Strode tried to repeat his new mantra, One step at a time. One step at a time.
Finch and Strode headed through the woods to the main path, as planned. But just after Finch pointed ahead, saying, “It’s just a little further this way,” she took a sharp left, further off-path.
“Finch? Where are you going?”
She didn’t have to answer. Strode saw it too. The golden light was merging with a nightly purple and spotlighted a row of crippled, decayed trees. Despite the others having full, bright leaves, the row of trees was grey and rotting—like a corpse.
Strode grabbed one of the limbs, and it disintegrated. Its remains fell to his muddied work boots.
Strode turned to Finch. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Have you?”
Finch shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense.” She pointed to Strode’s shoes and then raised her own, to show matching muddied soles.
Strode started to say it, but Finch beat him to. “It’s rained in the last few days.”
“And rained hard enough that the ground is still wet,” Strode answered.
Strode folded his lips into his mouth and moved them from side to side, thinking. He knew Finch wasn’t going to like his new plan.
“Here’s what I’m thinking. You know the main trail. You know the whole damn woods. You go find Burklow and come back this way to meet me.”
Finch put her hands in front of her and pulled them apart. “No way. No way. We have something here. We need to follow the decayed trees.”
Strode smiled at her expected stubbornness. “And we will. But if something or someone is at the end of this, we need to be sneaky. We can’t have Burklow running through the woods wearing a police shirt and calling for us.”
It was an extraordinary feeling for Strode to be so confident that he was making the right call.
Finch kicked her boot into the mud. “Fine. You’re right. But follow these trees, exactly as they line up, so we can find you. No turn-offs. Follow the trees.”
Strode gave a salute and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
Finch started down the main path and looked back at Strode. For her sake, he repeated her instructions, “Follow the decayed trees, no turn-offs.”
It was enough to send her on her way.
Strode looked to the ground at the ash pile, which was a decaying branch only moments ago. It made him feel nauseatingly fragile. Maybe even insignificant.
Strode shook his head. Focus. Focus.
He looked past the first of the decayed trees and saw the line was continuous and straight. Strode wondered how far it would go. Another part of him feared it wouldn’t go too far, and whatever had killed the trees was opening its jaws as a willing victim blindly strolled into its mouth.
It didn’t matter. Strode had to go on for the Blackwood boy, for Jackie Warren, and the people of Three Oaks.
Strode continued down the unofficial path of sickly trees. He noticed that some had exposed roots, as though they were diseased right down to their core. They were like bony fingers, trying to escape being buried away—like the living dead.
Then Strode heard a whisper.
“Pretty lady couldn’t have a baby.”
Strode felt his shoulders rise as he stopped. He turned his head slowly, looking behind him and hoping there wasn’t a bloodied, talking corpse behind him.
Not here, Jackie. Please. Not now.
The voice crept through the leaves, up Strode’s back, and into his ear.
“Pretty lady couldn’t have a baby.”
Strode pulled a flashlight from his back pocket, though a fair amount of light was still left in the evening. He was hoping that even if he couldn’t catch the speaker, maybe he could find their shadow.
Did he dare speak to it? The clown, Jackie, what good ever came from engaging with them?
But what if this isn’t an illusion? What if this is real?
Dr. Evers had told Strode hundreds of times that he needed to work to separate illusions—he was certain she wanted to say delusions instead—from reality. But as Strode stood in Warren Woods, searching for a sign, he realized Dr. Evers’s advice was simply that—advice. It wasn’t instructional. How the hell was he supposed to determine if the whisper was in his head, or if it was real, hiding somewhere within the trees of Warren Woods?
“Pretty lady couldn’t have a baby.”
Strode closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “One step at a time.”
He continued following the trees.
The further he got, the dryer the ground became. The path became an uphill slant. Strode noticed spots in the dirt where moisture held. The rest was bone dry. And rather than being that rich soil color, it was a light grey.
“Pretty lady couldn’t have a baby.”
The voice was dry, cracking as if whatever killed the trees was circling through that being too.
“Pretty lady couldn’t have a baby.”
The voice no longer sounded like it was behind Strode but calling from ahead.
The whisper was like a gnat. It tiptoed around him, from behind, to each side, and then back in front of him, repeating, “Pretty lady couldn’t have a baby.”
The icy breath with its cunning spider-like legs crawled into Strode’s ears and across his brain. Once it got inside his head, it must’ve found the clearly marked command center for his paranoia.
“Pretty lady couldn’t have a baby. Pretty lady couldn’t have a baby. Pretty lady couldn’t have a baby.”
The voice became louder. It spoke quicker, with an alarming sense of urgency.
Strode threw his hands to the sides of his head, covering his ears. He ran forward, following the trail of death and decay.
The voice boomed in front of him, “The pretty lady couldn’t have a baby. The pretty lady couldn’t have a baby. And then Strode saw a baby’s head pop off.”
Strode envisioned a strangled Jackie Warren, just as he did in his kitchen days before. There was a thick, rusted wire hanger around her neck. It circled tighter and tighter.
Jackie cried out for him, “Please, help me.”
Strode reached out to the little girl, and when he did, the girl disappeared.
But the voice remained.
The whispers were no longer dancing in circles around Strode. They tunneled straight at him. They echoed as they reached him, as though the path ahead was a cement hall rather than open woods.
“The pretty lady couldn’t have a baby.”
Strode called, “Stop it!”
The voice’s splitting sound surged through the path, “Then Strode tried to save a little girl.”
Strode’s feet pounded into the barren hill. Lifeless twigs snapped under his feet, and he jumped at the sound of each break. His mind tried to convince him that they were the sound of his body breaking down, bone by bone, just as his mind had, illusion by illusion.
“Strode tried to save a little girl.”
Snap. Snap.
“But Strode and the pretty lady who couldn’t have a baby couldn’t save the little girl. And the little girl’s head popped off.”
Strode winced. He had seen the aftermath of Jackie Warren dying a thousand different ways: starvation, strangulation, a slit throat, asphyxiation. But never had Jackie Warren come to him headless.
He turned behind him, hoping he would see Finch and Burklow, but the path was bare with just fallen branches and littered leaves. Strode’s first thought was to turn around and find the cabin, to wait there for his partners, but he pushed that thought away.
The voice remained in front of Strode.
With a newfound sense of strength and tact, that had no doubt been given to him by Finch, Strode stared dead-ahead.
The voice isn’t moving. The voice is trying to keep me from going straight.
Strode thought maybe the voice was trying to push him off the path. It was trying to
separate him from his partners.
Without them, illusions could freely feast on his sanity.
Strode had to take a stand.
He shook his head, repeated his mantra, and ran through the shrill voice as it sang, “Her head popped off. Her head popped off.”
The trees took a sudden turn and Strode followed their guidance.
Then the line of death and the voices stopped. Strode had made it to the end of the line, and before him stood a massive tree, nearly one hundred feet tall. Near the bottom, splitting roots with a strand of black spiraled into a break in the bark, was an opening.
At the top was a human head.
Bloodied and battered.
12
The cutout of the tree where the head poked out was like a scary story Strode had heard growing up about a poor woman who was left to rot in a tree.
What was her name? Becca? That doesn’t sound right.
Just beneath the hollow trunk were engorged roots. Strode steadied himself atop one of them and reached for a thick branch above him. The branch scuffed his hand but Strode held it tighter. His heart pounded. He hoped to God that this person was still alive.
Strode put one of his feet on the side of the tree for stability. Then, he peered into the top of the cutout. All he could see was this poor person’s head. A maroon stickiness stained the person’s white-blonde hair. Strode was familiar with this sight. It turned his stomach. He had seen an injury like that before, only the previous was far worse. Laurie Warren’s smashed-in head produced the same dark gelatinous thickness. Only her father hit her harder and far more times.
Strode realized Marlene Byers suffered this same kind of injury. She and the older Warren sister had wounds on their heads that showed bright chunks of a stringy-worm-like texture. Brain matter.
Strode had to get that person out of the tree before they ended up like the girls. He bent at his back and let his hands fall around the sides of the person’s head. His foot slid and nearly had him in the splits.
“Fuck.”
Strode had to take his hands out of the tree’s open mouth to readjust. This time, he bent at his knees, putting more weight against the tree as he leaned into the head. He felt something on his fingers, wetness, and rubbed them together. It balled on his fingertips and feathered away as he continued to roll it, between his thumb and pointer. It was blood.
Strode had no other choice; he would have to begin lifting this person out by their head. The tree was too narrow, and the stretch was too far to do it any other way.
Strode cupped his hands around the head like a hawk’s claw locking around a prey. He was so relieved when he heard a faint groan.
“Hello? Can you hear me?”
The groan answered.
“My name is Officer Strode. I’m going to get you out of here.”
Please let this be real. Let them be alive.
“If you do it that way, the baby’s head might pop off. Pop. Pop. Pop.”
The voice returned. And this time, it sounded as though it was right behind Strode. He turned to look over his shoulder, and his foot answered the fast motion with a slide.
“Fuck. Fuck.”
Strode closed his eyes. Them. Not Teddy. Not Jackie. Whoever this person is. Them. It has to be about them. Don’t let the delusions carry you away.
Strode tugged at the head and used the tree as he shoved his weight into. He was surprised to find the resistance eased, and he could see the person’s face.
It was a little boy. Strode pulled harder, and the boy groaned again.
“Not too hard, Strode. You don’t want his head to pop off.”
Strode shook his head and took mental inventory. Real—this boy. He is alive, and he needs my help. Not real—the voice trying to stop me.
“Ahhh!” Strode released a heavy grunt, and the boy’s shoulders emerged from the wych elm. Strode grabbed the torn bits of the boy’s shirt and dragged the body down to him. He flipped the top half of the boy over his shoulder and hopped down from the puffed tree root.
Strode laid the boy gently on the ground. The injuries were more than his head. The boy had cuts around his lips. The small, bloodied tics looked like fabric stitches that could create a smile with the tug of a thread.
On the tips of every other finger the skin was far darker than the rest of him. He was a ghostly pale, but his fingers were a scorched red color. They were blistering burns.
“I wanted him to understand the heat.”
Strode put his hand on his gun and rose to his feet. His eyes scanned the woods.
Nothing.
He pulled the gun off his belt and pointed it, doing a small circle around the boy’s body.
“I needed him to understand the heat. To know why.”
The voice was soft, almost sweet, despite its cryptic words.
“Who’s there?” Strode shouted.
The boy on the ground winced and groaned as he tried to lift his head. He couldn’t, nor could he open his eyes.
But when the voice said, “Come find me,” the pommeled boy parted his swollen lips and whispered, “Don’t.”
Strode stepped back with his gun still raised. “This isn’t real.” He looked to the boy on the ground, whose head was still bleeding. “This is, and this boy needs my help.”
Strode could hear Finch’s mantra again, One step at a time.
Then, a boy stepped from behind the trees. “Of course I’m real. Can’t you hear me talking to you?”
The kid was smiling, an innocent-looking smile. He had dark hair and grim grey-colored eyes. His skin was pale and showed every trace of dirt. He was wearing a blood-stained New York Yankees t-shirt.
“I need your help.”
Strode blinked, waiting for his vision to clear and the boy before him to disappear, just as Jackie Warren had all those times she haunted him.
But the boy was still there.
“Teddy?”
The boy nodded. “Now, I need your help. There is someone here in the woods. Someone who wants to hurt me.”
Strode looked back to the boy on the ground. “Like they hurt him?”
Teddy nodded. “Maybe. I’ve been out here even worse. Follow me, and I can show you where he’s hiding.”
Again, quiet enough so only Strode could hear, the boy on the ground whispered, “Don’t.”
Strode began feeling irritated. He had tried to find Teddy for a year, and there he was right in front of him, but something in his gut told him to stay put just as the injured little boy said.
“What are you doing out here, Teddy?”
Teddy took another step back, “He’s going to come for us if we don’t go now.”
Strode stepped closer to Teddy.
“Don’t.”
“Please, I’ve been lost for so long,” Teddy said.
Teddy grabbed on to the tree to the side of him.
Strode stepped closer.
Then, the tree’s leaves darkened from a bright green to a burnt brown and crumbled to the ground. Teddy’s eyes widened.
Strode pointed his gun at Teddy. “How the hell did you do that?”
Teddy raised his hands. “Please, it’s not me. It’s him. I need your help. Please help me.”
Then, Strode heard the boy on the ground whimpering in pain. There were fresh cuts under his eyes. Strode saw a figure on the ground slither around it. Without a moment’s thought, Strode fired at it, sending leaves and dirt spewing into the air.
“Please, don’t do this. Help me!” Teddy cried.
Strode turned to Teddy, and the boy on the ground whimpered again. Strode turned back, and blood dripped from the widow’s peak and down his forehead.
This boy is going to die.
Strode turned to the boy, piled leaves around his head, and pushed to slow the bleeding.
A hiss erupted through the woods and burned Stro
de’s ears. The shrill shriek surged through Strode and pinned him to the ground. He tried to cover his ears. Then, Strode felt like someone had tipped him upside down and let all his inner fluids leak out. A pain far worse than his usual headaches beat into his right eye. The trees above him seemed to interlink, and their leaves became a continuous loop of green.
Strode heard someone shout, “Stop! Stop where you are!”
It was a woman.
Strode heard rustling beside him.
Someone’s feet shifted in the dirt and pounded away.
A second shot, this time not from Strode, fired. It jolted Strode’s adrenaline, and his eyes cleared a small patch of vision for him.
He saw the whiteness of Teddy’s t-shirt, now with a growing bloodstain, move into the trees. He was running.
Strode shoved himself off the ground, taking down Finch who rushed to his side.
Without explanation, Strode yelled, “The boy. Save the boy. I have to go after Teddy!”
Strode felt like a horse rounding the final curve of the track and kicked into the dirt. A hammer tapped into the sides of his head and skewed his vision, but he could hear Teddy running too. Strode could hear the pounding of Teddy’s feet, the panic in his breath, and the hurry in each of the branches he tossed aside.
Teddy weaved on and off the straight line. Strode was stumbling down. Then, just as Jackie had all those times, he vanished.
Strode continued to run. “Teddy! Teddy Blackwood! I know you’re real! I know you’re alive!”
Something hit Strode in the throat, cutting off his speed and sending him to the ground gasping for air. Skeletal fingers tickled up Strode’s throat. The gold eyes hung just above his own and didn’t blink. Strode noticed they were flickering, like a bulb that needed replacing.
The eyes brightened by a single hue as claws penetrated Strode’s throat and wrenched back out.
Strode’s head fell to the side as blood spilled from his neck.
The hiss came again. Muffled and shaky this time, it spoke, “Go, Teddy. Get out of the woods.”
Strode’s adrenaline burnt out, and he tried to excavate any bit of fire left in his being to watch the boy he had searched for over a year stumble away.
Take Your Turn, Teddy Page 19