The Pines

by Robert Dunbar

  Barry looked around, then walked back to the wounded cur. His long shadow densely black before him, he took aim again. He pulled the trigger, and the revolver clicked. “Shit.” He stared in disbelief for a moment, then his booted foot lashed out again and again.

  As he walked back toward the car, he wiped his boots in the sand as best he could. Behind him, the dog looked like road kill.

  Steve closed his eyes. “It was just a puppy. You can tell by the size of the paws.” A headache gnawed his brain.

  “I winged the other one.” Barry sounded pleased with himself as they got back in the car.

  Steve nodded with a whiny grunt. He needed a drink.

  “What do you think? Should we go after it?”

  “We’d never find her.” Steve turned away and gazed toward the woods. “Not out there.”

  Sunset was a lava flow along the horizon.

  Ancient, rusted tin cans lay scattered about the clearing. As the last redness drained from the sky, the sand grayed, and colors shifted to darker hues. Shrilling with cicadas, the slender trunks of the surrounding trees grew indistinct.

  “Was this really the bottom of the ocean?” Amelia’s eyes held a fearful wonder. “Is that why it sort of looks like the beach with trees?”

  “That’s why”—rolling the last of several logs into a rough circle, Casey spoke between grunts—“everything’s so flat.”

  From the clearing’s edge, he was closely watched.

  Sitting on a log, Jenny randomly traced mystic-looking symbols in the sand…and sneaked a glance at the stranger.

  Pallid and handsome with coarse red hair, he couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty. The bright hair accentuated his unhealthy paleness; sharp cheekbones showed like ivory through white skin. He hardly spoke, as though a long illness had left him sullen and shy, wasted. Yet there was a furtive sexuality about him, the powerful shoulders seeming out of place on his emaciated frame. He wore a soiled shirt, and dirt had worked deeply into the folds of his neck and arms. He’d told them his name was Ernie and that he was a camper, out here alone. Periodically, his body would heave with a tubercular-sounding cough.

  Jenny didn’t care for the way he never took his eyes off Casey. She didn’t care for the way he just sat there, indistinct in the fading twilight. A childhood memory scratched elusively at the back of her mind, and then she had it: he reminded her of a stable hand she used to see during summer vacations. She remembered there’d been some problem, something the adults whispered about, some reason she hadn’t been allowed to talk to the unwashed boy. As though aware of her attention, Ernie looked over, and she caught another glimpse of those sickly, bloodshot eyes before quickly turning away.

  “Somebody gather some wood,” Casey called to the group. “You ever…Ernie?” He sat on a log and mopped sweat from his forehead. “You ever catch any fish in that stream?”

  After their swim, they’d hiked another hour before making camp, partly pressed on by Casey’s timetable, mostly in hopes of shaking their new acquaintance.

  Ernie choked on phlegm, spat thickly. “Can’t eat the fish.” Raising his shoulder, he wiped his mouth on the shirt.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Full of worms.”

  Jenny grimaced. Almost the first thing he’d said to them was that someone had recently drowned in a canoe accident right about where they’d been swimming.

  “There must still be wet ground nearby,” said Casey, waving at insects, “a pond or something.”

  Ernie nodded.

  “Maybe we ought to move.”

  “But it’s almost dark,” Jenny objected. “Besides, I’m awfully tired.” She immediately regretted her words—if they moved they might finally get rid of Ernie, who presumably was only hanging around in hopes of being fed. After all, he wouldn’t even speak to anyone but Casey, and then only to exchange boring wilderness lore.

  “Could somebody help me?” called Sandy, gathering firewood in the scrub. “Alan? Jenny, are you doing anything?” she asked in loud, sugary tones. “Shit!” The log in her hand had released a cloud of flying insects.

  “Must we have a big fire?” Jenny sighed again, her vision already blurry with perspiration and humidity. “I’m smothering as it is. How come it gets hotter at night? We should have stayed by the stream. Amelia, don’t go too far.”

  Chasing lightning bugs, the little girl paused to watch a bat, wings pinkish and translucent against the evening sky as it darted after moths. “Eww!”

  “What is it?”

  “Something flew up my nose!”

  Having scooped out sand in the middle of the circle of logs, Casey meticulously finished stacking branches, using small twigs and dried pine needles for kindling. “Where are the matches? Oh.” Once lit, the fire only served to make the woods darker. Only the nearer trees remained visible, and they seemed to waver as the firelight now caught them, now let them go.

  Casey dug out the supplies—plastic forks, fruitcake remnants, half a loaf of bread, smoked hot dogs, canned corn. “Who the hell packed this?” he muttered under his breath. Canned goods, no less—no wonder it weighed a ton. He wished his friends could grasp the difference between backpacking and picnicking. “We’ll need more wood,” he called, sharpening sticks with a pocketknife with a mother-of-pearl handle.

  “Nice knife.”

  Casey looked up to find Ernie standing right beside him.

  “You’ll stay and eat with us, won’t you?” Alan asked, smoothing his mustache with a comb.

  Insects descended in a vampiric swarm. The mosquitoes, wet and bloated but still feeding, surrounded them. Conversations in the clearing became peppered with slaps and curses.

  Flames licked up around the pine chunks. Because the smoke kept away some of the bugs, they all sat close to the fire, in spite of the heat. When Alan passed around insect repellant, Ernie declined wordlessly. Jenny rubbed some into Amelia’s small back, already covered with bites, and the oily scent mingled with the odor of smoke. Smelling the food, they sat in relative silence, while corn slowly heated in a pot perched among the coals, and hot dogs sizzled and blackened on sticks.

  Ernie drooled. Jenny stared—she’d never seen anything like it before. Shocked, she turned away. Finished with Amelia, she rubbed repellant on her own legs and arms. It stung a spot on the back of her ankle, the spot where Casey had burned off the leech.

  Scorching their fingers and mouths, all ate ravenously, jaws and throats working rapidly.

  Amelia turned to her mother. “I don’t like him. He smells bad.”

  “Amelia!”

  Ernie froze. A hunk of bread halfway to his mouth, he peered through slitted eyes as though afraid someone might try to take the food. Jenny stared at the grease around his mouth.

  “Uh…good food,” said Alan. “I’m hungry as a wolf.”

  Ernie resumed eating.

  Sandy licked her fingers and moved away from the fire. “You think it’s going to rain?” Leaning back on one elbow, she gazed upward.

  “It wouldn’t help,” Alan said around a mouthful. “The mosquitoes probably use Aqua-Lungs.”

  “I mean, it’s just so hot.” She fanned herself with a paper plate. “Next time, can we bring an air conditioner?”

  “What do you mean? What next time?”

  Casey distributed the evening rations of cigarettes, and somebody rolled a joint. They all felt pretty good—full bellies, a campfire to stare into. Alan stretched out on the ground.

  “What happens if it does rain?” wondered Sandy, sitting back. Last night there’d been more stars than she’d ever known existed, but to night the sky was blank.

  “We get wet.” Alan rolled onto his stomach and rested his chin on his arms. “That is what’s known as going camping. Hey, what’s that over there? See it above the trees?” Suddenly, he was on his feet. “Is it the moon coming up?” Ernie laughed and Casey joined him. Alan turned to them in bewilderment.

  “That’s a city,” said Casey. “
It’ll reflect off a haze like this sometimes.”

  Far to the north, the cold whitish glow hung low in the sky.

  “What city?”

  “It looks almost radioactive,” said Alan. “Tell me, you suppose a war started, and we’re the only ones who don’t know about it?” He giggled. “Maybe the only ones left alive?”

  They all stood, staring over the conifers at the distant wash of brightness. “So faraway.”

  The sands whispered, faint as thought.

  “These crickets sound like they’re big as a house.”

  “Back in high school, I used to borrow my brother’s ID and catch the labor bus at dawn, come out her to pick blueberries for the day.” Casey’s voice droned intensely. “You wouldn’t believe the ways they used to get people onto that b us—practically dragged them off the street. These old guys would come staggering out of a bar in North Philly. Next thing they know, they’re out here in the fields, throwing up, passing out, sun blazing down.”

  “Tell me, is that how they caught you?” Alan asked, as he sat down by the fire. “Staggering out of a bar?”

  “Why’d they do that, Case? Bring people in from the city, I mean? Aren’t there little towns and stuff out here?”

  “Well,” he began, “there probably just aren’t enough pineys to—”

  “Pineys! Oh, I know about them!” announced Sandy gleefully. “They’re the crazy people who live out here! Man, I’d forgotten all about them. We used to hear all kinds of stories.”

  “What crazy people?” Jenny edged closer to Amelia, closer to the fire. “What are you talking about?”

  Casey looked disgruntled.

  “Yeah,” Sandy continued. “This friend of mine was telling me. He was driving and he runs out of gas, right? Shit. Something stung me. Shit. Anyway, he said he saw these men in the woods, right, and he gets out of the car, only now the men are gone.” She looked around the campfire. “But he feels like he’s being watched. Anyway, he starts walking. Finally, he makes it back to the main road. So he finds this broken-down old gas station, and this weird guy sells him some. So he starts lugging gas, right? But when he makes it back to the car, the windows are all smashed. And there’s all these weird marks on the side of the car.”

  The others continued to lean forward expectantly.

  “I remember seeing a newspaper article once.” All heads turned toward Alan, now perched on a rolled-up sleeping bag. “A couple years back—they found this old house out in the woods, you know, log cabin sort of thing. Inside, they found this ten-year-old girl in a crib. First they thought she was retarded, but then they found out her brain was normal, but mentally she was still, let’s say, an infant.” He buried a cigarette butt in the sand. “Turned out her mother lived about a mile away with her new family. Once a day, she’d walk over, feed and change the girl and then leave. The girl would just lay in the crib all day, every day. All alone. Never learning to speak.”

  “But that story’s not really true, is it?” In obvious dismay, Sandy tried to make out Alan’s expression.

  “Honest to God.”

  “But that’s so sad!”

  “How come she stayed in the crib?” Amelia demanded impatiently. “How come she didn’t just—”

  “’S true.”

  No one knew where the voice had come from. They all looked around, finally locating the stranger’s dark form. Back beyond the shifting perimeter of light, Ernie spoke nothing further.

  “Tales like that come out of the barrens all the time,” Casey told them finally. “The pines seem to breed that kind of—”

  “I was just thinking. You suppose our cars are all right?”

  “Huh? Oh yeah. Sure.”

  Firelight flickered over them.

  “Mom, are there really…?”

  Alan leaned forward. “What are you grinning about, Casey?”

  The mood was set. Conscious of everyone watching, Casey took out his pipe and tobacco pouch and, with slow deliberation, filled the bowl, then took a light from a blazing twig. Which would it be? The walking tree monster? The man-eating grizzly? He fed wood to the fire, and waves of sudden heat pressed them all back a bit, smarting their eyes. “I’m going to tell you a story,” he said at last.

  There was giggling and whispering as they shifted and settled themselves. Jenny glanced in Ernie’s direction. If he’d sat closer, they might have done their best to include him, but…

  Casey’s face glowed orange, like a jack-o’-lantern, firelight glinting from his eyes. “This story takes place in the Pine Barrens.”

  (“So where else?” “Ssh!”)

  “There was a young couple out driving.” And so began the old tale. His voice held them. Sometimes he would pause in the telling to look around in a marked manner, and the others would find themselves searching the fleeting lights and shadows as well.

  (“And then the car broke down, right?” “Be quiet.”)

  He told them how the boy decided to go for help, leaving the girl alone. “Roll up the windows, and make sure you lock the doors. And stay in the car. Remember that—whatever you hear, stay in the car.”

  (“Uh oh.”)

  The burning shadows flickered and leaped, swept over them.

  Casey sucked on the stem of his pipe. “She heard it go tap, tap, tap.”

  From beyond the dome of brightness, the crickets seemed to pulse louder.

  (“Amelia, are you scared?”)

  “She thought about trying to run for it.”

  (“No!” “Stay in the car, stupid.”)

  Sandy yelled and smacked at Alan, and he snickered, drawing back. Casey spoke faster now, racing through the part where the state trooper arrives and tells her to get out of the car and walk straight toward him, and not to look back what ever she does.

  The soft sound of burning filled the clearing, as did the sharp smell of smoke. Patches of redder darkness erratically circled the flame, revealing first one person, then another.

  “Slowly, she walked toward him. Just at the last second, she turned around.”

  (“No, don’t!”)

  He finished the story, explaining that her boyfriend was hanging from a branch above the car and that as he swayed in the breeze, his foot tapped the roof. After the briefest of pauses, the group giggled, groaned and chattered in unison. (“Wait a minute, I don’t understand what happened.” “You left out the part about the escaped lunatic.” “Hey, does anybody know the one about the babysitter who gets the phone calls?” “Do you know any of the Hookman stories?” “Oh, that one’s great!” “Who-man?” “You know, the escaped homicidal maniac with the hook instead of a hand.” “That’s enough. No more scary stories.” “Get out! They don’t let maniacs have hooks.” “I said, that’s enough. You’re all going to give Amelia nightmares.” “Forget Amelia, I’m the one’s going to have nightmares!”) And Casey sat back, pleased with himself and smiling because of the goose bumps on his arms.

  Jenny watched for any motion in the dark that might suggest that Ernie intended to leave. The haze had thinned so that the lunar disk showed, featureless, washing the pines in dull light.

  From outside the rim of brightness, came a rasping voice. “Know about the Leeds Devil?”

  Everyone stopped talking.

  Ernie’s thin face emerged from the darkness. “Long time ago.” Flame glinted from the eyes of the others, but in his eyes light sank, became deep embers in a face that seemed pointed and hollowed by moving shadows. “Mother Leeds was in labor.” He coughed, spat, and his mouth twitched with a smile. “Found a hut, not far from here. Maybe I’ll take you there.”

  They shifted uneasily.

  “Mother Leeds had twelve other kids. She cursed it.” He coughed again, a horrible rattling. “Didn’t do nothing. Wasn’t even born yet. It was hers!” He spoke haltingly and with effort, rage and shyness in his manner. “Understand? It had nobody else!” He shouted but looked directly at no one. “Cursed it!”

  Isolated in the dark, th
ey tried to find one another’s faces for reassurance.

  “Unborn. Cursed. Torn from her. It clawed, fought its way out of her stinking, bloody hole.”

  “Hey!” Jenny’s arm circled little Amelia’s shoulders, as though to shield her from his words. Strange to feel so vulnerable—sophisticated Jenny and her so-grownup-seeming daughter, their eyes big with fear.

  “Said its father was a devil.”

  “I wonder how she meant that.” Sandy attempted a snicker.

  “Little baby. Looked normal. That showed what it might have been, if only she’d fucking loved it!” His voice grated. “Her fault…twisted…grew up, grew…became a fiend.” A tremor ran through him, and he looked as though he were about to laugh or scream. “Ashamed of it, ashamed of her own. Afraid of it, too. Shut it away…locked up. That’s what they wanted. They all wanted.” He breathed deeply, spat again. “The old whore used to pass food through a crack in the floor. Years. Had to live in his own piss and shit. She got old. Stunk—the basement—enough to make you puke. She didn’t know how big he was growing. Never knew.” He stabbed a twig into the embers. “One night, the twelve brothers and sisters heard something, the cellar door splintering. They heard him coming closer. Down the hall. Closer. Fucked and ate them all in their beds.”

  Jenny watched him. Pacing now, he moved in front of the fire. Amelia sat very still.

  “Ran out…in the dark. Door shut behind. Hung around the yard, cold and hungry. Couldn’t get back in the house. Night after night…call his mother. Begging. She wouldn’t let him in. Stayed in bed. Pretended to be sick, the bitch.” His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “She starved to death. The monster wandered off into the woods. These woods.”

  Casey cleared his throat. “Good story.”

  “Yeah, real good story,” said Alan, and as he spoke, he fed twig after twig into the embers. They all threw on wood, bringing the fire back to blazing life. The crickets seemed to pulse louder.

  “You know, it sure was a long day. I sure am tired. Hey, where’d that flashlight get to? I, uh, can’t see to untie the cords on my sleeping bag.”