In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  “He ain’t no demon,” Allie said.

  “Why you say that? Did you see It?”

  “No. Not exactly, anyway. I can’t eat that, Zach. It’s all raw.”

  “Don’t make no difference,” Zach said. “Food’s food. We gotta. More healthier than all your candy bars.”

  “I didn’t hear you saying nothing about those candy bars while you were scarfing them down.”

  “That’s ’cause it’s all we had. Now come on. It ain’t so bad.”

  “Like you eat raw fish all the time,” Allie said. “Can you clean it at least? Get all the guts out?”

  Zach dipped his head. A fresh wave of shame flowed over him. “I ain’t got my knife. Dropped it along the path.”

  Allie ran a hand through her hair and cursed what devilry lay in a man that could make him go from joy to despair in a mere blink. She said, “That’s okay. I’ll eat it. Guess I’m hungry too. Still would prefer a candy bar, but at least this is better than having to eat another tree.” She looked down and saw the wideness in her dog’s eyes. “Sam can sure use something to munch on.”

  “We’ll split it three ways,” Zach said. “Even Steven. You go first.”

  “Why me?”

  “’Cause you’re a girl and me and Sam are guys. It’s proper.”

  Again, that devilry—one with a hunger on the end that convicted Allie to at least try and eat so Zach and Sam could have their share. He handed her the fish. It felt slimy and heavy in her hands. Allie brought it to her mouth (the smell on it was the river, brackish and almost sour) and closed her eyes. The longer she waited, the worse it would be. She bit midway down the fish’s back and felt the crunch of skin and bone. Saliva flooded her mouth at the taste of food. Allie pulled the fish away, tearing the meat. A runner of something—flesh or organ, she didn’t know, nor was she much concerned—stretched from her lips to the bite her mouth had left in the bass. She chewed long before swallowing, not wanting one of the bones to lodge in her throat, then opened her mouth again. Her next bite was bigger, nearly severing the fish in half.

  “Is it good?” Zach asked.

  Allie nodded. Her mouth made an “Mmmm” sound as she chewed. Below her, Sam began to whine. She opened her mouth again, ready for more. Zach stopped her.

  “We should pray.”

  She swallowed part of her bite. The other became caught in her response: “Mm-what?”

  “We should pray, Allie. For the food.”

  Allie swallowed the rest, feeling that warm spot in her throat as the meat slid down, filling her insides.

  “Are we back on this, Zach?” she asked. “This is good and all, but it ain’t prayer-worthy. Go on if you want. I’m eating.”

  She finished her third as fast as she could, wanting to rush the food to her stomach and not wanting Zach and Sam to wait. She handed the head to Zach, who took the tail section instead. He was hungry—starved, really—but not to the point where he could eat eyes. He dropped the head to the ground and then lowered his own, offering his thanks to the God who had let them get lost in the woods and the God who had given them just enough to keep going. Sam pounced.

  They filled the juice boxes with water and kept their lunch in their bellies, though for a while it was touch and go. Allie found that what went down easy sometimes came up even easier in meaty burps, but she managed to hold the fish in place by drinking deep from the river. It was more food than they’d had in the last five days, and their full bellies mixed with the cold air to make them sluggish. They packed the other two fish in Allie’s pack and rested along the riverbank in a silence much different from the one they’d endured before. Zach was no longer imprisoned in his shame (or he was, but at least he could now see daylight between the bars) and set to trying to rub his jeans dry with two dirty hands. Allie no longer fretted about the spot just on her jeans above the hem of her jacket. Sam dozed. They were not happy—not with the memory of being chased still fresh in their minds—but Allie and Zach found in that span a contentment that helped repair the gulf between them. And they were still not lost. They still had a way to go.

  The peace between Zach and Allie lasted until he said, “We gotta keep moving, Allie. Mr. Scary’s still over there, and he’s still gonna look for us. He’ll have to go a ways to cross, but who’s to say there ain’t another tree over another narrow part of the river somewhere?”

  “Ain’t no Mr. Scary that’s chasing us, Zach. And He ain’t chasing you and Sam as much as me, though we’ve all been marked now.”

  Zach burped and recoiled, more from the taste than how it made his chest hurt. His hands played the legs of his jeans. Everything was cold, but not as cold as it had been. Then again, Zach realized he might just be going numb. “You ain’t making no sense, Allie.”

  “I mean it’s God, Zach. God’s done found out Momma sent word, and He’s done found me coming here to get her. He don’t want me and Momma finding each other, why I don’t know. But He’s out to stop us.”

  Zach’s hands stopped. “What?”

  “God’s gonna get us, Zach. I’m so sorry.”

  “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life, Allie Granderson.”

  “No it ain’t.” She picked up a stone, tossed it into the water. It made a tiny blurp sound. “God marked me when The Storm came. Marked us all, I guess, but me an’ Daddy especially. Now He’s marked you and Sam too. You seen it, Zach. Back at the pond. God clawed those trees with His sharp edges. He don’t want me finding Momma.”

  “Ain’t God that’s chasing us, Allie. It’s a demon.”

  “I think they’re pretty much the same. And it don’t matter anyways. All that matters is we get away. Which way do we go? Upstream or down?”

  Zach looked in both directions, trying to decide. He closed his eyes and imagined them standing on Miller’s Bridge in town, looking at the water. Trying to remember how the current flowed. Was it up, from the bridge toward downtown? Or was it the other way?

  “Water goes through town,” he said. “From town, on under the bridge, then on down toward the dump. That means we go upstream.”

  “What’s town got to do with it?” she asked.

  “Town’s where we’re going.”

  “What about my momma?”

  “You’re momma ain’t out here, Allie. She never was.” Cold words, he knew, but words Zach had told Allie before and she needed to hear again. “You ain’t thinkin’ right anymore. We can’t stay out here, and nobody’s gonna find us. We’re hungry and cold and we’re hurt, Allie. We’re hurt bad. We gotta save ourselves.”

  Allie felt her heart drop. Not because they were hungry and cold and hurt bad—she’d known that, and in some ways longer than Zach had—but because she knew he was right.

  “I’m here to find my momma,” she said again. “That’s what she wants, Zach. That’s why she made my compass work.”

  “It never worked, Allie, and we ain’t got time to fight over that. Your brain’s so cold you think the Lord’s over yonder in that bush, tryin’ to eat us. Decision’s mine to make, and I made it. You can stay here and die, or you can go with me and live. I’m taking Sam, though. You don’t love him anyway, and he’s a good dog.” Those last words hung in Zach’s throat like a bit of the fish. He tried to swallow and found he couldn’t. “Come with me, Allie. We can go home.”

  She shook her head and looked out over the water. “You can, maybe. I can’t.”

  Zach would not leave her. Could not. And yet he hoped what he did next was enough to convince Allie he would. He pulled the shoelace from his boot—not the one he had been using to try and start his fires, that one had frayed to near breaking—and found two slender pieces of wood. He tied them around Allie’s ankle, bracing them as he could.

  “This should hold,” he said. “Good luck.”

  He picked himself up from the rocks and lifted Sam into his arms, then began a long walk up the riverbank. Sam twisted in his arms, turning his head back to Allie, whining at her as tears
pooled once more in her eyes.

  10

  It had been five years since a human had traveled that forgotten land, and that had been the Bad Man of Zach’s memory. Others had come in the long stretch of ages before, drawn to that darkwood by a power that only snared them in the end. The old ones (for such was what they called themselves) wandered there first, early in the dawn of time. They knew what lived in the deep places and seldom traveled beyond the olden woods Zach and Allie had passed some five days before.

  To the old ones, the world was awash in a spirit that permeated every living thing. The taller one grew from the earth, the more removed from that spirit he became. To them, that was why beasts and children remained so close to God. So they said. Many could pronounce such philosophies as false, and perhaps that is so. Yet that belief had been proven true by Allie and Zach, and most of all by Samwise the Dog, whose tiny paws and short legs bound him closer to the earth than most everything.

  Sam had struggled through the last days just as much as his masters. In some ways, he had suffered more. His fur had protected him from the cold and wind, keeping him from sickness. And though his bones ached and his head hung from all the going, he was still able to munch on what grass he could and lap from the nearest cracks of water. Yet Samwise was plagued by this one thing that had for the most part affected neither Allie nor Zach: he knew What chased them. And more than that, Sam knew how long It had followed, and just how close It remained.

  That is why he waited for Allie to pick herself up and trod on toward Zach. Only then did Sam move out in front. He was the only one who could spot the danger. In the close times, when It had gotten so near that Sam could smell the stench, he had drawn to Allie’s and Zach’s sides. Out of fear, Allie thought, and so had Zach. But that wasn’t so. Sam understood few words aside from his own name and “To me” and “Allie” and “Zach,” but what the dog lacked in the comprehension of words he more than made up for in a comprehension of feelings. He knew hurt and fear and sickness, and he felt all of those things in the two people now trailing behind.

  His ears were cocked to the far bank, where It had rustled just after their meal. So long as that sound remained there and didn’t reach here, Sam was prepared to accept it. But now his nose had caught that stench again. Not across the water. Ahead. To where Sam’s masters meant to go.

  He turned his head and yipped a warning. Allie shushed him. She said, “To me,” but Sam turned his back.

  The scent grew stronger, charging Sam’s body. Nose to the rocks now, ears raised and pointed ahead. His tail went rigid. Zach spoke (it was words the dog didn’t know, though he did recognize his own name buried in them) and began to walk faster. Sam’s nose found a muddy spot leading to the darkwood on their side of the river. He raised his head and bayed, knowing that would bring his masters quicker than anything else he could do. He turned to see Zach close. Allie was just behind.

  Zach knelt, rubbing Sam’s head as he studied the spot in the mud.

  “What is it?” Allie called.

  Zach shook his head. “You better come see.”

  Allie limped over. The brace on her ankle helped well enough, but not enough to give her any kind of speed. Zach used the seconds before she arrived to try and make sense of what Sam had found—simply shrugging it off, saying it was nothing, wouldn’t do much good in restoring the confidence he knew he’d lost in her. Besides, Zach knew it wasn’t nothing. It was something, and it was important.

  He felt Allie’s hand on his back. “What is it?”

  “Prints.”

  Allie looked. Left in the mud were five deep ridges running in perpendicular lines. The marks were long. Allie judged them as nearly ten inches, Zach settled on nearer to a foot. Sam had no idea of measurement and didn’t care—it was not the marks that piqued his fear, but the claws that had made them. The space between the ridges was wide, almost the span of the two fingers Zach laid down between them.

  “What kinda prints?” Allie asked.

  “I don’t know. I ain’t never seen nothing like that. But it’s fresh.”

  “You mean—” she began, but the words behind wouldn’t come out. A fortunate thing, as Zach had decided he couldn’t bear to hear them anyway. For his part, Sam didn’t need to hear anything at all. He could feel. “See, Zach? Sharp. Sharp like God.” She righted herself by pushing her hand off Zach’s back and stared into the trees, hollering, “Go away. I never did anything to You. Can’t You see we’re just kids? You better just leave us alone and go back where You come from. Do You hear me?” Those words were swallowed by the river and darkwood. “I’m gonna find my momma no matter what You do.”

  Zach scanned the river. Allie’s ravings bothered him, but not as much as that print. “Can’t be,” he said. He shook his head and felt the heartbeat in the wound on his head, making him dizzy again. “No way It coulda crossed, Allie. Not up here. Water’s too deep. Just no way.”

  Sam had no inclination toward discussion. The scent stretched from the track on into the darkwood. He nosed his way in, feeling with his senses.

  “What else could it be?” Allie asked. “God can do anything, right? That’s what you believers think. Us fallen-aways? We think He can do anything, too, but stuff that hurts us.”

  “Talk sense, Allie. That’s an animal mark. Can’t be no other thing. Maybe it was a rabbit,” Zach said. “Come down here for a drink or something, but slipped on the bank.”

  “You ever seen a rabbit that’d make a track that big?” Allie asked. When Zach didn’t answer (he was too busy studying that mark, trying to decide how big an animal had to be to leave a track like that and if it wore his daddy’s cowboy hat), she asked again: “Zach? You ever seen a rabbit that’s prolly twenty feet tall?”

  “No,” he mumbled. “Can’t say I have.”

  Sam couldn’t smell anything in all that undergrowth, at least not right away. But his dog ears could still hear just fine, and what they heard was the snapping of a twig. He barked once. Zach and Allie both jumped. Allie silenced him by easing up to the tree line and tugging on Sam’s collar, pulling him away.

  “We can’t go this way,” she said. “We gotta turn ’round. Go back where we come.”

  “Can’t do that, Allie. Upstream’s the way home. We go down, that just means we get lost.”

  “We go on, that just means it’s our heads up in a tree somewhere and our skin layin’ in a pile on the ground. You ain’t got your knife no more, Zach. You ain’t even got your staff. It’s just us. And if we gotta run, I can’t.”

  “Why here?” Zach asked. “If It could cross here, It could’a crossed anywhere. It could’a just come over the way we come, right after we did it. So why up here?”

  Allie looked at him. “That’s what’s on your mind right now, Zach?”

  “It’s important,” Zach said, though he didn’t know why.

  “Right now all that’s important is we go the other way.”

  “No.”

  Zach stood up and brushed the knees of his jeans (which did nothing at all other than rub dirt where dirt had already been). He looked into the darkwood ahead and then to the riverbank in front of them.

  “What?” Allie asked.

  “We ain’t turning back, we’re going on. I think I know what’s happening, Allie. I think I know what It’s doing, and we can’t let It.”

  “What? Zach, I don’t understand—”

  “I gotta know for sure, Allie. Then I’ll tell you. We go slow. It’ll be okay. You just have to trust me. Do you?”

  Allie did. Zach had lost her compass on purpose and had led them toward home without telling her, but she still trusted him as she would trust the only light left in her life. But of course trusting someone doesn’t mean what they do is always right, especially when the person you trust is a boy trying to tell himself he’s a man. Sam, however, knew better. Allie called, “To me,” and Samwise the Dog had no choice but to follow. He shot out ahead and led the way once more. It was only right that
he did. Someone had to protect them.

  11

  Grace found Kate on a bench in the town square—the very bench, in fact, where she’d seen Zach sitting and Allie trying to hide some three days earlier. Three days. The time seemed so small when put in those terms, and yet it felt so long.

  The new pastor of the Methodist church had been sitting with her. Juliet Creech had come to Mattingly just after The Storm, rotated there by some church hierarchy Grace didn’t understand. It was the sort of decision made by people from Away based on rationality rather than common sense. The former pastor had perished in The Storm, leaving the flock without a shepherd. Juliet’s name had come up. Having a woman preacher in a place like Mattingly was bound to fail. It was a horrible thing for Grace to admit, but true. Juliet had been trying well enough to tend to the town’s spiritual needs, both after The Storm and especially in the last days, but the way Grace saw the pastor walking away told her Juliet hadn’t been able to tend to Kate’s. Grace didn’t think anyone could. Not now.

  The men had gone looking again. Jake had taken a group of volunteers east, into the forests that bordered Happy Hollow. Where Marshall had gone Grace didn’t know, nor had he volunteered. To find somewhere private, she thought, to draw down that curtain. Grace had let him go. Though a part of her knew it was the wrong thing, she also felt it was the only right thing after Jake had to let Bobby go. The possibility that the town drunk had taken the children was a horrible one, but it was also the only lead they had left. Now Grace thought what the town was doing wasn’t searching at all. It was just wandering, hoping a miracle would turn up.

  Kate had her eyes on the town tree as Grace sat. She said nothing, never even moved. Kate was a good woman, a strong woman. She’d given so much to the people in her life, had a passion for the poor, especially the children, though the thick notebook in which she had once used to write the names of those she helped had been long discarded. Now the town Kate loved was trying to love her back, but her grief had built a wall that kept everyone away. Grace would not try to scale that wall. She would instead do as she’d done with Marshall and Allie and stand vigil before it.