The midday sun was beating down on the shores of the Oconee River, but the dense canopy of ancient pines cast long, chilling shadows over our campsite. We were miles away from the nearest highway, entirely off the grid, and devoid of any cell service. It was supposed to be a relaxing weekend getaway—just me, my boyfriend of three years, Eli, and his lifelong best friend, Mason. Because neither of them had a vehicle that could handle the rugged logging roads, I had volunteered to drive my SUV. I had the only set of keys safely zipped in my backpack.
About two hours into the trip, Eli and Mason decided to hike a few hundred yards upstream. “Mason swears he saw a massive rope swing just around the bend,” Eli had said, pressing a quick kiss to my forehead. “We’re just going to scout it out. We’ll be right back, ten minutes tops.”
I stayed behind to guard the cooler and read my book on the riverbank. But ten minutes bled into thirty. Then forty-five.
By the time an hour had passed, the initial annoyance had curdled into a heavy, suffocating panic. The river was moving fast today, swollen from recent rains, and the woods surrounding us were notoriously treacherous. I stood up, Cupping my hands around my mouth, I screamed their names. The only answer was the mocking roar of the rapids. Terrified that one of them had slipped on the slick river rocks or fallen into a strong undercurrent, I zipped up my boots, grabbed my keys, and plunged into the dense woods heading upstream.
The brush was thick and unforgiving. Thorns tore at my jeans, and mosquitoes swarmed my face, but the adrenaline numbed it all. For thirty terrifying minutes, I scrambled over mossy boulders and pushed through rotting deadwood, my mind playing a continuous loop of gruesome scenarios: broken necks, drownings, bear attacks.
And then, I heard it.
It wasn’t a scream for help, or a groan of pain. It was a laugh.
The sound stopped me dead in my tracks. It was Mason’s laugh—low, cruel, and completely devoid of distress. I crept forward, keeping my footsteps light on the pine needles, guided by the low hum of their voices. I pushed aside a thick curtain of weeping willow branches and peered into a small, secluded clearing.
I finally found them… and I immediately wished I hadn’t looked.
They weren’t hurt. They weren’t lost.
Eli and Mason were standing side-by-side, smoking cigarettes. Spread out on the dirt in front of them was a heavy-duty blue tarp. Mason was casually unrolling a coil of thick nylon rope, while Eli was using a collapsible camping shovel—my camping shovel, which had been in the back of my SUV—to dig a deep, narrow trench in the soft forest floor.
“I’m telling you, this is the perfect spot,” Mason said, taking a drag of his cigarette. “The river floods this bank every spring. Whatever is buried here is going to be washed out and scattered down a twenty-mile stretch by next April.”
“Just make sure the hole is deep enough for now,” Eli replied, his voice cold and calculating in a way I had never heard in three years of loving him. “I’ll go back down to the camp in a minute. I’ll tell her you slipped and broke your leg, and that we need her to help carry you out. Once she’s up here, out of sight of the main trail…” Eli paused, mimicking a swift, striking motion with his hand. “We take the car keys, we take the SUV, and we drive to the border. By the time anyone checks this deep in the woods, we’ll be in Mexico with the insurance payout.”
My blood turned to ice water. My lungs seized, refusing to take in oxygen. They hadn’t wandered off to find a rope swing. They had wandered off to prepare my grave.
I slowly backed away, letting the willow branches fall back into place. For the first fifty yards, I moved with agonizing slowness, terrified that the snap of a single twig would alert them. But once the roar of the river masked my sounds, I turned and ran.
I ran like a hunted animal. Branches whipped my face, and my lungs burned, but I didn’t stop until I burst through the tree line and saw my SUV parked exactly where I left it. My hands shook so violently I could barely unzip my backpack to retrieve the keys.
Just as I slid into the driver’s seat and slammed the door, I saw Eli emerge from the woods at the far end of the campsite, putting on his best frantic, distressed face. He started waving his arms, opening his mouth to yell the lie that was supposed to end my life.
Instead of opening the window, I locked the doors. Our eyes met through the glass. In a fraction of a second, I watched his fake panic dissolve into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage as he realized I knew. He lunged forward, sprinting toward the car.
I jammed the key into the ignition, threw the car into drive, and stomped on the gas. The tires spun in the mud for a terrifying second before catching traction. I peeled out onto the logging road, leaving my boyfriend and his best friend stranded in the remote wilderness, exactly where they had planned to leave me.
