Chapter 2

An old and crumbling farmhouse was Willow's first sign that she was approaching Cedar Falls. Old and moldy plywood covered the windows and heavy wooden boards blocked the doorway, and only the broken remains of an ancient fence marked the boundary between the yard and the surrounding forest. It was shortly after she passed the dilapidated abode that she saw the sign welcoming visitors to the town.

Cedar Falls

Pop. 782

The sign itself was old and weathered, with a few bullet holes puncturing the metal where some bored redneck had used the thing for target practice. Immediately behind the sign was a cemetery.

Charming, she thought.

The town was far enough into the hills that she couldn't use her phone to find the promised motel, she didn't have a wireless signal. But she didn't think it would be too hard to locate; there seemed to be only one main road that ran through town, with a short span of a few blocks where a small high school, a gas station, a run-down church, and a general store served as a rustic facsimile of a "downtown." A curve of the street led her onto a bridge across the creek that flowed through the middle of town, and up ahead she saw what she supposed was the town's only landmark of note, a short cliff where the creek tumbled down in a cascade of glistening white. The titular Cedar Falls that the town was named after. A small, tree-strewn park surrounded the falls, and beside that she finally found her refuge for the night.

An unlit sign proclaimed it to be the Falls Motel. She couldn't tell if the building had originally been grey or brown, as it now sat in an uncomfortable place in between those two colors. The two-story building had a row of six rooms on teh bottom level, plus the office, and a set of stairs leading up to raised walkway that served as the entrance to six more units that mirrored the ones below, the doors all exposed to the open air, but with no front windows. There was a small "No Vacancy" sign in the office window, with only the "Vacancy" part lit. She sighed and pulled into the parking lot. She'd stayed in worse places than this, but not by much.

Her tanned skin prickled as she left the warmth of her car and a cool evening breeze blew through her light, bohemian shirt. The same breeze blew her wavy blonde hair across her face, and she pulled it back into a bushy ponytail, tying it back with a hair tie she had wrapped around her tattooed wrist. Then she shivered and pulled a cardigan over her exposed shoulders in a vain attempt to protect her from the cold air as she looked around. There was absolutely nobody to be seen, though the sounds of music could be heard from a "Fallside Bar and Grill" across the street.

The inside of the motel office smelled of old cigarettes and wet magazines, though she saw now sign of either. Nobody was at the counter, but a bell sat there, and it chimed loudly as she tapped it. A few moments went by with no response as Willow looked around the room, green eyes taking in the sparse decoration of the place. A small stand held a few road maps and flyers for various local state parks. She grabbed one of the road maps, wrinkling her nose in disappointment as she saw that it was one she already had in her collection, when one of the flyers caught her eye.

"Black Rock State Park," it advertised. There wasn't much information on the flyer, just a small image giving directions from Cedar Falls and a few pictures of the park itself. What caught her attention first was the trees. It was hard to tell the scale from the small photographs, but they were gnarled and massive, in no shape that she'd even seen a pine tree. Knotted and wickedly curved branches sprouted from lumpy, almost cancerous looking trunks, dripping with some kind of dark sap that turned her stomach even in these small photos. There was also a picture of a small sign, in the style of all Oregon State Park signs, reading "Black Rock Trail, 13 Miles" and showing a zig-zagging line representing the course of the trail as it climbed up the nearby peak.

She would have looked at the flyer longer, but at that moment an ill feeling came over her. It was like someone had draped her in a wet blanket, heavy and cold, weighing her down and sapping the heat from her body. She stood up straight and drew in her breath through her teeth in a sharp hiss, suddenly fighting the urge to bolt.

"Can I help you?" a slick, saccharine voice asked from behind her.