The Dark Place

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With a curse that echoed weirdly through the dripping forest, Eckert sat heavily down on a spongy, moss-covered log. Then he stood up again and shrugged out of the backpack he wore under his poncho, heedlessly letting it slip to the sodden ground. He rubbed his shoulders and stood staring at his moisture-blackened boots, listening to the never-ending soft rain that rustled in the tall trees and pattered on the plastic hood of his poncho like a thousand spidery, scrabbling insects.

He was tired: tired in the base of his spine, and the muscles of his thighs, and the ligaments of his knees. And he was tired of being wet, unutterably sick of the dark, glistening forest with its green, under-the-sea light, ghostly and dim. For two days and nights the rain had floated down in a mist, never slackening, never increasing; just enough to keep him continuously wet, cold, and miserable.

The trail he had been on since eight was too new to show on the map, but the Park Service sign had said NORTH SHORE, TEN MILES. That saved five miles and would put him under a hot shower and into dry clothes two hours sooner than the old trail. But now he wasn’t sure of exactly where he was, and that made him uncomfortable. Still, it couldn’t be more than two or three miles more; it just couldn’t be.

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