The Fall of Asher — Kylie Davenport
I watched them lay the casket into the 6 foot deep hole. It was cold, and rainy. There were people around me crying, and nobody could say a word. The headstone said that Asher died on February 25th, 2026, but that wasn’t true, it was all just a coverup. Asher was still alive, and I was the only one who knew.
It all started this last fall when he showed up to my apartment in the middle of the night. He looked out of breath, and sweaty, and he said, “I need your help, somebody is after me.”
I was confused. Asher isn’t the kind of person who would be hunted by someone.
“Who’s after you,” I asked, uneasily.
He hesitated, and looked around before saying, “I can’t tell you right now, but I need to get off the radar. You’re the only person I trust.”
I knew that I had no choice but to help him. Asher had been my best friend since Kindergarten, and we did, and shared almost everything together. This had to be the craziest thing we had done though.
That night we came up with a plan. He was going to stage a car accident, and his body wouldn’t be found. They would assume that his body got burned up from the accident, which would mean his funeral would be a closed casket. The only drawback of this plan is that I would have to watch everybody that cared about him suffer. His parents would believe that their son was gone forever, and his little sister was still too young to get a grasp on death. If only I could tell them he wasn’t really dead.
Once the funeral was over, I snuck into the woods, and hid behind the cemetery.
I took out my phone and sent a text that said, “It’s over.”
Immediately, I got a reply that said, “Meet me tonight at the cabin by the lake.”
We used to hangout at the cabin all the time growing up. It was 2 stories, and surrounded by pine trees. It was also in an isolated area that was owned by his dad, and behind it was a small path that led to a lake. We used to go camping there every summer, and tell ghost stories, but tonight I didn’t get that nostalgic feeling I always had here. Instead it felt dangerous.
As I stepped inside the cabin that night, Asher melted out of the darkness, looking very alive. He was wearing a black hoodie with a pair of black sweats so that he could easily hide in the shadows.
“Thanks for doing this,” he said. “Now nobody will be looking for me.”
I crossed my arms, and sighed. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?”
He hesitated for a moment, then pulled a folded paper from his pocket. The paper had strange symbols on it with jagged lines, and what seemed to be coordinates. “I found this in my dad’s office.”
I didn’t know much about his father, but all I knew was that he was a quiet man, and he worked for the government. He never talked about what he did for the government though.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’m pretty sure it’s a map, and some directions. Most likely to something that they don’t want anyone to find.” His voice dropped lower. “And they know I saw it. That’s why I had to disappear.”
It had been weeks since that day. To the world, Asher was dead. To me, he was a ghost that was hiding in the shadows. I snuck him food, clothes, and news of the outside world. He studied the map for hours every day. He was convinced that it would lead to something monumental.
The more time that I spent around him, the more paranoid he became. Every time a twig snapped he would flinch. Every car that passed by he would curse under his breath. I started to wonder if helping him was a mistake.
Then one night everything had changed.
I woke up to Asher standing over me, covered in sweat, and shaking me awake. “We have to go,” he said, panicked. “They’re coming.”
“Who’s coming?” I demanded.
“Them. The people that were after me before I ‘died’.”
Before I could argue with him about how they found us, headlights swept across the cabin walls. A car was pulling into the driveway. My heart dropped.
We bolted out the back door and into the woods, with branches tearing at our faces. Behind us, there were voices calling out, and flashlights cutting through the darkness.
“You can’t run forever, Asher Cross!” one of the voices behind us shouted.
We hid by the lake in an abandoned shack until the sun came up. My hands shook, and my lungs were burning from the cold. Finally, after I calmed down a bit, I turned to Asher. “You have to tell me the truth. What is really going on?”
His eyes softened, and for the first time in months, he looked like the Asher that I had always known. “The map leads to something buried. It’s something that my dad was supposed to protect. I don’t know if it’s a weapon, or evidence, or something else, but if they get their hands on it the world could be in danger.
“What happens if we get it first,” I asked.
He looked straight into my eyes and said, “Then maybe we will be able to save it.”
Three days have passed. Now I’m sitting at my desk, staring at the map he left me. He disappeared again, and promised to throw off the people chasing him. “If anything happens to me,” he said, “follow the map. You’ll know what to do.”
I don’t know if I should believe him or not. Maybe it’s just scribbles on paper. Maybe I’ve been dragged into a fantasy spun by a boy far too paranoid for his own good, but part of me can’t shake the truth that I saw in his eyes that night.
After looking at the map for so long, I’ve decided that tomorrow I’ll pack a bag and set out for the coordinates marked on the map. Asher Cross may be “dead” to the world right now, but to me, he’s still alive. If he’s right, what I find could change everything.
Kylie Davenport is a senior in high school in Oregon. She enjoys singing, and playing video games with her friends.