In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  At first Allie didn’t understand what he meant—the underbrush was still there, waiting to poke and prod all over again—but then she did. Yes, there was underbrush, but it wasn’t the same. It all laid scattered in a different way. There were pines instead of oaks. Boulders and small rocks that hadn’t been there before.

  “It’s okay,” Zach said. “It is. Really.”

  But those words sounded small and weak to Allie, as though Zach was trying to convince himself instead of her. Far from comforting, what Zach said released a tiny, horrible thought that bubbled up from the dark place in Allie’s heart and whispered that her mother was gone forever, and what had been lost could never be gained again.

  A thought that bubbled up in Zach as well. Something far different from Allie’s, but one just as terrible.

  He didn’t know the way.

  8

  “What do we do?”

  Allie looked at Zach, who in the last seconds had gone from a source of great comfort to one of increasing worry. He wouldn’t move from his spot at the edge of the meadow and wouldn’t say anything other than the same two words—“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay”—as though repetition was the secret to altering circumstance. She thumped him in the arm.

  “Zach? What do we do?”

  He turned, facing Allie instead of the underbrush. That was enough to pull him from his trance. He blinked twice and opened his mouth wide, like he was trying to pop his ears.

  “We gotta not freak out,” he said, though the shake in his voice told her he was nearly there. “That’s when people screw up. They freak out and then they do something stupid. We just gotta think.”

  Allie said, “Well, I think that’s the way we come,” and pointed to the thick tangle of pines in front of them. And of course it was. It could have been no other way. They’d followed a straight line from the brush to the meadow and had gone no farther. Zach turned to see the rotting oak hadn’t moved. Its limbs were still raised out and up, warning STOP.

  But it didn’t look like that was the way they’d come, and they both knew it. There’d been oaks, for one, not pines. They’d forced their way through thornbushes—as though reading each other’s minds, Zach and Allie looked down at the scratches on their hands that proved it—but now those thornbushes were gone as well, replaced by a mass of rotting branches atop a blanket of pinecones and needles. Zach crouched and called for Sam.

  “You take us home, boy?” he asked. “Where’s home, Samwise? Huh?”

  “That ain’t gonna work,” Allie said. “Sam’s just a pup, Zach. He couldn’t find his tail.”

  Zach paid her no mind. He rubbed Sam’s head. “You go on now, boy. Take us back.”

  Sam made a small circle around them, sniffing at the ground.

  “See?”

  “He ain’t looking for home,” Allie said. “Prolly just looking for a place to pee.”

  But then Sam let out a small bark and lit straight for the trees, trusting his nose over his eyes. He disappeared into the scrub. Allie felt a flash of panic at the thought of her dog getting lost in there and never being seen again. She called for him once and then again, taking a small step toward the trees. A bark returned.

  “We should go,” Zach said. “You ain’t supposed to, you know. When you get lo—” He cut off the word, not wanting to say it. “When you get turned around, you’re supposed to hold still. But I think we should go.”

  Allie looked back into the meadow. She didn’t know if people who got turned around were supposed to stay put or not, but she knew she wanted to get away from that tree. She took Zach’s hand. He led them into the pines, holding the branches away so they wouldn’t clip her face. Allie kept calling for Sam. Zach used the barks that returned as a homing signal to lead them through to the other side. Allie’s fingers began to tremble, and not just from the cold that had settled over the woods. Her breaths came fast and shallow. That hollow place in her stomach growled in high, lonely whines.

  The pines thinned ahead. Sam continued his barking, though there was no longer need. The white tip of his tail whooshed against the evergreens, and that was the only thing that moved.

  “There he is,” Zach said.

  Allie reached Sam and bent to her knees, kissing him on the nose. She smiled when he licked her face and nearly laughed as his tail slapped her on the leg. True, they were all just as lo—

  (turned around)

  —as they’d been only minutes before, but Allie realized things were better now. They were together at least, all three of them, and she thought being bewildered wasn’t so bad if you weren’t the only one.

  Zach pointed. “Look.”

  Not thirty feet to their right sat the most beautiful sight Allie had ever seen. The oaks may have turned to pines and the brambles to fluffy needles, but the boulder they’d rested on remained. Spread out beyond was the same olden wood they’d crossed before. And here and there, where pockets of snow remained, lay a winding trail of footprints.

  “It’s okay,” Zach told her—told himself. This time he needed to say it only once. “All we gotta do is follow the path we made. We should hurry up, though. It’s gettin’ dark. Colder too.”

  They moved quickly from one patch of snow to the next, mindful to keep parallel to the footprints in case they found themselves turned around again. It felt good, getting away from that meadow. Zach kept a solid pace in front of Allie and Sam, looking over his shoulder to make sure they weren’t falling behind. Allie stopped only once and only so she could shrug off her pack and put her jacket back on. She untied the scarf from her waist and wrapped it around her neck. It was dirty and smelled like the woods, but Allie figured she was both of those things too. Sam went on ahead. Zach tapped the toe of his boot on the ground, waiting. His eyes kept moving.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Just don’t like it here is all. You been in the woods as much as me, you get to feeling things other people don’t. This place feels bad.”

  Allie thought that was just about as close to admitting he was scared as Zach could get. It did little to make her own self feel better. She reached for her backpack and said, “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

  “What?”

  “I gotta go, Zach. Just for a minute. It’s important.”

  “Can’t you wait till we get back?” he asked. “We’re runnin’ out of daylight, Allie. You’re daddy’s probably home by now, and my folks are gonna kill me.”

  “I gotta go.”

  Sam paused ahead and turned around, wanting to know which of them was holding up the group.

  “Well, can you just wait until we’re outta these woods?” Zach asked. “Can you at least do that?”

  Allie didn’t think she could—it had been forever since she checked Down There, and she thought the longer it went, the worse it would be—but she nodded anyway. Zach made a circling motion with his hand and turned, moving toward Sam. Allie slipped her arms through the straps of her pack and jogged to catch up.

  Just as before, that wide wood stole whatever words either of them had a mind to speak. Allie concentrated on the crunching sound of their feet upon the hard earth instead, hoping that would take her mind off the heavy feeling of something being near. The trail was clear enough, which comforted her; the patches of snow were close enough that she could see the next set of tracks before leaving the set they traveled through. She didn’t think they were far from the borderland where they’d first entered that part of the wood. After that it wouldn’t be long until they found their bikes and the road. That notion made her feel better in one way and worse in another. They’d spent hours searching, and all they’d gotten for their trouble were sore legs and scratched faces.

  Zach had promised they’d come back the next day. Allie believed that well enough, at least as far as he was concerned. But tramping through the woods all day had left her best friend looking weary, and his face held a pasty color streaked by long beads of sweat leaking from under his hat. He might have a
ll the intention in the world of coming back the next day, but there was no way his momma would let him. Especially with it being that close to Christmas. And what would Allie do then?

  She lifted her sleeve to make sure the needle still pointed. As long as it did, there was at least a chance Allie could come back herself, find the way. She stopped. The compass was still working. It also wasn’t. At least not in the way Allie thought it should.

  Zach didn’t see her and kept walking, his eyes fixed ahead.

  “Zach?”

  “Shh. When we’re out. Then we can talk.”

  “But—”

  “Shh.”

  He shook his head, not believing how Allie could go on yammering there in the middle of that wood. He fixed his attention ahead, watching for movement. He didn’t see any and knew that didn’t matter. Just because you can’t see a thing don’t mean it ain’t real, or even that it ain’t watching. That’s what he’d told Allie, and that’s what he believed now. Something was hiding among those ancient trees. Whatever it was didn’t feel close, at least not in the sense that Allie and Sam were close. But it was watching.

  Allie forced her legs to work and caught up. Sam lifted his nose from the ground and made his way with only his eyes, convinced of the way now. Zach matched the dog’s steps and glanced around and up. Allie followed his gaze. The trees felt closer, the air thicker, and for a brief moment a primal place deep within her roused, sparking to life some dormant ancestral gene born in a time when the whole world lived in wild places that were big and dark and could swallow you. Nothing around them had changed. The trees were still grand and kingly, the empty spaces still full with welcoming peace. But those things felt false to Allie now. It was almost as if the forest used those things the same way some women used makeup—to hide old scars that would never heal.

  “Up there,” Zach said. Sam’s eyes and nose hadn’t failed them. Ahead, the woods ended in the same jagged line of scrub and bush they’d come through early that afternoon. “See that? We’re almost through.”

  Allie looked at the compass again. She shook her head, trying to understand.

  “Zach, it ain’t right. Something’s wrong.”

  “Not no more. We’re good, Allie. Told you I’d keep you safe.” He patted Sam on the butt. “Lead on, boy.”

  The dog weaved his way through the saplings and undergrowth. Zach scrunched down his hat and took Allie’s hand again. They picked their way through an old game trail, wincing as the briars scraped them, Allie calling for Sam and Sam answering, Zach homing in on the sound. When they broke through to the empty place beyond, neither of them spoke. Sam’s tail fell silent between his legs. Only Allie felt a sense of what had happened, and how.

  The needle had pointed through the screaming tree in the meadow. As such, it should have been pointing behind them all that time, back from where they’d come. And yet somewhere in that silent and watching forest, something had turned. Them or the needle, Allie didn’t know. All she knew was that the compass now pointed ahead, and Sam hadn’t led them back to the road. What they’d found instead was a dead meadow of graying grass that surveyed a whitening sky and a rising moon. And in the middle of that meadow stood a tree so bent and grotesque that its wide limbs and rotting mouth did not need to scream STOP for them to do just that.

  Zach let go of Allie’s hand. “That ain’t possible,” he said. “How could we end up back here?” Panicking now, freaking out, just what he’d said they shouldn’t do because that’s when people screwed up. “What’s going on, Allie? What’d we do wrong?”

  She tried to calm him. Zach’s voice came out broken and stumbling. He pushed Allie away when she tried to take hold of his shoulders and screamed into the air—“Help, hey, anybody, help us please”—repeating it, just as It’s okay had come before. The last call came out more scream than words and ended with three deep coughs that sounded thick with mucus. Only Zach’s echo returned, along with a cold breeze that lowered Allie’s head to her chest. The three of them stood still and hushed as that echo faded to silence. It was as if they were the only ones left in the world.

  9

  They took lodging beneath a thick, low-hanging pine in the heart of the undergrowth, away from the wind and cold. The ground there was dry, and that place in the tangle hid them from the screaming tree. Dusk yielded to the kind of dark that can only exist in the wilderness, one so deep and heavy that Allie felt it seeping into her bones. The singing birds and shuffling squirrels that had kept them company through the day fell silent. Sam huddled near sleep in a pillow of needles beside Allie’s pack. He looked hungry and thirsty. They all did. The fear over finding themselves back in the meadow rather than closer to the road lingered. Thankfully, Zach had taken charge with a confidence that warmed Allie despite the cold.

  “We’ll stay here tonight,” he’d said. “It’s too late to go searchin’ for someplace better. Pine’ll keep us warm if we bundle and keep Sam close.”

  Allie looked down at her thin jacket. It had held up okay, as had the sweatshirt beneath. She’d been colder in her short life. But her tennis shoes were soggy from the long walk through the snow, and her feet were tingly.

  “We can’t freak out,” Zach said, more to himself than to her. “We gotta stay calm. It’s just one night. Just a few hours, really. It’ll be like camping, like Joseph and Mary did. We’ll find our way come morning, Allie. The way’s always easy to see in the light. My folks and your daddy’re prolly looking for us already. Bet the whole town’s out hollering.”

  And that was true. Marshall had returned home hours before, carrying a six-pack that was down to two rather than a new Mary because who knew you had to buy the whole set, the Joseph and Jesus, too, and that was a hundred dollars Marshall didn’t have. He’d found the windows dark and the tree unlit and the front door open but still thought everything was fine. The Grandersons had no Mary but they had each other, and it was only when Marshall found his note on the back of the door, with four words scrawled beneath his own, that he knew that notion was a lie and always had been.

  She’s all I had

  Only that. Not even her name beneath or “Daddy” and a comma at the top. But it was enough to send Marshall out the front door, where now his beer-soaked mind cleared enough for him to notice the wood he’d stacked in Mary’s place that morning sprawled out on the damp ground. The blue tarp he’d used to cover it lay in a clump nearby.

  Allie had found it. He’d left her a note saying not to look but she’d looked anyway, how could she not, that stupid Mary was all Allie had. Screaming his daughter’s name across an empty street, he’d raced back inside to find both Sam and Allie’s backpack gone, but it was only when he spotted the shed door open and Allie’s bike missing that he knew what had happened. Allie had run away. In the days that would follow, Marshall Granderson would come to understand a great many truths about his life. In those first few moments, however, only one truth broke through his panic—he had no one to turn to for help. It took the last bit of strength left in him to stand on Grace Howard’s front porch and not cry when she answered the door.

  The two words that greeted Grace had come out shouted and slurred, masking the enormity of what Marshall had said for only a moment. Grace stood there with her brow scrunched. Her mouth opened slowly as her mind pieced together what Marshall had just said:

  Allie’s gone.

  He hadn’t heard from her all day, had called and called, but it was only when Marshall began repeating that Mary was gone, gone, and he wasn’t the one who’d taken her at all that Grace had begun to worry. She’d opened the door, inviting him inside. Marshall shook his head no, he had to find Allie. They had to find Allie, because Grace was the only person who would help. Grace told Marshall that wasn’t true. She’d also told him that Allie hadn’t run away at all. And what Grace said next was both the one thing she’d known Marshall most needed to hear and the one thing he didn’t.

  She’d seen Allie that morning, in the town square.
And she’d been with Zach Barnett.

  They’d driven to the Barnett home straight away, believing Allie was there. After an argument fueled as much by Marshall’s anger as his drunkenness, Jake informed him that Allie wasn’t there at all. Nor, Kate said through tears, was Zach. They had instead gone in search of a plastic Mary mysteriously gone from the Grandersons’ front yard, and did Marshall know anything about that? Marshall said he didn’t, that it was nothing of Jake’s business what happened between him and Allie. Jake didn’t believe him, not with the stench of beer on Marshall’s breath. For his part, Marshall didn’t believe Kate’s assertion that Allie wasn’t there. He would only believe it later and after a long night of looking, when he checked the answering machine at home to find just as many messages from Kate calling her boy home for supper as he himself had left for Allie.

  The four of them set aside their differences long enough to begin a search that was more hysterical than methodical. Jake, Kate, and Grace found nothing at all. The only thing Marshall found was the sureness that Allie had finally gotten her fill of him and run off, taking Sam and Zach with her. They scoured the fields and patches of woods between the two homes, rousing what neighbors they could, just as Zach had imagined. The problem Allie saw with that scenario was everyone would be looking in the wrong places. That was all her fault. Hers and the compass’s.

  10

  Zach pointed to Allie’s pack. “What food you got in there?”

  She unzipped the bag, wary of letting Zach see everything inside. There was no way he could, not in the darkness of the tree, but woman things were best kept hidden from boys.

  “Four candy bars and two juice boxes,” she said.

  “That’s it?”

  “I didn’t think we’d be out here in no-man’s-land for the whole night, Zach.”

  “Okay. We’ll split one of the candy bars and one thing of juice.”

  “Are you kidding me? I’m starving.”

  “So’m I,” Zach said. “But we better ration, just in case. We gotta be careful, Allie. This is wild country.”