After Dawn

Chapter 4

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Jess
9:00 PM
Location: ???
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I have just gotten out of the institution today. It took a whole year to get to where I am now and I'm finally sane enough to go home—or so they think. I had to lie to get out of that hell hole and make them believe that I now realize that what I seen was only an illusion. But I know it wasn't... Or do I?

Fuck, I don't know...

What I do know is that something wasn't right on that mountain and it certainly wasn't just Josh pulling all his stupid prank on us all. I know something grabbed me and tore me away from Mike, I'm just not sure what. But that is in the past, and now I have to focus on my future.

Nobody really visited me when I was locked away, which was surprising. Not even Mike came to check up on me once, which hurt more than anything. He had to have been told by my parents or someone that he wasn't allowed to visit, right? There is no way he just decided that he didn't want anything to do with me anymore just like that.

He still loves me even if I'm crazy, right?

I can't dwell on it—not now. I have to focus on getting home. Right now I'm sitting in a taxi, being driven from the hospital to my house. My parents didn't even have the decency to pick me up, instead they send a driver. How nice! Sometimes I wonder if they are disappointed in me—disappointed that their only daughter is a lunatic. They didn't even believe my story. That's why I spent the year in a hospital.

I was lucky to be given back my things when I was discharged. I hold my phone in my hand now, not feeling the usual spark of joy I used to when I had it in my hands after a certain amount of time away from it. It's not the one I had last year. That one was damaged by the cold when the police found it after searching the mountains. This one was a gift sent to me by my parents last week. Though I wasn't allowed to use it until just now.

I hold the button until it responds with a vibration to tell me it's turning on and watch as the screen lights up with a picture of me from before last year's incident. I find it funny how Mike is conveniently cropped out of the picture, so it's only me in frame. It had to be my parents' doing.

Surprisingly, there is two messages. I click on the icon to see one from my mother, telling me how excited she is for me to get home. But then I see another one sent today by an unknown number...

I get an oddly eerie feeling when I gazed at the digits laid out across the screen before me. I don't recognize it, though I was always bad with remembering numbers. So I decide to click on it. Surely whoever sent it would say who it was, right?

Wrong.

The message only says "I'm still here." with... Directions? Directions to Washington mountain! I gasp and the driver instantly takes his eyes off the road for a split second to eye me in the rearview mirror.

"Are you alright, ma'am?" He asks with a hint of concern in his tone. I glance up at him for a moment and think before speaking.

Clearly I can't tell him what I've seen, since it could get me in trouble. Maybe if I could get him to drop me off somewhere close to Blackwood Pines and hitchhike from there, then I'd be okay? Wait... Why do I want to do that? Why do I want to relive the horrible nightmare I survived on that mountain? Am I still high on the drugs they gave me at the hospital?

I must be, because something inside me tells me to go. I have to know who sent this. It has to be one of the others. Who would be psycho enough to go to the mountain unless they know the land? ... Hell, who would be psycho enough to go back? But nobody else knows what happened because Josh's parents covered it up. So it has to be someone I already know... Maybe...

"Uh— Yeah... I just remembered that I forgot something that I have to pick up before we go to the airport."

I figured it was a pretty good excuse, but the man didn't seem so convinced yet. I watch his eyes slightly narrow at me in the mirror, and I wince. I have to do better.

"Where do you need to be dropped off, ma'am?"

I quickly gve him an address of someone who used to be a friend of the Washingtons. They used to go to the mountains every summer and clean up the gardens for them when they wouldn't be there. Some of us wondered if they were only friends with the man because of how convenient it was to know someone who lived so close by and would do yard work for free, but Josh and the twins assured us it wasn't like that.

I gave some bullshit excuse that my parents had delivered a package there and wanted me to pick it up before coming home and luckily, the man bought it and was even willing to make the detour. Now all I had to worry about was who sent me the message. Was it Josh? Could he still be alive after all this time? It had to be him. Who else would still be up there, especially on the anniversary of last year's events?

I decide to push it out of my mind for now and gaze out my window, watching the snowflakes fall gently as I thank God my parents chose to send me to an institution in Alberta...

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