In The Forest Of Harm

by Sallie Bissell

  “But maybe he hid . . .”

  Alex’s eyes flashed with pain. “Mary, every night we played show-and-tell. Of course I had to show first, but then he would tell. I got to hear exactly what happened to all the people who owned that stuff.” Alex hobbled over and rummaged in the tackle box, pulling up a high-school ring with a bright green stone.

  “Remember the girl whose picture was on the bulletin board at the store? This was hers. You don’t want to know what happened to her. And this,” she pawed through some ragged clothing and pulled out a child’s baseball cap. “This belonged to the little boy whose picture was beside hers.”

  “Jimmy Reynolds,” Mary murmured, tracing the worn Milwaukee Braves emblem with her finger.

  Alex put her arm around Mary’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice thick with regret. “I got to hear about every one in great detail. Your mother was not among his victims.”

  Mary retrieved the photo of Jonathan and Jodie Foster, then the three women closed the door of the cabin and limped into the sunshine. Walking as if of one accord, they made their way to the creek. At the water’s edge, they pulled off their clothes. Something far beyond Ulagu had stained them all today. Maybe the water could wash it away.

  Mary stretched her arms to the bright sky for a moment, then she stepped into the stream. The sunlight danced like fire on the water, and she gasped as the frigid current sent shock waves up her legs.

  Breathing deeply, she dropped first to her knees, then lay on her stomach, letting the stream roil around her. Though the freezing water nearly paralyzed her, the gummy bloodstains that covered her began to float away in clumps, revealing the clean skin beneath. She sighed as the water caressed her body like icy silk. Maybe this little stream was the true Atagahi. Maybe when she rose dripping from this creek, she would be clean. Maybe she would even be healed.

  Alex sat down next to her with a splash, then Joan joined them, easing herself down onto a soft bed of underwater moss. Mary turned to Joan.

  “How did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Everything. Avoid getting your throat cut. And then coming after me.”

  “I couldn’t stand just to stay and watch anymore. I crawled through the bushes to the front of the cabin. It was the only place I could see everything.”

  Mary frowned. “Did he come looking for us at the woodpile?”

  “I never saw him until he was behind you, when you were hiding by the door. I didn’t know what to do, so I waited. When nothing happened, I figured things had gone sour. Then I knew it was time for me to do something. I’ve been such a wuss . . .”

  Alex frowned at her. “What was that word you called him when you killed him?”

  For a moment Joan only stared into the rippling water. Then she raised her head and looked at Alex, her face calm and unashamed. “ Stupratoré,” she replied. “Rapist. I was raped, you know.”

  Alex nodded, her eyes full of pain. “I know.”

  Joan turned to Mary. “Do you think I’ll go to jail?” she asked evenly. “I mean, I did kill a man.”

  “They ought to give you a medal for killing him,” Alex growled as she stroked the raw, blistered skin where her wrists had been bound together. “Maybe mint a few million new quarters with your face on them.”

  But Joan kept her eyes on Mary. “Barring that, will they indict me for murder?”

  “I doubt it, considering the circumstances. You could claim about ten legitimate defenses. Lex talionis, for one.” Mary scrubbed fiercely at the blood on her arms and fingers.

  “Eye for an eye?” Joan frowned. “But he didn’t kill any of us.”

  “Yes, he did.” Alex said it flatly. “Just because he didn’t stop our hearts doesn’t mean he didn’t kill us.”

  For a while, no one spoke. Only the monotonous gurgle of the creek rose around them as they each counted the cost the barefoot stranger had exacted of them. Finally, Mary broke the silence.

  “Alex, did you ever find out his last name?”

  “Brank,” Alex replied. “Henry Brank. His father was a butcher. His mother made chocolate cake called Kuchen. He was absolutely convinced that I was his dead sister, Trudy.”

  “His dead sister?” Joan frowned. “Why would he want to kidnap a person who’s already dead?”

  “He was way gone, Joan. He’d spent thirty years hiding in these woods,” said Alex.

  “But I don’t understand . . .”

  “Years ago, he couldn’t bring himself to kill a deer, so his big sister Trudy made fun of him.” Alex’s laugh was bitter. “He got mad and killed her, then he got scared and ran into the mountains. Somewhere along the line, the edges began to blur. He believed Trudy was hunting him. To him, everything became Trudy. And every Trudy, he killed.”

  “But he didn’t kill my mother!” Suddenly Mary’s voice broke with rage and pain. “Somebody else did! I can’t catch the one who killed her!”

  Alex leaned over and gathered her in her arms. “Honey, it’s okay—”

  “No, it’s not,” cried Mary in a fury. “You don’t understand!”

  Alex held her tight. “No, Mary, you don’t understand.” She looked into Mary’s eyes, now sparkling with angry tears. “The whole time I was in that cabin the only thing that kept me going was that I knew if you weren’t already dead, you’d come after me.” She smiled. “You saved my life at least fifty times a day.”

  “That’s right, Mary,” added Joan. “You might not have been able to save your mom, but you certainly saved the both of us. That must count for something!”

  For a long moment Mary stared at them, as if measuring their words, then she nodded. “I’m freezing. Let’s go lie in the sun. We’ll catch pneumonia sitting here.”

  The three women climbed to the bank and let the warm sun dry them, then they put on what clothes they had; Mary lacing her boots, Alex buttoning up her old shirt, Joan pulling on her underpants and ceding Mary’s jeans to Alex. After that they walked over to the bright meadow behind the cabin and stretched out beneath the maple tree.

  Joan fell asleep immediately, but Alex could not be still. She walked around the cabin several times, once returning with a small shard of glass from one of the broken windows, another time carrying the cedar log with which Mary had meant to kill Brank. Finally she settled in between Mary and Joan. She sat down with her arms folded, and stared intently at the cabin, as if Henry Brank might reappear and pursue her once more.

  “He’s not coming back, Alex,” Mary said, looking at her friend’s odd collection of weapons.

  Alex shrugged. “You know, when I was a kid I wasn’t afraid of anything. Not Dracula or Freddy Krueger or any of the gross stuff my brothers tried to scare me with.” She pried a weed up from the dusty earth and shredded it. “Now I can hardly stand to blink my eyes.”

  “Lie down,” Mary said. “I’ll stay here beside you.”

  “I don’t think that will—”

  “Alex, remember our freshman year in college? All those nights you listened to me until I fell asleep?”

  Alex nodded.

  “Well, now’s payback time. Close your eyes and sleep. And this time I’ll keep watch.”

  Alex frowned, but then she curled up obediently while Mary leaned back against the tree and watched two squirrels play on the roof of the cabin. For a while Alex twitched and cried out in her sleep, but gradually her arms and legs relaxed and her breathing became soft and rhythmic. Mary pulled the photograph of Jonathan from her sweatshirt pocket and studied it. How sweet he looked, standing there beside the beautiful actress, his arm lightly on her shoulder, his smile genuine, but also amused at the unlikeliness of his picture being taken with a movie star. Mary traced around his image with her finger. He would not have given this up without a fight. Was this the souvenir of Jonathan that Henry Brank had stolen for his collection? She stared at the picture for a long while, then she put it back in her pocket. Waves of a new dark ocean of pain lapped against her, but s
he would not plunge into them now. She would do that later, if she ever made it back to any place where tears could be shed safely and in private.

  All at once she felt as if her whole body had been leeched of all the strength it had ever possessed. With a deep yawn, she lay down and turned her face up to the afternoon sun. They would have a long, hard hike back to Little Jump Off. They would need to be rested. She took one final look at the cabin, then she laid her head down. With a single sigh, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to relax into a soft heavy nothingness that was very like what she imagined death to be.

  FORTY-TWO

  From a distance he knew they were dead. He’d swung wide around Godfrey’s Hell and approached the old Babcock logging camp from the ridge above it. The battered dogtrot cabin looked like a hundred others, remnants from the last century. No smoke wisped from the chimney, and no dogs dozed beneath the porch. Even when he drew closer it seemed harmless, save for the broken floorboards and jagged windowpanes. Not until he scouted the area from the close perimeter of the trees did he see them. There, in the back, sprawled in the weeds, he found Mary and her friends, semi-clothed and motionless, like dolls abandoned by some careless child. His throat closed as Homer whimpered. Whitman had beaten him here.

  First Billy, now Mary. Jonathan felt as if an Atagahi boulder had been suddenly heaved against his heart.

  He tied Homer to a tree and clicked off the safety of his shotgun. With his hands sweating, he walked toward the three women.

  They lay in the grass beneath the single tree that grew behind the cabin. The tall one wore a plaid shirt and ridiculously short jeans, and her face looked like a prizefighter’s the morning after the night before. The curly-haired one still wore her sweatshirt and Yankees cap, but her left foot was red and swollen with infection. Jonathan stared at her nose, unbelieving. When she’d been at the store she’d been a beauty. Now she was something else entirely.

  Reluctantly, he looked at Mary. A filthy sweatshirt covered the upper part of her body, but her legs were bare. He could see no apparent wounds or injuries, although blood dotted the tops of her hiking boots like spatters of dark red paint and her legs were torn and scratched.

  He frowned. It didn’t add up. Why would a man gut-shoot another man, batter two innocent women into hamburger, and then leave his intended victim virtually untouched? Why not line them up with their faces to a wall and simply execute them? And why did he see no bullet holes? If these women had been shot with the same gun as Billy, the wind should be whistling Dixie through the holes in their chests.

  He glanced back at the cabin. It sat there still and sad, as if Babcock’s loggers had just picked up their axes and moved on. Even as he watched, a tiny brown wren began hopping through one of the broken windows. The cabin was empty, he realized. Whitman had gone. But where? Was he scurrying through the distant trees, trying to put as many mountains as possible between him and his victims? Or was he hiding just beyond the creek, waiting to see who might wander by?

  Jonathan’s eyes narrowed. He scanned the forest that surrounded the cabin. He would be the proverbial sitting duck if Whitman was out there, watching. But he had to take care of Mary. He would just have to take his chances.

  Keeping his gun pointed at the ground, he crept through the grass without a sound. When he reached Mary he extended two fingers, seeking a pulse in her throat.

  Her eyes flew open the instant he touched her. He flinched at the look in them. She saw him, and yet she didn’t see him. She pressed herself against the earth, silent and wary.

  “Mary, it’s me!” He spoke softly, not wanting to frighten her any further. “Jonathan. Jonathan Walkingstick.”

  “What?” She blinked at the war paint smeared grotesquely across his face.

  He rubbed Billy’s dried blood from his skin and touched her cheek. “It’s me,” he repeated. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  For a moment she stared at him as if she’d never seen him before, then she said, “Jonathan?”

  He nodded, and only then did she fling herself around his neck and cling to him, as if he might carry her out of some building that was burning inside her.

  “I thought you were dead,” he said as he locked his arms around her. She trembled in his grasp. He held her tight and buried his face in her hair, once again losing himself in the softness of her skin.

  “We were in so much trouble!” She pushed back and looked at him hard, as if to make certain he was not a dream. “I thought he killed you, too.”

  “Why would anybody kill me?”

  “He had this.” She held up the photo of Jodie Foster.

  Jonathan stared at the picture. It made no sense. Mary had been tracked by a killer from Atlanta. A brain-fried mountain trapper had snitched his snapshot. He shook his head, baffled. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  “Come with me.” She grabbed his hands. “I’ll show you.”

  “What about your friends? Don’t they need help?”

  She glanced at Joan and Alex. “They’re sleeping, thank God. Don’t wake them yet.”

  He helped her up and pulled off his army jacket for her to wrap around her waist. She pressed herself tight against him, as if she were afraid he might disappear.

  “Did you know this is Babcock’s old Wolfpen camp?” he asked. “The place they used to warn us about when we were kids.”

  “I figured it might be when we started tracking along the railroad bed. They were right to keep us away from here. Just look at that.” She pointed as they passed a gaping black hole in the ground.

  He peered into it, then he looked up at her in astonishment. “That thing’s ten feet deep. There must be a dozen rattlers at the bottom.”

  “Come on.” She grabbed his arm and tugged him toward the cabin. “There’s more.”

  They hurried on to the porch, their footsteps breaking the sunlit silence of the clearing. At the cabin door, Mary stopped.

  “There’s a man in there. He attacked Joan and Alex at Atagahi. He raped Joan, stole all our clothes and supplies, then kidnapped Alex. Joan and I tracked them here.”

  Jonathan said, “Yellow dots on the south side of the trees.”

  Mary nodded. “That was us.”

  “But what about Billy?” he asked.

  “Billy?” Mary frowned. “You mean Billy Swimmer?”

  “Yeah. Our old friend Billy. You tracked the guy who stole my picture and kidnapped your friend. Didn’t you ever see Billy?”

  Mary shook her head. “I haven’t seen Billy since the day we drove up to Little Jump Off.” She pushed open the cabin door. “Just look. There’s a whole table of trophies from the people he’s murdered.”

  He knew someone was dead long before his eyes adjusted to the dark. The smell of blood and shit poured from the cabin like a malevolent cloud. In the shadows he could hear the hum of busy flies. Mary took his hand and pulled him across the room.

  She stopped well before they neared the corpse, watching motionless as Jonathan knelt beside it. With the tip of a Bowie knife still protruding from his chest, lay the man he’d last seen at Little Jump Off.

  “Jesus Christ, Mary! When you ladies kill somebody, you don’t mess around.”

  The man’s skin was mottled with death and blackened blood. A fly was dining on one open, unseeing eye. Mary knew nothing about Billy or Whitman, Jonathan realized. She had killed the man who’d attacked her friends. She was totally unaware that someone else was tracking her. He looked up at her.

  “Mary,” he began, choosing his words carefully. “You may not have killed the right man.”

  “But that’s exactly what Mary Crow does best.” A deep voice rang out behind them. “Or haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  FORTY-THREE

  Now turn around, both of you. No sudden moves, okay?” Mary and Jonathan turned. A tall young man stood in the doorway, long legs spread wide in a shooter’s stance, muscular arms pointing a pistol directly at them. Mud and beggar-lice covered
his camouflage suit, while soot had been smeared over his cheeks and forehead.

  Mary gasped. “Mitchell Whitman!”

  The sunlight trapped Mitch’s eyes like two pale prisms as he pointed his Beretta at Jonathan. “Put that shotgun down on the floor. Do it slowly, and I may let you live long enough to kiss Pocahontas here good-bye.”

  Jonathan knelt with infinite care, setting the shotgun on the floor as if it were an offering to some god. As he bent over, Mary saw that he pulled his shirttail surreptitiously from his belt, letting it fall loosely around his waist. Ribtickler, she thought.

  “Haven’t seen you since last Thursday in court.” Mitch grinned at Mary’s filthy appearance. “I gotta say, you don’t look like the same girl.”

  Mary met his gaze steadily, her eyes the color of steel. “Oh, I’m the same girl, Whitman. Believe me.”

  “Oh, yeah? Still just as bad a bitch?”

  “Maybe even a worse one. It might be better not to fuck with me today.”

  “Awww, sugar.” Mitch threw back his head and laughed. “I haven’t even begun to fuck with you!”

  “Just like you didn’t fuck with poor Sandra Manning?”

  “Sandra Manning? Didn’t we exhaust that subject on the stand last week?”

  “Pretty much. Except I think you killed her, Mitch. Your brother was involved, but I think you were the one who really killed her.”

  “How so?”

  Mary regarded him with a bitter smile. “Because if you didn’t kill Sandra Manning, then why else would you be up here pointing that pistol at me?”

  “Maybe I wanted to teach you some manners. Maybe I wanted to show you that you can’t torch people on the witness stand and not expect to pay the consequences.”

  Mary shook her head. “I didn’t call you to the stand, Mitch. Defense did.”

  “But once you got going, you just couldn’t stop, could you? You really got off on having a rich man’s son up there, sweating like some petty thief. You knew you’d never get a shot at Cal, so you took it all out on me.”