Page 12 of Entangled in the Woods
“How? I don’t have a car. You fell asleep right after…” My voice trailed off as the man’s eyes glanced at me again in the rearview mirror. He’d obviously heard that. Wilder shook his head and turned to face forward.
“There will be people looking for me,” I said, turning to the man in front. At least I hoped Jenny and Leo would be concerned if I didn’t show up today.
“I’ll have someone alleviate their concerns. Once we enter Camp, we won’t be leaving until Sunday,” the man said.
What had Jenny been thinking, pumping me up like that last night? Her pep talk had been the worst advice ever. These were the locals we’d been told not to interact with, and now here Iwas in an unknown black car with an unknown driver headed to an unknown location. I was powerless as we barreled down the road at what anyone but a race-car driver would consider a frightening speed. All that time spent studying, not going out often with my friends had built up, and the one time I was a little wild, this happened.
Spending the summer in a research cabin that was cut off from the world with no service had seemed like a dream opportunity—a chance to immerse myself in the natural world and not have to worry about any other distractions. But right now, I desperately missed the security a phone gave me.
“My parents! My professor! They’ll all be expecting to hear from me,” I yelled, trying to entice the driver to stop, let me out, make him see that letting me go would be to his advantage.
“You live with roommates, right? Not your parents?” he asked, although he already knew the answer. I nodded. “And a professor? So you’re a student, probably a good one?” I nodded again. “Then you weren’t listening. It’s the weekend. No professor is going to come check on you on the weekend. I’ll take care of the roommates. Come Sunday, you’ll be back home, safe back in your world. They won’t even notice you’re gone.”
I looked away from Wilder and the rearview mirror, slumping over in my seat with my head in my hands. Last night had been such a mistake. I should have stayed in my lane and focused on doing what I’d come here to do. I was here to study and research the forest, not the local men. When they found my body buried in the woods in a couple of months, I was sure Professor Robinson would be nothing but disappointed.
“Wilder!” I whisper-yelled at him, trying to get his attention from my bent-over position so he could give me any clues about where I was going.
“Don’t bother with him—you’ll be nothing but disappointed,” the driver said. There seemed to be a lot of disappointmentgoing around. “I hope you have nowhere to be for the rest of the weekend. You’re going to be stuck at Camp.”
“What’s Camp?” I asked. I was fine sleeping in a tent if my tent was far away from Wilder’s.
“If you’re expecting s’mores and campfire stories, don’t.”
“So, I’m your prisoner until Sunday?” This one-night stand had turned into an unwanted weekend affair.
“If I remember correctly, I gave you three choices. You chose the car. That hardly makes you a prisoner.”
The car sped up even more. The man’s white knuckles gripping the steering wheel were the only sign that he felt flustered. A sharp buzz sounded behind the car, and I whipped my head around to see what the noise was. Out the back window was nothing but the gravel road we had just driven over.
As I turned to face forward once again, we slowed down considerably to dodge the tents and people that had appeared in front of our car. My eyes must have bulged out of my head as I looked out the windshield.
“Welcome to Camp.” The driver chuckled at my disbelief.
Wilder looked unimpressed next to me. He was acting like a teenage boy, unwillingly dragged along on a family road trip.
Large canvas tents lined the road we drove on. People were walking, laughing, and having conversations with one another outside the tents and along the road. Flags flew high above the crest of each tent’s entrance. They were all different colors and had different symbols on them. We pulled next to the last tent on the road. The flag was black with a green cedar tree surrounded by a white moon like a halo.
Hopping out of the car, the driver opened my door and made a hand motion for me to follow him. Wilder got out of his side of the car and followed us to the entrance of the tent. The man pulled back the flap of the tent and let me see inside before I entered. The tent was large and lit with natural light from theplastic covered windows on each of its sides. In the middle of the tent, there was a large table with five chairs on each side and a chair at the head and foot of the table. Several couches lined the sides of the tent. The mismatched fabric on them gave the impression that they had been bought from different garage sales.
A small group of people sat together on a couch near the back. Deep in conversation, they didn’t seem to notice us entering. It wasn’t until Wilder threw his body loudly onto the nearest couch that they turned around to look at us.
“You got him, Everett. Where the hell was he?” A man similar in size to the driver, apparently named Everett, stood up and walked over to where Wilder was lying on the couch.
Wilder looked undeterred by the large man coming at him. The man kicked the couch, rattling him. He sat up, glaring at everyone in the room like a boy receiving a lecture from his parents after they’d caught him sneaking out of the house.
“At his house, sleeping.” Everett crossed his arms.
The large man walked over to where Everett and I were standing, keeping his eyes directly on me. “And who’s this?”
He came up close to me, and I tried not to cower in front of his imposing size. Broad, muscular shoulders dominated his frame. He was wearing some sort of leather vest over his black T-shirt, accentuating his large pectoral muscles. Every one of these men was uncommonly large. I had to tilt my head back to see his face as he towered over me with a frown on his cleanly shaven chin. A thin white scar ran across his forehead. His hair was cut so short, you could see his scalp through the tiny brown hairs.
I clenched my hands together tightly to disguise that I was shaking.
“Don’t scare the girl, Kostas,” a feminine voice said from behind who I assumed was Kostas.
Everett sighed. “I found her with that idiot.” He gestured with his head to Wilder. “The same girl we saw him with at the bar last night. I didn’t have time to drop her anywhere with the wards closing.”
“The side of the road would’ve sufficed,” Kostas said.
