Dark Trail

Salts, Crystals, and Sage

"Do we have everything, Alena?" Jarvis asked the girl with a notebook and purple pen in her hands. Alena gave her notebook a distressed look.

"According to the list that I have written down, yes. I just can't help but feel like I'm forgetting something," she said and absently tapped her chin with the pen. Alena's giant German shepherd licked her hand. Alena's stressed look quickly melted and turned into joy. "Of course I can't forget you can I, Maxy?" She asked in a sing-song voice that only a pet owner can do.

"You're not really going to bring that enormous brute, are you?" Jarvis asked, his arms crossing in front of his wide chest. This question gained him a poisonous look from Alena.

"Yes I am going to bring him. And he is not a brute."

"But he is enormous," he pointed out. To this, Alena had nothing to say because she knew it was true.

"When are you two going to just date already?" Salem asked the duo, his hands full of camping supplies. Each gave him a funny look and said nothing. Neither knew that the other's lips were turned up just slightly at the idea.

"Are you guys really sure you want to do this?" Eira asked for almost the thousandth time. Ember put a hand on her sister's upper arm.

"It's going to be fine. I promise," Ember cooed and continued to pack the supplies in the bed of Salem's beat up red truck. The group was taking two vehicles. Salem, Ember, and Eira in Salem's truck, Jarvis, Alena, Oliver, and Maximus in Oliver's van.

"Dude, when is Oliver going to get here? We should have been on the road a half an hour ago," Jarvis muttered to Salem.

"Dunno. He should have been here already."

As if on cue, a screech and a squeal sounded down the road. Salem closed the bed of his truck and they all watched as a white van got larger the closer it got. With a loud halt, Oliver stumbled out of his van.

"Hey guys, sorry I'm late. Can you believe I got a speeding ticket? That's like the third one this month!" Alena gave Ember a horrified look.

"Eh, Olly? No offense, dude, but I'm driving," Jarvis told him. Oliver's light eyebrows shoved together in confusion, but he offered up his keys anyway.

The drive there was nothing eventful. All Arkansas nature had to offer was trees, rocks, and more trees with the occasional pond or farm.

"Y'know," Salem said to no one in particular, "I heard that if you hear a screech owl in these woods, it's a sign of the Greek god Hades and someone is going to die."

"I don't believe in Greek gods," Eira told him, not even to bother looking away from her window. "Besides. Screech owls are just Banshees in different cultures. They represent the same thing."

Ember glanced from her sister to Salem, who's eyebrows raised for a moment.

"Look, who knows. This whole thing is probably just some silly legend. Everything that goes on in those woods can be explained. The noises are just animals. The people who go missing- well- people go missing all the time. And those that come out crazy were probably loony to begin with," Ember reasoned.

The rest of the ride was silent. Salem's knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel, Ember's hands lightly folded in her lap, and Eira staring absently out the window. Every once in a while, Eira would check her black and pink bag that held her odd necessities just to make certain that they were safe. Only once did Ember look down to see what exactly her sister had in there. Only then did she see just a glint of something that looked to her like a dagger.