Sedona Ghosts

Three days after the president mounts a stage and a camera pans over white upturned faces, three days after the northern half of their state institutes what is called shelter in place, three days after their university sends an email that says, Apologies, but—

Three days after all this, they decide to leave for Sedona.

There are also three of them. Kate and Bri are in the backseat as Elle drives out of Los Angeles through low-lying Indio and Palm Springs, past mountains that ridge up first snow-topped and then clay red. The landscape flattens from cityscape to desert, plants shift from palm trees into cacti and flowers. Traffic drops off once they make it through Coachella Valley, and the highway reduces from a congestion of cars to the occasional trundling semi-truck.

The sky is clear. Drizzle had been shadowing Los Angeles the past weeks, unusual after a dry and yellowed winter. What a relief to see above, thinks Elle.

There was also supposed to be a fourth, Grace. But she was from the other coast, and she flew home quickly, afraid that the airports, too, would shutter, that she would be stranded in California whose borders are quickly solidifying.

Understandable, Kate and Bri had said. Couldn’t agree more.

But to Elle they’d whispered, Wouldn’t you rather be trapped on the West Coast?

The clouds hang low and flat, as if on glass.

The road falls straight behind.

In the backseat, Kate and Bri crackle with laughter.

When they reach the town, it is red and quiet. The buildings are the same color as the earth, and even the logos (McDonald’s! Whole Foods! Chase Bank!) are displayed in turquoise or stone. They drive through the emptied main road, where red mountains tower around them,  turn into a tucked-away street, and rumble up a private driveway. At the top looms a chain-link gate, stamped with a metallic horse .

Outside a woman and her baby linger. Elle rolls down her window.

The woman balances the baby on her hip and approaches.

You must be our guests! she says, with an unnatural kindness. The brim of her hat droops, shading her face from the sun, and also from Elle’s view. Here are your keys, she says, dropping them into Elle’s hand. Here is the gate clicker. Here is a pass for hiking.

Elle can hear Kate and Bri shift behind her: Will she ask where they are coming from?

No. She does not. They thank her and park.

The house where they are staying is cave-like, tucked under another unit. The kitchen is small, almost nonexistent, but they each get their own large bedroom, a small miracle for college students. Elle chooses the largest, the one with windows stretching across the furthest wall. She looks through each individually, peering past the garden outside to the green-tipped slopes, and then to the red rocks rising beyond them.

She sees a glass door next to her bed. She peeks in there too and sees stairs leading upward. No curtains to close over it.

She exits quickly, discomforted by the nearness of the other family, the thought that someone could watch her from here.

In the kitchen, Kate and Bri lounge: Bri sprawled on the loveseat, Kate hunkered over the dining table. There is creaking above.

Can you hear that? says Kate, in a low voice.

They listen, and above them is the woman’s voice talking to someone. The baby shrieks, his small footsteps punctuating directly above their heads.

They all lift their eyes to watch.

I thought we were supposed to have the house to ourselves, Bri whispers.

 

Going into town is like stepping into Los Angeles a few days prior. The restaurants and bars are still open, heads still cluster and darken windows. They go to a crystal shop, where they trace their fingertips over smooth and cold gems. Elle imagines the dozens of hands that have touched the stones before them.

Enhanced immunity, advertises one. Increased longevity, says another.

Kate and Bri scoop up a few of each. The cashier’s smile is so plastered on that Elle feels she could scrape it off. But Kate and Bri are entranced.

How beautiful, they say on the drive back to the house. How relaxing. Don’t you feel so much better? Don’t you feel like you’ve escaped?

 

Elle wakes to footsteps above her head and light leaching into the room. She brings her laptop and coffee outside and watches the clouds pass over the sun, causing the mountains to turn red to blue to black.

Kate makes her way outside. God, it’s so beautiful, she says, leaning against Elle’s chair. And then she adds, squinting, But don’t those mountains seem closer than yesterday?

The rocks stand tall and stark against the brightening sky.

I swear I couldn’t see those cracks before, says Kate, craning her neck further.

 

The drive to the trail takes them through an adobe backroad specked with cacti. The flat roofs of houses are indistinguishable from the landscape. The three are quiet.

I think our place is haunted, says Bri, suddenly.

Oh, my God, says Kate, letting out a breath. I thought the same thing. I thought I could feel something.

Elle shivers, her hands white on the wheel. I could hardly sleep, she says. I felt like I was being watched.

The curtain shifting in the dim of the night. The glass door, so close she could touch.

I hate it there, says Bri, and laughs. I’m so glad to be out of that house.

They park where the road begins to curl into the mountain, alongside a cluster of empty SUVs.

They choose the longest trail to Devil’s Bridge. It’s quiet at first and they scrabble through the dust quickly. A stream trickles under stones. The trees are twisted and low, the cacti bubbling from the ground. Everywhere is a brilliant red against the cobalt sky.

They reach the bottom of a mountain that rises and then plateaus, and it’s here that the tourists begin to mob, that the path shifts from flat to stone steps. The tourists clamber upward, pushing and shoving, breathing heavy spittle, coughing from exertion or maybe something else.

Jesus, says Bri under her breath. Don’t they know we’re supposed to stay apart? She glares at a small family scrambling past a boulder.

Six feet, says Kate, shaking her head sadly. Guess they don’t care.

They turn, and a stone bridge comes into view, bending into a narrow arc over a one-hundred foot drop, the bottom covered with cacti and shorn tree trunks. There is a line of people waiting to walk over it. A man saunters his way to the center, no more than three feet from either edge, then plops down and scoots toward the drop for a photo.

Nononono, says Kate.

The man swings his legs over. They dangle over the canyon. He smiles for the camera.

Oh, shit, says Bri. Oh, fuck.

The man totters when he stands up. His hands throw to either side. They hold their breaths, and finally he regains his balance, safe.

He makes it back to the line, still jaunty.

They sigh with relief until the next tourists step on, this time a mother with her daughter who can’t be older than five. Her legs, short and unsteady, waddle forward. Elle screws her eyes shut, then opens them again.

I can’t watch this, says Kate, and turns away.

Don’t they care about their lives? snaps Bri. Or at least their children’s?

Are they careless? she says. Do they want to die?

Her eyes are red. I hate people like that, says Bri, finally turning her back.

Elle says nothing. She only watches the small mother and child as they veer closer and closer to the edge.

 

The next morning Elle wakes to laughter and creaking floorboards over her head. Somewhere near the baby babbles.

That day it rains, and they are trapped inside.

Elle uses the time to scroll through reviews of the house. She doesn’t believe in these things, she insists to herself, but still she searches for words like “haunted” and “spirits,” “energy,” and “loud” just in case. Nothing turns up, except for comments like, The host kept us in good spirits despite the weather! and This place has great energy, I mean, really.

They can’t see the rocks through the gray drizzle but they can feel them there, close, closer. The air is still. They eat quietly at the kitchen table, each frightened by the heavy air of the house. There is another presence they do not want to name.

 

That night she presses her hand against each of the curtains to make sure no one is standing behind them. She checks under the bed. She doesn’t dare look through the windows.

There is the distinct feeling that there is another body in the room, and although she distrusts the intuition, she’s frightened of what her imagination will show her.

When she finally opens her eyes, Kate stands in the doorway, sallow.

Elle, she says. I feel sick.

Elle sits up in bed, cautiously. Her eyes are adjusting and she ignores the shadows moving in her periphery. What’s wrong?

I have body aches, Kate says. A dry cough. Fever.

Slowly, she lists every one of the symptoms on the list that the news outlets have been parroting for days.

Okay, says Elle. Okay.

We need to leave, says Elle. Now.

 

They zip underneath a storm so strong that Elle pulls over. The windshield is blurred and thick with water. The wipers squeal on the swollen glass.

Do we tell them?

No, not until we get a positive. We don’t want to stir panic.

The valley they passed through before is weighed down by clouds so close Elle feels she could touch them. The mountains cup the highway, moving inward. They are at the bottom of a glass bowl filling with water.

I’m so glad to go home, says Bri.

The sky is impossibly low.

That place was creepy, says Kate.

Aren’t you glad to be gone? asks Bri. Don’t you feel like you’ve escaped?

Elle does not. Instead, she has the sense that maybe they are the ghosts, that maybe they are the ones who have brought something unforgivable.

A quarter mile away, lightning cracks the sky into a jagged and electric blue.

Ahead, the landscape stretches dull and endless.

Megan Ritchie is a writer from San Jose, California. She earned her undergraduate degrees at the University of Southern California and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Miami.

You can view Megan’s website here.