“That’s my dad, up there in that cemetery. They found the bastard’s camera down at the bottom of the ravine. Never found him though.”
“Are you being serious?”
“Yep, November 2nd, 1974. We knew papa was heading up into the mountains, but we hadn’t seen him for a week and the sheriff came over, said they found his camera at the bottom of Elmer’s Cliff, but that was it.”
“Holy shit, man.”
I was quickly not starting to feel good about this whole thing. I thought about turning around, but was worried about leaving Ezra up there all alone and wasn’t even sure how to get back down. I pressed on.
My skin grew cold even though I was still sweating from the challenging climb.
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“I might say I didn’t, but my daddy didn’t go up there with anyone.”
Ezra looked back at me with sweat finally starting to break upon his tanned and wrinkled forehead.
“So who do you think took that picture?”
I didn’t have a response, just thought about walking back down the mountain again. Maybe I could make it out of the forest before nightfall?
“But I would be lying if I said that was the worst story about these mountains. We’re about to come up on the coyote farm.”
