Beyond those trees, however, she could understand a case being made for the stories she’d heard. The shaded interior between, with its thick, strange foliage, emanated an odd smell of organic material just begun to decompose. As dusk drew on, she’d begun to hear sounds, not just the crunching and snapping of twigs trampled by some animal, not just the oddly mournful wails and calls of loons and owls, but other noises. These she hadn’t been quite able to identify—hissing and sliding and slithering sounds too big to be made by any animal she knew. And Haley in the backseat, either picking up on Charlie’s unease or feeling some instinctual baby sense of danger, had begun to whimper and fuss. They’d left in a hurry.
Charlie didn’t want to die there. She didn’t want to die that day, period, but least of all there in those woods, alone in their darkness and forgotten until someone found her gun-shot body in the car. Or those whispered-about things that made those too-big noises found her first.
As if tuned into her thoughts, Simone asked, “Ever go hiking out there in those woods?”
“No,” Charlie replied.
“The doctors always tried to get me to go hiking,” Simone continued as if Charlie’s answer was irrelevant. A small laugh escaped her. “They thought the fresh air, the exercise would do me good.”
Charlie didn’t answer. She no longer wanted to think about the woods. She was running out of time.
“As if fresh air could just, I don’t know, blow through me like a wind and take all the bad feelings away. Like I could hike far enough away to forget about the foul things that seep up from the ground and poison everything beautiful and take all the color and music away, right? Ridiculous. They knew I hate the fade. I hate the shadows it causes. And just because you’ve got the sun shining on something, that doesn’t dry up the foul things or send them back underground, you know? I don’t think anything can do that, really.”
That creeping chill closed around Charlie again. Every time Simone spoke, that door in her head that kept delusion at bay, as badly unhinged as it was, seemed to swing farther out and away from its frame. Or maybe, Charlie thought, it was more like a window to Simone—without was the real world, with unmanageable, unbearable stresses, and she looked out sometimes on it through the skewed, dusty glass of her insanity. Within, though, Charlie suspected all those terrible little creeping insecurities and fears, the foul things, still managed to slip in. Seeped up from the floor, maybe, like she said.
Simone continued. “And those woods there?” She tapped the barrel of the gun against the window lightly and huffed disdainfully. “No fresh air in those woods, no sir.”
Haley blinked, staring at the trees outside her window. Her tiny hand rubbed her little lips, a sign she was hungry. Charlie watched her, tensing in anticipation. Would Simone be able to handle a crying baby without that door in her mind falling off completely? Her stress threshold was obviously low, and that made her a powder keg that a tiny, unsuspecting, uncomprehending baby voicing discomfort would only provide a fuse for. She had to get Haley out of there. Already she was running options in her mind. The scenario that gave her the most satisfaction involved elbowing Simone in the face, diving toward Haley, snatching her from the car seat, and running like hell. Logistically, though, on a good day those baby car seats took a few minutes of fumbling, and those minutes could get her shot in the head. She considered getting out and flagging down another car, maybe even a police car. Simone would most likely make the same threats, though, that she had made at the gas station. Crashing the car was not an option, not with Haley in the backseat. Alone, she would have taken the risk, had in fact heard somewhere that crashing the car was a carjack victim’s best option for survival. But what if it went wrong and Haley got hurt? She just couldn’t bring herself to do that.
“Please let us go,” Charlie said, forcing her voice around a tiny bone of desperation wedged in her throat. “Please, Simone, you don’t want to do this.”
“Don’t,” Simone said with an exasperated shake of the head. “Don’t start that. This has to be done. It’s the best thing for the baby. You’ll see.”
“Simone, Haley needs me. I’m her mother—”
“No,” Simone growled, and Charlie flinched. The gun hovered close to her right ear. “No, no, no. You don’t understand. The baby is mine. They never should have taken her away from me. I won’t—I won’t—let it happen again.”
“Simone, I don’t underst—”
“You need to shut up now,” Simone said. Her voice tone sounded hysterical, tense, like the electric hum of the air before a storm. “You need to shut up now.”
Charlie kept her watering eyes on the road. She couldn’t help but watch all those other cars cruising around her, heading off to countless destinations—jobs, restaurants, bars, food stores, drugstores, coffee shops. Maybe a husband was speeding off to the hospital to meet his wife for the birth of their first child. Maybe he was speeding toward a motel to catch her sleeping with the guy next door. Maybe a teenager was heading toward the mall to meet friends, or a couple on their first date were going to catch a movie. Maybe folks were going home. Home safe home. All those people’s cars were spiriting them to normal places, commonplace next stages of everyday life. She envied them.
“The baby’s awake,” she countered softly.
“What?”
Maybe it was the crack to her skull or the stress and fear finally wearing her thin, but she said in firm and measured tones, “I need to stop. I need to take care of the baby. She’s awake. She’s going to be hungry, she’ll need to be changed…” In the baby seat, Haley stirred, poking out her little lip in a pout that signaled she was about to cry.
“I’ll take care of her.” The cloud gathered over Simone’s face again. “I can take care of her.”
Charlie considered this. If she could get Haley fed and changed, she might be able to keep both the baby and the woman next to her calm. It was Charlie’s gut feeling that calm was the key to avoiding premature violence. Calm would bide her time until she figured out how to save Haley.
“Her bottle is in the diaper bag down there,” Charlie said, gesturing with a crooked thumb.
Simone seemed startled by this sudden acquiescence, and looked blankly from her to the baby to the tan canvas bag, which had slid to the right, behind the passenger seat.
Haley began to issue a series of staccato cries, and Charlie’s chest tightened.
“There are two baby food jars, a spinach and a plum, and a spoon in the diaper bag. Plums are her favorite. She should eat them for you, no problem. There’s a bib in there, too.” The calm in Charlie’s voice surprised her. It sounded like some other woman outside her head speaking those words, a model of restraint because survival demanded it.
Haley’s cries grew louder, the little fists pummeling the air in front of her, and Charlie’s heart ached. She hated to hear the baby crying, but now, so helpless and unable to protect her, unable even to feed her, it tore deeply into the mommy-part of Charlie and nearly brought tears to her own eyes.
“You have to feed her, Simone, or I’ll have to pull over and feed her myself.”
With one hand, Simone still clutched the gun. With the other, she tugged the diaper bag toward her and unzipped it, then rifled around for the items Charlie had mentioned. A moment later, she produced the jars of baby food and the beginner spoon, and with some renewed effort, found a bib. She fidgeted with trying to get it around Haley’s neck, and Charlie tensed again. It made her livid to see that woman’s fingers, frustrated and impatient, working to get a piece of cloth around her child’s neck. With an exasperated huff, Simone gave up, draping the bib just beneath the baby’s chin without bothering to snap it. She popped open the jar of baby food spinach first and began spooning it into Haley’s open and wailing mouth. Haley immediately stopped crying, but dribbled the excess green goop down her chin.
“Thank you,” Charlie said, forcing the words to sound as genuine as possible. “That’s right, just give her small spoonf
uls, slowly, and she’ll eat it all.” She hoped Simone would get the hint to stop shoving heaps Haley couldn’t keep up with into her mouth, and kept a mental pair of fingers crossed that nothing in her tone could be misconstrued as critical.
To her relief, Simone took her advice, slowed down, and offered a smaller spoonful. She even wiped the extra baby food off Haley’s chin with the corner of the bib. Charlie considered offering some praise to reinforce the behavior, but decided against it. She didn’t want to push it. She wanted to maintain calm, and that was, she was coming to see, a balancing act between giving, suggesting, and knowing when to shut up and let things go. So she forced herself to focus as best she could on the road, rewarding herself for every so many minutes of calm with a glance back to see how they were doing.
So far, so good. Haley was, luckily, a great little eater, especially with the fruits and veggies. She had finished her spinach and Simone was now giving her the plums. She gurgled contentedly, and a small weight lifted off Charlie’s chest.
“All done,” Simone said, sounding pleased. Charlie glanced back to see Simone get most of the remaining baby food off Haley’s cheeks and chin, and then shove it all, open and sticky as is, back into the diaper bag. Simone wiped her hand on the back of Charlie’s chair. “She ate—”
Just then there was a loud popping sound, and for one horrible moment, Charlie thought the gun had gone off. Her gaze darted to the rearview in time to see the baby jump, startled.
“What was that?” Simone asked, her beaming eyes and smile suddenly swallowed in panic. “What was that?”
“I—I don’t know.” Charlie was a far cry from an expert on cars, but from the thud-thud-thud her sedan was making, she suspected a flat tire. “I’m going to have to pull over and check.”
“Keep going,” Simone said, suspicious.
“I can’t. I think the tire might be flat. If I keep going and it blows out, we could skid off the highway and crash.”
Simone’s thin fingers pounced on her shoulder, gripping it tightly. “If this is a trick to try to get away from me—”
“Listen,” Charlie said with all the patience she could muster, slowing down to coast along the shoulder. “Listen to the sound it’s making. You’ve got to be able to hear that it can’t be a good sound.”
Simone let go of her shoulder, still hovering close, and Charlie rolled to a stop along the ample shoulder. To their left, trucks and other cars roared by, rocking the little sedan.
“Get out and check.”
Charlie hesitated. If she got out alone, this crazy bitch might try to hop in the front seat and drive away with Haley. That was unacceptable. She pinched the bridge of her nose, her head still throbbing, and tried to think. “She’s gonna scream if she sees me get out of the car and leave her alone with a stranger.”
“She’ll be fine.” Simone raised the gun to Charlie’s face. “Go.”
Charlie sighed, took the keys out of the ignition, and pocketed them. With a glance back to her baby followed by a wary one directed at Simone, she opened the driver’s-side door.
A truck thundered past, driving a wind that whipped at her hair and clothes and even the open car door. She closed the door behind her, glancing down to check the tires on the driver side. Both looked okay to her, full enough, the hub cap riding high from the street. She crossed her arms over her chest against the wind from the traffic and moved around the front of the car to the passenger side. As she passed the hood, she glanced into the backseat. Simone was watching her, eyes enveloped by their own darkness. Her arm wrapped around the top of the baby seat, the hand with the gun dangling so that the barrel just brushed the top of the baby’s fine hair.
Charlie forced herself to look away and check the passenger-side tires. The rear one was clearly the problem, its underside nearly flat with the pavement. A flap of thick black rubber just beneath the wheel well blew escaping air on her hand as she passed it over the tire.
“Damn,” she muttered, staring at it a moment. Normally, she would have called AAA to fix it (car expert she was not), because although she knew the theory behind changing a tire, she had only ever actually done so once before. It had always been a task that boyfriends had handled in the past. She glanced again at Simone and the baby, and the window on her side buzzed down.
“What’s going on?” Simone asked.
“Tire’s shot. I have a donut in the trunk, I think, but you’re not really supposed to go more than a few miles on it.”
“That’s fine. We’re almost where we’re going, anyway.”
The two women regarded each other for a moment, and Charlie moved toward the trunk to get the spare. She had just gotten it out of the trunk, along with the jack, when the state trooper’s car pulled up on the shoulder behind her.
* * *
“Everything okay?”
The policeman was tall, sandy-haired, sporting sunglasses that completely obscured his eyes. He exuded a crisp solidity that made Charlie think of jocks and soldiers, and he moved with a stiff, wary, no-nonsense kind of walk that spoke of a man used to dealing with people who were rarely happy to see him.
Charlie, on the other hand, couldn’t be more delighted. “Flat tire,” she said, rising and dusting her hands on her jeans. She risked a quick glance to the baby and Simone in the backseat, then smiled at the officer.
“Your head is bleeding. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“What? Oh, oh, yeah,” Charlie responded, her fingers fluttering up to her head. “I—it was stupid. I bumped it against the corner of the door when I was getting into the car before. It’s—it’s okay now.”
For several agonizing moments, she waited, her heart pounding in her chest, for the policeman to finish assessing her and her answer. Finally, he nodded slowly and said, “Need me to call a tow truck, ma’am?”
“Well, I—”
“I think we’ll be fine,” Simone said. She stood next to the open back door on the driver side, the side so close to the cars and trucks thundering by. Charlie’s chest felt tight, the pounding of her heart in her ears now. In her arms, Simone held the baby who, bright-eyed and curious, clutched a tiny fistful of the thin blonde hair that had escaped from its bonds.
“Ma’am, I’d like to ask you to please come around to this side of the car.”
When Simone hesitated, the policeman repeated his request more firmly, gesturing to her. “Please, ma’am, bring the baby around this side. It’s safer than being so close to traffic.”
Simone eyed Charlie evenly and moved with Haley around the front side of the car to stand next to Charlie.
The policeman regarded both of them for a moment, and then addressed Charlie. “Ma’am, are you the driver?”
Charlie nodded. “We were going for a drive.” She forced a smile that felt too big, too exaggerated for her mouth, then added, “It soothes the baby—you know, when we can’t get her to sleep.”
The policeman nodded. “Could I please see license, registration, and insurance?”
“Sure, sure, no problem.” Charlie’s heart leaped as she moved to the front passenger-side door. Surely Simone couldn’t argue that to avoid rousing suspicion, it made sense to give the cop her credentials. Her credentials, which had her name, address, and contact info. Her credentials, which, should someone actually care enough to report her missing, could help establish a timeline as to when and where she was last seen, what direction she was heading, and—maybe Simone hadn’t thought of this, getting out of the car—a visual of whom she had been with. She almost giggled when she opened the door and dug through her glove compartment. She produced the requested documents and walked them back to the officer.
He nodded. “Thank you. I’m just going to run these. Please wait here.”
“Can Charlie fix the tire while you’re doing that?” Simone called after him.
He turned. “Please, both of you just wait there until I come back. Then I’ll wait with you until the tire is changed and you’re ready to get back
on the road, okay?”
Simone nodded, even offered the policeman a smile herself.
The policeman went back with Charlie’s credentials and got into the front seat, punching her information into the dashboard laptop, and she again allowed herself the faintest hope that somebody, anybody had reported her missing, that someone had found her cell phone or maybe that gas station attendant—
“If you say anything to the cop,” Simone leaned over and told her in a harsh whisper, clutching Haley to her chest, “I’ll take the baby and run right out into traffic. Do you hear?”
Sickened, Charlie nodded. It was then that she decided she was going to kill Simone. She wasn’t sure how yet, but this lunatic waif was threatening the most precious person in the world to Charlie, and she was going to die for it.
The policeman returned and handed Charlie back the credentials, which she reluctantly returned to the glove compartment. As she walked back, she couldn’t help but notice Simone had moved around to the trunk with the baby, her back to the highway. The wind stirred by the moving cars whipped strands of hair from the knot behind her head and yanked at the back of her sweater. Haley jumped, her little face hovering between surprise and tears, every time the trucks zoomed close.
“Do you need help with the tire?” The policeman gestured toward the trunk.
“Uh, I think I’ve got it.” Charlie went around to the trunk, cringing infinitesimally when her proximity caused Simone to move away from her toward the traffic. She believed Simone would do it, would run right out into traffic with the baby. The thought made her sick to her stomach.
The Fading Place Page 3