The Girl from the Woods

by Chris Keane

  After a long silence, Kurt cleared his throat and yelled, “Why don’t you tell someone who gives a shit?”

  Dante had a new-found swagger. After going home for a quick rinse, he headed directly to visit Angie at work. He could tell she was really excited to see him. Whenever the waiting room cleared, she pulled him behind the counter so they could make out. At lunchtime, she led him by the hand into her bedroom, locking the door behind her.

  The room had peach-covered walls and posters hanging everywhere. Her eclectic selection of wall art, paper backs and CD cases were like clues to a mystery slowly unraveling. Bras hung from random dresser knobs. Thongs and exotic lingerie lay crumbled up in balls on the floor.

  Seeing Angie’s underwear got Dante excited. Unlike the other night, he was the one attacking her. He moved her toward the bed and lay on top of her, massaging her body everywhere with his hands. Her blue medical scrubs were paper thin, and he quickly realized that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath, which got him insanely aroused. He started to undress her.

  “Wait!” She yelled.

  Dante stopped dead in his tracks, raising his hands in the air like the cops had a six-piece trained on his forehead. Angie rolled over and popped a CD into her laptop. Adele rattled through tiny speakers placed throughout the bedroom.

  “Hey, this is from my mix tape!” Dante exclaimed, proudly.

  “My dad’s having lunch in the other room. I want to be able to make noise,” Angie said coolly.

  Dante undid the small knot in the back of Angie’s scrubs and peeled them off. He needed a deep breath at the sight of her fully-naked body beneath him. In the dark of the woods, he had relied on his sense of touch to navigate the beautiful curves of her body. But in the broad daylight, the sight was sending him into sensory overload. Her skin was luminous and white, a perfect complexion. Her breasts were full and upright, beautifully shaped, and scattered with cute red freckles. His eyes couldn’t help drifting south of her waistline; it was the first time he had seen a fully-naked woman.

  Angie tossed him a condom, hitting him in the chest. “Come on! Are you just window shopping here, or what?”

  Dante tore off his boxers. In an instant, he was inside her again. It didn’t matter that he had just been with her, he knew he wouldn’t last long. Angie cooed as they rolled around, intertwined, across the bed; it was light-years more comfortable than the unforgiving ground. Dante moved his hips in and out as she grinded herself against him vigorously. The longer they went, the more in sync they became, settling into quick steady rhythm. Then, out of nowhere, Angie let out a shriek that rivaled Adele’s; it startled Dante so much that he nearly stopped moving altogether.

  “Keep going!” she screamed.

  Dante picked up the pace again, feeling a rush of pleasure down below, even more intense than the night before. Daytime sex was good, very good. “I’m gonna come,” he murmured.

  “Little longer…I’m close,” she pleaded.

  Dante held his breath, trying to conjure up un-sexy thoughts as Angie’s face turned the red of her hair. Then without warning, he released.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “Sorry? I finished, and it was amazing!” Angie leaned over and kissed Dante on the lips and collapsed back onto the soft comforter.

  Dante handed Angie a bottle of water. “You know you have to go back to work, right?”

  “What’s work?” she quipped.

  By hanging around the office, Dante had managed to ask Doctor Sewall some background questions. He had grown up in Massachusetts and attended Boston College on an academic scholarship. After school, he joined the Army and served as a medic during the Bosnian convict. When his tour ended, he had gone to medical school at UMASS.

  Yet there wasn’t a single diploma hanging on the walls to back up Doctor Sewall’s claims. Perhaps it was a small town thing, not wanting to appear pretentious. But based on what he had read so far, Dante wasn’t going to just take him at his word.

  Later that night, while Angie was having dinner with her father, Dante was back at the library to investigate him further. Angie had asked what he was up to that night, and he told her he needed to spend some time with his grandmother. He felt badly having to lie to her, but there were questions that needed answering.

  The library was closing soon, but Dante had a plan. He would say goodnight to the old lady, then hide down in the bathroom until she was gone. The bathroom smelled like raw sewage but during the day, random people would be coming and going to use the library computer. Everyone in town, except for the conspiracy theorist behind the cash register, seemed to know and love Dr. Sewall. And if at all possible, Dante would rather keep them in the dark about his ongoing investigation.

  The web research didn’t go well; it turned out it’s pretty hard to find thirty-year-old yearbooks online. Eventually, Dante came across some third-party site that hosted yearbooks going back to the sixties, but they were looking for a credit card. That wouldn’t have been a problem except Kurt had run up so much debt that collection agencies were calling their home at all hours, souring Dante’s father on the idea of credit cards altogether. Dante decided to just shoot an email to the medical school requesting them to verify the credentials of a Dr. Sewall. It was getting late and Dante figured he had done as much as he could for now. He packed up his backpack and headed toward the exit. As he neared the door, he got an odd urge to explore the basement again.

  From the top of the stairs, he heard a faint rustling sound. Then he heard it again. It was as if something were calling, asking him for help. Could there really be an animal stuck down there? None of this made any sense of course, but it also didn’t make sense to be scared of a bunch of inanimate objects and some random noise that could have been a million other things. Besides, being with Angie had somehow given Dante a sense of invincibility.

  He made it down the cellar stairs in the dark, the depth and width of the creaky boards somehow already stored in Dante’s muscle memory. With the ambient light from the library streaming in through the basement door frame, Dante spotted the outline of a person in the corner of the room. His heart skipped a beat. He rubbed his eyes and did a double-take, before realizing it was just a mannequin. Shit! Dante hadn’t remembered seeing that the other day, but it must have been there.

  He powered on his cell phone and turned on its flashlight function. Even if his cell service was effectively blocked by the mountains, it still provided some usefulness. A cone of light illuminated a healthy swath of the floor, but the silence was still deafening. Dante crept toward the center of the room, toward the dead light bulb, away from the staircase — his only escape back to the main level.

  He turned back towards a yellow stripe of light painting the top of the stairs. The librarian had scared the shit out of him the other day, and he was trying to avoid being surprised by anyone again. But when he swung his head back around, a decrepit woman was standing in front of him. Her hair was gray and stringy, her body was emaciated and her staunch face, addled with wrinkles and warts. Dante jumped and screamed at the top of his lungs. He tried running, but his legs wouldn’t move. He was trapped.

  The woman’s hands squeezed tightly around Dante’s neck. He couldn’t breathe. Blurry flashes of red light blinded him, as he swung his hands wildly and kicked the space in front of him without making any contact. His cell phone slipped from his hand and then everything turned black.

  ***

  Dante woke up screaming in the middle of the basement floor. His energy was totally depleted, and the back of his head was in excruciating pain. He pulled himself up off the dusty ground. The light coming from the stairs was brighter than it had been earlier, indicating it was a combination of both artificial and natural light. Had he slept all night? He looked down and spotted his cell phone on the floor; it had cracked screen but was still functional. He scanned the walls of the room, searching for signs of last night’s attack. There were none. He ran up the basement stairs as fast as he could
, picturing the emaciated woman breathing down his neck.

  He wanted to get the hell out of the library, but his bladder felt like it was about to explode, so he slipped into the bathroom. In the chipped, smudge-covered mirror, his neck looked clean. No marks of any kind. But something had lured him into the basement. There was no other explanation for it. He had been duped by some phantom cry for help, and it had almost cost him his life. He recalled a ghastly image of a witch-like woman right before he had passed out; it was a high-definition nightmare! There was no way he would ever get her face erased from his memory. The woman looked so angry and tortured, Dante knew she would be back again before too long.

  16

  coming clean

  For the next several weeks, Dante spent every waking minute with Angie. Life with her was a never-ending honeymoon. Each day started with a morning hike to find a secluded spot in the woods to make love. Most days, Angie worked long hours, so Dante hung around her office all day just to be near her. They could talk for hours upon hours and not run out of things to say, or they would just gaze into each other’s eyes and be perfectly content.

  He had nearly managed to put the nightmare at the library out of his mind, when the UMASS bursar office finally responded to his email. There was no record of Doctor Sewall ever attending medical school or any other college at UMASS. At the end of the day, after the doctor had left the office, Dante told Angie about all the strange things that had happened to him since he had arrived to town.

  “Wait, what exactly are you saying? You were attacked by a witch in the library?” Angie asked, furrowing her brow.

  “Yes,” Dante replied firmly.

  “You know that was all just boogeyman bullshit, right? The Salem Witch trials were probably the greatest miscarriages of American justice ever.”

  “They must have done something…”

  “Just shut it! I know what happened,” she barked, brandishing a book on Salem history. “My heart breaks for those girls, murdered just for being different.”

  “Please don’t fight me on this, Ang. There’s some crazy shit going on, and I just can’t handle it on my own anymore.”

  “Your grandmother?” she replied with a concerned tone.

  “Well, she’s losing her mind. But in addition to that…I’m concerned about your father.”

  “My father?”

  “I don’t think he’s who he says he is.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Did he ever tell you about protesting in Salem?”

  “Not that I recall. Why?”

  “Well apparently, he was really fired up about the witch trials. Ended up in jail one time. Plus, I don’t think he’s real a doctor.”

  “That’s ridiculous! Don’t you think I would know that?”

  “It’s true. I read about it in newspaper clippings in the library.”

  Dante grabbed Angie’s hand, but she pulled away, leaving his arm dangling. When he took off toward her office though, Angie followed him.

  “Come on! I need to show you something,” he called.

  Angie looked suspiciously at the email from UMASS and then didn’t say anything for a long while after.

  “What the fuck is this?” she got out, horrified.

  “It’s from the medical school. Your father’s never went here. He’s lying! I think he uses some kind of alternative medicine….possibly witchcraft.”

  “This is INSANE! My father is the best doctor in this area! You know how many people he’s helped? For free? You’ve got some serious balls trying to dig up dirt on him!”

  “If you listen for five seconds, I can explain it-“

  “Leave. I want you out of her right now,” Angie barked, holding the office door wide open.

  Dante walked home exhausted and dejected. What a disaster the last twenty-four hours had been. He had gone from heaven to hell, from Angie’s bed to a haunted basement. Why couldn’t he just leave well enough alone? He needed to try to get everything that had happened at the library out of his mind and focus on making Angie happy again. He would have to find a way to make it up to her, to smooth things over; otherwise he would risk losing the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  Even his grandmother could tell something was wrong. Dante sat at the table pushing a chicken pot pie around with a fork.

  “But that’s your favorite…” Gram sighed.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Girl trouble, huh?” Gram asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “How’d you guess?” Dante replied, dejected.

  “Oh, it was obvious. You’ve been on cloud nine since you saw her at the doctor’s office that day.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’ve just come crashing down to Earth.”

  “You know, Dante, I’m not sure you’re her speed.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I believe she’s looking for a man who knows his way around the bedroom-like your grandfather.”

  Dante covered his face, blushing “Gram! Please stop saying things like that!”

  “Ok. But just remember, a wise man prospers from sound advice, while the fool ignores it and falls flat on his face.”

  “Well, it’s too late for that. She’s really angry and I’m not sure she’ll ever forgive me.”

  “Simply saying you’re sorry goes a long way...” Gram paused a moment. “Hey, why don’t you invite her to a dinner? We clear missed your birthday.”

  “Sure, sounds good,” Dante said, humoring Gram.

  “Now finish up that pot pie. I sweated bullets making it for you!”

  After dinner, Dante went straight to his bedroom to put together a new mix tape with mostly apologetic songs. Sometimes when Dante couldn’t find the right words, music helped him out. He kicked things off with two of his favorites: “Purple Rain” by Prince and “Forgive Me” by Evanescence. Then he added a couple classic love songs: “Your Song” by Elton John and “Something” by The Beatles. To prove he had turned on a radio in the last decade, Dante closed things out with several recent tunes, including: “Back to Me” by Daya and “One Call Away” by Charlie Puth.

  Unfortunately, there was no way for Dante to assess the quality of his latest musical creation; making musical mixes was more of an art than a science. Still, he had always gotten butterflies in his stomach after completing each labor of love for Angie. But this time, his feelings were ambiguous at best.

  At the end of the night, Dante simply couldn’t clear his mind of Dr. Sewall. Tomorrow he would start following him a little more closely, maybe then he would get a better idea about who the man was.

  ***

  Mapping out Doctor Sewall’s routine had been fairly easy. He spent all day at the office, then most nights, he headed out to a strip club on the highway. The minute Gram turned in for the night, Dante fired up her old Nova and took a ride down there.

  Dante parked in the side lot, out of range of all of the street lights and gawkers wandering across the lot. Strip clubs cast a wide net. He saw every kind of vehicle known to man: gas guzzling SUVs, smart cars, old pick-up trucks, and a line of shiny mid-life-crisis mobiles. They all came to The Spotted Kitty for the same thing. Dante didn’t know much about strip clubs, and he had little interest at the moment. He was a man in love.

  Around 2 AM, Dr. Sewall staggered out into the light, arm-in-arm with a glamorous blonde wearing a mini skirt and high-heels. There had to be at least twenty years between the two, but they looked right together anyway. With his black outfit and a smug look on his face, the man had serious SWAG. His eyes were laser-focused. He looked intimidating and dark. In that moment, Dante realized that the affable physician act Doctor Sewall displayed at the office was just that: an act.

  17

  alarm

  Dante paced back and forth across Gram’s living room waiting for Angie to arrive. The last several weeks had been a series of steamy rendezvous. But when Dante pictured himself huddled around the card table having dinner with Angie and Gram, a
lump formed in his throat, bile burned his empty gut, and the urge to make a mad dash down the driveway nearly overcame him. His worlds were about to collide and the timing was awful: right after their first fight.

  Based on Angie’s reaction when he had accused her father of shady practices, Dante figured he was treading on thin ice. If Angie didn’t get on well with Gram, that could jeopardize their glorious honeymoon. Also, Gram had made some thinly-veiled comments about good girls versus bad girls recently; basically, girls who sleep around before marriage are disloyal, thus no longer marriage material. It was obvious to Dante that Gram was judging Angie, while sending him a message not to get involved with her.

  A couple of knocks sent Dante bolting toward the door. He opened it, concerned he might be opening Pandora’s Box at the same time. Angie looked adorable in a yellow sundress and a white ribbon in her hair.

  “Hi.” Dante said softly.

  “Hey.” Angie replied, her eyes looking down.

  “I’m really sorry about what I said the other day. I hope you can forgive me.” Dante slowly handed her the mix CD he had made.

  Without a word, Angie pulled him out onto the porch for a quick smooch before stepping inside.

  Gram’s face lit up when she saw Angie, and Dante suddenly couldn’t remember what he was worried about in the first place. During dinner, Angie hung on Gram’s every word, while those same words made Dante squirm in his seat. For Dante, each story was more embarrassing than the next. His childhood had been filled with bruises, blunders, and overall stupidity. The stories themselves would have been enough to make him crawl under the table, but they also included a series of mortifying revelations: “Dante was scared of his own shadow,” “Dante always wet his bedding,” and “Dante asked me to marry him!”