In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  “Want me t’carry Sam some?” he asked.

  “It’s okay, I can manage. Least till we get to the trees.”

  She let Zach take over there. The trees at the water’s edge were too thick to pull Sam through, and so Allie held him while Zach maneuvered the travois through to the other side. He looked for any prints that might have been left in the soft mud the night before. He found only his own.

  Allie followed as Zach pulled Sam’s cart through on its side, weaving among the willows and oaks. Zach turned his head before finding the bank once more. The windbreak looked small from that distance, like a stack of his Legos. The top of his Christmas tree poked up from the center.

  Allie placed Sam back in his bed and took hold of the handles. She began pulling again. “He ain’t there,” she said.

  “So you say. What’s to say you’re wrong?”

  Allie shrugged. Or maybe it wasn’t a shrug at all, just her struggling under the weight of pulling all that dog and wood. Zach couldn’t tell.

  “He can smell me.”

  “Cannot,” he said. “Besides, I stink just as much as you do. If anything, it’s Sam’s blood that’ll draw It.”

  “Not Sam’s. Not yours, neither. It’s me He smells, Zach. Me he’s after.”

  “Well, Sam’s wound’s covered and mine’s all dried up. And you ain’t bleeding at all.”

  “You cain’t see everything.”

  She tilted her head up and was met by that look again, that wanting to know.

  “You remember back in the fall when the guidance counselors came and split the class up?” she asked. “Girls stayed with her, boys went with—”

  “Mr. Matthews,” Zach finished. He cringed at that particular memory. “What about it?”

  “What’d y’all talk about?”

  “I don’t know. Stuff.”

  Stuff, yes. Hilarious stuff. Stuff Zach and everyone else joked and guffawed over in that typical boy way that was all tough on the outside but utter fear down deep. How their bodies were about to change like the caterpillar in the film Mr. Matthews had shown them. How they were all going to start growing hair in strange places and their voices were about to change. Zach remembered thinking that didn’t sound like caterpillars at all. To him, it sounded like a monster had been living quiet down inside him all that while, and what was going to waken it was something so little as an extra candle on the cake. It had all been nearly enough to make him sick. Thankfully, Touchdown Tommy Robertson had beaten him to it.

  “Why?” he asked. “What’d y’all talk about?”

  “I didn’t go,” Allie said. “I never gave Daddy the paper to sign. It felt gross somehow, letting him read that. Kind of mean too. I got sent to the library until it was done.”

  She kept her eyes forward, on past where the riverbank bent to the right. The handles on Sam’s stretcher vibrated each time the bottom poles thunked over the rocks, pinching her fingers. Allie didn’t want to tell Zach more, hadn’t wanted to tell him even the little she had, but in a way she felt she owed him that much. It was something she had to do even if it scared her, much the same way as she saw their trek down the riverbank. And just like that trek, the only way Allie found to deal with that fear was to put one foot in front of another and slog on.

  “Turns out I coulda used a seat in there, though.”

  “Why? It was gross.”

  “You don’t know gross, Zach Barnett. Pain, neither. You’re just a man. That day I ran outta class? I was sick. I know you heard stuff. Probably from that old Lisa Ann Campbell, I don’t doubt it.”

  “She told us you were cryin’ and screamin’ in the bath-room,” Zach said. “One of the kids in the class down the hall told her, ’cause they’d heard it. I didn’t believe her. Then I heard some teachers talking about it after school’s over. That’s when I decided I’d come see you that night, check on you.”

  “I’m glad you did. Lisa Ann was right. I really did cry and scream. Something fierce too. And right there on the toilet. I won’t tell you what happened, and you won’t ask if you care about me at all. But I ain’t a little girl no more, Zach. I’m a woman now.”

  “How you know you’re a woman?” he asked.

  “Because I’m doing woman things.”

  Her eyes drifted up, fully expecting to be met with that quizzical look again. It wasn’t there this time. What Allie saw on Zach’s face was instead a gentle acceptance, as though what she’d just said had been plain for a long while, and to all but herself. Zach couldn’t for the life of him understand how a girl became a woman just by going into the bathroom, but he didn’t think that mattered. He thought Allie had stopped being a little girl a long time ago. Being hurt made you grow up, and sometimes it made you grow up before you were ready. Allie had been doing woman things ever since her momma died, cooking meals and washing clothes and tending house. She’d kept her daddy from turning into someone worse than Zach figured he could ever imagine. Of course Allie was a woman. Not because she wanted to be one, but because she had to. She’d never had a choice.

  “Why you saying all this?” he asked.

  “Because we’re almost there.”

  “Almost where?”

  “To the end of things,” she said. “I don’t know what that means exactly. I don’t know if it’s when we find my momma or when we just give out. Maybe it’ll come when we see those eyes again. And we’ll see ’em, Zach, because God chases everybody. I tried running from Him all this time, but He found me anyway. I can feel it the same way an animal feels its time’s near up and just goes off to die on its own. I think you can feel it too.”

  Zach said nothing to this. It was either speak a lie and say no, or speak the truth and make it real. He crept alongside and took one of the handles. Allie let him, thankful her load had been halved.

  “Either way,” she said, “I just wanted you to know.”

  “That why you been going off in the woods all alone?” he asked. “To use the bathroom and see if you’re still a woman?”

  “No. Once you’re a woman, you stay. Ain’t no going back to being a kid, no matter how much you wish it. Trust me, I’ve wished it plenty.”

  “Bein’ a man’s the best thing ever,” Zach said. His voice was quiet and full of longing as he remembered he’d never be one now. “Prolly the same to a boy as bein’ a woman is to a girl.”

  “Not for me. All it means is that I’m moving on and leaving stuff behind. It’s an end, just like this riverbank’s gonna end somewhere. Only thing is I’m moving on alone. Least you got your daddy to show you how to be a man. He’d probably drive you on up to the Hollow to carve your name himself, if you’d ask. I ain’t got nobody to do that. That’s why Momma sent word through my compass. She knows she’s gotta come back, because I can’t grow up on my own.”

  Zach said nothing to this as well, and for much the same reason as he’d held his tongue about an end being near. He only did what he thought he should and matched his stride with Allie’s, keeping beside her. On they walked over the smooth stones and muddy patches of the riverbank. Herded. Downstream, farther into the wilderness. Toward the end of things.

  They kept in lockstep, heads down against the cold, their feet trundling forward in rhythm with the clattering sounds of Sam’s travois. The hours wore on without a sound from the darkwood to their right. Not one snapping branch, not a single low growl. It was as though they’d become the only ones in the world again, and all that was left for Allie and Zach to battle were the pains and wants inside them. The riverbank widened farther on, making their way the easiest it had been since leaving the road some four days before. Zach, ever the optimist, saw this as a sign of blessing. Allie considered it a mark of trouble.

  She knew she was right when they rounded that last small bend and saw what lay just to the horizon. In what Allie could only call one horrible and cruel act, the sun peered out from the thick clouds that very moment and shined itself there, to what lay between them and the spire of a great hill
in the distance, as though God Himself wanted to make sure they saw it. The sight stopped them both. The river churned and flowed in a deep gurgle to their left. In the wind was pine and cedar and the hint of spring deep down. But neither of them could sense any of this. Their eyes were too full of the cliffs rising up ahead.

  4

  Allie said, “We need to turn around.”

  Zach shook his head no but could not answer, could only stare. A mile on, perhaps less, the water had cut its way through an entire mountain. Eons ago was his best guess, clear back to the dinosaur times, and the swift understanding of this—of just how ancient that land was, and how time could stretch so far back and yet be so clearly seen—silenced him even more than the two jagged cliffs towering over the wood. The sun appeared through a thin spot in the clouds, just as Allie had said it would. Its light winked upon those hardscrabble crags, turning the face of the cliffs from brown to yellow to the color of blood. Small, leafless bushes dotted the contours of the rock. The tops were barren but for clumps of struggling pines and cedars that sprouted like tufts of green hair atop an otherwise bald pate. Shoulders and arms of thick darkwood extended down to the river’s edge. Zach shuddered at what might lie in all that tangle.

  “Zach? I changed my mind. We need to turn around. For real. That’s a bad place.”

  “Don’t look bad,” he answered. “What that looks like to me’s the tallest thing in these whole woods. We get up there, Allie, we might be able to see the way home. Least we’ll be able to take a good look at that hill further on.”

  “No.” Allie let go of her end of the travois, threatening to spill an unconscious Sam. She caught it with one hand. The other grabbed the front of Zach’s coat like a bully demanding milk money. “Something bad’s gonna happen if you go up there, Zach. Something terrible.”

  “How you know that?”

  “I dreamed it.”

  “Allie—”

  “God’s up on those cliffs, Zach. He’s waitin’. I thought we could skirt on past but we can’t. Those cliffs go straight above the river and there’s darkwood all around. Don’t you see?”

  Zach moved her fist away with two fingers and one roll of his eyes. “Don’t be so stupid,” he said, even if a part of him wondered if Allie was right. She’d been right about a great many things, had even started a fire. The idea of that fire being nothing but blind luck offered Zach little comfort. Allie had worked the bow drill while frozen and wet and near naked just after being attacked by a demon. She’d been so delirious that she’d even believed Sam had talked and her momma had appeared, but she’d still done it.

  There was this too—if Allie was convinced that It was atop those cliffs, that meant the way behind them really was clear.

  “We could turn around,” he said. “We could go back the way we come, Allie. Upstream’s town. I know it.”

  Allie believed that could be so, but upstream was definitely not the way to her mother. Mary hadn’t come strolling down the riverbank, she’d come up it. They were close now, and they’d all go home together. All she had to do was be brave.

  “Allie?” Zach asked. “We can go back. I think back’s best.”

  “Momma’s on this way.”

  “Allie.” Soft now, and with a kindness that hid Zach’s frustration. “You said something bad’s gonna happen if we go this way. I don’t know if your momma’s there or not. I don’t think you do either, deep down. So I’m askin’ if you wanna risk us for something that might not be. I’m askin’ if one small chance is worth your life and mine.”

  She thought, Almost done, almost to the end and she thought of that boy-size casket in her dreams, propped on its end between two scrubby pines on the cliffs ahead. In that moment, Allie found she could do nothing. The weight of her choice was too great and too awful. She was a woman trapped in the body of a tired and cold little girl, but Allie knew well the pain of living. It is the things we want most of all that require the greatest sacrifice, and in that regard Allie believed she had suffered enough for her reward. She had given her body to the woods, had surrendered her doubts and most of her fears, hoping that would prove her worthy of finding Mary again. Now the God she’d grown to loathe asked for one thing more. He wanted Zach. And though the thought of losing him frightened her, what scared Allie more was that she still faced those cliffs, and hadn’t turned back.

  Zach turned for her. He nudged the travois toward the river and on around, pointing it upstream as gently as he could so as not to upset Allie or Sam. And just as he lifted his boot to take that first step back, a tree cracked not a hundred yards away.

  Neither of them moved. There was no further sound from the darkwood. None was needed. They had been in the forest for five days, and in many ways had come to understand that world better than the one they’d left. Zach merely steered the travois back around and pointed it to the cliffs. He began a slow stumble forward. Allie took hold of her handle and walked with him, because that’s what animals did when they were herded.

  “Something bad’s gonna happen if we go up there, Zach.”

  “We ain’t goin’ up there. I got a plan.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.”

  A lie (maybe the biggest Zach had ever told in his life), but one that was at least partly embedded in the truth. He at least had the first steps of a plan, and that was not to make the demon angry again. It didn’t matter to him if they were going the wrong way. Sooner or later the woods had to end somewhere, and maybe there they would find help. Maybe they could even escape. But not now. Not with Sam near death and Allie’s feet not working. Not with Zach’s own clogged chest and fading courage.

  They reached halfway to the cliffs when Allie asked, “What’s your plan?”

  “Let’s sit down and rest. We can do that. It’ll understand.”

  Staying put was better than going on ahead. Allie let go of her side of the travois and shrugged off her pack. Her shoulders hurt from pulling Sam all that way, and her fingers buzzed from the tremors of the wood bouncing over the rocks. Her ankle ached but her feet felt fine, at least in the sense that Allie couldn’t feel them at all. She thought as long as they were numb they hadn’t gone any worse, though she didn’t have a mind to take off her shoes and socks to look. Allie had come to the conclusion that what was left of her Chucks was all that was keeping her feet whole. If she took them off, those blisters on her feet would pop and millions of black spiders could come spewing out. It was an impossible thought, utterly childish. Then again, the most frightening things often were.

  Zach walked to the water’s edge and gathered a handful of water for Sam. The dog’s eyes fluttered from closed to the thick look of someone unsure if what he’s seeing is real or not. Allie didn’t ask Zach whether he thought Samwise would live. She was too afraid of the answer. Besides, she didn’t think it would matter as long as they were moving toward those cliffs. Zach sat, happy to get off his feet. Allie looked at the serpentine shape of the river behind them, that wide bank leading back to their old camp. Zach only looked ahead, his thoughts plain.

  “You can’t go on those cliffs, Zach,” she whispered. “Please promise you won’t.”

  “It ain’t up there, Allie, It’s behind. I get up there, I can find a way out.”

  “I saw what’s gonna happen if you get up there. I dreamed it. I been dreaming it a long while. Started the night we slept under the pine, next to the meadow with the tree. I dreamed I was at a funeral. Everybody was there and everybody was crying, and there was a casket.”

  “Whose was it?”

  “It wasn’t like the big ones they buried everyone in after The Storm. It was small. Like what they’d put a kid in.” Allie couldn’t look at him, only her shoes. Her hands appeared from somewhere. They weren’t a child’s hands, more an old woman’s. “Dreamed it again the next night. That time I wanted to ask you who was getting buried, because I couldn’t see the name on the stone. But you weren’t there, Zach. Everybody was there but you and Sam,
and now Sam’s . . .”

  She couldn’t finish. The world beyond Allie’s shoes was covered by the long strands of her hair. She was glad for that. It meant Zach couldn’t see the tears that had welled in her eyes. Allie tried shooing them away and then thought better of it. Crying might mean it was done (and it wasn’t, she thought, at least not yet), but Allie would let those tears fall if that was what convinced Zach to listen. To trust.

  “The next night was the night when I figured out it was you,” she said. “That was the night you bumped your head. It scared me, Zach. I ain’t never been so scared, not even when those eyes were chasing me. Then last night, I had it again. Only this time there wasn’t no funeral. It was just the casket. It was sitting up on its end, up on those cliffs.”

  “Just a dream,” Zach said not long after, though with a tone Allie believed had a few tears in it as well. “Don’t mean nothin’, Allie. It’s your fear’s all. These woods ain’t been kind. We both been beaten up, along with poor old Sam. You get cold and scared and beaten up, your mind starts playing tricks. You took your clothes off in all that freezing wind. That ain’t what no normal person would do. You said Sam talked you through how to make that fire and you talked to your momma. You know those ain’t right, Allie. In your heart, you know.”

  Allie brushed half of her hair behind her right ear. She looked up at him. Zach’s words may have been full of doubt, but his face had gone pasty with fear. “You just have to believe,” she said.

  “Kinda funny, being told to believe by a girl who’s fallen away.”

  “I got more faith than you think, Zach Barnett. Faith’s all you got when all else gets taken away. Maybe Sam never talked to me at all and maybe that was never my momma, but I believe it because I’m here. I didn’t die from falling in that water, and God never ate me in that darkwood. Maybe what I saw was just her sending word, like she did with my compass. That’s my faith either way, and I believe it no matter what. Maybe that’s the truest kind of believing there is. And that’s why I need you to believe me now.”