He adjusted his glasses and went over to where the Dead Man had been standing. The tree looked like any regular tree. He touched the bark to be sure. He looked again at the two slashes hacked into the blackened middle. Closer to the blade than he wanted to be, Doug withdrew his hand. The soot stained his fingertips.
“Spirits, or whatever … telling a kid—a killer to get other kids together … digging in the woods … at night. Sound familiar to anyone?”
“Whoa,” Greg said.
“C’mon. You don’t believe that,” Tiffany said.
“It makes sense,” Doug said. “Not total sense, but—”
“Then what’re you still doing here?”
“I won’t—I can’t let him hurt you,” he said.
“I’m a big girl, genius.”
“Anyone … Please,” he turned to them, “we have to leave this place … now, or—”
“I hope you make the choice to stay, Dougy,” E. said. She squeezed his arm as she walked by. “You’re wrong about John.” E. stood at the head of the circle, the Big Tree at her back.
Doug kept away from her, from the group and the fire. “If it’s John … or some other crazy person, like Greg said—the killer has killed before.”
“So we’ll have to be scarier than he is,” Tiffany said.
“Scarier than the devil worshipper?” Josué said.
“War.” In the orange glow, E. spookily smiled.
“That’s what he wants,” Doug said. Whether he meant John or the killer, not even Doug was sure anymore, so certain he was that they were walking into some monster’s trap.
“I like this idea,” Josué said. He and Tiffany high-fived.
Greg kept his head down, burdened by conflicting emotions about Erika.
“We’re just kids,” Doug said. “We’re kids—kids …”
The more he said the word, the less true it sounded. The word recalled all the time they’d shared in the woods, how inexperienced and friendless they’d arrived, kids bearing the weight of being nothing special in a world that promised they could be anything. Here was a chance to be something. They were on the brink of it, and only a breeze …
Hearing the treetops rustle, Greg lifted his eyes.
“I—”
The kids saw movement high in the branches of the Big Tree. It wasn’t the wind. A boy was up there.
John Walker found his footing on a thick limb that projected over their heads, thirty feet or more above. Slightly bent in the moonlight, the boy shed his clothes. The articles fell on them as graceful and quiet as the shadows of nighthawks. His shirt and a sock were lost in the fire. He stood upright and his thin body shown softly radiant. He took a bold step forward. One knee wobbled. The tremor coursed his torso and rattled his bony shoulders. The boy appeared to make jazz hands at an invisible audience in the sky. The group said nothing, were barely breathing, transfixed by the sight. John seemed to sense their awe then and stood straighter. Without looking down, he took two surefooted steps toward the stars. The tree beneath him was lost to shadows as he neared the end of the bough. The already vague outline of its leaves dissolved around him. The boy appeared to stand in the night sky. It was hard to say for how long John was up there, cheating gravity, death, disbelief. His arms hovered at his sides. He lifted them in a V.
“These are our woods,” someone said. It didn’t matter who. It could’ve been any of them, except Doug.
E. joined hands with Alex, who reached for Tiffany. Tiffany took hold of Greg. Greg gave in, accepted the hand of his good buddy, J. Josué and E. offered open hands to Doug to close the circle around the fire.
He joined them.
Doug didn’t gawk in reverence at the heavens. He watched their faces flicker red against the night. Their wide-open mouths and upturned eyes made masks of ecstasy and rage.
II
1
Doug Horolez would never forget one basketball game down at Penny Park starring the lanky Greg Dombrowski. The guy wore a parrot green jersey. Doug didn’t follow sports, but it wasn’t the school’s colors. Greg wasn’t on the team. He could’ve been. The way he moved on the court was unforgettable, feigning and slinking past other kids as if they were mannequins, soaring to the net, layup after layup. Greg remained stone-faced between roars of struggle against gravity and his body’s limits. That was the feeling of watching him play—a solo performance with no other purpose but the enactment of grace to the end.
Greg showed the same surefootedness during the ritual, the Friday after John’s. The boy’s naked body towered on the limb of the Big Tree. He took three strides, going for the open break in the canopy.
They all had to walk, the group had decided last week. The Dead Man proposed it once he’d scaled down the rock wall behind the tree, naked and shivering, but also grinning with some embarrassment and pride. They put a blanket around his shoulders and hugged him. They high-fived in celebration, as if the guy had hit an out-of-the-park home run. Nothing had changed except their outlook on the danger ahead. They huddled together and discussed plans for reclaiming the woods. The ritual would be their “purification process.” John spoke with what appeared to be great concentration, eyelids pressed tight, verbalizing cosmically ordained rules he alone could hear:
“We, each of us, must be fearless. The ritual will prepare us to confront the devil in the woods.”
The group had yessed and nodded enthusiastically as the fire hissed and popped louder than the hushed voices they’d suddenly adopted. Whispering in this way, it was decided one or two ritual walks per week could be managed without arousing the suspicion of their parents and jeopardizing their work in the woods. Greg stood first when the question of initiation order was posed. Doug was the last sitting. Warnings died, strangled in him. The group giggled as if an inside joke had been made. Josué noogied him until he got up. They joined hands around the fire again and vowed in a low chant to finish all seven rituals before the moon was “pregnant with light.”
Silently, Doug made a vow of his own: to save the group from themselves before then, preferably before his own walk. He understood their bond as a temporary insanity, born of desperation. He knew they were good people who could be returned to reality. When they didn’t wake up doubtful the next morning or the next, Doug knew he had to keep his promise. He followed the group across an invisible boundary into another world. Somebody had to. He couldn’t let John win, shepherd E. and everyone else into the woods until there was no one left to love him.
There was no talking to Tiffany about the dangers of confronting a cloaked murderer that wielded a knife the length of Doug’s forearm. On the night John walked, she’d curled asleep with Alex. In the morning, she left camp early with Greg. While Doug rolled his slippery nylon sleeping bag, trying to get it small enough to bind, he watched Tiffany who’d only yesterday taken his virginity recede through the trees with another guy. She sassed Greg, and he started after her in mock chase. They ran around the trail bend and left only their coupled laughter to echo in Doug’s heart, empty as ever, ringing as hollow as a tin can lost to the wind.
“The wind blows in our favor now,” John said above him. It sounded as if the guy had read his mind and spoke directly to him. Doug didn’t look up. The walls of whatever contained his emotions felt thin. They trembled and threatened to crush.
“I feel it, too,” E. answered warmly. She doused the fire’s coals.
Doug unrolled his sleeping bag and tried again, one clumsy fold at a time, uncertain if he were doing it right. Despite the insanity of last night, he failed to think beyond himself. He focused on the labor of his hands while his mind unpacked what he was losing, which was nothing, as usual, except the potential of having something with somebody. Even if dating someone, there was the threat of heartbreak, sure, but not after many deeply fulfilling moments to make the potential (inevitable?) loss worth it.
Doug’s hands ached now, and the sleeping bag was still too bulky. He undid it and restarted. How long would he hav
e needed to date Tiffany or E. to break even with loneliness? A whole week? Months? Fifteen years, like his parents? Nothing short of forever seemed enough. Doug was alone inwardly, as in his sense of rightness, which alienated him from the group. He wanted to feel strong and determined always, as he had when preparing to face an evil John Walker. He wanted to put that power to use, to save his friends, be the sort of hero unconcerned about his fragile inner self, only the actions necessary to do good.
Whatever strength remained in him allowed Doug to pack his belongings and leave. He didn’t cry in front of E. and the others. He got the bag rolled OK. One side funneled out wider than the other, but he was able to jam it into its drawstring sack, mutely wave, and hurry home, where, alone in his room, Doug sobbed into his pillow to keep his family from hearing.
The kids spent all week setting traps around the Grove’s perimeter. Trip lines and stumbling pits camouflaged with sticks and leaves were strategically placed on the other side of the creek. They retraced the course the killer had run, as reported by Doug, through the crime scene and into the trees. They found trails zigzagging in razor thin lines up the valley’s steep sides to the high ridge above. They booby-trapped these as well. The next day, they found their new hiding spot rooted up. Rations, tools, and supplies had all been reduced to ash and char in the fire pit as before. The failure of their juvenile defenses against the killer, who was more like a force of erasure of everything they loved, brought a humbling quiet over the group. After a day of strategizing, research, and rummaging their parents’ sheds, garages, medicine cabinets, and junk drawers, they returned and built deadlier traps, starting up the ridge and working backward as methodically as their enemy: punji bear traps and reinforced steel trip wires, as well as common handholds and low-lying branches armed with the real consequences of sharp-ended sticks and spreads of nails, needles, and razorblades.
Doug didn’t voice opposition to the work. He didn’t say much all that week. The others noticed—his gawky smile swapped for lowered eyes, his usual criticism absent whenever the group discussed plans to defend the Grove. Each in turn asked if he were sick, if he were still shaken up from seeing the killer, if he’d had some trouble outside the woods, if something wasn’t the matter. They questioned Doug while prepping weapons to maim another human being. Sure, a murderer, but maybe random kids who would return to the Grove to revive its glory days. Believing himself incapable of more than one stand against John’s influence, Doug withheld his concerns, waiting for the right moment, a slip of doubt from one of his friends about the group’s intentions. They were careful, determined. As the week marched on and the rift widened between their unity and his silent resistance, Doug began to wonder if they suspected his dissent and his desire to stop them.
That Friday after school, they toured the traps to ensure Greg’s ritual would go undisturbed, making repairs and adjustments to askew armaments and loose wires. They walked single file through the breath of the woods, a muggy midday heat, uncommon for early May. They went slowly but confidently, swatting mindlessly at mosquitoes and intently mimicking the kid ahead of them. Alex led the group through underbrush, over humps of stone and dirt by way of detailed notes, stopping often to instruct where to place footing and which trees to grasp to safely venture from camp. All but John were coatless. Everyone but Alex wore shorts. Tiffany wore a striped dress. All of which would make a wrong move painful, if not lethal. Unlike yesterday, the nearest traps remained intact. The group paused to admire each, revealed by their guide like deadly spiders with exotic, gorgeously patterned backs, strung between trunks or nested in ground holes, awaiting a misstep. It seemed wild now to the kids that they were their makers. The woods were covered with them. None of the well-camouflaged tops of the punji traps in the middle of the trails had been broken. Just a little way ahead, one of their trip lines sagged, had been snagged out of the earth. Along one of the thin trails further up the ridge, they discovered a spiked foothold crushed and crusted in dried blood.
“We got him,” Greg said. He landed congratulatory handshakes on the rest of the group. Winning smiles broke their anxiety. All but Doug looked relieved.
In a few minutes, the traps were adjusted and carefully reset, and the kids returned to camp as cautiously. They struggled to contain their excitement and traveled in an effervescent shuffle that resembled a conga line fleeing a room with a sleeping baby. Back at the tree, they yipped and howled at the trees. They clapped in triumphant pops and cracked jokes that portrayed the killer as an idiot, bumbling around last night, catching his goofy cloak on nails, tumbling cartoonishly into trap after trap until, too fearful to take another step, he was forced to give up his marauding until morning, stuck petrified in the woods alone for hours before scrambling to his perch up on the ridge.
“We’ve won one round,” E. said over their trailing laughter.
Her eyes softened. Her lips remained a wavering line. To Doug, she looked a bit crazed.
“He can be afraid, like us,” John said, not at the head of the fire pit, where E. stood, but walking up from the creek. He’d been crouched, cupping up enough water to slake a great thirst. His chin was glossy and he wiped it with his sleeve as the group turned. “He can leave us this place.”
The others whispered yesses in their group voice.
From his things, John withdrew a disassembled fishing pole with line and a pouch of hooks. He put them in Greg’s hands and said, “Do good work.”
Driving pegs for trip lines yesterday, Greg had talked about fishing with his biological dad on the Cal-Sag River. The sun making pink fire in the black sky over the trees. Car tires thumping lazily across the bridge overhead. Greg full of purpose and the potency of the man’s bitter cologne. John must’ve guessed at the story’s significance and asked Greg to catch a celebratory dinner for them to fry after the ritual—three fish, no more or less—and to teach Doug.
Doug lagged at first, resisting John’s order to play the child as Greg strode down the creek. Soon enough, though, he tried to match the guy’s every footprint, unable to recall where he’d set his own traps, let alone others’.
The valley narrowed and sloped gradually until the ridge above both boys was lost behind the treetops. Over rocky steps, the creek snaked down through the dense woodland, quickened by smaller run-offs. One slender waterfall slapped the stones like hose water.
The land leveled. The hike became less strenuous. The creek widened and deepened. It bent calmly around a muddy embankment and the black corpses of several fallen trees. It was nothing new for Doug to be disoriented, yet it was disturbing that he couldn’t discern from which direction the whir of traffic was coming, just above the water’s trickle, on what was probably Willow Springs Road. The world beyond culminated into a slow roar, like an ever-cresting wave. Why that sound? If there was a god overseeing all things—good, evil, and mundane—it could’ve been anything, like a bell.
“Here’ll do,” Greg said.
Greg scanned the green surface while they talked about the likelihood that the stream emptied onto the Cal-Sag River. A fish flashed from the hollow of a submerged tree. Greg dropped to one knee and showed Doug how to overturn rocks to dig for live bait. Greg looked over at him after every step, not continuing until Doug glanced up to acknowledge his instructions. Maybe he emulated the father that he’d spoken of with nostalgia, and felt necessary, like somebody. The guy’s confidence was irritating. Needing a break, Doug pulled a plastic bottle of pop out of his backpack and took a swig. He offered the pop to Greg who dumped it, pulled a stubby knife from his pocket, and sliced the top off without asking. He tipped a few worms over the jagged rim. The last he slipped bleeding onto his hook.
“Now we can get some work done,” Greg said.
Doug followed him out onto the water, and the boys balanced on the soggy tree trunks, loose like basketballs underfoot. Doug played fisherman’s apprentice, holding the squirming bottle away from his body while recalling his own assertiveness when the group firs
t began to dig for clues at Bachelor’s Grove. Having Tiffany on his side, the support of someone skeptical of John’s judgment, had made him tougher. That version of himself seemed faded and false as a dream. To watch that power alive in Greg wasn’t easy. The guy had stolen his girl and his best self.
“See that shady spot?” Greg pointed up the stream. He cast the line. Greg fumbled the reeling, but the bait sunk right on.
“John talk to you about how we could live out here, all of us? Grow our own food,” Greg said. “Wouldn’t that be something.”
Doug looked down to hide his revulsion. The guy’s gym shoes were so big, the tips protruded over the water. A part of Doug wanted to shove him in, watch him drift—safe, but gone forever.
“Did you really see him? The killer?”
“It sucked,” Doug said.
“You couldn’t see his face at all?”
Doug shook his head.
“I mean, if you saw him—if he passed you on the street—you wouldn’t even know?”
“Probably not. I blew it … like everything.”
“No way,” Greg said. “You’ve come closer than anyone to this guy. That’s cool, man. And you were ready to brain him with that hammer of yours? That’s tough.”
“Thanks,” Doug said, too upset to be grateful.
The pole bent in Greg’s hands.
“I got you,” he cried and leaned in. He cranked at the reel, yanking the pole up and down against the catch. His body wobbled, angled sideways of the taut line. He readjusted his footing. Overstepping, Greg tipped forward—
Doug seized and held firmly to his waist, keeping the tall boy steady.
A minute later, they were out of breath and rested on the bank with a long, lean fish between them.
“Thanks, genius,” Greg said. “I don’t usually do teamwork.”
Doug nodded. Still he wouldn’t meet Greg’s gaze. He felt like a toddler beside the adult-sized basketballer, and he watched the dead fish as if for another round of spasms.
Into that Good Night Page 18