Grimm Woods

by D. Melhoff

  “Here,” Brynn said. She took Tyrell and guided him to the ground. “Go round them up.”

  Scott rushed toward the rest of the kids, but they shrunk back as he approached them, eying the bloody handprints that Tyrell had stamped onto his pecs like tribal paint. “It’s not mine,” he assured them. The looks on their faces said it didn’t matter whose blood it was. “Come on,” he said, snagging his V-neck from the sand and yanking it over his head. “Double-time.”

  They joined Brynn and started for the camp. Scott noticed Tyrell was clean again, and for a moment he considered running back to the water and rinsing himself off. He decided against it. I can’t leave Brynn with a bunch of kids who just witnessed that. I’ll wash up after we’ve calmed down to at least DEFCON 3.

  The path wound through the teeming trees, and the group remained hushed. A sniffle here, a whimper there. Overall, it seemed as though the grim event had shoved a dark reality—one they had almost forgotten—back in their faces and shocked them into silence. Their pace was slower than before, but they marched onward, and twenty minutes later, the trees opened up on the east side of Crownheart.

  From the edge of the clearing, everything appeared as they had left it, rippling in the heat.

  Scott fanned his collar and watched the kids follow Brynn into the camp. The blood on his chest had gelled into a tacky substance that kept snagging the shirt and rubbing sand against his skin like fiberglass. Goddammit, I really should’ve washed this stuff off—

  The thought cut out midsentence.

  “No,” he muttered, squinting in the distance. It’s the sun. These heat waves are screwing with me.

  Still, he didn’t move. He checked the corner of his vision—watching Brynn shepherd the campers across the lawn—and then checked back, comparing clarity, blinking once, twice, three times.

  Four blinks.

  Five blinks.

  His gut curdled and went sour.

  He took a step away from the tree line, wobbling out of the shade as the sun illuminated his blood-tacked face, and a blast of icy fear overwhelmed him. On his second step, he began to run.

  “Brynn!”

  From the fringes of the square, he saw her spin on her heels and move—first speed-walking, then full-tilt—across the lawn, catching his wake but not quite matching the speed of his longer stride. By now, they could tell the difference in each other’s voices between a holler for attention and a cry for help.

  Scott wasn’t blinking anymore. Every brain cell converged on the sight in front of him as he dove through the field and arrived at the border of the archery range.

  It hadn’t been a trick of the light.

  The shed’s door was wide open.

  Brynn raced up behind him, but he didn’t turn around. He bounded over the concrete steps and flew into the windowless shack.

  “Oh my God.”

  Scott took one more step forward—his foot, unbeknownst to him, tapping a crumpled-up aluminum pie plate—and stopped.

  Charlotte was gone.

  Bruce was gone too. In a different way. The groundskeeper’s body lay faceup in the center of the room, his head cocked to the side and his dark, unblinking eyes staring down at the bloodstained shafts of two arrows protruding from his chest.

  30

  Scott couldn’t believe it—refused to believe it.

  His fingers curled into fists, and his fists shook as he looked around the shed in disbelief. He said he tossed out the equipment. He said so, dammit! Dropping to his knees, he tilted an ear over Bruce’s mouth and prayed for a puff of air while watching for any up-and-down movement of the man’s chest. Nothing.

  He waited five seconds…ten…

  “Fuck.”

  From where he was crouched, head tilted, Scott judged the distance between Bruce’s boots and the doorway as less than two feet. The groundskeeper had come in of his own volition but hadn’t gotten very far. The door swung open, he stood there with a hatchet, he took one step in, and then thwack. Right in the rib cage. Scott’s eyes refocused on the closer of the two arrows impaled in Bruce’s chest, then jumped to the second arrow. Thwack. Another nail in the coffin.

  But something seemed odd from this angle. He leaned closer.

  Where’s the paint?

  All of Crownheart’s supplies—from the tablecloths in the mess hall and the banners in the ballroom, to the helmets in the stables and the equipment on the archery range—were branded with the camp’s flagship colors: green and yellow. These arrows were bare timber.

  As he leaned forward, something crunched under his hand.

  He lifted his palm and blew away what appeared to be dust and wood shavings.

  Shavings?

  He sat up straighter, a sickening realization pulling into view.

  A stack of quarter-inch cedar dowels lay scattered in the corner of the room, strewn amid a puddle of superglue, sawdust, and discarded feather fletches. Among the dowels, a cardboard carton of broadheads and plastic nocks had been torn apart, and beside them, loose bowstrings dangled off the end of a workbench that held a pile of long, pliable staves.

  The answer materialized—so obvious that he wanted to grab one of the broadheads and stab himself in his eyes for not seeing it sooner.

  She made her own arrows, he reeled. We got rid of the bows and quivers, but this isn’t just a storage shed; it’s a fucking workshop. She had everything she needed right here.

  Scott clambered to his feet and stumbled out of the shack. He keeled over—about to blow chunks or swell up like someone going into anaphylactic shock—when he heard Brynn’s voice beside him saying, “Scott. Scott, she’s gone. What are we going to do? Scott?”

  “I—I can’t think.” He hocked a gob of saliva into the grass and raked his scalp.

  “Find the kids before…I need Stephy…if the fort’s open, we can…”

  Only portions of Brynn’s sentences were getting through. The primal part of Scott’s brain had killed his superego and flipped the id switch.

  Scott reached over and grabbed Brynn’s hand, pulling her away from the shed. “Wait.” Brynn pulled back. “Knives. We should get knives from the kitchen. No, screw that, we can take Bruce’s ax straight to the square and round everybody up before—what are you doing?”

  Scott hadn’t let go. He pulled harder as Brynn resisted, yanking her not toward the square but toward the path to Lake Mer.

  “Stop it,” she said. “The kids are this way. We need to—”

  “No!” Scott wheeled around. “No. We’re going back to the lake. The rowboat’s still there, and it’s our ticket outta this hellhole.”

  “What? No. No no no no no, it’s not.”

  “Shut up and—”

  “Scott. We’re not leaving the kids here to die.”

  “She wants us. Us.”

  “And she’ll kill them to draw us out. God, what if she’s got Norma and Denisha already?”

  “Don’t you get it? Staying here is death. You might buy yourself another hour or two, but then she’ll line you up and gun you down like everybody else. We’re going—now. I don’t care if you hate me for the rest of your life, but at least you’ll have one.”

  Brynn clawed to get free, but Scott tightened his grip and she stumbled backward, digging her heels into the dirt.

  “I was right before. All you care about is yourself—you’re repulsive!” She spit the plosive p in his face. “Go ahead, Scott. Get out of here, you…you spineless piece of shit.” She slapped his cheek, but he clung tighter, squeezing her wrist to the point of bruising.

  “SCREW OFF.”

  Brynn’s leg lashed out at the same time as her fist and both blows connected, buckling Scott’s knee and sending an explosion of stars across his vision. Blood spurted from his lip—his grip released—and they stumbled in opposite directions.

  Scott wiped his mouth and watched Brynn take off from the archery field. He flung his arms open, bellowing, “You’re running to your death!”

  �
��At least I’ll die making the right decision,” she yelled back. “Pray to God you can live with yours.”

  Scott turned for the path to the lake. He paused, glancing at Storybook Square, then at the fort, then at the path again. The birches beckoned him closer with outstretched boughs—Come on, come on, into the woods, hurry. Without second-guessing himself, he shook his head and bolted into the forest. Crownheart vanished behind him. He slalomed uphill and downhill around stumps and roots and boulders, and ten minutes later, the path dumped him on the edge of the beach. He didn’t stop. He sped to the waterfront and beat his way through the reeds and cattails until the grass opened up on his ramshackle escape pod waiting in the froth.

  The barrel was there too, but he averted his eyes from Roddy’s corpse and raced down the dock, hobbling into the boat.

  Paddles. Where are the goddamn—there.

  His hand plunged in the water and seized an oar floating in the algae. He used it to push off from the dock, and the boat drifted out of the shallows, slow at first and then faster as the current tugged him beyond the inlet and doubled speed.

  With only one paddle to aid him, he alternated sides, putting every arm and lumbar muscle to work. The shore went by like a filmstrip. Beach sand faded to river grass, which faded to beaver dams and outcrops of low-hanging cedars.

  “At least I’ll die making the right decision. Pray to God you can live with yours.”

  He tried forcing Brynn’s voice away, but this time he couldn’t.

  “Pray to God you can live with yours. Pray to God. PRAY TO GOD.”

  The lake narrowed and kept channeling Scott south, pulling him deeper into the hinterland. He thought he must have been a quarter of a mile away from Crownheart now—maybe more.

  He brought the oar into the boat and stretched his legs, moaning.

  The bones in his neck cracked. His feet burned, his vision whirled.

  He rested his head on the bench and closed his eyes, and the ringing in his ears stepped down a semitone, then another. Every part of him wanted to puke, but he knew vomiting wouldn’t make him feel better. This isn’t a hangover, he told himself. It’s panic with a shot of heat exhaustion. Jesus H. Christ, help me get through this. Then another thought countered: Help you? Fuck you. Jesus, help those kids you abandoned, you repulsive pile of shit. She was right all along.

  Scott adjusted his body, and his head bumped the ridge of the seat behind him. Above, the sun bore down—a fiery, scrutinizing eyeball unblocked by trees or rooftops—and his blinking got slower and slower. A droplet of sweat rose out of his forehead and hovered on the edge of his hairline, wavering, and then tumbled down the side of his face, making it two inches before his shoulders sagged and the rest of his strength deserted him. By the time the bead of sweat plopped onto the boat’s stern-sheet, Scott Mamer had passed out cold.

  ____

  “Mom says I shouldn’t talk to strangers, but Ms. Cartier says strangers are just friends we haven’t met yet. I think Ms. Cartier is right.”

  No, kid. Get out. Get out before they see you.

  But nothing was in order anymore. The dream was a messed-up movie platter, its mis-spliced reels spooling through his mental projector at twice their regular speed. The audio was wrong too: a stretch of silence occurred when the thugs came screaming in with their hot rod, followed by their blaring threats in the tender moment when Desiree applied a purple bandage to Scott’s leg.

  Another skip, another flash. Now he was on his stomach in the decommissioned train station, peeking through the boards while the thugs circled the little girl.

  “Don’t—or we’ll—and your arm.”

  Scott pleaded for Desiree to betray him this time, to turn and reveal his hiding place. Do it. Give me away. But she didn’t. She made the same over-the-train motion with her hand that she always made, and he wondered—as he had countless times before—how each of their lives would have been different if that eight-year-old hadn’t been the bigger and braver of the two of them that day.

  “Lying!”

  The men closed in tighter.

  Desiree took one step backward, then another. Her dress thrashed in the wind, and Scott saw her eyes grow larger with every inch back.

  Her face vanished from his viewpoint.

  Then the edge of her dress…

  Then her runners…

  Scott gritted his teeth, anticipating the deafening skweee of the steam whistle that would fling him back to reality, kicking and tossing and hyperventilating.

  But no whistle came. The pistons of the locomotive thundered louder in his ears.

  Wake up. He tried pinching himself, but he was paralyzed. Wake up wake up wake up.

  Instead of a skweee, there was a loud, sickening BOOM.

  He felt a scream rising in his throat, but it didn’t escape. The dream had him by the neck, seizing him in a chokehold and forcing him to watch as the little girl’s body landed with a thud less than three inches away from his face.

  Desiree’s skull struck the concrete first, crunching inward like the top of a fractured shell in an Easter shackling competition. Her neck snapped under the weight of her torso and tore open, sending a gory splatter of blood flecking across the side of the train station with appalling force. The rest of the girl’s body hit the ground next. Her chest slammed against the gravel, and her arm came thudding down last—ripped out of its socket—and crumpled into an impossible angle behind her shoulder blades, dangling by a tenuous strand of bright, rosy flesh.

  Scott jolted back, feeling the girl’s blood dribbling down his cheeks. Her eyes stared at him between the planks, wide, unblinking. They weren’t angry or hurt or accusing—they were just empty. Just dead.

  He tried looking away, but he couldn’t. The dream choked tighter as he connected with her gaze and heard the sound of the thugs scrambling for their hot rod. Someone else—a witness—screamed, and more voices began shouting, but those were like distant underwater explosions, leagues and leagues away.

  No sounds came from the body in front of him. She was gone.

  Gone because of me.

  And then—swirling in Desiree’s dead, glassy eyes—Scott saw the dark portents of the fairy-tale fatalities. The little girl’s face became Dominique’s, staring up from the haystack of drugs and syringes on the floor of the foggy hut. Dominique morphed into Erin and then cycled to Chase and Kimberly—purple, constricted necks strangled with zip-line wire—before changing to Meegan and Bethany, chained in the cell of the dungeon with the stumps of their legs collecting white, rancid mold. The anorexics’ pupils distended into Lance’s terrified gaze. A firework electrified the optic discs at the back of his eyeballs, and the geldings shot off in opposite directions as Roddy appeared through the tidal wave of blood, wrung to the bone, his pale skin perforated with innumerable nail holes.

  The faces cycled faster and faster in a grisly loop, but the eyes never changed.

  Dominique, Erin, Chase…

  I’m sorry.

  Kimberly, Meegan, Bethany…

  What do you want? I’m sorry, I’M SORRY.

  Lance, Roddy, Ella, Bruce…

  Stop staring! Leave me alone!

  He tried closing his eyes, but the dead orbs fixed him to the spot. It would have been better if the victims were screaming out, accusing him, or swooping in for revenge—at least then he could make his case or pay the price, and the score would be settled. But they weren’t. They were just dead, and the dead don’t dole out retribution.

  GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY.

  The cycling faces slowed like the drum of a slot machine…and stopped with a dull click. It was the face of the girl again.

  Desiree.

  Tears trickled out of Scott’s eyes. He pictured her standing beside her mother and father in the glossy magazine spread, all hugs and smiles. Above them the headline: “Fairy-tale camp profits! Small family breaks ten-year curse.”

  Desiree Becker.

  Another stream of tears tumbled down
his cheeks. The train station vanished, and he was standing in the Three Pigs Mess Hall with Charlotte. She handed him his uniform and said, “Behave impeccably.” Then the memory warped forward twenty-four hours to her crowded office where a pile of drugs and alcohol littered her desk. “When someone tells you to behave”—she was shouting—“when I said impeccably, why does that sound like a challenge? You’re adults. You’re role models. What the hell happened?” And then a quieter exchange replaced the screaming. “Do you have kids?” Scott heard himself asking during their conversation on the ballroom stage. “No,” Charlotte had said. There had been a look of such grief on her face, which didn’t sink in until now. “I had a daughter. A daughter who’s dead, thanks to you, and now I’ll teach you a lesson, you miserable worm. That’s right. I’ll show you what real pain is like.”

  Charlotte leaned in, transmogrifying. Her jaw and nose cartilage jutted out, connecting in one sharp point, and then black barbs began protruding out of her cheeks.

  “I’ll teach you to hurt little girls,” she screamed. “Are you listening? Are you?!”

  Her chest puffed out like a balloon as the barbs kept extending from her skin, lengthening into feathers. She let out a retching caw and tilted her head toward Scott, flashing the eye of a giant crow ready to rip him apart.

  “ARE YOU LEARNING YOUR LESSON?”

  YES!

  The crow plunged for Scott’s face, striking him square between the eyes, and he let out an agonizing scream.

  All he felt was pressure. All he saw was blood.

  The blood was hot, pulsing, lighting up the darkness with a red hue, and he thought, The sun!

  Scott’s eyes whipped open, and sunlight speared his corneas. He pitched over the side of the rowboat and immediately puked up what little fluid remained in his stomach.

  He pulled himself back in the boat—

  And that’s when he smelled it: something sharp and acidic. He didn’t have to look down to know he had pissed himself.

  He cupped a handful of water from the river and bathed his crotch.

  As he scrubbed, he examined his surroundings and realized he had no idea where he was. The current was barely moving, and the sun seemed to be hanging in the same position as before: a hair-width away from high noon.