In the Woods

by Carrie Jones

  Dad doesn’t move. There’s no immediate change. I wait. Nothing. The door opens behind me and the nurse says, “Son?” I don’t turn to look at her. “Son? I’m afraid your time is up. Son?”

  Reluctantly, I turn away. The nurse smiles at me and pats my arm as I walk past her. She promises me they’re doing their best. I nod and keep walking.

  Chrystal is sitting beside Mom, holding her hand. She looks up at me as I approach, and her eyes are big and afraid. Mom is as listless as she was when I went in.

  “How was he?” Chrystal asks.

  I shrug. “Nothing changed.”

  “Your mom hasn’t been eating or drinking. I told her I’d get her a Coke and she said she’d try to drink some of it.” Chrystal looks from me to Mom and says, “We’ll be right back, Mrs. Jennings. I’m going to get you that candy bar, too.”

  Mom’s eyes shift toward the sound of Chrystal’s voice and she smiles just a little. “You really are a good girl,” she says, her voice a cracked whisper. “You feel like family, you know that, don’t you? Ever since I first saw you, it felt like you were one of my own.”

  Chrystal nods. “You too. I think … I think you must be the best mother that there ever was.”

  And I know what she’s thinking. She’s thinking that she wishes my mom were her mom. I can’t blame her, not judging from that phone call I overheard.

  “Come on, Logan.” Chrystal gets up and grabs my hand, pulling me out of the waiting room and down the hallway toward a bank of vending machines we saw when we came in. As soon as we’re out of earshot she asks, “There was no change?”

  “No. Maybe it takes a while. I don’t know,” I say. “He didn’t move when I gave it to him. On the good side, he didn’t go into convulsions and die. Let’s stay here a little bit and see if there’s any change.”

  “We will,” she promises. At the bank of machines, she feeds two one-dollar bills into one machine for a bottle of Coke while I pay another dollar for a Hershey bar with almonds, Mom’s favorite.

  “Now that I think of it, I’m kind of hungry,” I say.

  “Me too. We can go get something to eat in a while. Maybe we can get your mom to go with us,” Chrystal says as we walk back. “But, I also really want to go looking for Kelsey. I’ve called Dr. Borgess and left another message. He’s probably missing too.”

  She stops abruptly.

  Mom is gone.

  Chrystal and I both stand there, dumbfounded for a moment, looking at the empty seat Mom had been sitting in just a few minutes ago. Her purse is still tucked under the chair, but she’s gone.

  “She wouldn’t leave her purse,” Chrystal says. “Not unless…”

  “Nurse!” I yell at the first white-clothed woman I see. The thin black lady stops suddenly, like my voice scared her. I try to calm down. “My mom is gone. She was right here.” I point at the chair.

  My God. What if the werewolf was here? What if he got her?

  The nurse steps closer, looking at the chair. “Mrs. Jennings?” she asks.

  “Yes,” Chrystal answers.

  “She’s in the room with Mr. Jennings. He asked for her,” the nurse says.

  “He asked for her? He talked?” I ask. Hope fills my heart.

  “Yes.”

  “Can we go in?” I ask.

  “Only two visitors at a time. One of you will have to wait,” she says, and smiles again, then goes back to whatever errand she’d been on before I yelled at her.

  “Go on.” Chrystal pushes at me. “Ask him how he feels. Ask if he feels anything inside. You know, like … I don’t know. Like the burn of alcohol or something.”

  * * *

  Mom is crying in the room. She’s holding Dad’s hand, her back to me, but her shoulders are shaking with the sobs. I step up next to her and put my arm around her waist as I look down at Dad.

  It’s amazing. Someone has raised the bed so that he’s sitting up. His eyes are almost clear and he’s alert, though it’s easy to see he’s still feeling some pain. The hair, though. I can’t believe it. He still has the beard, but it’s his normal beard. The hair that was high on his cheeks and low on his throat is gone. Well, not gone, but all loose. Like he’s shedding.

  “Logan,” he says when he sees me.

  “Dad.” I don’t know what to say, and that’s just as well because I don’t trust my throat to make anything like a manly noise right now.

  “RJ, I’ve been so scared,” Mom says. “I don’t know what I would have done without you if … if…” She can’t finish.

  “I feel a lot better now,” Dad says.

  “It’s a miracle. It’s a miracle from God,” Mom says through her tears.

  I bite my tongue. Dad is looking at me. He knows something. He looks up at Mom. We’ve promised not to tell him about Kels.

  “Will you give me just a minute with Logan?” he asks.

  “She hasn’t been eating,” I tattle. “Chrystal has a Coke and a candy bar for her, and we want to take her to lunch.”

  “That would be very good,” Dad says. He gently pulls his hand away from Mom and looks at her in a way I’m not sure I’ve ever seen. There’s so much love there. “Give us just a minute, okay? Go eat your candy, then come right back.”

  Mom looks suspiciously from Dad to me, then nods. She leaves us, but I know we’ve only got a couple minutes.

  “What’s going on?” Dad asks as soon as the door is closed. “You did something.”

  “It’s temporary,” I explain. “The werewolf gave it to me as proof that he can make a cure for you. But he wants a lot for the rest. I don’t know how long this will last.”

  I pull the bottle out of my pocket, look at it for a minute, then press it into his hand. “It’s water, wolfsbane, and his blood.”

  “His blood? Wolfsbane? That’s poison,” Dad says.

  I nod. “I know. We just dropped the flower into boiling water for a minute, then took it out. I don’t know how it works. But it does.” I remember what Chrystal told me. “How do you feel? Do you feel different inside?”

  Dad seems to think about it for a minute. “A little,” he admits. “Before, I felt … I don’t know. Mad. Like there was something in my gut making me real mad. Now I can feel that it’s still there, but smothered.”

  “I don’t know if you can just take another little drink of that if you get to feeling bad,” I say, and am about to say more when Mom comes back in.

  “What’s that?” she asks, looking at the bottle in Dad’s hand.

  “Nothing,” I answer too quickly.

  “This is medicine Logan made,” Dad answers, giving me a semi-harsh look for lying to Mom. “This is why I’m able to talk to you right now.”

  Mom looks from the bottle to me. “What is it?”

  “It’s anti-werewolf medicine,” Dad says before I can speak. “Logan, I want you to take your mom to eat, and I want you to tell her everything you know. She’s been safe here. I want her to stay. Where are the girls?”

  “With the Thompsons,” Mom lies. “For the day. They’ll come back and sleep in the waiting room with me. It just seemed safer to keep them away from the house at night.”

  Dad nods. “That’s fine. Logan, what about you and the Lawson Smiths?”

  “Chrystal’s dad is missing. Me and Chrystal have been staying at home. Mr. Davis has been staying with us. There have been deputies, too.”

  “I don’t like that,” Dad says. “Not at all.”

  30

  CHRYSTAL

  I part my hair down the middle and braid it as tightly as I possibly can, trying to create a new look, a new me, somehow—a me that a werewolf doesn’t want. The mirror in the hospital bathroom is warped and smudgy and the flickering fluorescent light doesn’t help me examine my image. I look older, I think … maybe … tired but determined. Or maybe I just want to think I look like how I feel. When it comes right down to it, nobody knows what they actually look like—mirror images are not true images. They flip us. Nobody really k
nows how the world sees them.

  I am what a werewolf wants. Who would believe that? Who would think that these are the secrets I am hiding? Certainly not the elderly lady who just shuffled into the accessible stall; her rubber-soled shoes made little plip-plop noises as she walked across the linoleum floor.

  These two braided pigtails are all I have right now, all I control. My hand shakes when I think about it, think about Kelsey, how scared she must be. I finish up and leave the bathroom, head down the lime-green halls to the doors of the ICU ward, and push the button to open the door. It swings open and I walk past the desk that is the nurses’ station, past the carts of medicine, the movable IV lines, and to Mr. Jennings’s room. I step inside before anyone says anything.

  He lifts his head. “Chrystal?”

  “Mr. Jennings.” My courage wavers a little bit, but I move toward the bed. His skin is pale but human-looking. “How are you feeling?”

  “A bit better, thanks to the concoction.” He eyes me. “Thank you for that.”

  “I heard what you told them. How you don’t want me to be bait. How you would rather die than feel guilty.”

  “I meant that, Chrystal,” he says, his voice gruff.

  “I know you did, but it’s awful selfish of you.”

  His eyes widen. “What?”

  “The way I see it, we know that if nothing is done for you, you will become a werewolf and you will ask Logan to kill you before that happens. If Logan can’t do it, you’ll ask one of your friends. We know that we have no way of stopping the transformation. Your outcome is inevitable.” I take a deep breath. “But with me—we don’t know what will happen. My plan could work. I could be bait and we could get the antidote and save you, or the other option is I could be bait and we could fail.”

  “And you’d die.”

  “It’s a possibility with me, but not the only possibility, not like you.”

  He closes his eyes. Machines blip. A door buzzes open. A phone rings. People keep living their lives.

  “You can’t live with the guilt of my death, Mr. Jennings, but neither can I live with the guilt of yours.” I lean forward and kiss his forehead. “You have a family. You have a wife and three kids. They can’t make it without you. They’re in jeopardy because of me.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “The werewolf has it in for me, for my family. So what does he do? He creates a little craziness here in Oklahoma, knowing that my dad is into cryptozoology. Everyone knows that. So my dad comes out here. My dad brings me. It’s all just this elaborate trap for me. All of it. Your family’s terror. The dead cops. The missing women. Even the dead cows. It’s all to get me and my dad out here. And then … then he takes out the men who protect me. You. My dad. Who is next? Logan? I can’t let that happen.”

  Moments pass. In those moments the truth that I’ve finally articulated weighs in the air, heavy and horrible. He grabs my wrist. Even though he’s weak, I can feel the strength in his fingers. “Chrystal, you’re so young.”

  “I know,” I say, “but that doesn’t make my life worth more than yours.”

  He lets go of my wrist. I tuck the thin blanket around him.

  “You rest,” I say. “It’ll be okay.”

  But we both know that’s probably not true.

  * * *

  I told Mr. Jennings that I had a plan, but that’s complete bull, because I don’t have anything of the sort. At least, I don’t until Logan and I are back in the truck and headed home.

  “I don’t think he’ll come tonight,” he says.

  And that’s when I get the plan. “So we strike tonight.”

  His eyes open wide. “What?”

  “If we strike tonight while he’s weak, we have a chance. We find his human self and restrain him and—”

  “How are we going to restrain him?” he interrupts.

  “Good question.” And I have no answer. “Isn’t there some sort of livestock thing that would work for werewolves? A cage or something?”

  “The cops might have something.”

  “The cops think I should go back to New England without my dad, Logan. I don’t think they’ll want to help us with this.” I rub my hand across my eyes. My whole face feels dirty. I’ll have to shower again when we get back to the house. I let my head drop back against my seat. “Maybe David?”

  “He’d help us, but I don’t know if I want to put him at risk,” Logan says after a second.

  “Yeah. That makes sense.”

  Logan reaches over and grabs me by the arm. He tugs like he wants me to lean into him, and I do, but the stupid stick shift makes it awkward.

  “I don’t want to put anyone at risk, especially you.” His voice is hoarse with emotion.

  “I know.” I trace a circle on his jeans, right where the center of his thigh is.

  “But you’re pretty determined, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I am.”

  * * *

  When I take my shower, I try not to think, This is possibly the last shower of my life. When I shampoo my hair with the Jenningses’ shampoo, I try not to think, I will die smelling like coconut. When I grab the soap, I try not to think, I miss my loofah and I miss my dad and my mom and my friends. I try not to think, I want Kelsey to be okay. Please let Kelsey be okay. And my dad.

  I try not to think of anything, just let the water wash the grime and the sweat away and come out clean.

  I have texted all my friends a silly I LOVE U GUYS. ROCK HARD. xoxox <3 text, which is normal for me. So nobody will wonder about it. I have riffed on my bass just the tiniest bit and left a note that Katie should have it. I suspect she’ll have some musical ability. I know she eyed it before, and if there’s anything I know, it’s that a bass needs to be loved.

  I have done all these things and even written notes for my dad and my mom and Mrs. Jennings, sealed them all up in envelopes I found downstairs. I studied the chemical composition of the blood as much as I could before I packed up one of the samples and mailed it to Sergeant Mitchell.

  I was going to mail a sample to my dad’s professor friend, Dr. Borgess, but when I went to the university website to get his mailing address, I found something that showed me just how futile this whole thing is.

  I left the rest of the samples for my dad, in case he ever comes back.

  Logan has found a trailer that David’s dad uses to move bulls. It’s sturdy, but they’re retrofitting it with extra plates and steel. David, Mr. Davis, and David’s dad are both in on it now. Logan felt like we had no choice, and the more help the better. I hope that’s the right decision. I hope no more people get hurt.

  Kierkegaard wrote, “What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.” That is Logan. Even his breaths are music to me, a low melody that soothes.

  When I get out of the shower, I wrap a towel around myself, walk down the hall to Kelsey’s room and put on the cleanest clothes I can find, which seems ironic. I try not to think, This is what I might die in—a pair of baby-blue shorts and a T-shirt from the Oklahoma state fair. I can’t stop the thinking though, can’t stop the wondering. In twenty-four hours it should be all over—one way or another—and I’m going to hold on to that thought.

  There is wolfsbane in my pocket, just in case. We’ve made a squirt bottle full of boiled wolfsbane mixed with water, but we want the werewolf alive at least long enough to get a cure.

  A cure.

  I brush out my hair but don’t bother to dry it. It’s too hot. Instead I tug it back into a high ponytail. I put earrings in every single hole in my ears. And I start to head downstairs. The dogs bark. First it’s just one bark that belongs to Galahad, but the others join in and it becomes an insane cacophony of sound.

  Someone is banging on the door.

  “Hold on!” I hear Logan yell, and I rush down the stairs. A dust bunny made of dog fur tumbles after me.r />
  Logan peeks out of the curtain and whispers a swear, but runs to the door, quickly works the locks, and throws it open.

  A girl tumbles in. She’s dirty and bloody. Her clothes are ripped. Dust and dirt cake her crazy dark-brown hair.

  “Holy…” Mr. Thompson swears.

  “It’s Kelsey,” David whispers.

  Kelsey looks around all crazy-eyed. One shaking arm reaches up and her finger points. It points at me.

  31

  LOGAN

  Chrystal and Kelsey are staring at each other. Kels is crying and she sways and it’s none of us men who catch her. Nope, it’s Chrystal who wraps her arms around her and settles her on the couch. Kelsey is all dirty and Chrystal’s fresh out of the shower. The dirt from the torn clothes and exposed skin is getting ground into Chrystal’s clothes and all over her bare arms. And her tear-streaked face.

  I suddenly feel self-conscious for gawking at them during this emotional interchange, so I turn away, pretending to straighten the make-shift drapes Chrystal’s hung over the window. Yeah. Like anyone would believe I care about drapes right now.

  “Someone needs to call the police,” Mr. Thompson says, leaving the room and pulling out his cell phone.

  Chrystal asks, “What happened?”

  They are holding each other at arm’s length, both with wet, dirty faces.

  “He has your father—the wolf—he … he’s coming for you. I…” Then Kelsey promptly passes out.

  * * *

  Sitting at the dining room table with a jug of cold water, a pitcher of sweet tea, and our glasses, Chrystal and I tell Sergeant Mitchell our story first. As we talk, his animated face transitions between looks of intense interest to shock, fear, pride, and determination.

  “You would use yourself as bait to help a fellow human?” he asks Chrystal when we’re done. She nods. He lowers his head for a moment, and when he raises it again, there is steel in his eyes. “Did we not talk about this?”

  She waves his anger away. “Anyone would do it.”