Page 82 of The Same Flesh
“Hey!”
“You can get your nails done after you pick up all the dog turds.”
Daniel turned up the volume on the TV.Somebody on the show kept screaming different types of fruit.
“What is happening?”Tean asked as they got in the Subaru.
“He’s being a teenager, which means annoying and insecure and needy and combative, all at the same time.”
Tean made a sound that he hoped suggested he understood.
“That was actually one of your top ten interactions,” Jem said.
“Oh my gosh,” Tean muttered.But he couldn’t help asking, just to be sure, “It was?”
The drive to the Uinta Basin took them along the backside of the Wasatch Mountains, through canyons and valleys where the snow was deep and white and the pines looked blue in the midmorning light.Then, coming down out of the mountains, color and snow retreated until the grayish-brown floor of the valley was broken only by dusty scrub and juniper.It had snowed here too at some point, but the precipitation had melted except where it had drifted against snow fences.The effect was like someone had drawn a thick white line along the side of the road.
Tean didn’t spend the drive staring at the scenery, though.True to his word, Scott had sent them not only GPS coordinates for the ranch but an email full of links to YouTube videos.During the parts of the drive when Tean had service, he opened the videos and watched clips of them.They all appeared to be adjacent to some of the horror movies Jem liked, bridging found footage and pseudoscientific investigation—and, of course, videos by dumb kids who wanted to do dumb things like explore a haunted ranch.
The picture that he pieced together from the videos sounded surprisingly familiar.Among other things, the ranch was supposed to have been the site of frequent UFO visits, as well as being at the intersection of ley lines, and a “hot spot” for paranormal activity.The result was that cattle mutilations were apparently common in the area, people reported sightings of unidentified lights and “orbs,” and rumors abounded of large animals with huge red eyes that stalked the unwary through the dark.The connection was made, many times, by many hosts, to Native American traditions like skinwalkers and wendigos.There was also something about magnetic fields, but even the hosts on the videos didn’t sound too sure about that.
Aside from all that, though, the videos did provide something useful: glimpses of the ranch itself.The quality of the footage was poor, exclusively amateur with the exception of a 2006 “documentary” done by a woman from Eastern Europe who kept getting her high heels caught in loose boards.It was hard to tell what she found, mostly because Tean had no idea what she was saying, but also because she stopped halfway through the documentary to change wigs after she got hung up on a nail.
In the background of the wig shot—and the rest of the videos—Tean caught glimpses of dilapidated buildings.Frame structures had shiplap siding bleached from the sun, many of them partially collapsed, roofs and walls falling away to leave only remnants still standing.It was hard to imagine anyone taking shelter there, but then, it was also hard to know what Teanwasn’tseeing in the videos.
He paused, at one point, to text Amy:Did you ever find any connection to Direwolf Ranch?
Seconds turned into minutes, and Tean was about to re-start the video when a response finally came through:You’re going out there?
Tean wrote back:Yes.You’ve heard of it?
Amy responded:Let me check.
After a few more minutes, though, with no response, Tean let the video play again, but he quickly found himself hearing the same rumors, the same stories, the same recycled information.
The third time Jem crossed the rumble strip because he was trying to watch the videos with Tean, Tean put the phone away.
Jem made a disappointed “Aww!”
“You can watch them later.”
“No, keep playing them.I promise I won’t watch.I’ll just listen.”
“I think we’ve heard enough.”Before Jem could insist, Tean added, “Do you know what’s strange?It sounds so much like the stories we heard about the campground where we first met them.Remember that woman we met, Katie?The one who found Brennon’s body?It sounds like the kind of thing she was telling us.”
“Katie was awesome.That was the first time I ever heard of space wolves.”
“And it’s not just that.I know there should be some…repeated patterns, I suppose, in the lives of men who go on to commit acts of violence.So, I’m not entirely surprised that what we’ve learned about Kai has echoes of what happened to Rydel and Zeb.But doesn’t it seem like there’s a lot?”
Jem shrugged.“Maybe that makes sense, though.”
“In what way?”
“Well, it’s not like that stuff doesn’t happen all the time.Plus, they found each other for a reason.It makes sense that they’d have things in common.And if this is the kind of stuff Kai was interested in when he was growing up, then however he ended up at that campground, I figure either he genuinely believed that stuff was going on there, too, or he thought it would make a great way to get people to stay there.”
“That makes sense.We’re going through this case backward chronologically, so right now it looks like coincidence.But if we followed it from the beginning, it would look like causation.”Tean paused.“That’s very smart, Jem.”
“Thanks.”
