The tree cover had thinned with the progression of fall. As he moved down the path, the occasional branch took a swipe at his arms and legs. Roger looked ahead, hoping to catch a glimpse of the girl. A couple of times he thought he saw her, the red shirt catching his eye somewhere in the distance then, just as quickly, fading from sight. He knew that eventually, if she continued on long enough, she would reach a county road or one of the new subdivisions that had recently been built, but those were several miles away, and the paths weren't straight or predictable. He didn't want her getting away and causing trouble for him, but he didn't want her ending up lost or hurt either. He cared about her. He wanted her back.
Roger came to a spot where the path forked. To the left, the more well-worn path, was the area he hunted, the places he would go with his father. The safe places, as he liked to think of them. And to the right, down the slightly overgrown and less frequently used path, lay the clearing. Roger stood at the fork, considering his options. He thought that it made sense, and seemed more likely, for the girl to take the easier path. Wouldn't she think that she would be more likely to find help down there, in the direction that it appeared more people had traveled? Roger took two steps that way and then stopped.
But...
If someone wanted to throw someone off their trail, wouldn't they take the unexpected path, the one that led to the right? Roger reversed his course and returned to the fork.
It was getting on toward evening. The tall trees blocked most of the declining sun, letting only filtered and indirect light reach the floor of the woods where Roger stood. He had been out there enough to know that the clearing didn't do much to him during the day, that only at night did he feel its full power. But standing there at the fork, and knowing that the new girl might be down there as well, caused the sweetly painful stirring between his legs, a more intense cousin to the feeling he had experienced standing outside the bathroom door just a few minutes earlier. The feeling spread through his blood, a cold current that made his skin prickle, and if it had been dark, as it usually was when Roger came out here, he wouldn't have been surprised to see sparks leaping off of his skin like Fourth of July fireworks.
A low, animalistic grunting slipped through his teeth.
He started down the path toward the clearing, his body moving faster than it normally did, faster than a body that big and clumsy had any right to move. His dad had warned him about rocks and holes, telling him that the last thing Roger wanted to do was turn an ankle or snap a bone out in the woods.
"You'd be laying there 'til you croaked," his dad had said. "You're all alone out here."
But Roger had other things on his mind. He didn't want to be alone, so he had to find the girl and bring her back to the house. Nothing else mattered. He just kept moving forward until he saw the clearing up ahead, its surrounding ring of trees open to him and even inviting. He moved even faster with the goal in sight and soon found himself in that familiar and comfortable space.
He stood at the outer edge, breathing hard. The energy that had been flowing through his body intensified, rising to the surface of his skin like boiling lava, hardening the member between his legs until it hurt. His hands and feet felt like they were twice their normal size. He stood near the grave of the last girl, but he didn't even think about her.
He looked around, but he didn't see the new girl. So he listened, just as he did when he hunted deer.
At first, Roger only heard the blood thumping in his ears, a steady beating that moved in time to the pounding of his heart. But the more he listened, the more he heard his surroundings. The chirping cries of birds, the chittering song of a cicada. Beneath that, he heard a rustling, like a sheet of paper being slowly rolled into a ball. It came from his left, from the edge of the clearing, and at first he thought it was simply the stirring of the wind or even the scuttling movements of a squirrel or chipmunk. But the noise continued, and it sounded too large for one of those tiny ground animals. And then Roger heard something human, a soft whimper of fear or sadness, and he knew the girl was near.
He moved toward the sound, slowly but purposefully. He didn't want to startle her or send her away, but he imagined that if she wasn't jumping to her feet, something might be preventing her, and Roger hoped that she hadn't fallen or hurt herself as she ran through the woods. And if she did, if she was hurt, wasn't that his fault as well? Wasn't he the reason she ran in the first place?
As Roger came closer, he saw her red shirt through the undergrowth and grass that grew on the edge of the clearing. The girl was lying on the ground and crying. Her mouth was open, and tears were running down her cheeks, making lines through the dirt that smeared her face. She looked so young, so like a small child who needed help.
"Are you hurt?" Roger said.
The girl kept crying. "I fell," she said.
Roger didn't know what to do. Even though he and the other girl had a routine, he never really knew what to do when she cried, and she did cry from time to time, even after she had been living with him for many, many years. She usually cried at night, when she thought Roger was asleep, and he'd lay there on his side of the bed, listening but not acting like he had heard, while the girl muttered and sniffed, sometimes saying something over and over again, something that sounded like the word "Mommy."
Roger held out his hand. "Here," he said.
But the girl didn't take it. She pointed at the ground, near her feet, and Roger thought he knew what was wrong.
"Is it your ankle?" he said. "Let me help you up."
She shook her head. She kept shaking it and pointing at the ground.
The light was fading, but Roger leaned forward and looked where the girl was pointing. It took a moment to see, but eventually he saw something nestled in the grass and weeds, something a dirty gray-white color. Roger knew right away what it was and why it made the girl cry.
It was a human skull and bones.
Roger held his hand out again.
"Come on," he said. "Let's get you out of here."
This time, the girl reached out and took his hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet. She started muttering.
"I fell, so I tried to hide, to get down in the weeds there, and I found those bones. I laid right on top of them. Why are they there? What happened?"
Roger didn't respond. He started guiding the girl back toward the path and the house. She went along for a moment, her body limp and fluid, but then Roger felt a stiffness coming into her form, a resistance to his efforts to move her along.
"My God," she said. "You're going to kill me."
"No."
"You killed all of these people, and you're going to kill me. My God, my God, my God."
She started pulling away, trying to release herself from Roger's grip. Roger tightened his hold, but one of the girl's arms slipped out and began flailing. She went for Roger's face, swinging and scratching, jabbing at his eyes. He leaned away, letting her go wild for a moment, then he stepped in and tried to pin her arms to her sides. The girl turned away from him, so that he ended up grabbing her from behind, but he managed to pin her arms by holding her tight across the middle. He increased the pressure and heard the air go out of her mouth with a soft whoosh. The girl made a small grunting noise, then was silent. He remembered the bedroom and how he almost choked off all of her air. He eased up a little and heard the girl gasp again. She was okay.
They stood like that for a moment, Roger holding her up while she caught her breath. She still felt limp and weak in his arms. He hadn't been this close to a girl, hadn't touched one in this way in so long. The stirring, the aching pleasure between his legs, had never gone away, and with the girl so close, her backside rubbing up against his front, it grew even more intense, more sickly pleasurable until Roger thought he was going to explode.
And he was in the clearing with her. And something in his head told him, over and over, that now was the time, now was the time to make her his wife.
Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.
Roger took her and lowered her to the ground.
The girl gasped again, this time with the knowledge of what Roger was about to do. He worked at her clothes quickly, his big hands suddenly more nimble than they had ever been before. The girl offered little in the way of resistance to him. It seemed as though she had already given up and accepted her fate, and Roger took this as a good sign. He had a wife. The plan had worked. He had chosen the right one.
When he had her clothes off, throwing the bike shorts aside like they were garbage, he worked on his, opening his zipper with one hand, slipping his member out, the thing feeling huge as a log in his hand. He remembered how to do it.
The girl lay still beneath him while he did it. His face was close to the dirt, smelling the rich soil, the musty odor of the ground, while the girl's hair tickled his nose. Somewhere beneath them, worms crawled through the earth, feeding off the bones of the last girl, but Roger didn't care. He was here now, alive, with his new wife, and when the moment came his body grew rigid, almost frozen, then shuddered repeatedly as he shot off into the girl, the flooding release feeling like it came from the very ground itself and out into her. He was taking her, making her his own, just like his dad had told him.
Take a wife, the old man said, and that's what he meant. Take a wife in the clearing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was after seven, the sun slipping away into a blaze of red and orange, when Diana began her drive to Kay Todd's house. She found her listed in the county phone directory, a trailer court fifteen miles away in Grainger, a one-stoplight-and-post-office town west of New Cambridge. Diana had spent the day trying not to think about Kay Todd, her cigarettes, her leathery face. She went for a much-needed run. She scanned the want ads, circling three waitressing jobs and one position as a security guard. She cleaned the bathroom and kitchen in her apartment. But in the back of her head—and sometimes in the front—she heard Dan's voice.
It's impossible for this woman to know anything about your sister.
But what if she did?
Diana quickly found herself in the countryside. Her headlights illuminated the trees along the side of the road, and once she saw three deer in the tall grass, their eyes appearing in the headlights like glowing, yellow marbles. The approach of the car didn't bother them, and as Diana passed they bent their heads back to the ground, largely indifferent to the human life buzzing past them on the highway.
It wasn't lost on Diana that she was driving through a scene right out of one of her visions. New Cambridge was one in a series of small, south-central Ohio towns that dotted the landscape, but in between the towns there was nothing but farmland and trees, occasional houses and forgotten country roads. As Diana drove through the dark overhanging canopy of those trees and tried to comprehend the limitless spaces that stretched out beyond them, the countless ditches and deadfalls, the heavy logs and accumulated leaves, it seemed hard to believe that there weren't hundreds of bodies scattered in there, a collection of lives snuffed out and hidden away, forgotten by all but those who cared the most. She could dedicate the rest of her life to searching for the spot that seemed to be beckoning her—the vision of the clearing in the woods—and never find it, never even come close.
Then why send the vision if it didn't want to be found?
It had begun to seem like a cruel joke, just like the one Kay Todd might be playing on her.
Then why go see her? Why keep looking?
"Because there's nothing else," Diana said, her voice filling the empty space of the car. "Nothing else."
Light rain began to spit against Diana's windshield. She put the wipers on intermittently as she drove through the heart of Grainger. A diner, a clothing store, a police station. One long blink, and you'd miss it. Diana went a mile past the town, then made a right onto Pike Road, a narrow two-lane that went out into the unincorporated land around Grainger and showed up on the map as Union Township. It was full dark by then, the headlights carving out a path in the night. The rain picked up, and Diana turned the wipers higher, their rhythmic beating the only sound in the car.
A few miles down the road, she saw the Pine Grove Trailer Park, a dingy looking complex surrounded by a barbed wire fence and a stand of puny trees. The road through Pine Grove was gravel, and the little stones popped and pinged against the underside of her Honda until she eased to a stop in front of number forty-four, a sagging singlewide resting on cinder blocks.
A lone bulb illuminated the porch, its jaundiced glow still attracting the last hearty gnats and moths of the summer. The steps to the front door had been painted white at one time, but as Diana climbed them, she saw that the wood was exposed and warped by rain and sun, the nails rusted and discolored. A battered screen door with a huge dent at its base allowed the sounds of a sitcom's canned laughter to blast out at her. There was no bell so Diana knocked. She couldn't imagine anyone hearing anything over the sound of that TV, so Diana used her best authoritarian police knock, then just called the woman's name.
"Mrs. Todd? Kay Todd?"
Diana waited a moment, her shoulders hunched against the falling rain. She raised her fist again, and the TV volume dropped. She heard a long, hacking cough, then a faint voice.
"Coming."
Diana waited. The closest trailer was lighted up. Diana heard a baby crying, then a harsh shushing from an adult voice. She turned and saw the faint outline of the old woman appearing behind the screen, her form backlit by the trailer's shabby lighting.
"Oh, hello," Kay said, her voice cautious. She looked to either side of Diana, as if she expected her to have brought reinforcements.
"Can I come in?"
Kay hesitated. She looked Diana up and down.
"It's raining, Kay. Come on."
"I didn't know it was raining..."
She undid the eyehook on the door and pushed it open, letting Diana step into a small entryway. The heavy odor of cigarettes hung in the trailer, and when they moved into the cluttered living room, Diana saw a hazy nimbus of smoke around the lamps on either side of the sagging couch.
"Would you like coffee or something?"
"Sure."
Kay didn't invite Diana to sit, so she remained standing.
"Oh, at least take your coat off," Kay said before leaving the room. "You're wet." She even helped Diana with one of the sleeves. It felt like a mother's gesture, and Diana found herself unexpectedly moved by it. "Go ahead and sit. I'll be right back."
Diana sat on the opposite end of the couch from the overflowing ashtray. A half-smoked butt still burned there, its smoke curling toward the ceiling. The TV was muted, and Diana watched a big-haired, blonde actress roll her eyes comically at someone off-screen, her gestures ridiculous and exaggerated. On the wall behind the TV was a framed picture of Jesus, his sacred heart exposed and both burning and pierced with thorns. She had just noticed the family pictures on a shelf across the room when Kay returned with two mugs of coffee in her hands.
"I remember you liked cream, so I added some," she said, setting them down on the coffee table. "Well, it's milk actually. But whole, not that skim stuff." Diana thanked her and took a sip. The trailer was warm, and Diana relaxed a little, though she remained perched on the edge of the couch. Kay took her seat and lit another cigarette, ignoring the coffee. "I know I should quit but..." She shrugged. Too late now. "I'm surprised to see you here," she said. "I thought you'd be done with me."
"I talked to the police today."
"Oh?" Her voice sounded forced, like someone pretending to be casual. "What did they say?"
"I need to ask you something, Kay."
"I figured you would."
"I need to know about Rachel. What do you have to tell me?"
Kay took a long drag on her cigarette and exhaled smoke through her nose.
"Kay?"
"If I told you what I know, then you wouldn't help me. It's called leverage. I didn't go to business school, but I do know that."
"Kay, we're talking about
somebody's life here. My sister's life." Diana didn't like the tone she heard creeping into her voice. It had begun to sound pleading and needy, but she couldn't stop it. "Is she alive? Do you know that? Is Rachel alive?"
She turned and leveled her eyes at Diana. "There are people who know things, about your sister and my daughter. My daughter has been gone longer. Find her, and I'll tell you what you want to know."
Diana stood up. "You're bullshitting me. And I'm not going to get taken for a ride. Thanks for the coffee."
"Your sister liked that song 'Rhinestone Cowboy,' didn't she?"
Diana stopped moving toward the door. "What did you say?"
"'Rhinestone Cowboy.' By Glen Campbell. She liked it. Am I right?"
Diana cocked her head to the side as though she weren't hearing correctly. "Did you know her?"
"Are you saying I'm right?" Kay said.
Diana and Rachel didn't have much in their childhoods. No fancy TVs, no computers or DVD players, just an old turntable and a collection of vinyl records their dad had left behind. Rachel played them over and over again, and fixated on that Glen Campbell song, the plea of a poor man who dreams of making it big someday. Diana couldn't hear the song without thinking of Rachel. On the rare occasions it came on the radio, Diana switched stations.
"Where is she? What do you know?"
Kay shook her head. "It's not going to work that way," she said. "You need to help me, then I'll help you."
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