The Clearing

by Tom Deady

  “You fainted, honey. Are you okay?”

  Hannah nodded and tried to sit up. She was still a little unsteady but remembered her last thought before she fainted. She saw Officer Benson standing beside Dad.

  “Did you find Jacob?” Hannah’s voice was crackly, her throat sandpapery. Dad handed her a glass of water and she drank greedily, savoring the relief on her parched throat.

  “Jacob wasn’t home yet. No sign of him or his car. I had them run his plate and issue a BOLO.”

  Hannah had watched enough cop shows to know that meant “be on the lookout.” She wanted to cry but had no tears left.

  “Dad, Officer Benson, what are we going to do?”

  Dad started to respond but Officer Benson cut him off. “We aren’t going to do anything. You’re going to stay out of this and let me do my job.”

  Hannah bit her lip, unsure she should say anything.

  Screw it. This is Ashley, and now Jacob. She realized how much she’d come to like Jacob in just a short time.

  “What if some of the police are part of whatever is going on?”

  “Hannah.” Dad gave her a withering look.

  “It’s all right, Mr. Green.” He knelt in front of her, so his eyes were at the same level as hers. “Hannah, I understand your concern, but at this point it looks like the person that put that idea in your head is the one that’s part of it. I’ve probably breached protocol a couple of dozen times already, letting you tag along to Mrs. Bayole’s. I’d appreciate your cooperation on this. It won’t help if you can’t trust me and hold something back.”

  Hannah nodded. He had let her tag along. Maybe he did that because he knew we wouldn’t find anything. She didn’t know what to do. She just wanted Ashley back.

  An idea struck her, and she started to speak, but decided against it.

  “You’re right, Officer Benson, I’m sorry. Please find Ashley and Jacob.”

  Benson spoke with Dad for a few more minutes, giving him his card before he left.

  “I promise I’ll do everything I can, we’ll find them.”

  Benson shook hands with Dad and gave Hannah a tip of his cap, which she found endearing. She almost called after him but held back. She watched him drive away before turning to Dad.

  “Do you think we should try to call Ashley’s parents or wait a while?”

  Dad sighed. “I already tried the number for the hotel. I left a message, asking them to call back. Hopefully she’ll turn up before they call.”

  Dad’s voice was flat, defeated. Hannah’s mind was spinning. She needed to check something but knew he’d never let her leave the house alone. He solved the problem for her.

  “I’m going to take a shower, okay?”

  “Sure,” she replied, trying to sound casual.

  He trudged upstairs and as soon as he was out of sight, Hannah wrote him a note and put it on the kitchen table where he’d be sure to see it. When she heard the shower turn on, she grabbed Scout’s leash and headed for the door. He’d be mad, but this was important. “Let’s go,” she said, and Scout followed her outside. Why didn’t I get my bike from Jacob’s trunk?

  She was a block from the library when she saw a couple of boys walking toward her. Her heart skipped a beat. She wondered what she looked like after the day she’d had.

  “Hi Hannah. How’s your summer going?”

  Marcus Diaz offered up a crooked smile and Hannah blushed. The other boy, Kenny Driscoll, looked at Marcus funny, then said hi to her.

  “Hi Marcus, Kenny. You know how it is in Hopeland. You almost start to miss school out of sheer boredom.”

  What a dork, Hannah chided.

  Marcus laughed. “Yeah, I hear you.”

  Kenny bent down to pat Scout, and Hannah suddenly understood she hadn’t thought this through—she couldn’t bring Scout into the library. “Hey, can you guys do me a favor?”

  Marcus’s face lit up and she pictured the handsome boy he would be when his acne cleared. Her heart did that funny double-beat thing again.

  “Sure, Hannah, anything.”

  Kenny rolled his eyes. That’s when it clicked. Hannah realized that Marcus might like her. Her face burned.

  “Um, well, I have to check something really quick in the library. Would you mind hanging out with Scout for a few minutes?”

  Marcus smiled. “Sure, we’ll take him over to the park and snag a tennis ball. Meet us there when you’re done.”

  Kenny looked at Marcus and started to argue, “I thought we—”

  Marcus cut him off. “Never mind, Kenny. This’ll be fun.”

  Hannah smiled. “Thanks, I mean it. I appreciate the help.”

  Marcus smiled his own goofy smile and Kenny punched him in the shoulder.

  “I’ll be back in a few.”

  She turned and practically skipped to the library. Wait until I tell...

  For just a moment, she had forgotten why she was there. Guilt and sadness washed over her as she climbed the steps.

  She opened the door and stepped into the cool, dry air of the library. She hadn’t noticed how muggy it was outside until she was free from its oppressiveness.

  She had almost told Officer Benson about the librarian but had held back at the last minute. She turned the corner and there she was; the librarian that had thrown them out the other day. Instead of fear, a white-hot anger surged through her, making her pulse pound in her temples.

  The woman stared at her with a confused look before recognition spread across her face. She started toward Hannah. Clenching her fists by her side, Hannah stepped forward to meet her.

  “I thought I told you and your friend to stay away?”

  “You can’t kick me out,” Hannah hissed, stepping closer. “Just try it and see what happens.”

  Blotches of red formed on the woman’s cheeks. She opened her mouth to reply but something made her stop. Her eyes darted back and forth around the library. Hannah looked around, too. The tables in the main area were pretty full, a lot of people trying to escape the heat and humidity for a while. The woman took a step back and smiled. It was the expression Hannah would expect on a shark sizing up its prey, but Hannah didn’t break eye contact and look away.

  “You’re pressing your luck,” the woman said through her fake smile, before adding, in a sickly-sweet voice, “Let me know if I can help you with anything.”

  Hannah continued to stare her down, filled with a righteous fury. She turned and walked toward the computers without looking back. Hannah sat at one facing the desk so she could keep an eye on the librarian. Aces and eights, she thought with a determined smile.

  Her fingers flew across the keyboard. The librarian was on her cell phone, no doubt talking to someone about Hannah.

  Mama Bayole? The guy who took Ashley?

  Hannah turned her attention back to the computer screen. She logged into Ashley’s email. They knew each other’s passwords for just about everything. She was looking for the thread between Ash and the blogger.

  After finding it, she scanned the conversation, searching for anything that would help her figure out who he was or what had happened to Ashley. Several of the emails talked about where the body was. The blogger claimed he knew, and Ashley was trying to get him to tell her. It was that piece of information that he used to convince her to meet him.

  Hannah reread the emails again. He had danced around the location, giving Ashley hints to prove he knew the woods and where the body was buried. She focused on a comment in one of his early emails to Ashley, trying to force a memory to the surface.

  There’s a kind of mutant tree, I call it the Siamese Pine. I hid behind it and watched them bury her. It was creepy, terrifying; the sun was rising behind them and I was only about thirty yards away.

  Hannah had hiked practically every inch of those woods near where Scout found the foot over the years, and there were plenty of weird tree formations. It might be any of them. Half the forest was pine trees.

  Wait ... something clicked. “S
iamese Pine,” she whispered.

  Hannah remembered a walk she’d taken one day, early in the morning. Scout had woken up and needed to go out. The sun was just up, burning the morning fog off the lawn. Hannah had decided it was too beautiful to go back to bed, so she’d thrown on her sneakers and a sweatshirt and just started walking.

  At one point, she’d heard something moving around off the path in the thickets. She’d made Scout stay with her and went to investigate. It had been a deer, a fawn just rooting around, enjoying the morning, same as she was.

  Scout had barked and Hannah had been sure the deer would bolt, but instead it just looked at them for a few minutes, decided there was no danger, and walked deeper into the forest. Hannah had followed, amazed by the calmness of both the fawn and Scout, after his initial bark of excitement. The deer had led them well off the path, stopping occasionally to graze before moving on.

  They’d been deep into the forest when Hannah had heard more rustling. Another deer, a full-grown doe, had broken through the underbrush and approached the fawn. They’d nuzzled each other and Hannah had realized it was the mother. They had both looked at her and Scout, and then darted off into the woods.

  She remembered finding her way back to the path and stopping by a pine tree, or rather a pair of pine trees that had grown together for about four feet before splitting into two trunks.

  That must be what the blogger was talking about.

  Hannah got up to leave, making sure she logged out of Ashley’s email and cleared the browser history. She glanced at the librarian and saw the woman was still glaring at her. Hannah gave her the biggest fake smile she was able to muster and waved to her, resisting the urge to flip her the bird. The woman’s face went red again and her lips tightened. Hannah laughed and exited the building.

  She ran down the library steps and across the street to the park, pausing to watch Marcus and Ken play with Scout. They had indeed gotten a tennis ball and were playing keep-away, letting Scout get the ball every couple of tosses, then chasing him around like lunatics.

  Hannah smiled. This is what summer should be. She jogged toward them.

  Marcus saw her coming and walked over to meet her.

  “Hey, Hannah. Your dog is awesome. He’s better at keep-away than Kenny.”

  Hannah laughed and Ken gave Marcus the finger.

  “Thanks for hanging out with him, I really appreciate it.” Hannah looked around. The park was emptying out. She thought of the long walk home and the car from the other day.

  “It was no big deal. Hey... um...”

  Marcus glanced at Ken who was watching him with a weird look of amusement. Marcus was already flushed from roughhousing with Scout, but a deeper red was rising up his neck, and burning his cheeks and ears.

  “Well, we could walk you home if you want?”

  Hannah almost gasped. Partly with relief but mostly with... something else. Ashley was missing, Hannah was getting ready to go look for a dead body in the woods, and now Marcus was offering to walk her home? Perfect timing.

  “Sure, that would be nice.”

  What? She’d meant to tell him she had things to do. How did it come out as “that would be nice.”

  Hannah’s cell phone buzzed, and she looked at the screen, already knowing it was Dad and he’d be frantic. “One sec,” she said to Marcus and accepted the call. “Hi Dad—”

  “Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “I’m fine. I just had to get out of the house. I’m at the park and a couple of friends from school are going to walk me home.” She smiled at Marcus and mouthed “thank you,” then finished the call with her father. “Thanks, guys. I do have to get home.”

  They started walking but realized Ken wasn’t coming.

  “Marcus, I... uh... just remembered my mom wanted me to cut the grass. I gotta go, sorry.”

  Hannah couldn’t believe it, seeing through the thin facade. Ken was Marcus’s wingman. Now she was going to have to have a one-on-one conversation. The thought made her throat start to close. Somehow with the three of them, it was different. This was more... personal. Practically a date.

  “Oh, okay Ken, I’ll text you later?”

  Ken waved and set off in the other direction, across the park. Marcus and Hannah started walking toward her house.

  Despite all the things Hannah should have on her mind, her only thought was what it would feel like if Marcus slipped his hand around hers.

  “So, what were you doing at the library?”

  She almost stopped walking. Well, Marcus, Scout dragged a human foot out of the woods and me and Ashley, you know Ashley, right? Anyway, she’s been kidnapped by some cult, but I’m still trying to find the rest of the body that used to be attached to the foot, you know?

  “Just researching a story I was thinking about writing?” she stammered.

  “That’s cool. I didn’t know you liked to write.”

  She shrugged. The truth was she did like to write but usually just messed around with poems or wrote in her journal. This would make a great story.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it, you know? Not much else to do around here, right?”

  Marcus laughed. “It’s not so bad. I used to live in Boston. There was a lot to do, but I don’t know—it was so crowded and noisy. There were always sirens, twenty-four-seven. Police, fire engines, ambulances. It never stopped. I kind of like it here.”

  Hannah thought about what he said. She’d always romanticized city life, but he made a good point. Would she really want to be around all those people all the time? To have to take Scout on leash walks and pick up his poop in a bag instead of romping in the woods? Having to worry about crime... She stopped at this one, the irony not lost on her.

  “I guess it’s not so bad,” she relented, “Maybe if we at least had a movie theater, somewhere to go at night?”

  “Yeah, that would be cool, I guess. They have those concerts at the gazebo sometimes. The bands usually suck but it’s something to do.”

  Hannah nodded. “I think I saw a sign for one of those coming up.”

  “It’s next weekend. I was thinking...”

  Hannah’s palms were sweating. Please don’t hold my hand now.

  “Maybe we could go together, get an ice cream after? It’s not as cool as a movie.” His tone was odd, like he was trying to sound both enthusiastic and casual at the same time.

  “I’d like that.” Hannah said, thinking how cute he sounded. Then she realized he was asking her out on a date. I’d like that? I couldn’t come up with anything cleverer than I’d like that?

  “Great, it’s a—”

  “Date?” she finished. Her face on fire, eyes darting sideways. He was blushing, too. And he had that goofy smile going.

  “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I was hoping—”

  They rounded the corner of Rough Timber Lane and Hannah stopped, blinking in shock, then she took off in a dead run toward her house.

  She bounded past the police car and through the front door. Officer Benson and Dad turned at the same time. Scout began barking outside the door and she opened it to let him in, realizing Marcus was also standing there.

  “Is everything okay?” he whispered.

  Marcus looked totally confused and more than a little nervous.

  “I... I don’t know. Come on in, Marcus.” Hannah nodded toward Dad and Officer Benson. “Dad, Officer Benson, this is Marcus Diaz, my friend from school.” Before anybody asked a question, she continued. “What’s going on?”

  Benson and Dad looked at each other and she knew it was bad news.

  Oh, my God... Ashley.

  Her knees went wobbly and the room was doing that tunnel vision thing again. She staggered to the couch and sat down hard, putting her head between her knees. Dad was next to her instantly, gently rubbing her back.

  Benson cleared his throat. “Hannah, this has nothing to do with Ashley.” It was like he’d read her mind. “One of our other officers found Jacob’s car out o
n Route 33.”

  Hannah’s head snapped up. Route 33! She was overwhelmed with mixed emotions—glad there was no bad news about Ashley, but afraid for Jacob’s safety. She couldn’t even look at Marcus.

  “The car had a flat tire. It’s being towed to the station now. Jacob wasn’t with the car.”

  “Maybe he started walking to get help?” She hated the desperation in her voice.

  “We’ve got cars combing the area and foot patrols in the woods around where Jacob’s vehicle was found. No sign of him yet.”

  Hannah stood quickly, too quickly, because the room tilted like a ship in rough seas, and she almost fell.

  “Was Ashley’s phone in the car?”

  Officer Benson shook his head. “The initial search came up empty. The strange thing—your bike wasn’t in the trunk. I was going to bring it to you.”

  Hannah stared at him, not comprehending what that might mean. A coughing sound from behind her broke her train of thought. Marcus.

  “Uh, maybe I should go?”

  “I’m sorry, Marcus. Things are kind of weird right now. Can I talk to you when things settle down a little?”

  Marcus nodded and backed toward the door, unsure of what to do. Dad stood up and pulled out his keys.

  “I’d feel more comfortable dropping you off,” he offered.

  Officer Benson also headed for the door. “I’ll keep you folks posted.”

  Hannah followed Dad and Marcus to the car, and they drove across town in awkward silence.

  When they got to Marcus’s house, Hannah got out of the car with him. “I’ll explain everything, I promise,” she said.

  Marcus nodded and said goodbye, then jogged up his driveway. Dad gave her a knowing look when she got back in the car, unable to hide the hint of a sad smile. They pulled out and Dad made a U-turn, accelerating toward home and more uncertainty.

  “I went to the library and logged into Ashley’s email. I think I know where the body is.”

  Dad turned to look at her, trying to keep one eye on the road. “Hannah, we talked about this. We need to let Benson know.”

  “Not yet, Dad, please? What if I’m wrong and we waste his time digging in the woods when he could be looking for Jacob and Ashley?”