"So why are you bringing it up now?" Diana asked.
"I have lung cancer. Inoperable. The doctor says eight months, maybe a year. My other daughter, Daphne, died two years ago. Ovarian cancer. It runs in our family apparently. My mother died of it, too."
"I'm sorry," Diana said again. She sometimes felt as though it was all she could say to the Kay Todds of the world. I'm sorry. Sorry for the hand they'd been dealt, sorry that the world isn't fair, sorry that whatever god hands out the breaks and the advantages hands them out with all the care and foresight of an overgrown, temperamental child. I'm sorry.
"I want to know something before I go. I want to know what happened to my Margie. For a long time, I thought she was still alive. I believed it. I could feel it in my heart. Lately, I'm not so sure. I don't feel her anymore the way I used to. The way I always did, since I carried her inside me." She licked her lips. "Do you still feel your sister, Diana? Do you still think she's alive?"
The cold sensation at the base of Diana's skull spread down her spine and radiated through her body. She let her hands drop to the top of the table.
"Why did you say that? Why did you bring up my sister?"
"You didn't answer my question," Kay said.
Diana studied the old woman's face, which no longer looked as helpless as it had in the parking lot. Her withered, wizened features and watery eyes looked like a mask, one that hid some deeper motivation Diana couldn't begin to understand.
"You have no right to say that," Diana said. "You have no right to talk about her."
Kay brought out a cigarette and lighted it, ignoring the posted No Smoking sign above their table. She blew a plume of smoke up toward the fluorescent lights and leveled her gaze at Diana.
"I want to help you, Diana," she said. "But you have to help me first."
"How can you help me?"
Kay held up her hand, a request for Diana's silence. "I want you to find out what happened to Margie." Her eyes were pleading again, but her jaw was set tight. "I need you to."
"It's been too long. Twenty-five years is too much time. Seventy-two hours is too long in a case like this."
"Find her," Kay said. "Find her and I can tell you what happened to your sister."
Diana made a quick, instinctual grab for Kay's right arm. She gripped the old woman just above the wrist, felt the bone just beneath the papery flesh, and in the process knocked her coffee mug to the floor where it shattered.
"Don't," Kay said.
Diana looked down and saw the lighted cigarette poised above the back of her hand, the tip burning an inch above her flesh.
Diana let go.
Kay didn't rub her arm, didn't give Diana the satisfaction of thinking she had hurt her. She took another drag while the waitress returned and asked if everything was okay.
Diana looked and saw the old-timers staring at them, their faces impassive, but inside, they were no doubt thrilled to have this display of female emotion, something to chew over in the days to come.
"We're fine," Kay said, without taking her eyes off Diana. "It's a family matter."
The waitress looked them both over, then left without cleaning up the mess. When she was gone, Diana said, "You don't know anything about Rachel. You don't know anything about me."
Kay used her saucer as an ashtray and stubbed the cigarette out. "I've been waiting a long time, longer than you. I have more at stake here. Find out what happened to her, and then I'll tell you what you want to know." She scooted back from the table, gathered her purse and stood up. "Do you mind paying for the coffee?"
She didn't wait for Diana's response, and Diana wasn't sure she could have given one anyway. She sat at the table, the broken crockery and spilled coffee at her feet, and watched Kay Todd walk away.
CHAPTER THREE
Roger waited until sunset to bury the girl.
Even though he wouldn't be seen in the woods, he still waited until the sun was falling, the shadows slanting through the thick trees, elongating their shapes across the ground until it seemed they stretched for miles.
But Roger didn't want to wait too long. He had a lot of digging ahead of him.
The girl's death had been a terrible one. At first, Roger thought she was faking. She complained about the pain in her abdomen for weeks, even going so far as refusing to eat, and it put him in mind of the days when she had first come to live with him and refused to eat, a spoiled child throwing a tantrum. But her complaints didn't end. They only grew worse. She started losing weight. She vomited during the night. Her skin turned yellow, her eyes developed dark circles beneath them like someone had punched her...
Roger hadn't punched her.
He hadn't punched her since those first days, back when she cried all the time and refused to eat. He didn't like punching the girl because it only made her cry more, but eventually she stopped crying and started eating, and their life settled into a routine and it felt like he was home again.
And everything was great, for years and years, until she got sick.
And when she died, he had to take her to the woods.
His father had warned him about it. When he was a child, they hunted the woods near their house, land that had been in the family for close to two hundred years. They navigated the narrow trails, hunting deer mostly, but if need be, settling for squirrel or opossum. He cherished those times, learning at his father's side, and he looked back on them now and missed their simplicity, the clear-cut sense of belonging he felt. His dad was the boss. He did whatever his dad told him to do. And his dad told him to stay away from the clearing a mile behind their house.
"Why, Daddy?"
"Just stay away."
"There are probably deer there. Lots of them."
"There ain't nothing there," his dad said. "Nothing you ever want to see."
So he stayed away, as best he could. But when he grew older and started hunting on his own, he would find himself coming near the place, his body drawn in that direction as though by an invisible force. And that's what he remembered most of all, that sense of not having any choice.
Not having any choice at all.
* * *
A vehicle wouldn't work. There was no road to reach the clearing, not even one that came close enough to make driving worthwhile. And he didn't have an ATV or a tractor to use for hauling. He didn't want to haul the girl anyway, drag her along behind some vehicle like a sack of garbage. She meant something to him, and he didn't want to treat her that way. It left only one choice. He'd carry her.
It helped that he was a big guy, and she was small. With being sick and all, she'd wasted away down to nothing. He wrapped her in a sheet and flung her over his shoulder. It was like carrying a bunch of small twigs in a bag.
He grabbed a shovel with his free hand and started through the woods, down the trail that started at the back of his house.
His house.
After all these years, he still had a hard time thinking of the house as his, even though his parents had been dead longer than he could remember, leaving the house and the land to him to do with as he pleased. He liked to think he had done a good job, that he was making his parents proud if they could look down on him from wherever they were. The girl had helped make the place look nice, just like his mom used to. And now the girl was gone, and he was alone. Truly alone.
Just before his dad died, the old man had given him some advice. His dad had been sick a long time, too, just like the girl. He got thin and pale and started coughing and coughing.
"Goddamn cigarettes," his dad used to say, and then he'd cough and cough some more until it seemed he'd never stop. But when he did, he called Roger to his bedside and asked him to lean in close. "There're a couple of things I need to tell you," he said.
His dad smelled rotten, like something inside of him had gone bad and was now leaking out through his pores. But Roger didn't lean away. He wanted to hear his dad speak because Roger knew it might be the last thing to ever come out of the man's mouth.
<
br /> "Roger," his dad said, his voice full of phlegm. "I'm not sure you're cut out for living on your own. Are you?"
Roger shook his head. "No, sir."
"Neither was I. That's why I got married to your mother and had you. So I wouldn't have to go through my life alone. Make sense?"
Roger understood and nodded to show it, but another coughing fit sent his dad into spasms. When he settled down, he hocked a bloody loogie into a glass by the side of the bed, then leaned back and closed his eyes. Roger thought he was going to sleep, but his dad started talking again.
"I'm not sure you have much of a chance in the race for a wife, do you? I mean...you ain't exactly a looker, are you?"
Roger nodded. He knew he didn't look right. He was big. Huge. And his head was too small. He had one eye that wandered off beyond his control, and his fingers were thick and meaty. He knew what his dad meant.
His dad coughed again, but not as bad as before. Then he said, "But I don't think it's right that a man like yourself should have to be alone. I think a man has a right to some companionship and company, if you know what I mean."
Roger thought he did. "Do you want me to get a dog?"
His dad laughed and thumped the flat of his hand against the bed sheets. Roger was afraid he was going to start coughing again, but he didn't.
"No, dummy," he said. "Not a dog. A wife. I want you to take a wife. Someone who can help you out with this place. Cook and clean and...all the things a wife does for a man. Do you know what I mean now?"
Roger knew what men and women did together in the bedroom, and he knew his dad was talking about something like that. But he didn't understand what that had to do with him, and he didn't know how he was going to get to a place where he was going to be able to do those things. So he told his dad he didn't get it.
And that's when his dad told him about the clearing.
* * *
Carrying the girl and the shovel slowed Roger down. The path was there beneath his feet, but it didn't get used much and was still overgrown from the summer. Branches scratched against his arms and face, and once, an unseen thorn bush scraped across the soft skin of his neck, making him wince. But after a while, Roger stopped even noticing the scratches and the scrapes. He began to feel the power of the place drawing him closer.
It always came upon him the same way. His hands, even burdened as they were by the load he carried, began to tingle, as though they were falling asleep. But Roger knew that wasn't the case. He knew his body was waking up. He paused, adjusted the girl on his shoulder. He looked ahead, though the clearing remained obscured by the forest growth. But he knew it was out there and getting closer. He felt the cold sweat form in his armpits and trickle down his sides. He felt his heart rate increase until his breath came in quick huffs. And he felt the hardening between his legs, the stiffening that felt so good it almost hurt.
Roger moaned.
He kept walking, moving faster now.
When Roger reached the clearing, he dropped the shovel, eased the girl to the ground, and fell to his knees. The sweat dripped down his face, burning his eyes. He wiped it away and examined his surroundings. The clearing remained the same as ever. No grass or weeds grew in its center, and the tall trees at its edges loomed timeless and eternal, like they had been placed there at the start of the world, never to be moved or brought down. The sky above had mostly darkened, and the moon was still rising. Roger's eyes were adjusted to the dark. He reached out, placing his hand on his bundle. The girl he came to bury.
His father hadn't told him much about the clearing that night on his deathbed. Roger listened to every word, trying his best to absorb and retain everything the old man said. But he felt that his father had left certain things out, and Roger assumed that if his dad hadn't mentioned them, they really weren't that important anyway.
His dad did tell him that the clearing meant a great deal to the men who founded Union Township, the original settlement that eventually led to the creation of New Cambridge ten miles to the east. In those earliest days, the men gathered in the clearing, drawn there—Roger assumed—by the same force that drew him back again and again. All the most important decisions relating to the founding of the new community were discussed and made in that spot. What the laws would be. What the form of government would be. Who would live where and on what parcel of land.
Who would marry who.
Roger came back to the clearing to bury the girl because of that. His father had told him, during that deathbed revelation, that a man could feel a great deal of power if he gave himself over to the clearing. And, his father told him, if a man wants to find a wife, he should start looking in the clearing. If a man spent enough time there and opened himself up to the possibilities that flowed through that place, he could find himself with a suitable wife and an end to his loneliness.
"That's the way we determined those things back then," the old man said. "If a man couldn't find a wife, he came to the clearing, and one was found for him..."
Roger believed it.
He started going there before his father died, and shortly before the old man's death, Roger had found the girl and brought her to live with him. But he couldn't have done it—knew he couldn't have done it—without first receiving the power that came from that place.
Roger pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed the shovel and looked for a suitable place to dig. The hardness in his pants continued, pushing against his jeans. Roger used his hand to adjust himself, hoping for some relief, even though he knew of only one real way to ease the pain and discomfort.
But he couldn't do that anymore. The girl was gone. She had died. And even before she died, she was sick, and he couldn't relieve his urges.
But in the clearing, he felt otherwise. Something told him otherwise.
And once he started thinking about it, Roger couldn't stop himself. He knew he was going to be alone for a long time, maybe forever. And hadn't his dad said that the clearing was the place where men drew their power, where men did what men had to do?
Roger bent down and untied the knot holding the sheet tight around the girl's body. Once he started untying the knot, he felt the desire rise within him. It felt like a swarm of bees buzzing in his skull, and he pulled and tugged harder against the knot, his thick fingers butchering the job, making the knot worse and more uncooperative.
"Ahhhh," he cried, his voice rising in the woods.
He continued his fight with the knots until they started to come free. Sweat covered his body now, and he felt like he had a fever. His forehead and the tips of his earlobes burned in the cool night air.
He pulled the sheet apart.
There she was. The girl. His girl.
She wore her nightgown, the one she had died in, and her hair looked greasy and tangled from the months of her sickness. Her skin was pale, the bones rising from beneath her flesh.
But Roger didn't care. She was cold already, but he didn't care.
He fumbled with his pants. When he opened them, some of the pressure eased. But not all of it, not nearly enough of it.
He lifted her nightgown and climbed on top of her. He went to work just as the clearing told him to do.
He knew relief was coming, felt it drawing closer with each rhythmic thrust.
He howled, his voice rising and cutting through the night.
When Roger was finished, he lay on his back next to the girl's body. He felt better. Relieved, he thought.
But as he lay there, looking at the stars that dotted the sky and the almost fully risen moon, he knew it was only temporary. He smelled the rich earth, the thick green vegetation and knew that he had to put the girl in the ground. But once she went in there, he would be alone.
Really alone.
No one else in his family had ever lived alone. His mother died first, but Dad had him for company. And right after Dad died, the girl came to live with him. But now he faced the future by himself, with no one to help him or guide him. No one to care for him.
/> He thought about bringing the girl back into the house with him, just for a little while, but he couldn't bring himself to do that. It would be wrong. Indecent. He couldn't do anything like that in his parents' house.
So he continued to stare at the sky and tried to open himself up to the power of the clearing.
And the answer came to him in just a few minutes:
Why not find a new wife?
As soon as he thought it, Roger knew he had found the solution to all of his problems. He could find a new wife, someone to come and take the girl's place, and then he wouldn't have to be alone in the house. He wouldn't have to be alone at all.
He felt the tingling in his hands again. He felt like there was nothing he couldn't do.
He climbed to his feet, dusting the dirt and leaves off of his skin, and then pulled his pants up, zipping and buttoning them, noting that he felt so much more comfortable now than when he had come to the clearing.
Yes, he thought, I'll find a new wife. A new one just as good as the old one.
He felt a pleasant burst of energy course through his body, a sense of freshness and renewal that he hadn't felt in a long time.
He grabbed the shovel. He had work to finish tonight.
And he had a new task to devote himself to tomorrow.
CHAPTER FOUR
Diana was driving down Highway Seventeen northbound, the main road between New Cambridge and Leesburg, when she reached for the radio volume dial and saw how much her hand was shaking. She brought it back, gripping the wheel with both hands, and shook her head, although there was no one there to see the gesture, just a farmer in his combine, chewing up acres of withering cornstalks and kicking up enough dust to partially obscure the red sunset.
The Girl In The Woods Page 2
