by Chris Page
Carrie again utilized a pause for dramatic effect before answering, “I don’t know.”
Then came Jackie’s inspection, a lengthy, squinting gaze that sought out subterfuge. She missed it entirely.
“I guess he’s not coming out today,” Carrie added.
Jackie likely would have responded then had she not been out of breath. Instead, Carrie led her back at a lighter pace towards their cars where they hugged and parted ways. Jackie was beaten, for now. Carrie made like she was pulling out, but Jackie went first and she let her travel a length of road before turning off her engine and stepping out of the car again. There was just enough time to catch him. She hastened back into the forest.
21
_________
Close calls found cracks in Jake’s composure, mistakes threatening his control over daily life. There was a costly miscalculation in one high value loan’s pricing, but he managed to pawn the misstep off on a new hire for whom it meant nothing. Not that it mattered, he would have done so if it meant their firing, but less drama was better. It meant less energy expended on things beyond his work. His true work.
Aaron Burrell lingered in a sustained obsession at the forefront of Jake’s thoughts. Little else could displace it, only momentarily and out of necessity. The demands of his position at Trinity Mortgage were such that he could reasonably offload them to his underlings, pick away at the managerial ones, and appear still dutifully at the helm of his department to his superiors. Among them, Sean Buchanan was the greatest nuisance. Whether by some hunch or random presumption, he seemed concerned with Jake’s frame of mind and took to pestering him with drink invites on a near daily basis.
While nibbling away at a bologna sandwich, he spied Sean hovering around in the distance like a fly ready to descend. His eyes refocused on his screen, a collection of documents amassed for Aaron Burrell’s personal mortgage. Jake spent all of his free time in study, and much of his company time pouring over the same documents. In the absence of more productive activities, he nearly memorized the details of Aaron’s financials, his plot, debts, income, assets.
He felt the hand on his back again, striking him between his shoulder blades with a brazen familiarity he permitted between the two of them. Without a second thought, Jake’s hand swung the mouse to the dock and opened up the internet browser. A main page of local news filled his screen, obscuring the documents and breaking his meditative repetition of them.
“How’s it hangin, bud?”
Jake cringed inwardly. He spun his chair around to stare up into the soulless eyes of his boss. “Just fine, Sean, how about you?”
Sean’s face sagged. Jake watched the expression shift from bullshit congeniality to near horror. He felt his heart skip a beat. His mind raced for reasons why their status quo would rupture. He felt as though it was written in his features, the sleepless nights, the booze, the revenge plot, the criminal contact. In the face of his undoing, however, Jake remained perfectly still, his thoughts receding into his core where they were bound and unable to affect his appearance.
“Terrible shame,” said Sean.
It was then that Jake followed Sean’s eyes back to the screen. He turned his chin to his shoulder to view the top headline on the local news site’s front page. It read “Local Man Found Dead in Home.” Alongside the headline was a photo of David Marko smiling into camera, ten, maybe fifteen years ago. Jake imagined it was a chore for their editors to drum up the image, something presentable, respectful of the dead. Words from the body of the article made their way into Jake’s consciousness. Self-inflicted gunshot wound. He heard the pop again ringing out in his ears, turning over into a high pitch whine that scratched at his eardrums, rising in volume until Sean broke the trance.
“Think I knew the guy, yeah.”
Jake pivoted back to Sean. “Oh yeah? Sorry to hear.”
Sean removed one hand from his pocket to wave it nonchalantly in the air. “Oh, I didn’t know him as a friend or anything. Just saying I think I knew him.”
“Ah,” was all that Jake mustered. Instead he wanted to tell Sean what an asinine comment it was to casually say he might have known someone who had just committed suicide.
With the same unconcerned demeanor, he circled back to his daily request. “How about them drinks, Jake?”
“Fine,” Jake replied.
He watched Sean’s head react with a quick yet subtle backward jerk, and wondered if his aggression had shown through. Then Sean’s head swayed forward in a nod and smiled. “Hey, there’s my guy. On me, this Friday, after work.”
Jake winked. “You got it,” he said, knowing some excuse would come to him before the week’s end. He watched Sean finally retreat back to his office, then turned back around to face his screens. The article, with its accompanying photo, assaulted him. He grimaced and closed out of the browser, but not before the page left an imprint on his vision, a blue and white negative transposed over the world. He blinked, but in the darkness only saw it clearer. There, against the black of his own eyelids, he saw a pair of words that caused him to twitch. “Abduction” and “survivor” trickled down into his active thoughts and grabbed him. He quickly reopened the browser and pulled up the article once more. His eyes scanned through the body of text to arrive at the wanted details. “A survivor of a slew of abductions in the early 1980s around the Willow Brook area, David Marko…”
Jake leaned back in his chair.
He laughed at himself.
Then he thought.
Singling out David Marko had been the right track. While not the culprit, he was stained with the same strain of evil Jake was hunting. It was all connected. The webbing was thick, the spider was close.
Or perhaps Jake was the spider, plucking at the strands for returned vibrations, tracing them around what creatures were imprisoned by its grasp.
It didn’t matter. The revelation was confirmation. He was headed in the right direction. Survivors of a series of abductions in the 1980s. He searched the query. A list of articles stretched the length of his monitor, telling the story of an unknown, never captured suspect. The progenitor. The man was likely dead, but his work fathered the present evil. It was generational. The lineage was trauma, not blood relation. Now they were all part of the same family, every member reeking of the same stench, the same evil. It was time to cut down the tree.
Jake clicked through several articles, learning about the abductions. There was Samantha Uriel, seven, disappeared after turning up lost from a field trip to the history museum. George Benson, age ten, was hiking with his parents and chased after a rabbit. In the ensuing chase, his parents lost him. His body was found half buried under autumn leaves. Others were also murdered. Victor Tripp, four, throat slit, hogtied, the killers MO. Five had escaped. Becky Kartheiser, age six. Nathaniel Shapson, eight. Carrie Rogers, eight.
Carrie Rogers.
Carrie.
Carrie Holloway.
22
_________
The house was maintained in piecemeal chores, dividing the various tasks by room, then organized into a hierarchy of necessity. She could wait on dusting until it drowned them. The dishes could go several days, but before long they would attract bugs, infestation. Likewise, the garbage maxed out at a week, and when it came time to haul it from the can to the bin, then drag the bin to the curb, Carrie would strain to lift the overfilled trash bag and hoist it over her shoulder to walk it outside. Her body was beginning to ache in ways it had never done so before. When she lifted upward, she felt her wrists quake with a pain that shot up the length of her forearms. Her knees were brittle, any weight beyond her own induced pain. But she could still care for herself, and her home, and she could still walk. That was all she had to do. Survive, and keep the house from collapse. Everything would be tended to in due time. This was endurance. Carrie was prepared to wait, and force all other things in her life to do likewise. A pale in the hull until they reached shore.
After addressing the pile of dishes i
n the kitchen sink, Carrie marched out to her car and dropped into the driver seat. When the engine turned over, she felt a renewed sense of strength, and found herself correcting her posture and widening her eyes as she pulled out onto the street. The commute was quick, she arrived at the trailhead just past noon, which gave her enough time to rest a moment, shut her eyes, and prepare.
Let go. She repeated the mantra silently to herself, then once to the empty interior of the car. The door opened and the sound of rustling poured in with the wind. It cut to the bone, but Carrie didn’t mind, so long as the muscle in-between still worked.
She walked the usual path, cut across when her feet told her to, snaked through the dense forest made thinner by fall. She stepped back onto the wood chips where the hill rose to the sign and she took a deep breath, propping herself up against the wooden post. Her eyes fell into the shallow valley to her left and awaited the figure of the man to enter, catch her eye, and pause. Then, when their eyes met and he smiled, she would wave and he would return it. She would make her way down the hill to join him by his side, the two of them would proceed in silence, the trees would make their tunnel, and Carrie would reenter the darkness that was teaching her all manner of secrets, withholding the one she patiently awaited until the time was deemed appropriate.
Chatter from her right snapped her head towards its direction. She peered through the bare branches at a pair making their way along the path. With a slow, plodding pace, they approached. One was stout, and shorter than the second, tall, with a black and grey beard. It was him. He was not alone.
As the man and the interloper dragged nearer, Carrie began to make out their voices. She recognized both of them, but it wasn’t until her sight confirmed that she realized what had happened. Before her, in the dip of the path to her left, she viewed the man with Jackie by his side, merrily bantering about the beauty of the forest. He nodded, agreed, and mostly listened while she babbled on. Then there was silence as Jackie found Carrie staring down at her. At their distance, they could not see the rage-fuelled tears risen in Carrie’s eyes.
“Carrie!” Jackie called up to her.
The following moments were piloted by something other than her consciousness. She witnessed them from a safe vantage, where she could not interact with them. She heard the conversation as an echo, reaching her as though first spoken against a wall, then fallen back to her and made softer.
Jackie spoke of the man’s kindness, and she gave him a name. It was Lance Westin. She claimed he had the most beautiful forest retreat, a little home he had built for himself, not technically legal, but inconspicuous and cozy. She had spent the morning there, she said, and Carrie’s body nodded along to it all. Jackie’s Lance introduced himself with this new name, and became a new person, an imposter, embodying her guide. He confirmed that they had seen one another, had crossed paths, had waved, and little more. Carrie’s lips did not contradict. When Jackie insisted Carrie had built up their relationship to be something much more serious, laughing as she spoke the word affair, Carrie’s body did not blush. It did not react. It waited, as did Carrie, from her vantage of safety a great emotional distance away from them.
“Excuse me,” she said as she sank back into her bones, the weight upon which was practically unbearable. But she refused collapse. She pushed between them on her way towards the forest’s heart. Neither called after her, she had made a well enough exit to stave off concern. It was for the better that she was alone now, she could sense it was time, anyway. The forest was going to surrender its ultimate secret.
Her body was broken, but at a sprinting pace, all its pieces seemed separated from each other and therefore could not produce quakes from their grinding against one another. Her lungs would have to keep up. The dark began to close in. Good, she thought. It would accept her alone. Her eyes could see across the tops of their vision the little spindles twisting into one another, linking, and pulling the trees together. The tunnel formed around her, and she pressed on against the burning in her chest. The dark tightened. The sky disappeared. The trunks were enveloped. Then her own fists, squeezed into balls before her, swinging back and forth past her waist, disappeared into solid black. She was lifted into it, and felt the forest’s hold raise her in the indeterminate space of its cold, lightless heart.
She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the forest’s own chorus of creaks and rustles acting in synchronicity to begin. “Why have you come?” it asked.
Carrie felt its voice radiate from all around her, and in her body she could feel it rattling her innards. Still, she managed a reply. “You know why I’m here.”
“You must say it,” it spoke in rebuke.
She felt heat in her cheeks, and tears caress them. “I’m here for my son! I’ve come for my son, I’ve come for Benny!”
The forest was silent, leaving her emotions to sour into embarrassment. When they had settled back into the simmering holding place within her belly, it returned, “I despise the molestation of men’s hands.”
“Of course!” Carrie shouted. “Save my son from the same, please, I’m begging you!”
Again, it left her in silence as a disciplinary measure for her outburst. She hollowed herself then, and when it appeared she was calm, the forest spoke. “Your son is one of them.”
Carrie withheld her first impulse. She gave it a moment, to swallow it back, mixed with the rough flavor creeping up her tongue. She clenched her jaw as the lump traveled south into her chest. “He is only a boy,” she spoke, measured.
The forest breeze swept past her. “If returned, he will betray. Boys become men. Men destroy. That is their nature.”
Carrie felt the tears stream down to the point of her chin, but she refused to allow the muscles in her face to shift and exhibit her fear. “Benny is my son. He will learn—”
“The man who took him suffered the same, and yet he sows chaos. Destruction and molestation, there is nothing else in their wake. You cannot save him from his very nature. You cannot change nature. This is truth.”
“No,” Carrie refused. “No, that is not true. The boy is sweet, he doesn’t have to learn destruction. You can save him, you can teach him mercy by returning him to me. In mercy, you will change his nature.”
The forest laughed, a rustling of unseen leaves and cracking twigs. “So you admit to their nature?”
The lump rose to catch in Carrie’s throat.
“You admit to their nature.”
She tried to swallow, but the lump refused, lodging itself firmly.
“You cannot have your Benny back. He will perish here, as should they all.”
Carrie coughed, but couldn’t move the blockage. It began to suffocate her.
“Now you must forget this, Carrie. You are one of my children, he is one of my meals. This is how it must be. I love you, but your pain is risen from the stench of something unholy and unworth your affection. Leave it here, with me, and I will cleanse it, child.”
As the forest spoke, Carrie felt her body lower, the lump choking her while her feet returned to the earth. She coughed for air, but swallowed none, and slowly, she drifted out of consciousness.
In the next moment, she awoke, sucking in long drags of cool, fresh forest air, which made her sick. She leaned to her side and watched vomit pour out into the leaves collected along the edge of the trail. She was back, the forest had dumped her onto the path. She cursed it between heaves. She lifted onto shaky legs. When she heard an oncoming jogger, she corrected her posture and smiled with wet lips at the person who grimaced back before receding down the way. Her hunch returned, and she wobbled to the nearest tree for support. She took several deep breaths with closed eyes, staring into a memory. Within it, she was eight, and she was leaving the forest in the company of a married couple whispering comforting words to her, drowned by the voice she heard echoing in-between her ears. It told her it would keep her safe.
She no longer wanted its safety. If the forest was bent on consuming Benny, it woul
d have to consume her first.
23
_________
Jake pulled into the driveway absent the memory of having driven home. He was in a daze, his mind occupied by little but the day’s revelation. He held it suspended in his thoughts, dangling above them and holding everything else still. It paralyzed him, though his body, trained to exist separate and proceed through its requisite motions, carried him home. Now, resting in the silent interior of his car, in his periphery he spied Carrie’s car parked beside his. He turned to look at it, observing the filth collected around the wheels, kicked up along the doors. When he stepped out of his car and walked to the front door, he looked back again and saw the contrast between them, his own recently washed and pristine. By comparison, her car looked like some white trash country bumpkin lived with him. Someone he didn’t know.
He entered through the foyer into the house. All lights were off save the kitchen around the corner at the end of the hallway. He paused after shutting the door behind him, listening to the sounds creep through the dark hallway towards him. There was rummaging, cabinets opening and shutting, some flustered grunts, shuffling feet. It sounded like a manic beast had been set loose in their house and now hunted for a meal.
He slowly bent over to untie his dress shoes and place them neatly together beneath the coat rack where he hung up his jacket. Jake then proceeded into the dark towards the light filtering into the end of the hallway. His quiet way of movement didn’t disturb the actions happening in the kitchen, their sounds proceeding unbroken. His eyes narrowed as he approached the corner, finally pivoting and finding what made the racket.
Carrie stood with her back to him, her arms reaching above her head, extended towards the highest shelves of their cabinets. The several shelves beneath were emptied, and from his vantage, he could see there was also nothing where she reached. Instead of informing her, he continued to watch like a set of bars separated them, a sign mounted to them, “Do Not Reach Into Habitat.” There was a fascination at first, though it quickly turned over into something sour he didn’t care to mull. Her gaunt frame seemed to shiver in place, her thin fingers shaking in their extension. It was pathetic - that was one concrete thought that came to him. It was the only one he permitted before departing the scene. He went to the back door. Quietly, he opened it and in his socks stepped onto the grass on his way to the shed.