The Woods
Page 1
251 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010
Text copyright © 2019 by R.L. Toalson
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Yellow Jacket and associated colophon are trademarks of Little Bee Books.
Manufactured in the United States of America MPL 0819
First Edition
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Toalson, R.L. (Rachel L.), author.
Title: The woods / R.L. Toalson.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY: Yellow Jacket, [2019]
Summary: After a tragic explosion causes twelve-year-old Lenora to lose her family, she goes to live with her estranged uncle at his estate, where, in spite of being warned against it, she explores the surrounding woods, hoping to find a way to be reunited with her family.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019014013 | Subjects: | CYAC: Grief—Fiction. | Death—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Forests and forestry—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic. | JUVENILE FICTION / Family / General (see also headings under Social Issues). | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Death & Dying. | Classification: LCC PZ7.1.T587 Wo 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019014013
ISBN 978-1-4998-0957-2
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FOR EVELYN AND JANE—
BE FIERCE AND BRAVE AND STEADFAST
AND REMEMBER YOU ARE LOVED
—RLT
In the beginning, he was there.
A wispy form, but a form nonetheless. He hovered over the woods, and they curved around his presence, trees bowing as though in the company of royalty, wonders rising from the ground, enchantments crackling into being. The woods were his. But he would share.
They were too magical, too wondrous, too full of delightful fascinations to keep to himself.
The first to see the woods and its wonders was a child.
April 16, 1947
The most difficult thing to do in the face of great scientific discoveries (or those that defy science entirely) is to keep silent. But I know what happens when one does not—the way they look at you, the things they whisper, the titles they can strip and burn on an altar of “mad.” If my brother were here, they might take note. But I am a man of science. A man of science cannot believe the things I believe. A man of science cannot have seen the things I have seen.
I am not mad; I have never been a victim of madness, only a keen observer and relentless detective uncovering the answers to mysterious questions and unexplainable phenomena. They will know this soon enough.
My army is nearly finished. I am in need of a few slight adjustments, perhaps a month more of tinkering, and my life’s work will be complete.
And when it is complete, I will find my son. I will destroy the woods and whatever lies within them. And I will protect Stonewall Manor and its residents—my family—forever after, as I promised my mother.
—excerpt from Richard Cole’s Journal of Scientific Progress
Contents
THE DAY THE WORLD EXPLODED
1
2
3
4
5
6
STONEWALL MANOR, NACOGDOCHES
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
QUESTIONS AND MORE QUESTIONS
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
THE MADMAN WALKS
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
INTO THE WOODS
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
DEEPER INTO THE WOODS
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
THE OPEN DOOR
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
GOODBYE
71
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
THE DAY THE WORLD EXPLODED
1
April 16, 1947, was already shaping up to be the worst day in history, and Lenora had only just begun it.
Every now and again, Mother and Father would let Lenora or her sister, Rory, or her brothers, John or Charles, take a day off from school while the others attended as usual. They said it was good for the mind and heart to play, instead of working all the time. They said, too, that it was good for a child to spend one-on-one time with parents. They called these special occasions Fun Days—not all that creative, but efficient, as Mother and Father always were. Whoever was privileged enough to stay home for a Fun Day was often taken to the theater down the road for a noonday showing of whatever was playing, or to the ice-cream shop on the corner, or even, sometimes, out to the port of Texas City. The ships docking there came from all over the world, carrying all sorts of cargo, and watching them—touring them sometimes, if she was lucky—was one of Lenora’s favorite things to do.
Today was Lenora’s birthday. She was supposed to have a Fun Day.
Instead, John and Charles had woken up with a rattling cough, and Rory, never one to be left out, had begun coughing as well. Her cough sounded nothing like the one shaking from her brothers, but she’d cleverly convinced Mother that she was sick, too, and Mother had agreed to let them all stay home. All, that is, except for Lenora, who was not sick and would not pretend to be.
She did not like lies.
So even though it was Lenora’s birthday, she was stuck in the old schoolhouse, Danforth Elementary, on the second floor, where the sixth graders gathered for instruction every weekday morning at eight.
She sulked.
Earlier, Mother had waved Lenora toward the candy apple–red Chevrolet waiting out front. Father sat behind the large brown steering wheel, staring out his window toward the dock, where a thin plume of yellow smoke puffed up from one of the ships.
Lenora had tried to argue with Mother about going to school—it was her birthday, after all—but Mother had said they would reschedule their Fun Day and quickly pushed her out the door with a “Father is waiting, dear.”
When Lenora climbed in the car, she looked back toward the front window of their tidy white house. Rory was standing between the blue curtains, sticking out her tongue. Lenora had fumed all the way to school, and the fuming did not end when Father walked her to the red doors and kissed the top of her head and said, “I’m sorry you had to go to school on your birthday, angel, but try to have a good day. I love you.” In fact, his words made it worse.
She hadn’t said anything in response so that Father would know she was more than just a little upset. She deserved two Fun Days for this.
The warm, sticky air of their seaport town had made it hard for her to breathe. She hadn’t looked back as she climbed the concrete stairs into her school.
She was still fuming in the hard wooden seat affixed to her desk. She drew
random pencil lines across a piece of paper. Class had not yet started.
Most of her classmates, while waiting for Mrs. Easter to clap her hands and order them into their seats, as she did every morning so that lessons could begin, were clustered at the windows that lined the schoolroom wall. The light streaming in cast shadows on their backs, so Lenora could not tell who was who. They were exclaiming over the same plume of smoke Father had pointed out on the drive in. They were calling it beautiful. Lenora didn’t know how anyone could call anything beautiful on this very disappointing day.
Her stomach knotted, and she rested her hands on her arms.
“Come look at the pretty smoke, Lenora!” said her best friend, Emma. Emma had not even wished her happy birthday. Lenora looked at her friend, who was dressed in a pretty white dress with tiny blue flowers on it. Her black hair spilled over the puffed sleeves. A blue bow was nestled in her hair, on the right side.
“I’ve already seen it.” Lenora tried to make her voice something more than a grumble, but disappointment chewed through her words.
“But it’s even prettier than it was,” Emma said, pulling Lenora up from her seat. And Lenora didn’t have it in her to resist. She followed Emma to the windows.
Even Mrs. Easter was at the window now, pointing out the different colors, quizzing her students about what they thought might be the origin of the lovely shades. Lenora felt her stomach tighten again. Surely it was not a good thing to see smoke pouring from the dock. Her father had mentioned a few days ago that several of the ships at the port carried flammable materials. As the city’s volunteer fire chief, he had been on high alert since the ships had docked.
But Lenora did have to admit that the smoke was beautiful. The thickening cloud had turned a deep yellow-orange color now. Lenora tilted her head. Someone jostled her, and she stepped back, but she could not tear her eyes from the smoke. She felt sick, worried. She couldn’t say why.
The smoke was unlike anything she had ever seen before. It was beginning to turn the land around it hazy, like a fog had moved in. Maybe she felt uneasy because she had been the only one left out of her family’s day off from school when it was her birthday. Rory would accompany Father to the dock when he went to explore the source of the smoke, since she was not really sick. She would be able to see the fire.
Lenora would like to see the fire.
Her classmates were still offering guesses as to the source of the smoke. Most of them agreed that it originated from one of the ships docked at the harbor. There were several: the SS Grandcamp, a large ship that came from France; the SS High Flyer, docked right next to the Grandcamp; and the SS Wilson B. Keene. Father had not told her what the ships were carrying.
One of Lenora’s classmates suggested that perhaps the smoke originated from the railroad office, but Lenora didn’t think this made the least bit of sense. Why would yellow-orange smoke pour from a railroad office that had been there since long before she was born? Nothing like this had ever happened in Texas City, though the town was what the local newspaper had recently called “the heart of the greatest industrial development of the South.”
Lenora and all those who lived in Texas City were somewhat accustomed to hearing small explosions every now and then, because the city was home to two large chemical plants: Union Carbide and Monsanto. But never had there been anything like this—a cloud of smoke without an explosion announcing it. And never, ever had the smoke been so lovely.
The knot in her stomach tightened.
Lenora walked back to her desk and sat down, her chin propped on her fist. She would rather be at home. They were not even learning anything today. They were staring out the windows making educated guesses. Would it have been so terrible to let her stay home on her birthday?
Lenora smoothed her skirt around her. Mother had bought her a new dress for her birthday—a pretty green-blue and white-checkered one with a perfectly white collar lining the top. Lenora was not good at keeping her collars white, and Mother had warned her about this one when she’d pulled the dress from its elegant wrapping this morning. The dress was expensive, Mother had said. She had bought it because it was the same color as Lenora’s eyes, and she’d thought it would look lovely on her. But Lenora had to promise to keep the collar clean this time.
The dress had been folded up over a brand-new pair of shoes of the same color as her green-blue dress, made of smooth suede. They even had a small heel on them, which had ignited Rory’s jealousy. Mother did not permit heels on shoes until a girl turned twelve, which was Lenora’s age today.
Lenora smiled a bit at the memory of Rory’s envy. And then she frowned. Rory was at home.
“Lenora dear,” Mrs. Easter said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m not feeling well,” Lenora said, which was true. She wasn’t sick, but the knot in her stomach was giving her some trouble.
Mrs. Easter crossed the classroom to Lenora’s desk and put the back of her hand on Lenora’s forehead. “Should I call your mother?”
And that was when the world exploded.
2
First it was the windows, shattering into millions of pieces that flew every which direction. Then it was her classmates, screaming in terror. And then it turned silent, while students toppled to the ground everywhere Lenora looked. She couldn’t breathe. She watched Mrs. Easter fly in a forward trajectory as though something had pushed her from behind.
Lenora gripped her desk and felt the blast ripping her from her seat. She curled her foot around the chair leg—a hook of sorts. Mrs. Easter landed several feet away, on her back. She mouthed something, but Lenora could not hear her. Mrs. Easter scrambled to her feet, blood trickling from a wound on her cheek and another on her forehead. She frantically beckoned to the students, who all lay or stood stunned. No one heard her or no one was listening, because they all remained rooted in place, some on their backs, some on their stomachs, some still standing with their mouths and eyes wide.
A faraway pop sounded, and then another tremor shook the ground, and a boy pointed to a window that had not yet shattered but was spidering into cracks. Lenora followed the boy’s finger.
The dock. The dock was concealed by a thick black curtain of smoke.
The dock had exploded.
Father.
Mother.
Rory.
John.
Charles.
A faint whistling sound penetrated the silence, and that seemed to be what set the world in motion again. A wave of students rushed toward the dark stairwell, pushing and shoving and trampling those who had fallen. It was chaos, but it was nothing compared to what Lenora feared was happening at the port, veiled by the black smoke. She moved, too, pressing against the other bodies, trying to slip through them, but she was stuck in the narrow passageway until the sea of students from every classroom in the school—kindergarten through sixth grade—began its descent. Lenora tried to find order in the madness, but she could not. The uneasiness in her stomach pulsed. She slid down the stairs more than she stepped, but she managed to hit the ground on her feet.
Father.
Mother.
Rory.
John.
Charles.
She had to find them. She had to make sure they were not hurt.
The school was a few miles from the town, but Lenora took off running anyway. Students bent all around her, emptying their stomachs. She had to stop and do the same. As soon as the heaving finished, she took off running again, straight toward the town and its gray cloak of invisibility.
Screams and shouts billowed behind her. The sound in the world had returned full force, and Lenora almost wished it hadn’t. Students yelled things she did not want to consider, like “Are they all dead?” “We’re gonna die!” and “Are the explosions done?”
Lenora—and many others—ignored the shouts and questions and continued running. Her lungs ached, but she did not quit; she had never been a quitter. And now she had to find her family. She had to make sure they
were not hurt in the blasts.
The scent of smoke and sulfur and singed wood, metal, and flesh trapped her breath so it came in halting gasps. She could smell the raging fires, but she could not yet see them.
Father would take care of the fires. He would save the day. He was a hero.
***
By the time she reached town, Lenora’s body felt weak and winded. Her legs burned and her feet had numbed in the lengthy sprint, but she could not stop now. Another explosion shook the ground, and the whistling sound sharpened. She heard—even felt—large objects hit cement and grass with clangs and thumps. She took another step, but a bare foot lay in front of her, severed from its body. Her stomach churned.
Her heart lurched.
She could see now. She could see what awaited her in the town, and it made her knees buckle and her vision blacken. She put her hands on her thighs and hung her head and tried to remember how to breathe.
Bodies scattered the ground. Dead bodies. Pieces of bodies. A severed head, staring up at the sky. Two legs that did not belong to the same body, crisscrossed in an X. An arm with a ring on the third finger.
What about her family?
Father.
Mother.
Rory.
John.
Charles.
Where were they? Lenora fought to keep her eyes open, to keep her lungs grasping at air, to keep her legs moving forward, stepping gingerly over the bodies of people she did not recognize because of the thick film of soot covering their skin. She did not bend to wipe it away from their faces. She had no time to waste.
Her family must be alive. She would not find them here on the ground.
A popping and hissing sound drew her eyes to the left. Some electrical lines had fallen and were slapping the pavement and jetting fire in short blasts. The sulfuric smell snaked into her nose, unfolded in her throat, and swelled. She coughed. Some bits of wood rained down to her right, bouncing off the ground and then settling on a body bleeding from the ears and nose.
Lenora stood in the middle of the chaos and slowly turned around. She did not know what to do or where to go or how to find her family. She did not know how to process the wreckage that looked as though the entire town had been destroyed. She did not know how to keep breathing.