No Service by Susan Luciano Read Free Book Online Page A

husband when her hand met the empty futon mattress.
    “Chris?” she asked in a tired stupor.
    At first, the sleepiness left her slowly, drifting away as if on a breeze. Suddenly, she sat bolt upright and frantically looked around the tent. “Chris?” she said more urgently.
    No response. Slipping on a sweatshirt that she’d tucked away in a corner, she fumbled her way out of the tent into the dark. There was no light at their site. Leaning back in, she grabbed a small flashlight they’d stashed in the overhanging pocket. Clicking it on, she illuminated a small circle of light.
    It was like a creepy horror movie as she shined the light around. At any moment, the beam could illuminate a nightmare. Instead, the picnic bench sat vacantly by the fire pit. The cooler was tucked under the table. The car was parked on the small gravel space on the lot. After that it was nothing but forest.
    “Chris?” she said again, still somewhat quiet. She willed herself to assume that he’d simply gone to the bathroom.
    There was only the faintest hint of a radio playing nearby. Someone was an extreme night owl. Otherwise, the whole area was devoid of human sounds. The animals were joined in a nocturnal chorus mostly comprised of owls and crickets.
    She could feel a small panic rising in her chest. Her blood was beginning to chill at the thought of something happening to Chris. The road surface clawed at her bare feet as she jogged along toward the bathroom. She knocked on the men’s room door and called for Chris again. Nothing.
    The horror continued to rise and her heart was beginning to beat out of control. She called for Chris louder. She was running now, heading back for their loop, mentally configuring the place they’d left the car keys. Her purse? His pocket? The tent? She wondered if she should phone the park police or 9-1-1 first.
    Rounding the bend back toward the site, she saw a flashlight shining off into the woods. Her bare feet slapped heavily against the ground. It felt like sandpaper against her sensitive skin, but she couldn’t stop the terror.
    She raced past her site hoping to enlist the stranger for help. Maybe they’d seen something. Maybe they had heard something.
    The flashlight was shining into the back of an empty campsite. The person stood on the road just barely out of reach of the only streetlight. It illuminated the intersection between this specific loop and the road that connected the other loops. It was the last site in the row.
    “Hello?” Jess asked as she sprinted toward the stranger.
    The figure turned to her and took a step into the light.
    “Chris? What are you doing here?”
    “I thought I saw something.”
    Jess caught up and turned to look into the site. “I don’t see anything.”
    “When I was coming back from the bathrooms. I thought I saw two people. They were running right toward me and then they weren’t under the light anymore. I came to see if they needed help and by the time I got down here, it was just the bushes rustling.”
    “Should we call the park police?”
    “Yeah. That seemed really shady.”
    Chris pulled out his cell, but still no signal. They were about to walk down to the security office, when they saw a park vehicle pass by. The maintenance man radioed for help as they waited in the chilly dark. A few moments later, several green park vehicles pulled up. The officers got out and after everything Chris had seen was recounted, they looked around. Finding nothing, they told Chris and Jess to go back to their tent.
    The curiosity was still overwhelming and they couldn’t bring themselves to try and go back to bed yet. Instead, they sat around the campfire. About an hour later, headlights passed by as the vehicles drove off and the darkness was complete again.
    “I guess they didn’t find anything,” Chris shrugged. “I still saw something though.”
    They gazed into the smoldering embers. The flames had died down, but the logs still gave off an intense heat.