Until Alex - J. Nathan Page 0,31

I got as close as I could without being detected, I spotted Hayden in the church’s small cemetery pointing his phone’s light at a gravestone. He stood for a long time, doing nothing but staring down at it.

I didn’t know what I expected to find, but this definitely wasn’t it.

Something snapped in the woods behind me.

The hair on my arms stood on end. Every part of my body froze. Not because of the animal lurking behind me, but because I was seconds away from being discovered.

Hayden’s head whipped around. The light to his cell switched off. I could no longer see him. But it didn’t mean he hadn’t seen me.

I backed into the woods, stumbling over fallen branches and clumps of leaves in the complete darkness. My heart pounded in my chest. In my ears. In my fingertips. When I could no longer see the church or the cemetery, I stopped and crouched behind the thick trunk of a mammoth tree, hoping my spot hid me.

I listened for footsteps crushing leaves. For the engine to Hayden’s truck. For Hayden’s voice. For a hungry animal. For a zombie.

Dammit. Now I was just scaring myself.

The silence dragged on for far too long, taunting me with the unknown ramifications of my hasty actions. Not even a lousy cricket chirped.

It was inevitable. Hayden would find me hiding in the shadows in the middle of the night because I’d followed him.

When had I become so pathetic? So psychotic? And why in the world was I so damn curious about Hayden to begin with? He humiliated me. Deserted me. Played me for a fool. What more did I need to know?

My body jolted as his truck’s engine roared to life. I held my breath as his headlights broke through the brush, lighting up a vast portion of the woods between the parking lot and me. Thankfully, I was just out of reach from their revealing beams.

It didn’t take long for him to pull away and his lights to disappear with him.

And even as the sound of his engine became a distant hum, I didn’t dare move a muscle. It could’ve been a trick. A ruse to lure me out of the woods. A ploy to bring me face to face with him.

But after more long minutes passed, it was clear Hayden had gone.

I hurried to the edge of the woods, stopping when the church reappeared. My eyes flashed to the cemetery, then the road. A sane person would’ve turned on their phone’s light, fled to their car, and gotten the hell out of there. But sane and me weren’t necessarily synonymous lately.

I jogged across the paved parking lot to the cemetery entrance. I stopped at the rusted cast iron fence. My heart rate spiked at the sudden realization that I stood alone. In the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by darkness and the dead. And no one knew where I’d gone.

I hadn’t realized it until that moment. But having Hayden nearby, if a zombie or masked murder stumbled upon me, had put me at ease. But now. Alone. With nothing but my thoughts to mock me for my rash decision, the whole situation frightened the hell out of me.

But it was too late to turn back. I’d made it that far.

I scrambled through the creaky gate, pulling out my phone to light a path. I flashed my beam around, searching the gravestones for the one that captivated Hayden.

Most of the stones were old, dates long passed. But one stood out. A newer one, set between stones that had begun to crumble. One with matted down leaves in front of it, where someone had recently stood.

I moved closer, shining my light on the front where Victor Zane was etched into the stone. Zane? How was it I didn’t even know Hayden’s last name? The dates indicated Victor died three years ago at the age of forty. Could he have been Hayden’s father?

* * *

Hayden’s car wasn’t in the parking lot when I returned. I hadn’t seen him bring home any girls recently. But then again I hadn’t seen him period. Maybe he was servicing them at their homes. With that pleasant thought in mind, I settled on my bed with my iPad in search of anything I could find on Victor Zane.

An obituary popped up first. I read through the brief epitaph, which strangely didn’t mention a wife, sibling, child, or Hayden. If Victor Zane wasn’t Hayden’s relative, who was he?

A series of news articles popped up next,