In the Woods

by Nancy Gideon

  "Sounds perfect."

  And it was. The perfect excuse to go back to where she'd never wanted to leave without the compromise of pride.

  Her husband's side.

  ӜӜӜ

  He faded back when he saw Helen Kerwood exit the store with another woman. Disappointment blackened his mood and made his breathing quicken into hurtful gasps. As he watched, the blonde climbed into a silver Mercedes and his intended victim into her compact. And his opportunity drove away with them.

  Pressing the heels of his hands to his temples, he tried to quiet their pounding. Why was everything going wrong? It had been days since the paper carried an article about him. And now his chance to make the eleven o’clock lead story disappeared in a plume of exhaust fumes.

  He walked in tight circles, panting, trying to find a way out of the box of futility, for a way to recapture the golden satisfaction that came with infamy. If there were no stories on him, he’d be a nobody again. How soon they’d all forget. The media was so fickle. He’d have to do something about it and soon. Something big. Something that would demand headlines.

  “Hey, buddy. Are you all right?”

  He turned on the Samaritan with a fierce snarl. “Mind your own business.”

  The passerby held up his hands in a disarming manner and continued to walk on, muttering something about nuts. He followed the man with a thoughtful gaze then shook his head. No. Nothing that simple. Nothing that ordinary.

  He closed his eyes against the pinwheeling darkness and made his breathing slow. Something spectacular. Something . . . fitting.

  From out of the tormented corners of his mind came a distorted image from childhood. Of Miss Brantley’s third grade. Of Sarah Miller with her carrot-colored pigtails who sat behind him, leaping out of her desk with finger pointed.

  “Miss Brantley,” she’d shrieked through her mouthful of braces.“There’s things moving in his hair! Ewwww! Look. Look!”

  And look they had, all twenty-six pairs of inquisitive eyes, looking, then laughing, then ridiculing as he was marched down to the health room by the lovely Miss Brantley, her features rigid with disgust. Then came the pointing and the probing of fingers in his greasy hair. And the humiliation of having his mother called at her miserably paying job to come and get him–a job she’d lost because of it.

  A serene smile shaped his mouth as he pictured those mean-spirited pixies in the third grade who’d taunted him the rest of his elementary years, calling him “Cootie boy.” The nasty smiles, the vicious whispers. The pointing behind his back.

  Yes.

  Something big always started someplace small.

  Someplace like Hoover Elementary.

  ӜӜӜ

  It was the right place.

  He could smell the man. He could feel the devil creature. But both were gone, the evidence of their passing old in his nose, faint in the way it quivered upon his senses. Again, he was too late, too slowed by his recovering wounds.

  He approached cautiously, keeping to the trees where no one would see, where no trace would be left by his passing. He recognized the confusion of many in the signs upon the ground below. And he scented blood. The blood of offering to the one who called, blood the only acceptable sacrifice as a sign of blind obedience.

  Who was this new master and why had he released evil upon the land? Those questions didn’t trouble him as deeply as his own obligations. Who and why didn’t matter. They wouldn’t alter what must be done.

  Though he would have liked to learn more from what the earth would tell him, he felt the danger of discovery more acutely than his curiosity. Time was his enemy, preying upon the command he’d received in those ancient days, condemning him with each passing minute for his failure to keep it. The devil was loose, controlled by this new and strange master. Though the time was different, though the setting foreign, his purpose remained unchanging.

  Guard. Keep. Protect.

  And see the evil back to its grave.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Honey, are you coming up?”

  On a normal evening, that purring question from his wife would have sent Wayne Higley bounding for the stairs to cash in on that husky innuendo. But as he sat in the partially finished off basement he fondly called his hobby room, studying the scratches on his hands, he knew nothing was normal about his life any more. Not until he dealt with things.

  He wasn’t a man to run from trouble, but in this case, he wanted to pack a bag and take the first flight to any other time zone.

  “Wayne? Are you okay?”

  His wife, Sheila stood on the basement stairs, backlit by the kitchen light. He sat in the glow from the television, shadows gathering in around him. He had no idea what he was watching. All the images were within his head until he glanced up to be teased by her silhouette. A fine figure of a woman, round in all the right places, soft where a woman should be soft, yet drill sergeant tough when it came to her family and making him tow the line. He could hear the concern in her voice because in all his years on the job he’d taken exactly three sick days. Two of them when he’d had to have his appendix taken out and the other when he passed a kidney stone. He was no wimp. Colds and flu never slowed him.

  But something had, and he could feel her wanting to ask what it was.

  They had an understanding, he and Sheila. The job stayed on the job and home was a place for family where none of its ugliness intruded. That’s why they were still married. He didn’t discuss what went on during his days and nights in uniform, at least not in any of the gory, techno-color details. He didn’t have to. She could sense his moods and was ready with a cold beer or a warm hug depending upon the circumstance. Her intuition was buzzing now, but she couldn’t pinpoint the problem. That bothered her. Like watching a TV through a snowy interference.

  He could feel her questions hanging there just begging for the opportunity to be asked but he wouldn’t give her that opening. He couldn’t answer what he didn’t understand. He couldn’t calm her fears when he couldn’t get a handle on his own. Not now. Not yet.

  “I’m fine, baby. Go on up to bed. I’m going to wait for the news.Maybe it won’t be all bad tonight.”

  She waited, and he knew she wanted him to say more, that she wanted to say more, but finally, she sighed and left him to his troubled thoughts.

  Today, he’d lied to his insurance company and right now, he was lying to himself.

  It wasn’t going to go away by wishing it so.

  He’d seen what he’d seen, heard what he’d heard out in the Blanchard family woods. It wasn’t a trick of the imagination. It was real.

  But how did a logical thinking man deal with something so bizarre? How could a husband, a father, a boss known for his level-headed control examine something akin to madness?

  True, he’d woken up with a king-sized hangover, but that’s not why he’d chosen not to go in to work. He’d stayed home, nursing a pot a coffee and munching plain rye toast because he was scared to death to face Alex Kerwood with what they’d both discovered.

  And now, it had just gotten worse with a call from Al Fargo filling him in on Alex’s predicament.

  It wasn’t a serial killer leaving gifts at Alex’s house. Alex knew it. He knew it, too. But to speak about it out loud when he could barely consider it in the privacy of his own thoughts . . .

  What was he going to do?

  How did a man come clean in front of friends, family, God, and network news to admit that he’d seen a monster?

  How could a man cower at home while one of his own bore the brunt of that awful truth alone?

  What the hell was he going to do?

  Alex, forgive me, buddy, but I just don’t know.

  ӜӜӜ

  Alex stared with unabashed awe as Larry drove them down a broad boulevard studded sparingly with elegant homes in a wooded setting.It was one of the upscale neighborhoods Alex drove through without ever thinking he'd have reason to stop. None of his friends or coworkers rubbed shoulders w
ith the wealthy and quite frankly, he was surprised to fit Larry Gorham into such posh surroundings.

  "Not too bad for a policeman's salary," he commented at last.

  Larry laughed good-naturedly. "Right. Like I could afford a P.O. Box from this zip code. The money's Elizabeth's. You might say I married well." He sounded comfortable with that, no apology given, no bitterness expressed.

  "I guess so," Alex muttered, eyeballing a sprawling Tudor as they drove by. Its lawn was wide enough to support a herd of grazing cattle. He had a difficult enough time keeping up with their simple tract house. He couldn't imagine finding the opportunity to mow let alone landscape one of these show pieces. But of course, none of the people who lived behind these pristine walls actually did the work themselves.

  "How big a staff do you have, Larry?"

  Again, the belly laugh. "I wish. I'd love to turn my rounds on the riding mower over to someone else. We have a lady who comes in to move around the dust once a week. Without kids at home, the upkeep is minimal with both of us working. It’s really too big for two but Elizabeth’s collected so much junk over the years, we’d have to rent a museum for storage if we ever decided to go condo. Besides," he grinned with a malicious amusement, “the address keeps Pellman off my back. Liz belongs to half the influential organizations in town and he can’t afford to antagonize me.”

  “I should be so lucky,” Alex muttered.

  He pulled up into the drive of a modern two-story with a detached double garage. It was connected to the house by a stone walkway. Helen's little import looked like a shabby relation next to the gleaming metallic Mercedes parked there.

  "Well, what do you think of the house?" Larry asked, obviously a proud owner.

  "Very nice. Especially without the body parts scattered around."

  "That's not funny, Kerwood."

  "Sorry."

  They got out of Larry's car and he reached down to pop the trunk.

  "You want to grab your stuff out of the back? We’ve got the guest room all ready.”

  "In a minute."

  Alex was staring at Helen's tiny vehicle, his gut in square knots of anticipation and anxiousness. What if she wouldn't stay? What if she wouldn't let him try to make amends? The two of them forced under one roof with so much left unresolved between them could lead up to disaster.

  A fight was the last thing he needed now. All he wanted was to see his wife, to convince himself that she was really well and truly fine. The scare he'd had took a huge notch out of his male arrogance.He was ready to grovel if need be just to be able to hold her.

  Larry was watching his shifts of expression, not unmoved by the other's distress. "Let's go in. If I know my wife, Elizabeth will have Helen primed for your apologies by now. You two need to get your shit straight. At times like this, you really can't afford to have petty arguments with your wife. Understand?"

  "Hey, I've been trying to talk to her."

  "Yeah. And I understand you've been paying rent on a stool at Double-Vision. That's not making progress, Kerwood."

  Alex's defiant gaze dropped and he let out a bitter sigh. "You wouldn't understand."

  "Really? Don't bet on it. I don't care how bad it is. You don't take the bottle. That's one step closer to a life alone, and baby, you don't want to be there."

  Alex motioned to the door, chagrined and tired of the well- intentioned lecture. "Can we go in now, Dad?" It was almost a plea.

  Feeling generous, Larry waved him on. "Sure."

  The ladies were seated together in the living room before a cozy fire, sipping tea. The room was spacious and contemporary in design.In it, Elizabeth Gorham was sleek pale satin next to Helen's deeper-toned warm velvet. Both women looked up from their conversation with expectant expressions. Helen's grew cautious as she watched her husband shut the door. Her gaze consumed him hungrily, noting with a guilty pleasure, the weariness evident in the pinch of his mouth and the bruised smudges beneath his eyes. He met that look, his own carefully neutral.

  "Hello, honey," Larry called.

  "Hi." Elizabeth stood and gestured to Helen. "Larry, I'd like you to meet Helen Kerwood."

  Helen rose to accept Larry's hand in greeting.

  "So nice to meet you," Helen murmured, nervously avoiding Alex."Elizabeth's told me quite a bit about you."

  "Whatever she's told you . . . is probably true." He sighed then grinned. He nodded back at Alex who remained by the door. As if aggrieved, he went to tow the reluctant fireman over to their group.Alex looked uncomfortable, glancing at Helen then away, his smile forced.

  "Elizabeth, I'd like you to meet an old friend of mine. Who, oh my goodness, just happens to be married to Helen. Can you imagine that! What a coincidence!"

  Elizabeth swatted her husband on the shoulder, muttering, "You fool," with incredible fondness. Then she reached out a slender hand to Alex, who took it gently as she enthused, "It's a definite a pleasure, Alex. Helen's told me a lot about you, too."

  Alex responded with more grimace than smile.

  Silence.

  Sensing a change was called for, Larry grabbed up Elizabeth's hand and announced, "We're going to the kitchen to start cooking some grub. Why don't you make yourselves comfortable. We'll be right back."

  Comfortable? Right. Alex fidgeted.

  "No problem," Helen answered diplomatically.

  Then the two of them were left alone in the tasteful sea of modern furniture, as inanimate as the andirons in the fireplace.

  Finally, Alex went to sit on the couch the two women had vacated.After a moment's hesitation, Helen joined him, keeping a judicious distance.

  "Elizabeth is really nice," she ventured quietly.

  "Larry's a great guy. It's a shame we drifted apart. I think he'll be a good influence."

  She canted a looked at him. "On what?"

  "On me."

  And then their gazes met and held, overflowing with a silent communion that conveyed everything words had failed to. Things like I love you, I need you, my life is empty without you. Then Alex spoke the rest aloud at last.

  "I am so sorry about the other night."

  He put his hand over hers and she let it remain, her fingers still passive beneath its press. So he continued with a firmer conviction.

  "I was a prize fool for not coming to you, talking to you first.What you must have thought . . . well, you were right for the most part. I just didn't know what to say to you."

  "Alex, you can tell me anything. Don't you know that by now?"Her hand turned, bringing palm to palm, fingers intertwining.

  "I know, but this—it was so strange. If I hadn't been drinking, you would have thought I'd gone off the deep end, head first."

  Her clasp tightened. Her voice strengthened. "If this is about what you found at the house, Elizabeth told me, and I'm the one who's sorry you had to cope with that alone. I—"

  "No, Helen. That's not it. That's not even the half of it."

  "What? Tell me. Talk to me, Alex."

  "Promise you'll be open-minded."

  She forced a smile because the situation began to steep in tension. "I married you, didn't I?"

  When he winced slightly, her arm went about him, her head seeking a familiar spot against his shoulder.

  "Jeez, I was only joking."

  "I-I know. It's just that this is so weird and I don't want you to think I'm a loony."

  "I won't. I promise. Now tell me."

  With her warmth curled against his side and the crisp, clean fragrance of her hair teasing up his nose, it was hard to speak of the horror shadowing his recollections. From the safety of the Gorhams's living room, it seemed even crazier to mention monsters, but he did. He had to or risk losing the woman he loved. He had to make her believe in the unbelievable, or at least, make her understand that he believed it enough at the time to go a little bit bonkers.A man had that right when his whole world view was tipped on its ear.

  "It started when Wayne invited me hunting. We walked for a long time in the woods
, back where it was real thick and creepy, and we came across a clearing of some sort. And we saw what we were sure was a grave . . ."

  ӜӜӜ

  Elizabeth stood at the counter listening to her husband as she cut up vegetables. Her features were solemn, as was the subject. She listened without interruption, as she'd learned to over the years, letting him pour out all his observations, all his frustrations, all his intuitions, waiting for a pause that would signal his desire for her input.

  She never flinched away from even the most gruesome details that came home with him, knowing how much he needed the release he got in telling her what weighed upon his soul. It came with the territory.The good with the bad, and usually this was the worst part of it.The listening, hearing the sordid, gory facts of what he dealt with day in and day out. Sometimes, it was all she could do not to scream for him to stop . . . until she thought of how he must feel. Listening in the comfort of one's home wasn't the same as being confronted with these horrors, face to face, in grotesque 3-D.

  ". . . about all we've found," he continued. "It doesn't make any sense. I'm beginning to think we have two separate problems here."He paused.

  "And one of those problems is Alex's," came her astute conclusion.

  Larry nodded and massaged his temples. A headache started to pound just thinking about how to approach Pellman with the news.

  We've got not one, but two, count 'em, two deranged killers running loose.

  They didn't have the manpower to conduct one intensive investigation, let alone a second, and he couldn’t imagine the proud Chief Pellman ever calling for any back up. He was too arrogant to let anyone else second guess him. Or grab his glory from the jaws of the news hounds.

  Pellman was going to go through the ceiling.

  Elizabeth leaned forward to suddenly brush his taut cheek with a kiss. It shocked him from his glum mood, just as she intended.

  "You want the filet mignon?" she whispered like a high price hooker asking how he wanted it. His groin tightened, and he pulled her close so she wouldn't miss her effect on him. Her gaze grew sultry with appreciation as he murmured back, "But, of course."