Page 108 of The Bright Lands

“I told you, he’s crazy. Look.” Dashandre tapped a button and the screen reverted to a blank gray square. “This where you normally would have your profile and shit. This guy don’t post nothing. For a while he used to come online when he was lit and try and get busy and then pretend he don’t know you next time you say hey.” Dashandre shrugged again. “He’s trash.”

Clark hit the Chat button, began to scroll up for older messages.

Dashandre tried to cover the screen with a hand, suddenly sounding nervous. “I don’t want you to see nothing you don’t want to see, Officer ma’am.”

She hardly heard him. She pulled the phone away and read what the mysterious user had sent Dashandre on 5/19:

what’s up yo 24 6'0 195 well built nice package vers masculine very dl looking for fun u down??

The message was followed by five pictures. The pictures had been taken in a dingy yellow bathroom, posed in front of a mirror flecked with toothpaste (or something equally creamy). The man was holding his phone in one hand and a middling dick in the other, posing a muscled backside, flexing a ridged stomach.

His face was cropped from the frame in every photo but Clark had no trouble identifying him. Those tattoos could only belong to one person.

She scrolled back to the picture of the man’s ass, zoomed in, stared. A pair of Bison charged at one another from either cheek. Above the Bison floated two scrolls. On one scroll was written2008. On the other was2012.

IF ANY OF U FUCKING FAGGOTS COME NEAR MY BOY.

“D just got to run off with his boy every weekend.”

“Some of the Bison I played with had more tricks than a deck of cards.”

Browder.Son of a bitch.

“Excuse me, Officer, can we speak to you a moment?”

Clark looked up to see Whiskey Brazos and T-Bay Baskin standing behind her, their faces serious. While her head was turned she felt Dashandre slip his phone from her hand.

“Is it urgent?” she asked the boys.

“It’s about Dylan, ma’am,” T-Bay said.

Whiskey added, “And Luke. And Kimbra. And Joel.”

“Shit’s been wrong all week, ma’am. Us and the other boys, we’ve been feeling it in our gut.”

Whiskey swallowed, studied Clark’s boots. “Something bad is going down tonight.”

Clark, her head still buzzing from the photos, felt something click in her head. “You think it’s connected to that place?”

T-Bay chewed his cheek. “We’ve been having dreams.”

Clark fixed the boys with a hard glare so they’d know she wasn’t playing. “Dreams about where to find it?”

The footballers looked at one another, hesitated.

“Not exactly,” T-Bay said.

Whiskey glanced over his shoulder before murmuring, “But we know someone who knows.”

BETHANY

Bethany told herself that this was totally absolutely don’t panic normal. Luke’s truck bounded over the open country while she clutched on to a hook with two fingers and prayed a golf bag skittering around in the bed with her didn’t come flying into her face.

The truth. They were heading toward the truth, Bethany knew, sheknewit—heading toward the truthshewould reveal, she would call the lady deputy with the ugly shoes and say, “Officer, Officer, I’m sending you my location now—” (because Bethany knew all the tricks to all the modern devices) “—come quick, tell everybody, I found theTRUTH.”

Bethany had spotted the pile of stale clothes in the far corner of Luke’s truck bed the moment she’d lowered the unlocked tailgate in the parking lot. She’d even been pleasantly surprised to discover that she could curl herself beneath the few old shirts and towels and hardly raise the pile at all. As long as nobody shone a flashlight in here, as long as she wasn’t still here come daybreak, she could stay perfectly hidden.

Her resolution had lasted about thirty seconds before common sense had intervened and asked her what the fuck she thought she was doing.