Traces of Delilah

Twenty-One

I'd have had a better chance searching for a needle in a haystack, then searching for the area Delilah and Silvia buried the gun. Seriously, it was almost fucking impossible!

I had driven to the trail near Jeremy's house first. It was the same house along the same strip Delilah and her friends had been walking that night. The sense of familiarity was incomparable to what I felt as Delilah.

I had then ventured deep into the woods from that point on with a flashlight in hand. If they had been walking Bear from Jeremy's house, then I figured that was a great place to start. It wasn't as great though when all it had led me to was losing myself in the dark.

"Definitely not familiar." I sighed, waving my flashlight in circles.

My shoes sunk into the damp leaves piled along the path, that were tangled around broken branches and drowning in muddy dirt. I'd forgotten about last night's rain. It'd washed everything all over the floor into one huge messy scatter.

"J-Jesus. . . C-could you . . . s-stop for like . . . o-one minute? Please?" In between every word, I coughed. The dust slipping into my airways stirred havoc within my chest. 

That was a sign I shouldn't have been out here in the first place. I should have been in bed resting where I belonged. Not in the woods by myself. Especially not when I had a stalker on my tail. Not a smart decision on my part.

I guess I was a masochist or something because I seemed to liked torturing myself. If Skylar woke up and discovered I left without telling her, she was going to kill me, no doubt about it. I could imagine her number spamming my phone now.

Something a little like, where are you, hey where'd you go, Chastity I'm worried about you, among other not so kind messages when she found out I was okay. It wouldn't have been the first time she'd lost her mind worrying about me. 

I pushed my shoulders back, lowering my flashlight. Pitch black overshadowed the dark blue skies until the moon was long gone out of sight, and I was staring at a blank palette of color. Not even a single star lit the sky.

"Eh, whatever. It's okay. We'll worry about everything later. Let's just hurry up and get out of here." I shut my eyes and pictured the area all over again. 

An area where deer's roamed, birds stalked down from above, and a small opening formed in between the naked trees closing in on them. A carving. I remembered seeing a carving for a split second in one of the trees far down the trail.

"S and J," I whispered. 

Right, that's what it was. There were only a few names I knew of that best fit that narrative.

Silvia, Jace, and Jeremy. It had to be Silvia and Jeremy though, due to the heart I remembered carved around the initials, like some old cheesy heart-felt romance. I still wasn't sure what was so heart-felt about those two's relationship. Shit, but which memory had I seen it in? It might've been the one I saw briefly, right after the gun went off and Bear was dead.

"Time to start—is that music?" I frowned, my flashlight flashing around the thick shadows.

I walked into the woods alone. My phone wasn't going off either.

So, that couldn't have been music. Right?

But there were noises looming over my ears. Like a bullet piercing through silence, the volume increased until I could no longer hear the thoughts in my head. My feet were now moving on their own.

A throb pinched at the bottom of both my feet, right on the arch. I was walking. No, I was jogging. A mix of fresh green leaves and brown leaves that were dying blew along the trail in front of me. Obnoxious insects flew around the trail in groups, cluttering around my face.