The Girl from the Woods

by Chris Keane

  The Girl from

  the Woods

  Chris Keane

  Copyright © 2017 by Keane Fiction, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Pennant Collective, Atlantic Highlands, NJ

  This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0692832172

  ISBN-13: 0692832173

  Cover Art by Nick Kiefer

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A huge thanks to my phenomenal editor Mike Burgess for working his magic on this book. I can’t express enough gratitude to the amazingly talented Nick Kiefer for bringing The Girl from the Woods to life as cover art. Thanks a million Monika, and the rest of your crack team, at Digiwriting for all your much-needed assistance with the book launch. Shout out to my old friend Ray “Nutty” Amoroso for reading my first short story and encouraging me to write more. Thanks to fellow Goonies Michael Boylan and Matt Strippoli at Pennant Films: writing scripts with you two inspired me to write more and also made me a better storyteller. A special thanks to my beautiful wife, Laura. You are both my love and inspiration. Thanks for all your support with this project despite your very full plate. You rock!

  1

  Dream Girl

  She stood before Dante, tall and beautiful in a white tank top and tight black jeans. Fiery waves of red hair caressed her face. Streams of blue light shot from the tips of her fingers. Her large breasts jutted out. They were torpedoes. Down below, between perfectly sinuous hips, her triangular region glowed deep purple.

  Dante moved his mouth, unable to make any kind of vocalization, no matter how hard he tried. His limbs felt frozen, netted in some alien force field. Who are you? The girl smiled as she wrapped her arms around him, brushing over his short, scrawny body. He felt her sweet, warm breath on his cheek as she leaned in closer for a kiss. Electricity pulsed through his underwear as her full lips enveloped his half-open mouth with a wet kiss — his first. Faint music played in the distance, but he couldn’t make out the words. This is heaven.

  A sharp needle pierced his bony arm. Dante winced in pain as the girl floated upward. THUD! He had taken a brutal punch from some invisible location. He held his stomach gasping for air. His eyelids opened. The girl was gone. Dante was back in his small bedroom looking up at his older brother, Kurt. “Wake up, Dainty!”

  His brother scooped him off the bed and body-slammed him to the ground. Before Dante even had a chance to get up, Kurt plopped his butt on Dante’s chest, laughing hysterically.

  “I can’t breathe!” Dante rasped.

  “If you couldn’t breathe you wouldn’t be able to talk. Moron!” Kurt replied coldly as Dante kicked his feet and flailed his arms.

  “Mom! Dad! HELP!” Dante pleaded.

  “They can’t save you this time!” Kurt sneered.

  “What’s going on?” Dante whined. “Where are Mom and Dad?”

  Kurt slowly brought himself to his feet and stared down at Dante with a sardonic smile. “You’re not gonna like it.”

  Dante darted out of his bedroom door like a startled deer, slipping and sliding on the newly-waxed hardwood floor. As he rounded the corner toward the stairs, he lost his footing and tumbled all the way to the bottom. For a minute he lay there motionless, holding his right ankle and panting. “Shit…” Slowly, he pushed himself off the ground, trying to keep the weight from his feet. He leaned on the banister, screaming at the top of his lungs. “WHERE ARE THEY?”

  He scanned the kitchen for any sign of life. The windows were all closed, with the shades drawn. The table was clear. The sink was empty. The family dog was gone. A lonely, typed letter was pasted to their enormous silver-plated refrigerator.

  Boys,

  By the time you read this we will be on a lush green hilltop in the emerald isle playing golf! I’m sorry it had to come to this. I’m sorry to just sneak off, but you both have been quite a handful the last year or so. Not to mention all the years prior where we had to sacrifice our time and finances to try to raise you right. What did we get? KURT! I don’t even have to explain what a disappointment you have been. Since you graduated high school FIVE years ago all you’ve done is party it up. Way to go! We expect you to have a job and find a place to live other than here by the time we return.

  Dante, until we return, you will be summering at your grandmothers. I’m DONE WITH BEING YOUR MAID! You have not shown the tiniest bit of responsibility. You’ve ignored my repeated requests to take out the garbage, clean your plate, clean your room, or simply turn on a load of your laundry. YOU ARE A NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD INFANT!

  Love,

  Mom

  On the back there was a barely legible note, scribbled in black ink. “Boys, you should be shot. Dad”

  “No!” Dante screamed, his voice cracking.

  In the morning dew, dads dragged garbage cans to the curb, young moms nudged baby carriages, and dedicated dog owners went through their daily ritual with their pooper-scoopers. With a maniacal look in his eyes, Kurt revved the engine in the driveway of the family’s big colonial. In a matter of minutes, they would leave the familiar confines of their cul-de-sac for the smoky, bumper-to-bumper congestion of the Garden State Parkway.

  No matter what car people were driving, the traffic moved at a torturous two miles per hour during rush hour.

  Kurt slammed on his horn. “Shit! Commuters! And mom and dad wonder why I work part time. Who wants to deal with this on a daily basis?”

  “Not me.” Dante agreed.

  As they inched their way towards the New York Thruway, Kurt cursed under his breath. Dante just stared silently out the window, still in shock over his drastic change in fortune.

  Unlike the Parkway, the Thruway really moved, especially heading north, away from the city. Dante glanced over to his brother clutching the wheel wearing leather driving gloves — the ones with holes for knuckles. He was a decent-enough driver, but weaving in and out of eighteen-wheelers at ninety miles in a beat-up sports car was still a death wish.

  But Dante knew not to ever insult his brother’s wheels; the Camaro was all he lived for. His parents had given him a choice: college or Camaro. Dante’s dad, a shrewd business man, figured he’d get off cheap. And he was right. But that was five years ago, and Kurt was still driving the same car, living at home, and blowing all his cash on booze and cigarettes.

  “SLOW DOWN! YOU’RE GONNA KILL US!” Dante ordered.

  “You baby!” Kurt snorted, speeding up.

  Dante studied his big brother’s profile. Kurt, at twenty-three, was only four years older, but he was aging rapidly. His skin appeared weathered and cracked in the morning sunlight filtering through the windshield. His jet black hair was receding in the front, with random gray hairs sprouting up everywhere. He always seemed to have a five o’clock shadow. Dante figured it was all the booze and late-night hours taking a toll on his body. Not to mention the fact that he smoked a lot and regularly fried himself with artificial UV rays.

  Dante popped opened the glove box, exposing a stack of girly magazines and a bunch of half-eaten protein bars. The red-headed bombshell on the front of one of the Maxims reminded him of the girl from his dream. He smiled, thumbing through the spread.

  “Hey! Put that back!” Kurt snapped.

  “My phone’s dead.”

  “Tough shit. I don’t want your grimy paws all over that thing,” Kurt snapped. “Besides you’re never gonna get a chick like that,” he barked, stuffing the magazine under his seat.

  Dante scratched his head, “And you are?”

  “Maybe…I’ve come close.” Kurt stared at his reflec
tion in the rearview mirror, studying a pimple that was forming on his chin. “Met this chick the other night, Lesley. She’s smoking hot, and loaded. I pretended to drop my phone, and she picked it up for me. Next thing I know, I’ve got her digits.”

  “Sounds simple enough.” Dante said.

  “Yeah, for me.” Kurt replied, glibly.

  “Huh?” Dante mumbled.

  “You could never bank a girl like Lesley.”

  “Hold up! Why not?” Dante replied, with a hint of panic in his voice. Dante squirmed in his seat as his brother drove on, totally ignoring him. “Tell me!”

  “Girl like her is lookin’ for a man.” Kurt replied plainly.

  “I’m almost twenty!”

  “Yeah, but you’re no man. Sit back. Listen to a little Kendall. He’ll straighten your ass out.”

  Kurt’s lips peeled open revealing yellow, tarter-stained teeth. He breathed right into Dante’s face, choking him with putrid beef jerky breath. “Hell yeah!” Kurt screamed as he spun the dial to max — a rapper’s voice over a cacophony of cracking and humming from the speakers while they raced down the Thruway.

  All the bile and angst Dante had been feeling towards Kurt evaporated at the site of the Roy Rogers sign. He looked over at his brother who nodded as he made a no-blinker, three-lane turn, sending them careening onto the exit ramp at sixty miles per hour. The best part was that there was no torturous choice to make per usual: fried chicken or regular roast beef. The pile of cash his parents had left them for the rest of the summer would buy them quite a few super-sized meals. They both stacked their trays with steroid-laced chicken and red roast beef sandwiches. The food looked about as edible as Play-Doh, but neither cared. It tasted great washed down with carbonated sugar water.

  Dante ate wildly, like he was going to prison the next day; in a way, he was. There would be none of the comforts of home out in the boonies. “Why don't they have this place by us anymore?” Dante asked. “It totally beats Burger King.”

  Kurt inhaled his first sandwich, let out a large belch, and looked out the window at a guy standing at the side of the road next to a broken down Buick. “Mom and Dad are moving to Florida.”

  “What? Since when?”

  “I overheard them talking about it last week. Dad's taking a package, then they’re gone. Scooping up the nest. They’re done parenting, dude.”

  “Gee, I wonder why?” Dante said sarcastically.

  “Don't blame yourself.”

  “I'm not! You're out of control. Coming home drunk all the time. Random visitors. Calls at all hours.”

  “It's not my fault I've got a life.”

  “You make us look bad.”

  “Nonsense. They're tired of babying you.”

  "They're tired of POLICING you!"

  "You know how pissed dad is that you didn't get into Penn?"

  "Yeah..." Dante sighed as his head bobbed forward into his right palm.

  "Then you didn't get into State..."

  "I missed the application date! I would have totally gotten in!"

  "Maybe. But they thought you'd be out of their hair by now. Me too I guess."

  "Yeah. I guess. Let's get the hell out of here."

  Dante felt his eardrums pop as they labored up the two-lane rows that traced the outer rim of the Adirondacks. In the late-morning fog, though, he couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him.

  “I feel like I’m inside a Coors Light bottle,” Kurt said as they spiraled around a tight curve hugging the mountain.

  “Can you see?” Dante asked, concerned.

  “Yeah. I’m good.”

  Occasionally some beat-up truck would smoke by with massive hairy arms dangling from the windows, and a gun rack on the back. A large portion of the rural population didn’t have licenses much less insurance. The locals probably thought heading to the DMV for the government to poke over your vehicle was ridiculous and communist.

  As they made their ascent, the two lanes eroded to a hair above one. Coming around a sharp bend, Kurt swerved to avoid an object in the middle of the road, sending the Camaro skidding towards the edge of a precipice.

  “Ahhh!” Dante let out a blood-curdling scream as they grinded to a halt.

  “What the fuck was that?” Kurt yelled.

  “A rock!”

  “I know it was a rock!” Kurt snapped. “What the fuck was it doing there?” Kurt asked as he started to back up the car, spewing rocks and dirt over the edge.

  “That’s it. I’m getting out! I’m not gonna die over this.”

  Dante opened the door and started to step out of the car, but all he saw was a blurry view of the tree-covered ground down below. He quickly recoiled back into the passenger’s seat and slammed the door.

  “Don’t move! I’m backing up.” Kurt killed the music and slowly slalomed around the errant boulder.

  “I think I’m gonna be sick,” Dante whined.

  “Don’t go blowing chunks all over my Camaro,” Kurt warned as the car jerked forward.

  The car seemed eerily quiet without Kurt’s rap blaring. Dante was really shaken up, and in a state of shock. He pictured himself plummeting off the side of the mountain over and over again. Kurt kept talking like it was nothing, but his body language couldn’t lie: he white-knuckled the steering wheel with his hands firmly on ten and two. It wasn’t until they had nearly made it down the backside of the mountain that the tension in the car began to dissipate.

  When Kurt spotted a sign for Gram’s town of Tuckerton, a huge smile formed on the corners of his face. He flipped his black Ray-Bans on, slimed his ‘do with a scoop of blue hair gel, and cranked up the radio again. “Damn! That was like a video game.”

  “Yeah,” Dante replied solemnly. “Except no extra lives.”

  Dante scanned Main Street searching for signs of civilization, finding only the bare-bone essentials for human life to exist: a post office, a Texaco, a library, a church, a general store, and a bar. The town, resting at the bottom of a giant hill, was absolutely miniscule. It was going to be a long summer.

  The Camaro’s enormous V-8 engine rumbled toward Gram’s ranch, scattering animals along the way. Kurt rocked back and forth as they snaked their way through thick woods past scattered homes carved into the landscape. When they peeled off the road, a bobcat stared at them curiously, then disappeared back into the woods.

  Once Kurt cut the engine, things got real. Dante was unable to mask his emotions or even his tears. “Can you please let me hang at home?” he cried. “I promise I’ll stay out of your way.”

  “Toughen up! You’re weak and scrawny. Pump some iron, or at least get some sun up here. With those black duds and fangs for teeth, you look like a friggin’ vampire!”

  Dante motioned toward Gram’s broken down ranch house. “You can’t leave me here. There’s no cell service. There’s no ANYTHING!”

  “I can’t babysit you all summer, man. Sorry. Tell Gram I said hi.”

  “You’re not even coming in?”

  Kurt shook his head. “Nah, I’ve gotta go pick up the keg, couple of handles of Popov.” He whipped out the Maxim Dante had been reading from underneath the driver’s seat. “Here. You’ll need this.”

  “Dickhead,” Dante muttered. Wiping his tears with his t-shirt, Dante slowly marched toward the end of his summer.

  2

  No service

  Dante sighed as he creaked open the front door to his grandmother’s ranch. The place was dark and almost painfully plain. Old Norman Rockwell paintings hung on puke-colored wallpaper. Uncomfortable-looking furniture, entombed in thick, cloudy plastic, filled a narrow living room. Other than a few scattered newspapers sitting on the edge of a coffee table, there were no tangible signs of human existence.

  In the corner, four nicks in the faded hardwood floor were all that remained of Gram’s clunky, bunny-eared TV. Dante fondly recalled watching static-filled morning cartoons with Kurt. By day, they wandered the adjacent woods, searching for lost treasure. A
t night, they would play flashlight tag out back until all hours. Since then, landlines had been replaced with cell phones, microprocessors had doubled in speed a few dozen times, Netflix streamed movies to anything with a power switch, and his brother had become an arrogant jerk.

  Dante dropped his bulky blue duffle bag and headed back toward the kitchen to look for Gram; it was her most likely locale. She had always been a voracious cook, loving nothing more than whipping up culinary delights for all to enjoy. This was in stark contrast to back home, where his mother barely boiled water; her immense, eight-burner stove was simply a show piece for her cavernous kitchen. By comparison, Gram’s kitchen seemed tiny. There wasn’t even room for a small table, just a single burner and an off-white Coleman fridge. But it smelled amazing!

  It didn’t take long for Dante to give up his indoor search. The front door slammed behind him as he called, “Gram? Gram!” But nothing cut the eerie silence. His mind started to race, wondering if something awful had happened to her living out in the boonies all alone. He circled the house, picking up the pace. The ground had been flooded by the overflowing stream that bordered the woods. He trudged through the mud, as water slowly seeped into his leather shoes. “Oh Shit!” He shouted.

  Dante finally found Gram resting on a chipped wooden chair on the back porch. “Gram! HELLO!” He studied her face illuminated by the bright orange sun sinking into the trees. Wrinkles were to be expected, but he didn’t think her pale gray color was so great. Over and over, he tapped on her shoulder until she finally looked up. With her head cocked to the side, she stared at Dante like a confused canine. Through her clear blue eyes, he could practically see sparks from the synapses misfiring. He pressed his hand firmly into her shoulder as he looked her directly in the eyes. “Gram. It’s me! Dante!”

  “Look there, Dante! It’s you!” She popped off her chair and wrapped her arms around Dante’s neck. “What are you doing here?”