In the Woods

by Nancy Gideon

  He stepped outside into the fresh air to draw a breath and flush the taunting sounds from his head.

  If they only knew. All of them with their accusations. Well, who was pointing fingers now? Certainly not the first four. Soon, not number five.

  A hoarse chuckle escaped him as a delicious plan formed in his mind.

  He would slip into the back seat of her car. He would put his knife blade to her pretty throat and, while he was smelling her perfume and her fear, would demand she drive them to someplace secluded. Like that road where he’d tossed the log in front of the college girl’s car. And he’d promise not to hurt her. They always believed that because they wanted to . . . even knowing it wasn’t true.

  And then she would join the rest of his growing circle of friends. Friends who always paid attention to him. Who never interrupted. Who never looked at him in indifferent scorn.

  Thoughts of what would happen played about his brain in dizzying circles until he was drunk with them, as drunk as he’d soon be upon the power that came with listening to her screams for mercy. Losing himself to the euphoria, he closed his eyes, letting the sensation build like an arousal. Hearing a car door slam shocked them back open in time to see Helen Kerwood pulling out of her space.

  She was leaving early! Disappointment caused his plans to wither.

  But he didn’t try to stop her. No need.

  There would be other nights, other chances.

  He smiled and walked away from the store, a faceless monster content to wait in his anonymity.

  ӜӜӜ

  Helen maneuvered her little import into the driveway, swinging it around the awkward angle of Wayne Higley's pick-up. Figuring Alex must be entertaining his boss inside, she did a mental check of what was in the icebox as she got out of her car, just in case the fire chief decided to stay for a meal. She liked what she knew of Wayne, despite what she'd insinuated in her earlier argument with Alex.Wayne was a clear-thinking, upstanding kind of guy. The kind of guy she hoped Alex would emulate . . . when he decided to grow up.

  Deciding on veal because it was both fancy and last week's market special, she started for the house.

  When she stepped into the living room, she paused, expecting to hear male voices, but it was quiet, not even the television was on. Then she spotted Alex stretched out on the couch, snoring obliviously. Perplexed, she started across the room, wondering what had happened to Wayne. As she put her purse down on the coffee table, she noticed Alex's boots were caked with mud and a mixture of leaves and pine needles. Boots that were casually resting on the arm of their fairly new tax refund sofa. Yard work? Maybe he'd decided to start on that barbecue pit she'd been begging for all winter long. That made her smile return and the dirty boots were forgiven as she bent down over his inert form, planning to bestow a kiss.

  Then he moaned.

  And her nostrils flared at the stench of alcohol.

  "Son-of-a-bitch," she cried. "You son-of-a-bitch!"

  Alex swam back to awareness beneath a rain of angry blows upon his chest and shoulders. "Helen?" he groaned in confusion, trying to ineffectually to grab her wrists, earning himself a hard slap for his trouble.

  "You bastard. You lying bastard. Where did you get those marks on your face and hands? Some cat fight with a bar floozy? Falling down drunk in the bushes outside?"

  "Helen—"Alex struggled with his muddled brain, trying to link up his speech processes into a working receptacle. Failing miserably.

  In the end, it didn't matter much. Helen wasn't interested in conversation.

  "That's it," she stormed. "No more! Whatever you've got to say for yourself, I just don't want to hear it! I’m not going to be your babysitter, your confessor or your jailor. And I don’t want to be your wife anymore.”

  She pushed away from him, swatting at his groping hands. He could hear her crying as she ran to the back of the house. He needed to go after her . . . to explain. But the couch cushions were sucking him down, holding him fast. He couldn't struggle free of them.

  And then she was back in the room. Her sobs had wound down to noisy hitches. He caught sight of a hastily packed suitcase as it banged into the coffee table by his head. He got a glimpse of some silky underthings caught like a coat hem in a car door. The cat, who had been snoozing contentedly on the back of the sofa, gave a yowl of displeasure as Helen snatched him up and stuffed him under one arm before hoisting the suitcase again. She was taking their baby with her.

  "Adios, Alex!"

  And she was gone. Just like that. Before he had a chance to change her mind.

  The sound of the front door slamming touched off something primal in Alex, something that pierced through even his sodden brain.

  Helen was leaving him.

  And there was something out there. Something shadowy and dangerous. Something that smelled like disease and stalked like death. Something that functioned on an elemental level where human feeling and worth weren't recognized.

  And Helen was going out there where that killing machine was loose, where it had murdered already, more than once, those who were alone and defenseless in their innocence.

  Like Helen.

  "No . . ."

  Moaning, he made a gigantic effort to rise above his intoxication. He hauled himself into a sloppy seated position. He could hear her sputtery little car in the driveway. It wasn't too late to stop her. If only he could get to the door. It wavered, an impossible world away. If only he could get her to listen, just for a minute. So he could tell her that there were things out there worse than a husband who came home drunk with broken promises still fresh on his lips.

  That there were dangers, real or imagined, that he had to save her from.

  He staggered up and managed one weak, limping step before crashing down, like a felled elm, full length on the floor after first rebounding off the edge of the coffee table.

  His mind spun. His stomach knotted. The room revolved like some mad Tilt-a-Whirl. But one thought remained firmly implanted, screaming in inner terror.

  Helen, don't go! You don't understand! Something's out there!Something unnatural . . . something deadly. Come back so I can protect . . . you . . .

  ӜӜӜ

  Harvey Forbes jiggled the leash before giving it a slight jerk to pull the little dog at its end away from its predecessor’s business, then gave the animal’s fuzzy rump a soft boot to encourage him to find a place to do his own. The Yorkie yipped in surprise but hurried ahead, the bells on its rhinestone-studded collar tinkling.

  To Harvey, there was no greater embarrassment than being caught walking his wife’s snotty lap dog. Catering to the prancing dictates of the pampered overgrown rat was somehow terribly unmanning. Men didn’t own little white balls of yapping fluff. They strutted behind Dobermans or Rotts–manly men’s dogs. But his wife was down with a weakening case of stomach flu and Baby–he cringed at the name—needed to relieve himself someplace other than the expensive carpet by their condo’s door.

  So here he was, creeping down the most deserted street he could find, hoping no one would recognize the league’s most successful basketball coach attached to a prissy dog with a blue bow in its immaculately groomed hair.

  “Hurry up, you little rodent,” he hissed as the fussy beast skirted yet another traffic sign only to disdainfully mince away. “What do you need, porcelain fixtures?”

  “Hey, Coach!”

  He grimaced as a carful of high school boys roared by, horn blaring. Great. The news would be all over the school. What kind of team took a man with a plastic bag on his hand and a Yorkie seriously?

  He yanked the dog around the corner, heading up Front Street where the houses were few and far between, and the sidewalk lined with heavy shrubbery in case he needed to duck out of sight the next time a car approached. Baby seemed to prefer the bushes to the metal posts and began sniffing in earnest. Good. Their goal was within sight. Then he could return to the action flick he’d been enjoying before his dear Millie presented him with the l
eash and its hyper owner.

  A sudden growl from Baby surprised him. He didn’t think the little puffball had the nuts to actually make an aggressive sound.Just as quickly, the animal reverted to its familiar habit of high-pitched yapping that always shot right through his eardrums with wincing penetration.

  “Shut up, Baby,” he commanded, tugging on the leash. But the dog had grown tenacious, digging in its painted toenails and struggling to forge ahead. “What the hell’s gotten into you?” He pressed the button on the automatic feeder spool in his hand to give the leash some slack, and Baby darted into the cedars, cord singing off the reel behind him. “If you’re after some damned skunk, you’ll sleep in the carport no matter what Millie says.”

  His warning went unheeded. The leash had reached its end and after several amazingly strong yanks, went slack. Harvey pushed the switch forward to rewind the cord. There was no resistance. And then, to his dismay, he saw why.

  From out of the evergreens, came the end of the leash with no dog attached. Examining the frayed end, he couldn’t believe the animal had found the strength to break the braided nylon.

  Millie was going to kill him if some big mutt gobbled up her precious Baby.

  Cursing under his breath, Harvey parted the bushes and pushed his six foot four frame through the opening. He called to the dog, beginning to wish for the sound of those annoying bells as he imagined his wife’s tearful reaction to him returning home alone.

  Never once considering that he might not return either, until a scream was torn out of his throat.

  ӜӜӜ

  He awoke to the bizarre sight of tiny beige worms standing at strict attention as if waiting for review.

  Alex blinked and the worms became carpet fibers, tickling his nose, mashed beneath his cheek, unpleasantly soggy where his mouth sagged open.

  He was on the floor.

  It was a miracle he could stand. A greater mystery that he could find his way to the kitchen to squint in protest against the intruding sunlight. His head throbbed. His mouth tasted like sweat socks soaked in formaldehyde. The muscles in his legs ached from abuse, and countless scrapes sizzled with pain.

  And Helen was gone.

  Helluva morning.

  Still in his rumpled, perspiration blotched clothes, he hunched at the breakfast table while infusing hot java into his system to kick start his brain. It was a lengthy process, an uncertain science.Not a pretty sight or for the squeamish. Thoughts moved through his mind at a snail's creep, leaving an ache behind like a slime trail.Finally, bits of memory began to congeal into a cohesive mass that forced him to remember more than he cared to. He reached for the phone and winced as it rang on the other end.

  "Hello, Delores." Words rasped over the sandpaper coating his tongue. "Is Helen there? Not yet? Okay . . . Could you have her call . . . Just tell her I called."

  He hung up, sagging for a long minute while guilt and misery beat through him with each loud pulse in his head. A shower, that's what he needed to bring the dead to life. Not exactly a funny analogy when he thought about it.

  A glance toward the clock warned that the shower could wait until he got to the station. Even changing his clothes there, he'd have to hope for every green light in town to make it on time.

  Helluva morning.

  Fresh clothing rolled under one arm, he moved with half-closed eyes toward the garage, forgetting Wayne's truck was in the drive until the door went up and he saw it sitting behind the Jeep. He'd have to do some fancy maneuvering to get around its bulky footprint, but it would be worth it not to be reminded of the reason it sat there nearly blocking the way to the street. And what was the chance that Helen would come to the station to pick him up if he drove the truck in for Wayne? No, his chief would just have to find his way over to retrieve it later.

  Thinking of Wayne, made him think of their hunting excursion, whether he wanted to or not.

  How the hell was he going to act around the man with the secret they shared weighing silently between them? Things looked even more fantastical through a sober, though blurry mind’s eye.

  What the hell had happened out there in the woods?

  Should he bring it up in the light of this new day? Or should he just leave it alone and hope Wayne would let it go away?

  As he plopped behind the wheel of the Jeep, he grimaced. Spears of brightness shot through the fragments of broken glass clinging to the garage window’s frame, burning his optical nerves. How had that happened? He stared at the shattered pane in angry disbelief. He’d probably find a baseball underneath the Jeep where it had been lobbed by careless neighbors.

  "I'm going to kill those kids," he muttered, throwing the gears into reverse.

  The Jeep started backing then jolted to a stop, something wedged like a chalk beneath the rear wheel. Obviously, something bigger than a baseball.

  Grumbling dire threats toward the neighborhood delinquents who'd obviously broken into his garage to create mayhem, Alex bent down from the seat to peer under the vehicle to see if he could spot the obstruction. Something bulky blocked the passenger side tire.With a more descriptive curse, he swung out of the Jeep and circled behind it, pausing as he rounded the bumper because a river of something dark and wet was streaking the cement.

  "If those damned punks punctured anything vital, I'm going to—"

  He never finished. Because just then, the sun angled slightly on its upward trek and fell in living color upon the stains. They weren't the shiny metallic of gasoline or the greenish silver of transmission fluid. They were thick and brownish red.

  Paint . . . ?He bent down closer and got a good strong identifying whiff.

  Blood.

  Lots of it.

  Pools of it running from whatever was stuck between the frame and the wheel well.

  “Oh, crap.”

  Thinking it was some poor dumb animal made him heart sick as he continued to the other side of the Jeep. It must have been Helen's job rubbing off on him to make him such a softy. Probably something had gotten in through the broken window, and picked the wrong place to rest. And now, thanks to him, was resting in peace, if not pieces.

  Taking a deep breath to still his none-too-sturdy stomach, Alex squatted down and tipped to one side for a better look. And everything he'd been trying to keep down in the acidy sea of his gut came churning up like Old Faithful to spew out onto the blood soaked cement.

  Weak and shaken, he scuttled back until he was perched atop the lawn mower, banging against the wall of the garage with enough desperate force to send several boxes of trash bags and penny nails crashing around him. And there, sucking in gas fumes with each panicky breath, he took another queasy look at what was wedged beneath his wheel.

  It was a body part, all right. But it wasn't some stray cat or injured dog. It wasn't even a whole piece.

  What was stuck behind his tire was a section of human ribcage, picked nearly clean, with only raw strips of meat and ragged skin to clothe it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The drive and street in front of the Kerwoods's suburban home overflowed with police vehicles and a mobile crime lab. Uniformed officers crisscrossed the yard, front and back, searching for anything even remotely relevant to the remains found inside the garage. Grim faces registered no surprise at what was covered in plastic on the garage floor. They'd seen or imagined it all since this episode began. So they did their work, quickly but methodically, while the owner of the property sat in a state of shock on the living room sofa.

  A policeman came out of the kitchen with two mugs of coffee.One, he handed to his chief, Connor Pellman and the other to Alex, who glanced up with a spacy vagueness to mutter a raw, "Thanks."

  Pellman took the coffee without any wasteful niceties to demand of the officer, "Well, what did you find?"

  His manner sparked like flint on steel and the resulting flame of hostility was inevitable.

  The officer regarded him blankly and shrugged, the gesture one of helplessness when another more meaningfu
l hand sign came to mind.But one didn't flick off one's superior. Even when that superior made daily living a hell with his ranting and foaming about what he was going to tell the press if his pissant squad of small town bumpkins couldn't bring him anything to quiet their braying.

  Hell, they were worried about what they were going to tell family and friends who knew one or all of the victims. Sure, the head that wore the crown was uneasy, but it was a trickle down tension and no one in the community was unaffected. After months of sleepless nights, worrying about one's own family's safety, there wasn't a calm port in this storm of frustration.

  A man on edge, Pellman had no patience with his subordinate's attitude. He'd been tiptoeing on the high wire of public opinion for months, ever since the first disappearance, and with each new crime and each investigation yielding diddly squat, his balance on that wire grew more precarious. The media was on one end bouncing up and down and the families of those missing were below, waiting to eat him alive should he fall. Now his own officers seemed to be yelling, "Jump!" Not a pleasant place to be, and he'd be damned if he'd go one more day without something tangible to turn over to the mob howling for his head and resignation, perhaps in that order.

  "Don't just shrug your shoulders. Do you have anything?" he snapped at the officer.

  The officer was just tired enough of his chief's constant needling to square off and respond with a frigid civility. "I'll tell you what we got, sir. Shit is what we got. Well, I take that back.We got some blood and some ribs. All we need is some corn and we got a barbecue."

  Seeing the rising flush in his chief's face as a measurement of mercury about to blow, Detective Larry Gorham stepped in to advise the officer, "Get out there and find something. I don't care if it's with tweezers or a vacuum."

  The officer snapped a feigned salute. He respected Gorham a hell of a lot more than Pellman, so he would get the required tweezers and try to turn up something, but in his own defense, he grumbled, "It's not like we're simply looking for Italian loafer prints, size 12." Then he was wise enough to clear out before the sting of a reprimand attached to his record.