In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  In the end, that was what made Allie step away from the edge of those rocks. The trip down would be fast and painless and would end all of her suffering, but after would come more suffering than she could imagine. And it wouldn’t be just her burning flesh (which actually didn’t sound all that bad, surrounded by all that cold) or the fact that she would never see Zach again. It would be because Allie would never know where her momma had gone, and they’d be separated forever.

  She sighed and closed her eyes, tilting her head up to the light, giving herself over to the moon. And yet when Allie opened them she saw the moon wasn’t there at all, at least not the one she’d always known. Much of it had been dulled by a thin wisp of cloud that stretched from beyond the arc of the sky, as though the far mountains had grown a tongue and were trying to devour it. The night should have been black, given that cover. But it wasn’t. There was still that strange shine falling over the trees, one so strong it nearly cast Allie’s body as a shadow at her feet. And as the dawning of that light’s source reached past Allie’s fading mind and penetrated her soul, she found herself listing into something more than the dark depths. She found herself immersed in wonder.

  It was the stars. All of them. Packed tight from one end of the night to the other like a glittering blanket draped over the world. Trillions of pinpricks crammed into that black dome of sky, more lights than she ever thought possible. Each shone so clear and close that Allie actually raised her hands to touch them. There were planets and suns and the faint blots of ancient galaxies, all scattered to form a pattern beyond her reckoning. And as she stared, her numbed lips parted in a look of awe as each of those lights began pulsing like the hand she’d placed upon Zach’s chest. Yes. That’s what this was. It was the beating of some deeper heart that ran through all creation, pumping from a single Source that watched over and guided it all. It was mystery and magic.

  Though a part of Allie knew none of it may have been real at all, and the sky might be only the last gasps of her fuzzy mind, she bent low in an act of penitence. The night carried the grunts of her prying the Chucks from her swollen feet. She tossed the shoes aside so as not to sully the holy ground she stood upon. Such a sight was too great for human eyes, and yet she could not bear to look away for the feeling it kindled in her—not mere reverence, but the deep comfort of knowing there existed a Something greater than the one in the moon and in the woods, and that the wind she so feared was merely that eternal breath brushing upon the mortal living.

  A bright vein of light flew over her head, leading down over the steepest part of the hill—the exact place where she had nearly thrown herself. The silvery tail sparked and faded but never really died, for another star followed close behind and then another, all of them speeding along some heavenly road leading on beyond. And far from the hill where those stars fell, Allie saw the same single, shining light she and Zach had seen the night before along the pond. Calling to her. Showing Allie the way.

  In that single tick of time, Allie Granderson understood that their path could be dark and dangerous to the end of their journey, but the end would not come that night. That night, she and Zach and Sam had been covered with a grace that not even the monsters of the wood could penetrate—one that would carry them to where her mother waited. And when Allie climbed from the rocks and returned to the cave, she held her trembling chin high, and there was a feeling of joy in her heart.

  10

  Allie crawled back into the cave sometime later, guided more by Zach’s shallow wheezes than her own eyes. The dog raised his head as she settled against the wall. He thumped his tail once, all he was able. Allie patted Sam’s head and bid him good night. She remembered her dog’s name again, just as she remembered everything that mattered in the world.

  “Are you awake, Zach?”

  Nothing.

  She shook him. “Zach, wish you’d get up and come out there with me. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  Zach sighed (it was more like a long croak) and ignored her. Allie touched his wrist, feeling for a pulse. When she found one, she lifted Zach’s arm over his head and let go. It plopped against his thigh.

  “Guess you’re too tired for even a miracle. Thought you was stronger than that, Zach Barnett.”

  Trying to coax a response. None was offered. Zach only remained against the wall of the cave, half sitting and half lying down, and when Allie believed he wouldn’t be talking much at all that night, she talked for him: “Don’t you know I’m the strongest boy in town, Allie Granderson?”

  She giggled, not at the words she’d used but at the way she’d spoken them. It was more John Wayne than Zach Barnett, more how Zach saw himself than how he truly was.

  “Well, I’d say you earned a rest. The way you fell out there, Zach, when all that was happening. It scared me.

  “Didn’t mean to scare you, little lady. Just playin’ possum with the scariest thing in the world. Worked, too, didn’t it? We’re safe in here; he’s out there.

  “I suppose,” she told Zach’s face. “But still, I was worried for you, Zach.

  “I ain’t messed up my pretty face, have I, Allie?” he didn’t say. “Wouldn’t want anything like that to happen. You know I’m so handsome I can stop time and make rivers run backward.”

  Allie chuckled again. “Your face is fine. Your head’s another matter. Not just that gash in it either. Sometimes it’s what we can’t see that hurts the most.” She stopped there, the smile on her face frozen, then fading. “Can I tell you something, Zach? Just between us?”

  Zach’s face was still, his eyes shut, and yet Allie imagined him saying, “Won’t tell a soul. Cowboy’s honor.”

  “I love you, Zach. I ain’t supposed to, because if God found out He’d do something to you like He did to my momma. That’s why I’ll never tell you right out. It’s gotta be heartspoken instead. But I just wanted to say it now. I don’t think either of us’ll get in trouble, what with you being comatose and all. And you don’t have to say nothing back. Okay?”

  She laid her head on Zach’s chest and wrapped her arms around him. What more Allie whispered that night was for herself rather than him. Zach was not dead, nor would he die. So the voice among the stars had told her. But he was too far lost in his slumber to hear anything Allie said, however wonderful those words might be. And they were wonderful, at least to her own ears. They were words that spoke of the hope Zach had lost in the deep woods and the hope she had just found. It was the assurance of an end from which a new beginning would be born.

  Allie closed her eyes when she was done (Just for a minute, gotta stand watch) and tumbled back into her dream of the funeral. Miss Howard stood on her right, Marshall at her left. Beside him stood Jake and Kate Barnett. Surrounding them were people by the hundreds, their faces masked by a fog Allie realized had been made by warm exhales that came out as whimpers against the frigid air. Dapples of shadow fell over the gray grass, cast there by a weak sun streaming through millions of red trees.

  The casket rested just above the broken ground, enclosed by sections of fake grass. Allie began to panic when she remembered it was her in there, that box was for no grown-up but it was perfect for a child, and she’d been marked. She pulled at her father’s sleeve, begging Marshall to tell her who was being put into the ground and why everyone was crying. He didn’t hear, nor did Grace. Allie looked to her right and left, searching for Zach. She spied all of the faces around her, peered through every bit of that mournful mist. Zach had always been there for Allie and had never left her side, not even after her momma left, but he wasn’t there now. Zach wasn’t there, and that casket was so small.

  Hours later, a shadow darker than the night shifted from the trees below. It crept up the slope with a silence that bordered on the unnatural given the immensity of its size. It moved around the rocks, searching for the cave’s opening, and paused there. Not even Sam stirred as that shadow peered inside, drawn by the fear and sickness inside.

  Young ones.

  It ha
d followed them from the creek. Studying them. Stalking them. Waiting for the right moment. And though that moment seemed now, It turned after filling Its nose and made Its way back, careful not to leave any trace.

  Patience. That, more than anything, was the order of the day. There was time enough. In the deep woods, there was all the time in the world.

  December 23

  1

  Zach would have found Allie’s morning inventory a strange thing indeed. He may have thought himself a man (and would for a little while longer), but there was still enough boy in him to consider sleep a necessary evil. There was too much to do and too much to see. While Allie would lie in bed weighing her sorrows against the dread of a new day, Zach would spring from his own to devour a little more of the world.

  But not on this day. On this day, Zach Barnett understood the value of reserving a few moments to take stock of his condition before daring to open his eyes, because one of them would not open at all.

  He was sitting against the rock wall with Allie’s pack under his head. Zach didn’t know how he’d gotten there, though he seemed to remember his coughs waking him some time in the night and Allie positioning him that way. His chest hurt, of course, though that had been the source of such constant discomfort over the past days that he had grown accustomed to feeling it. His head (and the spot just over the brow of his right eye in particular) hurt worse, like someone was pressing a hot brick against his eye. He moved his hand, trying to pry that eye open. The world beyond lay so fuzzy and off-center that his stomach fluttered.

  He thought this must be how people like Bobby Barnes felt every morning, all hungover and wondering what they’d done the night before to deserve such torment. And in fact Bobby was hurting just then, maybe even more than Zach, though that had more to do with how rough the town doctor was handling the bandages. Jake ushered Doc March out of the single jail cell, eager to question Bobby more before the state police arrived. He’d been at it all night, yelling at Bobby, screaming at him, wanting answers. Bobby had only bawled and said there were no answers to give.

  By that morning, Bobby Barnes had gone nearly ten hours without a drink. Jake set a cold bottle of beer on the table between them and said it was Bobby’s last chance. He could have that bottle and more, so long as he said where Allie and Zach were. The ACLU would have no doubt voiced disapproval over such tactics. Then again, Jake figured no one at the ACLU was missing a son just then.

  No one in Mattingly would say a word against such tactics. News of what Marshall found in Bobby’s truck had covered the town faster than even the news of Allie’s and Zach’s disappearance. Days of searching only to return empty-handed had worn on the town, turning most from hope to despair. The fracturing of Mattingly after The Storm had begun to mend after the two children had disappeared. Jake understood tragedy did that. It brought people together and made them see they were a part of something beyond themselves. He also understood that rage could do much the same thing. Bobby Barnes had long been a sore on the people of Mattingly. Allie’s scarf was reason enough to justify their hatred. To Jake, what he was doing to Bobby now was more civil than turning him out to the crowd waiting outside his office. And it was downright Christian compared to letting Marshall have his way. To make his point, he popped the cap off the bottle with the long end of his tomahawk’s blade.

  2

  Zach let his hand fall away from his eye before it could do further damage and rested it on the leg of his jeans. The wet, sandpapery feeling of dog tongue ran across his fingers.

  “Hullo there, Samwise,” he managed.

  “Hey there, Zach.”

  He looked down to see Sam at his side, wondering how it was that Allie’s dog had learned to talk (and when that same voice said, “Over here, silly,” how Sam had learned to throw his voice). His eyes caught a bit of ruined pink that wiggled just beyond Sam’s front paws. Zach followed the line up from there and realized Allie was sitting against the far wall, not three feet away. She held herself tight, which did little to quiet her juddering shoulders. Draped over her shoulders were two raggedy pigtails. A set of white teeth sparkled out from behind lips that had gone a pale white.

  “Knew there was nothing wrong with you,” she said. “Other’n a bumped head, a clogged chest, and a black eye that would make a coon jealous, a’course. Which is to say nothing too bad when all’s considered. I had a dream you died, Zach Barnett. But we made it, and we’ll make it still. How’re you feeling?”

  “Passing fair,” Zach said. The words came out well enough, though not so much that he believed them. “Can’t see much out my eye. You dreamed I died?”

  “You got a shiner.”

  Allie’s smile widened to a beam, like she knew a secret too good to keep to herself. Zach wondered what had happened to her in the night to make her that way, and if that something had been real or not.

  “Guess you hit more than just your head on that rock,” she told him. “But you’ll be okay. We’re all going to be okay now.”

  “How you know that?”

  Allie shrugged, though that may have been the chill. “Call it a real good feeling.”

  “How long you been awake?”

  “Most of the night,” she said. “I slept some, but I had to stand watch. Sam weren’t much trouble since he’s all furred, but you shook something fierce. I couldn’t make nothing to keep us warm like you did back at the frozen pond, so I just hugged you tight. You coughed a lot. I had to slap you on the back a couple times so you could get your crud up. And you twitched. I think you were dreaming.”

  Zach tried to nod. All his swollen head managed was a one-way dip of his chin. There had been a dream, though the details had gone fuzzy at the edges. He remembered that the dream had been horrible and he’d wanted to wake up screaming. Sam climbed onto his lap and nuzzled his chest. Zach’s fingers traced the line of ribs just under the dog’s skin.

  “You hungry?” he asked.

  Allie shrugged. “Some, I guess. Enough for me to start craving some tree bark.”

  “Guess that’ll have to do for now. But we gotta get us some proper food and water soon, Allie. We won’t last.”

  That look on her face, widening. “I know.”

  “Why you smilin’ so hard?”

  “Don’t you want me to?” she asked. “You’re the one who said I ain’t happy no more. Maybe I’m happy now.”

  “Why?”

  She leaned in close, sharing: “I saw somethin’ last night, Zach. Up there on the rocks.”

  “What’d you see?”

  “That light. The one we seen back at the pond. It was down there yonder a ways. It called to me.”

  “What’d it call?”

  “Hope.”

  “Hope?” Zach tried to laugh but found it too much of an exertion. “We’re trapped in a cave up on a hill with no water and no food, and there’s something chasing us, and you’re all giddy because you got some hope? That’s stupid, Allie.”

  Allie smiled anyway. “Hope don’t always make sense, Zach, but it always makes things easier. We’re gonna be okay now.”

  “We ain’t gonna be okay ’less we can get off this hill without being spotted,” Zach said. “And unless there’s a McDonald’s with a telephone right nearby.”

  “I think there’s something even better’n food, and I think it’s close, Zach. I really do. I know it ain’t been easy and I know we both screwed up, but things are gonna get better now. I’d lay a wage on it.”

  “You’d lay a wage on it?”

  “Indeed I would,” Allie said, and on the back end of that came an actual giggle. “We still ain’t lost, Zach. Maybe the whole world thinks we are, but we ain’t. We ain’t alone, neither.” She shivered again.

  “You ain’t gotta tell me we ain’t alone.”

  “I’m not talking about the Him out there. I’m talking about Something else. I think there’s bad things in this wood, Zach. We both know that. But there’s good things too.”

  �
��What are you talking about?”

  Allie shook her head. Her lips pursed into a kind of moving wave against the chill in the cave. She tried to speak, then paused as though reconsidering. Tried again and managed, “It’s just” before falling silent. Her eyes sparkled.

  “Use your words, Allie.”

  “That’s just it,” she said. “It’s all just too big for me to say right now. I’d probably end up using all my words and not even get close. Besides, we ain’t got time. We gotta move, like you said. Food and water, that’s the order of the day.”

  Zach pushed his jaws together, making the skin beneath his ears bulge. He looked out beyond the opening of the cave and saw nothing but the faint light of a day without sun.

  “You been out yet?”

  “Just for a bit. I had to, you know . . . go.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Going?”

  “No, dummy. What’s the weather?”

  “Oh.” Allie giggled again.

  It sounded like music, really, like Zach had been tuning a radio full of static for a long while trying to find just that song. Now that he had, he almost wished for the static again.

  “It’s still cold. Ain’t no wind, though. You know what wind really is, Zach? I’ll tell you later. I found out last night. It ain’t nothing bad, neither. It ain’t at all what I thought it was.”

  “Is there sun?”

  “Nope. Clouds and fog. It ain’t gonna blow, though. I know clouds, and the ones out there ain’t the blowing kind. But it’ll be cold. I think a front’s set in. Like, really cold.” Allie shivered as an example. “Is it Christmas yet?”

  Zach thought, then counted off his fingers. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then there’s still time.”

  “For what?”

  “To get my momma home. That’s what I want for Christmas, Zach—this one and all the ones after.”