“What, exactly, did you tell him? Did you tell him there had been an accident, or did you say there were four accidents. Four disappearances, spread out, systematic, five years apart? Did you tell him that every one in town is afraid to go out there? Did you tell him that kids aren’t allowed to go out there, even the older kids?” Miller had even more reason to hate those trees, but he’d never told anyone. Again, unwillingly, he thought of Mary.
Donald Harmon said, “I told him about the kids. It’s none of your business.”
Miller said, “When you coming back to church?”
Donald stared at the fiery old man for a moment and closed the door, muttering the same reply as always, “Next week.” Miller had already turned back when the door opened again. The bright sunlight made Donald impossible to see in the little crack, but Miller heard what he said:
“You want to tell them there were four kids, you tell them. It’s a free country.”
Anger flashed in Miller at hearing this, but hadn’t been anger at Donald. It was anger at himself. He could have told them. He needed to. But something had stopped him.
Fear.
Now, staring at the house, he felt it was too late. He’d gone out there months ago for that very reason, to tell that writer what he’d gotten himself into, but he hadn’t said a word. He’d been too weak. He took a sip of his Postum without really tasting it.
The warm spot that grew in his belly felt like the only good thing in the world.
8
Jen hadn’t known how to respond to Hills’ request for the house. In the heat of the conversation she had wanted to say yes. As crazy as it sounded, his invitation really had felt for a moment like a Godsend. It made her realize how badly she wanted to get out. She’d told him no, but that Paul would want to talk to him, if only to catch up. She gave Hills Paul’s number and email, and then she’d told him she had pressing work and had to go. It was true. She did have pressing work, but now she felt too distracted to do any of it. It didn’t help that, in theory, any of it could be done the next day. She was just adding to her workload by not doing it now.
She paced her mid-sized office. Shapes of co-workers moved past the opaque window that made up her wall, and anyone who cared to look could probably see that she was walking back and forth, but she didn’t care.
The phone conversation had struck some nerve with her, had irritated a wound she hadn’t known she had. It wasn’t just Utah she didn’t like—it really was the house. And something else… something she couldn’t quite get her mind to think. Just as she felt about to turn an important corner, see the thing her mind avoided, there was knock at her door. Less than a second after, Sean came in.
“Hey, friend!” he said, and his presence seemed to push away the unpleasant thoughts of her home. She let them go, welcoming an easier tone. She wanted to reclaim the wonderful sense of lightness she’d come to work with.
“Hi, Sean.”
He stepped in and closed the door.
“Please open that,” she said, keeping her tone polite.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, and turned the knob so the door could drift open about an inch and a half. “How’s things?”
She sat at her desk, subconsciously keeping herself in the position of power, “Good.”
“Good?” he said with exaggerated, friendly surprise. “Last I heard, things weren’t so… good.”
“Well, now they are.” She gave him a little smile to show she meant it, and perhaps even hint at him that she’d gotten some action last night. She had no idea why she would want to advertise that to Sean of all people, but some part of her did.
“Did you talk to him?” he said, sitting on the edge of her desk and crossing his legs.
“Are you gay?” she blurted out, not even realizing she was going to. She’d never experienced anything like it. It was like the words had been waiting on her teeth, and the first gust of air from her mouth sent them out.
His smile stayed on, but it looked frozen there, as if his face had gone on stand-by while the brain looked something up. There was something charming about it, charmingly weird. Then his brows creased, and he looked confused, as if he genuinely hadn’t understood the nature of the question.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, “I really don’t know why I said that.” But she did. She wanted him to be gay so it would be okay for her to tell him more. If he were gay than she wouldn’t feel these encounters to be so clandestine. She’d feel like she really had a friend.
Then, like something in his brain had finally loaded, his smile leapt back on. “Actually,” he said demurely, “you got me. I am. I just, I don’t talk about it much. You know.”
Although he surely would have no reason to lie about it, for a moment she wondered at the sincerity of his answer. But of course that was ridiculous. She said, “Sorry to ask, but I’ve always been good at seeing that.” That wasn’t true, but she didn’t know what else to say.
“It’s fine. I’m not ashamed of it.”
“Oh, of course not!” she said, and then, as if she were unable to not say it: “Last night we made love for the first time in a long time.”
“Is that so!” he said, now with the slightest of lisps. “That’s good news.” Had his voice always sounded like that? She reached back in her memory, and one was waiting for her. A memory of his lisp. Of course he’d always had it. In fact, hadn’t she known even before today that he was gay? Of course she had.
Perhaps they’d even discussed it.
“Tell me more,” he said, and she wanted to.
“We didn’t use protection. He said he wanted a kid, but I’m afraid he just said it for me.”
Sean looked at her, attractive, gentle. “Sounds like he did more than say it. Sounds like he put his money on it, too.”
“He did,” she said, feeling slightly dreamy. But who wouldn’t after the rollercoaster she’d been through the last couple of days? She felt… drunk. “Hey, Sean. We should talk about this later.” She didn’t trust herself to say only what she should.
“No problem,” he said. “I’ll stop back in tomorrow. I’ve got kind of a lot to do today.”
“Me, too.”
“Just wanted to check in.” He made his way for the door. “You want me to leave this open, or close it?”
“You can close it, thanks.”
“Bye, Jen.”
“Bye,” she said, and he shut the door behind him.
She didn’t have any energy left to consider Paul, or the house, or anything personal. She thumbed through the stack of papers on her desk and the list of people she needed to call, and they suddenly looked quite appetizing.
Anything to get her mind off herself for a while.
9
Paul smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled.
CHAPTER FOUR
A FACE CLANCY MILLER HAD SEEN BEFORE looked out at him from between the trees. He had only ever seen it in dreams, and before it had always been faint, ghostly, without substance. But now it was different, more real. The body it belonged to was obscured by shadows, or perhaps the body was even… missing. The face seemed to float midair, inches in front of one of the larger trees. Its eyes bore down on Miller. It was grinning wickedly, like a round, mean moon.
“Old man,” the voice came from the face, but the lips didn’t move, the teeth didn’t part, the smile never faltered. “Welcome to the forest.”
Miller wanted to scream something hateful and biting at the mock smile but could only manage: “It’s not a forest! It’s just a patch of trees!”
He felt impotent. Ineffectual.
“I feel your lie. You know more of the truth than even you believe,” the face said, still without the slightest movement. “It is not just a patch of trees. To me… it is a garden. It is the work of my hands.” The massive half-circle grin loomed, commanding the whole of Miller’s attention. “It is what I have tended to and grown.”
“Give them back!” Miller was sobbing, “Give back those children
. All of them. And not just them… give back everyone you’ve taken.”
“You cannot give back the dead, Farmer. They must remain in my frozen ground. They must feed the roots of the purpose. My purpose.”
A freezing breeze tore out of the woods against Miller’s weathered old skin and whipped his nondescript clothes about his frail body. He hugged himself against the cold and said, “How can you do this? You are not a man.”
The face merely grinned then turned and fluttered into the woods, shedding light like a lantern, bobbing in and out of the trees, moving farther and farther away from him. Miller had not even been able to anger it.
†
He woke from the dream drenched in oily old man sweat.
As he did sometimes upon waking—when he was in his worst state of mind—he felt the other half of the bed, as if Mary might actually be there. She wasn’t, of course. Never had been. They had not spent as much as one night together as lovers. Miller had not ever tried to woo another woman, and so did not know what it was like to have another person asleep next to him. That did not stop him from reaching out, stupidly hoping she’d be beside him.
He gasped and hobbled into his small, dim bathroom wearing only his Jesus Jammies, his pet nickname for the religious underclothing he wore, and splashed freezing water on his face.
From the bathroom window he could see the corner of the awful house. It leaned on the woods. In some way that wasn’t tied to his typical senses, he could feel it—leaning, leaning toward the woods.
He realized he’d dreamt of the face before. It had been with him off-and-on for years now. But this was different. He let out a soulful howl, out-of-step with the pragmatic, no-nonsense farmer face he wore for the world. He knew no one but God could hear him. The cold silence that greeted him felt very empty, but he still believed his anguish did not go unheeded. He knew he was as much to blame for whatever was going to happen as Donald Harmon. It was, indeed, a free country; he should have warned them. But something had held his tongue. He just hoped that something had been God, in His wisdom, and not Satan, in his devious designs.
You can still warn them, a pale voice inside tried to tell him. A voice that had no power.
Don’t be daffy, he thought back at himself. You know it’s too late for that. But maybe the Lord will assist me. Maybe He will open another door for me… of course He will.
He remembered a quote from their current prophet, Thomas S. Monson, who’d said many times, “When we are on the Lord’s errand, we are entitled to the Lord’s help. Remember that the Lord will shape the back to bear the burden placed upon it.”
And did Miller not believe he was on the Lord’s errand?
How could he not be?
2
Monday, December 2nd was decidedly colder than the days and weeks preceding it, but still the sky kept its snow, and the ground was empty of everything but dirt and leaves and whatever was beneath.
Paul woke at 7:30; Jen was already gone.
A large smile grew on Paul’s face like a mushroom in time-lapse photography. He stared at the beige-white ceiling. The Forest was singing its song of secrets. Paul wanted to hear more of that song.
He lopped out into The Forest in pin-stripe pajamas, humming along with the electricity in the air. He hardly noticed Cards whining in the kitchen as he passed by. She used to follow him sometimes out into the trees, but she hadn’t done that for a while now. The book he’d been writing was almost finished—and what a book it was. Paul felt buoyed-up by its power. The Forest continued to sing to him, and he transcribed the music into words on his MacBook screen. The air whispered its complicated, murderous proposals in the form of wind. The ground was steady, like a percussive backbeat. The trees alternated between standing as symbols of people waiting to be cut down and emblems of eternal truths of blood. No birds flew overhead, and none rested in any branches, barren or evergreen. There were no animals at all. Paul hadn’t even seen an insect in the forest for over a week.
He giggled to himself, thinking, That’s what happens in winter, I guess.
From behind a small tree, Deeny’s massive figure appeared. He walked to where Paul was sitting, but Paul did not so much as look up. The anti-light began to creep from the ground around them. At length, Deeny made his way behind another tree, and his darkness fog mostly departed. A little while passed, and Paul wrote, feeling the end of the story approaching like a massive unknown storm. Deeny’s eyes looked over the screen of his laptop, but Paul ignored him, too absorbed in the book to talk. Deeny didn’t mind. He took a place next to Paul on the fallen log. An onlooker might have thought it would bend or break beneath Deeny’s giant, meaty hindquarters, but it didn’t even rock. Deeny watched Paul work, sharing his smile.
He read over the Writer’s shoulder:
Deeny made no attempt to conceal or muffle the sound of kicking the door open. The entire family had been watching a movie in the living room; they were all there to see him. The man, the father of the home, the supposed protector of his children, stood in a rage, but quickly he submitted to Deeny’s sledgehammer. The father squished under the power of the blow like a garbage bag of rotten meat. His bloody pieces painted the walls and floor. Deeny was pleased to note that some of him was even on the ceiling. Wonderful.
Familiar, ancient screams came from the children and their mother:
“Don’t!”
“No!”
“Please!”
Deeny was the composer and this was his tune. He closed his eyes, held out his hands, and listened. After basking in the glorious notes for a few moments, he turned to the mother and her children. So much still do be done.
But Deeny had never been one to shirk his duties.
It gave Deeny shivers to see his fondest dreams realized on-screen. He drummed his big hands happily on knees the size of coconuts.
“Deeny,” Paul looked at him, as if just now noticing he was there. “I can’t see the screen.”
Deeny had sat too long; his anti-light had just about entrenched them. “Pardon me,” he said, and disappeared. He materialized about ten yards off, near one of the larger oaks, but Paul didn’t notice. He simply kept writing. Deeny liked this Writer who had heard and heeded his call. With the Writer’s help, Deeny hoped that all of this could someday become real. He did not know where the man was from, but sensed that it was a long way off. He didn’t really care how far he’d come, or what he’d done before; he only felt gratitude. He’s here now, Deeny thought, and that is what matters. The Writer was here, but more than that, he was with Deeny. Their relationship had grown in a way Deeny could not have predicted: they had become friends.
The four children lost here—still decaying—had given Deeny more power than he’d ever thought possible. They had even given him the power to distract and relieve the Writer’s wife so that she did not start talking to family or friends about recent events between them.
Deeny sensed he was stretching his power to the limit by leading the Writer so strongly to his fondest wishes, but no matter. The Writer was like an earthquake waiting to happen. He was power.
Paul worked at a furious pace that always made Deeny slightly nervous. When Deeny worked, or rather when he imagined working, he did so slowly. He enjoyed every moment. But, to each his own. To each his own. It was a phrase he had gleaned from the Writer’s mind. They had grown close since the Writer moved here, and he hadn’t realized how much like the Writer he was becoming, even as the Writer became like him. For example, his love of books had grown immeasurably. He had never read one, but if they were anything like what the Writer was crafting in The Forest, he’d love to read a few.
Deeny regretted interrupting the work, but the question needed to be asked. He walked over a few feet of crushed, fallen leaves, not disturbing them in the slightest, and said, “Writer, are you ready?” At first, Paul childishly pretended not to hear. He slowed his typing momentarily, but then began again at his typical break-neck speed. “Writer,” he spoke as if
to young boy, “I know you can hear me.”
Paul stopped abruptly and stared out into the trees, at least, what little he could see of the trees through the blackness that accompanied Deeny. Paul said, “What?” No trace of the smile he’d worn as he wrote on his face now.
“I asked if you are yet ready.” Deeny knew he must be delicate, if the Writer lost his nerve completely, Deeny would have to start breaking him down all over again. Deeny wasn’t sure he had enough power to start the process from the ground up.
“Ready for what?” Paul was almost pouting.
“You know what I am asking, Writer.”
A tear bled from one of Paul’s eyes. He said, “I don’t know if I will ever be ready for that.”
“Why must you fight me? You know it is what you want, what you actually want. And you know there is not much time for delay.” Deeny tried to keep any and all impatience from his voice and features. He had, after all, been waiting many decades for an opportunity like this, what was another week or two if the Writer was not ready? Ahh, but he knew as he got closer to his dream, waiting would only get more difficult. Deeny wondered if he was going too far, but added, “You are sleeping with her now almost every night. That is good, for she must not think you are backing down from your promise of… children. But if she does happened to gain child, things for you will become more complicated.” He broke wind. “Not just for you, but for both of us.”
Paul said, “But still… I’m not ready. I’m not ready. As I said, I am not sure I will ever be ready…” he motioned at the story on the screen, “for this.”
“Are you afraid you are weak?” Deeny moved in close to him. Paul could smell his chemically breath.
“Yes.”
“Are you afraid you will not be able to bring the blade down? The bat? The hammer?”
“Yes.”
Tomorrow I Will Kill Again Page 8