Into that Good Night

by Levis Keltner

  If John’s testimony wasn’t proof enough that Rocky was their tormentor, Alex had faked sick today—in itself an elaborate story—and followed the kid from his house to the doors of Palos Hills Junior High, video recording the whole thing. He ended up at—drum roll—Doug’s locker, mixing in with other kids and rushing out before Doug approached. He reappeared during recess, fiddled with Doug’s lock for less than a minute and picked up the note that Alex had left for him.

  “Wait—what note?”

  “You’re going to have to ignore the irrational emotional part of yourself, now. Everything depends on it,” Alex said, looking back, then went out into the gloomy day and up the tracks.

  At the top, the Dead Man still gazed at the water. “Are you ready?”

  “I’m stopping this,” Doug said as he climbed the slippery rocks.

  “It’s too late,” John said.

  “Watch me.”

  “You literally can’t.”

  Doug started home.

  “Before you turn your back forever on the people who need you most—listen to me,” John said, his voice straining.

  “That’s what got me here in the first place,” Doug shouted back. “I’m not stupid. I’m telling people about the woods.”

  “We used your notebook—your paper, your pen. We mocked your handwriting.”

  Doug slowed. He cringed on the knife of betrayal.

  “The three of us—we decided to leave a very convincing note for the killer. Just in case of … this.” John waited for him to stop before continuing. “If you tell anyone, it’ll look like you were corresponding with the killer as his accomplice. Alex’s video and photos would confirm that. It’s something you would never do—I know, because I know you. The people you’re running to don’t. By the time you sort that out, E. will have confronted the killer and you can’t let that happen. I’m sorry. Believe me, I didn’t want it to happen like this. I wanted—needed you to help of your own free will. But your fear has been so great. I would take it on, but he chose you.”

  “You really did set me up this time.” Doug was shocked. He should’ve been used to being manipulated by John. He wasn’t used to being right.

  “We threw the pitch, evil hit. The ball is going way back to the fence. You have to make the catch and close the inning, be the hero. I know you want—more than anything, deep down—to be that. To save E., who is resolved to face the killer on the train bridge herself unless you make this play. The trees know my limits, buddy. You’re up.”

  Doug hadn’t turned around yet. No matter how hard he squeezed his hands into fists, his heart remained small and hard, no longer an egg, but a stone, paralyzed with defeat.

  •

  Doug waited for the killer on the train bridge until dark. He got up hourly, stepped with care across the gaps in ties that led to a long drop to the green water, and switched tracks to let the passenger trains scream by, and, later, the endless freighters. One way or another, John would succeed in getting him killed. After being so upset that Doug couldn’t cry, a bit of sense returned and he laid his hammer out on his backpack. Occasionally, distant figures approached from the Palos Hills side, scrambled in midday heat lines. They vanished long before coming near enough to recognize. No one had yet approached from the Heights.

  Doug had time to run, to flag a police car, to tell all. Meanwhile, what if E. died? The possibility that John and Alex were telling the truth petrified him.

  Alex had promised they would keep watch from the trees along the canal. Josué, Tiffany, and Greg were likely with them now, passing the binoculars, maybe horsing around or talking about school or their parents, as if it weren’t totally fucked that people who claimed to be his friends were convinced that him confronting a murderer was a good idea. Because they weren’t his friends. And where was the best of them?

  Doug peered over the sides to spot the girl. Not seeing her on the bank of the canal, he looked behind the rusted truss beams on both sides and found nothing. She was on the far bank, maybe. He felt as if E. were just behind him, close enough to reach out and touch. He called her name. He demanded she appear to defend how the death of her sister justified being so careless with others’ lives.

  Everything else came out, too. How long he’d waited to be good enough for her, smart enough to love her, only proving he was stupid enough to stick around. She’d been his best friend, but she’d never been a good friend. Why had she kept him around so long? Did he entertain her, like a pet monkey? Or did she enjoy how well he echoed her ideas, like a blank wall at the end of an empty corridor? Then Doug cried, really wailed. He said mean things. Like maybe he’d never liked her. Maybe he’d only liked the attention. Still, there was no one in the world like her, as challenging, as brilliant. He didn’t stop there. He shouted about how he used to admire her quest to understand things, life, but that it’d taken her down this crazy-scary path he couldn’t follow, or refused to. And here he was. Because he couldn’t accept—for himself, not for the group or the dumb woods—allowing someone that he cared about to throw her life away. He admitted his fears about losing her to John, as well as his nightmare about the ritual and the smoke. To him, the dream meant he’d never stopped loving her. He loved her. That was the truth. Even the conviction she’d developed over the last few weeks to do good for people, he admired. Just not her means, which were John’s means. If only the guy were to leave them, Doug knew they could make great things happen and be happy, side by side. If only the Dead Man would die.

  He lifted his head from where he stood in the middle of the bridge. Dusk pushed the last arc of cool blue heaven under the canal. Headlights shone on the car bridge around the bend—too far to be noticed no matter how high a boy jumped or loud he shouted.

  Behind him, the night sky was clear, for the suburbs. Gazing at the stars, he no longer felt bonded to E., to his family or anyone.

  Day became night. He was clean, solitary. That peace didn’t last, though.

  Doug couldn’t remember when last a train had roared by. It’d been a long time. In both directions, the tracks led to darkness. He remembered Alex had agreed that very soon there would be another victim. Doug reseated his glasses. Wide-eyed, he scanned the tracks for movement. Even if the group were watching and, by some magic, could see him in the dark, how would they reach him in time to subdue the killer when he appeared? It occurred to Doug that the story about E.’s life being in danger out here had been a lie. For wanting to leave the group and to confess, he’d been fed to the Devil in the Woods. E. was probably under the Big Tree with the others, smile waning as she asked if anyone had seen Doug, her old friend—the only person who’d ever cared about him duped into never-minding, forgetting him until gone. No one needed help but himself.

  A dark mass slid around the canal’s bend. A white eye opened in the center of its body. Horror and awe stunned the boy. Creeping on the water was not a lurking monster of the deep, but a cargo ship. The rusted craft was a bulbous heap, stacked haphazardly with boxcars. Its spotlight swept up the Palos Hills bank toward the bridge. Doug backed from the edge, ready to run home and distribute the letters he’d written as soon as it’d passed.

  “What aren’t you afraid of, Dougydearest?” an unfamiliar voice said.

  The speaker was not twenty feet away. A figure garbed in black stood between the tracks. By its confidence and imposing build, Doug recognized the knife-wielding tormentor who’d set fire to the Big Tree.

  Doug backed and tripped over a rail tie. He clutched his twisted ankle that immediately began to swell.

  The figure snickered. “You’re just as I imagined you,” he said, impassioned but satisfied, almost lusty.

  Doug scrambled to his feet. The figure strode for him commandingly, the way he’d come around the Big Tree that night.

  “Let’s have a good look at you,” he said. He reached for Doug’s head.

  The freighter’s spotlight hit the center of the bridge and illuminated the boys. They froze for an instant
. The figure spun behind a beam.

  Doug crawled away on his hands and knees, careful of the gaps. He stopped and cursed himself. Exposure was exactly what he needed to avoid being killed. He stood and waved to be noticed by the freighter’s crew.

  “Fool! What’re you doing?”

  Doug flailed both arms and hopped on his good leg as the craft passed beneath the bridge. The radiance of its beam showed up through the slats. It hadn’t seen him. A sprint home was impossible. Doug took up his hammer. He turned and faced the killer.

  “If you come—come any closer, I’ll—”

  “I came to warn you against false prophets, not to sacrifice you, little lamb.” The figure loomed a reach away. “Dost thou know who made thee?” he hoarsely whispered. Amusing himself, he laughed. He wasn’t getting any nearer, though.

  “Are you—?”

  “The less you know about me, the better, kid.”

  The light beneath them went out as the freighter’s beam swung upriver. In the enclosing dark, the tormentor’s silhouette had the sheen of velvet. His cloak opened. Slowly and deliberately, he withdrew the long blade, which—there was no mistaking this close—had a serrated edge. He crouched, setting the knife lengthwise on a tie between them in the manner of an offering. Peace—parley at least. His gloved hands settled on his hips. He towered before Doug in a moment of heavy silence. The baggy hood that veiled his face shuddered in the wind.

  “Why don’t you put the hammer down,” he said, voice syrupy, almost congenial, except for a hint of threat. “Let us talk—two simple men, both wronged by the one ringmaster.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you—anyone—I don’t want anyone hurt.”

  “Hush now. That’s beyond our power in this moment. Rest easy in knowing your former master will soon retire to the great applause of his own undoing.”

  “Master?”

  “The boy doesn’t understand the true nature of the woods. That’s why you’re here. Isn’t it? As if with X-Ray Specs you peered through the falseness of his parlor trick hocus-pocus, seeing it for what it is—good intentions and a minor deathbed enchantment, nothing more.”

  “John isn’t my master.”

  “Let me tell you now what the others will never guess and what the Late One will never suspect: The woods, in which he trusts, are leading you to—”

  The figure collapsed. A swath of black cloth doubled over at Doug’s feet.

  A girl stood behind it, clutching a long club. The downed figure moaned. Twice more she beat its head. It went still.

  The others cried in triumph somewhere in the distant trees.

  E. was in her underwear and batted the windblown hair out of her smiling eyes. “You came back for me,” she said.

  “You—I thought—I didn’t know—” Doug stammered.

  “I heard everything.”

  E. stepped over the figure. She came into Doug’s arms and rested her head on his chest.

  “Come on, Doug. Hold me, please?”

  She nestled against him.

  Doug hugged E. Her back was taut, spiky with goose bumps, her body streaked with soot from slipping up through the railroad ties.

  Alex and John had lowered her onto one of the concrete bridge supports that afternoon, she explained, unclothed to move stealthily and unmarked by evidence, where she’d waited beneath the tracks all day for the killer to pass. She’d hoped that Doug would have the courage John and Alex didn’t. Otherwise, she’d have climbed up to club him without the help of Doug’s distraction—attempted to.

  “You risked your life for me,” she said.

  “I still can’t believe I’m not dead.” He watched the figure, motionless at their feet.

  E. squeezed him. “Can you believe that I love you?”

  “No,” he said. “Wait—you do?”

  “Like family.” E. looked up at him, searched his face for … Doug didn’t know what, yet. “You’ve been trying for so long to make me feel more.” Though close enough, E. didn’t kiss him. She smiled, politely at first, next from the awkwardness. Her smile then softened into genuine affection. “I’m going to work on it, like I’ve worked on everything else. It’s just like you said—we can be happy together, here in the woods.”

  III

  1

  The group was joined around the cloaked body of the killer. Or their tormentor. But conclusively a high school boy named Rocco Lordes who threatened them by mere knowledge of their existence. He shifted and groaned on the train bridge that night as they bound his legs in duct tape and fixed his wrists behind his back and his mouth similarly with a gym-sock gag. Working in silence, they dragged his booted feet thudding against the rail ties and logrolled him down the bumpy slope to the wooded path below. His darkly garbed body landed in a cloud of white dust.

  Rocky was fully conscious when the group reached him. He’d crawled ten or so feet. He sat with his backside crooked up a tree trunk. His legs were in the air and he sawed, frantically and uselessly, at the thick band restricting his legs against a branch. “Lose this?” Josué held up the knife near enough that Rocky kicked at him for it. Josué flattened him with an impersonal jab to the kidney. Greg swept in and delivered an arching punt to his ribs. A tuft of chalky dust shot up, and he flipped onto his back. He groaned, struggled to rise onto one elbow. E. toppled him with her staff. Tiffany sat on his chest, then, grunting, “No—no,” and pounded against his weakening attempts at sitting up. Alex assisted, holding tight the baggy ends of his hood, blinding him until Tiffany relented, satisfied with her work.

  Rocky lay still before them.

  “He is not so scary now, eh?” Josué said.

  He dragged the boy crudely by the feet to the trailhead. His cloak snagged branches. The cheap velvet ripped and caked with mud. Josué stumbled backward, left clutching a boot that’d slipped off. They huddled and decided that a body was best carried over one’s shoulders, as in a war movie. Greg scooped him up without needing to be asked and remarked that Rocky was as light as somebody’s kid sister. E. asked him if Rocky was at last being agreeable. Greg hefted the limp body. “Perfect angel,” he said. They laughed, and the group hiked with their captive to camp. Without a flashlight, E. led them through vague, moonlit trails, down into the valley around their gnarliest, yet-to-be-sprung traps. Doug walked behind the girl in faith that she would bring them to safety. He looked back only once. John lagged far behind.

  Alex engineered the binding of Rocky to the Big Tree, relying on Greg’s muscle and materials brought for that purpose. In ten minutes, their tormentor was well fastened, arms behind his back in a sitting position. His shoulders slumped forward and his head drooped sideways. That Rocky could be unconscious after so much jostling seemed unlikely. It created an ominous sense that he was faking. But nobody dared draw back the hood.

  They sat and waited for the boy to speak. The campfire burned close enough to his boots that he shared their circle. As fresh logs cracked in the pit, their hatred for him expanded and consumed them from inside. His presence fouled the night air, the strength of their bond, and the sanctity of the Grove, which filled with firelight and hatred. To even look at him was torturous. Yet their fascination was too great to turn away from the stranger for more than a moment. Here he was. They’d tied their tormentor, potentially the killer, to the same tree he’d defiled several times. But they felt no great relief. Its trunk, scorched coal-black from his fires, rose at his back like a high throne. All that remained of the group’s original memorial were those pink flats well above him, as if flying from a hell to which he—and they too—were left condemned.

  They had him. Rocky was helpless. His cloak, which they’d childishly pictured in daydreams to be composed of shadow itself, was shredded in spots and dusted white, which powdered the long smears of mud on his chest and arms and made him appear pitiful and clownish. Considering how much this one person had dominated their lives by luring Erika to the woods and then toying with them in the place of her death, and how he’d
completely altered the course of their futures, who they’d imagined they’d be at the end of—what otherwise would’ve been, right?—another banal year of junior high in an ordinary American suburb—reflecting on all he’d done to them, the group couldn’t shake the feeling that still he had them. His actions had transformed them, a change that, now at its end, felt like a deformation, their souls having twisted against each hardship and challenge. Because of his influence, they’d become what they were—secret, not normal, specters even by daylight, a group, forever marked as such—and they hated him for it, for dark thoughts like these that glowed like the head-lanterns of creatures at the bottom of the sea, illuminating their nightmarish faces.

  “I wish you had let us know about …” Greg jabbed a finger at their guest.

  Alex started to list the many circumstances that’d made confiding in the entire group an impossibility. Greg and Tiffany and Josué weren’t briefed until Doug was facing the killer.

  E. lifted her hand, which until that moment, Doug had held as if an artifact made of precious stone in his upturned palm. Alex hushed immediately. “If things had gone bad for us up there,” E. explained, “we didn’t want you to feel responsible.”

  “Um, no offense, but what you’re saying is total bullshit,” Tiffany said. The night air was clammy and her arms tightened across her chest. “No matter what happens here, ever, we’re basically all responsible at this point.”

  Josué nodded. “No secrets.”

  “Right,” Tiffany said. “I’m here. We’re all here now, aren’t we? We obviously care enough to feel responsible no matter what. So don’t take away my choice in … whatever. Because you’re not more special than me or anybody else.”

  “Yeah. It would’ve been nice to know.” Greg looked side to side, not raising his head high enough to meet their eyes. “I thought we did things as a group. I could’ve been there for you guys.” After each sentence he halted, as if having much more to say but unable to put all his racing thoughts into words. “I should’ve been asked. Told something.”