The Boy in the Woods

by Carter Wilson

  It turned out to be a really hard thing to do. He couldn’t breathe. He sucked in but could not exhale, but he kept trying, ensuring a faster death. His chest felt like it was collapsing on itself, a black hole. He closed his eyes and only saw the red of blood inside his eyelids.

  Don’t panic.

  Slowly, he took himself away in his mind, far in another time, to a place with a towering tree surrounded by soft wild grass, a place he remembered at some age before he started remembering specific ages, where all he could remember was feeling, and the feeling at the tree was happiness and peace, the kind you could only know when you were too young even to know what that meant. Tommy, in that shitty motel room with the stiff sheets and the poky pillows and death shaking him like a rag doll, found that place now.

  And then he started breathing again.

  You’re not dying, Tommy convinced himself. A panic attack. That must be what it was. Just reality coming back to smack you upside the head a few times.

  His wheezing slowed and he finally sucked in enough air to slow his pulse. He staggered to his feet and made it to the bathroom sink, where he vomited in three short, violent bursts. He hovered over the cracked plastic basin for a few moments before cleaning up, splashing water in the sink and on his face. When he was done, he looked up in the mirror, seeing a ghost of himself.

  Tommy hadn’t looked in a mirror in days, it seemed.

  He didn’t have to worry about someone recognizing him from the back of a dust jacket. His face was drained of any color it once had, and his eyes wore the bloodshot haze of an alcoholic on a binge. He had barely eaten or slept in days.

  He stared at himself for a full five minutes, enough time, in his mind, to let his body absorb the blow of the attack. When he was done, he could feel something shift inside him. He felt looser, as if the panic attack released the pressure that had suddenly become too great to contain. Tommy felt weak, but he also felt better than he had in a week.

  He called Evie back, apologizing for hanging up. He didn’t tell her what had happened, but neither did he make up another lie. It was a small victory, but he fought to be honest where it didn’t carry the risk of losing everything. Both kids told Tommy they missed him, and it had been a long time since he had been away from them long enough to hear that. It made him want to go home all the more, but he had a dirty job to do first.

  His first stop was breakfast. He ached for a real meal, something that would give him the strength he knew he would need. Tommy slid inconspicuously into a back booth of a run-down diner and had the biggest omelet on the menu, chased with two cups of black coffee-water, sides of bacon and hash browns, and two glasses of orange juice.

  Tommy took his time driving to Lind Falls, stopping at two different towns to buy supplies. In one hardware store he bought some work boots, heavy-duty gloves, and a duffel bag. In a different store he bought a shovel. Paid cash for everything.

  In the mid-afternoon Tommy finally drove slowly into the place of his childhood. Lind Falls was a small town and Tommy’s name was assuredly well-known there, but despite all the photos on the back of his book jackets, people rarely recognized authors, no matter how many books they had sold. Still, he didn’t like the idea of doing what he had come to do during the daytime. Running into others was a possibility, and if someone recognized him Tommy’s evidence trail would become more damaging.

  But if there was one thing worse than digging up a body during the daytime, it was digging up a body at night. Tommy would take his chances.

  He looked up at the sky. The clouds screamed rain, but Tommy knew better. Oregon clouds often lied. It wouldn’t rain.

  He drove to the woods.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Tommy drove past his old house, which sat diminished by time and memory. The green and white clapboard was now painted beige and brown, making the house look like a big lump of 1950s ranch-house shit. The north side of the house had been popped out, adding more living area and encroaching on an already small backyard. The changes annoyed him, as if what was good enough for Tommy’s family wasn’t good enough for these people.

  Three doors down was Rade Baristow’s house. It hadn’t changed at all, and Tommy wondered if that was done on purpose, just in case the missing little boy from decades ago stumbled back into town.

  Tommy parked across the street, next to a park that was once a large field of dirt. He stared at the Baristow house from inside the car.

  The disappearance of Rade Baristow had never been solved and, as clichéd as it was, his picture had indeed been placed on milk cartons back in 1981, at least locally. Most of Tommy’s neighbors had been interviewed by the police to determine if someone had seen something. Tommy himself had been questioned, and it was, at the time, the second most nerve-wracking moment of his young life. He had barely felt his lips moving as he replied No to every question the officer asked. Did you see him that day? Did you hear or see anything out of the ordinary? Any strangers hanging around the area? The officer who had questioned him was Alan Stykes, at the time a newer member of the Lind Falls tiny police department. Tommy remembered the cold gaze of Officer Stykes in the brief moments Tommy had actually made eye contact with him. He had felt sure his guilt was wrapped around him like a book jacket, but he must have been convincing enough because he was never questioned a second time.

  Mark and Jason were never questioned.

  Nor was Elizabeth, but only because no one ever saw her again. She had been a ghost, whiffing away into a thin vapor trail that blew softly out of town. Tommy had asked a few questions about her, very delicately, here and there, but no one seemed to have heard of her. It seemed she had come to Lind Falls only to kill, and then, once satisfied, moved on. It had made no sense. Who were her parents? Or was she herself a teenager drifter, a character from an S.E. Hinton book?

  Tommy had always assumed Rade’s parents never really gave a shit about their boy. The assessment was based partly on the fact that Rade always seemed to be allowed to wander the neighborhood alone at any time of day, and partly on the fact that Tommy had been fourteen and wasn’t really capable of understanding parental motives for anything. So what somehow came as the biggest surprise to him in the aftermath was the complete unwinding of Charles and Rita Baristow. Rita left within a year of Rade’s disappearance, heading to California. Charles remained in the house but was constantly on the road for his job, selling insurance or some such commodity.

  Rita killed herself in a Holiday Inn in Fresno six months later. Painkillers and vodka. Tommy remembered his parents discussing it at dinner. Tommy didn’t eat much that night. Or most nights back then.

  Tommy’s gaze focused on the upstairs window, the one he remembered belonging to Rade’s bedroom. Tommy wondered if Charles, the father, still lived there. Maybe Charles moved. If he did, who lived there now? Did they ever receive visits from the ghost of a boy buried less than a half-mile from here?

  Tommy shook his head, as if flinging the thought from his head.

  Focus.

  You’ve got a job to do.

  Tommy got out of the car and went to the trunk. He unzipped the duffel bag and put the shovel and gloves inside, then zipped it up and slung it over his shoulder. He then exchanged his leather loafers for the work boots before heading down the street.

  He found the old path with ease, the one that led to the woods. From the start of the path, nothing had changed. The towering maples and oaks beckoned him. Even over the last thirty years, the economy of Lind Falls had never been good enough to encourage digging up the woods to add another subdivision, which was either a blessing or a curse.

  The woods were exactly as they had always been.

  The sky grew darker and the October breeze crept around Tommy’s bare neck and snaked down the back of his shirt, chilling him. He had only the thinnest of jackets, not having been prepared for traveling from South Carolina to Oregon.

  His steps were slow, not because he was unsure of his direction, but because he want
ed to be aware of his surroundings. He wanted to see, to hear. If there was something to smell, he wanted to smell it. Tommy wanted to know what was out there with him.

  Dry leaves crunched under his boots as he walked, and the noise seemed ungodly loud to him, making him feel exposed. He was carrying a shovel and gloves in a duffel bag, which, if questioned for any reason, he had no good answer for. But this was nothing compared to the thought of being caught digging up the body of a long-decomposed boy.

  His plan was relatively simple, which always made for the best ones. Ideally, he would dig up Rade’s body and rebury him somewhere else in the woods. Elizabeth would have no idea where the body was relocated, and thus she would have no real evidence with which to incriminate Tommy. The duffel bag was his backup plan. If he had to, he’d put the body in the bag and take it with him, disposing of it somewhere else. Tommy hoped to all hell it wouldn’t come to that.

  Can I really even do this?

  His cell phone screamed.

  ‘Fuck,’ he muttered, cursing himself for the oversight of not turning it off. He yanked it from his jacket pocket and ignored the call, seeing Sofia’s name on the screen briefly before Tommy sent her to voicemail. He turned the phone off.

  A bird called in the distance. Three brief caws, then silence. Again, three brief caws, then silence.

  A drop of rain hit Tommy on the nose and he looked up through the towering skeleton trees at the clouds.

  ‘No,’ he commanded them. ‘I know you. You will not rain on me.’

  No further drops came.

  He was close now, and in his mind the trees were no longer bare but full and lush, reeking of soft earth and tender bark. The clouds were pulling apart, revealing blue skies above. The breeze no longer chilled him, but instead licked him with a hot tongue.

  As Tommy finally reached the clearing, it was no longer a gray October day.

  It was summer.

  Summer 1981.

  PART II

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Lind Falls, Oregon, 1981

  ‘Holy shit,’ Mark said. ‘What did you do?’

  Elizabeth said nothing. Her eyes remained closed and her naked shoulders quivered, the faintest of smiles creeping over her face. She was still straddling Rade, who no longer moved, and whose blood had sprayed up on to his killer’s naked chest, painting her skin with Pollock-like splatters.

  Her breaths were heavy and slow.

  A bird called high above, deep within the treetops. Three caws and then silence. Three caws and silence.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Jason said. ‘Oh my God. Oh my God.’

  Tommy’s fourteen-year-old mind could not yet process what had just happened. He stood there, looking, absorbing all that was in front of him. Tommy looked at the death and the dirt. A movement to the right caught his eye, and he saw the squirrel coming back down the tree, inching toward them. Creeping closer, as if there had been nothing of interest until that young boy’s head had split open, spilling out the possibility of food. In Tommy’s mind he could hear the squirrel’s tiny claws scuffle against the tree bark.

  Elizabeth finally opened her eyes. They seemed brighter than what the filtered sunlight through the trees should have allowed.

  ‘I just came so fucking hard,’ she said. She reached up and gave her naked breasts a soft squeeze.

  ‘You … is he dead?’ Jason said. Tommy looked at him. Jason’s bloodless face held eyes that did not blink.

  She rose and stretched her arms high above her head, as if just waking from a long nap. Then she ran her hands longer over her naked waist, smearing Rade’s blood across her skin until she was covered in broad strokes of pinkish hues rather than bright red splatters. She reached down and pressed her fingers against Rade’s neck, to the place where life should be found.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  The three boys looked at her, none of them speaking. There was so much to say. There was nothing to say.

  Rade was on his back, the top of his skull crumpled like a Coke can, his dark hair matted and mushy with blood. Elizabeth had hit him a total of three times with the rock, but one time was probably all that was necessary. Rade’s lifeless eyes stared up and back, as if still trying to see where the rock in her hands had been aimed. To Tommy, there was no question Rade was dead, but no one checked for sure. No one moved at all.

  The bloody rock sat in the dirt, close to Rade’s open fingers.

  We have to do something, Tommy thought. That one sentence played over and over in his mind, yet he did not move. Whether it was fear or just the simple inability to process information, Tommy froze, and in his mind that made him a coward.

  Mark will do something, Tommy thought. Mark is stronger than me. Mark will do something.

  Tommy looked over at Mark, and as he did Jason and Elizabeth also looked at him. Mark’s eyes narrowed as he kept his focus on the half-naked girl.

  Elizabeth stood and began to move, confidently, a model on a catwalk, strutting over to Mark, her naked shoulders broad and straight, accentuating a narrow waist and the slight curve of her teenage hips.

  She stood in front of Mark and placed a hand on his chest. Mark stared back at her, his gaze feral, but did not move. Elizabeth leaned in and whispered something to him. Still he did not move.

  Do something, Tommy thought. His feet seemed cemented to the ground. Do something, Mark. Smash her in the face or something.

  Then Elizabeth slowly went down to her knees, snaking down Mark’s body like a raindrop on a window. Without any hesitation she opened the fly of Mark’s jeans and pulled them down. Then she took him into her mouth, her head slowly working back and forth, her hand stroking his cock as her mouth consumed him.

  Mark closed his eyes, almost wincing, as if trying to fight against the pleasure, but it was no use. Tommy could see he was already hard, and the hands he brought down, perhaps to push her away, were soon grabbing her red hair, pulling her face closer in to him. He shouted in fury as he came just seconds later, and she drank him in.

  What is happening?

  Elizabeth slowly wiped the corner of her mouth and she left Mark and turned her attention to Jason. Like Mark, he seemed powerless against her, and again she leaned in close and whispered something in his ear. This time she shed her remaining clothes and stood naked in front of him. She undressed Jason and led him by hand to the closest tree, where she turned and bent over, bracing herself against the trunk, offering herself to him.

  Tommy saw the squirrel coming from the opposite direction, inching its way to Rade’s open skull.

  Jason thrust into her from behind while Mark and Tommy watched. In seconds it was over, and Jason withdrew and let himself fall into the dirt, naked and sobbing.

  this isn’t happening this isn’t happening this isn’t happening

  Elizabeth let out a long, pleasured sigh and turned to Tommy.

  Tommy watched as she now came to him, her feet crossing delicately one in front of the other as she walked, as if on a balance beam. Her long legs milky white and strong; her thin patch of pubic hair red like her hair.

  Tommy felt certain he would vomit from revulsion at any moment, but he couldn’t help feeling excited. He wanted to fuck her as much as he wanted to kill her, and the agony was knowing he would do neither.

  She stood in front of him and placed a hand on his chest, brushing her fingertips from nipple to nipple. Then she leaned in close.

  ‘We’re family now,’ she said, her breath hot and sensual. ‘We have to make it official.’

  Her hand lowered to his crotch.

  Tommy felt his body light on fire and his breathing quickened. Her fingers deftly popped open the button on his jeans, and Tommy was certain he was going to let her do whatever she wanted.

  But he couldn’t. As much as he was no longer in control of what was happening in those woods on that summer day, he couldn’t let this happen. He would not give in, because something told him if he did she would control him forever, and his soul would belong t
o her.

  He pushed her.

  ‘Get away from me.’

  Her eyes flashed feral rage, but then almost immediately softened into a hazy state of indifference. The crooked, playful smile crept back.

  ‘You some kind of faggot, Tommy?’ she said. ‘You like boys, baby?’

  Tommy pounced, throwing his body full force against hers, knocking her into the dirt. His face pushed into her naked chest, his chin pressing against one of her nipples. He could smell her sweat and a lingering hint of perfume, both of which mixed with droplets of Rade’s blood that had sprayed her milky skin.

  She tensed, her muscles taut and hard beneath her skin. But she didn’t fight back. In fact, she seemed to like it.

  ‘That’s right, baby. Take me rough. Any way you want it.’ Her breathing quickened. Tommy pushed off her. A small drop of blood had smeared on the corner of her mouth, making her look like a little girl who’d put on lipstick for the very first time. Whether it was Rade’s blood or her own Tommy didn’t know.

  Tommy staggered to his feet and leaned into her, screaming. ‘What did you do?’

  She said nothing. Then her gaze flicked to the left of Tommy, and her eyes focused on something behind him. She looked at Tommy again and smiled. The blood was still on her mouth.

  Tommy turned.

  Someone was coming toward them, from deep within the woods. Not another teen. A man.

  ‘I was wondering if you stayed for the whole thing,’ Elizabeth said.

  The man’s head was hidden beneath a black wool ski mask. Tommy thought, in a detached, shock-setting-in kind of way, that the mask must be insufferably hot. The man wore camouflage pants and a tight black t-shirt, revealing some muscle, some fat, and deeply hairy arms.

  In those arms he held a shotgun, which was pointed directly at Tommy.

  Tommy looked first to Mark and then to Jason. Each boy stared at the man with utter stillness. Jason’s pants were still unzipped.