One day, before our parents came home from work, Erica and I were alone in the living room, trapped inside by a cold November rain. As usual, my sister was whispering to Little Erica. I slid closer to hear what she was saying, but she stopped talking and frowned at me as if I’d interrupted a private moment.
I was in a bad mood. I’d flunked another geography test. Someone left a sheet of notebook paper taped to my locker: “Selene is gonna getcha.” A boy named Caleb Rice tripped me in the hall and got a big laugh out of the kids who saw me take a tumble and drop all my books.
“That doll can’t hear a thing you say,” I said crossly.
“What do you know about dolls?”
“What everybody knows—everybody but you. They aren’t alive.”
“Think what you want.” Erica smiled as if she knew things I didn’t.
“Tell me one thing she can do that a real person does.”
“She listens to me. Nobody else does. She talks to me, too. Nobody else does that either.”
“Prove it,” I said. “Make her say something.”
“Little Erica only talks to me.”
“You’re such a liar.” Disgusted with her and myself, I looked out the window. The van was coming down the driveway, its headlights slicing through the dark. “Mom and Dad are here.”
Erica shrugged and started combing Little Erica’s hair. “I wish I had a sister like you instead of a brother like Daniel.” She spoke to the doll just loudly enough for me to hear.
The back door opened, and Mom and Dad came in, bringing the cold evening air with them. From the way they acted, neither speaking to nor looking at each other, I knew they’d been quarreling.
Back in the good old Connecticut days, they hardly ever argued, but now it happened so often they barely spoke to each other without one making the other angry. Usually it was the house. The leak in the roof had gotten worse, and we had to set buckets out to catch the rain. Cold drafts sneaked in through every crack. Dad had figured out the furnace, but the house was never warm. Mom said we lived in a barn.
They were too busy arguing to pay much attention to either Erica or me. I don’t think they realized how miserable we were. Or how much they’d changed.
At dinner that night, I said, “Maybe we should go back to Connecticut. Not Fairfield but someplace cheaper, like Bridgeport.”
“Bridgeport?” Mom put down her fork and stared at me. “Do you really think we’d be happier in Bridgeport?”
“I don’t know.” I looked at her. “But the schools might be better.”
“Doubtful,” Dad said.
“They have Home Depots there,” I said. “Lowe’s, too.”
“Oh, that’s an inducement,” Dad said. “I could wear my nifty orange apron and show investment bankers where the restrooms are.”
“Never mind.” I left the table, only to hear raised voices behind me. Erica slunk past me and went to her room.
The days passed, rushing us toward winter. The house got messier. Books piled up in odd places. Newspapers and magazines littered floors and tabletops. Dirty dishes sat in the sink until we ran out of plates and then someone washed them. Nobody did the laundry until we needed clean underwear or socks. Dust balls collected under beds and furniture and in the corners of rooms.
I spent more time in the woods. The weather was turning colder, and the tall trees rocked and swayed over my head, making that sad sound bare branches make when the wind blows through them. I could see the mountains now, ridge after ridge, blue in the distance.
I didn’t worry about getting lost—I always carried a compass in my pocket—but sometimes the woods scared me. Maybe it was the solitude, maybe it was being in the presence of so many tall trees, but I’d find myself looking over my shoulder. I’d stop and listen. Branches sawed and scraped against each other. A twig snapped. The bushes rustled. I never saw anything, and I never told anyone, but sometimes I thought something was following me.
I’d think of the man—or whatever I’d seen—on the edge of the woods that night. I’d never seen him again, but what if he was following me, watching me from hidden places, waiting for the right opportunity to—to what? To kill me? Kidnap me? Harm me in some way?
I told myself not to be silly, it was just squirrels or birds rustling the bushes or the wind blowing high and lonesome over my head, but a little voice from a dark part of my mind kept whispering, What if it’s something else? What if it’s something dangerous? What if Brody wasn’t lying about the things in the woods?
One afternoon I took the wrong trail and came out of the woods two or three miles down the road from our house. It was already late, and while I walked, the sun dropped below the top of the mountains. Soon I was stumbling along in the dark, wishing I’d brought a flashlight, wishing I had a dog. I’d asked Dad if we could go to animal rescue and get one, but he said we couldn’t afford an extra mouth to feed. He’d looked so depressed, I never asked again.
In the thick dark of the woods, I heard the rustling, snuffling sounds of a large animal nosing in the fallen leaves. I smelled something disgusting—rotten leaves, mildew, decay. A bear, it must be a bear. I’d seen black bears on my hikes, but never so near that I could smell them.
Just as I was about to run, I heard a car behind me. I moved to the edge of the road. An old Ford slowed to a stop. The driver rolled down his window.
“What are you doing out here all by yourself?” he asked. “It’s getting dark, and look at you, wearing jeans and a black jacket. You’re lucky I saw you.”
I backed away. The man was a stranger, and I was alone on a dark road. He could grab me and throw me into his car and drive away.
Which was worse—being kidnapped or being attacked by a bear?
“You must be the kid who lives in the old Estes place,” the man said. “You want a ride home?”
I shook my head. My feet were tangled up in vines, and I was scared that I was trapped. “That’s okay. I like to walk,” I stammered.
“In the dark? Who knows who might come along and get you?” Then he laughed. “Oh, I see, you think I’m going to get you. Is that it?”
He opened the car door. The overhead light came on, and I saw an old man with white hair. “I’m Mr. O’Neill from up the road a ways. I know your dad, Ted Anderson. Nice fella. Helps me carry stuff to my car at Home Depot. Come on, get in before you get yourself run over.”
Mr. O’Neill looked harmless. He knew Dad’s name and where he worked. “Thanks,” I said. Lurching out of the vines, I slid into the car.
“What were you doing way out here?” he asked.
“Hiking,” I told him. “I took the wrong turn on one of the trails.”
“Lucky I came along. You won’t catch me traipsing around in the woods all by my lonesome. Hasn’t anybody told you about Bloody Bones?”
“Bloody Bones?” I laughed. “That’s just a silly old scary story about a monster coming up the steps one at a time to get you.”
“That’s not the real story. Not by a long shot. There’s a lot more to Bloody Bones than that.” He peered at me. “You ever come across an old, fallen-down cabin up on a hill?”
“My dad and my sister and I went there once. Dad took pictures of it.”
“Well, that cabin once belonged to Old Auntie. She was a conjure woman. You know what that is?”
“A witch?”
He nodded. “Well, Old Auntie lived by herself, save for this big old razorback hog she kept as a pet. She took that mean, ugly critter with her everywhere she went. Some folks said that hog walked on his hind legs like a man, and I believe he did.”
He pulled into our driveway and let the engine idle. “Well, one day Old Auntie couldn’t find her hog anywhere. She searched high, she searched low—no sign of him. So she got out her conjure pot and made a potion she could see things in. And you know what she saw?”
I shook my head.
“She saw this nasty old feller that lived up in the mountains. He’d been hunting
razorback hogs. One of the hogs he caught was her pet. That sneaking, thieving rascal slaughtered all the hogs and skinned them and carved off their meat and threw what was left in a heap. In that pile, Old Auntie saw her hog’s bald head and bloody bones. So she cast a spell to summon him back from the dead. His bones put themselves together and rose up on their hind feet. His skull jumped on top of the bones, and off he danced. On the way to the sneaking, thieving rascal’s house, he got some claws from a dead bear, some teeth from a dead panther, and a tail from a dead raccoon.”
Mr. O’Neill paused to look at his watch. “It’s later than I thought. Guess I’ll have to make a long story a mite shorter. The hog killed that lying, thieving rascal—tore him clean apart with the panther’s teeth and ate him up. Then he dug his grave with the bear’s claws and brushed the ground smooth with the raccoon’s tail. He left that lying, thieving rascal’s bones up there in the rocks all by himself. Folks round here say you can still hear him howling and moaning and screaming when the wind blows just right.”
Even though I knew it was just a story, one I’d heard around a campfire at Boy Scout camp, Mr. O’Neill had a way of making it sound real. The dark woods and the lonely road and the wind swaying the treetops added a lot to the telling, or maybe it was because I was already half terrified, but the old man definitely had a knack for scaring people.
Trying to hide my fear, I asked him what happened to the hog.
“Well, he dressed himself in that lying, thieving rascal’s overalls and went home to Old Auntie, raccoon tail and all.”
He paused a moment. “From then on, he became known as Bloody Bones. There’s not a child in this valley who’s not scared of him.”
“It’s just an old story kids tell,” I muttered, but my heart beat a little harder than normal at the idea of Bloody Bones. Suppose he was what I’d heard and smelled. What if he was just about to pounce on me when Mr. O’Neill came along and saved my life?
“And I tell you Bloody Bones still roams the woods,” Mr. O’Neill said. “He got a liking for human flesh when he ate that lying, thieving rascal.”
“Oh, sure.” I tried hard not to look past the headlights into the unknowable dark surrounding the car. If Bloody Bones hid in the trees, I didn’t want to see him.
“Don’t you Oh, sure me, son.” Mr. O’Neill looked hard at me. “To this day, people have a way of disappearing in these woods.”
He leaned across me and opened the door. “You mind getting out here? I’m a little late for an appointment in town. Or would you rather I drive you all the way home?”
I sat in the brightly lit car. The headlights faded into the night a few feet up the driveway. The woods were dark, and the wind was blowing through treetops as bare as bones. Who knew what was out there?
“I walked pretty far today,” I said in a low voice. “And I’m really tired. Would you mind driving me to the house?”
Mr. O’Neill chuckled and said he’d be glad to, seeing as how I was too tired to walk up the driveway. I could almost hear quotation marks around tired.
When the car stopped at the end of the driveway, I saw my sister looking out the window at us. She held Little Erica up so she could see, too.
“That your little sister?” he asked.
I nodded.
“She’s a pretty little thing,” he said. “Take good care of her, son. Don’t let her go wandering off like . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Like Selene?”
“Oh, you heard that story, did you?”
“From Brody Mason.”
Mr. O’Neill sighed. “He’s a sad case, that boy. His mama died a few months back, and he and his daddy are having a hard time. No telling what he’ll tell you, but in the case of Selene, it’s the honest-to-God truth.”
“Did she really disappear?”
“Yes, she did. No one found her. No one knows what happened to her.” He paused a moment. “Lord, that was fifty years ago.”
“Did you know her?”
He nodded. “I knew the whole family. She and my daughter Eleanor were best friends. She played at our house or Eleanor played at her house almost every day. It just about broke Eleanor’s heart when Selene vanished.”
“What happened to the Estes family afterward?”
He sighed. “They moved about a year later. By then, they knew she wasn’t coming back. We never knew where they went. After what happened, I reckon they didn’t want anything to do with this place.”
I had more questions, but Mr. O’Neill looked at his watch again and said, “Time for me to hit the road, son.”
I got out of the car. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Glad to do it. Say hi to your dad for me.”
When I opened the kitchen door, Mom asked who brought me home.
“Mr. O’Neill. He knows Dad.”
“He’s a nice old fellow,” Dad said. “I enjoy talking to him at work.”
Mom frowned at me. “What have I told you about taking rides with strangers?”
“He wasn’t a stranger, Mom. You heard Dad. He knows him.”
“But you didn’t know him,” Mom said. “He could have been lying. He could have kidnapped you. Promise me you’ll never do that again!”
“Now, Martha,” Dad said. “We aren’t in Connecticut anymore.”
“No, we certainly aren’t.” With that, Mom yanked a frozen pizza out of the oven and called Erica to the table.
I was dying to ask Dad if Mr. O’Neill had ever told him about Bloody Bones, or if he’d talked to him about Selene Estes, but Erica was sitting across the table, picking at her food and smearing dabs on Little Erica’s face. She had enough trouble sleeping without imagining Bloody Bones sneaking up the stairs to get her.
I figured it was best to keep quiet and eat my dinner. I’d ask Dad later, when he was alone.
But after dinner Dad secluded himself in his den. Mom stood at a living room window, a cigarette in her hand, and stared into the darkness. Erica sat on the couch and watched Mom. “Will you read to me, Mommy?” she asked.
“Not right now, Erica.” Mom left the window and went to the kitchen.
My sister and I looked at each other. “She’s crying,” Erica said.
I sat down beside her. “I know.”
“Nobody’s happy anymore,” Erica said.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”
“It’s this house. We never should have come here.” She leaned toward me. “Do you ever feel like something bad will happen?”
I could have said All the time, every minute, but I kept my thoughts to myself. “Like what?” I asked.
Erica gazed past me into the fire blazing on the hearth. “I don’t know, just something.” She smoothed Little Erica’s hair. “Those whispers,” she added. “They’re getting louder. They keep me awake at night. Are you sure you never hear them?”
“Like I told you, it’s just the wind or the floorboards creaking. Old houses make lots of noises.”
“The wind doesn’t say people’s names.”
Mom came back and sat down beside Erica. Picking up The Middle Moffat, she asked, “What chapter are we on?”
As Mom began to read, I studied her face. Her eyes were red, and so was her nose. I wanted to ask her what was going on between her and Dad. Were they getting divorced? But I knew she’d say, Don’t be silly, Daniel. Nothing’s wrong. Everyone has arguments sometimes. That’s the problem with families—too many things no one wants to talk about.
Since I wasn’t interested in the Moffat family, I left Erica and Mom snuggled under a blanket and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Down the hall, a strip of light shone under Dad’s door. I heard explosions and gunfire, which meant he was playing one of his war games.
Downstairs, Mom and Erica laughed about something Rufus Moffat said.
I’d never felt so alone in all my life.
The Dolly
It begins with a whisper in the dark, always the girl’s name, always long and airy. The old woma
n blows it through keyholes and cracks. She guides it upstairs and down until it finds the girl’s ear and nestles there. Air-ric-cah . . . No one can hear it but the girl.
The girl has trouble sleeping, she’s fearful, she withdraws and spends most of her time with the dolly. Perfect. The old woman gives the dolly a sweet voice. The dolly uses her sweet voice to tell the girl she loves her, but no one else does. She tells the girl she understands how she feels, but no one else does. Especially her brother. He hates her, doesn’t she know that? Hasn’t she always known that?
The girl tells the doll how unhappy she is. The children at school are mean to her. They laugh at her clothes, they laugh at the way she talks. On the playground, they gather in groups and turn their backs. Her brother is mean to her too. Her parents pick on her. They love her brother more than they love her. The doll agrees with everything the girl tells her.
One day, when winter is closing in and the nights are long, the dolly tells the girl she wants to go to the woods. The girl is afraid of the woods, she never goes there. She stays inside by the fire where it’s warm. She reads to the dolly, she talks to the dolly, she shares her unhappiness with the dolly.
But the dolly insists. She has secrets she will share with the girl, but only if they are outside in the woods where no one can hear and no one can see. “If you really love me,” the dolly says, “you’ll do as I ask. If you refuse me, I’ll stop talking to you. I’ll be what your brother says I am—a lump of plastic. Is that what you want?”
Of course it’s not what the girl wants. She puts on her parka and her hat and her gloves, and she goes out into the cold with the dolly. The wind blows her name through the air. It’s taken up by a flock of crows and passed on into the darkness—Air-ric-cah, Air-ric-cah . . .
The dolly shows her a path. “This must be a secret,” she warns the girl. “You mustn’t tell anyone what we see or do here.”
And so it continues.
Six
As the days passed, Erica and I spent less and less time together. While she spent her afternoons reading and drawing and playing with her stupid doll, I roamed the woods, exploring trails and searching for hawks. Thanks to my binoculars and Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds of North America, I could identify red-tailed hawks, sharp-shinned hawks, and Cooper’s hawks. I knew the difference between black buzzards and turkey buzzards. Once, I’d even seen a bald eagle.
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