of the Adena Native American culture; and after the Adena came the Shawnee. The Shawnee had been pushed off the land not long after Ohio’s statehood in 1803. When the Indians departed, they left their dead behind. Native American burial sites dotted the area.
Two hundred years later, the county was still mostly rural, and filled with vast, unpeopled swaths of woodlands. There would be farmhouses dating back to the pre-Civil War era, and old churchyards filled with headstones from the nineteenth century. Carey County was the kind of place that was practically begging for a ghost story. Throw in some dark and unverified rumors of cult activity, and you had a locale that made the imagination run wild. But that didn’t mean that there was anything in those woods to be concerned about, aside from the occasional black bear or feral dog.
He heard his cell phone ringing. This time it was not his mother, but Molly Russell.
I’d might as well answer it, he thought.
“How are you doing, Molly?”
“Not so well,” she said. “You’ve been avoiding me. Why don’t you just come out and be honest with me, Jason—instead of simply refusing to take my phone calls?”
“Molly,” he said. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’ve been busy. The end of the semester and all.”
“Jason,” she said. “I’ve left you half a dozen messages in the past week. You haven’t returned a single one. Then I saw you on campus the other day, and you turned away from me and walked in the other direction.”
Jason sighed. He knew that this was true. From across one of the university’s main quadrangles, Jason had clearly seen Molly Russell walking in his direction. For a brief second, the two of them had made eye contact, in a moment of mutual recognition. Although the distance separating them had been much too wide for conversation, Molly had partially opened her mouth as if to say something.
And then Jason had turned away from her and begun walking abruptly in another direction.
Why had he done it? He couldn’t say, exactly. It had been a nearly involuntary, reflexive reaction.
“Molly,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to call you. I’ve just been busy.”
“Liar!” she said. He could hear the tears in her voice. She was right: He was lying. But he was lying in an attempt to save her feelings, and—he also realized—to spare himself a confrontation with certain aspects of himself. Aspects of himself that he did not like.
“What do you think I am?” she asked. “Someone you can just use and toss away?”
“You went home with me,” he said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong: I like you and all. But I thought it was just a hookup sort of thing. That happens on campus, you know.”
Jason knew that he did not sound very convincing. What had happened between him and Molly was not just another hookup. For going on two years, the two of them had been very close friends. They had met in an anthropology class that both of them had been taking for a general studies requirement.
Molly was a business administration major, and the polar opposite of Jason in many ways. But the two of them had hit it off, though not exactly in romantic terms—not at first, anyway. Jason had sensed from the beginning that Molly had a rigidly methodical approach to life. She was the sort of person who had been thinking about her college options and consciously preparing for the SAT since her freshman year of high school. That sort of girl would not come from a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father.
And sure enough, she had not: Jason soon discovered that Molly’s parents were both CPAs, both type-A high achievers who had raised Molly and her two siblings to be the same. Jason could tell that Molly liked him—as girls from uptight, high-achiever backgrounds often did. His understated good looks and veneer of a carefree nature often appealed to girls from good families who had been too rigidly channeled down the pathways of conventional success. The schtick of being a budding filmmaker completed the image. He projected just the right amount of roguishness. He was outside the lines of upper middle-class respectability that girls like Molly were taught to admire. At the same time, he was not beyond the hope of eventual redemption. With a bit of work and the influence of the right girl, he might still be molded into a sensible accountant or an insurance company executive.
This was exactly what caused him to fear Molly, even as he was drawn to her. He knew that his filmmaking was his first love; and if a relationship with a woman ever forced him to give that up, a part of him would die a slow and agonizing death. Worse yet, torn from his true ambition, he would likely go the way of his father: into some sort of an addiction.
Jason knew that his father had never wanted to be a high school history teacher; he had always wanted to be a novelist. Throughout Jason’s childhood years, the shelves in his father’s study had been filled with back issues of Writer’s Digest, and classic how-to writing books like Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. When Jason was a small child, his dad would disappear into the study every night after dinner, where he typed away on what he hoped would become saleable work. Jason had never learned what sort of novel, exactly, his father was working on. When the subject of his father’s novel came up in conversation between his parents—as it sometimes did—they both referred to it simply as “the novel,” or even more vaguely: “the book.” For all Jason knew, it might have been anything from an espionage tale to a gothic romance (though Jason strongly doubted the latter). He also didn’t know how far the work had progressed—if it was sitting in a drawer somewhere, or perhaps on the hard drive of the ancient PC that occupied the desk in the study. His father’s old computer might still be running Windows 95 or 98, for all Jason knew. It also likely contained the stillborn remnants of Randall Kelley’s dream.
After a few years of effort, his father had stopped disappearing into the study at night. Instead he lingered in the family room, grading student term papers while watching TV, or playing with him and Amy. Because that was what married men with families did. They didn’t pour themselves into making films or writing books or changing the world. They worked all day at dull but dependable jobs that they either hated or grimly tolerated, and then at night they dedicated their last waking hours to their spouses and children. Some men did fine with that life prescription, and Jason figured that some were even happy with it. But clearly his father had not been cut out for it, or he would not have started drinking within a few years of giving up writing.
Filmmaking was a lot like writing. It was a tournament endeavor in which a small number of players reaped large rewards, and the vast majority subsisted on a steady diet of Chef Boyardee beefaroni and ramen noodles. It wasn’t the sort of life that you could chain a woman like Molly to—not until you’d made it.
Achieve your dreams and then get married, he had determined. That means you have to be careful of Molly Russell. Of course, Molly Russell was not exactly corralling him to the altar. At the time he made this resolution, in fact, they had been nothing more than friends. But he knew that he already liked Molly a great deal. That meant that if things progressed beyond the friendship stage with her, he would fall and he would fall hard. Better for now to stick to the vacuous girls, the ones who didn’t challenge him and didn’t make him even contemplate the possibility of assuming the roles of responsible husband and provider.
One afternoon, as he and Molly were talking over a shared lunch of sandwiches and soft drinks in the university center, Jason had broached the subject of Molly’s long-term plans. This was long before he had slept with her, but long after he realized that he had feelings for her. Jason had wanted to see if he could possibly have his proverbial cake and eat it, too. In the middle of a conversation about cranky professors and term papers, Jason abruptly elicited Molly’s innermost notions of her future. He felt that he needed to know.
“Where do you see yourself in five years?” he asked with mock casualness.
“What is this? A scholarship application? Or maybe a job interview?”
“No, I’m just curious.”
“Have you been in contact with my parents? Did they hire you to check up on me?”
“Not quite. Really, I’m only curious. Are you going to tell me that you haven’t thought about it?”
She sighed, resigned. “Okay. I guess I would see myself working at my career—assuming the economy and the job market improve, of course. I’ll be on the downhill run to thirty by then, not a kid anymore, by any means. So I guess I would see myself married, too. Possibly with a child. Or maybe with one on the way.”
Then she turned away from him, an embarrassed smile on her face.
“What?” he asked.
“You’ve got me all embarrassed.”
“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“Only the baring of my soul, that’s all.”
“Oh, come on, it isn’t that big of a deal. What’s got you so worked up?”
When she looked at him again, her cheeks were flushed but she was no longer quite so self-conscious. “Nothing. I guess it sounds silly, doesn’t it, having your life planned out to such a degree? It’s true to say that you can never be sure of anything, isn’t it? But if you don’t have a target…”
“Then you have nothing to aim for,” he finished the thought for her.
“Yeah, I guess that’s it,” she said. She laid her hand across his wrist, held it briefly, and then removed it. The gesture told him that Molly was not the only one who saw romantic potential in this thus far platonic friendship. And looking at her across the plastic tabletop, with the buzz of the university center all around them, Jason knew for certain that he wanted Molly Russell. She was pretty, sure—a petite brunette with brown eyes and a teasing smile. But it wasn’t only a matter of being pretty. How many girls could you talk to like this, without feeling the need to play head games or go out of your way to impress them? He could talk to Molly as if she were an old friend—which she now was, more or less; and yet they both knew that something more than mere friendship existed here.
And this was exactly why he needed to keep Molly at a distance. Jason liked Molly, but he was in love with the idea of being a filmmaker. This realization gave him what he recognized as a sense of unworthiness—a belief that if he and Molly became more than friends, he would only end up wrecking things for both of them.
He didn’t deserve Molly. She should set her sights on someone more solid—a guy who held realistic career plans and a more sober view of his future. A guy who didn’t have to worry about repeating the legacy of an alcoholic father who coped poorly with the demands of being a middle-class husband and provider.
And so Jason had decided—more than a little reluctantly—that he would be Molly’s friend and nothing more. For a while he had even believed that this desire for purely platonic interactions was mutual, the unmistakable sexual tension between them notwithstanding. After all, when Molly spoke about being married at some point in the near future (within five years!), nothing about her words or tone had even remotely suggested that he was a likely candidate for the position of Mr. Molly Russell.
But then he had run into her at that party the previous weekend. He hadn’t even known that she would be there. She had caught his glance from across the room, and within a few minutes they were standing close, drawn together as they so often were, and talking in the noisy room with their faces only inches apart.
“I gave up my Friday night for this?” Molly had reflected, casting a disdainful look at a group of boisterous college males on the far side of the room. The young men were assembling a beer bong with great enthusiasm, as if it were some sort of a terribly interesting and important engineering project. “I thought we left this sort of thing behind in high school.”
“Not everyone, apparently,” Jason had said.
A few more minutes of conversation determined that Molly had come to the party alone and unescorted; and a few more minutes of remarks about the low quality of their surroundings convinced them both that the party was definitely not worth an entire Friday evening.
Then one thing led to another. First it was simply a matter of leaving the party. Then it was a matter of where to go so late on a Friday night. In an almost inevitable progression, they found themselves back in his apartment. There was really no place else to go—or so it had seemed to him at the time.
That night was the first time that they had been alone together in a room with a bed. And while this fact alone did not necessarily make sex inevitable, it combined and colluded with the undeniable chemistry that had been building between them for months now.
Such were Jason’s recollections now, as Molly Russell blurted out:
“Jason Kelley, you are one cold son-of-a-bitch.”
I could have told you that, Jason thought but did not say. Had I told you, I might have saved us both a lot of drama.
But he really didn’t believe that, did he? When he thought about Molly, he knew that he was being a stubborn fool. He had been a stubborn fool for the past two weeks, ever since Molly had slept with him.
What is it about you, Jason, that makes you run from the people you really should be holding on to?
For now, he would have to chalk it up to his father’s legacy: It was necessary for him to succeed before he allowed others to stake their claim on him—to drag him down. But this was not something that he could explain to Molly.
“Molly, give me a few days, okay? I’ve got something really important that I have to get done. Then I’ll call you—I promise.”
“Don’t bother,” she said in a voice just above a whisper. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from something important.”
He realized that his fumbling attempt at an explanation had come out far more callously than he had intended. He began to backtrack, to rephrase himself—and then he realized that he was talking to a dead connection. Molly had terminated the call.
Jason contemplated calling her back, but then thought better of it. Whatever he said right now would only make the situation worse.
Chapter 3
Jason was not a frequent dreamer. Tonight, however, he dreamed. At some time during the wee hours of the next morning, he found himself back at his family home in Columbus, at the dinner table. His parents were both there; and he could discern that there were others in the room as well, though he was not to know their identities for the time being.
“How did school go today?” his father asked to no one in particular. As had been the case during the worst days of his father’s drinking, he slurred his words and clumsily forked his food into his mouth. He reached out for one of the main serving dishes, and he bumped his water glass with one swaying hand. The glass threatened to overturn. His mother reached out and caught it before it could spill.
Jason started to speak; he was cut off by a sharp glance and terse words from his mother.
“We’re going to have a nice family dinner,” she said.
From within the miniaturized world of the dream, Jason could recall that this was exactly what she had done during those days in which his father had come home from the high school with traces of vodka on his breath—when he had disappeared for hours into his basement study during the evening, only to shuffle up the stairs in an obviously inebriated state.
You’re in denial, Mom! Jason thought furiously. You’ve fooled yourself with your image of us as the perfect family—something from Leave it to Beaver or The Brady Bunch or whatever. You’re so obsessed with what you want us to be, that you either can’t or won’t recognize what we actually are: A family teetering on the edge because of an alcoholic father. How long until he loses his job, Mom, and then what happens—to you, to me, to all of us?
And then he remembered that his father had lost his job teaching history at the high school. He remembered what it had been like to walk through the halls of the school the day after the principal had finally dismissed Mr. Kelley. In the rumor mill that churns beneath the surface of every academic institution, the news of his father’s ignominious firing had already begun to circulate, even before the official announcement was made. That same day, the principal had walked into his homeroom and announced that the school’s World Culture and American Government courses would be taught by a group of rotating subs until the end of the school year.
Beside him, at the dinner table, his sister nudged him.
“You’re going to do right, Jason,” Amy whispered. “You’re going to do what everyone expects of you. What you should do.”
The dream was incredibly lucid—the way it allowed him to maintain a running patter of internal thoughts even as the scene unfolded. It was as if he had been transported back to his high school days, when he and his sister were both still living at home. But it was not completely the same: there was still another, the one that he had not yet identified.
“Jason,” a female voice inquired. “Why haven’t you called me? Why haven’t you come to see me?”
In the midst of the dream he thought of Molly Russell; but this was not Molly Russell’s voice. The words had been spoken by a someone much, much older.
He became aware of a sudden chill in the room. The chairs where his parents were seated moved suddenly apart, as if pushed by unseen hands. Now there was a fifth presence at the table. He tried to look at the presence directly; but each time he tried, the face faded into an indistinct blur.
“Don’t look at me!” it hissed in a raspy, disembodied voice. “Don’t look at me! Not yet!”
He had a sense that the entity was vaguely female; but not female like his mother or his sister. And certainly not female like Molly.
The temperature in the room abruptly dropped again. Jason looked around the table at his father, mother, and sister: Their skin had lost its flesh tone; it bore a waxy, bluish pallor. The three of them were slumped against the backs of their chairs, suspended by the deathly chill that this unseeable creature had somehow caused to descend upon the family dinner table. In the dream, only Jason was awake. He was cold—so cold that he would awaken to find himself shivering in his actual sleep. But the entity wanted him to remain awake and alert within the world of the dream.
Jason was alone now with this unknown entity. He tried to look directly at it and found that he could not. Invisible hands forced his head to one side—so that he could only see it from a peripheral angle. At the same time, he could hear evidence of its presence: He heard the scraping of sharp, heavy fingernails digging their way into the surface of the dining room table.
As is often the case in the worst nightmares, Jason sensed that he would be able to will himself awake. The world of the dream had an undeniable force of its own; but its power was dependent on his remaining asleep.
His shivering growing more intense now, Jason began to push that world away. He was vaguely aware of his body—still shaking but lying in bed. For a few seconds he was half awake and half inside the unconscious realm inhabited by this thing.
“I’ll be waiting for you, Jason,” it said just before the dream world dissolved. “I’ll be waiting for you at the bridge.”
End of preview…
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