Into the Woods (Anomaly Hunters, Book One)

by J. S. Volpe

  Donovan shook his head. “Violet, I know you mean well, and I appreciate it. But…well, I never thought I’d ever say this, but I think maybe we should leave this to the cops. They know what they’re doing. They have experience in this kind of thing. If we start mucking around, we could, like, fuck up their investigation or something.”

  She placed her hands on his shoulders and looked him directly in the eye, her expression full of unwonted seriousness.

  “Dude, this is your fucking sister,” she said. “I understand where you’re coming from on this, but the fact is—and I don’t mean to be a downer or a complete cunt about this—but the fact is, if she’s been abducted by some kinda psycho pervert molester person, her chances of survival get worse and worse by the hour. And while the cops and FBI dudes are noodling around with their fucking paperwork-in-triplicate bullshit and their dainty little regulations, she could be getting killed. Or worse. Now, I know everybody means well, and all those regulations mean well and everything. But meaning well is not gonna find your sister. Me, I’d rather break a few rules and step on some toes in the name of a righteous cause than just sit around with my thumb up my ass and watch a bunch of complete strangers do some frigid little by-the-book investigation and let the moment of action slip away.”

  “Violet, I don’t know…” He shook his head and stared off at the Slipknot All Hope Is Gone poster on his wall. Then he looked away with a frown; that wasn’t really the most comforting title, given the circumstances.

  He sighed with uncertainty. In her usual inimitable way, Violet was right, but she was also wrong. He had heard the same statistics about the swiftly declining chances of survival of abducted children. Not that that was definitely what had happened to Emily, but it was, he had to admit, the most likely scenario. And the thought that he might be letting the moment of action slip away made him feel almost physically sick.

  But he also remembered all the cops and FBI agents he had met throughout the day. Behind their by-the-book law-abiding exteriors, Donovan had sensed an urgency to find Emily that nearly matched his own. It was as if Emily were their own kith and kin.

  “I dunno, Violet,” he said. “I think we oughtta give them more time.” Seeing her dubiously raised eyebrow, he quickly added, “I mean, you only just called them with your information. Let’s give them some time to act on it. Besides, it’s like how you mentioned Casey Anthony and O.J. and all that. Part of the reason they walked in the end is cuz the cops weren’t able to make a case against them. If we start mucking around, we might fuck up the case, and whoever’s behind this might end up walking because of us.”

  Violet regarded him in slit-eyed silence for a moment. Then she flung up her hands. “Okay, fine. We’ll give them a little more time.” She jabbed a finger at him. “But if they haven’t found her by tomorrow night, we’re gonna start tearin’ up this cornhole town lookin’ for her ourselves.”

  Chapter 8

  Roger Grey

  1

  Roger Grey lifted the lid of the large, yellow chest freezer in his basement and looked inside. He had to squint a little against the chilly air that washed over his face.

  At the bottom of the freezer lay the body of Emily Crow. She was wrapped in a blue blanket, only her slack, pale face visible amid its folds. A dime-sized spot of blood stained the blanket just above her heart.

  The sight made Roger shake his head with anger and disgust. She had been so beautiful, so perfect. Now she was just a lifeless husk. Useless. He had wanted her alive. He had wanted her to scream and wriggle and fight and plead. That had been the whole point. He hadn’t wanted to kill her.

  At least not so soon…

  2

  He had desired her from the moment he first saw her six months ago.

  It had been a time of change in all kinds of ways. He had just landed a good-paying job at the May National Bank, and to be closer to his new (and hopefully permanent) workplace, he had sold his recently deceased mother’s house in Kingwood and bought a cozy one-storey bungalow on Grace Road in eastern May. He enjoyed the thought of assuming a quiet, outwardly normal life among these witless suburbanites. It amused him to no end to exchange smiles and hellos with his neighbors and coworkers while spending his nights fantasizing about the rape and torture of their pretty little prepubescent daughters. He felt like a wolf among sheep.

  At times it bothered him that his fantasies were only fantasies, that despite his masturbatory imaginings his life was largely that of the sheep. But he understood that the risks involved in acting on his desires far outweighed the fleeting benefits, and for the most part he had been content to let his dreams remain dreams.

  But it had been a time of change in all kinds of ways.

  He was thrilled to discover that his new job was across the street from a park frequented by the local children. Rather than take his lunch break at a nearby deli like most of his coworkers, he chose to eat alone in the park. His coworkers probably considered him antisocial, but their opinion of him—of anything—meant less to him than the grass and flowers he tramped as he crossed the park to the gazebo, where he would sit and eat his peanut butter and jelly sandwich and his Lay’s potato chips and his Oreos, while he watched the little girls laugh and play.

  His third week in May, he was eating his lunch on the gazebo steps when Emily Crow strolled into the park to jump rope.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was perfect. He watched, slack-jawed, his sandwich gathering flies in his lap, while she jumped rope, her long dark hair flying, her lithe body working, her flawless skin glistening with sweat.

  After that he visited the park with the sole hope of seeing her. When summer ended and school resumed, he hung around the park after work and on weekends, hoping she would visit in her free time. When she did he was elated. When she didn’t he was plunged into gloom like a jilted lover. She became the screaming, bawling star of his increasingly violent nightly fantasies. He was smitten.

  Via judicious questioning of the locals, he learned who she was and where she lived. A few times he felt bold enough to prowl the woods around her house. He didn’t linger long. He felt oddly exposed in the woods. After all, the woods were little more than a collection of hiding places. Hundreds of eyes could be watching him from the bushes and shadows. He always wound up cutting these excursions short and hurrying home without a glimpse of Emily.

  Despite his reconnaissance, he didn’t seriously contemplate making a move on Emily. The vast machinery of law and order arrayed against him was enough to keep him in line, to keep his fantasies only fantasies.

  Until two weeks ago.

  3

  Emily lay on the grass in the clearing, naked and trussed up like a rodeo calf, her sobs and whines barely audible through the gag in her mouth. Roger, too, was naked. They were alone. He could do whatever he wanted with her.

  And he did.

  The dream had been incredibly long and detailed, more so than any dream he had ever had. He spent what seemed like hours ravishing her delicate little body. He felt every individual blade of grass tickling his bare knees. He traced the path of every tear that spilled from her frightened, pleading eyes. He heard the creak of the ropes that bound her wrists and ankles as she twisted her hands and feet about in search of a release that would never come.

  He awoke with a start as he ejaculated—not just in the dream but in reality. For the first time in his life he had been so aroused that he had come without even touching himself.

  After that the dream haunted him. The memory of it was always present behind his eyes, no matter what he was doing, a pornographic film loop superimposed upon his every interaction with the world. He would catch himself zoning out in the middle of work as he relived part of the dream, his gaze distant, his mouth agape, his cock an iron rod in his pants. He started masturbating three or four times a day. His penis grew red and sore. But even then he didn’t stop. He couldn’t.

  The dream wouldn’t leave him alone. Or he couldn’t leave i
t alone. He saw now that his previous fantasies had been feeble, third-rate inventions with little basis in truth. The dream had given him a taste of the real thing. But a taste wasn’t enough. He wanted more. He needed more. It was an itch he had to scratch.

  He had to act, he realized. He had to make the dream reality. Damn the police. Damn the law. He was smart enough to avoid capture and punishment. He just had to be careful. Meticulous.

  He needed a plan. But though he spent many hours crafting scheme after scheme, none of them were good enough. Something was missing.

  The something revealed itself a week ago, while he was watching Emily in the park after work one day. She was there with two of her friends—a black-haired boy and a brunette girl, both of them around her own age. The brunette was kind of cute. Not nearly as lovely as Emily, of course, but well worth the occasional supporting role in his fantasies.

  The trio of kids had been shit-talking their teacher, an old lady named Miss Dryer. It seemed Miss Dryer had denied the existence of fairies, something Emily vehemently believed it.

  “Stupid old bitch,” Emily had snapped. “I know fairies are real. I’ve seen them. I saw them when I was a little girl, right in the woods near my house, and—”

  “We know,” the boy said. “You’ve told us, like, eight hundred million times before.”

  Emily stuck out her tongue at him. “Well, I still have to tell you eight hundred million times more, because it’s just that important!”

  At that point they passed out of earshot. But Roger had heard enough. He already had the beginning of a plan.

  4

  It took him a couple of days to work out the plan. To initiate the plan, he needed some time to talk to Emily alone and unobserved in the park. Given the irregularity of Emily’s visits and the park’s variable attendance, it might take a while before he found the right opportunity. Fortunately, Roger’s first two-week vacation at his no-longer-quite-so-new job rolled around, which meant he could spend a lot more time at the park. The timing was perfect, as if it had been meant to be. But since Roger knew there were no gods in the sky and no meaning or purpose inherent in the bland, mechanical world, it was clearly only a coincidence, albeit a delightful one.

  Or perhaps not so delightful: The first few days of his vacation passed without a single glimpse of Emily, and Roger began to worry that she was sick or busy and that his vacation would wind up being two weeks of mounting frustration. But then on Thursday she strolled into the park around four-thirty and started jumping rope in her usual shady corner. Roger glanced around. The kids on the baseball diamond were absorbed in their game. The two ladies who had been taking their babies for a stroll were chattering away, oblivious to everything around them. The fat guy who ran the antique store and who always spent part of his afternoon in the park chain smoking and reading Agatha Christie novels had his bulbous nose buried in And Then There Were None.

  Perfect.

  Roger pushed himself off the gazebo steps and headed toward the dim, quiet corner where Emily was. She was facing the woods, perhaps watching for fairies while she jumped rope. Roger walked up to the woods about twenty feet to her right and peered intently into the trees as if looking for something.

  Emily’s curiosity was roused, exactly as planned. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her stop jumping rope to watch him. Eyes fixed on the woods, he slowly sidled her way as though seeking out a better view. When he was just a few feet away from her, he glanced up and jumped a little as though startled to see someone nearby.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said with a faint upper-class British accent. His plan required him to adopt the role of the kindly, introverted scholar, and he figured the accent would help. “I didn’t see you there.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “How could you not?”

  He gave a small, embarrassed laugh. “Well, you know, I was a bit, ah, preoccupied. I was rather absorbed in the fairy lights.” He gestured at the woods.

  “Fairy lights?” She looked into the woods, her eyes huge and excited. “Where?”

  “They’re gone now. I saw them for only a few seconds. That’s typical, though. The moment the fairies realize anyone’s watching, they disappear like that.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis.

  She stared at him with wonder. “You’ve seen them, too?”

  “Yes, of course. Although, uh, I really don’t like to talk about it very much. Most people…they just don’t understand.” He cocked his head. “Am I to understand that you have seen them as well?”

  “Yeah! I saw some in the woods when I was little. I’ve been hoping to see them again, but I never have, even though I live right here.”

  “Yes,” he said with a sad sigh. “Over the last decade or so they’ve become more reclusive, perhaps because there are more people around than there used to be. Nowadays, you usually see them only late at night when everyone is asleep. Every now and then I come out here around midnight, and I go to one of the spots in the woods where they like to gather. And there I sit and wait and watch, and if I’m lucky I see all the multicolored lights dancing in the air among the trees. It’s a beautiful sight.”

  Hyper with excitement, Emily started babbling away a mile a minute, telling him about the time she saw the fairies. She talked so fast he barely understood her, but he managed to catch the gist of it: naked fairies and mushrooms. He nodded sagely all the while, interjecting comments like, “Ah, yes,” and “That’s very typical of fairies.”

  When she was done, he frowned and scratched his chin. “You know,” he said. “I’ll be coming out here to look for them tonight around midnight. I’d invite you, but it will be quite late, and I’m sure you have school tomorrow.”

  “No! I can go! I’ve stayed up that late before. It’s not a problem.”

  “Oh, I don’t know…” This was too easy. She had probably been told a million times that she should be wary of strangers, but she had forgotten that, or didn’t care, now that she had found an adult who actually believed in fairies. Who believed her.

  “Pleeeease,” she said, giving him a pleading smile. “My birthday’s in two weeks.”

  “Your birthday, eh? I don’t know. If your parents were to find out, I’d probably get accused of…of child endangerment or something.”

  She waved a hand dismissively. “Beh. They won’t find out. They’ll be asleep. They go to bed really early.”

  That answered that. “Hm. You say you live nearby?”

  “Uh-huh. Right over there.” She pointed in the direction of her house.

  “Well, that would make it easier, I guess.” He frowned down at the ground as if pondering a weighty matter. Finally he sighed and looked at her. “All right. Tell you what: Meet me at the round clearing across the river at midnight. You know where the clearing is?”

  “Of course!”

  “Okay. Good. If you’re not there by five after, I’ll go on by myself.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “All right, then. Oh, wait. One other thing. I, uh, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about what we’ll be doing.”

  “Why not?” For the first time she looked suspicious.

  “Well, um…” He grimaced and looked down at his shoes. “The people I work with—my friends—they wouldn’t understand. No one else believes, you see. At least not adults. If word got around that I believe in fairies…well, you know how people can be about things like that.”

  Whatever suspicions she may have harbored were gone now, washed away by a flood of sympathy. “It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone. Don’t worry.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief. “I wish all people were as understanding as you. Well, then, I’ll see you at midnight in the clearing. And please try not to be late.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good.”

  “By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Huh? Oh, uh, my name’s Mark.”

  “I’m Emily.” She held out a hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Emily.” He
shook her hand. It was soft and smooth and warm. There was a sudden swell of pressure in his pants. “And I hope we have good luck tonight.”

  “Me too!”

  They parted with smiles, each of them sure that their fondest dreams would soon be realized.

  5

  Roger spent the rest of the day preparing for their meeting. He picked out a bunch of old clothes he didn’t need anymore and could dispose of afterward. Then he dug out his father’s old hunting knife, eight inches of shining, razor-sharp steel that he felt sure would scare Emily into silence and obedience. He hooked the sheathed knife onto the back of his belt, where it would be hidden under his jacket.

  Into his jacket pockets went a roll of twine and a few pieces of an old torn-up T-shirt. Into the trunk of the car went an old blue blanket. The plan was to gag her, strip her, and bind her at knife-point, then have his way with her in the clearing. After he had thus made his dream reality, he would wrap her in the blanket—both to obscure her form should any vehicles pass by while he was carrying her from the woods to his car, and to prevent any hair or other forensic evidence from contaminating the trunk, where he planned to put her—then drive her back to his house. There he would keep her locked in the basement, his luscious little sex slave for however long he wanted.

  He had been afraid he would be a bundle of nerves once the moment arrived, but as he drove through the dark and silent streets of May toward his midnight rendezvous, he felt calm and powerful, like a shark gliding toward the scent of blood.

  There was a grassy verge beneath the eaves of the woods just west of the Old Stone Bridge, and after making sure no one was around, Roger cut the headlights then parked on the grass, his dark gray Ford Focus nearly invisible in the shadows. He looked at his watch. 11:55. Perfect.