In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just that I’m not sure what we’re doin’ way out here on the other side of town from where we’re supposed to be, and you ain’t said three words to me since we left the square. I don’t mind comin’ along with you, Allie, but I care to be more than just a body. I thought we’d . . . you know.”

  “What?” Allie asked.

  “Well, talk for one. We talk more at school than we’ve talked out here all alone by ourselves. Don’t that bother you none?” The trees behind them popped and crunched. Sam sauntered out and sat between them. Zach reached down and stroked the dog’s back. “I know we’re friends and all, but that don’t mean I don’t miss you none.”

  Allie considered how to respond to that. It was something they’d never discussed at length, how far they’d drifted apart. The sweetly awkward moment that followed was filled with the sound of dripping water from the trees and the call of a faraway crow.

  “I miss you too,” she said. “I’m sorry, Zach. We just have to find her is all. I don’t mind talking so long as we’re moving at the same time. Promise.”

  Zach figured that was the best he could manage from her. “Fine, then. We’ll go on. Like I said, there’s plenty time before we gotta head back. You want me to take Sam again?”

  She nodded.

  “I could probably fit him in your backpack,” he said. “It’s big enough, and I’d keep the zipper open for his head to poke through. It’d go easier if he was on my back instead of my lap.”

  “No. There’s other stuff in there that’s mine.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Private stuff. Come on.”

  She rose from the stump and flipped the kickstand up on her bike. Zach lifted Sam and felt the same dull ache in his left arm. Another ache, this one not so dull, crept back into his insides too. Allie had never said anything was private, not to him.

  They left the pavement a few miles ahead (at the compass’s direction, Zach was quick to learn), and wove their way through the narrow dirt roads that cut into the dense forest between Mattingly and the small villages of the hill country. Zach held his unease in check only because those back ways were still familiar. The peace of the woods soothed him and crept into Allie as well. She was talking now, and not pedaling so hard. And even though she often checked her compass, she was looking at Zach more than her wrist.

  “Why’d you hide from Miss Howard?” he asked. “She wouldn’t say nothin’ if she saw us together. No more’n anyone else would, anyway.”

  Just like that, all the progress Zach thought they’d made vanished. Allie fell mute and broody, even went so far as to put both hands on her handlebars instead of just the one. She eased to the other side of the road.

  “Miss Howard wants to marry my daddy,” she said.

  “What?”

  “She wants to marry my daddy. Been trying to wrangle him ever since Momma left. I think she might even love him.”

  The words struck Zach as though they were solid, hard in the body. His arm nearly let go of Sam, who took that opportunity to try and wriggle free. It was the first Zach had heard that about his teacher. He didn’t know if what he felt was anger over Allie keeping such a secret or jealousy over Miss Howard being in love with someone like Marshall Granderson.

  “Miss Howard’s been Momma’s best friend for, like, ever,” Allie said. “Almost as good friends as my momma is with yours. They’ve known each other since they were just little girls. They used to do all kinds of stuff together. Miss Howard was nice then. She came to the funeral and stood right with me, thinking I was gonna cry, but I wasn’t gonna cry over no buried shoe. Wouldn’t hold her hand neither, even though she wanted me to. After, she’d come bring us supper and whatnot. She told me she lost her momma when she was young as me. That’s when it all started. Her latchin’ onto me, I mean. Now she brings us food all the time, even though Daddy says I cook masterpieces. I don’t know what he thinks, but I know what she thinks. I think she made me be in her class, too, just to keep an eye on me. Miss Howard has wiles.”

  “She ain’t got no wiles,” Zach said. “Miss Grace is nice.”

  Allie said, “A woman knows, Zach Barnett,” and Zach decided to leave it at that.

  It was just after noon and many miles on when Allie glanced at her compass again. She braked and settled her feet on the road’s thin layer of gravel, straddling the bike between her legs.

  Zach stopped and asked, “What is it?”

  “Needle’s moved again.”

  He leaned over to look. Sam licked him in the face. Zach eased the dog away and studied the compass. The needle had indeed moved, pointing to the right instead of ahead. He looked in that direction. All he saw there were trees.

  “Ain’t no road that way,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Zach realized he was letting Allie decide for the both of them. It didn’t seem right, letting her do that. She was the one in need; it was his place to take charge. And yet there they were, miles from the nearest home, searching for a missing Christmas ornament by using a busted old carny compass that had never worked in the first place. Zach may only be eleven, but that didn’t take away from his seeing this was the dumbest thing he’d ever done. He hoped Allie would see it too.

  She didn’t. Yes, maybe coming all that way was dumb if you looked at it a certain way. But if you set it on its side and looked at it another way—if you believed—it wasn’t dumb at all. Going in those trees was something Allie didn’t want to do with or without Zach, but she’d swallowed her fears so far, and she’d swallow them still.

  “Onward ho,” Allie said. She chewed on her lip. “That’s where it’s pointing, so that’s where we need to head.”

  She waited for him to move first. The trees where the compass pointed were tall and mangled, bunched together so thick that the sun penetrated little more than their tops. What snow had fallen to the ground there still remained. And there was no noise from inside, no skittering of squirrels, and no birdsong, only an odd quiet that beckoned as much as warned. Sam’s ears perked. He barked once and darted inside the trees, using his nose the same way Allie had used her compass.

  “Allie,” Zach whispered. “I know you love that Mary, but that Mary ain’t your momma. Just like that thing on your wrist ain’t something magic—it’s just an old compass from a long time gone. Things like that, they’re just toys.”

  Allie looked at him. “You scared, Zach Barnett?”

  “I ain’t scared of nothin’!” That was not a whisper. Zach said this as loud and strong as the woods allowed. “I’m just saying that thing’s took us all the way out here to the middle of nowhere, and if we keep following it, we might end up in Africa and still not find nothing.”

  “No,” Allie managed. “That ain’t true.”

  Somewhere in the trees, Sam barked.

  “You wanna go in there?” Zach asked. “You ain’t been in the woods since—”

  The Storm, he almost said. And he almost added, Because you say the wind always sounds meaner in the woods, like it’s chasing you from behind and eating everything in its path.

  Another bark, followed by the rustling of dead leaves in snow. Allie called Sam to her. He only barked again.

  “We’ll just go a little ways,” Allie told him. “Just to see. We’re gonna have to get Sam out of there anyways.”

  Zach thought that was true enough, and if anyone had to go in there to get Allie’s dog, it’d be him. Everyone knew a Barnett wasn’t really at home unless he was in the woods. He and Allie would go in there and walk around a bit, no problem. See where the needle’s pointing and never lose sight of the road. Allie would get her fill soon. She’d start getting hungry or tired or both, and they’d be back in town by lunch.

  He decided to say something manly in an aloof sort of way—Fine then, I’ll take you in there, maybe, or You ain’t gotta be afraid, Allie, ’cause I’m here. He never got the chance. Sam’s barking went fr
om the sort of yapping pups love to make to something urgent.

  “What’s he doing in there?” Allie asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s got a squirrel.”

  Zach took his bike along, no sense leaving it in the road, and walked into the trees. Ahead of Allie, he reminded himself, and with no small amount of satisfaction. She followed close behind with her bike in tow. The trees thickened more not ten feet from the road, where they tangled with underbrush and made the bikes useless.

  “You see him?” Zach asked.

  He turned when Allie didn’t answer. Her attention was on the compass again. Zach shook his head and called out for Sam. The bark came from only a few more feet away, beneath the corpse of a fallen oak. Zach flipped his kickstand down.

  Allie said, “Zach, there’s something wrong with the compass.”

  “Shocking.”

  He pushed through a maze of thornbushes, wincing as the needles scraped his hands. The tree on the other side rested at a low angle to the ground, propped up by its own splintered stump. Dead branches formed a web over the ground. Sam lay beneath. He whined as Zach approached.

  “What you got, boy?” he asked.

  “Zach?” Allie called. She sounded far away. “You gotta see this needle. It’s really freaking out.”

  Zach didn’t answer. He reached the fallen tree and squatted to where Sam waited, rubbing the dog’s ears. “Good boy,” he said. “You just take it easy, Samwise. Just let me see what you—”

  The last word lodged in Zach’s throat, stealing his breath. He heard Allie approaching behind him, felt the sting the thorns had left on the backs of his hands. Smelled the damp freshness of the forest. But all of those things seemed apart from him, inconsequential. It was what Zach saw beneath that rotten old log that consumed him. Because Allie was right. She’d been right all along.

  6

  Allie’s world had shrunk to the space of the tiny, fog-covered bubble over the needle the moment they’d left the road. She never saw Zach move through the thornbush and stoop to that fallen tree. She heard Sam barking and herself calling for Zach, telling him he had to see this, the needle was really freaking out. And it was, Allie could think of no better word. She couldn’t tell where the needle pointed now because the needle couldn’t make up its mind. It swung in a tight arc between the fallen tree where Zach had gone and a spot to their right. Here, then there, back to here. Slow at first, then faster, and then so fast that the needle blurred. The compass was going to explode. Allie’s mind buckled at that certainty. She held her wrist out and away from her body, wanting the compass off, now afraid of the magic that had lain dormant in it for so long.

  She wanted Zach. Zach would get the compass off. He would save her, he always had, and Allie believed if she had done one thing right that morning it was to stop at the sheriff’s office before heading out all that way alone. She wouldn’t have braved the back roads beyond town with only Sam. She never could have strayed into the woods, where even the breeze rushed like thunder through the limbs and leaves. Standing there with her arm outstretched, feeling the needle’s vibration against her wrist, Allie Granderson no longer cared what would happen to Zach if God found out she loved him. She only knew she did, and there was no changing it.

  Her voice quivered. “Zach? Help me please?”

  There was nothing at first, only the trees and the brush and the sound of Sam’s whimpers from somewhere under the tree. Allie closed her lips over the scream in her throat. Her eyes tightened at the edges.

  The compass made a whirring sound as Zach rose up from the twist of branches, snapping them. The look on his face was not the calm assurance Allie craved. It was instead an expression of shock and shame. When he raised his arm to show Allie what Sam had found, the needle froze with a click so loud it made her flinch.

  The scarf had been muddied and browned by a night in the woods, but Allie could still see the blue-and-orange stripes. Sam scurried from the log and wormed his way through the scrub. He reached Allie and rose up, dirtying her jeans with his front paws. Zach followed as best he could, wincing as he passed through the briars. Allie’s hand remained outstretched, still calling for help. Zach, thinking Allie’s arm was out because she’d known about the scarf before Sam even found it, placed it in Allie’s palm. Her fingers closed around the thick wool.

  “Sam found it.” He bent without taking his eyes away and rubbed the dog’s ears, telling him good boy. “It’s yours, ain’t it? I seen it last night. You put that scarf and the one you wear t’school around Mary’s neck. To keep her warm.”

  Allie ran the scarf through her fingers. It felt cold and damp and utterly lifeless. This wasn’t right, not right at all. She managed a slow, deep nod.

  “It’s true,” Zach said. “It’s really true. You were right, Allie. Your compass works. It brought us here. Right here.”

  Her head shook no. It couldn’t end this way. This couldn’t be all.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “We got a ever-lovin’ miracle here, Allie. You’re standing there like it’s the end of the world.”

  Zach thumped her just to the side of where the strap of her pack met her right shoulder, rocking Allie backward. He chuckled and tensed, waiting for her to retaliate. But when Allie reached out her hand, it wasn’t to smack. It was to show. The compass pointed to the fallen tree where Sam had found the scarf, but only because that was the direction where Allie’s hand pointed. The needle had frozen again.

  “I think maybe it really is the end of the world,” she said. “I think it’s broke.”

  Allie left off the again her mind wanted to add on, if for no other reason than she still believed the compass was never really broken before. It had been more waiting. And yet standing there just beyond the edge of the road, Allie was reminded once more that nothing ever lasted long in life. The world wasn’t built for permanence. Things broke and rusted and faded. Things went away. Sometimes very important things.

  Zach said, “Let me see,” and took hold of her wrist, easing it to himself. His fingers were dirty and strong. She felt a shiver at his touch. He flicked the plastic dome on top of the compass. The needle didn’t budge. “That don’t make no sense.”

  “It does if that’s all we were supposed to find,” Allie said.

  “Why would it just let us find that and nothing else?”

  “I don’t know. You can’t figure magic.”

  Sam became concerned with this latest development. He raised up on his hind legs and fell into an awkward pirouette, sniffing at the air between them. Zach tapped the dome again. Allie let him. It hadn’t worked the first time, and she felt no indication it would work now, but it was better than just standing in the middle of the woods with a dancing beagle.

  “Maybe we should pray,” Zach said.

  “Don’t you dare,” Allie told him. “I’m marked, Zach Barnett, in case you forgot. You invite Him in on this, things’ll end just as bad as they always do. Besides, the Lord ain’t the one doing the talking through this.”

  “Well, right now ain’t nobody doing the talking through it. What were you doing when it started working the first time?”

  “I was standing in the yard,” she said, “looking at that spot where the Mary used to be and tryin’ not to cry.”

  “Maybe you should start cryin’,” Zach said. “Or at least get close to it.”

  Allie shook her head. “Crying means it’s done.”

  They stared at the needle, each of them trying to find another way. Sam gave up his dance and resorted to walking in wide circles around them, sniffing at the snow.

  “Maybe we just gotta believe,” Zach said.

  “How do we do that?”

  “I don’t know. Believing’s not something you do; it’s something you are.”

  So the two of them huddled around Allie’s tiny compass in silence, guarded by Samwise and his wide circles. Allie thought maybe Zach was right, they just had to believe. If that was the case, then s
he hoped Zach could believe enough for the both of them. The Storm had taken no one he loved, and nothing bad had ever happened to him. Faith ran true through such people. They had no cracks inside them for it to fall through and disappear, and they had no walls around them to dam it all up until it turned sour.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please work.”

  Perhaps that word was what unstuck the needle. Or perhaps it was not belief at all, only a need for one more miracle. But something freed the compass just then. It was only a bit, just a tiny twitch of the needle to the side, and if either of them had chosen that moment to blink, they would’ve missed it. Zach held Allie’s wrist and eased his head away, letting what sun leaked through alight on the dome. The needle moved again, this time the other way, like it was a rusty hinge being worked free by some unseen hand. It swung in a slow sweep first to Zach, then to Allie, and finally farther on into the forest. The compass trembled. Allie thought it was going to go stiff again, then realized the shaking was coming from Zach’s hand.

  “We gotta go,” Zach said. “I know it’s scary, but I’ll be with you. I think we’re really going to find her, Allie. I think your Mary’s close.”

  Allie nodded, and the smile she gave Zach was a grin more of conviction than belief. She tied the scarf around her waist like a belt and adjusted her backpack. Sam stopped his circles and joined them. She bent and cradled the dog’s head in her hands, kissing him there.

  “You’re a good boy, Sam. You did real good. You show us the way now.”

  Twenty miles to the south in the city of Camden, Virginia, Marshall Granderson had spent his half-hour lunch trying to call home. Allie wouldn’t answer. Everything was fine. That’s what he told himself as he hung up for the last time. Everything was fine and Allie hadn’t looked under the tarp, and there would be plenty of time after his shift ended for him to drive to the Walmart and buy another Mary. Craziest thing in the world, how that thing had disappeared. Taken by the storm the night before, most likely. Allie was right: it had been a blow.

  He tried thinking of someone he could call, anyone who could stop by the house to make sure the tarp was still there and Allie was okay. But the neighbors were all at work, and he had no real friends except for Bobby, who was likely drunk by now. He thought of Grace next. Grace would go by the house, would probably vacuum the floors and clean the bathrooms and cook supper, too, but Marshall knew Grace would never get the chance because Allie would never answer the door for her. It didn’t matter. That’s what Marshall thought as he donned his earplugs again. Everything was fine. Everything had to be.