Reach for the Dead Book Four: The Spook Road by Shani Struthers

Author:Shani Struthers [Struthers, Shani]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Authors Reach
Published: 2024-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“The fifth bridge… All done, Shady, every one of ’em. Shady?”

“What? Huh? Sorry, you say something? We’re over the fifth bridge?”

“We are. Did you fall asleep?”

“Um…not sure. Did I?”

Ray was clearly bemused. “You should know!”

“Yeah,” she said, sitting up and wiping at her mouth, some drool having gathered in the corners. “Think I did for a few minutes. Surprised you didn’t notice.”

“Sweet dreams?”

A shudder passed through her as what dreams she’d had returned, the shades of them, at least, quickly fading. They had not been sweet but nightmarish. And at the end of them, coming out of the trees, had been Kim. Her blond hair red with blood, and blood on her face too, dripping onto the dress she wore until she was soaked in it, her eyes bulging like those of a hanged person, telling her she had to do something…had to. Find not just Ethan and Beth but her as well. And yet…why was she lost? Her body must be in a cemetery in her hometown. So what did she mean by it?

Shady shook her head. She had no idea what any of it meant, a way to help any of the Wick family still a mystery to her for now. “Mileage,” she said instead, much to Ray’s confusion. “How many miles was it between the fourth and fifth bridge? It kind of dragged.”

“Oh, okay, I get you. It did drag, but actually it was around the usual, eight or nine.”

She frowned. “Really? Oh, okay, so we’ve done them, then? No more bridges.”

“No more, and all were present and accounted for on the outgoing journey. There’s just more road facing us, so dull, so bor⁠—”

He stopped mid-sentence, Shady sitting up straighter too.

It had been a long, long road, given the distance to the first bridge from Murdoc had been around fifty miles, one heck of a stretch. Shady had supposed they’d just turn the car around once completed and head back, start counting the bridges again all the way to the crossroads. Then what? Stay another night and delve deeper into this mystery?

She reckoned so. Had accounted for it. What she hadn’t accounted for was this.

The road, if it could be called that, the dirt track, no longer twisted and turned but had straightened out, this time promising nothing less than gloriousness.

The Badlands. The fabled Badlands, which she’d heard about but never seen, the jewel of South Dakota. Plain, barren, unyielding landscape had now been replaced by quite another, a horizon of mountainous spires and pinnacles that rose and fell, an endless ridge as jagged as shards of ice, perhaps as lethal too but the most beautiful of colors, even on this, the greyest of days—striped with colors, all the reds, yellows, blues, and purples, white as well. Imperfect, some peaks rising taller than others, but because of that, perfect. Created by nature on a good day, when she was feeling at her most inspired, just wanting to give some relief to the land, a reason for being.

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