Into the Woods (Anomaly Hunters, Book One)

by J. S. Volpe

  Stooping down to clear the overhang, Calvin made his way across the alcove. The alcove was dim and dank and loud with the echoing hiss of the falls. The spray from the falling water left tiny, chilly droplets on his bare arms.

  On the other side he headed straight for the clearing. He was on Robert May’s land now, and for some reason the woods on this side of the river were denser and darker than on the Crow side. Calvin had no idea if this was a naturally occurring phenomenon—maybe due to environmental differences on either side of the river—or if it meant only that the Crows had felled more trees and cleared more brush over the years. Either way, he preferred the May side. It looked older and creepier and cooler.

  As Calvin drew closer to the clearing he began to see traces of human activity. Much of the brush was tramped down and broken, and there were areas where the dirt was churned with footprints. At one point he saw a blue latex glove caught in the branches of a bush.

  He spotted a flash of something yellow moving amid the trees up ahead where the clearing was. Not the warm, sunny yellow of the autumn leaves, but a garish, artificial man-made shade of yellow. Were people still here?

  He slowed down and advanced more cautiously, craning his head this way and that to see around the brush for a better view. He soon discerned black letters on the yellow and realized it was police tape bobbing in the breeze.

  He started to relax, but then caught a glimpse of something else moving. Someone else. Amid the foliage he saw what looked like a white T-shirt. Blue jeans. A bit of a bare arm. A skinny arm. A girl.

  Then he saw the long, red hair that haunted all his thoughts these days, and his breath caught in his throat. It was Cynthia.

  A few more steps forward brought her fully into view. She stood on the edge of the clearing, her back to Calvin, her hands resting lightly on the police tape that was strung at waist level from tree trunk to tree trunk around the perimeter of the clearing. There wasn’t anyone else in sight.

  He had been trying to keep quiet, but now he deliberately scuffed his feet on the ground to alert her to his presence.

  Cynthia jumped and spun around, her eyes huge with alarm. Then she recognized him and relaxed.

  “Calvin,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Um…” He wasn’t sure what to say. Now that he was faced with the reality of the situation, with the police tape cordoning off the clearing, with the woods around him bearing the traces of dozens of smart and well-trained law enforcement personnel, with Cynthia’s haggard yet unyielding countenance, all of his amateur-sleuth/young-hero-to-the-rescue fantasies suddenly seemed silly and juvenile. “I, uh…I heard about what happened. I’m sorry. I just thought maybe I could…I don’t know, help somehow or something.” He shrugged. “But I guess there probably isn’t a whole lot I can do that isn’t already being done.”

  She studied him with a narrow, assessive gaze for a moment, then said, “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She nodded in the direction of the May house.

  “What do you know about Robert May?” she said.

  “Robert May? Um…I don’t know. I know he’s old. He’s, what, like, ninety-something? Beyond that, not much. I mean, there’re lots of stories about him at school. About him being crazy or a Satanist or…” He stiffened. “Wait, do you think he has something to do with what happened to your sister?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it, then sighed. “I don’t know. It’s just, I’m not sure how much you’ve heard, but they found one of Emily’s shoes here in the clearing this morning. And some blood, too. They still don’t know whose it was. The tests’ll take a while. They also found some of Emily’s shoe-prints in the mud by the riverbank, down by the stepping stones. And then there’s that.” She pointed at the center of the clearing, where there was a circle of burned grass two feet wide.

  Calvin had been so preoccupied with Cynthia that he hadn’t noticed the burn till now. He leaned over the police tape for a better look. The grass was blackened all the way down to the soil. Much of it had already crumbled into powder.

  “What happened?” he asked. “How did it get burned like that?”

  “Nobody knows. At first everyone thought it was a campfire or something, but the guys from the FBI couldn’t find any signs of any combustible materials. No wood, no paper, nothing. They said it looked more like a lightning strike.”

  “Lightning? Seriously?” He looked at the sky, then at the circle again. “But there hasn’t been a storm here for a long time. A few weeks, at least.”

  “I know! But my real point is, this is all on Robert May’s land.” She held up a hand as if to forestall any objections. “Now, I know in and of itself that doesn’t mean anything. Just because something happened on his property, that’s not proof he had anything to do with it. But there’re also all those stories about him. Bodies in the basement. Ritual sacrifices. Generations of inbreeding and insanity.”

  “Do you think all that stuff’s true?”

  “Well…I don’t know about all of it. But have you heard the stories about mysterious deliveries to his house late at night?”

  “Yeah. Like, trucks delivering coffins or iron maidens or whatever. It always sounded like something out of a cheesy horror story to me.”

  “Well, I can tell you for a fact those stories are based on truth. I mean, I didn’t see coffins or anything, but listen: One night about two years ago I was coming back from a get-together at Jess Asher’s, right? It was pretty late. Late enough that I wound up getting grounded, actually. It was probably around one a.m. Anyway, I was heading east down Oaks Road, but sticking to the shadows under the eaves of the woods so no one would see me. And as I was nearing Mr. May’s driveway, I saw an old flatbed truck turn down it, and chained to the bed was this big metal oil drum.”

  “An oil drum? What was in it?”

  “I have no idea! When I came to the end of his driveway, I paused and looked down it. I couldn’t see anything because of the way the driveway winds through the woods, but I could hear faint clanks and bangs as they unloaded the truck. Then everything went silent, so I started walking on. I had just turned down my own driveway when I heard the truck pull back out. It was coming my way, so I stopped and waited, and when it drove by, the bed was empty. There were two guys in the cab. One was this skinny guy with a beard and sunglasses—”

  “At one in the morning?”

  “I know! And the other one looked almost like a gorilla with a blue cap and overalls on.”

  “That is really weird.”

  “Exactly. And let me ask you something else: What the hell does he do? What has he ever done? I mean, I assume he’s pretty rich because of the brewery his family and mine used to own, but what does he do with all his time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Nobody knows. I’ve been living next to him my whole life, and I couldn’t tell you the first thing about him. He hardly ever leaves his house. And the few times I’ve seen him outside it, he’s always acting weird.”

  “Like how?”

  “Well, sometimes when I was a little girl, I’d be out playing in the woods, and he’d just sort of pop up out of nowhere and start talking to me. Even back then, he looked ancient, all bent and wrinkled and white-haired. The sight of him always scared me. I’d never seen anyone who looked so old. Anyway, he’d come up to me and ask me all these questions about me and my family.”

  “Your family? Like what?”

  “All kinds of stuff. He’d always start out really innocuous, asking me how I was doing, what school was like, how my parents were. Basic neighbor stuff, right? But then the questions would get more probing and specific. I remember one time he wanted to know about my Aunt Wendy, my dad’s sister, up in Boston. He seemed especially interested in her seizures.”

  “Seizures?”

  “Yeah, when she was young—way before my time; this was back when she was growing up here—she used to have these,
like, epileptic fits or something. I don’t think she’s had one in years. But Mr. May wanted to know if she’d had any more, and if anyone had ever told me much about the ones she did have. And then this other time he wanted to know if I knew anything about my grandma’s death. My dad’s mom, that is. He never seemed interested in my mom’s family. But anyway, you see my point? It’s like he was collecting information on us, like he has a weird fixation on my family.”

  “And you think, what, he’s taken his fixation to the next level now?”

  Cynthia shrugged. “I don’t know. I just think there’s definitely something not quite kosher going on with that guy, something worth looking into.”

  “Yeah, I agree he’s definitely peculiar,” Calvin said. “But like you said yourself, he’s also ancient. Admittedly I’ve only seen him a couple of times, but he looks like he can barely stand up without a cane. Could a little old man like that really snatch up a ten-year-old girl?”

  Cynthia rolled her eyes. “That’s pretty much what the cops said.”

  “You told them?”

  “Yeah, and they just sort of pooh-poohed the whole thing. They gave me that ‘we’ll take that under consideration’ routine, you know? They did send someone over to interview him, but they did that with all the neighbors.” She shook her head. “The thing is, he doesn’t have to be super-healthy or anything. It looks like Emily came out here on her own. All Mr. May would have to do is just hit her on the head with a rock and knock her out. That could account for the blood. Then he’s too weak to carry her, so he drags her off. In the process her shoe comes off but he doesn’t notice.”

  Calvin nodded. It was a plausible theory. Except…

  “What about the burned grass?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. Then a light dawned in her eyes. “Maybe he rigged up some glowing pyrotechnic thingie to look like a fairy light or something. To lure her in.”

  “That makes sense, I guess. It seems kind of unnecessarily elaborate, but…”

  “It’s better than magical lightning out of a clear sky.”

  Calvin nodded. “Very true.” He regarded the burned circle for a moment, then stared off in the direction of the May house.

  “You believe me?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I mean, evidence like this can be interpreted all kinds of ways. It’s all too inconclusive. But from what you’ve said, it really does sound like Mr. May merits further investigation. There’s definitely something odd going on over there.”

  Her left eyebrow rose. “You wanna help me conduct a little unofficial investigation, then?”

  He looked at her in surprise, all his amateur sleuth fantasies surging to the fore again. But this was even better than his fantasies. Now, not only would he be investigating a mystery and hopefully helping Emily, but he would be doing it at Cynthia’s side.

  “Count me in,” he said with a firm nod.

  Chapter 5

  Anna West and John Coyote

  Eleven-year-old Anna West rang the doorbell of the small brick house on Papesh Road that was home to John Coyote, her friend and classmate and a fellow BFF of Emily’s. While Anna waited for an answer, she looked over her shoulder and flashed a reassuring smile at her mom Karen, who sat behind the wheel of the silver minivan idling at the curb. Anna felt kind of babyish to have her mom chauffeuring her on a three-block trip she had walked unsupervised a hundred times before. Then again, Anna understood her mom’s—all parents’—concern and sudden overzealous protectiveness in the wake of Emily’s disappearance. And while one part of her cringed at the babyishness of it, another part was thankful. With a possible child-nabbing psycho on the loose, it was better to be safe than sorry.

  The front door opened and there stood John’s aunt Colleen Brandt. She was a short, stout woman who always wore dark frumpy cardigans and fluttery ankle-length skirts and whose brown hair was always drawn back in a bun so tight it could have doubled as a drawer pull. Ms. Brandt gave Anna’s mom a smile and a wave. Anna’s mom returned the wave, then drove away.

  “Come on inside,” Ms. Brandt said, holding open the door. “It’s terrible what’s happened. How are you holding up?”

  “Okay, I guess,” Anna said as she stepped into the vestibule.

  “Both John and I are worried sick.” Ms. Brandt glanced at the open door of the living room from which the zany music and crazy sound effects of a cartoon emanated. Then she bent down toward Anna and whispered, “He’s not dealing with this very well, I’m afraid. He woke up feeling poorly, and then…” She sighed. “I just hope they find her soon. But with the FBI on the case now, I’m sure it won’t be long.

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on.” Ms. Brandt turned and led Anna toward the living room. “Perhaps you’ll be able to cheer him up better than a superannuated old biddy like me can.”

  Despite the grim circumstances, Anna couldn’t help smiling a little. Only Ms. Brandt would use a word like “superannuated” in conversation. Though she was a sweet lady, she was kind of a weirdo. She was nearly fifty, had never married, and worked as the head librarian at the May Public Library. According to John, she spent most of her free time working on an enormous epic poem about pirates. Apparently she had been working on it for decades. John said he caught a glimpse of the complete manuscript once and swore it was as tall as he was. Plus it was full of words like “superannuated” (and worse). More shockingly, the manuscript was written entirely in longhand, the ultra-old-fashioned way. Ms. Brandt used computers only at work and only because she had to.

  Still, for all her quirks, and despite the fact that she probably hadn’t wanted any kids, Ms. Brandt had done a fine job raising John after the death of John’s parents. No one had ever told Anna the full story of the tragedy, but she managed to piece most of it together from scraps of overheard conversations. Apparently Martin and Sally Coyote and their only child, John, barely a year old at the time, had been returning home from Christmas shopping one blustery winter evening when the car hit a patch of ice and swerved straight into the path of an oncoming pickup. John’s parents and the driver of the pickup died instantly. John came through it miraculously unscathed: When rescuers tore open the twisted wreckage they found John still strapped securely to his safety seat with not a mark on him.

  At least not on his body. For as long as Anna had known him, John had been subject to bouts of intense moodiness, during which he became withdrawn and sullen and almost hostile. Anna had always assumed these moods were rooted in his parents’ untimely death, though she wasn’t sure if he actually remembered the accident (she sure hoped not), or if he simply knew what others had told him.

  She had figured that Emily’s disappearance would plunge him into one of these dark moods, but he was even worse than she expected. Anna almost gasped out loud when she saw him. He sat on the living room couch gazing vacantly at an episode of Pinky and the Brain. His face was pale and waxy, and there were dark bags under his eyes. He was bundled tight in one of his aunt’s homemade black afghans. His right hand stuck out of the afghan’s folds and lay atop the TV remote on his thigh. With his distant eyes and his pallid skin and the afghan wrapped around him like a shroud, he looked almost like a corpse.

  Anna tried to suppress the awful thought. Dead things were nasty. Over the summer she had caught a few minutes of an episode of The Walking Dead, and for the next two weeks she had nightmares about zombies pursuing her across dark, desolate landscapes. Many of the zombies were people she had once loved—her family, her friends, even John, even Emily—all of them now transformed into soulless, shambling, dead-eyed things eager to rip her to shreds and devour her still-warm flesh.

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” Ms. Brandt said. “Let me know if you need anything.” She bustled off into the kitchen.

  “Hey,” Anna said, crossing the room to the couch.

  “Hey,” John said, his voice a whisper.

  “You’re sick?”

  His afghan-draped shoulders rose a fraction.r />
  “I don’t know. Something.”

  “Something?”

  He didn’t answer. His finger pressed a button on the remote, and Pinky and the Brain was replaced by black-and-white cowboys galloping along on horses.

  “Hurry!” one of the cowboys hollered to the others. “Before that snakey varmint gets away!”

  Anna gestured at an empty spot on the couch next to him.

  “Can I sit?”

  Another feeble shrug. “Sure.”

  Anna sat.

  John’s finger moved again. The cowboys were swapped out for a Volkswagen commercial.

  “I was worried about you,” Anna said. “Especially with, you know, both of you not in school today. I mean, after I heard about Emily, I thought maybe you were…” She shrugged, embarrassed to remember how hysterical she had gotten during her interview with Officer Ritelli in the elementary school’s conference room this morning. When Ritelli revealed the reason for Emily’s absence from school, Anna immediately feared that John’s absence had the same horrible explanation. Her frantic pleas had put a brief halt to the interview while Ritelli made a few calls to check on John’s whereabouts. To Anna’s relief, it turned out John’s aunt had called him in sick this morning. His and Emily’s mutual absence was only a coincidence.

  Or was it? Could John have somehow unconsciously known what had happened to Emily and become ill in response? Anna had always felt that John and Emily shared a bond she herself wasn’t privy to. When the three of them were together she sometimes felt left out, a third wheel. They were all best friends—a three-person tribe, as Emily liked to call them—but John and Emily’s friendship was something rare and special. Unhealthily so, perhaps. John and Emily were too alike, really. With their black hair, dark eyes, and light complexions, they looked similar enough to pass for brother and sister. In addition, both of them possessed hyperactive imaginations, a fascination with monsters and fantasy and weird things, and a disdain for the suburban blandness of their hometown. To cap things off, they shared the same birthday. Not just any day, either, but October 31st, Halloween. John and Emily saw great meaning in these coincidences, and this led them to cultivate their similarities and see themselves as a breed apart from the boring normality that surrounded them.