In the Woods

by Carrie Jones

  “I have to milk the cows,” I say, ready to throw the covers off.

  “No, Sam and a couple the deputies already did it,” she answers. “We slept through it.”

  “We did? They did?”

  “Will you sit still so I can put this tray on your lap?”

  I stop fidgeting. She lowers the tray with two plates of eggs, bacon, toast, and two glasses of orange juice. She’s put on the shorts Mom gave her. The bruises on her legs stand out, dark and ugly, as she carefully sits on the bed next to me.

  “My dad’s still not back. The cops are all gone,” she says. “Sam said he saw us sleeping up here when he came to get you for the milking. He moved the book and turned off the light and just let us sleep. When he went outside, the cops were pretty much finished, so a couple them offered to help.”

  “That was really nice of them,” I say around a mouthful of eggs. “Did you make this?”

  “No. Sam’s wife is here. She made it.” She nibbles at her toast. “It’s so cool how everybody just jumps in to help.”

  “Yeah,” I agree. “It is. Your neighbors would do that, wouldn’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. Her eyes get this faraway look. “I would like to think so, but I don’t know. Everyone here just seems so nice.”

  “They say country people are that way.”

  “I slept well,” she says after we eat for a while. “It seems like forever since I slept well, you know?”

  “Me too,” I say, but I’m not totally sure it’s true. Bits and pieces of Mr. Lawson Smith’s book must have influenced my dreams. “I found something in your dad’s book that might help us. I don’t know. It’s a really hard book to understand.”

  “What was it?”

  I look around and find where Mr. Davis put the book on the table beside my bed. I pick it up. It’s closed. I let it fall open, hoping it’ll go back to the little story about the Norwegian werewolf. I get close, but I have to thumb through a few pages to find it. I read the two sentences to her.

  “We have to find someone who is weak and tired today?” she asks.

  “Well, that would be nice. But I was thinking of my dad. We have to get the werewolf’s blood, if that guy was telling you the truth last night. I couldn’t find anything about that in this book. If we can figure out who it is, maybe we can kill him after his werewolf episode.”

  “Do you have any idea who it could be?” she asks.

  I shake my head, then sip orange juice. “I didn’t know any of those three men who are dead now. Whoever the werewolf is, he’s probably a stranger too. Otherwise this stuff would have been happening forever. It just started, though.”

  “Who would know? I mean, who would know if new people moved in around here?”

  “I don’t know. Mr. Davis usually knows that kind of stuff, but he didn’t know those guys Mom shot.”

  “Anyone else? Were there any farms for sale?”

  “No. Nothing right around here. But that thing has killed livestock all over the county. And who says it lives on a farm when it isn’t a werewolf? Maybe…” I pause, thinking.

  “What?”

  “Well, there is one place where new people show up all the time.”

  “Where?”

  “The college in Tahlequah.”

  “You think it’s a college student?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I just don’t know.”

  “That’s where my dad was going. He was going to visit a professor there.” Her voice is too quiet, completely unperky and un-Chrystal.

  We eat, finishing the last of our breakfast.

  “Any news about your dad?” I ask.

  Before she can answer, though, my phone rings. I grab it off my table. It’s Mom. She’s probably calling me back from when I tried to call her last night. She didn’t answer.

  “Logan? What is going on? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

  “It’s on the news. Our house is on the news right now. They say a man was killed on the road right outside our house and that thing was back in our yard and Chrystal was kidnapped. What’s going on?”

  As briefly as possible, I tell her what happened the night before.

  “Everyone’s all right?” she asks.

  “We’re fine. Chrystal has some bruises. David went home after it was all over. His mom was about to have a fit.”

  “I’m sure she was,” Mom says, and now her voice is calmer. Sadder.

  “How’s Dad?”

  “Not good. They—” She chokes on the words, then tries again. “They’ve had to put him on a respirator. He’s having some minor convulsions, too. They still don’t know what it is.”

  I’m quiet for so long that Mom has to ask if I’m still on the line. “I’m here,” I say. “I just don’t know what to say.”

  Downstairs, someone’s leaning on the doorbell. Mr. Davis’s booming, raspy voice is telling someone very firmly that no one in this house wants to talk to whoever is at the door.

  “How are Kelsey and Katie?” I ask.

  “Tired. Bored. Worried,” Mom answers. “Beth Thompson is going to come up and get them and take Katie back to her house so she can get some sleep today. Kelsey insists she has to come home for a bit. I want them back up here tonight, though. If…” She sniffles. “If we’re still here. I think you and Chrystal should get out of the house.”

  I want to tell her I don’t think it would do much good. The thing is locked onto Chrystal and, unless we could mask her scent, he would follow us wherever we go. “I’ll think about it,” I say.

  Mr. Davis is still arguing downstairs. Chrystal gets up and goes out of my room. A second later she comes back in. She’s limping a little. The bruises must be making her legs stiff.

  “Reporters,” she whispers.

  “I have to go, Mom. I’m going to try to come up there today, but we have to look for a cure, too.”

  “What do you mean?” Mom asks.

  I can’t tell her about getting werewolf blood. “In Mr. Lawson Smith’s books,” I answer. It’s not a total lie. I do want to look in more books to see if they say anything about such a cure. “Call me if there’s any change, okay?”

  “I will,” she promises.

  Chrystal goes to my window and looks out, then drops the curtain and quickly steps away from the window.

  “I have to go, Mom. Bye.” I barely wait for her to acknowledge me. I jump up and put an arm around Chrystal. “What?”

  “More reporters. One was aiming his video camera right at the window when I opened the curtain.”

  26

  CHRYSTAL

  “Reporters are not the worst things in the world, obviously, and I know some really, really nice ones back at home, but when you’re struggling with survival, it’s not who you want to see, you know? It’s just another hurdle we have to deal with—that we will deal with,” I tell Logan. “We can do this.”

  “Do what?” He’s so scruffy-looking from sleep. It’s adorable. I rough up his hair—I just can’t resist.

  “We’re going to go to the college, ask around about a guy with burns on his face, maybe a neck wound, or if he heals quickly in human form, just about someone who is acting funny. If we get stuck there, we’ll go to rooming houses in that T city. Tecalumeh?”

  He makes a face.

  “Do not make a face at me,” I tease. “It is an unpronounceable city!”

  He presses his lips together like he’s trying not to laugh. I toss him his pants and walk out of the room so he can get dressed.

  * * *

  Downstairs, after I greet Kelsey, I sign in to our phone account and check to see if Dad’s made any calls. He hasn’t. His data usage is practically nothing since we maxed it all out by using GoogleMaps and the GPS getting here. Dad never turned on his Find My iPhone because he thought it was a government conspiracy to keep tabs on people, or a big business conspiracy meant to tap into consumers’ habits for marketing purposes.

&
nbsp; But we have family sharing.

  I click on “all devices.”

  The green dot appears next to both of our phones and my computer.

  I select dad’s phone.

  “Holy crap,” I whisper.

  “What is it?” Kelsey’s leaning over my shoulder.

  “It says that Dad’s phone is still at the college. At that college in that town whose name I can’t pronounce.”

  “What?”

  I point at the screen. “That’s where he was going, so it makes sense.”

  “Maybe he forgot it there.”

  “Maybe,” I say, “or maybe he’s still there.”

  Swallowing hard, I turn to her. “Dr. Borgess said he never showed up, but what—”

  “What if he did?”

  “Exactly.”

  * * *

  I’m just putting on my clothes after a shower when I bristle.

  Something’s happening.

  I pull the door open a tiny bit and listen.

  There’s a shuffling noise downstairs.

  “Kelsey? Logan?”

  Nobody answers.

  But then there’s a hard banging like someone being pushed into a wall.

  I thunder down the stairs and into the kitchen. The computer’s missing. The tables are overturned and the back door is open.

  “Kelsey!” I scream, and push through the door and out to the back steps. “Kels!”

  In front of me, heading into the woods, is a man. Kelsey’s dangling over his shoulder. “No!” I yell, running after them.

  Two seconds later footfalls come racing around the house. There’s hollering and Logan and a cop have caught up to me and passed me, heading toward Kelsey. I can’t see her anymore. I can’t see anything.

  A motor roars in the woods, almost as terrifying as a beast.

  “No!” I say again, picking up the pace, but it’s too late.

  She’s gone.

  * * *

  Apparently, whoever it was waited until one of us was alone in the kitchen and the police presence was all positioned in the front of the house. They knocked Kelsey out after a scuffle, judging by her body position as the man ran to the woods. There was an ATV out there. They’ve followed the tracks to the road.

  “Why would they take her?” I say with a gasp.

  But we know the answer isn’t anything we want to hear.

  * * *

  After, Logan and I are lectured by the police about being careful, and questioned about why we’re such targets. After far too long explaining that we don’t freaking know, we slip out the back door and run to the truck. People turn and film us, but we don’t stop. It feels like we can’t ever stop, like if we stop, we’ll be dead.

  The cameras roll and the voices start.

  “Miss Lawson Smith! Is it true your father’s missing? Do you think he’s part of this? Did he abduct the Jennings girl?”

  “Mr. Jennings! Logan! What does it feel like to have your own dad mauled by the beast?”

  Logan tenses. I grab his hand and yank him toward his truck. He hauls open the door and I climb in first, avoiding the stick shift and then settling into the passenger seat. He follows me. Both windows are down and there are cameras filming from both sides. Logan is tugging keys from his jeans pocket. I turn to the camera outside my window.

  “We are all hoping,” I say in my best news camera voice, which is supposed to sound measured and sincere, I think, “for a speedy recovery for Mr. Jennings. We mourn the loss of the women who died last week and our local law enforcement officer who died so bravely in the line of duty.”

  They all stare at me. I try to quickly think of something else that will satisfy them so they can have their three-minute clips and thirty-second sound bites.

  “And we also pray for the quick location of the beast who did this to all of them.” I nod. “Thank you.”

  Logan makes the truck’s engine roar. Some keep filming. It seems like there are actually three film crews here, with three big cameras on various-sized cameramen and three white vans with call letters on the sides and mini satellite dishes on the tops.

  “Are you two a couple?” one asks. “You were holding hands.…”

  Logan swears under his breath and shoves the gearshift down. He guns the engine again, muttering more curses. The truck rumbles like a spaceship getting ready to lift off and take us into the land of zero gravity.

  “Try not to run anyone over,” I say as I pull the seat belt across my chest.

  “Wouldn’t be any loss,” he grumbles.

  “Logan!”

  He does a half laugh that’s mostly anguish, then slips from between the cameras and up the driveway. Then we’re off, away from his house, away from the reporters, away from the deaths, hopefully, away … away … away …

  * * *

  We hold hands as he drives. Logan has to keep letting go of my hand in order to shift. Every time he does, I check the phone the cops gave back, looking for a text from my dad, but there’s nothing. It takes everything I have to not keep calling him. Good news? He is now officially a missing person, so they are looking for him and the Subaru. Sort of. I can’t imagine it’s on the top of their list of things to do when there’s a cop-killing werewolf on the loose.

  “You okay?” Logan asks.

  “Pretty much,” I lie.

  “You okay?” he asks again.

  “Nope.”

  He shifts at a stop sign. The thing about letting go of a hand is that it’s so much better when you grab it again. It’s like the letting go makes you appreciate it more.

  “We’re going to find them,” I say.

  “Yep.”

  “We will.”

  “Yep.”

  Kierkegaard wrote: “Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.”

  My dad likes that quote. It’s on our fridge. He made me print it out and put it there when I read it to him the first time. I think I was, like, eight then. I stuck it on with a bass magnet.

  “Do you think evil exists, Logan?” I ask as we pass a doughnut shop and a car wash. Worry pushes the insides of me around, making everything feel misplaced. My nerves are jangled and every time I think about Kelsey, panic threatens to overwhelm me.

  “Yeah.” He glances over at me. So much pain lurks in his eyes. “Well, now I know it does.”

  I grab the handle above the window as we take a left turn. “I never used to believe in it. I thought it was just something we made up to make ourselves feel like we’re good. I figured you couldn’t have good without evil and that maybe people weren’t either, you know? Like we just were in the middle, but that wasn’t cool, or didn’t make for good stories, so we invented evil to have something to compare ourselves to.”

  “And now?” he asks as we pull into a student parking lot at the college. We don’t have a sticker. I hope it doesn’t matter, since it’s the summer.

  “Chrystal,” he says, like I’m forgetting something.

  “What?”

  He pulls into a parking space. “And now? What do you believe?”

  “I believe that beast is evil to us, but to him? Maybe we’re the evil ones, keeping him away from what he needs to survive.”

  “Seriously?” He looks at me like I’m totally crazy. “It took Kelsey. It killed so many people.”

  I unbuckle my seat belt. “Maybe. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I think I define evil as this: something that hurts me or my friends. Something that kills or tortures to get its own needs met. Something without a conscience.”

  “So like a tiger?”

  “No. Like a werewolf.”

  * * *

  The heat presses against my shirt, against my skin, against everything, really, as we get out of the truck and step into the parking lot. The campus sprawls in front of us. Brick buildings line the quads of grass. Concrete buildings hover behind them. Even though it is summer, some sort of programs or classes must be going on, because student-looking people walk by
alone or in groups. Some throw Frisbees. Some lounge on the grass, eyes closed. Some are reading, or pretending to.

  “Busy place,” I say.

  Logan points. “Those big, ugly buildings are campus housing.”

  “So, what do we do? Just sort of knock on people’s doors?”

  He makes a face. “I’m not sure.”

  I rub the sweat off my forehead. “I know you want to be looking for Kelsey. I do, too. I just think…”

  “My dad’s running out of time and this is our best bet. We find the werewolf, we save my dad, Kelsey, maybe find your dad.”

  “Exactly.” I cringe. “I’m so sorry all this is happening.”

  “Me too. But there’s no time to be sorry. We’ve just … We’ve got to get looking.”

  The first door we try needs a key card to get inside. We don’t have one, so we wait all of 30 seconds for someone who does. It’s a girl in short-shorts and a tank. She smiles at us and says, “I hate when I forget mine.”

  “It sucks,” I agree, sliding in behind her as Logan holds the door open for both of us.

  We walk up and down the halls. It smells like beer and pot, stale. There are little signs on people’s doors announcing who they are in big block letters. There’s hardly anyone in the lounges, and nobody matching the werewolf’s human description.

  “This isn’t going too well,” I tell Logan once we leave the building, which at least was air-conditioned.

  “I know.” He pulls his t-shirt away from his chest because the humidity is making it stick. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

  I don’t either. So we check out another building and another. It’s hard to imagine going to school here. It’s so big and empty all at once, but again, I guess that’s because it’s summer.

  “Are you going to college?” I ask Logan.

  “I’m applying. I’m a senior this year.”

  “Me too.”

  For a second I want to ask him where he’s thinking of going. Maybe we’re applying to the same places. But the truth is, I don’t know if we’re going to make it to college, the way things are progressing. We’ll probably end up dead. I grab his hand in mine and squeeze.