The Answers Are In The Forest

by Katie Kaleski

  After squatting for a while, my knees got sore, so I had to sit down on my feet. My feet started to fall asleep after a while, so I crawled on my hands and knees out of the bushes and walked alongside the neighbor’s house to try to get rid of the pins and needles. When I turned around to go back to the bush I hid behind, I saw Mr. Pullman come out of his front door. I flattened myself up against the side of the house because it was certainly too late for me to run and hide somewhere.

  Mr. Pullman got in his truck. It looked like some considerable huffing and puffing went on to hoist himself in there. Once he pulled out and turned down another street, I casually strolled across the road, climbing the couple of steps up to the porch, and checked out the lock. Luckily, it was an old one which would be no problem for me. From my jacket pocket, I pulled out the lock pick set my brother got me a couple Christmases ago. Plucking out the tension wrench and pick from the set, I got to work. Before I knew it, I had the lock popped and was letting myself into the house. When I walked in, a strong scent of mothballs and cat urine greeted me. Cat droppings sat sporadically strewn across the floor.

  I looked around for pictures or photo albums or anything that might help, but the front room looked like it wasn’t going to give me much, information-wise. It was just full of overstuffed, outdated furniture and cat houses atop of scratching posts, so I headed to the back of the house, finding the dining room, which had a table covered in plastic that looked like it hadn’t been used in years, but there was also a large buffet with lots of drawers. Seemed like a good place to start. The first few drawers I pulled open were full of old china wrapped in newspaper. I also found some cutlery and a rotary phone in a box. The last couple of drawers were full of more of what I was looking for—papers, old mail, pictures, and documents.

  For some reason, I knew a bunch of junk would somehow help me out. I found some bills for my landlord or his dad, Chester Pullman. I flipped through the few pictures but didn’t find much. They looked mostly like relatives or something. Nothing caught my eye.

  The documents in the drawers were loan papers, diplomas, and even a printed copy of a birth certificate. So maybe I was getting somewhere. One Maximus Friedman was born on August 6, 1938. That was about all I could collect from the dining room, so I moved on to the kitchen but found nothing but dirty dishes and tattered takeout menus in there.

  Next, I went upstairs. A narrow stairwell with stained carpeting and a bunch of junk collected on the side of each step led me up. At the top of the stairs, there was a room to each side with a bathroom in the middle. I chose to go left and ended up in what was Mr. Pullman’s bedroom.

  The room smelled of cigarette smoke and body odor. Through the grossness of his room, I happened upon a shoebox under his bed. I pulled the lid off and found some old pictures and newspaper articles. The first picture was clipped from a newspaper, and it was a middle-aged man holding a bowling trophy. The caption said Chester Pullman. I determined Chester was my landlord and not his dad.

  Next, I pulled out an obituary for a Milton Pullman who died in 1977 and was survived by his two children, Rebecca and Chester. His dad had passed a while ago, so maybe it was my landlord all along.

  The next newspaper clipping I pulled up was from October 23, 1948. It was about the tragic death of a young girl murdered by her father, Luca Friedman. Friedman, I saw that name on the copy of that birth certificate. After he strangled her to death, he shot his wife and then himself. The brother was witness to it all from the closet where he hid. The next article I found was also terribly sad. In October of 1968, the wife and daughter of Maximus Friedman were said to have died in a house fire. How did this Maximus Friedman fit into everything?

  Then I looked at the picture of Maximus Friedman and his family. The caption underneath identified his daughter, Sandra, age six months. My mom’s name was Sandra, but her maiden name wasn’t Friedman. Sticking my arm back under the bed, my hand came across something that felt like a book, so I pulled it out. It was an old high school yearbook. Flipping through it, I found a photo of Chester Pullman, and I also found one of Sandra Friedman. Goosebumps crawled up my arms. A younger version of my mother stared back at me. What the hell was going on? I didn’t have much time to process my newfound information because I heard a truck pull up in the driveway. Just my luck, Mr. Pullman came back already.

  I cursed under my breath and threw everything but the couple of articles back into the shoebox. Then I tucked the two newspaper articles in my back pocket and shot to my feet, unsure how I was going to get out of the house unnoticed. I glanced at the doorway but doubted I’d make it down the stairs and out the back door in time. Outside, I heard the truck door slam shut. My only real way out at that time was the window, so I strode over to it, lifting it up as I heard the sound of keys in the front lock. The window had a screen, and it squeaked as I shoved it up. Once the window was open, I threw one leg out and then my upper body. Luck was on my side because not too far below was the garage roof.

  Just as I pulled out my left leg, the window slammed down on it. Biting my lip, I tried to hold in my cry of pain. My ankle immediately started throbbing. Standing on the tiptoes of my right foot, I twisted my upper body toward the window and struggled to pull it up off my ankle. After a few yanks, I got it, pulled my leg out, and dropped to the garage roof with the window slamming behind me. As quickly as I could, I scooted to the edge of the roof, briefly looking below, and took a deep breath. No matter how I landed, my ankle was sure not to like it. I got onto my stomach, swung my legs over the side, and dropped to the ground, landing in a squatting position. I glanced up at the bedroom window to see if I was caught, but luckily, I was still in the clear.

  As I limped back to my bike, my phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize, but I answered it. It turned out to be Sarah.

  “What’s up?” I asked, stopping once I reached my bike.

  Without answering me, she asked, “Is Olive with you?”

  “No, why?” I dared to ask, my stomach already gurgling.

  “Um, we were just looking for her, and her mom is a little concerned.”

  “About what?” I asked, even though I somehow already knew.

  “She seems to be missing. Her car is parked in the driveway at her house, but she is nowhere to be found. I mean, it’s only been a couple of hours, but we’re kind of worried.”

  My gurgling gut knew what it meant. “Maybe she’s just out somewhere. Maybe somewhere she could’ve walked to,” I said, I thought more for my benefit than Sarah’s. I didn’t want to believe what I knew to be true, but Olive was going to be the next victim. There could only be so many coincidences in a day. But it didn’t seem Mr. Pullman had anyone with him, because when I snuck back across the street, his front door was wide open. He came back out, grabbed a bag of groceries, and went back in. If it was him, he must’ve hidden her somewhere other than his house.

  “I hope so,” Sarah said.

  Dear god, I hoped so too.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  By the time I got home, my ankle had begun to swell and turn some interesting colors. I threw some ice in a paper towel and sat in the living room, wanting to cry. Not because of my ankle, but because of Olive. I didn’t want her to meet the same fate as the others, and Rusck was missing too. If Mr. Pullman didn’t have her, did Rusck? And if so, what was he going to do with her? Was he working with the killer, like an apprentice?

  I held back my tears because I felt like I didn’t have time to waste. Things were going downhill so quickly. What could I do? Where could I look? I needed more answers, and as I sat and thought about it, I realized I hadn’t really searched my basement much. Perhaps there was something in all those cardboard boxes or a trace of blood on the floor. The children did, after all, meet in the woods behind my house, and it was where Timothy was more than likely killed. Something had to be there, so I made my way to the top of the basement stairs.

  I stood staring down the stairs, not because I was scared but be
cause I knew it would hurt. My ankle was seriously throbbing, so I sat on the top step and scooted down each one on my butt. Once at the bottom, I got up and did a sort of hobble-walk, touching the tip of my left foot to the ground. I hobbled on over to the back corner because if you hid secrets, you wouldn’t want them to be found, right? Starting in the back seemed to make the most sense. I began pulling the sheets off some of the boxes. The first few, I didn’t even want to touch. Mold and mildew crawled up the sides of them. I found a couple that weren’t as disgusting and started going through those.

  Boxes and boxes of old children’s clothes and toys were what I found. Maybe they belonged to Mr. Pullman and his sister. I was so engrossed with going through the boxes, I didn’t even hear somebody enter the basement.

  Someone called out my name. “Gabby.” It scared the crap out of me, and the dresses I held went flying in the air, and I screamed at a decibel I did not know I was capable of. Poking my head out from behind a box, I saw Rusck standing there. He wore a pair of dirty jeans and a mint green scrub top. I wasn’t sure if I should come out from behind the boxes or stay hidden, but I chose to come out because if he knew anything about where Olive was, I was going to make him tell me one way or the other.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, limping out from my protective stack of boxes.

  “Oh, good, you’re here.”

  “What do you want, Rusck?”

  “I came to help you. This needs to be figured out. I think we have to go to the police.”

  “Why now? You should be in the hospital.” He looked like he still needed to be there. His skin was pale, and he held his side, and dark circles hung under his eyes.

  “Creed gave my mom a note,” Rusck said, walking across the basement toward me.

  “Stay over there,” I told him, pointing at the bottom of the stairs, realizing I was cornered.

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Lots of things, Rusck, you being here the main one.”

  He tilted his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “You lied to me. You were sneaking around my house, looking in windows. You were a suspect in your brother’s disappearance. You took my phone. You stuck a dead rabbit in my locker, and now Olive is missing. And you act surprised that I’m here. You set it all up so you can get me here alone. Didn’t you?”

  Rusck didn’t respond at first. His mouth hung open, and he squinted at me. “Somebody stuck a dead rabbit in your locker? When?”

  “Oh, stop acting innocent. It was lying on your hoodie with its brains blown out, like I wasn’t going to figure it out. Who are you working with? Are you being trained or something?”

  “Let’s take this one thing at a time. You have some things mixed up here.” Rusck held his hands out as if trying to calm me down

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “I didn’t tell you about a couple of things because I didn’t know if you would trust me then. I was sneaking around that one night because it was what I always did before, and I saw that you and your mom moved in, and I was worried.”

  “So you spied on us?”

  “I was checking for the rabbits, something, I don’t know,” Rusck said, looking down at the ground. “What happened to Creed was my fault. I was the last one to see him before he disappeared. We, uh, we were driving home from school, and we had an argument over something totally stupid, so I pulled the car over, and I told him we weren’t going anywhere until we finished our argument, and he opened the car door and got out. After a couple of minutes, I realized he wasn’t getting back in, and I just left. I didn’t even go after him. And you know about as much as I do about what happened next, but if I could’ve prevented it from happening again, I was going to try, so…”

  “And what about my phone? Olive, and everything else?” I asked, thinking the spilling of his guts might’ve been some kind of ploy.

  “I don’t know anything about any of that, or the rabbit. You have to trust me. I would never want to hurt you, Olive, or anyone,” he said, placing his hand on his chest.

  “You were the one who told me the story about how you found a dead rabbit in your locker when you returned to school, and then the same thing happens to me. That seems like an awfully large coincidence.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. You just have to believe me.”

  “And why should I? The same day you go missing from the hospital, my friend disappears.”

  Rusck sighed and ran his fingers over the stitches on his cheek. “Let’s go to the police and tell them, and maybe they could tie Olive’s disappearance with whatever else is going on.”

  “I don’t know if I can trust you.”

  “Wait, here, look at this,” Rusck said, reaching into his back pocket. He pulled out a piece of folded paper and held it out to me. “Creed’s note.”

  I looked at Rusck and the note he held out. I wasn’t too sure if I should grab it from him or not. It could’ve been a trick. Rusck picked up on my hesitation and placed the paper on the ground and walked back a few steps. After waiting a couple of seconds, I went over to pick it up. I unfolded the paper, and on it was drawn a figure that looked like the ones in the back of my closet. Underneath was written

  They killed all seven of us.

  “Okay, and?”

  “I think it’s pretty major. There are seven kids and not six.”

  “You could’ve just drawn this, and that somebody might be you.”

  “But I didn’t draw it. How can I prove to you that I have nothing to do with any of this?”

  “And why now? Why all of a sudden, after so many months of silence from him that he should give your mom this note at just the exact right time?”

  “Because he knows we’re trying to help him and help the other kids.”

  We both stopped talking when we heard the front door upstairs open.

  “Crap,” I said under my breath. I was pretty certain it was Mr. Pullman coming to bust me.

  “Who’s that?” Rusck asked, his eyes bugging out. I wasn’t sure if his eyes could get any wider.

  “We should maybe get out of here.”

  “I’ll go check it out.”

  Before I could tell him no, we should go out the window, Rusck was halfway up the stairs in about three bounds.

  “Rusck,” I whispered after him, following him over, standing at the bottom of the stairs.

  He looked over his shoulder at me right as the basement door opened. Rusck ran up the steps, but when he got to the top, I saw a bat in the doorway, and it came down on the back of his head. Rusck crumpled and rolled down the steps, landing in a pile at my feet.

  “Rusck!” I screamed. I squatted next to him and heard the front door open and close again. A car screeched away outside. I called his name again and gently shook his shoulders, but he was out. He was still breathing, so after a few minutes, I began creeping up the stairs when a figure appeared in the doorway.

  “Gabby,” Mr. Pullman said.

  I began backing down the steps.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You have to ask? Why did you hit him?”

  “Who?” he asked, glancing down the stairs past me. “Oh, Jesus, we have to get the two of you out of here.”

  “No, please just tell us where Olive is.”

  “What? Oh no, that wasn’t me, sweetheart.”

  “What do you want?” I asked, looking up at Mr. Pullman, who wore a blue button down and red suspenders.

  “For you to come with me.”

  “Are you going to kill us?” I asked, my whole body trembling.

  “If I was, do you really think I’d tell you?” Mr. Pullman said as he walked down the steps that sounded like they’d crack at any moment from his weight.

  “You’re not going to get away with this. None of this.”

  “You need to help me lift him.”

  “No.”

  Mr. Pullman reached behind him and pulled out a gun.

  “Okay. Oh my g
od, please don’t shoot us. I won’t tell anybody anything. I swear.”

  “Tell me what you think you know.” He scratched at his forehead with the barrel of the gun.

  “You’re helping my mom’s dad or continuing what he started. You knew her in high school. Maybe that’s how you found out about her father and wanted in on the fun. And this house was the hub of it all or something, and now you’ve dragged Rusck into it too.”

  “You think your friend here is involved?”

  “Maybe, or I did.”

  “Boy, I wouldn’t want you for a friend,” Mr. Pullman chuckled and tucked his gun back into his pants. “You’d think he’d be involved in something so horrible? Why would you ever think that?”

  “I don’t want to stand around here and chitchat with you, okay? I just want to know what’s going on and what’s going to happen,” I said, looking down at the motionless Rusck.

  “What’s happening is…that you guys are coming with me.”

  I let out a loud sigh.

  “And now, young lady,” Mr. Pullman said, reaching for his gun again, “grab his feet.”

  “No, fine. I’ll help.”

  “Now, don’t go getting any funny ideas,” Mr. Pullman said. “I’m trying to protect you kids.”

  I nodded, and Mr. Pullman pulled Rusck up from his crumpled pile, wrapping his arms around Rusck’s chest, under the armpits. I grabbed his ankles.

  Mr. Pullman counted to three, and we started on our way up the stairs, the steps groaning under all the weight. Rusck’s arms flapped at his sides, and his head hung limply back as we carried him up, step by step.