The pile of wrecked cars at the bottom of the gorge became just a memory as Terri and Reyes resumed their walk along the wide dirt road. There were no words spoken; Reyes fearing what conclusions he and his wife might draw if they were to do so. She was probably silent for the same reason. With a long sweeping turn to the right their path led them away from the edge of the mountain and again into the thick of the forest.

Plagued by the uncertainties of their future as well as the certainties of their recent past, Reyes felt a weakness within that now far surpassed any of his childhood fears. Although he was no longer being held captive at the cabins, he was nevertheless being held at the mercy of the deep woods under the direction of this road that was leading he and his wife toward an unpredictable end. Around them the temperature was climbing somewhat, and yet it was still some ways off from being downright hot. Their soft footsteps upon the road were their only accompaniment as no birds or crickets were heard. Strangely, not even a rustling of the brush on either side of them came from any wildlife that most assuredly called the forest home. It was as if all life but theirs had stopped – or had been scared away.

“I think we’re going the wrong way,” Terri said suddenly, breaking the silence and startling Reyes somewhat. “I think we should turn around and go back.”

“How come?” he asked, coming to a halt.

“Because we’re not getting anywhere. We’ve been on this road for the better part of 20 minutes and the only thing we’ve come across is our wrecked car.”

“Problem is that the main highway could be just up ahead. If we turn back now, we could…”

“The main highway could have been five minutes in the other direction from where we first got on this road. I have this uneasy feeling that we’re heading deeper into the woods.”

“But even so, this has to lead to something – as wide and well-traveled as it is,” he reasoned aloud.

“I’ve been thinking about that, and I’ve decided that this is just an old logging road.”

“Can’t be,” he said with a tinge of anger rushing briefly to his head. “Logging roads aren’t this smooth. The trucks tear them up pretty badly.”

“And now you’re an expert on logging?” she said, her own anger showing clearly in her deteriorating tone.

Reyes had expected the eventual downfall of their moods a lot sooner and was therefore surprised that it had taken this long. The main problem, though, was that it was his own mood that he had expected to fail first. “No, I’m not an expert on logging,” he said almost apologetically, “but I grew up in a logging town and did a lot of driving and camping in the woods where they logged. This road is in too good shape to be a logging road. Besides,” he added with a general sweep of his hand across the heavy woods on either side of the road, “there’s been no logging here. These trees are all old-growth; you said so yourself.”

Terri seemed to ponder this in silence although the look in her eyes clearly identified the mounting anger inside. “Fine,” she finally said, “we’ll go forward for another five minutes. If we don’t find anything by then, we’ll turn back and go the other direction.”

“Okay, that’s fine.” It was anything but fine as far as Reyes was concerned because some inner sense was telling him that their current direction was the way forward. By the tone in Terri’s voice, though, he felt it better all the way around to agree to her terms. He had seen her temper only once before and the experience was somewhat akin to that of a nuclear bomb going off in their house. The two resumed their walk.

“I’m really getting hungry,” she said, apparently as a distraction from her previous explosion.

“Yeah, me too.”

“How do people survive in the woods? There must be something edible around here; nuts, berries. I sure wish we had been able to stop and eat some of those blackberries back in the woods.”

Reyes felt his hand twinge at the thought. “I was just thinking about that little brook that was running across the road leading down to the cabins. That would taste so good right about now.”

“Don’t suppose we’ll run across a fast food place up here,” she said.

Reyes glanced over to find a smile creeping over her face and wrapped his arm around her back to draw her near. "That'd be nice, except my wallet is gone, too."

"Well, I'll say this for the bananas back at the Rotunda; they're thorough."

The clock on their current direction ticked away with nothing to show for it as the road before them seemed to just roll out forever. Reyes knew that at any moment his wife would have had enough and demand they turn around, leaving him to forever wonder if the main highway was just around the next bend.

She did finally speak, but her words were not what he had expected to hear. “Hey, what’s that?”

Expecting to see the villagers of what Edna called ‘LAMA’ again appearing to wreak further havoc, Reyes looked around briefly, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. “What’s what?”

“Up ahead. It looks like a gate and a sign of some kind.”

Turning his attention ahead, Reyes focused on the two posts rising on either side of the road. They had been painted a dark green, thereby pretty effectively blending the poles in with the bordering forest. The giveaway, however, was the long gate hanging from the pole on the right which was a little too obvious. It had been left open at some point and now seemed to guard that side of the road rather than that which it had been erected to protect. In the middle of the gate was what looked to be an old metal sign with stenciled printing on it, although from this distance its contents were unintelligible.

The revelation of this gate gave Reyes new hope that his instincts about their direction of travel had been right all along. “Looks like it’s the gate off the main highway. I think we made it,” he beamed. Taking his wife’s hand he led her forward at an accelerated pace, although this was not necessary since, upon reaching the main road, they again had a long journey ahead of them. Just the same, the excitement within him propelled his feet forward faster than normal.

The green paint covering the posts and gate proved to him that this was a Forest Service road. This assumption, however, was quickly eradicated when he and Terri reached the gate and approached the sign. It was badly rusted and the once-white surface with red lettering forever obscured but for the uppermost portion which read:

 Lexington Acute Mental Asylum

Visiting Hours:

 The remainder of the sign was too badly rusted to read but this told Reyes all he needed to know about what lay beyond the open gate that almost seemed to welcome them in. For the longest time both Reyes and Terri stood reading the sign, their thoughts mired in a silence that felt almost to be thick.

Selected text copyright 2010 by MT Shivers