by Ania Ahlborn
I’d stay out of those woody woods if I were a woodpecker, you.
He picked his way through the trees despite the pounding of his heart, heading in the direction of the fort, in the direction of what Jude called “the zombie house.” He went slow, his caution born both of trepidation and a search for clues. If he gave in to his anxiety and rushed, he would overlook things that may be important. And so, rather than running, he took deliberately sluggish steps, his gaze sweeping the trail for anything suspicious. His ears zeroed in on the occasional whoosh of a car driving down Main. That road noise was a small comfort, a reminder that, despite his nerves, he wasn’t as far from civilization as he felt. But the sound of cars faded fast, and less than five minutes into his walk, Stevie was surrounded by nothing but the knocking of a lone woodpecker on the trunk of a pine overhead. Stay out. An owl dolefully complaining of insomnia. Go back. A squirrel bounding up the trunk of a Douglas fir. Stay away. Tree branches shivering from the occasional breath of wind, reaching out for him to keep him in place. The quiet bubbling of booby-trapped Cedar Creek, threatening to drown him, to slash him up on Jude’s stockpile of shattered glass.
“I wouldn’t go in those woods if I were you,” Stevie whispered to himself.
But he continued onward, even when the well-worn trail became nothing but a meandering line of stomped-down earth. Eventually, there were signs that this territory belonged to two lone boys. A splotch of spray paint marking a crooked J on the bark of a tree. Jude. Jitters. Judgment day. A stack of rocks Stevie had piled on top of a downed log like an ancient cairn. A pyre of fallen branches, collected to keep their tiny hiking trail clean of debris; extra building material if they needed it on the fly. The hike was at least two miles, probably more. They’d never been sure. Jude tried to convince Stevie to snag his mom’s phone so they could measure it with GPS, but Stevie didn’t have the guts. And then, when it seemed that civilization was as good as lost, their path converged with a narrow, unpaved road. That road. The one where the house stood, haunted and alone.
He’d mentioned the area to his mom only once. “I don’t like that, Stevie,” she had said. “That’s too far from home.” She made him promise that he wouldn’t go out there, but that creepy house was the stuff of dangerous adventure, and Jude was obsessed.
“What’s your mom so scared of anyway?” he had asked. “Does she think we’re gonna get hit by a phantom truck?” And it was true; nobody drove on that defunct logging road anymore. They could have laid down in the middle of it and made up some stupid chant: Semitruck, semitruck, squish me dead! “Maybe it’s not the phantom trucks she’s scared of,” Jude had continued. “Maybe it’s the undead living in that house.”
Except Stevie hadn’t mentioned that, knowing that his mom would only freak out if she knew it was there.
The house was a good distance from where the trail crossed the road, but it was impossible to miss. Its white-painted clapboards and mismatched chicken coop stood out like an inkblot against an all-green backdrop. It had taken the boys nearly a month to gather up the guts to go closer, but once they finally steeled their nerves, the house lived up to exactly what they had imagined. It was old, dilapidated, verdant with mold; the entire structure appearing to lean to the left. There was a detached garage along the side. The pitched roof sagged in the middle, and moss had gobbled up the shingles. The house itself was two stories tall, a small dormer window suggesting an attic—a window that Stevie couldn’t help but picture a ghost standing behind, watching them as they approached. That attic window had a perfect view of the road. Poised upon a hill, the gentle slope showed off the ancient bricks of a basement wall half buried beneath the earth. Small rectangular windows, like something belonging to a medieval prison, dotted the exposed stone. They looked painted-over from the inside, as if to keep the curious at bay.
Stevie had crept through the trees behind Jude without so much as a word, because once Jude had gotten up his nerve, he was determined to get a good look. They stopped only a few yards shy of a fence, in such disrepair it had fallen half inward, some of it propped up by stones and pieces of wood. There was chicken wire strung up between the slats.
“Looks haunted,” Jude murmured as they hovered just outside the broken fence. “All green and moldy and stuff? Let’s check it out.”
“No way, Jose!” Stevie caught Jude by the arm as soon as his best friend made like he was going to trespass, but all Jude did was laugh.
“You really are a chicken shit, you know that?”
“Better than being undead,” Stevie said.
“I don’t know.” Jude shrugged his shoulders. “I think being a zombie would be pretty damn cool.”
Now, all alone a few days later, the tips of Stevie’s sneakers toed the edge of that road. I’d stay out of those woods if I were you. He swallowed the wad of spit that had collected at the back of his throat, gripping his field book tight in both hands.
“You didn’t,” Stevie whispered to himself. “You didn’t.”
He forced his attention to the notebook in his hands, then scribbled ghost house onto the page. His eyes were, however, quick to dart back to the building in the distance, because something felt off.
His pulse quickened, keeping time with the staccato knock-knock-knocking of a woodpecker nearby. For a second he was ready to forget the investigation, forget being the hero, forget everything and book it back the way he had come. Crossing the road meant closing the distance, and at that very moment, Stevie would rather have choked down a Cedar Creek broken-glass sandwich than set foot across that washboard dirt. But that idea—that stupid, ridiculous idea—kept him cemented where he stood.
Jude is in there. Where? There. I wouldn’t go in . . .
Stevie didn’t want to consider the possibility, but if Jude had run away, perhaps this—not the fort—was the first place he had thought to come. Did the police even know this house existed? Stevie guessed they probably did, but who would have checked?
If Jude was in there, it meant Stevie had to go inside to find him. He had to reject his own dread, walk up those crumbling front-porch steps, and knock on the door.
Except, that was insane. Jude was not in there. And Stevie was not going anywhere near that house. If he asked Dunk to come with him, or Mr. Greenwood about—
There. A shift of light.
Something darted just beyond his periphery.
He jerked his head sideways, expected to see nothing. Shadow people, nothing but dark lingering vapor as soon as he looked their way. His imagination was so overwrought it wouldn’t let him sleep, sometimes wouldn’t let him eat, often so vivid it made him scream. But when his gaze finally tumbled across the house’s front facade—
Something moved on the porch. Hidden in the darkness. Crouched. Not disappearing.
Reflexively, Stevie did an about-face and ran.
Bolting down the path he’d come in on, he broke left toward town, leaping over ferns like an Olympic hurdler, slapping branches out of his way. He nearly stumbled as the earth sank in on itself, spongy with vines and moss, with waterlogged leaves. Hands sprouted from the sodden soil, grabbing at his ankles, slowing his sprint, desperate to pull him under with each clawing, hungry swipe. Stevie exhaled a yell. A warning on repeat inside his head: Run, run, run. Because whatever had been on that porch was giving chase. He could hear it, its gasping breaths mimicked by his own. The pounding of its hands and feet setting off earthquakes behind Stevie’s back. It was going to kill him. Just like it had killed Jude.
When he bounded out of the woods just shy of the main strip, he was screaming. People who had been wandering along the street stopped to stare; some window-shopping, others running errands as they flitted in and out of the hardware store and Greenwood General, startled by the boy who had come blasting out of the forest like a wild child. A couple of girls sitting outside the Mr. Frosty gave each other a look, then laughed and continued eating strawberry sundaes. Outside Cuppa Joe’s, Mrs. Tassel, Stevie’s third-gra
de teacher, rose from where she was sitting with a man who must have been her husband. “Stevie?” Across the street, Stevie’s schoolmate Colby Clay gave him a blank stare, then followed his dad into the deli, probably looking to grab some lunch before going fishing or doing father-son stuff fit for The Andy Griffith Show.
“Stevie, are you all right?”
All of these folks could have been interviewed. One of them may have had just the detail to shake this whole case loose. But Stevie had lost his goddamn notebook, and he had no intention of questioning anyone else. All he wanted to do was get home.
He nearly jumped when Mrs. Tassel’s hand landed on his shoulder. “Stevie, what’s wrong? What happened?”
He was still heaving from his run, probably looking crazy-eyed and completely deranged. Mrs. Tassel moved her hand, delicately plucking a small branch from the wild tuft of his hair.
“Why don’t you come sit down?” she suggested. “Let’s get you some water.” Her fingers caught him by the shoulder once more. She was trying to steer him, gentle but deliberate; herd him the way The Tyrant did. Through the house. To his room. On his knees. His belt. Whoosh. Out of the loops. The buckle. Jingle jangle. Ready. Aim.
“No!” Stevie spun away from her.
“Stevie, what—”
“No!” he yelled. “It’s coming!” Then he booked it down the road, swinging wide onto Sunset Avenue, dashing for the safety of his mother’s porch, no doubt leaving Mrs. Tassel and the folks of Deer Valley shaking their heads. Poor Stevie Clark, they’d say. Sad little bastard. Not a friend in the world.
He barged into the house so fast that he nearly tripped over the front mat. Dunk was on the couch, still wearing yesterday’s T-shirt and the boxer shorts he’d slept in. His brother squinted against the sudden blast of sunshine that cut through the room, shielded his eyes, and barked a gruff “Close the goddamn door!” before Stevie swung it shut behind him. It slammed hard, knocked one of his mom’s flea market pictures off the wall, but he didn’t bother picking it up. He threw himself headlong into the kitchen, where his mother had just pushed a casserole dish into the oven.
“Mom!”
She jumped at Stevie’s sudden appearance, lost her grip on the oven’s handle. The oven door rattled closed, making her wince at the bang. Nicki Clark fluttered her eyes at her son as she tugged oven mitts off her hands. But Stevie was frozen in the doorframe, his brain churning around the information he was about to present, wondering if there was any possible way to say what he needed to say without sounding completely insane.
“Stevie?” She arched a brow over one eye.
“I—I—I—I”—Dammit! He took a breath, tried to calm himself—“saw, saw, seesaw something.” It was only when he spoke that he realized how out of breath he was, his words just barely eking out of him before he had to gulp for air. And yet, despite toeing the line of physical exhaustion, he couldn’t help but notice the small ways in which his mom tensed at his words—or she could have just been reacting to the clear and present backslide of his mental state. This had happened before, after Stevie’s dad left. After Uncle Scott died. She wrung the bright red oven mitts in her hands, as if trying to drain them of a color she no longer liked, one that seemed to forewarn of some dreadful thing that would come to pass.
“Something . . . ?”
His mind reeled at the memory of it—the way that shadow thing had moved, so quick despite its scoliosis hunch.
“Honey?” Casting the mitts aside, she took a forward step. It was enough to snap him out of it, pull him away from the abandoned road and back to the present. He shot her a desperate look that pleaded for her to listen before she assumed, to at least try to believe him before she wrote it all off as Stevie just being Stevie, nothing but a bag of nuts.
“At, th-th-the . . .” He clamped down his teeth, reached across his chest and pinched his arm hard. “. . . the house!” Finally spitting out the words.
“The house . . .” She shook her head, not following.
“The house! On that road.”
Her expression took a turn. What had seconds ago been worry was now aggravation. Stevie’s tongue was suddenly superglued to the roof of his mouth.
“The road.” Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “You mean the road I specifically told you not to go near. That road?”
“I was retracing our footsteps—”
“Stop.”
He swallowed. “From Sunday,” he said. “I was following where we had gone, and when I got there, I—I—I . . .” He paused. Forced his tongue straight. “. . . to the road, I saw this . . . this thing, this thing, this thing-a-ling lingering . . .”
“Stephen. Aaron. Clark.”
His full name made the hairs on his arms recoil. She only ever used it when he was in serious trouble, but she couldn’t possibly punish him now. Not without listening to what he had to say. He had gone off to look for Jude, had seen something. What if it was Jude’s abductor? Jude’s killer?
“Mom!”
“Don’t you ‘Mom’ me!” she snapped. “What’s gotten into you lately? Have you lost—” She cut herself off, closed her eyes and took a steadying breath. Lost your mind? Sometimes he wished she’d just go on and say it. It wasn’t like it was some big secret, but it seemed to him that she was convinced that if she didn’t acknowledge his mental state, the problem would eventually go away. “Stevie . . .” She was more collected now, but just barely. The tension in her voice was masked, but her gaze was still severe. “What do you think would happen to this family if you went missing, too? Did you stop to think about that? Did you stop to think that there might be someone out there who wants to hurt more kids? That wants to hurt you?”
“But there is someone!” He flung that statement at her without hesitation, let it flop at her feet, dead and slimy like a rotting fish. “There’s someone, two, three, four! We don’t want it at the door!”
“Stop it.” That hard edge was back. “I need you to stop right now.”
He snapped his mouth shut.
Her cell phone rang.
“You know you’re not supposed to be anywhere near that road,” she said, moving across the kitchen to answer it. “I told you to stay away from there, and you purposefully defied me.”
“It was a thing!”
“Quiet!” The word came out of her with such force that Stevie’s breath hitched in his throat. He glared down at his sneakers, listening as she answered the call.
“Hello?” A pause. “This is she.” Another pause. “I . . . I see.” He could feel her eyes on him, roving across his skin like a bug. “Yes, he’s home.” A big fat bug. A cockroach three inches long. “No, it’s fine.” Crawling up his arm. “Yes, I can see how that would be . . . startling. I’m . . .” Up his neck. “I’m sorry, I’ll . . . Yes . . . Yes, I will.” Across his face. “Thank you for calling.” Up his nose.
“Stevie.”
He blinked.
“Do you want to guess who that was?”
Glancing at his mother’s face, he furrowed his eyebrows at her question. “ . . . No?”
“That was your old teacher Mrs. Tassel.”
Oh. Great.
“Do you know why she was calling?”
Stevie hated this game. What was he, a psychic?
“No.”
“Really.” His mom scoffed. “You have no idea? You didn’t just scare the bejesus out of half the town by screaming your head off near the coffee shop?”
Bejesus. He liked that word. He couldn’t help the smile that crawled across his face.
“You think this is funny? How about this: You’re grounded. Is that funny?” Two words that no kid ever liked to hear. You’re grounded. Like two gunshots—bang bang. Summer, over. Freedom, gone.
Stevie gawked. Incredulous.
“One month,” she said, unmoved. “Starting five minutes ago.”
“A whole month?” Despite his pulse having slowed, his breaths were coming in heaves again. The backs of his eyes s
tarted to burn. His face felt hot. Every time it flushed like that, he imagined himself turning red like a cartoon character, smoke coming out of his ears. As a matter of fact, there was smoke coming out of the oven behind his mom, giant toxic purple plumes forming the shape of a pair of hands . . . hands that he hoped would wrap themselves around her throat. Wrap wrap wrap and squeeze. “That isn’t fair!”
“Life isn’t fair.” She threw that typical grown-up response in his face, as though he hadn’t heard it a million times.
“You don’t care!” He bellowed the words. “You don’t care that he’s gone.”
She turned away from him, as if wounded. But rather than taking it all back—Forget the grounding, it was a mistake—she said, “I’ve had enough of this,” toward the kitchen window. “We should go away. Just until all of this is over . . .”
“Go away?” His heart flip-flopped inside his chest. Suddenly, that burning at the back of his eyes turned into stupid crybaby tears. “Maybe you should go away.”
“This is too much,” she said, so low Stevie doubted she meant for him to hear her. “We can’t do anything to help, and it’s just . . . it’s just getting worse. It’s making you worse.”
Suddenly, Nicki Clark disappeared, replaced by a woman who looked just like her. A close replica, but with a hole where Stevie’s mom’s heart had once been. She was a hollow person who only acted concerned, pretending to be terrified of what may have happened to Jude, but she didn’t give a damn. Run away. Forget everything. Let whatever was going to happen to Jude happen and cry out her guilt at her nephew’s funeral. She’d console herself with the lie that she had done everything she could. But she’d done nothing. Not a single fucking thing.
“Y-you’re a bad person,” he cried. “You don’t give a shit one bit!” Jude’s words coming out of his mouth, unfiltered. “Y-you should go away. Because I hate you!” he roared. “You hear me? I hate you, you stupid jerk!”
His mother’s face whipped back at him, replaced by nothing but a pair of basketball-sized eyes. He didn’t stick around for any more of her reaction. Rather, he stomped out of the kitchen and down the hall, catching sight of Dunk for half a second on the way to his room. His older brother had overheard everything. Still on the couch, he had twisted halfway around to get a better view. When their eyes met, Dunk pulled up his eyebrows in an impressed sort of way, but Stevie wasn’t in the mood.