4. MEGHAN

Oquirrh Mountains, Utah

1 year before

It took all night for me to find my way back to my body in the dark forest.

The thumbnail of a moon provided just enough light to get me back to the rocky gully. From there, it was an impossible guessing game of sagebrush, crumbling limestone, and hundreds of scrawny pine trees that looked exactly alike.

There were no stumbles or falls to slow me down as I moved through the darkness. But as it turned out, being a ghost didn't come with a maps app. And it didn't make me any less afraid of the dark. The night was full of snapping branches, and unearthly muttering noises. I screamed in terror and frustration every few minutes. The sound didn't echo.

Despite my best efforts to move like the spirits I'd seen on TV, my feet stayed on the ground, in the lace-up coral flats I'd been wearing earlier.

Above me, the stars were brighter than I'd ever seen them. Everything else surrounding me was swallowed up in inky blackness.

I'd always enjoyed camping—the few times I'd gone anyway. Still, I was quick as anyone to park myself around the campfire or zip myself up in my tent when the sun set. Nature was beautiful, at a distance. Up close, it was usually terrifying.

With every new twig snap or rustling branch, I froze. Or screamed.

From somewhere in the distance, I could hear the excited chorus of coyotes.

It wasn't that I was afraid something bad would happen to me. The worst thing had already happened. Fear felt different than it had while I was alive. My heartbeat didn't speed up. My breath didn't speed up. I just felt the terror of being alone, of being lost, of being dead, in every part of me that was left.

When I came around a bend and saw a huge pair of glinting eyes staring back at me from a rocky outcropping, I shrieked.

The eyes didn't disappear. If anything, they moved a little closer before I ran. The pinpricks of stars swirled in front of me as I moved faster and faster, still screaming for help I knew would not be coming.

* * *

It was the coyotes that led me back to my body as the sky turned steel gray above the rocky horizon.

They had stopped calling to each other. But as I climbed up an embankment that looked vaguely familiar, I could hear growls and snarls coming from just beyond the ravine.

The first thing I saw was one of my coral shoes: the battered mortal twin to the pristine reflections on my feet. It was lying in the dirt, smears of something dark crusting the tongue.

There were five coyotes just past the shoe. They were skinny and small enough that I wouldn't have been afraid of any of them in the daylight. In the darkness, it was a different story. Backs hunched together, eyes flashing green as they snapped and chattered to one another, and jaws dark with what I knew was blood, they were something else entirely.

I felt the terror expand until it was too big for me to contain it. "Get away!" I screamed, taking a step toward them.

To my amazement, five heads swiveled toward me as the chattering snarls stopped.

The coyote nearest me, who had a dark patch on her head, drew back her lips to bare needle-like teeth.

"Get out of here," I screamed again, stepping toward them.

Their ears went back slightly, and they sniffed the air, taking a few shuffling steps away from my body.

I took a step forward, still screaming.

They didn't flinch, exactly. However, they didn't turn back to their meal, either.

The coyote with the dark patch made a muttering noise in her throat and moved to circle the rest of her companions—allowing me a glimpse behind her.

I'd never seen a dead body before, except on TV.

Let alone my own dead body.

The dread and disgust shot through me like a massive bolt of electricity, and I drew back from the mangled, bloody corpse on the ground. One of my legs from the knee down was in tatters, hanging on by dark threads. They'd ripped open my stomach, letting the glinting entrails spill partway out onto the ground.

My face had been spared. But the skin on my neck that was visible where the pink-and-green scarf lay open was a mass of bruises that could be seen even in the dim light.

The coyote with the dark patch on her head circled back around in a wide loop, sniffing the air. Her muzzle was wet with blood, and she was still making that muttering noise in the back of her throat.

In a daze, I reached out a hand to touch her, and she gave a sharp bark then loped toward the ravine with her ears pinned against her tawny head.

The others followed her into the steel-gray darkness.

I sat down in the dirt, a few feet away from where the ground turned black and slick, until the sun finally came up on my remains.