The Haunting of Steely Woods

by Bonnie Elizabeth

  It began to drizzle, barely enough to wet the ground, but enough to add a chill to the air and make everything smell even more piney than it already did. Ronette wasn’t bothered by the drips, nor was Lois. If anything, Mercedes seemed pleased by the rain and tried to start romping around, though Lois pulled her close in case the bones required forensic testing. If it was as old as I thought, it was likely that the only forensic evidence would be on the bones themselves.

  I listened to Mercedes thrash and yip before settling down. The pine needles rustled and the branches swayed whenever the slightest breeze came up, leaving me shivering. I didn’t remember the Northwest being that chilly, but I’d spent so long in North Carolina that I was beyond spoiled when it came to weather. Now I wore a jacket if it got below 72.

  Ronette played on her phone.

  “I had to text my husband that I wouldn’t be home as quickly as I thought,” she said. “He’s supportive and all, but he’d hate it if I didn’t let him know. I’ll text the girls after they get home from school, when it’s too late for them to get into anything huge without me there. They’ll think if I don’t let them know where I am, I’m on my way home and they won’t make quite such a mess. If I wait, it’ll be late enough that they’ll worry about their dad coming home.”

  I laughed at the way her mind worked. It was quintessential Ronette, who was always thinking ahead and planning for what others might be thinking. It’s what made her a great therapist. She’d been working only part-time while the girls were young and was looking forward to expanding her practice now that they were older. That was something we’d chatted about on Facebook because it was a safe topic and didn’t require any judgements, unlike my issues with ghosts.

  “I tried researching this area,” Lois said. “I’ve been digging pretty deep and pulling in favors from the law officers who might remember things or maybe heard rumors from years ago. It’s a tough one. I did have one officer recall that there was a guy named Will who lived in one of the little townships around here, off the beaten track, who had a reputation as one bad guy. He also said the Martin girl was into all kinds of stuff and was always barely making ends meet. She had quite a taste for alcohol, but he wasn’t sure when that started. She’d been in jail and was out by the time he was in the force.”

  “So she wasn’t very good at being a responsible adult?” I asked. My impression from what I’d read was that neither Alma nor Lucy were very old.

  “She didn’t report her sister missing for a long time. In fact, she only did it because the school came around asking why she wasn’t in school. At first Alma tried to say it was work but later on she said Lucy had run off. Didn’t like working. No one had ever seen Lucy working, according to this officer, so it was assumed that her job was less than legal. In those days that would have meant prostitution.”

  It seemed like a very sad life to me, one that ended all too soon. I felt badly for Lucy, although I reminded myself that she wanted me dead for some twisted reason. Too bad the guy who murdered her was probably already dead. I had no idea what I was going to do to appease the girl.

  “If she’s out here, I wonder what happened,” Ronette said. “This isn’t close to anything.”

  “If she was turning tricks, they might have gone out in a car someplace where they wouldn’t have been seen,” Lois said.

  “There’s nothing for miles,” Ronette said. “You’d think they could have gone a bit closer to town.”

  “Unless whoever killed her planned on killing her,” I said softly. Again that feeling of sympathy.

  It started to rain again, making Mercedes shake herself off a few feet away. She started to whine a bit. At first, I thought the rain was bothering her but soon enough, I heard the crack of branches and the faint sounds of people talking. A radio hissed and spat out some static. Scott was returning with the police.

  We all turned, waiting, and were rewarded a short time later. Mercedes went running up to meet her other owner and let him know he’d been missed. It was hard not to smile at her enthusiastic, but polite, greeting.

  “What have we got?” the officer was a tall man, thickly built, but not fat, though in ten years he might be. His dark brown hair curled slightly over his ears. He was probably thinking about getting it cut to keep that from happening, particularly since he reached up and pushed it away multiple times as he spoke.

  “We found this hand bone,” Lois said, pointing at the bones sticking out from under the bush. Mercedes had dragged them that far before Lois had told her to drop, which she’d done quickly and without complaint. It was only then that Scott had squatted to identify that they looked human.

  The office squatted down. A woman officer appeared at the edge of our makeshift clearing, watching. She’d clearly been scouting the perimeter of where we stood in case there were people waiting in ambush. Or at least that’s what I thought. Maybe she needed to pee, and like me, hated rest areas.

  “That looks like part of a human hand,” the male officer said. He stood again, nodding at Scott, as if in apology for not believing him.

  He walked to the side of the clearing and started talking into his radio. The woman came closer. She pushed the bushes aside, not stepping into the bones, the narrow fingers joined by a few traces of tissue that remained. She squatted down as low as she could and looked under the bush.

  “Did you see how far the dog dragged the hand?”

  The bushes weren’t that thick, so I wasn’t sure what she was getting at.

  “She was just here. We’ve been trailing her through the woods, wherever she wants to go as much as we can,” Lois said. “The hand wouldn’t have been far under there.”

  “And what were you all doing out here again?” The officer asked, looking at each of us in turn.

  Lois told her how she was one of those people who looked at cold cases. I had an interest in finding a missing girl from the forties named Lucy Martin. I picked up the tale and explained that I was interested in her because of the women who had died at the rest area. I said I had once thought I was going to be attacked at Steely Woods years ago.

  “Did you report it?” Officer Cross Your T’s asked, probably wanting to check my story.

  “I didn’t,” I said. “I lived in Portland at the time and it seemed pointless. Nothing happened.”

  Ronette said nothing.

  “And you?” The woman looked at Ronette.

  “I’m here for Traci. It didn’t seem like a good idea to meet a stranger and a dog at a rest area without some support from a friend.”

  For the first time the woman officer smiled a little but then went back to picking apart our stories. Fortunately, Lois was being completely honest, and I had told this part of my story so many times it didn’t matter. Ronette was being very good about volunteering nothing.

  If the police didn’t believe us, they said nothing. Of course, unless we were criminal masterminds using some sort of agent to break down flesh, the hand bones had been around for some time. Still, because this was a rest stop and we were traveling through, we were asked to wait.

  Lois asked if she could take Mercedes for a bit of a walk back the way we had come. There was some discussion about whether this would be allowed, but in the end, Mercedes got to burn off some of her energy. Scott found a log to sit on a bit away from the little clearing, though his jacket was still visible from where we were.

  Ronette and I huddled near a tree and tried to stay dry when the rain got heavier.

  Eventually a detective arrived with another officer and asked us more of the same questions we’d been asked before. Another group of people arrived checking out the bone and looking around the area for other clues. At that point, our personal information was taken and we were escorted back to the rest area.

  “Well, that was exciting,” Lois said. She was still smiling.

  I looked at Ronette who just sort of nodded.

  “I need to use the restroom,” Ronette said before we got to the car. I watched he
r go inside.

  It was later in the afternoon and a few women went in and came back out, but no Ronette. The back of my neck started to tingle. My stomach started to knot. I worried she was in trouble.

  I hung back but walked closer, the door like a maw that opened into hell.

  The two men serving coffee had been replaced by a man and a woman, both equally old. They seemed interested in the police cars that were parked off to one side, where we’d all entered the woods.

  I took a deep breath. The air felt too cold and tasted of old bitter coffee. I didn’t care. I needed to go check on Ronette.

  I waited until a red-haired woman in a blue skirted suit got out of a car and walked quickly to the building. I headed in behind her.

  Ronette was at the dryer, which wasn’t blowing on her hands and she was shaking them out.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I knew it was taking a while but I didn’t realize it was so long that you had to come in.”

  “What happened?” I asked as we left the place. I hated the smell of it and even by day it reminded of the last time I’d been in there, not something I wanted to think about. I hurried out.

  “The dryer wasn’t working. Everyone seems fine with wet hands but I hate that,” Ronette said. She was rubbing her slightly damp hands together. “There was air but no heat.”

  I saw her look over at the people offering coffee.

  “Think we should tell them?” I asked.

  Ronette shrugged. “I’m sure they’ll find out soon enough. We should get going.”

  She had a long drive head of her. I’d probably have dinner at Burger King and then some wandering around before I came back after dark to do my ritual.

  My stomach plunged to my feet. I was going to be alone for the ritual and I had no idea if it would work. I started worrying about being interrupted by the police, perhaps even being accused of being responsible for the bones we’d found earlier.

  The worries ate away at me, keeping me from hearing anything Ronette said during the rest of our drive back to the Burger King. If she noticed, she didn’t make any comments

  32

  Traci: Spring, When it Happened

  It all happened the night after Ronette’s birthday. I’d come up to Tacoma, where she’d lived. It had been for a girl’s night party where we’d driven to a trendy area and we had drinks at bunch of bars, laughing and singing and having a good time. I knew I was driving back when we were done so I’d been the designated driver, slogging back too many Diet Cokes, laughing as hard as anyone.

  The friendly low cream buildings that greeted me during the day had changed to something more ominous when I got to Steely Woods, a pit stop I had been aching for for miles. I’d considered stopping along the freeway and going in the bushes, but I wasn’t quite that brave. Besides, I knew the trip. I knew the rest stop wasn’t that far ahead.

  Pulling off into the parking area, the previously friendly buildings looked haunted. Instead of being welcoming, the trees at Steely Woods stood pale and skeletal in the late winter night. A light breeze made the branches drift like dancing ghosts. The evergreens were mere shadows behind the dancers, swaying in time.

  Across the grassy area that housed the toilets and the little office, I saw three semis parked. There was one other car on my side of the lot, parked as far from the buildings as possible. It sat dark and lonely. The rest stop allowed no camping but that didn’t mean you couldn’t take a quick nap in your car.

  I jumped at the sound of a bang against the driver’s side window, not sure what made it. I saw nothing. The skeletal trees continued their dance. Perhaps a gust of wind. I took a breath in to calm my heart. There was something about the rest stop at night, and me there alone, which made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  With my bladder nearly bursting, I doubted I’d make it to the next off ramp before my need moved beyond critical. I got out. The wind flowed softly around me, not the sort of wind that gusts and bangs against glass. The smell of pine reached my nose laced with that of old French fries. I walked past the dumpsters, noticing that they were full. Three French fries lay on the ground.

  I continued to the building. The window in the office, where coffee was normally served, gaped like a dark mouth. Out on the freeway beyond the stop, the sound of a semi braking could have been a sigh.

  I hurried into the bathroom. I just wanted this to be done. The bathroom was well lit and clean. The stall doors were all closed, but I saw no feet in any of them. I picked one at random, one not too far from the door, and went in to do my business.

  A faucet dripped, just once. It echoed too loudly in the silent room.

  Down the way, in another stall, I heard a light tap as if someone moved. I looked under the wall but saw no feet. Maybe a mouse or something. I was out in nowhere. I sat.

  Someone banged open a stall door at the far end of the bathroom. The crash of the door echoed in the quiet. I jumped. Another crash echoed as the next door banged, coming closer. I looked under the edge of my stall but could see no feet. The next stall door banged open.

  That stopped all possibility of doing my business. I waited. I wanted nothing more than to pull up my jeans and run, but I was frozen where I sat. Fear ramped up my need even as it paralyzed me, keeping me from doing anything. The door to the stall next to mine banged open. My door would be next.

  I saw a hand at the top of my door. I heard something that could have been a groan, but lower and softer.

  The hand moved, getting a better grip. The long fingers, skeletal in their thinness, looked the color of the bone in the harsh light. The nails were short and pointed. If the bathroom hadn’t been so well-lit, I would have said the hand was a claw. Then another hand appeared, pale and thin. It matched its companion, but for one blackened nail on the pinky finger as if it had been slammed in one of the doors it banged against.

  I stopped breathing, waiting for what would happen next. Slowly I saw the hairs on a head, unevenly spaced and sparse, appear as if someone were raising themselves up to look over the door. As the head began to appear, I saw that the hair wasn’t just sparse, it was patchy, like someone had pulled large handfuls of it out.

  At that point my bladder let go. Fortunately, I was on the toilet because I had no ability to stop anything. My legs had no more control than my bladder. Had I been standing, attempting to run, I knew I couldn’t have supported my weight. My heart tried to beat its way out of my chest. The skull that was beneath those tufts of hair was as pale as the claws that grasped the door. Whatever was beyond the door was not human.

  I was going to die sitting on a toilet at the Steely Woods Rest Stop a month before my twenty-sixth birthday.

  Even as my lungs burned and my bladder emptied its contents, the skull crept ever closer to looking over the top of the stall door. Just as it was about to peer over, letting me look into eyes that were no doubt deep black pits, the main bathroom door squeaked open.

  “I cannot believe it!” a girl said, giggling.

  “I know!” another girl said.

  “Hurry up. Mom doesn’t like stopping here at night,” the first one said.

  They trooped loudly through the silence of the bathroom. My heart was the only other sound thundering along with them. The creature was gone. This was my escape. I saw the girl’s feet when they tramped by. One girl had on green sneakers with rainbow socks. The other girl was in plain blue and white trainers with socks that weren’t visible between shoe and jeans. Ordinary.

  They loudly banged stall doors, closing and latching them shut. This time the sound was comforting rather than frightening.

  They had saved me. At least for the moment. I finished by business in record time. I didn’t bother to wash my hands, merely hurried out to my car.

  There were three dark drops on the asphalt by where I’d parked. I hadn’t noticed them getting out of the car, didn’t really notice them going back in except to wonder if they could have been blood. Whose blood I didn’t know.

>   My hands shook so hard I couldn’t find my keys. It took four tries to get the door unlocked because I kept missing the hole.

  There was one other car in the lot now, a silver gray Accord with a woman sitting in it, the engine running, a calming purr in the background. The trees no longer danced. The breeze didn’t tug at my hair.

  I climbed in the car, afraid the engine wouldn’t start, breathing a sigh of relief when it did. While I had had a hard time finding where to put the keys, the engine started on the first try.

  I drove out, watching as the girls hurried out of the bathroom, heading happily towards their car, never noticing the shadowed figure that huddled behind them. I thought I saw a flash of white teeth, too large and too even to be real, but I looked away, certain I was imagining things.

  I practically flew home to Portland that night, always certain that there was someone behind me, chasing me. Once I thought I saw a face in the rearview mirror, partly rotten and boney, but it was gone as soon as I noticed it.

  I whimpered. I kept the radio on as loudly as it would go just to keep me company while hoping the noise would fool whatever it was that was after me into thinking I wasn’t actually alone on the nearly empty freeway late at night.

  Perhaps it had been fooled because it never attacked me, though I had no doubt, years later, that it had followed me and bided its time, angry perhaps at being interrupted.

  33

  Traci: September Now

  I drove across the street from the Burger King to a McDonald’s. It’s not that I don’t like Burger King, but I’d had that for lunch with Ronette. Now that I was back at the exit, I didn’t have much to do with myself. Ronette was heading home, dreading having to have the discussion with her husband about what exactly she’d been doing out at the rest stop with me.