by Lanyon, Josh
“You asshole.” I hated him like I’d never hated anyone in my life.
Luke ignored my trembling rage. “What happened here, Tim?” His breath was warm against my ear. “Something happened twelve years ago. What was it?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.” I made another half-hearted attempt to wrest free. “Look, this was a bad idea. We need to get out of here.”
His arms tightened. “Talk to me. What happened the first time you found this place?”
“I don’t know. Please. Let me go.”
I started shivering from head to foot — and the weirdest part was, I wasn’t even sure why. I thought my heart was going to tear out of my chest. Maybe Luke felt it banging against his arm, because his grip changed, turning to support, comfort if I wanted it. I resisted it. I couldn’t trust him anymore. This was all his fault.
“Where would you go, Tim? Think for a minute. You can’t go barging through the bushes. If you go tearing out of here you’ll just get lost or injured.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“I can’t let you take that chance.”
“Jesus, who died and made you John Wayne?”
He didn’t bother to answer.
I thought how strange it was that at this time the night before we’d been settling down to sex and maybe the start of something. In twenty-four hours everything had changed.
I sagged against him. “Luke…I don’t remember.”
“The hell you don’t.”
I shook my head hopelessly. He just waited — like we had all the time in the world.
I said, finally, so quietly that he had to duck his head to hear, “There were pieces of bone all over the ground…like peanut shells or sea shells. Like gravel. Broken animal skulls and…human. I know they were…”
Luke’s arms tightened. “You’re okay. Go on.”
“I picked up a little piece of a jaw. I could see where the…teeth were supposed to go.” I swallowed dryly. “Ricky wanted to see if we could climb inside through one of the broken windows. We snuck up to the side of the house.” I took a deep breath, trying to get control. “We got to one of the windows, looked up, and — and suddenly there was a man standing there.”
“Inside the house?”
I nodded. “He just…stared at us. Straight at us. And we stared back. Frozen. Like a pair of rabbits. And then he raised his hand like he was waving hello.” My voice broke. “It looked black. He pressed it against the window…and it left a bloody handprint.”
My voice gave out as though I had run out of oxygen, which is how I felt. I stared up at Luke, stricken.
“What did you do?” he asked after a moment. His voice sounded thick.
“He turned away from the window…and we ran.”
The dark woods of my memory opened up and swallowed me. That terrified scramble through briars, crawling and wriggling under when we couldn’t push through, running blind as the night settled on the roof of treetops — and always the knowledge that he was behind us….
Luke said so calmly it was like a slap, “What happened when you got home?”
My mouth worked but I couldn’t remember the words.
“You made it home safely,” Luke said. “What happened then?”
“Nothing.”
He let me go. “You didn’t tell anyone?”
I shook my head, massaging my twisted shoulder. I could see the lack of comprehension on his face. “We were afraid. He saw us. We thought he would come after us.”
“Then why the hell wouldn’t you tell your parents?”
“Ricky — we weren’t supposed to go into the woods. His dad said he would get the belt if he went back in there. We couldn’t decide. We thought no one would believe us. And it’s not like we could lead them back. We got lost so many times that day. I don’t know how the hell we did finally get out.”
Luck. And the fact that we were small enough to wriggle through places our pursuer couldn’t. Mostly luck.
“But —”
“And my parents came the next day. I went home and it…all seemed like a dream. I told myself we imagined it.”
Luke didn’t say anything; I read condemnation in his silence.
“We left him free to keep killing, didn’t we?” I said dully. “Everyone who disappeared after that…it’s our fault.”
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Luke said. “Nothing this sick fucker did is your fault. You were thirteen-years-old. And teenage boys don’t have the greatest judgment in the world.”
“I just…forgot about it,” I whispered. “I let myself forget.”
He said dryly, “Yeah, well, maybe you tried. I don’t know how successful you were.”
“That girl on the poster in the store…”
“Let it go, Tim. You have no idea what happened to her.” He reached inside his shirt. He was wearing a shoulder holster. I already knew that. I’d felt it when I was leaning against him. He pulled out his gun, checked the chamber.
“Do you know how to handle a gun?”
I nodded wearily. My assent seemed to catch him by surprise.
“You do?”
“Yeah. My dad is ex-army. I know how to shoot. I grew up shooting.” I understood his hesitation. In his shoes I wouldn’t give me a gun either.
He knelt, opened his pack, pulled out a tightly-wrapped triangle, which, when unwrapped, turned out to be .38 revolver. He offered it to me.
I stepped back. “Don’t. I’m not going back there. I’m not going with you.”
His dark brows drew together. He continued to hold the gun out to me. “I can’t. I can’t. You can’t ask this of me,” I said.
“I am asking you.”
“Luke…you of anybody knows that there’s a limit to what you can…expect from me.”
“I’m not asking anything more than you’re capable of.”
I gaped. “Are you…you can’t be serious. Were you here five minutes ago?”
His hazel eyes met my own. “Tim, it’s one thing to run away when you’re thirteen. No one can blame you for that. But you’re a man now. You have to stop running.”
I blinked a couple of times, trying to focus on this idea. “But there’s no need for us to go back. The Forester’s dead by now.” I rushed along, trying to convince him, convince myself. “The guy’s dead. He has to be. He’s not even there anymore. He can’t be. We could just…call the cops.”
“I am a cop. I have to check this out before I call anyone else in. Anyway, you don’t believe that or you wouldn’t be this frightened.”
“Yes, I would! I am.” I gulped. “If you want to go back…that’s up to you. I’ll…wait for you. I’ll try to. But I can’t…”
He just kept staring at me. This is the face he wears when people try to talk him out of arresting them.
“You have to. I can’t leave you.”
“Yes, you can, because I’m not going with you.”
“Tim, for your own sake — you’ve got to face this before it destroys you.”
“Jesus Christ. Stop it! You don’t know me. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you this well. I need your help.”
I couldn’t look away from those hazel eyes. Finally, hand shaking, I took the gun, checked to make sure it was loaded, shoved it into my back waistband under my flannel shirt. I said unsteadily, “What the hell is this supposed to be? Intervention by serial killer?”
To my astonished rage, his mouth twitched like he found that funny.
I practically stuttered, “You laugh at me now, O’Brien, and I swear to Christ I’ll deck you.”
“You just keep channeling that anger and we’ll be fine.” His eyes assessed me.
“Do you need a drink?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“If it’ll help you hold together…”
I couldn’t hold his gaze. I looked away and nodded, and he got out the flask he’d brought for medicinal purposes and handed it to me.
* * * * *
From the cover of a thicket of berry bushes we studied the row of boarded windows. “Let’s try the other side,” Luke said, his voice low.
“If he was watching us last night, he could still be watching us. He could be following us and waiting for dark.”
Luke glanced up at the fading sunlight. He nodded. “Stay frosty.”
Stay frosty? Was he for real?
“Frosty the Snowman, that’s me,” I muttered. I moved around him, kneeling to pick up something white in the weeds. I handed it to Luke.
He studied the bone. “Animal. Not human.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t reassured.
Luke started toward the front of the house, skirting the bushes. I followed closely, watching the boarded face of the house. It didn’t look like anyone had been there for years, and yet…it didn’t quite feel dead, either.
If anyone lived in that wreck, he wasn’t coming and going through the front entrance, which had been secured with thick planks. We picked our way around broken boards and tree roots, ducking under the sagging portico. I saw a snake slither into the underbrush a few feet ahead.
The first-story windows were boarded on the other side of the house as well, but the trees grew closer to the foundation, and I saw that it would be possible to climb up and get in through one of the open second-story windows. I kept this thought to myself. I was still hoping Luke might give up and decide we were wasting our time.
“Let’s try the back,” Luke said.
“Let’s not and say we did.”
He threw me a brief grin.
We scooted around the corner of the house and paused in the deep shade. Something crunched behind us. I froze, staring at the moving wall of bushes a few feet away. Was it only the breeze stirring the leaves?
“Do you have your cell phone?” I whispered to Luke.
He didn’t bother to turn. “It’s back with my pack. There’s no signal out here.”
Maybe not, but I’d have been willing to try. My phone, unfortunately, was in Luke’s car.
“The back door’s not boarded up,” Luke said. He started forward across the carpet of autumn leaves.
I hesitated, still watching the bushes. The dusty, purple berries hung in heavy clusters. I looked skyward. The sun looked distorted through the ragged tree-tops, splintered light glanced off the dark foliage and flaking paint of the house. White flakes in the weeds, too. I stooped. Picked up a sliver of white. Not paint. A bone chip. Bone chips dusting the grass. I swallowed hard, straightened.
We didn’t have a lot of daylight left, and I didn’t want to try and find our way out of the woods by flashlight. And I sure as hell didn’t want to spend another night here.
“Tim.”
I glanced back. Luke was at the rear door of the house. He gestured with his chin.
I threw one last uneasy look at the bushes and moved out from the shadow of the house. Blood red autumn leaves blanketed the ground, crackling underfoot.
Just like that, the ground gave beneath me with the shriek of rotten wood and corroded hinges. I crashed down through a pair of crumbling cellar doors and slammed into the hard-packed dirt floor.
Stunned, I lay on my side for a few seconds trying to process what had happened while dry leaves floated gently down around me.
In a dark, dark wood…The words from the old children’s song ran through my mind in dazed refrain. There was a dark, dark house…
My ankle hurt. My knee hurt. My hip hurt. My wrist felt broken. Somehow I’d managed to protect my head, but that had been hurting before I ever fell through the broken doors — and this wasn’t helping.
Thank God I hadn’t fallen on my back and shot myself.
And in that dark, dark house…
Light from the hole in the doors above me illuminated burnt and jagged timber — thank God I hadn’t landed on any of that — wooden shelves with dusty jars and dusty cans, some broken furniture. A kerosene lantern swung precariously over my head, creaking on its rusty hook.
“Tim, can you hear me?”
I realized Luke was calling to me, that he had been calling for some time now.
“Tim? Can you answer me?”
“I’m okay.” That was a slight overstatement.
“Tim!”
“I’m okay,” I called more loudly. Gingerly, I made an effort to push up. My muscles screeched protest. Maybe my wrist was sprained, not broken. I cradled it against my chest, tried flexing the fingers.
“Jesus Christ,” Luke’s voice echoed with relief. “I thought…look, don’t move. I’m coming down.”
Don’t move. Right…
I stared up. It was about a twelve-foot drop. Several steps led up to the broken doors, but they were blocked off by the broken timbers. The room itself was twenty feet long. Another set of stairs, probably leading up to the kitchen, vanished into the shadows.
Luke’s head withdrew from the broken opening in the cellar doors. A moment later a shadow flashed across, and then was gone.
What…? Was that a bird?
I heard a thud. Swift, hard. And then another.
Hair prickled on the back of my neck. I yelled, “Luke?”
Nothing. No answer.
I listened tautly. Listened…and heard something like…a sodden dragging sound.
I opened my mouth to shout for Luke again, but something held me silent. I swallowed hard, and crawled out from under the opening in the cellar doors.
Grabbing onto one of the broken timbers, I painfully pulled myself upright. Okay, I was still in one working piece. Now I needed to focus on getting out of here. I could try climbing through the debris blocking the cellar doors and breaking out that way, but that might be what someone was expecting.
I picked my way across the junk-strewn floor and hesitated at the foot of the stairs. And in that dark, dark house…
Maybe I was…confused. Maybe everything was fine topside, and I needed to wait for Luke just like he told me to. The inner door was probably locked anyway.
Luke was pretty damned tough and pretty damned experienced. Nothing was going to happen to Luke that he couldn’t handle. Me, on the other hand…
My gaze fell on the shelf of dusty mason jars next to me. I stared. Picked up one of the jars. Wiped the grimy front on my shirt, studying the murky contents. Not peaches. Not tomatoes. I shook the jar gently and something small and round and unmistakable floated next to the glass, staring back at me.
I dropped the jar. It smashed on the floor, liquid mush spilling out.
“Oh, sweet Jesus…”
I reached out to steady myself on the shelf, and pain from my sprained wrist twisted through my nerves and muscles, snapping me back to awareness. I fumbled under my shirttail for the comforting weight of Luke’s .38.
I went up the short flight of stairs and tried the door. It creaked open onto a short dim hallway. Faded wallpaper and moldering carpet gave way to an old-fashioned kitchen.
A sweetish sickly pall seemed to hang in the dead air. It was hard to see. The only light came from the small window in the door that led out to the clearing behind the house. I could just make out dingy wallpaper, a grimy wall thermometer in the shape of a fish, and some filthy decorative plates on the wall — all in shocking contrast to piles of empty jars, broken dishes and bones.
A meat cleaver lay on the counter. A butcher’s knife lay on the floor. There were bones of all different sizes and shapes: like a macabre soup kitchen. Giant kettles sat on the cold stove and in the sinks and on tables.
There was a table in the center of the room. Feeling like I was sleepwalking, I moved over to it. The wooden top looked ink-stained. There were sheets and sheets of butcher paper covered with the crayon scrawls of a berserk child. Pictures of somber and serrated woods, tormented figures, and fire — fire or fountains of blood?
I crept over to the back door and peered out the grimy wi
ndow. It would be dark soon. The clearing behind the house looked empty. No sign of Luke. No sign of anyone. But a shovel lay in plain sight on the bed of red and gold leaves. A shovel where there had been no shovel before.
I tried to hear over the thunder of my own heartbeat.
Evening sounds. Crickets. Birds. Frogs.
What the hell was I supposed to do? I had no idea. Even if it were possible for me to escape into the woods, I couldn’t leave Luke. Not until I knew…for sure.
I looked across the kitchen, across the boiled bare carcasses and glass lanterns and knives, to another doorway leading into another dark room.
Would he have had time to drag Luke inside the house? Or was he butchering him out in the woods right now?
Or was he hunting for me?
I glanced back at the cellar door. It gaped blackly.
I picked up one of the candles from the table, scrabbled around till I found matches, and stepped inside the adjoining room. Leaves and branches were strewn over the wooden floor, but otherwise the room looked startlingly normal: old-fashioned moth-eaten furniture, tattered draperies, china. There was a fireplace with the burnt remains of clothing and a shoe. Over the fireplace hung a large, framed photo of a WWI soldier.
At the far end of the room stood another doorway and a staircase beyond. The upstairs windows were not boarded. I’d have a better chance of spotting Luke and his assailant from the second floor.
Glancing down at a little pie-shaped table my attention was caught by the small pile of odds and ends: coins, hair barrettes — large daisy barrettes. I stared and stared at them. No worse than any of the rest of it, right? If I was responsible for this, I was responsible for all of it. All of it. All of these things had belonged to someone: buttons, keys, a silver pen…and one boy’s bone-handled penknife.
I reached out automatically. I recognized that knife. I’d lost it twelve years ago in these woods.
Picking it up, I was surprised to see that my hand was steady. Nothing like the anesthesia of total shock. I slipped it into my pocket, started warily up the stairs, gun at the ready like I’d seen in a million TV shows. For all I knew there was a whole house full of these murdering freaks.