In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  She could not lift her head and so floated facedown, arms stretched out from her sides in a position that could only be described as submission. The water drew in her fingers and toes, turning them to claws. Her body folded in on itself. She thought of Zach’s screams and how he must have spent the last breaths from his tired lungs trying to keep her safe. She thought of poor Sam, lying alone behind the rock wall on the bank.

  The river pulled her deeper into its maw, promising an easy passage to better lands. And those lands would be better, would they not? Allie’s jumbled mind thought yes. She had been through enough in her short life. There would be no hell on the other side. Hell was what Allie was about to leave behind.

  Breathe, spoke the voice in her. Her eyes were open to black, and in that space grew stars that glittered and shot like those Allie had seen in the sky that night upon the rocks. The water would wash through her lungs, paralyzing her. It would be a proper death. Paralyzed was how she’d lived.

  But it was Allie’s heart that spoke louder as she began to sink under the roil. What it offered was more picture than words. Not the dream that had plagued her nights ever since she’d entered the woods, but something that felt like a promise—the gates of Oak Lawn swinging open on some faraway day as townspeople follow Marshall Granderson through. He leads them up the slender lane to the foot of the knoll and then on, midway down a long line of the honored dead. There, two stone markers sit where only one had been before. And while a pink tennis shoe still lies in Mary Granderson’s grave, there is only Allie’s empty box beside it. Allie sees her daddy wailing and Miss Grace standing beside him, offering what comfort she can. She sees her mother’s eyes in the way Grace looks at him, and her mother’s heart in how Grace longs to give Marshall peace. But that peace will never come to Marshall Granderson now, not when the short years of his life are spent under a shadow of knowing that he has been marked by the same God who has taken his wife and child. His hand shakes. The scruff on his face has gone all gray. He looks to the small casket with the same dulled brown eyes, but Allie knows another person looks out from them. Not the Marshall Granderson who once ate mac and cheese and called it a masterpiece. That Marshall is gone now and forever. Locked in the bedroom closet, perhaps. What looks out now is the Other.

  It was her heart’s picture rather than the swirl of the current that lowered Allie’s head to her chest. She could murder herself, had almost done so above the rocks only the night before, but Allie Granderson would never dare kill what goodness remained in her father. She used what strength remained to tuck her chin and roll her right shoulder. That was enough to turn her face from the icy water to a moonless sky. Allie forced the air from her lungs like jump-starting a dead battery. The heave she took in sounded like one of Zach’s.

  She lowered her legs. Next came a flash of confusion as she found purchase. Not with her feet, but with her hands. Allie curled her fingers in the muck at the river’s bottom and pushed herself up. The current overcame her, flooding her mouth and nose and threatening to wash her away. The struggle ended when she rose to her knees. And as she looked, the air filled with the sound of her laughter. The river had not swept her away at all. The bank lay only steps ahead, the windbreak only steps beyond that.

  Something—the laughter or the cold, Allie couldn’t decide—kept her from standing. She crawled instead, bracing a hand against the current so it would not sweep her away. Her pigtails had knotted themselves behind her head, forming a rudder that pulled her eyes away from shore. That too was funny, as were the bold outlines of the darkwood across the way and the thought of Zach’s head hanging in one of those trees.

  She reached the bank and stood. Her body convulsed from the cold, but Allie’s skin felt hot and sweaty, like she’d spent an entire July day fishing with her parents and the Barnetts at Boone’s Pond. She unbuttoned her jacket and let it fall, pulled at the neck of her sweatshirt to force it over her head. Tore at her shoes and socks. Her jeans came loose next. Allie left her clothes in a long line stretching from the river to the windbreak, and she made the last steps on feet so bare and blistered that they were no more than two hunks of frozen meat. Laughter turned to muffled cries of “Muh . . . muh,” over and over, speaking a language she could not understand.

  It was Sam who brought her back to her senses. He stood waiting in the center of the windbreak, whole and unbothered by the darkness around him. There was a smile upon the dog’s face, though his tail had gone sharp and still. His ears perked, leaving the floppy tips to dangle in the wind.

  He said, “You have to start the fire, Allie.”

  She laughed again. Not because her dog had both healed himself and learned to speak in the last thirty minutes, but because starting a fire now would be like running from the cold by hiding in a freezer.

  “Start the fire, Allie. You know how.”

  Allie staggered forward, then stopped feet away from the rocks.

  “Do you love me, Allie?” Sam asked.

  She said, “Muh.”

  “Then come start the fire. You have to. I can’t. I don’t have any hands.”

  Sam tilted his head and lifted a front paw, showing her. Allie nodded (though it may have been just to whisk the sweat from her forehead) and stumbled forward. Sam stepped aside as she fell to her knees, searching in the dark for Zach’s drill.

  “Put the bow in your right hand, Allie,” Sam said. “I have no hands, but I have a brain. You have no brain, but you have hands. Do as I say, and don’t be afraid. He’s gone for now.”

  She nodded again

  (“Muh”)

  and put the bow in her hand. Kept the spindle tight around Zach’s bootlace and a rotten foot on the fireboard. She placed the spindle in the socket, just as Sam instructed.

  “The tinder won’t work,” he said. “It doesn’t go under the board, Allie. That’s why Zach hasn’t gotten a fire. But I know just the trick.”

  The wind whipped again—God’s breath about to push Allie over the edge of the world. She looked up to find one of her pads stuck in Sam’s mouth. She reached out and took it, placing it beneath the fireboard under her foot. She looked at Sam, wondering when he’d learned to talk.

  “I can’t talk, silly,” he said. “None of this is real. You’ve gone crazy, you see. But you still have to saw. Saw away, pretty girl.”

  She didn’t think her hands would allow it, not with that wind (which had now somehow gone from hot to cold) pushing against her face. Sam told her to move so that the gusts hit her back. She did and began sawing again, pressing down on the handhold as the spindle churned in the socket.

  “Faster,” Sam said.

  He rose up on his hind legs and waved his paws in the air, cheering on the thin wisps of smoke rising from the board. Allie rocked the bow back and forth as smoldering dust filled the pad beneath. She stopped only when Sam said, “Now the tinder, Allie. Hurry now, but don’t rush.”

  Her body cramped. Allie lifted the bow and fireboard away and thanked Sam as he handed her the tinder in a paw. She held the pile in one hand and lost half of it from her spasms, then tilted the pad so the coal dropped inside.

  “Lift it, Allie,” he said. “To your face. Lightly now.” And when she had, “Now blow. Right to the center. Steady and hard.”

  The breaths came out jerky through her chattering teeth. Allie’s arms wavered in the cold.

  “That’s my girl,” Sam said. “Almost now.”

  The smoke gathered, wrapping Allie’s hands and face in a tight hug that nearly choked her. And with a final breath that coal sparked to flame against the tinder, covering her with warmth.

  “Down now, Allie. On the rocks will have to do. Find the sticks and twigs. Feed it well, as you’d feed yourself.”

  She laid the flame down and gathered what Zach had collected—the smaller wood first and then the pieces as thick as her wrists. The flame grew, coloring the gray rocks of the windbreak orange and yellow. Allie began laughing again. She looked at Sam and found he had
grown too tired to celebrate, had lain down and found a sleep so deep it looked near death. Allie’s bloody scarf covered him. She thanked her dog and fed the fire more. It blazed against the wind and water and all the evil lurking in the wood. Her naked legs and feet began to tickle with life. And when Allie stood to face the darkness, it was that same life and defiance that gave voice to her shouts.

  I ain’t afraid of you no more, was what her mind said. Do you hear me? I ain’t afraid.

  What echoed along the riverbank was nothing more than a series of moans and grunting sounds. And yet the Hollow tested those words just as it had tested Allie all that time, stripping away the fear and sadness so only the heart of her remained. Bringing her down, so she might finally learn how to rise again. For from the darkness where she looked, on past where Zach’s final screams had been uttered, there came a flicker of light yet again.

  17

  The terror that gripped Zach had taken him no more than a football field’s length from Allie. Just before she’d gone tumbling, that distance had shrunk to eighty feet. Had Zach the presence to turn around, he would have seen her land like a rag doll in the river. But of course Zach didn’t turn around, and for the simple reason that his mind was no longer his own. The forest had taken it, just as it had taken his dignity and his lungs and his holy quest, and what it had given him in return was all the awareness of a wounded animal.

  It was that wounded animal inside him that heard every huff of his clogged lungs as another growl at his heels and every branch he cracked as teeth snapping just out of reach. Wind swirled the darkwood, making shadows leap and dart. He ran. To where didn’t matter, only how far.

  But no matter how far Zach’s fading legs took him, he could not escape the sounds of Allie’s cries carried by the breeze. Begging Zach to come, to save her.

  His course had taken him from the trees along the riverbank to midway up the slope. There his sense of direction failed him. Zach had run back toward Allie rather than away, and then looped, returning in the direction he’d come. He would have kept running had it not been for the coughs that doubled him over, reducing his sprint to a stumble. And when Zach finally reached the bottom of the slope and discovered the trees in front of him once more, he thought of how Sam had tried to lead them home through the olden woods only to find the meadow and the screaming tree again.

  He crouched there in the trees along the bank, whimpering as his lungs filled with blood and muck. Zach felt as if he were drowning on land.

  The wind fell on him like a hammer, but aside from that there was only silence. He could not hear the demon and realized that didn’t improve things at all; It could be hiding right in front of him and he’d never know. But neither could Zach see anything, and unless what chased him was walking around with Its eyes closed, he’d see those horrid bright eyes. His chest seized again. Zach threw a sleeve over his mouth and coughed hard. More blood. He couldn’t see to know for sure, but his lips felt sticky and his tongue tasted like pennies.

  The quiet allowed his body to relax. It tensed once more at the realization that not only had the demon grown still, but Allie was no longer screaming. To Zach’s battered thoughts, that could mean only one thing.

  Allie would have been too scared to run at the sight of those red and white lights.

  Not like me, Zach thought. At least I didn’t go limp standing out there. I ran.

  True enough. Then again, Zach hadn’t run to where he should have, had he? He hadn’t run to Allie at all. He’d shot up the slope instead, meaning to put as much space between him and those glowing eyes as he could, and it didn’t matter who had been caught in the middle. And now Allie was dead because she was too afraid to run.

  No, Allie was dead because she couldn’t run. Not with a busted ankle and two busted feet, and not with Sam lying there all tore up and bleeding.

  A shiver fell over Zach that had nothing at all to do with the wind wriggling its way through the trees. He was no man at all. He’d never make it to the rusty gate, never carve his name in the shadow of that cursed and haunted wood known as Happy Hollow. He’d be too chicken to get close.

  The tears fell freely this time. No one was there to see. No one but God. That only made Zach shiver more. If the Almighty did indeed have sharp edges as the angel told him long ago, He would want nothing to do with a boy who was a coward. That’s what Zach was—chicken. Nothing more than a fraidy-cat who peed his pants. And hadn’t a part of him always known so? Wasn’t that why Zach wore his father’s big hat? To hide the little boy beneath? Now Allie was dead and so was Sam, and Zach was all alone and bleeding in the darkwood. He would have wet his pants again, had there been water enough in him.

  This must be what it’s like, he thought, to fall away. Strangely enough, it didn’t really feel like falling at all. What Zach felt instead was a feeling of being stuck, of being so frightened and despairing that going back or going on was no longer an option, and so all you could do is stand right where you are and sink. That must have been how Allie felt after her momma died. It had been a stone rolled over her heart, and the only light she’d found lay in a broken compass that had led her to die along the river. Zach’s only wish was that he could have died with her. At least he would have had the satisfaction of leaving this world brave. Instead, Zach Barnett’s last thought would be that he had all the spine of a jellyfish. His end would come huddled at the edge of the darkwood, and only weeds would grow in the place his bones rotted.

  He rested his head on his knees and rocked. He thought of his own mother and father and of Christmas, and how every Christmas for them from then on would be a time for mourning rather than joy.

  When the echo of Allie’s call carried along the bank, Zach thought it only a dream. The sound came again—not a scream, something other. Something strong. Zach lifted his face to the trees. Far beyond the twisted limbs he saw a light against the darkness. And from that very place, he heard Allie’s voice once more.

  This time Zach did not waver. He charged through the trees without care of how hard his lungs and legs protested, calling out to Allie that he was coming. And as Zach ran he prayed that he didn’t have to wear a hat to be a man, that instead it meant doing for others even what you most feared. Not because he was strong and brave, but because he loved. Because in the end, love is the most powerful magic of all.

  18

  The call came late, long after Marshall had retreated behind his locked bedroom door. Grace didn’t recognize the number and wasn’t surprised. Everyone in the world had called in the last days, from TV newspeople wanting a sound bite to psychics offering their services.

  She let the phone finish its first ring. A map of Mattingly and the surrounding wilderness lay sprawled on her lap. Grace had spent the last half hour circling with a yellow highlighter the areas that had been searched—the town proper, the neighborhoods, the farms and fields, and nearly all of the back roads leading into the mountains. Many miles had been scoured. Many more had not.

  Grace jumped when the phone rang again, her thoughts too scattered and her mind so tired that she’d forgotten someone was calling. Her hands came together and would have made a clap had she not been holding the highlighter. The tip slid across her opposite thumb in a long yellow scrawl and then slipped off, leaving another scrawl on the cream-colored pillow under her arm. Grace picked up the phone and offered a numb “Hello?” as she stared at the mark on the pillow. Wonderful. Mary would’ve killed her for that.

  Juliet Creech apologized for the hour but said it couldn’t be helped. It took Grace a few seconds to place the new pastor (“new” being a relative term; Grace was three when her parents moved to Mattingly, and even though that was thirty-seven years ago, many in town still considered her “new” as well) before saying there was no need for a sorry, she was still awake.

  “I had to make sure there was enough support before calling.” The preacher’s voice dropped to a mumble. “Sometimes the idea itself isn’t nearly as important as who come
s up with it.”

  “What idea’s that?”

  “I’m organizing a midnight vigil for tomorrow,” Juliet said. “Mayor Wallis gave me the okay. After he was on board, everyone else was. And I mean everyone, Miss Howard. The church won’t hold everyone, so we’re having it in the Square. I’ve already spoken with Jake and Kate. They said they’d come but only after the day’s search. Jake said they were going farther into the mountains tomorrow morning. On foot this time. They’ll bring the helicopter, too, if the weather’s right.”

  Grace cradled the phone at her neck and looked at the map. No marks were upon the wide swaths of light green representing hills and hollows around Mattingly. Her eyes followed the blue curve of the river as it wound through town and on into places that were familiar—Boone’s Pond, George Washington National Forest, the small communities of Riverwood and Three Peaks. But much of that land was foreign to Grace, as unknown and exotic as the moon. It had generally been agreed upon that the outer forests of the hill country were simply too far away for two children to lose themselves in, even with bicycles. Besides, everyone knew Allie would never dare the woods. The wind sounded closer in all those trees. Meaner. But now Jake had decided to go there anyway. Desperate times, yes? She didn’t know how much of that land could be covered by searchers and so didn’t know how much of it to circle. She pushed the highlighter into her thumb again, coloring in a bit more of the skin from white to jaundice.

  “—needs it,” Juliet said.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “It’ll be Christmas Eve. I think the town needs it. I’d very much like Marshall to come. And you, of course.”

  Grace kept coloring. Her thumb was now as yellow as the flashing star atop the Grandersons’ tree. “I think it’s a fine idea,” she said. “But there’s something you should know about Marshall, Pastor Creech.”

  “Please, it’s Juliet.”

  “Juliet,” Grace said. “Marshall’s what some here call ‘fallen away.’ Allie too. I know it might be difficult for you to understand, but ever since The Storm and Mary—”