The Woman in the Woods

by John Connolly

  “Drawings of what?”

  “Of the book’s surroundings. Of the room it’s in. This room, for example.”

  “Wait, they change?”

  “I told you it would sound crazy.”

  “Sounding crazy isn’t the same thing as being crazy.”

  “It’s close enough.”

  “I guess it is.”

  Parker turned to the copyright page of the book. There, as Leila had said, was the date: 1908. A printer’s error? Wasn’t that the kind of detail that made a book more valuable?

  “Look at the text,” said Leila.

  Parker did as she asked, and noticed that some words, and even the individual letters within them, were so jumbled as to render the stories unintelligible, as though a catastrophic error had been made during the setting process.

  “If you look at them again tomorrow, they could be different,” said Leila.

  “Different how?”

  “The letters may have rearranged themselves again. Look long enough, and you’ll begin seeing messages. I thought it was kind of cool at first—freaky, but cool—until . . .”

  “Until?”

  “Until they formed the words ‘Look Away, Cunt’ on page fourteen. I stopped opening the book after that.”

  She bit at a thumbnail.

  “And then there are the illustrations.”

  CHAPTER

  XCIX

  Billy Ocean hadn’t been in Hogie’s in a long time, not since he was old enough to drink legally. Hogie’s was one of those bars where the lights were always low, the music always loud, and people tended to mind their own business unless forced to do otherwise, which was rarely the case. It lay between Harmony and Corinna in southern Somerset County, and attracted little passing trade due to the unprepossessing nature of its exterior, which was matched by the unprepossessing nature of its interior, and its restrooms in particular, which were notoriously insalubrious. But a Bud Light in Hogie’s was a buck-fifty all day, and the food wasn’t so bad if you didn’t let it linger in your mouth.

  Billy found Quayle sitting at a table away from the bar, a glass of clear liquor before him. Billy identified him by his dress sense. It was possible that someone else had previously worn a velvet vest and knitted silk tie in Hogie’s, but if so, it was far enough in the past for the trauma to have faded from the bar’s collective memory. Quayle didn’t look like he belonged in Hogie’s, but neither did he appear particularly troubled by his surroundings. Some people had a way of colonizing spaces, adapting them to form sanctuaries for themselves. Quayle was such a man.

  Billy took a seat at the table, and a waitress came by for his order. He noticed that she barely registered Quayle’s presence, and even when she did, her gaze slid from him like water from an oiled boot. Whatever vibes he was giving off, they weren’t good.

  “So you’re British?” said Billy.

  “I think of myself as English first, British second. It’s a way of keeping the Scots and Welsh at a distance, never mind the Irish.”

  Billy was confused, but didn’t care enough one way or the other to seek further clarification.

  “What are you doing over here?”

  “I’m holidaying.”

  “You’re on vacation?”

  “If you prefer.”

  Again, Billy didn’t really give a fuck.

  “So,” Billy said, once his beer had arrived, “who blew up my truck?”

  “A man named Charlie Parker. He’s a private investigator.”

  Billy consumed this information with a mouthful of beer.

  “I know who he is. And you figure this how?”

  “Because it’s common knowledge, or relatively so. The police are aware of it, and I believe your father is, too. But the police won’t do anything about it because they have no proof, and there also appears to be a don’t-touch rule when it comes to Parker. As for your father, well, I can’t say. Perhaps he’s concerned you might be tempted to do something foolish, and put yourself at risk as a consequence.”

  “Why did Parker pick on me?”

  “Pick on.” What an interesting choice of words, Quayle thought. They told him all he needed to know about the man sitting opposite.

  “He keeps company with a colored man named Louis. My understanding is that this Louis found certain aspects of your truck’s décor objectionable, and Parker assisted him in registering what was, all things considered, a forceful protest.”

  Billy stood.

  “I need to make a call,” he said.

  He went outside and called Dean Harper, his father’s former aide. They hadn’t spoken since Harper’s firing, but Billy was less fearful of Harper when he didn’t have to face him in person.

  “What do you want?” Harper asked, when Billy identified himself.

  “To get you your job back.”

  “Least you can fucking do, seeing as how you lost it for me.”

  “My old man misses you.” This was true. Billy’s father regretted letting Harper go, but he didn’t like backtracking on a decision. He thought it made him seem weak. For Harper, though, he might be persuaded to make an exception. “It won’t take much to talk him around.”

  “And you’re doing this out of the goodness of your heart?”

  “It’s by way of an apology. I only want a word in return.”

  “What word would that be?”

  “Yes or no.”

  “And the question?”

  “My truck: Was Charlie Parker the name you heard?”

  No reply, or not the one he wanted.

  “Jesus, Billy,” said Harper, “you got to let this go.”

  “You want that job back, or don’t you?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Then answer the question.”

  “Yes. The answer is yes. But Billy—”

  Billy didn’t wait to hear the rest. He killed the connection and went back inside to rejoin Quayle.

  “Seeking confirmation?” said Quayle as Billy sat down.

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s always advisable to secure a second opinion. And what did you learn?”

  “That you might be telling the truth.”

  “That I am telling the truth.”

  “Okay, yeah, so you are. What do you want in return: money?”

  “No, I just want to help you retaliate.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because Parker is in my way, and I’d like to see him distracted.”

  “Getting in the way of your ‘vacation’?”

  “That’s right. I’m also prepared to compensate you for your time. You can put the money toward a new truck, perhaps one with a more subdued sense of ornamentation.”

  Billy grinned. “Seems to me that you might be up to no good here. Are you a bad man?”

  Quayle smiled back, and the lights of the bar gleamed like dying stars in the void of his eyes. “Trust me when I say that you have no conception.”

  Billy’s smile faded.

  “What kind of retaliation did you have in mind?” he asked.

  “Parker took something from you that you valued. I suggest you do the same to him. A little bird told me that he owns a vintage Mustang. He’s very fond of it. Why not burn it?”

  Billy knew the car. He’d seen it around town. Burning it seemed like a very good idea. It wasn’t worth as much as his truck, but Billy was prepared to make allowances for sentimental value.

  “I have a friend outside,” said Quayle. “She’s quite an expert at destruction. Why don’t I introduce you to her? After all, no time like the present . . .”

  CHAPTER

  C

  Leila Patton powered up her laptop.

  “Look,” she said. “These are some of Rackham’s original illustrations for the 1909 edition.”

  They were not what Parker had anticipated. He was, he supposed, more familiar with the pictures that featured in young children’s collections of fairy tales, with their bright primary colors, their knight
s on horseback and wolves in bonnets. Rackham’s work bore no relation to that tradition beyond the thematic. Here the colors were muted, the characters sensual, and an ambience of the ethereal, the sinister, infused all, particularly the depictions of forests and trees, their trunks like hides, their branches the limbs of grasping, emaciated creatures.

  “Impressive, right?” said Leila.

  “They’re beautiful. Unsettling, but beautiful.”

  “You haven’t even started being unsettled yet.”

  She pulled up a Rackham illustration from the tale of “Snow-White and Rose-Red,” in which the two young women of the title stood beside a great fallen tree with twisted, exposed roots, facing a dwarf trapped by the weight of the trunk. The rendering of the scene reminded Parker of Karis Lamb’s gravesite.

  “Okay,” said Leila, “you should be able to find the equivalent illustration in the book.”

  Parker flipped through it until he found the correct plate.

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Now compare it to the one on the screen.”

  He did. They appeared similar, apart from a slight blemish to the background of the plate in the book, where Rackham had faded the forest into darkness.

  “They look alike.”

  “Hold on.”

  Leila went to a closet beside the piano and removed a magnifying glass from one of the drawers. Parker suddenly felt very old. Apparently he now needed a magnifying glass to identify what a twentysomething could see with the naked eye. His despair obviously showed on his face, because Leila told him not to feel too bad.

  “I had trouble spotting some of them at the start. And they alter. Like I said, it’s been a while since I opened the book.”

  Parker took the glass and held it over the blemish. Staring back at him from the depths of the forest was the mutilated child glimpsed back in Portland. Its face was half hidden, and only a suggestion of its body was visible in the murk, but it was the same figure.

  “I’ve checked so many versions of the plate on the Internet,” said Leila. “That . . . thing is not in any of the others, only this one.”

  Parker looked at the illustration again. It seemed that more of the child was visible now—he could see its head more clearly, and part of its right leg—except its position had altered, and it was now closer to the fallen tree before it.

  Leila was watching him.

  “You can say it,” she said.

  “It gives the impression of movement.”

  “That’s a very noncommittal way of putting it.”

  “It could be that I find the alternative unappealing.”

  Leila took the glass from him and used it to peer at the plate, although she remained careful not to touch the book itself. Parker studied the figure once more before turning the page and hiding it from view.

  “And you never discussed this with anyone else?” he said. “You never felt the urge to seek help?”

  “With what, the illustrations in a book? I don’t think you can dial 911 for a literary emergency.” She was smiling, but Parker could tell she was close to tears. The secrets she’d kept hidden were slowly being revealed, and the effect was like lancing a boil. “And I’ve been scared for so long. I was afraid I was going insane, and that was bad, but then I realized I wasn’t, which was worse. I wish I’d never agreed to keep the book.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Because Karis said that if Vernay managed to track her down, she didn’t want him to get everything. I think she hoped the book might be a way of bargaining, if worse came to worst. You know: it would be returned to Vernay if he let Karis and the baby go.

  “And because I thought it was just a book, an ordinary book. It didn’t matter what some childfucker believed. It was a collection of fairy tales with a couple of extra pages sewn in, and they were blank. If having it stolen screwed up his life, then good.

  “But to be safe, Karis also asked Dobey to find her a decoy copy. She didn’t put it that way, and she didn’t tell him why she wanted it. She just needed him to track down a similar edition, and quickly, so he did. I remember it was couriered overnight. Dobey cut some deal for it, but it was still expensive. Karis paid, though. She insisted on it.”

  “And she brought the decoy with her when she left Cadillac?”

  “Yes, although Dobey thought she took both versions. He would never have agreed to my holding on to the original, and I don’t think he’d have wanted to hold on to it himself either. But then, he knew more about Vernay than I did.”

  Parker was turning the pages of the book before him while Leila spoke.

  “Does every plate contain an extra element?”

  “Most of them.”

  “Show me.”

  Leila did. She had to take a break to help her mother to the bathroom, and afterward to prepare a fresh pot of tea, but by the end Parker was under no illusions about the strangeness of the book. Hidden among Rackham’s illustrations were hybrid beings reminiscent of the nightmares tempting St. Anthony in the works of Grünewald and Rosa; of the tormenters in Signorelli’s Damned Cast into Hell; of the haunters in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.

  And as the intruders in the plates took form beneath the magnifier, Parker began to feel this might be no coincidence, and that these earlier artists had stumbled upon elemental images buried deep in the human consciousness, a shared memory of that which might seek to hunt us in the final darkness, a glimpse of all that observed humanity from behind the glass, waiting to devour.

  But the beasts that moved through the pages of the book in Parker’s hands were more imminent than any visions captured by artists. They were not simulacra, but neither were they real; rather, they represented the potential usurpation of one reality, its slow infection by another. Parker was very glad Leila Patton had given him gloves with which to hold the book; he also believed she was wise to have hidden it away, and not to have looked at it too often. To expose oneself to it was to risk contamination—and ultimately, perhaps, one’s own corruption.

  But the book held one more surprise for Parker, and an unwelcome one. The illustration accompanying “The White Snake” showed a servant in conversation with a fish, a forest of white birch as the backdrop. From among the trees, a blurred face of yellow and black stared out at them.

  “Uh, that’s new,” said Leila. “What’s wrong with its face?”

  Parker positioned the magnifying glass, but already he had a premonition of the answer. It was a head formed entirely of insects.

  “Wasps,” said Parker.

  And the God of Wasps appeared to blink.

  * * *

  IN THE GARDEN OF her grandparents’ home, Sam spoke to Jennifer.

  “What is Daddy searching for?”

  the child

  “No, there’s more.”

  what do you see?

  “Stories. Something old in the shape of a man, but empty inside. A child, but not a child.”

  Jennifer raised a hand and flicked it at the air, as though to brush away the unwanted attention of an insect.

  “And wasps.”

  * * *

  THE BOOK WAS CLOSED once again, the figures within now concealed, and those without protected from their gaze.

  “What is the God of Wasps?” Leila asked.

  “Some call it the One Who Waits Behind the Glass,” Parker replied. “To others, it’s the Buried God. Are you religious?”

  “I don’t go to church much, but I guess I believe in something greater than myself.”

  “Then the Buried God is its opposite.”

  “The devil?”

  “The Not-God. Or a Not-God. Worryingly, there may be more than one.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I hear whispers.”

  Parker placed the book back in the shoe box.

  “Do you want me to take this away?” he asked.

  “I think so. I’ve kept my promise to Karis for long enough.” She worried at her bottom lip. “I h
ate that her life ended the way it did, with her all alone in a forest.”

  “She wasn’t alone,” said Parker. “Someone was with her at the end, someone who cared enough to bury her and take care of her child.”

  “And you think she gave birth to a son?”

  “That’s what we believe.”

  “It might be better if he wasn’t found.”

  “I’m not sure that’s an option any longer, not with what’s been happening. The boy is at risk of becoming collateral damage in the hunt for this book. We just have to hope we find him before someone else does—like Vernay.”

  “It’s not Vernay who’s looking for the child, or the book.”

  “How can you be sure?” asked Parker.

  “Vernay’s dead.”

  “Because of what you read on the forums?”

  “That, and because of something Karis said. She told me she hoped they’d kill Vernay for losing the book. If no one came asking after her, she said, then I could take it that Vernay was dead. And no one did.”

  “Until recently.”

  “I guess.”

  “You kept her secrets well.”

  “I didn’t have a lot of choice, but now Dobey is dead because of it. What will you do with the book?”

  “I don’t know yet. One thing’s for sure: I won’t be keeping it in the house.”

  “That seems wise. Is there anything more you want to know?”

  “Tell me,” Parker said, “about the night Dobey died.”

  CHAPTER

  CI

  Pallida Mors passed through the silent rooms of Holly Weaver’s home, absorbing the details of a domesticity that would always be denied her. She considered burning the house to the ground. She thought about waiting for Holly, her father, and the boy, and killing each of them: the old man first, followed by the child, so that Holly could watch them bleed out before her.

  She pushed the images aside. Quayle had instructed her only to find the book and leave. Once it was in their possession, they could put this country behind them forever.

  Mors entered Daniel Weaver’s room and went straight to the bookshelf. There, on the second row, was a worn copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, Constable, 1909. It didn’t bear the bookplate inside the front cover, but it had the blank pages, and Mors could see no sign of any other copy. But the year was wrong, and someone had added a handwritten and carefully illustrated story.