Momma Grizzly

by Kevin Hensley

  “Right now? Not much, I guess. Holding on to the idea that my family and friends will all come together and magically fall into some sort of truce if I just keep myself busy and wait them out.” I didn’t want to mention that I was rapidly becoming a believer in Grunwald’s tall tales.

  “How do you keep yourself busy?”

  “Mostly working.”

  “You said you took journalism classes?”

  “Yes, I write for the local paper, the Green Grapevine.”

  “Really? I’ll take a look at that.”

  “Maybe some other time.”

  He smirked. “Something you don’t want me to see?”

  “I was… a little critical of Bellwether in my upcoming article.”

  Cotton waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I want to see all sides. I’m surrounded by yes-men. I want to know what effect Bellwether is really having on the town.” He reached the door and pulled it open. “Do me a couple of favors, would you? One, tell your mother we talked.” He winked. “Two, think on what the people around you believe. Try to distill them down to what really drives them to say and do what they do. Your family, your husband, the people you meet every day. Everyone believes something. If you can find it, you can reach them in ways you didn’t know existed.”

  I stood. “I’ll try that. I wasn’t sure about this, Pastor Cotton, but I’m very happy we talked. And I really appreciate you getting me lunch.”

  “My pleasure.”

  I stepped past him to exit his office.

  “One more thing, Mrs. Clegg.”

  I turned back. He was loosening his tie, unfastening the top button of his shirt. I let my puzzlement show on my face. He pushed his shirt to the side, exposing the collarbone of his paralyzed arm. The bone was crooked, with an irregular round scar right underneath.

  “I didn’t make it back from the war a hundred percent intact, either. I understand what your husband is going through better than you might think.” He straightened out his collar and tie. “If either of you need to talk, you know how to reach me.”

  I nodded. “Thank you. Really.”

  Chapter 17

  Decay. Rot. Putrescence. I smell it. I can almost feel it in the air. I imagine it clinging to me like mold spores. The thought makes my guts heave.

  I cannot move now—no mother walks in the woods this night—but I can make my plan. And as much as I want to avoid the hideous stench, I know I will have to head wherever it is strongest. They have stolen from me again.

  Worse than that, this time they have violated the age-old treaty. Even the former King was never so crass. Stagger, for all his faults, respected the tradition that kept our fragile peace. No, only one could have done this. Only the Grim Halberdier held such contempt for the rules of the forest. My husband once told me that his only regret was showing mercy to that monster.

  Even now, this situation escapes my understanding. The previous theft made sense in its own twisted way—the mother and child had been on the far side of the river at night, after all. But to trespass into the very town and steal a child from their home? Incomprehensible.

  And I cannot wrap my mind around the terror the children must be in. Especially my boy. Son of the forest. He had feared this day for a century. Well, I will find them.

  The sun rises and the black mist retreats. The woods will sleep. I must wait, but so must he. Come nightfall, the mother will search for the children. Then I will rip that unnatural man to pieces. Even if I have to cross the river myself to do so.

  I will not be stopped.

  ✽✽✽

  Over a solitary breakfast of cheese and grapes, I processed the conversations I’d had over the past week.

  My mother and father would be glad to know I had gone to talk to Pastor Cotton. I believed I saw the boy and the bear, but that didn’t mean it was my place to get involved. What good could really come of getting further into that anyway?

  Maybe Cotton was right. Maybe it was all because I was still hurting from the miscarriage. And Ike had a point about me doing the police’s job instead of my own. I thought about telling Maggie I wasn’t going to bother doing research. I really didn’t want to know more about this Axe-Man.

  What I needed to do was get out of my own head. I’d been alone too much and the cracks were starting to show. What I really needed to do…

  I called Sammie.

  “I was hoping to hear from you sooner,” she said right away. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “Not at all. I’ve just been doing some thinking.”

  “Well, you can tell me about all your great epiphanies this evening.”

  “What?”

  “You’re coming over—no, let me finish. We haven’t had the chance to thank you properly for bringing Emma Lee home.”

  “You know you don’t need to do that, Sammie. You’d have done the same thing if you hadn’t hit your head.”

  “Well… we’ve got to do something.”

  “I agree. I think we need to reach out to Rachael.”

  “Kelly… we’ve tried. I think it’s just too painful for her.”

  “We should go knock on her door. She’s isolated herself, just like me. It needs to stop. We need to get in her face and tell her we’re never leaving her behind, as much as she might want us to.”

  “I don’t know how that will go over. But if you’re doing it for sure, I’ll go with you.”

  “Yeah. I’m going to walk over to her house in a couple of hours.”

  “Isn’t it supposed to rain?”

  “Not until this evening.”

  ✽✽✽

  I felt a chill when we rounded the corner onto Rachael’s street, and not just because of the cloudy sky or cold wind. Two police cars were parked in front of her house, lights flashing. We quickened our pace to a jog.

  Joe, the policeman who had been searching Sammie’s car, was there to block the sidewalk and stop us from getting closer. Now I could see his badge: Collins. That was it.

  “Ladies, please, you’re going to have to move along.”

  “What happened?” Sammie demanded. “That’s our friend. What’s going on, Joe?”

  He faltered. “I c-can’t talk about the details. We’ll issue a statement once the investigation gets…”

  I stopped listening because I saw Rachael standing in the front yard talking with Chief Branchett. Her face was as red as the messy bun on top of her head. She’d been crying.

  When she saw us, she broke away from Branchett and cut across her lawn in our direction. I slipped past the officer and ran to meet her halfway.

  “Rachael!” I cried out. “What hap—”

  She shoved me and I fell on my back. Then she followed me down and pinned me to the grass with her stout, freckled arms.

  “What did you do with my daughter, bitch?” she hollered in my face.

  I tried to stay calm, meet her eyes. “Rachael, what are you talking about?”

  “Hey!” Sammie reached the scene and tried to pull her off me, to no effect. A second later the two policemen got there and did a much better job of yanking Rachael to her feet.

  “Stop,” Branchett growled. “Now, get a hold of yourself and tell me when you last saw Laylah.”

  “Kelly took her, I know it!” Rachael screamed, pointing at me. “She’s the town hero after bringing Emma Lee back, and now she wants to be the hero again! That’s the only way this makes sense! How do both our girls disappear one after another?”

  Sammie looked like her eyes were about to pop out of her head. “Rachael… listen to yourself. You can’t be serious. You weren’t there for my accident. That was… there’s no way Kelly could have had anything to do with it.”

  “Don’t fall for it, Sammie. Kelly doesn’t have a baby of her own, so she’s trying to take ours! She’s crazy!”

  I took an involuntary step forward. The two cops got between us.

  “Enough!” Branchett roared. “Mrs. Clegg, Mrs. Hagen, I’m going to have to
ask you to leave.”

  Sammie took hold of my arm with both hands. “Gladly. Kelly, let’s go.”

  I let her lead me back the way we came, turning away so Rachael and Branchett wouldn’t see my tears. How could she say that? How could she take that old wound and rip it right open and—

  —I forced myself out of my head. Rachael was my friend, and she was hurting. If we’d switched places, I could see myself reacting the same way. She was a mother without her child, lashing out at anything she could reach. I could take my anger and use it. I could help her.

  “Come on,” I snapped. “I know what happened.”

  “I just stuck up for you,” Sammie gasped. “Did you have something to do with this?”

  “No,” I said. “I just know someone who can help us find Laylah.”

  Chapter 18

  “Hello!” I shouted across the riverbed. “Someone’s gone missing!”

  I could feel Sammie’s trepidation and her eyes on my back. I didn’t care. I looked both ways along the river and in the branches of every tree around me, hoping maybe he had snuck up on me like before. No luck.

  “Um… Kelly? Who are we calling for?”

  I turned and took hold of her shoulders in both my hands. “Sammie, this is going to sound insane. There’s a boy living out here. He helped me find Emma Lee. He knows these woods and he cares about our town. If Laylah is out there in the forest, he’ll know where.”

  “Disregarding almost everything you just said for a second… how do we know she’s in the woods?”

  “Because Rachael is right. This isn’t a coincidence. Something in the forest is after the children in Grunwald.”

  She frowned, looking away from me. “Alright. I’m going to… go. Maybe spread the word around town or something. Print out some posters.”

  “Tell Phil. Remember how he tried to warn you off driving through the forest at night? He’ll believe me.”

  “He doesn’t want to have anything to do with these godforsaken woods anymore, and neither do I. Just come back inside with me, Kelly. We’ll figure this out.”

  I sighed. “Alright. Do what you want. I’m going to keep trying.”

  Sammie took a step back, out of my reach. “Yeah. I’m going to go back to town and help out. When we find her, you and I can have a talk. A long one.” She slowly backed away until she was among the trees and then turned to walk back to the road.

  “Hello!” I called again, pushing past my disappointment. “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said to myself. I lowered myself to sit on the slope and looked up through the twisted oak branches at the few visible patches of cloudy grey sky.

  I turned my phone over in my hands. Who would help? Who could I talk to? Who would get people looking in the woods?

  Pastor Cotton.

  I didn’t have his business card with me, but I could find the number in my phone’s call log. He didn’t answer, but his office voicemail picked up.

  “Hi, Pastor Cotton, it’s Kelly Clegg. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that we’ve got another missing child, Laylah Flaherty. I have reason to believe she’s lost in the woods, just like last time. You don’t need to call me back. Just do whatever it is you do that can motivate people to get looking for her. Please. Thank you.”

  I hung up and sighed. What else? There must have been something I could do. Anything. I could call Ike and get him to print and distribute Sammie’s posters.

  He wouldn’t care, he’d just ask me why I’m past my deadline again.

  No, that wasn’t the answer. And my parents would be of no help. No, I needed to get advice from the only people in town who believed that I had seen the bear. I called the home of the Cleggs.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Maggie, it’s Kelly.”

  “Oh, sweetie, are you alright? The police have been going door-to-door. Another missing child—the Flaherty girl.”

  “Yes, I know. Maggie, I think something in the forest took her. It’s time we got into those archives at the library. I need to know what we could be dealing with.”

  “Absolutely, dear.” Her tone had changed to a deadly quiet that I had never heard her use before. “We will meet you right out front.”

  Chapter 19

  A bare ten minutes later I was standing in front of the pine-scented door. Maggie slipped past me and thumbed through her key ring, but Gordon stopped on the sidewalk. “Kelly, what’s happening?”

  “I need to know what to do. With Laylah Flaherty gone missing… well, it goes back to what I said at dinner. Rachael thinks I had something to do with it. Sammie doesn’t believe me. I need more help. I think something in the woods is doing this.” I tried and failed to take a deep breath, stop my rising panic. “I tried asking the boy who helped me find Emma Lee. He’s not answering me.”

  “What boy?” Gordon asked.

  “I met him in the woods. He was the one who told me things… he was concerned about the Axe-Man. He says he’s lived there for centuries under the bear’s protection. I’m as worried about him as I am about Laylah.”

  “The stories never made mention of a boy,” Gordon said.

  “There we go,” Maggie said, pushing open the creaking door. “Let’s have a look.”

  “A quick look,” I added as I followed her through the doorway.

  Inside, the place looked and smelled the same way it always had. Dust, darkness, cobwebs, and the scent of old pages.

  “I swear this place had a custodian at one point,” Maggie commented. “Then I ended up having to do all the cleaning myself. But since nobody comes, and I’m getting too old to climb ladders and things… I sort of let it go.”

  “I always thought the air in here felt angry,” I replied.

  “Yes, I think that’s the neglect.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. My recent experiences had given words to what I was feeling here. The sense I was picking up from this library reminded me of how I felt when I retreated into my own thoughts.

  Maggie led us around her desk and unlocked the unmarked door behind it. I glanced back at Gordon, who was running a finger along the top of the desk, leaving a trail through the coating of dust.

  That smell of aged papers came out in full force when Maggie pulled open the metal door. “Alright,” she said. “Let’s get into Grunwald’s secrets.”

  “You’ve never gone in here before?” I asked.

  “I keep tax records and things in here, but I’ve never gone into the old files in the back. Never had a reason to.” She flipped a switch, illuminating a room that was only a few feet wide but stretched back a surprisingly long way. The floor by the door was piled with cardboard boxes. The back wall housed a beaten, rusty filing cabinet. The path to it was completely blocked by more boxes, extra desks, and chairs.

  I smiled, using muscles in my face that must not have moved for days. “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t be moving all that just for curiosity’s sake either.”

  Gordon squeezed past us. “Excuse me. I’ll take care of this.”

  Maggie stepped back around the front desk to give him space. I stood in the archive doorway and reached out to take the chair Gordon handed me. I moved it out into the main room and returned in time to take a plywood desk from him. After about ten minutes of work, we had cleared the path to the filing cabinets. Maggie led the way to the back of the archive room.

  “You know, I’m not even sure I have keys to this,” she said with her characteristic smirk. “Let me try a few.”

  I shifted, fighting back my growing anxiety. “You have until I get back from my car with a hammer and screwdriver.”

  “You and my son truly are soulmates. I’d rather not break any—oh, there we go. Got it.”

  Gordon and I crowded around Maggie as she pulled the top drawer open and produced a folder full of yellowed papers. “Dig in, folks,” she said.

  I pulled open the second drawer and took two overloaded hanging folders. Gordon opened
the next drawer and did the same. They sat on the floor while I returned to the main library to sit at Maggie’s desk.

  Extracting the contents of the first folder, I spread them out and began to leaf through, stacking everything I had read off to one side. None of it was organized by date or type. There were newspaper clippings, magazine covers, pages ripped out of almanacs, handwritten notes, posters, and fliers. The most interesting thing I found was a bunch of land surveys and blueprints for buildings that no longer existed. It seemed that none of this had ever been added to electronic public records, but I guessed my dad’s work re-surveying the Hill Country around San Antonio had made many of these documents superfluous.

  I stuffed everything back into the first folder, set it aside, and rubbed my eyes. I really hoped we weren’t wasting our time, but I wasn’t sure what else I could be doing. I had no leads other than my suspicion that something in the forest had taken Laylah.

  I pushed past the restlessness and got into the second folder. This one was a little more interesting. There was a census from 1960, when Grunwald had less than a thousand people living in it. I scanned down the list of names and found something that amused me for a second.

  “Clegg, Gordon,” I read aloud. “Age one year three months.”

  Maggie’s laugh carried from the back room. “That must be some old paperwork you’re finding.”

  “Not that old,” Gordon retorted.

  “Old enough to forget your reading glasses when you’re going to a library.”

  Gordon chuckled. “Touché.”

  “Will I find you on here, Maggie?” I asked. “What’s your maiden name again?”

  “Schroeder. But I was still a couple years in the making when that came out. My parents will be on there, though.”

  I chuckled and set the packet away from my stacks. “We can hang onto this one.”

  The rest of the papers in that folder took the smile off my face. More newspaper clippings, going further and further back. Then a handwritten note:

  “Cherie,

  Thank you again for storing all this. Please keep these records safe and do not discard them as they are official Grunwald Police Dept. documents. I will be back for them after the annex is constructed and we have additional storage space.