The Haunting of Steely Woods

by Bonnie Elizabeth

  The deputy was still getting only static on the radio. I tugged at him and we began to run.

  I hoped I was heading towards the rest stop. The purr of tires on pavement was drowned out by the crackle and hiss of the fire behind us. I was no longer cold. I was hot. The fire wasn’t moving terribly quickly, eating through the first of the pines that had lived in the wooded area for years. It would pick up speed fast unless the dampness in the underbrush slowed it down. I hoped so. I hoped that the trees were soaked inside too.

  The smoke grew thick and dark, trying to choke me. I felt like this was a last hurrah of Lucy, trying to choke me with the smoke. Perhaps she’d choked, though I thought she said she was beaten to death. I wouldn’t know, not unless those bones were hers and I somehow persuaded the coroner to tell me.

  I broke through the trees with the deputy. His radio still had some static, but he was able to call for fire fighters.

  “What the hell was that?” he breathed, looking at me.

  “I don’t know. I think I saw her about twenty years ago here, the week before the woman was killed then. I think she was after me.”

  The deputy gave me a long hard look like he wondered if I was pulling his leg. But he’d seen Lucy. Seen that her ghost didn’t react like it should have.

  Ronette’s car was across the parking lot. I hurried over there, suddenly terrified of what I might find, or now. What if Lucy had knocked her out and she was in the woods?

  “Wait!” the deputy called.

  “My friend’s car. I don’t see her,” I yelled back, hoping he’d get the idea. I didn’t know if he did but I heard the tap of his shoes on the asphalt when we ran.

  The parking lot was getting a little smoky. It wasn’t bad yet. Someone could have been having a barbecue. I looked in Ronette’s car. She wasn’t inside.

  I looked around the area.

  My eyes caught the restroom.

  I hurried towards it.

  As in a bad dream, I couldn’t move fast enough. My chest was tight. I hoped she wasn’t in there. I hoped that if she was, she was alive.

  The lights were back on, though one of them flickered a bit. I bit back a gasp. It could have been normal, maybe.

  I was through the door in seconds. Inside, the spilled salt. A shoe, attached to a foot. A body lying there, purple hair spread out around the salt.

  A slight groan.

  Red on the floor. Blood.

  “Ronette?” I called softly, dreading that I’d touch her and she’d be dead.

  Instead that slight groan again.

  I went to her, feeling her head. No injuries there. The blood on the floor seemed to puddle but it wasn’t so much that I thought she’d bled out. She could survive this, at least I hoped so.

  The deputy had followed me in. He spoke into his radio calling for an ambulance as well as the fire trucks.

  He went down and helped me roll her over. There was only a little blood. A thick white bone stuck out of her left side, as if someone had broken it off. For now, it was blocking whatever blood might flow.

  “What happened?” I asked softly.

  “She was there. And hit me in the stomach. It was like her hand went through my body,” Ronette mumbled. “So hot…”

  Ronette’s head turned and her eyes lost focus. She was still breathing but I didn’t like the way sweat beaded on her forehead

  My heart pounded. What had Lucy done? This was worse than if she killed me. If it were me and I died, it would just be over. I’d have failed, but I’d only have failed me. Tonight, I’d failed Ronette and her whole family could pay for it.

  The room went foggy and my nose plugged. If the deputy was speaking to me, I didn’t hear him. I was alone with my fears, my sorrows, and my anger at what had happened.

  Someone came and started moving me away from Ronette. I wanted to stay but a woman in a uniform looked me in the eye and gestured that I should leave. I let her lead me out of the restroom.

  She asked me questions I didn’t understand, but another part of me answered them easily. She seemed satisfied with what I said. Outside, the smoke was thick enough to have some of the truckers getting out and walking around. Or maybe it was the red and blue lights that woke them. If there were sirens, the rushing in my ears kept me from hearing them.

  Ronette was taken out on a gurney and the nice women in the uniform brought me to the same ambulance, settling me in while the other medic worked on Ronette. I worried about the rental car, about getting in contact with Ronette’s family. I felt around, found my phone in my pocket. My purse was locked in the trunk of the rental car so if I needed ID that was going to be a pain.

  I let it go, let myself drown in my worries about Ronette and Lucy.

  I wondered if the fire had taken care of Lucy. Fire was supposed to be cleansing. I’d thought about lighting the rest stop on fire. Maybe her grave was better.

  I didn’t understand why had she attacked Ronette but didn’t kill her.

  Too many questions.

  If those weren’t enough, I worried about what the deputy would say when he reported finding me in the wood. I pushed that aside. Ronette was the only important worry in my life right then.

  37

  Traci: September Now

  Ronette woke the next day around noon. I’d found a number for her family and called it. I’d stuck around the hospital. I’d need a ride to my car eventually. Sheriff’s deputies came by a couple of times and talked to me. I saw the young man from the woods once. He was sitting on a table as I was led out of the emergency area.

  The lights were too bright even for me. The beeps and bells of machines and the squeak of wheels rolling down the tile hallways echoed around me. The place smelled like all hospitals, that chemical scent of bleach and sickness.

  The sounds and lights didn’t keep the worry away. I had so many questions, so many things that I needed to consider that when I finally got to a bathroom, the fact that I was alone in a strange restroom didn’t phase me. Lucy didn’t appear.

  I waited in a waiting room to hear about Ronette. Her husband showed up with both girls later on. They looked as shook up as I felt. Her husband looked at me, seemed perplexed about whether he knew me or not, decided the not was easier. I didn’t disabuse him of the notion. Having followed Ronette on Facebook, I recognized her girls.

  She was going to be okay. I let the family go in first. It was nearly an hour later that the girls went out for something to eat. The husband came out and told me Ronette was asking for me.

  I went in, cautiously. I wanted to cry.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “You didn’t ask me to go back,” Ronette said. “I did that. I’m not sure I believed you, not really. Not in the way I should have. It was so weird. Lucy reached inside me, like she was going to gut me or something. Her hand got hot, like touching hot coals, and then she was gone, but the bone was still there. I think I passed out at the idea of it more than anything.”

  I nodded, sniffling. I couldn’t speak.

  “And then you were there with the deputy. The doctors were pretty weirded out about the bone. I guess it was old. Like someone dug up an old bone and stabbed me with it. The weird thing? I guess the fingers were curled around my spleen and none of them can figure that out.”

  I shuddered.

  “What did you do?” Ronette asked.

  “I thought you were with me in the woods,” I said. “You said you’d come, and I went. I thought you were following me, but it was Lucy.”

  “I intended to follow you. But I was slow. Then when I got to the tree line, you insisted upon sending me back, that you needed to do this thing alone. So I went back to the car. I got tired of waiting and thought I’d use the bathroom. I’ll know better than to do that again.” There was a little laugh at that.

  I was cold all over, not even certain what to say. Ronette asked me what happened.

  I told her what I knew, down to the deputy throwing the candle towards Lucy as she had
rushed him that last time.

  “Do you think that’s what made her stop, finally? Her resting place burned?”

  “But her bones weren’t there. Why would her resting place stop her?”

  “Maybe the bones we found weren’t hers,” Ronette said. “Did you say that you’d read there were other bones found in the area? And you just said that Lucy told you a man had paid her sister to use her, probably to kill her. What if she wasn’t the only girl he murdered? This could have been his burial area.”

  “So it’s not just Lucy’s ghost,” I said. Did I need to lay them all to rest?

  “Lucy was the one who was mad. She was the one who wanted revenge,” Ronette said. She yawned, tired. I let her close her eyes and slipped out. I signaled to her husband and went in search of someone who could take me to the rest stop for my car.

  The deputy from the woods was downstairs, waiting for me, drinking coffee. I asked how he knew I was there.

  “Assignment,” he said. “And because I’m supposed to be taking it easy after last night. Everyone thinks I’m frigging crazy, except maybe you because you were there.”

  “Unfortunately,” I said.

  “I didn’t mention the candle. I only said something started the fire. Being near a crime scene isn’t a crime to them. I couldn’t say more because I’m not sure I’d be alive if you hadn’t kept that thing away from me.”

  “I think there might be more bones there,” I said.

  “What makes you say that?” he asked.

  “Just a feeling.”

  “Cause after the burn was out, this morning they went and looked around and there were a half dozen more places bits of old bone sticking up. Like an old graveyard.”

  “Bet they were all missing women,” I said. “Or maybe not. Maybe no one cared enough to miss them.”

  I could only hope that there was one set of bones that had been burned completely.

  We drove in silence to my car. It was still where I’d parked. There were more police cars out there. I saw more movement in the woods. The stand was still there but thinner. Light came through it on the other side and the air smelled of burnt wood.

  The deputy watched me unlock the trunk and get my purse. I’d lost the other stuff out in the fire but I didn’t care. All I needed was my purse. I’d be in Portland before dark and spend my last night in the hotel. I had hoped to see Ronette today but she needed to rest. I hoped she’d be okay.

  The drive was uneventful. I was more relaxed than I had been in some time. Things finally felt like something had changed, like I was free.

  Although I felt as if I might need to use the restroom I passed the next rest stop without a second thought. There were limits to my sudden ease of fear.

  The rain started as I got to Vancouver and it was coming down hard when I got into the parking lot of the hotel. I took my stuff inside and settled in. I wasn’t terribly hungry but knew I should eat. I was closing the door before I realized I hadn’t turned on all the lights.

  It made me smile to think that I might be getting better.

  38

  Traci: November Now

  Will invited me to join him and his friends for Thanksgiving and I was looking forward to it. It wasn’t that I was suddenly enamored of my coworker, but he’d listened to my story, asked good questions, and let me process in a way no one else had. Not even Ronette. In some ways, once she was out of the hospital, she was worse than Anson, practically denying it had ever happened.

  I was alone on the floor on Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. Most people had gotten an early start. I’d done my shopping early and was set for the evening. I’d take the Lynx over to Will’s the next day. He told me that as the newest member of the “gang”, a group of about seven people he knew in the area, I didn’t have to bring anything. I was still bringing a bottle of wine. It seemed wrong to show up with nothing.

  I turned off my computer and left the building. There were a few people on the first floor but not many.

  The next day, I got to Will’s easily. The Lynx wasn’t as busy as I would have expected, though I watched plenty of cars waiting at traffic lights and stop signs. The city was busy with people all heading out to eat too much.

  Perhaps picking up my hopeful mood, the blue sky was cloudless. Getting off at Will’s stop, I had perhaps a quarter mile walk down a narrow street. The neighborhood was clearly older, but well-kept. Though I walked through shadows of buildings, none of them moved. None of them felt evil.

  I sighed, smiling. For once I wasn’t terrified and practically running because I was afraid of a ghost.

  Still, I jumped when my phone buzzed with a message. I tried to laugh at myself but it sounded a bit off even to me. Around me, the apartments and condos all looked quiet, though it was nearly noon. I heard traffic from the main street but no cars drove down this one.

  I looked at the text. Ronette. A happy Thanksgiving text with a picture of her and her daughter posed with a pie. Ronette looked thinner than she had and paler, her smile more strained. Still, she was alive, having Thanksgiving with her family. After what we’d been through, I couldn’t expect that she wouldn’t have changed. Look at how I had changed after both my confrontations with Lucy.

  I sent back a quick response and continued my walk to Will’s. He lived in a townhouse, a narrow building with a single car garage, perhaps twenty years old, at least. If older, it had been kept up spectacularly. The red brick was bright and colorful, the cream siding a nice contrast. Each of the townhouses looked almost the same, but Will’s had a rather poorly drawn turkey that said, “Welcome Gang” on the front door.

  I rang the bell and waited. Will answered. I gave him the wine. In the hallway in front of him was a big coat tree and he directed me to hand up my stuff. Shoes littered the wood floor, the shallow scratches suggesting laminate.

  Just beyond was a door to a narrow half bath. Laughter came from the great room and kitchen. As I walked past the door to the bath, I heard a faucet drip. Just once.

  Authors Note

  Driving down I-5, there are plenty of rest stops, but not one of them is called Steely Woods. Technically, I believe they’re rest areas now but I stuck with the older form simply because it distanced anyone from believing I was describing any particular rest area.

  Having driven down that stretch of freeway far too often from Portland to Tacoma or Seattle, I’ve stopped at every single stop. During the day, they’re often manned by people with coffee and cookies, or they were pre-pandemic. At night, things get quieter and the stops get a little creepy, especially if you’re traveling alone.

  I’ve often wondered what could happen if I had to stop alone at a rest area. This book grew out of a short story I wrote about Traci’s encounter.

  I’ve never traveled from Charlotte to Raleigh on I-85, though I have lived in Charlotte. I’ve stopped at the rest area Traci and her companions passed near Concord, though I invented a second one not far away, just outside of Salisbury for Deborah to die in. I didn’t want to taint a rest area with even an imaginary death.

  Despite the fact that I know of no deaths or ghostly attacks, most experts warn that after dark, if you’re traveling alone, it’s better to stop at a staffed establishment like a gas station or fast food restaurant for a break than at a rest area. Ghosts might not be real, but human danger is always a possibility.

  About Bonnie Elizabeth

  Bonnie Elizabeth could never decide what to do, so she wrote stories about amazing things and sometimes she even finished them.

  While rejection stung her so badly in person, she spent most of her young life talking to cats and dogs rather than people, she was unusually resilient when it came to rejections on her writing, racking up a good number of them.

  Floating through a variety of jobs, including veterinary receptionist, cemetery administrator, and finally acupuncturist, she continued to write stories.

  When the internet came along (yes she’s old), she started blogging as her c
at, because we all know cats don’t notice rejection. Then she started publishing.

  Bonnie writes in a variety of genres. Her popular Whisper series is contemporary fantasy and her Teenage Fairy Godmother series is written for teens. She has been published in a number of anthologies and is working on expanding her writing repertoire.

  She lives with her husband (who talks less than she does) and her three cats, who always talk back.

  Stay in Touch

  Also by Bonnie Elizabeth

  The Frost Witch Saga

  October Snow

  November Frost

  December Storm

  Appalachian Souls

  Souls Lost

  Souls Broken

  The Ash Jericho Series

  An Inheritance to Die For

  A Discovery to Die For

  A Distraction to Die For

  The Whisper Novels

  Whisper Bound

  Taken by the Sound

  An Air of Suspicion

  Little Dog Lost

  Death Interrupted

  Down in Whisper

  A Haunting Whisper

  A Haunting Attraction

  Secrets Not Whispers

  Only Human

  Other Novels

  One Bad Wish

  Sun Spot Magic

  Ghosts from the Past

  Unnatural Secrets

  Shadows of Solstice

  Find them all at your favorite bookseller or check us out at MyBigFatOrangeCat.com