In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  Sam lay between them in his own ball, his tail tucked over his nose. His stomach gurgled, but other than that, he seemed no worse for the wear.

  Her companions accounted for, Allie considered her own self last. Aside from creaky limbs, she was pleased that all systems seemed pointed to Go. Her stomach rumbled, but there was no hurt. That was saved for her face and hands. She raised her arms and found her fingers covered with scrapes and cuts. And her feet were cold. That maybe wasn’t so big a deal—she was out in the woods in the middle of winter, after all; everything felt cold. She raised her head, wincing again, and tried to straighten her legs. Her Chucks were soggy and crusted with dirt, but otherwise fine. She laid her head down again and breathed deep, trying to summarize the relevant facts.

  It was December 21, four days until Christmas and five hundred and forty-five days since her momma left.

  She had no idea of the weather, and that was a bother. Facing the day—any day—would be hard enough, but not knowing if the sun would shine or the snow would fall or how hard the wind was supposed to blow would make things harder. Much harder.

  She and Zach were still in the woods. Still turned around, according to him. Still just where they needed to be, according to her.

  Sam was okay but hungry, and Allie figured she was pretty much the same, all things considered. But Zach still had a cold, and his lungs were whistling. That brought another, more pressing point—they’d have to get home soon.

  The compass still worked.

  That last point was what stuck in Allie’s head and made the day seem brighter.

  “Hey.”

  The word made Allie jerk (which presented another relevant fact—her entire body felt like her neck). She turned her head. Zach’s eyes were open.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Pretty cool, huh? We made it the whole night.”

  Sam raised his head and grumbled when he saw where he was. There’d be no hiding under the covers that morning.

  “We sure did,” Allie said. “You feeling okay?”

  Zach nodded. He did feel okay. Mostly, anyway. His lungs felt gunky, and there was a layer of sweat between his upper lip and nose. It had been a long night—a horrible one, actually. He was glad Allie had slept through it all, or else she’d be worried.

  “I did a good job on the shelter, huh?” he asked. “Nice and toasty in here. It’s the pine needles. I piled them around the bottom to keep the draft out. You probably never even heard the wind, did you?”

  Allie shook her head. No, she hadn’t heard the wind at all.

  “We’re gonna go home today,” Zach said. “Promise. I’ll keep you safe.”

  “I know you will.”

  “Bet they’re looking for us now. Maybe everyone.”

  Allie said, “Guess so,” and realized she’d somehow left that part out of her personal inventory. Surely her daddy was out looking for her, was probably either worried out of his mind or drunk out of it. She knew she should feel a good deal of remorse for that, but what Allie felt most was a sense that came quite close to happiness. Served Marshall Granderson right for taking her Mary away. For spending so much time in his bedroom with the other Marshall Granderson or out in the shed with that pervert Bobby Barnes.

  But there was something else as well. Her father would have to go to town for help. Since The Storm, Marshall had tried to separate himself as much as possible from the people of Mattingly. There was no way he could keep himself separated from them now. Allie wondered how that had gone. She thought not well. Marshall had fallen away just as much as she, in some ways more. To many, his name was now looked down upon even more than Bobby Barnes’s. The town would band together to look for Zach, though. In a way that didn’t make Allie feel very good at all, she decided that had been another good reason to bring him along.

  2

  While that may have been true before, that morning Marshall found more friends than he could count. Grace Howard had stayed the night on the couch, wanting to be there if Allie came home but also not wanting to leave Marshall alone. He’d walked from the hallway into the living room little more than a corpse. His hair was jumbled, and his beard had gone an extra shade of gray overnight. His eyes were bloodshot. The smell of whiskey oozed from his pores. It had almost been enough for her to call him Hank once more, this time on purpose.

  She’d been on the phone with Kate, explaining that Marshall had taken ill late the night before. It was a lie, of course, one that Kate knew just as much as Grace, but that was neither the place nor the time to say so. Grace hung up the phone and told Marshall everyone was meeting in town, and for him to get himself dressed.

  The awkwardness Marshall felt of having to stand all but naked beneath Grace’s glare turned to surprise at what he found in the town square an hour later. Word of the missing children had spread overnight. Flyers were posted on telephone poles and in storefront windows, all with Allie’s and Zach’s likenesses. (“I gave a picture to Jake,” Grace said, “since you wouldn’t open up your door last night to get one down to him yourself.”) Marshall was besieged by well-wishers as soon as he climbed out of Grace’s car, everyone wanting to shake his hand and grasp his shoulder, wanting to hug and trying not to cry, telling him he might’ve left the town but the town had never left him, Allie was one of their own, and they wouldn’t rest until she was home safe. It was a moment that touched Grace’s heart, if not Marshall’s. Allie and Zach had somehow lost their way the day before, but the town itself had lost its way in the past year and a half. The sight of everyone coming to the aid of a neighbor allowed Grace the hope of something good rising from the ashes of such a terrible happening.

  The state police arrived at Jake’s behest, along with members of the forestry service. Search grids were plotted and distributed. Juliet Creech, pastor of Mattingly’s Methodist church, had called everyone to prayer. Heads were bowed and hands were clasped as she spoke of God’s goodness and protection. Marshall’s head never bent. His eyes remained open. He could not bring himself to ask the favor of the very thing that had led to his daughter’s disappearance. When he found one other person who seemed to share those very feelings, Marshall could only smile. It figured. The good pastor had stared at him, wide-eyed and unfeeling, through her entire prayer.

  Not long before Allie woke, Jake and a pilot had lifted off in a helicopter from the snow-covered grass of the church softball field, heading east for the hill country. Marshall had balked at that, calling the idea a waste of time, but Jake said he had to do something. It was a simple confession between two former friends, but it had been enough for Marshall to let Jake go. The largest part of Marshall still raged at the man he blamed for Mary’s death, but a bit of his old self mourned for the father whose son had disappeared.

  Zach lifted his head and blinked, brushing pine needles from his face and arms. He pushed aside the nearest pile and poked his head out from under the tree.

  “Hey,” he said. “You gotta see this.”

  Sam rose and shimmied out into the woods. Allie didn’t move at first. Her mind had already decided what it was that Zach wanted her to see—something left in the dirt from the night before, a track of a ghost or a witch that had snuck inside her dreams to say something awful. If her eyes beheld something like that, Allie thought she’d go plain mad. But Zach kept telling her to look, and his hand was waving her forward. She crept out and peeked.

  The forest outside lay covered in a fresh layer of white. Sam dipped his nose in the snow and shuffled away. When he found nothing of interest, he arched his back and stretched, shaking himself awake.

  “Gotta be another two inches,” Zach said. He coughed once, short and not that thick. “And we stayed dry the whole time. How awesome am I, anyway?”

  Allie smiled. Zach looked at her and smiled back, even if whatever glow shining through the cracks of her dirty face had more to do with the snow than with him. Clean, fresh, unruffled snow. Nothing had come near their tree at all. Whatever she thought had be
en in the meadow the night before was just her imagination after all, just like Zach had told her.

  “I’m gonna start a fire,” Zach said. “Snow probably won’t last long on the ground, but it’ll still be cold today. Then we need to figure out what we’re gonna do. We can’t stay here, Allie. We ain’t got no food or water, and we need both. Sam too. I think we should try goin’ back through those olden woods and find our bikes. But fire comes first.”

  “You do that,” Allie said. “I’m gonna go do my business.”

  He looked at her. “You gotta go again?”

  Allie shrugged. “You ain’t gotta?”

  “No,” Zach said. A part of him thought that strange. “Not even a little.”

  He crawled back under the tree and returned with his bow drill, the wood from the night before, and Allie’s backpack. Zach handed the latter to her without a word. She waited for him to ask again what was in there, but Zach only set about clearing a spot for the fire. The silence made her feel better and worse.

  “C’mon, Samwise,” she said. “Let’s get you warmed up with some exercise.”

  The dog barked once and followed. Allie led them through the tangle of brush and out the other side. Blades of gray grass poked up from the ground, their bottoms hidden by white. Fog lifted from the top of the hill in the distance. Maybe the sun would shine some and get rid of all that snow. Allie hoped so. The thought of another whole day tromping through the woods in just her Chucks made her feet hurt.

  The snow had made the forest look beautiful, but it had done little to prettify the oak standing in the meadow. At least Allie could look at it now. A lot of things didn’t look so bad in the light of day, whether a situation or a screaming tree. Even Sam didn’t look as scared of it as he had the day before.

  The screech of Zach’s fire maker wove through the pines behind them. Allie slipped off her pack and moved her scarf away. She unbuttoned her jeans and stopped.

  “I’m gonna need you to avert your eyes, Sam.”

  The dog sat and cocked his head to the side.

  “Go on, now. This ain’t something I want to see myself, much less you.”

  Sam turned his head (Allie was pretty sure he could still see her just fine out of the corner of his eye, the nosy old mongrel) and looked across the meadow. She tended to herself and lifted her jacket sleeve, studying the compass.

  “I’m coming,” she whispered.

  The needle pointed on, fluttering under its plastic bubble. She looked past the screaming oak and then to Sam.

  “That ain’t the way we come, Sam. We didn’t cross no hills. But I don’t think the way back’s how we come either, or we wouldn’t have ended up here again.”

  Sam padded over and rubbed his head against Allie’s leg, trying to comfort.

  Allie rubbed him and said, “It’s okay. Sometimes things are just hard when you love.”

  Zach was under the pine when they returned. The teepee of firewood he’d stacked in the cleared space out front remained unlit. His face was wet again and looked as pale as the snow.

  “Gonna have to find some dry ground,” he muttered. “Too wet here to catch a spark.”

  “I was thinking we should move on,” Allie said.

  “Me too. Not what you’re supposed to do when you’re turned around, but I’m hungry for more than another candy bar. Thirsty too.”

  “We got snow to eat,” Allie said.

  Zach shook his head. “Can’t. You’ll get hyperthomola.”

  “I don’t think it’s called that,” she said.

  “Is too. I learned it.”

  Allie said nothing more. What she had to say next called for diplomacy. She didn’t want to risk a fight.

  “I don’t think we should go back through the olden woods, Zach. We tried that yesterday. It just got us back here.”

  “We’ll be more careful this time,” he said. “’Sides, that way’ll be better for you. Those trees are thick up top, even in the winter. Ain’t as much snow on the ground. You can’t walk in the snow with them shoes you got on.”

  “I don’t think it’ll work,” she said.

  “How you know that?”

  “Because that’s not where my compass is pointing.”

  There, she’d said it. And even if Allie couldn’t look at Zach as those words came out, she felt the better for it.

  Zach wasn’t much surprised at the reasoning behind Allie’s argument, however dim that reasoning was. “It’s pointin’ the wrong way,” he said. “I know the woods, Allie. That ain’t the way we come.”

  “I know it ain’t. But maybe it’s pointing where we’re supposed to go. Maybe there’s a road nearby, or some old hermit living out here all alone. Maybe we’ll be closer to home going ahead than going back.”

  It was a stretch, Allie knew that, but one she was willing to make. Besides, she could be right. Maybe there really was a road close. One they’d find as soon as they found Mary.

  “Guess we do need to find some higher ground,” Zach said. “Take a look around, you know. See if we can spot anything.”

  “Well, there’s a hill up that way. You saw it.”

  “It’s a long way, Allie.”

  “So’s goin’ back.”

  He got up, surrendering to her logic. It did make sense in a way, going on ahead. The top of the hill farther on could probably give a good view for miles. Besides, Zach didn’t really care to tread back through the olden woods again. But he said, “I really think I should be making the decisions from here on, Allie. Not that you can’t, but I’m the man here. I been in the woods plenty. I kept us safe last night.”

  “I know you did”—anything to keep him moving—“you did real good.”

  “Okay.”

  She let Zach store his fire maker in her backpack, along with the tinder. Her only request was that she place them in there herself, and she would be the only one to take them out. Zach didn’t mind. He was too anxious to get moving and too tired to care. He cut an opening in the empty juice box and stuffed it with snow, then tucked it beneath his shirt to melt on the way. They set out then, the three of them. Through the pines and into the meadow, past the screaming tree that begged them to turn back. On into a wild land that held neither roads nor hermits.

  Sam led them. Allie asked Zach if he felt better and he said yes. It was a lie that would last one more day. He pointed to her wrist. Allie secured the compass midstride and thanked him. She had once believed in many things before everything ended. Much of that faith left after she’d fallen away. The little left Allie now poured into the tiny plastic bubble on her wrist, believing the needle would lead them to a place of miracles.

  Whether that would be true or not, neither Allie nor Zach could say. Nor did either of them pause in that long walk from the meadow to ponder that any compass, magical or not, could only guide Allie from the place they were to the place they wished to arrive. As for what lay in between? That was just as much a mystery to the needle as it was to them. Yet Allie walked on and never considered turning back. Even if ahead lay things far more dangerous and beautiful than two children and one dog could imagine.

  3

  The way was level and clear but for the bare trees and fluffy evergreens that rose up from the frozen ground. Sam found the woods much too interesting to remain close and wandered farther away. When the silence grew too long and deep, he stabbed it with a bark. Here and there, clumps of snow fell from the limbs above. Sam would hear those hollow thumps and give chase. As far as Allie was concerned, it was the finest day of her dog’s life.

  Not so for her and Zach. Gone were the brambles and underbrush that had plagued them the previous day. In their place were roots and rocks hidden like traps beneath the thin layer of snow. Sam managed to avoid these with ease enough, but the silence between his yips became filled with painful, aggravated grunts as Allie staggered on. The scarf was knotted around her neck, and her jacket was snapped all the way up, keeping out most of the cold. But her feet felt funny. T
he numbness in them that morning had gone away. An itch had moved in.

  Zach grew more worried the farther they moved away from the meadow. He was coughing again. It wasn’t nearly what he’d endured the night before while Allie slept, just enough to aggravate him. He felt okay enough (so he told himself), but he couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that the cold he’d left town with was turning into something worse. That wasn’t the only thing on his mind. Sam might have been acting fine in his head but he wasn’t anywhere else. Burrs dotted brown-and-white fur that looked to have sagged overnight. And then there was the issue of Allie’s shoes. Two inches of snow was nothing back in Mattingly, where there were plows and blowers and salt to get it all out of the way. But out there in the deep woods, even a dusting could lead to trouble. Especially when every step Allie took spilled a little of it over her Chucks.

  “We ain’t making distance like we did yesterday,” he said. “Guess we’re just tired’s all. Snow ain’t making it none easier.”

  “Tired,” she said. Yes, Allie was tired. More so than the day before, when the compass had sprung to life, and a piece of her that had gone moldy and stale had sprung with it. There had been a bright sun that day, and an end in sight. Now there was only a low sky and a hill beyond that might be an end or was only another stop. It was the first time Allie considered that the path of adventure she’d set Zach and Sam on had begun to turn to something else. Something maybe more important than finding Mary. Something even like life and death.

  She lifted her sleeve and checked the compass. Zach watched but said nothing, only coughed into his sleeve. The needle still held toward the hill. Much of their destination lay hidden by the forest ahead, though its thin top now loomed closer through the tops of the trees.