Buried in Hanging Hills

When Jade was only twelve-years-old, her father came home one afternoon with his arms and legs covered in claw marks. Jade felt confused and excited about his appearance. While she didn’t like seeing her dad hurt, she wondered if he finally bought her the cat or dog she wanted. He wasn’t good with animals and she figured it must have attacked him on the car ride home. To Jade’s dismay, he didn’t bear hug her or call her his “little troll,” a nickname he gave her for the vibrantly colored hair extensions she always wore. He hurried into the bathroom and shut the door. 
“Second time. This isn’t good at all,” she heard him say through the door. “I have to-”
The rest of his words were muffled and eventually drowned out by the sound of  blasting water from the shower. He had been acting strange for the past few weeks. This instance proved no exception. She wasn’t particularly bothered by the late nights he spent at the office or the number of business trips he took to some faraway state. When he asked her to stop calling her “dad” one day and to call him “Frank,” she knew something was seriously wrong. She loved calling Frank “dad,”  but Frank Butler insisted she was “old enough.”  For a long time, Jade thought this had something to do with the divorce, but now, she wasn’t sure at all.
When a few minutes lapsed into a half-hour, Jade decided to call her friend Sasha about going to Hubbard Park, which was right down the street from Frank’s house. Jade wasn’t supposed to use the house phone without permission, but she counted on him being in the bathroom for a while and had a few hours until her mom would stop by.
She cautiously dialed Sasha’s number, listening for any changes in sound from the bathroom. “Hey, Sash.”
“Wazzup, Jadybean?”
“Oh god. That commercial is so old. Want to go to Hubbard?” 
“I guess? I thought you were with…what’s he want you to call him again?”
“Frank. He’s so weird.”
“Ugh. So weird,” Sasha repeated, laughing. “Yeah, I’ll go. I got to go to drama club at four though.  See ya soon.”
“Kay. See ya.”
Jade left a note on the kitchen counter about her whereabouts and headed into the garage to grab her bike. As she stepped onto the concrete floor, she was surprised to find the interior vacant except for her blue Trek bike and a lone tool shelf. Before the divorce, the garage was full of sports equipment, gardening tools, and an extra fridge stocked with sports-themed beverages for when Frank coached her soccer team. Now, not only was the garage devoid of those remnants of her old life, but it was impeccably clean. Jade thought it was suspiciously clean. 
She figured he was in one of his moods again when she heard him shout, “This is disgusting!”  Whether it was due to work or another argument with her mom, she didn’t want to know. She knew he couldn’t keep his promise about a new cat or dog. Frank was full of broken promises, anger, and nothing more. She didn’t even care how he got the claw marks anymore.  All Jade knew as she rode off toward the park was that she barely recognized her dad or the house she once called home.
Thankfully, Sasha breathed life into her otherwise disappointing day. She smiled as she pulled into the park and saw Sasha on her purple mountain bike. As she fixed her braids, Jade thought about how lucky Sasha was to have actual blue streaks. Clip extensions were the only hair alterations Frank approved of. He used to never care about hair or clothes but now always had something to say when she stopped by. Jade’s mom said he worried about her becoming “a proper young lady.” She didn’t believe this at all. 
“Jadeybean! You look like hell.”
“Gee, thanks, Sash…”
“Chillax! I’m just saying. Wait did your dad-”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Want to go to Castle Craig?”
Sasha enthusiastically nodded as they rode to the trail, which was located on top of a hill in a gravel parking lot. The girls would often go to Castle Craig when the weather was nice or when they needed to clear their minds. They loved the hike because it crossed a pedestrian bridge over the busy freeway, which was fun to look down on, and the views from the stone castle as well as the Traprock mountain ridge were magnificent. From those heights, the girls could see all of Meriden, which the girls loved but made them a little sad as they would both be moving in a matter of months. Jade was beginning to wonder, however, if she’d be better off living further away from the man she used to call dad. 
“Did you hear about the two girls that disappeared last month?” Sasha asked as they locked their bikes to the trailhead fence. “They were from Kensington, I think. They went to Hubbard and never came home.”
Jade scrunched her nose, grabbing a long stick to hike with. “I thought it was just a rumor.”
“Are you kidding? It was all over the news last month.”
“I…don’t really watch the news.”
“Doesn’t it worry you?”
“Why would it?”
“Your mom is talking about moving there and so are my parents. It’s pretty crazy. I heard girls from Kensington disappear all the time.”
“Sure, Sash,” Jade said, still failing to see her friend’s point. For now, they lived in Meriden. It would make more sense to be worried now. This logic evaded Sasha, however, as she was more inclined to rumors than logic. As they passed a few hikers and headed onto the pedestrian bridge, Jade couldn’t help but feel annoyed by Sasha’s stories of “missing Kensington girls.”  Jade felt a bit scared about crossing the bridge, even though it was completely enclosed by metal fencing. 
“I’m serious, Jadybean! My older cousin told me that sometime in the nineties three girls in her class went up there after graduation and never came back.”
“Your cousin Alia who does tarot and is ‘psychic’?”
“What’s wrong with tarot?!”
“Nothing. Forget it. Hey…there’s a dog at the end of the bridge. What’s it doing there?”
“Am I crazy or is it like…glowing?”
At the end of the pedestrian bridge stood a small, vaguely spaniel-like, short-haired black dog. They couldn’t really see its face as it was sniffing something on the ground. For some reason, as it panted, the dog looked quite blurry. Jade rubbed her eyes, thinking it was her contacts, but the blurriness remained. Something wasn’t right about the dog. As they walked over the bridge in caution, it still seemed blurry and wouldn’t look at them. The dog wasn’t fazed by the girls’ loud footsteps or the booming traffic below. Jade could almost see the glow Sasha mentioned, a small layer of fog circulating its body. 
“Are you seeing what I’m-”
“Don’t move.”  Jade stuck her arm out as the dog finally looked up. Its eyes were deep brown and strangely sad. The dog opened its mouth to bark. No sound came out. “I don’t like this. Let’s get out of here.”
“Jesus Christ, Sash!”
Despite Jade’s inhibitions, Sasha continued over the bridge. Jade suddenly felt dizzy, unsure if she should be looking at the road below or the strange dog that made no sound when it barked. 
“Don’t touch it!”
“It might be lost!” Sasha said several paces ahead. Reluctantly, Jade sprinted to the edge of the bridge. As they both stopped before the strange black dog, the layer of fog disappeared. It still seemed kind of blurry though and its eyes looked even sadder than before, even though it was still panting as Sasha stroked its back.  Maybe Jade needed new contacts.
“This seems weird but…does it seem kinda blurry to you?”
Sasha paused and thought for a moment. “Yeah! And cold. Feel this!”
Sasha forced Jade’s hand onto the dog’s back. It seemed really cold as if it had just stepped out of a walk-in freezer. She couldn’t make sense of the blurriness either. The dog was sitting right in front of them. She remembered the Photoshop program she used in computer class and how her teacher taught her how to blur objects. None of this made sense. Images could blur, not real-life animals. Whether it was the dog’s sad brown eyes, its thin black fur, or its short wagging tail, it didn’t seem like a complete animal. 
“This makes no sense…” Jade took her hand off the dog, looking up at Sasha’s still excited expression. “Let’s get out of here or continue up to the top. Maybe its owner is nearby. I don’t know.” 
“We can’t leave it!”
“I guess you’re right…”
Jade and Sasha took a few steps off of the bridge and onto the trail. Even though Sasha happily petted the dog, Jade didn’t want to be anywhere near it. The more she looked away, however, the dizzier she felt. When Sasha glanced up from the dog, she said something Jade couldn’t hear. Her words were muffled, almost distorted. She felt increasingly lightheaded and weak, falling backward down a leaf-covered, dirt hill. As Jade rolled over a few jagged rocks, she began to panic. She felt too weak to move her body and break the fall. She braced herself as she rolled just feet away from oncoming traffic. Before she reached the pavement, two rugged hands grabbed her, and everything faded to black.
Jade opened her eyes to meet two arid blue ones. She recognized the thick blond beard and plaid shirt that smelt like menthols. It was Frank and next to him Sasha with a face drenched in tears. What was he doing here?  It took only a few moments for Sasha to realize she was back on the pedestrian bridge, laying on Frank’s nylon backpack, her entire body draped in aching sores. 
“Are you okay, sweetheart?”
“Yeah…what are you doing here?”
“Oh my god, Jadybean!” Sasha threw her arms around her and squeezed tightly. Jade groaned and Sasha profusely apologized. “I’m so sorry. It’s just…that was so scary! Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah…dad, I mean Frank, what are you doing here?”
He laughed, which she found quite odd given the circumstances. Despite taking a shower, his long beard and scruffy hair seemed dirty. There were also more marks on his face. “It’s quite a coincidence, actually. I was heading to the hardware store and pulled to the side of the road because I blew a tire. I heard a loud noise coming down the hill and there was my little troll.”
Frank hugged her tightly. Jade embraced him as he sounded like he was ready to sob. “Honey, you have to be careful when you hike. You know this.”
“We tried…” Jade said weakly. “But we saw this little black dog and I felt really dizzy and…I’m sorry Dad.”
“Yeah! It was really cute but weird looking,” Sasha chimed in.
Frank’s expression grew stern as he raised his hand to stop them. “Did it see you?”
They nodded simultaneously. Frank exhaled deeply, wiping the dirt from his face.
“This is going to sound crazy, girls, but you just have to, uh, trust me. That was no normal dog. Some say a little black dog haunts these hills.”
“What…”
“Like a ghost?!” Sasha blurted out.
“Something like that.”
“Da-Frank, I thought you didn’t believe in those things.”
“I usually don’t but this one’s different. Years ago, when your great-grandfather was a little kid, there were two geologists who fell to their deaths after seeing it. It’s documented and everything. Grandpa Lou swore about it till his death and he never spoke of anything spooky but that. He said you see it once for luck, twice for sorrow, and three times for death. I’ve even-”
“None of this makes sense…” Jade moaned. “I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff either.”
“And she didn’t have much luck!”
“Have you seen a dog like that before?”
Jade studied Frank’s expression for a moment to be sure that he was serious. They barely had any deep conversations since the divorce but all of a sudden, he was launching into this weird folktale. Oddly enough, what he said made sense. A memory deep within Jade unlocked, one from years ago when she was lost in Hubbard Park. She was no more than four-years-old. She felt scared until she saw a small black dog standing by a tree. It stayed there until her parents found her. Why had she forgotten? Then again, she had forgotten a lot over the years. 
“Yeah, I think so…” Jade muttered.
“Then, you must never go back,” her father said sternly. “You were lucky this time.”
Unlike the first time Jade saw the black dog, the second time stayed with her for years, an encounter strange and horrifying enough for her to never return to Hubbard Park.  Sasha thought Frank was going crazy after the divorce and that his belief was a product of his insanity along with wanting to be called by his first name.  Jade wasn’t sure at all. She never developed a belief in the supernatural other than in this instance. Sasha became even more skeptical over the years after dating a guy named Jordan who believed in everything paranormal. At one point, Jade dated Jordan’s friend Miguel. He was equally a believer but somehow more rational. Whenever the three of them mentioned the black dog incident and their varying beliefs, Jade shut them down.
After her twenty-seventh birthday, it became easier to shut everyone out. She broke up with Miguel and moved into a dilapidated house in Winsted with Colt, her slightly effeminate college roommate. He hated talking about anything even remotely scary and never brought up Jade’s past, so their living arrangement worked perfectly. Still, she couldn’t shake some things from her childhood. She still felt uncomfortable seeing someone walk a run-of-the-mill black dog around town. She still felt uncomfortable calling her dad “Frank,” even though he became less of a dad over the years. When Colt told Jade she should try therapy one night, she agreed to his surprise.
“So that’s a yes? You’re agreeing with me for once?” Colt said as they stared into the glow of an autumn bonfire. “I thought you said therapy was stupid.”
“I…never said that!” Jade slightly nudged him. “Besides, maybe I was stupid for doubting you.”
“Really?” 
“Yeah…I mean, it hasn’t always been easy.”
Colt smiled and they leaned into the fire, admiring the glowing embers and brisk September night. It almost made Jade forget her ex-boyfriend and financial troubles. Something deeper troubled her though. It had been fifteen years since her encounter with the black dog and her even creepier encounter with her dad on the side of the road. In those years, he never warned her about the black dog again. She figured it was just a story to keep her out of trouble. She thought about that incident around this time of year and it would usually fade with the autumn leaves.  This year it didn’t though.  Just as soon as she was about to forget again, she learned that the story Sasha told around the same time of the missing Kensington girls was more than just a story. 
“What are you reading about on your phone so intently?”
“Sorry.” Jade looked up at Colt who was roasting a marshmallow on a stick. “I am reading about those girls from Kensington who disappeared in the nineties.”
“I thought that was just a rumor…”
“Apparently not. Here’s the weird thing. I’m reading this breaking news article and apparently, there’s two girls from Kensington who have  disappeared around that park again, Khloe Peters and Alexa…oh no.” 
“What?”
Jade read the name a few times over to make sure she had the name right. 
“It…can’t be. He didn’t-”
“For Christ’s Sake, Jade,” he said, getting up to peer over her shoulder. “Is that Miguel’s…?”
“Alexa Boyd, yes. As in Alexa Boyd, Miguel’s cousin.” Jade stood up frantically and checked the name for the third time. “Yeah…that’s….his cousin. I didn’t get the… Oh never mind. The alert came earlier this morning. How could I not notice?”
“I didn’t get…oh shit.” Colt checked his phone as well and scrolled through the messages. “I didn’t see it either but the alert came earlier today- ‘Khloe Peters and Alexa Boyd, two twelve-year-old girls from Kensington, Connecticut, disappeared around Hubbard Park on Thursday morning.’ That was a little over twenty-four hours ago.”
“Fuck…” Jade ran her hands through her hair and started shaking. “How could he not tell me?”
“You’ve been broken up for a month. Why would he?”
“You don’t understand, Colt. I knew his family. I loved them.”
“Have you talked to him in a month?”
“No. Not really. What…do we do?”
Colt sat back down on this lawn chair and Jade frantically scrolled through the article for a fourth time just to make sure. “What can we do?”
“I’m going to text him…”
“Don’t…please-”
“I have to! I knew Alexa. I loved her. She was like his little sister. Well, like not literally, but still. Colt…what should we do?”
Colt stared deeper into the fire as Jade paced back and forth, contemplating whether or not she should text Miguel. When she finally couldn’t stand it anymore, Jade stopped looking at Colt and started texting Miguel. She wasn’t sure which line of text she wanted to choose and kept erasing her responses. Finally, Colt snatched Jade’s phone from her, choosing, “I heard about Alexa. Can I do anything to help?”
“Oh my god. Why, Colt?”
“You were taking forever.  Now we wait.”  Colt held onto her phone. As Jade extended a hand, Colt shook his head. “Don’t even. Someone with a clear head needs to do this. I didn’t even want you talking to him to begin with.”
“Okay, princess,” Jade said, sitting back on her lawn chair. “Have it your way.”
Miguel didn’t respond and the longer he didn’t respond, the more nervous Jade became. Even when they were in the worst of fights, he would tell Jade everything. After they broke up, it was just radio silence. At that moment, she couldn’t even remember why they broke up, just the pain that lingered in his absence. Even worse, she imagined Miguel staying up late, crying in his New Haven apartment over Alexa’s disappearance. Miguel was teaching her karate at a nearby studio in Meriden, a part-time gig he picked up to pay the bills. He was also helping her through her parent’s divorce. Jade was just beginning to know Alexa really well when their relationship ended abruptly. 
“I want to go there, Colt,” she said, almost in tears as they were putting out the fire. “I just want to get in my car and drive there. He shouldn’t be alone through this.”
“Jade…I know you still…how do I put this? It’s ten at night and you haven’t spoken to each other in a month.”
“I don’t care how late it is. He shouldn’t be alone through this. I don’t care what happened to us right now. Alexa means everything to him and god knows he still…”
She couldn’t finish that sentence without a teardrop trickling down her cheek. She stopped herself and stormed inside their house, headed into the living room, and turned on the small, boxy television they had kept since their college years. The reception was super glitchy. After nervously slamming the remote into her palm, she flipped through several channels before stumbling upon the ten o’clock news. She waited anxiously as a female reporter brought up their featured story.
“A tragedy in Meriden, Connecticut,”  Anne Navine proclaimed, locking eyes with the camera. Her well-dressed co-anchor, Dan Patricks, looked on stoically as footage of police and a search-and-rescue team patrolling Hubbard Park rolled across the screen. “Twelve-year-old  Kensington girls Khloe Peters and Alexa Boyd disappeared on their way to Hubbard Park Thursday Morning. An Amber Alert has been issued and police and locals have engaged in a non-stop search for the two girls.”
Jade and Colt looked on helplessly as an anchor interviewed an older couple in the park. The text on the bottom of the screen made her stomach churn: THE SEARCH FOR MISSING KENSINGTON GIRLS UNDERWAY. While the couple admitted that they hadn’t seen the two girls, they confessed to spotting a strange man in the woods on their way up to Castle Craig. 
“My husband and I were walking up around…what was it honey, six?”  The older man nodded. “We didn’t see the girls, but we did see something strange. There was this tall man in the woods. I don’t know what he was doing there. He was, let’s see…maybe six feet, long blonde beard, some kind of baseball hat with a bird on it, and smelled like menthols like my Morty used to smoke. He… waved at us and walked away. It was so strange!  I don’t know what he was doing there…”
An aggressive headache overwhelmed Jade’s senses as the reporter continued on about police cautioning the public that there were no suspects yet but to keep a “watchful eye.” The woman’s description of the blonde beard and stench of menthols took Jade instantly back to her childhood. Even Colt, who only met Frank once during college, gave Jade a look. The woman gave a universal description. 
“She saw my dad… I mean, Frank.”
“I was about to say.”
“What the hell was he doing in the woods?” 
“Maybe he was looking for something.”
“The timing just seems weird.”
“Frank’s a weird guy…”
With those words, the conversation faded to silence as the news story changed to one about a local sports team changing its name. Anxiously gripping her phone in her palm, Jade imagined Frank in the woods, smiling a yellow, decomposing smile. That awful smile crept underneath her skin and kept her awake some nights, especially when she remembered the weird ways he came home. After a long day at work, he often said he was “going to the hills,” especially if he was frustrated. Sometimes, he came home many hours later covered in dirt or bruised, claiming, “he took a bad fall.”  She accepted this excuse once or twice until she realized the trail wasn’t that long or dangerous. 
Before Jade drifted off to sleep, she remembered years ago when she looked up the black dog legend in her middle school’s computer lab. She read about two Geologists who fell to their deaths after seeing the black dog a third time. She couldn’t remember their names but was stunned by the legitimacy of the source. Still, she didn’t remember herself experiencing any sorrow or any luck many years before when she saw it for the first time. Just as she slipped into a deep, uncomfortable slumber, she recalled Sasha telling her that the dog attempted a voiceless growl at her dad as they walked back up the hill before scampering off, leaving no footprints behind. Come to think of it, dogs typically growled at her dad when she saw them.
When Jade awoke the next morning, she had a thought dancing on the tip of her tongue and Colt knew exactly what it was.
As she entered the kitchen, Jade blurted out, “I think my dad might be a serial killer.”
Colt looked up from his cereal and sighed. “You’re so predictable.”
“What-what do you mean?”
“You don’t remember the last several times you called him a serial killer?”
“He fits the profile! He’s a loner, he goes on long walks and long trips alone and when young girls disappear, it’s always around where he lives.” 
“I knew you would say that. One description about your weird dad on TV and all the sudden-”
“It’s too coincidental!”
“Him being in the woods to probably, I don’t know, take a smoke?”
“On the day the girls disappeared?”
“So what? He lives right near the hills.”
“And what about his weird black dog story on the day he just so happened to see me on the side of the road? Seems like misdirection.”
“Oh god. Not the damn black dog. Do you actually believe in that?”
“No. I don’t know. I mean, of course not. It just seems like a weird thing to say at a weird time. And the dog was blurry and made no noise when it barked.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Also, everything’s blurry when you remember your childhood. I love you, but it’s almost like you want him to be a serial killer.”
This gave Jade pause. Until Colt pointed it out, she hadn’t considered how often she mentioned her dad’s serial killer vibes or her uneasy encounter with the black dog when she was young. Her friends, especially Colt, were probably sick of it. Fifteen years had passed without her discovering any proof for her accusations or any more idea about what significance, if any, her encounter with the black dog held.
“I…can’t believe I’m saying this, but would you like to go to Hubbard Park today?”
She nodded enthusiastically.
“I’m not sure what we could do. Maybe it will give you peace of mind.”
“Maybe we can help.”
“I’m not sure how, but okay…”
After finishing their breakfast, they put on their barely-used hiking shoes and Colt drove them to Hubbard Park. On the way there, Jade kept refreshing her messages, hoping for any sign of Miguel. She even deleted several messages in hopes that they would be delayed, but hope, like anything else, was futile.  Instead, she stumbled across an article in which a woman named Hayley insisted that the disappearance of Alexa and Khloe was connected to the disappearance of her friends Krista and Eve in the late nineties. The woman discussed spending years searching for her friends with a suspect in mind but no conclusive evidence. Jade wasn’t sure if she had omitted the suspect’s name or if the news site chose not to publish it at all.
“Check this out.” Mere seconds after Colt pulled into the dirt lot by the trailhead, Jade shoved the phone into his hands. “Don’t just nod, read!”
“‘Hayley Brunelle believes the disappearances of her friends in 1999 are connected to the tragic disappearance of…’  Yeah, so they might be. What’s your point?”
“Read a little bit further…”
“‘Brunelle believes that her friends are no longer alive’ Well, that’s dark. Yes, I’ll read on. ‘And fears they might be buried somewhere in Hanging Hills. Authorities state there is no reason to believe this at this time and will continue their search for Alexa and Khloe.’’’
“I believe her.”
“You don’t know her.”
“Does that matter?”
“I know you’re overwhelmed with all this. Let’s just take things one step at a time.”
As the twosome walked onto the dirt trail, they remarked how quiet and empty the trail was for a Saturday morning with the exception of a guy speeding by them on a mountain bike. No matter how hard Colt attempted to make idle conversation, she couldn’t shake the thought of the girls from different decades meeting the same fate. She couldn’t shake the thought that Frank was somehow involved.
Jade felt her mind and body slip into auto-pilot as Colt droned on about his own relationship troubles and how steep the hill was. Colt didn’t have the body type or demeanor for hiking, so they took a short break halfway up the hill. He sat upon a rock, griping about how they should have packed a water bottle. She paid no mind to his banter as she saw a figure standing at the top of the trail that stopped abruptly at a winding road. She could recognize the wavy, shoulder-length brown hair, slightly muscular build, and well-worn Nirvana smiley tee-shirt from anywhere. He was staring at something across the road. 
“Miguel…” Jade felt the trembling intonation of her voice as she met his surprised but despondent expression. “Sorry…didn’t mean to scare you.”
He shook his head and gave her a faint smile. “Hey, guys. I’m…sorry I didn’t return your text. I’ve been out here for hours.”
“I’m so-” 
Miguel raised a finger to his lips. “No offense, guys. I…don’t want to hear that right now. I’ve…heard too much of that over the past two days.”
“I’m…” Jade struggled to find the right words. “Look, we’re here to help.”
Colt’s eyes widened, but after processing those words, he nodded in agreement.
“Thanks, guys. I’m…not sure what we can do. I’m…not sure how to start. The police searched the area with their dogs over the past two days and didn’t find anything. They’ve moved on to other areas.”
Jade wanted desperately to put an arm around his shoulders but stopped a few inches short of the small of his back. “But you’re not convinced.”
Miguel shook his head and sighed, running his fingers down the dark circles under his eyes. “They were going to Castle Craig. It was their hangout place. I know this sounds crazy but I don’t think they’d be anywhere else.” 
“It doesn’t sound crazy,” Colt said. “Your cousin’s a badass hiker like you and I’m sure her friend is too.”
Miguel smiled. “Thanks for treating her like she still exists. My whole family…they act like she’s gone. It’s been less than two days and they’re simultaneously talking about preparing for the worst and praying to God for her return. I don’t want to do any of those things! It doesn’t help, guys.”
Clenching his fists and holding back tears, Miguel motioned for them to step onto the road. “I’ve been all over these god-forsaken woods. The only place I haven’t been yet today is Castle Craig.  People are idiots so we have to be careful walking up.”
Colt and Jade nodded as they crossed onto the left side of the road. 
“Have you found anything at all…” Jade noticed her own nervous inflections, but it didn’t matter. It felt good to just be near him again. She noticed he was skinnier and not in a healthy sort of way, but skinny like the month his adopted father took ill when they were in college. She noticed bruises coursing the length of his arms, not the kind he usually incurred from a karate match, but the kind of bruise one would receive from a great fall. 
“Just some footprints off the trail…but I don’t have the type of expertise to tell what those are.”
“Times like these make me wish my Uncle Tony was still alive,” Colt remarked. They could see the tower from their vantage point and surprisingly few cars in the parking lot surrounding it. “He was a detective.”
Miguel re-clenched his fists. “Maybe yours would take this investigation more seriously. Hey Jade…you okay?”
The three of them turned around to see a small, vaguely spaniel-like, short-haired black dog. Jade felt all the hairs on her neck pierce her skin as the dog sat by the curbside, happily panting, but without a sound, as Miguel and Colt eagerly pet it. Just like years ago, the dog looked simultaneously blurry and vibrantly clear, especially its brown and strangely sad eyes. Her father’s haunting words “three times for death” echoed through her mind along with the guys’ oblivious laughter. 
“I needed this today,” Miguel said, smiling. A lone truck passed them as they scratched the back of his ears. “Poor guy is cold. I hope his owner is nearby. Jade, are you good?”
Colt took one look at her frozen green eyes and grunted. “Oh god…you think that’s the black dog don’t you.”
Miguel looked at her as well. “Oh no…I remember now. Jade that’s not-”
“Three times for death…I’m going to die soon,” Jade murmured, unable to move any part of her body. 
“That’s a ghost dog, alright,” Colt said laughing and nudging Jade.
“Ease up on her.” Miguel placed an arm around her back. “It’s just a dog, Jade. It’s really friendly too. It looks young too! It can’t be the one you saw years ago.”
“Three times for death…” Jade murmured again.
When the guys attempted to move her a few inches forward, she wouldn’t budge, but Miguel’s phone came loose from his pocket. The dog opened its mouth to bark. No sound came out, which infuriatingly to Jade, didn’t faze them one bit. But when the dog grabbed his phone like it was a chew toy and began to run, Miguel shouted, “damn pooch!” and began to chase it back toward the road. Colt followed stragglingly along.     
“Guys, don’t!” Jade finally managed to shout as they sped back down the road and toward the trail. As the dog ran, it looked increasingly blurry, and not just because of its speed. It also had a slight misty aura around its body. “Watch out!”
The dog dashed down the hill they walked up and then several paces off the hill. For a moment, the dog looked like it was floating across the decaying leaves.  They didn’t pay attention to where they were running as they struggled to keep the dog in sight. All at once, they tripped over a jagged rock and tumbled down a hill far off the trail, which was thankfully mostly leaves and dirt. Jade reached out to find anything that would break her fall as she saw Colt somersault past her. They were free-falling with the dog still in sight. Jade wondered if this was really it, the third time Frank and her grandfather warned of it. Perhaps she would face the same fate as those geologists, falling to a dark and terrifying demise. Just before she thought of praying to some deity she wasn’t sure she believed in, they stopped rolling. 
Miguel was the first one to stand up, shouting obscenities, before bending over to help up Jade first and Colt who almost pulled him over. They checked each other for blood and broken bones. When they were satisfied that they were bruised but stable, they spotted the black dog in front of a shovel staked upright into a mound of dirt. Miguel’s phone lay on top of the mound. When he reached for it, they saw the dog growling at the shovel, but like its panting or bark, without a sound. 
“Oh my god. That’s a gravedigger’s shovel, a really old one too,” Colt said. “My grandpa brought one of these home from a crime scene once.”
“That’s so eerie.” Miguel reached to grab the shovel at its handle, but Jade gripped his wrist. “What…what is it?”
“I think we’re standing on a burial plot.”
They jumped back a few paces. The mound of dirt was outlined in a near-perfect rectangle of about five feet in length and maybe a couple in width. 
“That’s…that’s a human body under there,” Jade stammered. She was certain enough to make that claim, remembering her late uncle’s burial years back. “We’ve got to find our way out of here and tell the police.”
“Yeah,” Colt said, visibly shaken by the scene. 
Jade was breathing heavily when the dog rubbed his head against her leg. Hesitantly, she looked into its sad, brown eyes and touched its frigid back. She was certain this was the same dog she had seen years ago. Why it wasn’t invisible like a ghost, she wasn’t sure, but it didn’t seem menacing one bit. Despite how young and short the dog looked, its touch indicated it was an old soul, one that lived perhaps countless lifetimes. 
“I’m sorry,” Jade whispered to the dog. “You were trying to help.”
“Miguel, drop the shovel!” Colt suddenly shouted.
Miguel was digging tenaciously into the dirt, tears streaming down his cheeks. 
“Miguel, stop!” Jade screamed. They grabbed onto each arm but Miguel pulled himself away practically diving with the shovel. “Come on, Miguel. Let go!”
“It could be them! It could be them!”
The three toppled onto the plot and covered their ears. A sudden crack or bang pierced the air. Miguel looked fearfully over his shoulder as the bang repeated a few times. By the time Jade and Colt also realized what it was, Miguel was screaming “Run!”  The sound of gunfire was unmistakable. They weren’t sure where it was coming from, just that they had to run, no matter how blindly, away from the sound, which grew closer and closer. They were running back up the hill when they fell down, or so Jade thought. She wasn’t sure if she could still hear gunfire, or if it was all in her head, but she was too terrified to look back. 
For a moment, Jade thought the dog was running beside them but when she turned to her left, she saw Colt starting to lag behind. She yelled for Miguel to slow down, grasping onto Colt who was practically hyperventilating as they finally crossed back onto the main trail. They no longer heard the sound of gunfire. They fell to their knees, coughing and wheezing, struggling to gain awareness of their surroundings. Colt doubled over and vomited onto a pile of leaves. Jade grabbed onto his back and he emptied what little contents he had left from a light breakfast. 
“I’m sorry,” Colt uttered weakly. 
“No, honey,” Jade said. “It’s not behind us anymore. Miguel, if you have service, call the police.”  
Miguel nodded and pulled out his phone, which only had a couple of bars. As the dispatcher picked up, he anxiously glanced over his shoulder for any unwelcome sound or figure. “Hello? Hello? Yes. Yes…My name is Miguel Boyd. My friends and I were hiking the Hanging Hills trail from Hubbard Park and…yes, in Meriden. We found…we found a gravesite and heard nearby gunfire and…goddammit! No!”
Before he could relay any more information, his phone drained to black. 
“You gave them enough info,” Jade said, noticing her own phone was dead as well. “Colt do you have… never mind. You left it in the house. Goddammit!”
“Do you think we’re safe, Miguel?” Colt stood up slowly, wiping some vomit from his lip. 
“I don’t want to find out.” Miguel fixed his shirt and then looked up at Jade’s watery green eyes. “Let’s get the hell out of here, not run, just walk with intention. Hopefully, by the time we reach the trailhead, the cops will be here.”
The three of them walked side-by-side in silence over the footbridge and back to the parking lot. There were still no hikers on the trail. Jade didn’t know what to say. She was both terrified and relieved. The dog she feared for all those years was nothing to fear at all. She wasn’t sure if it was a spirit or some type of immortal entity, but it wasn’t the evil creature Frank or the countless individuals that encountered the dog that made it out to be. If anything, it wasn’t angry at the people who saw it for a second or third time, but trying to seek help. Something far more evil lurked within those hills. The black dog was warning of that evil. At that moment, Frank’s fear all those years ago seemed infinitely less likely to relate to a curse or legend. 
When they reached the trailhead, a single police cruiser sat idling in the parking lot. The three of them rushed over to the lone officer who was caught off guard as they gathered around him. After motioning for them to “calm down” and that he “could only hear one person at a time,”  he took their statement. They told the officer every excruciating detail, which he recorded on his mobile laptop. Jade even told the officer about the black dog, which caused him to look up and wince, before continuing to type. By the end of their frantically told, albeit thorough story, the officer called for backup on his radio. Then, he sectioned off the trailhead with red tape with black lettering that read “DO NOT ENTER.” The mere words caused Jade’s heart to jump.
“We’re going to close the trail to the public today,” the officer said. “We received a few more phone calls about the gunshots, so we’re going to follow up on this. We’ll call you if we have any additional questions. You’ll be hearing from us within the next few hours.  Here’s my card.”
“Why wouldn’t he ask us to show him the burial site,” Miguel said gruffly as he opened the door to his beat-up Camry. 
“Keep your voice down,” Colt snapped, unlocking his car. “He said he’ll follow up with us.”
“Do you want to go back to our place?” Jade said softly.
“Thanks but…I have to make some calls to my mom and aunt. I’ll catch up with you guys.”
On impulse, Jade reached over to hug him. This caught Miguel off guard, but he ultimately fell into her embrace and pulled her in closely. At that moment, all the anger and pain that lingered from the breakup subsided. She was just glad that he was there and safe. She didn’t have to ask to know he felt the same. 
“I’m here for you. Through all of this.”
“I know…I don’t know what to…”
Instead of finishing that sentence, Miguel kissed her on the cheek. She smiled and watched with an ungodly amount of uncertainty, fear, and bliss as he sped out of the park. Colt sighed and hugged Jade as well, apologizing for the vomit that splattered onto her shirt, which caused her to snort a laugh. They drove in silence all the way back to Winsted. In the silence, Jade, of course, thought of everything they had been through but kept coming back to the shovel. She was almost sure she had seen that type of shovel before. As a teenager, Frank tasked her with mowing the lawn every other visit. If she remembered correctly, that shovel lay in the shed with the lawnmower. The memory was so clear because she remembered how unusual it was for Frank to own it. 
It would be another day and a half before the officer returned their call with the unfortunate news that they had neither located the burial plot nor the man with the gun. This caused Miguel to angrily return to the hills without Jade or Colt’s knowledge. After searching late into Sunday night, he never found the plot either. It would be only another week before the news coverage died down over Alexa and Khloe’s disappearance. Miguel took up extra hours at the karate studio and Colt at the Bushnell to get their mind off of their anxieties. Jade grew sick of seeing the same regulars at the brewery, especially being hit on by them, so she called out the following Saturday. 
That day, Jade drove aimlessly throughout Meriden, not sure what she was looking for that the police didn’t already find. Other than a few missing person signs around town, she didn’t uncover much. She knew she wanted to stop by Frank’s house.  When she reached the street, she thought about pulling into the driveway until she saw his car wasn’t there. The lawn and bushes looked overgrown as if he didn’t live there anymore. Jade couldn’t remember the last time she visited his house, just that he never neglected yard work. Just when she was about to turn the car around, she noticed a woman sitting in a parked SUV across the street. Without much forethought, Jade pulled up behind the SUV and parked, cautiously approaching the driver’s side window. On any other day, she wouldn’t have been as brave, but the stern look on the face of the woman with jet-black hair spiked her curiosity.
The woman rolled down the windows. Jade rocked back and forth on her heels and gulped.
“Yes? Can I help you?” her voice was both stern and dismissive. “I already told the other neighbor that I’m not fucking leaving until the cops come.”
“No,” Jade said hoarsely. “I have a feeling we’re here for the same reason.”
“Yeah? What would that be, honey?” The woman was probably in her late thirties but her vast crow’s feet made her appear much older. On her lap lay a pair of sunglasses and a stack of photographs. “You one of Frank’s whores or something? Well I got news for you honey, I’m not-”
“I’m his daughter.”
This gave the woman pause. “No shit. All these years and I never saw his family around. Some father he must be. What’s your name?”
“Jade.”
“Jade, do you know who the hell your father is? Do you know what the hell your father is?”
Reluctantly she nodded. “I…think I know but I don’t want to.”
“Shit, hun,” she said, stepping out of the vehicle. The woman was maybe five and a half feet but carried herself like she was much taller and unafraid of anything. “You have to. I’m sorry to break the news to you honey, but seventeen years ago, your father killed my friends.”
“Oh god…you’re-you’re Hayley Brunelle”
Jade felt her whole body go numb. She never thought she’d have her suspicions confirmed all those years later. All those times she half-jokingly told her friends about her dad’s serial killer vibes were no joke at all. She didn’t have to ask for proof to know Hayley had it. She felt a weird mixture of total nauseousness and relief. 
“You’ve done your homework. Good for you. I’ve…been following him for so many years.”
“Is that what you’re doing here?”
She nodded, glaring at the house. “He hasn’t been here for at least a week, maybe longer. I’m sure he has taken off ever since that news report broke.”
“But-but…I’m sorry. I need to sit down,” She felt the world spinning rapidly around her and her entire body growing numb. 
Hayley knelt down by Jade as she cradled her head in her hands. 
“I’m sorry, Hayley, I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” she said.  “It sounds like you’ve known about him.”
“I thought I did.” Jade looked up, her face drenched in an ugly mess of tears and sweat. “When I was a teenager, he started acting really weird. He divorced my mom and cleared out his house. He also took really long trips and asked me to start calling him Frank.”
Hayley paused. “You… didn’t know this but Frank had been stalking us for months before they died. We used to go to Hanging Hills all the time. He found us on the trail one day and told us that tired black dog legend. I’m not sure what the hell he was doing there but he saw us on the next several trips. He told us how pretty we were and…I’m not sure if you want to know more.”
“I do. That’s disgusting. He…told me the same thing. I feel sick. Did you…call the police?”
“Feel everything you need to. It’s a lot. Yes…we did and they didn’t take us seriously. After they disappeared, I remember angrily pounding on his door. I screamed at him and told him he didn’t deserve to be alive and didn’t deserve to be a dad.”
“Oh my god…”
“He filed a restraining order against me and my family. I…haven’t found anything since, any more evidence, but I know…” 
“Are you an investigator?”
Hayley chuckled, glancing over her shoulder for cars. “Just a very pissed-off single mother. I forgot to ask-what are you doing here?”
“You’d probably think I’m crazy.”
“Try me.”
“My friends and I went looking for those girls. We…saw the black dog.” Jade was surprised she wasn’t judging. “It’s hard to explain what it is. It’s not like a ghost but kind of blurry when you see it and cold to the touch. Anyway, the dog led us to this burial plot with a long shovel staked in it.”
“A gravedigger’s shovel,” she remarked coldly. 
“Yeah. We…also heard gunshots and ran. It was pretty terrifying. We told the cops but they didn’t find anything.” 
Jade’s words seemed to cut through Hayley’s stern exterior. She sighed, running her fingers through her hair. “The last time Krista, Eve, and I went there together, we saw the dog too. It led us to the same kind of plot. When we told the cops about what we found about Frank following us, they didn’t go out there.”
“It makes sense,” Jade said sadly. “My dad had a few good friends on the force back in the day.” 
“You never answered my question.” They both stood up and took another long look at the house. Hayley adjusted her jean jacket, furrowing her brow. Jade glanced at her, lower lip slightly trembling. “What are you doing here?”
“When I was a kid, I saw that shovel in his shed. I wanted to see if it was still there.”
“We can go look. We just have to watch out for the neighbors.”
They crept across the street and into the tall grass. Jade peered through the window while Hayley scaled the side of the house. The interior was completely vacant, save for a lone, unplugged lamp on the hardwood floor. Jade scrambled to the side and noticed the garage was vacant too and the windows were collecting cobwebs. As they entered the backyard, she could see from the single-hung windows that the kitchen was completely stripped of its appliances.
“Take a look at this!”  Hayley had busted the lock to the gray, saltbox shed. Jade hurried over. They stared jaw agape at the red writing hastily scribbled all over the walls and floors. There were several names and dates repeated in different lengths.  “Oh my god.”
They saw the names immediately: EVE CROSS AND KRISTA NOLAN-1999. Hayley gasped and clasped a hand over her mouth, her tough exterior slipping into one of absolute shock and terror. There were several other names they didn’t recognize: ALLY SHELAN-1992, NAOMI DELEON-1994, RICKI JOHNSON-2006. Jade wrapped an arm around Hayley’s waist as they saw the next two names:  KHLOE PETERS AND ALEXA BOYD- date followed. She wondered if she should take the sign as a positive one, an indication that their fates hadn’t been sealed yet. There was another name in the far corner. One with an “L” that she couldn’t quite make out. 
“I’m going to check inside the house,” Hayley said, her face flushed and pale. “Just to be sure the girls aren’t  there. You should call the police and let them know what we found. All these years…”
“Yeah…” Jade said. “Be careful…”
It was all too much. Her mind couldn’t tell her body to reach for her phone. The names paralyzed her with fear. The closer she looked, the more she found in the far corners of the shed: VICTORIA MALCOLM-1991, BILLIE SMITH-1989, NICKI LAMERICK-2002, MAYELLA CRUZ-2009. Who were these girls? When did her dad have time to find them? She had been in the shed a million times over the years, even as an adult. Why were the names here now?  In the furthest corner of the shed, which was devoid of any light, she saw the final name-LITTLE TROLL. No dates followed. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see either. All of her senses were fading. When she opened her mouth to scream, she couldn’t do that either. She could only hear the distinct sounds of the shed door latching behind her.   
The darkness was utterly disorienting. She felt herself slip into a deep, panicked, and nightmarish slumber. The slumber felt like an eternity of being unable to breathe or think coherently. Through the darkness, she could see faint images of the girls she never met. Billie Smith wore a blue and green sequin top when Frank stopped her on the footbridge, claiming he had lost his daughter. She was skipping school, which she was failing anyway, and eager to help.  Victoria Malcolm wore a pink flannel shirt when her father claimed to be a friend of Victoria’s dad atop the stone tower. She thought she knew all of her dad’s friends, but he seemed nice enough, and claimed to play basketball with him in high school. Eve Cross and Krista Nolan were wearing the new Silverchair shirts they purchased at the concert the night before when Frank told them at the trailhead that he was a roadie for the band. Nicki Lambert wore a gray American Eagle sweatshirt when Frank told her that her mom was looking for her. Nicki and her mom were the best of friends like the mother/daughter duo on that WB Network series that Jade used to watch. It wasn’t clear what Mayella was wearing when her face was covered in dirt, but she felt her fear and sadness being betrayed by her own Soccer coach.  It wasn’t long until Jade realized she was covered in dirt too.
When Jade regained her sense of taste, she realized how appalling the taste of soil truly was with its chalky, earthy texture. She attempted to spit it out, but more dirt trickled down, so she sealed her lips entirely. When Jade regained her sense of smell, she noticed the soil’s horribly sour and metallic scent, which she had a difficult time breathing through with only centimeters of her nostrils uncovered. When Jade regained her sense of sound, she noticed the crackles, clicks and pops from above. She also heard the sound of her phone buzzing somewhere. When Jade regained her sense of touch and consciousness, she was absolutely horrified by the immense pressure pushing down on her body. For several minutes, she tried to thrash her body but only moved an inch at best. She was losing oxygen again and rapidly. 
From above, she heard more distinct crackles, clicks and pops followed by the sound of grating and rasping. Something or someone was digging her up. It wasn’t the spade of a shovel. Its movements were still rapid but yet more gradual. She watched the dirt flick upward in small chunks. When her nose and mouth were unearthed, she realized two small black paws were doing the digging. When the paws had removed enough dirt from her body, she used all of her strength to force her body upward, using what minimal arm strength she had left to crawl out from the grave. The black dog bit onto her sleeve and helped tug her the rest of the way. 
As Jade rose to her feet, struggling to catch her breath, the dog guarded her in front, raising its tail with its ears flat against its head. The dog stood much taller than its familiar spaniel-like stature. If not for its familiar features, she would have mistaken it for a Great Dane. The dog was no longer blurry but glowing in a misty, green-tinted aura. Its sad brown eyes were no longer sad or brown but blue and fiery like the combustion of carbon. Jade stared in horror at the unmarked dirt plots that surrounded her from all sides. They numbered in the dozens, maybe double or triple that. She couldn’t be sure.  Then, she looked back, even more horrified, at the grave she came from, which was at least four feet deep. How long had the dog been digging for? How long had she been buried? All time seemed to elude her. She knew she heard her phone but couldn’t find it. She knew not to run though with the dog guarding her, moving with every direction she turned. 
“Thanks, buddy,” she whispered. “Should we-”
Just as she was about to move, the smell of menthols overwhelmed her senses the same way it had for many years.  From between two bushes, her father, a frailer-looking man than she remembered in torn flannel appeared, carrying the gravedigger’s shovel in his hand.
“You were never supposed to find out,” Frank said coldly, looking at the dog and not her.
Jade said nothing.
“You were never supposed to find him either.”
Silence.
She stared blankly into his arid blue eyes as if she were daring him to strike. She was no longer afraid of the man she stopped calling “dad” long ago. 
“Is this the third time you’ve seen him, Frank?” 
With these words, Frank’s arid eyes widened, his pupils dilated. He attempted to lunge forward, drawing a small gray pistol from a concealed holster, but the black dog leaped and tackled him into the grave. Frank unleashed a blood-curdling scream. The scream lasted mere moments before gnawing and gurgling sounds took its place. The gnawing and gurgling sounds turned to ones of crumbling as a mound of dirt collapsed into the grave. After the dirt collapsed, she heard the collective screams of Frank’s countless victims escape into the atmosphere.  These weren’t screams of terror, but cries of freedom, cries for the monster to stay buried forever, every inch of his evil being rotting into the earth. The dog jumped from the grave into a nearby pile of leaves, its stature morphing back to spaniel form. It took one last look at Jade, its eyes now a bold shade of brown, and drifted into the vast woods. 
Jade started to run, faster than she had ever run before. Somewhere in the distance, she heard people screaming her name. The closer she ran, the more distinctly she could make out the voices of Colt, Miguel, Hayley, and possibly Sasha, though she couldn’t be sure. Then, another female voice called her name that she didn’t recognize at all.  Jade lost all sense of where she came from but at least knew the direction she needed to run toward. Somehow, she also knew that the black dog wouldn’t let a single soul be buried in Hanging Hills again.
Category:Places
Category:Animals