Big Woods

by May Cobb

  “You have a sister,” she says, it’s not a question.

  “Yes,” I say, and relief washes over me: she is the real deal.

  “She is lost, she was taken from you some time ago. Am I correct?”

  “Yes.”

  She starts swaying faster and her eyes move quickly behind her eyelids. “Tell me more.”

  I break my vow, give her a few details. “She was kidnapped three months ago on the way to the bus stop.”

  “And what about your father?” she asks, sweat beads her forehead. “There’s something about your father. He’s gone, too?”

  “Yes, yes he is. He doesn’t come home anymore,” I say, my head spinning that she can somehow know all of this.

  “Yes,” she nods. “He feels … responsible, maybe, for what happened. But it wasn’t his fault.”

  “Can you please tell me more about my sister?”

  Her eyes keep moving underneath her eyelids, her hands squeeze mine. She sucks in a few ohs. “I see a white gown, she wore a white gown at night. There are other children, they are all holding hands.”

  “Where is she?” I ask, my voice rising. “Can you see that? Is she, is she … ” But I can’t finish the question.

  Shira shakes her head slowly, her mouth slumps down into a frown.

  “I had all these dreams about her, dreams that she was still alive. I know she was.” And now it’s me who’s squeezing her hands. “But the dreams stopped a week ago.”

  “Ah, yes, the dead often appear to us in dreams.” It feels like a knife just went through my head, I have a blinding pain between my eyes. I go to pull my hands away, but she snatches them back.

  “So, so… she’s dead?” I ask hysterically.

  Her eyes are moving so fast behind her eyelids now it looks like they are out of control and she starts humming a low, disturbing, buzzing sound. The heat rises up my arms and I’m so hot now that I’m dripping with sweat.

  “Leah,” she says, in a low voice, though I’m certain I never told her my name. My mouth goes dry. “I cannot say for sure. Your sister is coming through, but it’s fuzzy. I see the past, present, and the future, and sometimes I can’t tell which is which. Every time I see her, she slips away.” She clicks her tongue across her lips which are now dry, parched. I feel like she’s withholding something from me, shielding me.

  “Just tell me!” I yelp. The light above us suddenly seems harsher and brighter.

  Shira’s face looks ashen. “It seems, it seems she is very still. When people die, their soul sometimes goes through a transition, where they can contact us before they move onto the next plane.”

  I jerk my hands away and pound the table with my fists, rattling the teacups. “Is my sister alive?” I shout at her. “Come on!”

  She offers her hands to me again and I take them. She starts swaying again, slowly, her mouth moving, making inaudible grunts. “The connection is lost; I cannot feel her energy anymore. This is bigger than me.” She opens her eyes and looks straight at me. “I’m so sorry,” she says, and pulls out the wad of bills, now soaked, and hands them back to me. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you. This, this … just rarely happens.” She is drenched in sweat, her white hair now matted down to her head as if she’s just gotten out of the shower.

  I stare straight back, scanning her face. I’m pretty sure she thinks that Lucy is dead but she doesn’t have the heart to tell me.

  I shove the cash back in my purse and turn to leave without another word. I slam my hip against the door to open it against the cold wind and stumble out onto the crowded, noisy sidewalk. It’s freezing out and little pellets of rain sting my face, blurring with the hot tears as I march down the street in the opposite direction of the record convention.

  “Goddamit!” I yell to the side of a crumbling brick building as the thought roars in my head: Lucy is dead, and I was late, I was too late. I bite down hard on my lip and the tangy taste of blood fills my mouth, mixing with the hot tears.

  I see a payphone at the end of the block and run to it. I step inside the graffiti-covered booth and pull the phone off the hook. It’s grimy and waxy and smells like BO. For a quick second I think about calling Nick to come pick me up, but there’s only one person I want to talk to.

  “Operator,” a robotic voice says.

  “I need to make a collect call,” I say, shaking, and cough out my home phone number. Mom answers on the first ring, saying, “Yes, yes of course I’ll accept the charges.” When I hear her concerned voice, I fall apart even more.

  “Mom!” I shriek, and a searing sob tears the back of my throat, a ripping pain.

  “Leah, what’s happened? Where are you?”

  “I’m in Dallas, I’ll tell you everything, just come get me!” I’m convulsing with sobs, holding the nasty phone to my ear.

  “Of course! Where exactly are you? Can you see a street sign?”

  “I’m at the corner of Main and Exposition. There’s a tattoo parlor close by.”

  “Leah, listen to me. Do you see a restaurant nearby? Somewhere safe you can wait?”

  I scan the street and spot a Waffle House a few blocks up.

  “Just find a quiet table and wait there. Do you have any money?” I nod and tell her about the thirty-four dollars. “Good, honey. Give the waitress a twenty and explain to her that you need to sit there for a few hours. Keep ordering stuff. I’ll pick up the tab when I get there. I’m leaving now.”

  The Waffle House is packed and noisy; everybody is escaping the chill of the streets. I look around the room for the friendliest-looking waitress and ask to be seated in her section. There’s a short wait, but soon the hostess shows me to my table, a small window seat in the corner and slaps the plastic menu down on the table. The table is still moist from the last wipe down and I peel the menu off and pretend to scan it.

  “What would you like to drink, sweetie pie?” a smoky voice asks from behind my menu. I set it down and look up. The waitress is heavy set and has perfect, short curls hugging her head. Her name tag reads Mabel. Her skin is the color of caramel and she has electric, hazel eyes that turn worried as she scans my face. I don’t even have to pull a twenty out; she pats me on the shoulder and says, “Stay as long as you like.” I gulp back more tears and manage to order a hot chocolate.

  The front door keeps opening as more people spill in. At one point I see the manager motioning toward my table, asking Mabel why I’m still there, and I hear her say, “That girl’s hungry! Must have a hollow leg, she’s orderin’ the whole menu. Best customer I’ve had all day,” and I see him nod in compliance.

  Mabel brings me a slow but steady stream of hot food: hash browns smothered in gooey cheese followed by a spongy stack of waffles, a side of bacon, and then she starts pouring coffee. Miraculously, I eat it all. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.

  I sit and listen to the sizzle of the hash browns cooking, to the rhythmic scraping of the metal spatulas along the grate, to the ding and slam of the cash register. Mabel keeps returning, going through the whole litany of food, “Now. What kinda toast we havin’?” she purrs, taking her time. “We got whole wheat, sourdough, or just plain white.” I order the sourdough and she brings out a plate of it and a colorful tray of butter and jellies.

  I’m on my second warm up when I look up and see Mom through the window, marching to the front door. She’s made it in two hours on the nose. Her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun and she’s dressed in a dark navy trench coat over jogging pants, as if she just dashed out of the house. She opens the door and a concerned line creases her forehead as she scans the room for me.

  “Mom!” I say, and it comes out as a cry. She rushes over to me and grabs me into a hug and I start convulsing with sobs, and we stand there in the hot, cramped Waffle House surrounded by strangers, Mom smoothing my hair down, her eyes roving all over me. I turn to look
for Mabel and can see that she is watching us, but she respectfully turns away. We walk over to her and Mom pays the tab and on top of that I hand Mabel my entire wad of cash.

  In the car, I’m quiet as Mom navigates us out of Dallas, traffic pin-balling all around us. The ashtray is choked with a glut of stubbed-out cigarettes. Mom must’ve chained-smoked the whole drive up. I pull down the mirror in the visor and look at myself. I’ve cried so much my makeup is all smeared—rivers of charcoal are etched in my face. I wipe them away.

  When we pass the Town East Mall, the last sign of Dallas, I tell Mom everything: about Billy, about Shira, and what she said about Lucy. She stares straight ahead at the gray interstate for a moment, taking it in, before turning to look at me.

  “Honey … I think,” she sucks in a quick breath, strangling a cry. “I think it’s time we both let go.”

  My hands are folded together in my lap and my shoulder is leaning into the door, my head resting on the cold window. Our tires chew up the gray highway; the dividing lines in my vision blur into one. I am broken, empty, and all of a sudden letting go doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.

  65

  Leah

  Sunday, December 17th, 1989

  Lucy missing 11 weeks, 2 days

  When I wake up, my room is already lemon-yellow with the sun. I can smell the smoky smell of bacon frying, and my stomach gurgles and rumbles. After I brush my teeth and pull my frazzled hair back into a ponytail, I drift groggily down the stairs to the dining room, still half in a dream state.

  “Morning, sweetie,” Mom says and kisses the top of my head. I sink into a chair and Mom pushes a cup of chocolate milk at me before stepping back into the kitchen to finish cooking breakfast.

  My eyes are still adjusting to the morning light, which is much brighter in the dining room. The sun is shining and it reflects off the silvery pools of rainwater below in our courtyard, and I’ve just turned back to my milk when I see a figure moving out of the corner of my eye. I whip back around and look out the window and see the top of white, wild hair, walking toward the front of the house. My heart starts pounding.

  “Mom!” I call out in a high pitch, but before she answers there is a knocking at the front door. I creep around the stairway and hear the front door creak as Mom answers it. I’m about to rush to Mom’s side, but I hear her say, “Oh, it’s you again.”

  And something in Mom’s voice makes me pause at the wall, just within ear shot to hear their conversation. Maybe Mom knows I’m snooping because I hear her voice as it moves to the top step of the porch and gets picked up by the wind. I can only hear snatches of words, so I inch closer. I hear the woman say, in a pleading voice, “But I know what happened to her.” And then I hear Mom raise her voice and move to close the door, but not before I hear the woman say, loud enough for me to hear, “712 Melton. That’s my address if you change your—” and then the door slams shut.

  66

  Sylvia

  Sunday, December 17th, 1989

  I’m driving over to the Spencers’ house. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but earlier this week, one night while I was dicing onions for a stew, I had the small, portable television on in the kitchen. It was muted because I was listening to the radio, but I always like to watch Wheel of Fortune so I had it on while I was chopping away, a candle burning next to the cutting board to try and cut the fumes from the onions. Just after the show ended and a commercial ran, I looked up to see Sheriff Greene on the six o’ clock news. I set the knife down and was washing my hands so I could turn up the volume when a banner ran across the bottom of the screen that said: MISSING CHILD’S PURSE FOUND IN BIG WOODS.

  I gasped and Sheriff Greene was talking but my head was spinning so much I couldn’t make out all of his words. They flashed a picture of Lucy—it looked like a school portrait—and then followed that with footage of Big Woods and then the hotline number to call, just before the segment ended. I managed to piece together that they had discovered Lucy’s purse in Big Woods, evidently just before the Thanksgiving holidays, but were only just now making it public, as a plea for help. They were painting it as the same scenario as all the other cases, but I know the truth.

  As I dried my hands with a towel, my mind was already made up: I would try and talk to Roz again. I couldn’t let her think that Lucy was out in Big Woods when I knew differently.

  It’s early, and the town is quiet, but I’m driving over there now hoping to catch Roz at home, hoping that it will be more disarming this way, and I’m also hoping that the husband might come to the door. Maybe he will listen to me.

  I found their address easily enough in the phone book, and it’s a neighborhood I know well so I’m turning down their lane now, driving under a canopy of trees whose leaves have been shorn off by winter. My body is coursing with adrenaline, but I know this is the right thing to do. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. If I can just get the whole story out this time, then I will have done all I know to do.

  I approach their drive but think better of turning in and park on the street instead. Their house is a two-story white Colonial set back on a high hill. It must’ve been a showplace in its day, but this morning it looks like it’s fallen into neglect. The yard is littered with curled, dead leaves and tall, spindly weeds choke the walkway leading up to the front door. The husband must’ve let the yard go, and I think to myself that their house looks marked by tragedy.

  The shutters are all open on the front of the house, so as I’m making my way up the drive, I decide to try the side door, instead. Maybe I won’t be shooed away as fast if they can’t tell who’s out there. But as I’m walking along the side of the house, I feel like a prowler so I turn, with my head down, and walk up to the front door.

  I stand as close to the door as possible and rap the brass knocker a few times, still keeping my head down, hoping to look as demure and nonthreatening as possible. I hear footsteps padding toward the front door but I don’t dare look through the window to see who it is.

  The door opens slowly and it’s Roz, looking annoyed and standing there with a maroon bathrobe on, an eye mask parked on top of her tangled hair. I hope I haven’t woken her. I look up at her, hoping to be invited inside, perhaps, but she steps outside toward me instead, leaving the door just cracked behind her.

  “It’s you again,” she sighs. I beg her to please listen to the rest of my story. She seems to contemplate hearing me out, but then looks over her shoulder as if she’s concerned about who else might be listening.

  “I told you to leave us alone,” she says. She doesn’t sound angry, just weary and resigned. Before she shuts the door and slips back inside, I manage to shout out my address.

  67

  Sylvia

  Christmas Eve

  Sunday, December 24th, 1989

  Had I known the girl would go out there on her own, I would’ve never told her all that I did. I thought she could get her parents to listen, urge them to go to the police.

  I see now that it was foolish, telling her all that, but once I started I couldn’t stop. To have just one person who believed me after all this time, who listened … I couldn’t help myself.

  But now she’s missing, too, and I feel terrible.

  They found her car, a sky-blue Ford Tempo, on the side of Omen Road, parked in a shallow ditch. She’s been missing since Friday afternoon.

  It’s 6:45 in the morning. The police have just left my house. I was sitting in the half-dark kitchen at my wooden table in a thin nightgown, heating oil in a frying pan when I heard them knocking. I grabbed my forest-green sweater and pulled it around my shoulders before making my way to the front door. I looked through the peephole and saw Sheriff Greene standing there with two other officers, their radios crackling and bleating on my front porch.

  I opened the door and cold air shocked my bare ankles, the wind violent and cutting, so I invited the officers in
and they took a seat in the living room on my ratty brown sofa, the side lamps giving off weak, warm light.

  My hand flew to my mouth when the sheriff told me that Leah had vanished, and I was still trying to wrap my mind around it all when he mentioned that they were there to talk to me because Roz told them that I’d stopped by their house last Sunday. He didn’t come right out and say it, but it seemed like I was under suspicion, and I knew that having Leah’s diary would make me seem even more suspicious, so I kept it to myself.

  But let me start with last Thursday, the day that Leah came over. She stopped by the house late in the afternoon, a few hours after lunchtime. I was surprised to hear a knock at the door. It startled me—it wasn’t Owen’s soft knock, but I still crept quietly to the front door and checked the peephole before answering.

  I recognized Leah from all the constant news coverage of her family. She was pretty and slight with shiny light brown hair and her pert nose was covered with a delicate spray of caramel freckles. I invited her inside, but she declined, saying, “No thanks, I’m fine out here,” and took a seat on the wooden porch swing. We’d had a warm snap and it was lovely out so I didn’t try to persuade her otherwise. I sat across from her in my tattered wicker chair and told her everything: about Delia, about the cemetery, about Omen Road, about how the police wouldn’t listen to me. I even told her I was her delivery nurse—which surprised her—but I didn’t tell her about Hank. It seemed like it would be too much. She was quiet, as if she was taking all this in, only asking me a few questions, namely about the location of the cemetery.

  I stepped inside to make us some tea and returned with a tray of candies. She was very polite, and after she selected one, she said she’d better get going, she needed to get on home but had wanted to hear what I had to say. When she left, she turned back and gave me a gentle hug and said, “Goodbye, Sylvia, and thank you.” When she pulled back from me, there were tears in her eyes.