In the Woods

by Carrie Jones

  A few local farmers—friends of Dad’s—sit around drinking coffee and talking about the only topic to matter right now, the monster. Mr. Rice waves at me with a thick hand and I wave back, then lead Chrystal to a booth in the far corner. Chelsea Newman, our waitress, arrives at the table with two glasses of water and two laminated menus.

  “Hi, Logan,” she says, handing out the menus. She’s older than us, in her early thirties, I think. She looks at Chrystal for a minute, then says, “Hi, honey. Wasn’t you here yesterday?”

  “She’s visiting from Maine,” I say.

  “Really? Maine? That’s a long way away,” Chelsea says. “Whatcha doin’ down here? You related? I didn’t know you had any relatives in Maine, Logan.”

  “I don’t. Chrystal and her dad are here because of … because of what I saw. He investigates those kinds of things.”

  “Ooooh,” she says, and nods her curly blond head. “Well, y’all can just take whatever it was right back up to Maine with you. I’m sick to death of hearing about it. Monster this and Bigfoot that and it ate this and broke that. Enough already, is what I say.”

  “I don’t think it would fit in our Subaru,” Chrystal says, and I can’t help but give a quick snort of a laugh that doesn’t sound very nice.

  “Suburban? Oh, honey, you can fit anything in a big ole Suburban,” Chelsea says.

  “She said Subaru,” I correct. “It’s a foreign car. A station wagon, in this case.”

  “Oooh. Like a Honda or something?” she asks.

  “Yes, like that,” Chrystal says, blushing again. “I think I want a cheeseburger and some cheese fries.”

  The order seems to snap Chelsea back into work mode. She scribbles on her green pad, then looks at me. “How about you, Logan? The usual?”

  “No, I already ate. Just an order of fries and a chocolate shake.”

  “You want a shake?” she asks Chrystal.

  “Okay. Yeah!”

  I swear Chrystal’s eyes light up.

  “Thanks,” I say before Chelsea can start talking again. She turns and swishes away. Chrystal gives me a big-eyed look. Country folk, I mouth at her. She smiles, showing those perfect little teeth again.

  “It’s a nice place,” she says, looking around. There are hand-painted pictures of chickens, ducks, cows, and pigs on pieces of weathered old wood hanging all over the place. Little wooden or wicker baskets made to look like fake nests with egg-shaped rocks in them. “In Maine it would be decorated with fish and lobsters.”

  “Really? That’d be nice.”

  “It’s all in what you get used to,” she says. “Have you always lived on your farm?”

  “Yeah. It was my grandpa’s farm, really. Him and Grandma retired and moved down to Florida before I was born, and Dad took over the farm. It was all dairy then. He planted the pecan trees. We make good money from those.”

  “Do you like farming?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’ve never really thought of doing anything else. I’m the only boy, so I’m kind of expected to take over the business.”

  “You shouldn’t have to if you don’t want to,” she says.

  I shrug. “I don’t mind. There’s always something to do and you’re kind of your own boss.”

  “That would be good,” she says. It’s followed by a long pause. “Did you … Do you think you could tell me about what you saw?”

  “Yeah. In a second. I have questions. Do you work?” I ask. “I mean, are you even old enough? Do you have to be sixteen to have a job in Maine?”

  She laughs at me, but it isn’t a mean laugh. “You can be fourteen with a permit. I don’t work, though. Dad wants me to focus on my grades. I get an allowance.”

  “Oh. But, umm … you’re old enough to work? If you wanted to?”

  She laughs again. “Yes, I’m old enough.”

  “Good,” I say, and it sounds really dumb, like I’m evaluating her as if she’s a cow I’m thinking about buying for my 4-H project. “I mean…” I sigh and just admit it. “I haven’t been out with very many girls.”

  She smiles and puts her hand on the table. Her hand is so small and soft-looking, with delicate, unpainted fingers. Having it so close makes me tingle even though I’m not even touching it.

  “I totally can’t believe that,” she tells me.

  “Okay.” Inside, I’m saying, Please don’t pull your hand away. And maybe a little of, I wish David would walk in here right now. Chrystal is ten times better looking than Yesenia. “So, have you been on a lot of these hunts? Investigations? Are you just here hanging out with me so I’ll tell you what I saw?”

  She taps a fork on the table.

  “I’m here because I’m hungry,” she teases, not missing a beat. “But how many investigations? I guess a lot. I mean, I don’t know what you’d call ‘a lot.’ I thought I was going to spend this summer in New York with my mom, but she went to Europe with her new husband and I couldn’t go. But, yes, the sooner we leave here, the sooner my dad will bring me to New York.”

  “Oh.” That was a lot of information. I don’t know what to say. Again. Talk about how my parents are still married and never even fight? No. “I don’t think I’d like New York.” Great. Disagreeing with her about something she obviously does like. She’s looking at me like she expects me to say something else.

  “Just a country boy, I guess. You know, the smog and tall buildings and noise and stuff.” I shrug.

  “I wouldn’t want to live there all the time, but it’s fun to visit. You can be anonymous. Nobody thinks your dad is crazy or that you’re crazy by association,” she says.

  I think for a minute. Thoughts of Dad rescue me. “My dad really was sorry about how he acted. He’s never like that. We were up most of the night watching over the cattle, and it took us two days to put lights around the pasture. We try to keep the cattle out of that pasture because we grow alfalfa and then bail it up for winter feed.”

  “Now you’re talking,” she teases. It embarrasses me, and she sees that. “You have a lot of cows?”

  “About one-fifty.”

  “Do you, like, eat them?” she asks.

  “Sometimes. We’ll slaughter one steer a year and that’ll last the family pretty well. But we’re not a beef ranch. We’re a dairy farm. Dairy and pecans.”

  “Oh, milk,” she says, and nods.

  “Yeah. We’re part of the Double O Co-Op.”

  “Double O?”

  “Oklahoma Ozarks is what it stands for, but people just call it the Double O,” I explain. “You can find the Double O brand of milk and eggs, beef, chicken, pork, and pecans all over the eastern part of the state.”

  “You know your business,” she says, and smiles again.

  “Yeah, but now I’ve been talking too much and not about what you want me to talk about.”

  She doesn’t say anything; it’s just this long loaded pause before she finally clears her throat. The noise is harsh but her voice is gentle, the way Dad talks when he’s trying to soothe an injured cow.

  “So, are you sure what you saw wasn’t … wasn’t just a bear or something?” she asks. “Or a person? I mean there are some huge guys out there.”

  “Not rip-the-head-off-a-cow huge.”

  “With a weapon? A machete or something.”

  “Maybe. But … It…” I give up. “I want it to be human, Chrystal. Or a bear. But it wasn’t a bear. The sound of it walking through the woods was bipedal. It’s a different sort of noise.”

  “Bears can walk on two legs.”

  “Rarely. Short strides. Slow.” I fiddle with my napkin and stop. “You really don’t want this to be a Bigfoot. Why?”

  Just then Chelsea reappears with our food. I can’t help but grin when she puts the order of fries in front of Chrystal. Her eyes bug out and she licks her lips like a cartoon character. Her cheeseburger is a good five inches tall with meat, tomatoes, lettuce, and melted cheese hanging out on all sides. She goes after it with gusto and I try not to watch her
delicate jaw as she chews, or her throat as she swallows. She pulls a few long, curling, greasy fries from the basket, dips them in ketchup, and eats them.

  “Wow. Those are really good,” she says, wiping at her chin.

  “The best in the county,” I promise.

  I know she’s hungry, so I shut up and let her eat for a while. When her burger is mostly gone, she asks, “So, do you want to tell me exactly what you saw on your farm, or do you want to wait and tell me and Dad? Or do you even want to talk about it?”

  I pull in a deep breath and hold it for a moment, then let it out slowly. “I’ll talk. Y’all—I mean, you guys came all the way down here from Maine. It’d be kind of rude for me not to talk to you.”

  She laughs, and for a minute I think she’s going to reach over and take my hand, but instead she reaches for more fries. “You don’t have to. It would really thrill my dad, though.”

  “I’ll go ahead and tell you, then you can tell him, and if he wants to know anything else, he can ask,” I offer. She nods, so I recount my adventures of that night. I add on how we heard the thing again several nights later, screaming or howling or whatever in our driveway.

  “The driveway we were in today?” she asks.

  I nod around a mouthful of French fries. “Yeah.”

  That seems to bother her, which I’m kind of glad to see because it means she believes me. I’m about ready to tell her how there was a run on posts and lights at the feedstore when my cell phone goes off. It’s Mom.

  “Logan? Logan, are you all right?” Her voice is frantic.

  “Yeah, Mom. I’m fine.”

  “Where are you?”

  “The Greasy Hog. Chrystal was hungry.”

  “You’ve been there the whole time?” she demands.

  “Yeah. Well, I mean, I picked her up at the hotel, we talked for a few minutes, then came here. What’s going on?”

  “Karen Ferguson,” Mom says, then she can’t go on. She just bursts into sobs. A moment later Dad’s voice comes on the phone.

  “Logan, you need to come home,” he says.

  “All right, Dad, but can you tell me what happened?”

  He sighs. Mom’s still crying in the background. It sounds like Katie is crying too. Karen Ferguson is Dale Ferguson’s sister. Dale is a year older than me and Karen a year younger. She’s pretty, but shy.

  “She’s missing,” Dad says. “Those men who went tracking that thing after it took the hogs, they found her cell phone and a shoe right by the hog carcass. One hog was stripped clean, the other barely touched, but in the weeds real close there, they found Karen’s phone.”

  “But she’s not dead, right? Just missing. You think … you think that thing took her?” I ask. Chrystal is watching me, her fries apparently forgotten. Her usually pale face is now absolutely white. Her big, round eyes flick to the phone pressed against my head and I realize my hand is trembling.

  “Logan, come home. Come straight home right now, okay?”

  “Okay, Dad. I’ll be right there.” I put the phone down on the table. Chelsea suddenly appears beside us.

  “What was that about? What’s missing?” she asks, her voice low, but loud enough that it carries across the café. Everyone is looking at us.

  “That was my dad. He said Mr. Hennessey and some other men tracked that thing into the woods and they found Karen Ferguson’s cell and a shoe. They think the monster thing took her.”

  “Oh my good lord a’mighty,” Chelsea says in a gasp. “She was the sweetest girl to ever come through that door!”

  “Can I get our check?” I ask. “We have to go. You want to take that with you?” I ask Chrystal.

  She blinks at me a few times, then looks down at her food. She shakes her head. “No,” she says, then hesitates. “Yes. Dad might want it, I guess.”

  Chelsea brings us the check and two Styrofoam containers. I drop money onto the table and we leave.

  “Did you know her?” Chrystal asks when we’re about halfway back to the hotel.

  “Yeah. A little.” I explain about Karen and Dale.

  “They go to your school?”

  “Uh-huh. I just…” I don’t know what to say. “I just can’t believe it. Karen is a good kid. I don’t know what that thing might do to her.”

  “But they didn’t find her body, right? That’s a good sign,” Chrystal says in a voice about one octave higher than normal. She looks so innocent and scared and hoping for the best all at once.

  She’s going to be alone. In a hotel room. Alone. “Do you guys have a gun? I don’t know if that thing’s been close to town or not. I’m kind of worried about leaving you.”

  “I think we’ll be safer than you are. Plus, we aren’t gun people,” she says, and she reaches over to me again and puts her hand on my upper arm. It’s comforting, but I’m way too wound up to really enjoy it. I think again about the gearshift and how Chrystal can’t sit next to me because I have to shift the gears. Mom was right.

  The dusty red Subaru is in the parking lot, and that’s a huge relief. I don’t know if I could leave her all alone. I pull in beside it and set the parking brake.

  “I’ll walk you in,” I say.

  “You don’t have to,” she says. “Your dad told you to come straight home, and I heard your mom crying. Go home. Dad’s here, and I can get in okay.”

  “You sure?”

  She nods.

  The moment is horrible, but I can’t let it go. “Can I give you my number? Or get yours? Can I call you tomorrow? You could bring your dad back to the house tomorrow and we could talk?”

  “Of course. Do you want me to put my number in your phone?”

  “Um … Ah.…” I do, but if she takes my phone she’ll see the super embarrassing picture of Mom blowing a kiss at me. It’s a family joke, but how do you explain that to a hot girl? “Maybe you could write it down?” I offer before I think that I could just put her number in my phone. Or I could just put my number in hers. It’s all I can do not to hit myself in the forehead and shout, “Doh!”

  She grabs one of my spiral notebooks from behind the seat and finds a pen in my glove compartment. She writes down her number and puts the notebook over the rip in my seat. She’s written her number under one of my absolute worst poems. I don’t stare at it because I don’t want her to notice what I’ve written on the page. I flip to the back, to a blank page, tear it out and write my number on it for her.

  “Thanks for dinner. It was really nice of you to pay and take me and everything,” she says. “You must be one of the best new friends I’ve ever had.”

  Friends?

  She squeezes my arm, then scoots out the door of my pickup and jogs up to glass door of the Cherokee Country Inn. She tosses a final wave back at me, then goes inside.

  “Bye,” I say, though she’s already gone.

  Friend.

  I drive home as fast as I can.

  8

  CHRYSTAL

  The news about that girl Karen being missing sends my father into an absolute tizzy. He’d already been excited about a new plaster cast and a digital photo. So now he’s basically resonating with purpose.

  “This. Is. Horrific,” he says. “We must find her! Are there search parties?”

  “Yeah.” I imagine Logan in a search party, roaming around with some serial killer lurking in the woods. I cross my arms over my stomach and try not to throw up. Meanwhile, the parental unit is rummaging through the big red duffel bag that holds some of his favorite books and several files in folders. He pulls a couple books out, flips through them.

  He points his finger at me. “We have to stop it. We can’t let it hurt people.”

  “I know, Dad, but I’m sure the police are—”

  “The police! Brilliant! You are brilliant, Chrystal!” He interrupts me and starts pulling his shoes onto the wrong feet. “I’m going to the police. I have to tell them about this. This is a whole new ball of wax.”

  “Ball of wax?” I ask.

 
He ignores me. Instead, he realizes his mistake and shoves his shoes onto the appropriate feet. “I need to offer them my assistance.”

  “You want me to come?” I can’t imagine what the police are going to think about him. People tend to trust him a little bit more when I’m there. Mom calls me a “normalizing influence.”

  “No … no … Cops can be rough.” He hugs me quickly and kisses the top of my head. “You man the fort here.”

  Then he’s gone. I don’t get a chance to tell him about what Logan said at the diner or anything else. Sitting on the bed, I text him as much information as I can, hoping he’ll actually check his phone. I wonder if he even knows where the police station is, or if it’s local police or state or county that’s doing the investigation. Well, he’s a smart—if scattered—man. He’ll figure it out.

  I pick up my bass case and unzip it because there’s nothing else to do. Then I hesitate and text Logan: HOPE U R OK. THANKS 4 DINNER.

  He’s awkward, but in a totally different way from my dad. He seems so solid somehow, with his sweet parents who obviously still love each other since they give each other those looks even when his dad was being a jerk, and the big, old American farm life. He’s a farm boy.

  It makes me smile to think about him, which is much better than the queasy feeling I get whenever I think of Karen, the missing girl. She was close to my age, and that’s just wrong.

  I stare at my guitar for a second. The whole point of the bass is to lay down the rhythmic framework and sort of hold the harmony together. It’s like an anchor when you’re playing with a band. People don’t think of bassists as ever soloing, but we do, especially for Latin and funk. Mine has no frets so I can do glissandos and stuff. I start one now, just pushing the notes around with my fingers. I get into a zone when I play, and it takes a lot to snap me out of that zone, but something does.

  I smell it first: urine, berries, copper, a weird mix of animal and man. It’s the same smell from the parking lot last night.

  Holy crap.

  Putting the bass down, I look to the window. Whatever is making that smell has to be outside. It’s so strong that the window must still be open behind the big, moldy curtains. Holy crap. If the window’s open, then whatever is out there … It could smell me, too. It could get in. Assuming it’s even the monster thing, but do I want to take that chance? No, I do not. Tiptoeing back to where I was sitting, I tuck my bass under the bed for safekeeping and slip my cell into the pocket of my shorts. Swallowing hard, I creep toward the window. The smell wafts through again. It’s so pungent, it makes me want to vomit. Seriously.