In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  Allie’s mouth twisted into a grimace. She bent forward, overcome by the dam bursting inside her that surged from her eyes and nose, a deluge she felt leaking from her very pores. All the hope she’d found and lost. All the days she’d refused to let pass by. Cards she’d bought and signed and tucked into a living room drawer. Hours spent mopping and dusting and keeping a clean house for her momma to come home to.

  All of that mourning. Poured out.

  There upon that lonely crag of rock, the air filled with wounded howls muffled not by the wind but by the blanket of needles pressed against Allie’s face as she covered the bones with her own broken body. She tried to gather them all into her arms, wanting one last embrace. Zach laid his body over hers. He did not tell Allie everything would be all right; such notions had long passed. He did not offer counsel; none could be given. Zach only shut his eyes as the stone over Allie’s heart rolled away. He let her tears come, because crying meant it was over.

  Allie sniffed, tried to push herself up. Zach moved away as she rose to her feet. She felt him following her across the cliff. He veered off to their left, saying something. Allie kept walking. She stopped at the edge of the darkwood, at the place where the bear had gone. No sound came from inside, but Allie said, “Thank you.” Then she lifted her head to the sky, on past where the moon shone down over breaking clouds, above the stars themselves. The tears stung her eyes as she spoke again: “Thank you.”

  “Allie?” Zach said. “Come here.”

  She wiped her eyes and turned. Zach had drifted to the far edge of the cliffs, facing the direction they’d come. The breeze fluttered his coat in quiet snapping sounds, yet his body had gone rigid. Allie looked to make sure Sam was still safe and went to him. Zach took her hand in his right and pointed with his left. He spoke one word.

  “Look.”

  At first, Allie believed she would cry again. She bit her lip and sucked it back instead, thinking there would be time enough for that. Her hand squeezed Zach’s. His squeezed back.

  Far below lay the river and the bank upon which they’d trod nearly two whole days. Ahead and to their left, trees and hills and deadwood stretched on into forever, growing to blue mountains.

  But it was to the right Zach’s finger pointed. To the sliver of land where hills and deadwood yielded to the flat squares of fields and the town lights beyond.

  10

  They gathered what bones they could. There was no telling if the ground had returned them all, not with so many pieces and so little light. Zach said they could wait for morning to be sure, but Allie found she could not do that to him. Not after Zach had come so far and done so much. Not after seeing the pain on his face and that longing for home. They remained atop the cliff a while longer, feeling through the needles and dirt for any hard thing, laying it all together under Sam’s drowsing eyes. Allie took care not to let the bones form a pile, feeling that somehow wrong. She left a small space between each instead. When the time to leave had come, Zach retrieved Allie’s backpack and brought it to her. Even now, he did not look inside.

  She unzipped it and set aside the fire maker and what was left of the fish, then packed the bones inside. The skull went in last. Allie could not look at it without crying. She held the pack horizontal in her arms like an offering as Zach led them back into the darkwood. He carried Sam at his chest. The dog wavered between sleep and wakefulness. He lifted his head over Zach’s shoulder and peered at Allie. She smiled and called him a good boy.

  Finding the river was easy enough. The sound of rushing water was the only thing they heard, and Zach figured all they really had to do was keep heading downhill. He stepped soft through the tangle of branches and burrs, easing them aside for Allie before taking his place ahead of her again. They did not speak. Zach kept his eyes to the crowding night. Allie said not to worry, the bear would leave them alone now. She did not know how she understood this and gave it over to the God of sharp edges. He’d brought Allie to her mother, and her mother would keep them safe.

  They found the mound of rocks. The remaining stone that had pinned the travois had been moved away. Next to the place it now rested, Zach found a single print of five long claws. He laid Sam on top and snugged the scarf around him. Allie removed the bones from her pack and arranged them between Sam and the front of the travois as best she could. It felt better now, having Mary lie under the open sky just a while longer. Allie draped her backpack over the bones so none of them would spill. Sam perked a bit at the responsibility of not only keeping his master safe but his master’s treasure as well.

  “It’s gonna be a long way,” Zach said. “We ain’t never walked here at night before.”

  “I’m able so long as you can craft another splint for my ankle. How’s your breathin’?”

  His breathing didn’t sound good at all, but Zach’s grin looked fine. “Home for Christmas,” he said. “We hurry, we might even beat Santa.”

  He set her ankle between two sections of oak he broke across his knee and tied with the bootlace from the fire bow. They set out for the tall hill ahead. Zach took one end of the travois and Allie the other. Before long, the sound of thunk-thunk joined with the wind and the water and the gentle clapping of the bones, making an orchestra that sounded to Allie like the angels who once told shepherds the future had been saved.

  The darkwood stirred once not too far on—one snapping branch that bent just enough to catch their attention. Zach nearly screamed loud enough to soil himself, believing it to be an ambush. Allie showed no such fear. She stopped and peered into the deep trees as though pondering the mysteries of the world, then pulled her side of the travois away from the bank.

  Zach gripped his side hard and asked, “What’re you doing?”

  “It’s this way,” she said. “Come on.”

  “It’s in there, Allie.”

  She looked at him and smiled. “I know. This way, Zach.”

  He had no choice but to follow. Zach looked back, meaning to grab one of the bones. Mary’s bones had been what had driven the bear away, her bones and nothing more, and he believed waving a leg or arm or even a bit of shoulder in front of the beast’s face would be like wielding a cross in front of a vampire or shooting a werewolf with a silver bullet. Yet there was no need for talismans, real or imagined. The darkwood in that place was only a small patch; after a dozen steps the scrub ended at an expanse of olden woods much like what had greeted them that first day so long ago. The land here was flat and open, covered with a carpet of leaves that did not so much as bob the ends of the travois. Moonlight leaked down through the canopy, making the world bright. Another crack echoed ahead. Allie put the sound in front of her and turned the travois there. By then Zach was too tired to argue.

  The woods ceded to a wide meadow farther on, one populated not by screaming trees but giant stones. To their left the ancient forest stood tall and silent, so tightly packed that it appeared as one tree rather than thousands. Past the meadow the bear called again, leading them over a small rise with another cracking branch. They followed a trail blazed by sound rather than sight through the deep woods, skirting steep ravines and places Allie believed had been darkened by more than the night—places where she thought the bad things truly were. They walked long through that twisty land, slowed by burdens carried within and without. Then, as though the night’s events had finally tired him, the bear let out a single growl from the shadows.

  This time it was Zach who altered course first, and it was he who received the first glimpse of their journey’s end. There, only a few hundred steps more (which seemed miles to both of them; a sorry thought, given they both knew there would be miles more ahead), moonlight fell through the bare branches of oak and maple to reveal their end. It glimmered off the iron bars of a rusty gate. And on the other side, a flat blankness that could only mean a road.

  “Allie,” he said.

  “I see it.”

  “I never knew.”

  “Me neither.”

  The fore
st fell silent once more as they neared the rusty bars of the gate that guarded the entrance to Happy Hollow. Zach twisted and leaned the travois around the last of the trees and finally crossed to the other side, stepping onto a mix of clay and stone that made the most beautiful road he’d ever seen. Allie paused there and turned for a final look. She spied a flicker of two lights, one red and one white, in a patch of darkwood. There for only a moment, and then gone. For good, she believed, at least as far as Allie Granderson was concerned. She swore never to return to that wood. And yet Allie would do just that once more years later, this time to lose something rather than find. The God of sharp edges does not mock the promises we stake to our futures, though at times He does chuckle.

  Zach let go of his hold on the travois long enough to stoop for a sharp rock at his feet. He walked back to the gate and regarded it, then slowly carved two names into the crossbar at his face.

  ZACH BARNETT read one.

  ALLIE GRANDERSON the other.

  11

  The road would have made walking a delight to anyone not plagued by hardened feet, sprained ankles, and worn joints. It was not town but may as well have been; Zach knew exactly where they were. More, he knew the way. That narrow road led to a wider one of gravel not far on and then to pavement, and that pavement brought them three hours later to the old wooden road sign reading Welcome to Mattingly. By then, the mere act of placing one foot in front of the other had become an act of torture. The cold felt like a wall pressing against them from the top and front, hunching them over. Sam had fallen silent and would not even perk when Allie waved the last bites of fish in front of his nose. Whether it was sleep or death, Allie thought her dog had done all he could; his fate now rested in how soon they could get help.

  Andy Sommerville’s BP station was long shuttered for the night. The houses beyond (including the very neighborhoods Allie and Zach had passed in a former time as their former selves) stood dark and empty. Only a spattering of electric candles and wooden reindeer bore witness to their return. They stopped at the first few homes and beat on the windows and doors, crying for someone to please help. No one answered. To Allie, it was as if the town had emptied. Or—and this was far worse—that the townspeople had grown so callous as to let the cries of two lost and broken children and their equally broken dog go unheeded.

  “We’ll stop at the sheriff’s office,” Zach said. “Daddy always leaves the back door unlocked. We’ll call from there. Least we’ll be warm.”

  Past the neighborhood stood Miller’s Bridge and the glow of Main Street. At the sight of that, their slow pace quickened. Allie eased the burden of her ankle by leaning on Zach’s shoulder. They’d reached the midway point of the bridge when he came to a sudden stop against the railing and looked down at the water. Zach shook his head slowly. When he looked at Allie, she saw wonder and regret on his face.

  “I was wrong,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “Water’s goin’ the wrong way. I thought town was upriver. It ain’t. It’s down, Allie. Downriver. If we’d’ve gone the way I wanted when we found the river, we’d still be out there.”

  Allie looked at him and shrugged. When that didn’t work, she smiled and pulled at the travois, hoping Zach would put the bad behind him and move on. Really, that’s all anyone could ever do in life.

  “He was only meaning to help,” she said. “The bear, I mean. That wood’s a bad place, Zach. It’s the Holler, and we found out all those stories our parents scare us with about the Holler are true. There’s bad things there, bad things like all those shadows we thought we didn’t see and whatever thing killed that poor doe. But the bear wasn’t one of them. It marked us back at the pond, just like I said—like I was scared of. It was only after we started walking home that I thought about how those marks were.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Those claw marks were on the backs of the trees, Zach. Why’d that be? If it really wanted to scare us, that bear would’ve marked those trees so we’d see them plain. As it was, the only way we found them was because I had to go make sure I was still a woman. Even then, we had to go looking for the rest. Don’t you see? That bear clawed the trees that way not so we’d see we was marked, but so the bad things would—so they’d know the bear was protecting us.”

  “He still hurt Sam.”

  Allie turned to check on her dog. Sam lay curled in a ball, his eyes barely open but staring at the backpack. “I guess he had to do whatever he needed to keep us going the wrong way.” She fell quiet. “I thought he was God, but he was just my compass.”

  Zach kept his eyes on that water, watching as it flowed down past them. Thankfulness flooded his heart, along with a sadness so deep it could not even draw tears. “I think it’s the same thing.”

  The sight beyond the bridge was as familiar as slipping into old clothes and as alien as any world could be. The glow of downtown lights nearly blinded them after so many dark nights in the wilderness, but what caught Allie’s eye was the dome of light oozing up from between the buildings. As they neared the corner, the sound of singing rose into the night. Trucks and cars were parked in a wide circle around the town square, their headlights gleaming against the broken shapes of a crowd unlike any she had ever seen in Mattingly, not even for Carnival Day. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, all clustered around the town tree. Raising their voices in praise and grief not as many, but as one.

  Among them were Marshall Granderson and Grace Howard, as well as Jake and Kate Barnett. The four of them had formed the center of that night’s vigil. Gathered around them in a tight circle that kept away the dark and the cold were friends and neighbors both current and forgotten, all but Bobby Barnes, who stood at the window of his shop with a beer in his hand and tears on his cheeks, whispering those old carols to himself. The trembling that had overtaken Marshall’s body was not made better by all that good Christian charity, though it calmed a bit when Grace’s hand stroked his back.

  As the last verses were sung of neither sins nor sorrow grown and the wonders of His love, the crowd fell to silent prayer. Marshall heard his own whimpers and those of others. He heard Kate’s and Jake’s, and knew their sorrow as his own. He heard the wind as it rustled the wooden crosses on the tree and a steady clacking along the road beyond.

  He and Grace looked up at that last sound, unsure what it was. What Marshall beheld seemed more miracle than he deserved. There at the corner of Main Street where the new town hall had been built came the figures of a boy and girl bearing a load behind them. And though Marshall felt far too much fear to believe, he stepped away from Grace and called into the darkness.

  “Allie?”

  The gathered turned, their prayers suspended. The children had just passed beneath the first street lamp. The girl’s head looked up as they passed back into the faint shadow, struggling on closer for the square. Marshall called out her name again. This time, even in the darkness, he saw the girl lift her hand.

  Marshall ran. He ran as he had never run before, not even when news of The Storm had reached him at work some five hundred and forty-eight days before. He ran such that his legs felt free of the ground altogether, making him float the rest of the way. He felt Grace running beside him and reached out for her hand. The others chased after them. Jake and Kate called for their boy, asking if it was really him.

  There was nothing left in Allie but to smile. She labored on as Zach labored for them both, their eyes filled with the sight of home. Unspoken between them was the sudden knowledge of what they’d just done and how much they’d given in their search. Every ache in Allie’s body flamed and burned, just as Zach felt in each step the thick weariness of all the steps that had come before it, and they both understood that it all could not have happened another way. Allie did not use what small breath she had left to call out for her father, who was now so close that she could see the love mixed with horror in his eyes. She looked to Zach instead, all muddied with blotches of dirt and filth that looked like
liver spots. They’d gone old in the woods, and yet in the seconds it took for Marshall and Jake to reach them, Allie realized the town would still see them as the boy and girl who’d gone lost and not the man and woman who’d gotten themselves found. If that was the case, there was something she needed to say now, before it was too late.

  “You’re very brave, Zach Barnett.”

  He smiled. “So are you, Allie Granderson.”

  Marshall reached them first. He swept Allie into his arms and squeezed her, mourning the sunken look in her eyes and every rib poking out of her shriveled frame. He covered her dirty face and shambled hair with his kisses and then did the same with Zach. Grace wrapped her arms around father and daughter, pressing them into one another as though molding not a memory, but a bridge to span what had been broken and what was now healed. The sheriff and his wife followed. Kate could not speak through her tears. All she could manage was an unbroken melody of “I love you” to Zach sung over and over. She covered her son, holding him tight. Allie watched as Zach’s momma looked far into the sky, past the moon and stars, to the very place where Allie had offered her thank-you hours before. The crowd rushed over them with tears of their own, washing them with cries of shock and praises to Jesus.

  No one noticed what lay upon the travois. None would have were it not for Sam’s tired bark. Grace was first to kneel by the dog. She patted Sam’s head and turned the scarf around him over, revealing a wide wound that made someone scream. Grace then lifted Allie’s knapsack, revealing what lay beneath.

  A silence fell over the crowd. To Allie, it was as if they had all turned their backs and walked on, leaving only her and her father. Marshall looked at the bones as a paleness swept over his face. Allie told herself she would not cry, not there in the midst of all that happiness. She instead kept her voice even as the tears flowed down her cheeks. She held out her hand and opened it, showing the cross inside.