In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  They split another candy bar and filled up on water. Zach used his pocketknife while they rested, cutting clumps of green needles to stuff inside Allie’s shoes and both of their shirts and jeans. They wouldn’t last and wouldn’t do much, but at least the evergreens would put a dry cushion between their clothes and skin. Zach said they looked like two scarecrows. Allie laughed. That chuckle was another apology more than anything else, Allie’s way of trying to bring them together again.

  They moved upstream thirty minutes later, where Allie said the needle pointed. Zach was too tired to protest when she walked in front. Time clicked by in steps rather than hours. Zach’s cough worsened despite their stops for water, though nothing more came up from his lungs. The gunk seemed to have hardened there instead, making whistling sounds rise from his chest. Allie would stop and turn, asking if he was okay. Zach only waved her on.

  He did not know how far they’d gone when he first noticed the compass slipping from her wrist. It wasn’t sudden, just a gentle give of the one remaining plastic bump on the band, loosening with each step Allie took. It fell not long after, hitting the soft cushion of melting snow and soggy leaves along the bank with barely a sound.

  The words were on Zach’s lips even before the compass landed—Better watch that. He’d said them so many times before, in class and in the park or in any of those precious hours they stole together along the river in town. Zach kept his pace and stared at the pink band. It had landed with the bubble facing up. He saw the needle floating, pointing them on.

  Zach felt his back bending and his arm reaching out, heard himself telling her, Hey, Allie, here’s your compass back. I know how special it is because it’s the last thing your dead momma ever gave you.

  That trinket from Carnival Day, that token of an unexpected good-bye.

  That cheap piece of plastic won at a cheap game that had taken Zach away from his family for Christmas.

  That toy that had gotten them both lost in the woods and had left Zach’s daddy looking for him in a helicopter and his momma sitting back in town, crying and wanting her little boy back.

  That stupid compass.

  Allie never turned around. She was too focused on what lay ahead to worry about what had fallen behind. Zach straightened and stood tall. He reached the compass in three more steps. He used the fourth to kick it into the water.

  The pink band bobbed and weaved along a current that washed it away. For those small moments along the riverbank, Zach only felt the sweet release of his anger and frustration. He gave no thought to what he’d done, believed it was nothing wrong. In fact, Zach believed he may have just saved them all. He’d broken the chains that had laid heavy on Allie’s heart for a year and a half. He’d freed her. And because of that, perhaps now Allie would listen to reason. Maybe now they could forget about finding her momma and start concentrating on finding their way home. Maybe now they’d be okay.

  Only Sam looked at him. The dog’s ears drooped low and his tail hung limp and still, as though what he had just witnessed had cost them all something far greater than Zach could know.

  He walked on with his head bowed while Marshall, Grace, and thirty volunteers finished combing the riverbank that flowed through downtown Mattingly. The radio clipped to Marshall’s belt had chirped often in the last hours as search parties radioed back and forth, relaying news of empty woods and fields. Marshall had answered each of those calls himself with two shaking hands and one hard swallow, each time wishing for a drink and thanking them for their pledges to keep looking. And just as Jake’s voice came over the radio to report no sign of the children in the hill country, Allie’s mind began to bend.

  6

  She no longer sees the forest or the stream or how the white sky has gone the dull gray of evening. Sam is no longer padding out front, and his nose has not just led him to a brown glob of something poking up from the snow that he chews and swallows. Even Zach is gone—left somewhere behind to mull and wallow and not understand. She chuckles at the way the straps of her backpack cut into her shoulders, rendering them numb. Numb, yes—everything is numb. Allie cannot even feel the pine needles, stuffed into her shoes and clothes, prickling her skin.

  She understands what her mind has done. The woods are too dark and Zach’s silence is too awful, and so Allie has fled to a place of her own making. It’s no longer muck and snow she trudges through, but the warm grass of summertime. The sun shines bright and hot, turning her skin a deep brown. Fish leap from the creek already cleaned and fried. Their mouths are wedged open with slices of lemon. And there! There’s Zach. He’s close now, just to Allie’s right, wearing a suit of armor that glimmers in the day. He holds a smile and his daddy’s tomahawk.

  Sam nuzzles against her other side. Allie looks there and laughs at how her dog’s legs dangle and his ears flop in the breeze. The laughter turns to a quiet awe as Allie understands they are no longer walking, but flying. Not so high that she is frightened and not so fast that she screams. A few feet off the ground is all, just enough to raise feet and paws to the center of the passing oaks. Just enough to let them rest. They float slow and silent and graceful, three feathers carried by a warm breeze. There is no need to worry about the right way. The woods are Allie’s compass now, the wind a needle. All she has to do is let go. All they have to do is ride.

  The hill comes like an emerald rising from the earth. Allie feels a pull on her insides as her body is nudged upward. Sam must feel it, too, because he barks once and jitters his leg as though he’s being rubbed on the belly. Zach lets out a soft “Ooh.” He smiles wider and takes Allie’s hand. They glide up the slope of the hill and pause over a crown of green and gold. They land with their fingers entwined and their arms outstretched, as though it is the final step of a beautiful dance.

  Mary Granderson waits there.

  She is as beautiful now as she was in the picture on Allie’s bedroom dresser—hair long and brown, eyes wide almonds. Her dress is made of yellow flowers and ripe vines. A golden cross hangs loose from her bare neck. It shimmers like a living thing.

  Allie goes to her. She feels her momma’s arms around her and inhales. Mary smells like jasmine and honeysuckle and all things made whole again. Sam rises on his hind legs, mouth yapping and tail wagging. Zach stands close and tips his head to the ground. His hand remains on the tomahawk’s shaft, ever guarding against what he says are the bad things in the woods. Allie looks into her mother’s eyes and cries. She lets the tears pour forth and feels her body shiver from the power of that release, that final act.

  It’s over. Now and finally, it is over.

  Mary holds her daughter tight and tells her to cry on. She tells them of her adventures in the deep woods and how the bad things wouldn’t let her escape, but she found a way to send word through the compass because it was Christmas, and Christmas is when love shines brightest.

  And when Mary is done, Allie says let’s go home now, Mommy.

  She looks up, not breaking their embrace, and finds Mary’s eyes have darkened. Her smile fades only some, turning from bright noon to soft morning. She strokes the back of her daughter’s head and says we can’t go home now, Allie—not ever. Once the forest has you, it won’t let go.

  Zach’s face grows hard. He draws his father’s tomahawk forward as the ground beneath Allie gives way. She sinks to her ankles as

  a bolt of lightning raced up Allie’s spine, shattering that imaginary place like shards exploding from a mirror. In front of her lay an endless mass of barren trees and melting snow. She shut her eyes, willing the green hill back. Needing her momma with her. But all of that was gone now, a product of cold and hunger and hope, even if it had all been so real that Allie believed she’d just lost her mother for the second time in two days.

  She looked down to find her Chucks submerged in icy water. Slivers of pine needles broke free and floated away like castaways from a sinking ship. Allie jumped as the last tendrils of her dream gave way and the cold enveloped her, burning her toes. The
ground she landed on was soft and marshy. Zach and Sam stood motionless behind her. The hard caws of two crows echoed from the trees behind them. A third joined them, turning the duo into a trio. There was no sound of rushing water. Allie looked to where the creek should have been and found only a wide pond of melting snow and ice that extended out in a wide oval.

  “Where’d it go?” she asked.

  Zach said, “It putters out right here,” and stared at the tops of his boots. His hat sat low on his forehead, hiding his eyes. “Thought maybe it’d lead to the river eventually, but it don’t. You were right, Allie. It weren’t no steady stream. It all just gathers in this low spot whenever it storms and flows out.”

  “Bless it,” Allie said. She raised her feet and shook off what water she could. It wasn’t much. “Done got my shoes all soggy-wet again.”

  Dislodged roots and limbs poked up from the surface of the water like hungry fish. It didn’t look deep in there, probably just to their ankles. Then again, that water might as well be an ocean because of her town shoes. The crows called again—four of them now.

  The temporary pond ended farther to their right. Allie guessed that was where they were supposed to go next. She sighed and turned her arm over, thinking that being told where to go was better than being lost, but not nearly as good as knowing how long it would take to get there.

  She found only white skin on her wrist.

  Allie stared at that empty spot as her mind listed and sputtered, trying to explain what was wrong. Air gathered inside her mouth, puffing her cheeks. The breath came out in a mad half chuckle that scared her.

  Someone was playing a joke, pulling her leg. The fingers of Allie’s right hand appeared and curled around her naked wrist, feeling for the faded red band that had to be there, had always been there, ever since way back at the beginning when everything ended, and she had sworn never to take it off because her momma had given it to her on Carnival Day and said the compass would point the way, and that’s what it had been doing until now, and now—

  “It’s gone.”

  Zach’s face was to her now, eyes big and shiny, like he was going to cry. Allie looked down and moved her feet, sure she’d somehow stepped on it. There were only her footprints.

  “It’s gone,” she said again. “My compass is gone, Zach.”

  He stood motionless until his eyes grew too wide and too wet. Only then did Zach lower his head in a look of defeat. She had crushed him, had murdered his heart on the hilltop that morning. Allie wanted to go to him and beg forgiveness all over again, but that would have to wait. The compass was more important. That had to be reclaimed first, even before their friendship.

  She retraced her steps to the edge of the pond and bent to her knees. The water was too murky.

  “It must’ve fallen in here,” she said. “Help me look, Zach.”

  He said, “No.”

  “Help me look.”

  Allie hovered her hand over the water’s surface and tensed her muscles. It wasn’t enough to steel her against the cold when she plunged her fingers in. Crowsong gathered in the deep trees. Allie felt rocks and twigs and mud but no compass.

  “Stop it, Allie,” Zach said.

  Allie’s hand was so cold she felt as though it were burning. She jerked it from the water with a gasp and tucked her fingers beneath her sweatshirt. “I must’ve dropped it along the way. We gotta go back, Zach. Did you see it fall?”

  He would not look at her.

  “Did you see it fall?”

  Sam turned and growled at the noisy birds beyond—crows and now others, mockingbirds and cardinals and sparrows, growing closer. His tail went rigid as Allie felt her body go limp.

  The sting returned to the corners of her eyes as she whispered, “Zach? Did you see my compass fall?”

  He raised his chin. Lowered it—a nod.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Everything looks the same now.”

  She moved past him, saying they had to go back. Zach grabbed the sleeve of her jacket and spun her around.

  “No,” he said. “Ain’t no use now, Allie. Compass’s gone now. I kicked it into the stream.”

  Sam barked again. It was loud and sharp and echoed off the trees, but Allie neither heard her dog nor what approached them. She only heard Zach and what he had just said.

  “You lost my compass?”

  “I had to,” he said.

  Allie wrenched her arm free. It came loose easy, like prying something from a baby’s fingers, and a part of her realized that was all the strength Zach could muster now. A greater part of her didn’t care. She screamed, “That was the only way we knew where we were going, Zach,” making the birds call louder.

  Zach yelled back, “You ain’t known where we’re going since we left town, Allie. We’re out here because of a stupid toy. Don’t you know how dumb that is?”

  He shouted that last word with such force that his spittle landed against Allie’s cheek. Sam’s barks went from singles to doubles to full rage toward the trees behind them. His tail was no longer up but tucked between his legs.

  “We’re lost without my compass, Zach. We don’t know where to go. What’re we supposed to do now?”

  Zach’s eyes fell from Allie’s to a place over her shoulder. His mouth fell open. What came out wasn’t an answer, but a groan that flattened his face and drained it of all color.

  “Run,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Run.”

  He grabbed Allie’s arm and jerked her forward, nearly taking her out of her shoes. He charged back for the pond. Allie tried calling out, but she couldn’t find her breath. Zach shouted for Sam, telling him to hurry. Allie turned to see her dog doing just that, and she saw why.

  From the trees behind them came a living cloud of wings and feathers moving like a black monster. Allie screamed as Zach pulled her on, veering to the right along the pond’s edge, straining to keep them from falling. The cloud enveloped them in a rage of chirps and calls. A crow’s wing clipped Allie’s head, doubling her over. Her fingers slipped from Zach’s hand. He groped for some part of her, any part, as mockingbirds and sparrows bounced off his face and body. Cardinals weaved. Blackbirds dodged. A buzzard the size of a cat barely missed Zach’s hat. Sam called out in a bark that was all terror as Zach slapped the birds away, making them squawk, sending them into a frenzy. He grabbed Allie as she grabbed him.

  The birds were frantic, screaming to get away. Zach shielded his eyes with his left arm and managed to get them the next few feet. He pushed Allie to the ground first, Sam next, himself last. Allie opened her eyes to a thick section of fallen tree in front of her face. Zach shoved Sam against the brittle trunk. He covered Allie with his own body. The sound was deafening. Like a storm.

  The rage blew past. An eerie calm followed. Zach eased his head up over the log. Allie’s heart jackhammered in her chest. It beat even harder when Zach said, “Stay down, Allie. Move closer. They’re coming.”

  He covered her again as the ground beneath them began to thrum. Allie heard limbs snap like thunder in front of them and water splashing behind. She turned her head beneath Zach’s arm, needing to breathe. A deer jumped over the log, landing only feet beyond. Another followed and then another, large bucks with wide antlers and white tails raised in alarm, joined by their females. Snow and mud pelted Zach’s back as the hooves landed and kicked up again. Others came after and between—squirrels and raccoons and possums by the hundreds. Rabbits. Skunks. Foxes. Zach shut his eyes and took off his hat, using it to shield their heads as the entire forest emptied around them.

  He raised his head when it was done. His lungs sounded like two clogged holes that allowed only those high, piercing whistles to escape. Allie rose up on two weak legs and gathered Sam in her arms, holding his trembling body tight.

  It looked as though an army had passed. Where there had once been melting snow over a blanket of leaves, there now lay only a wide swath of mangled mud. To their left, the pond
rippled in tiny waves that lapped against the forest floor. The storm of legs and wings faded in the distance.

  None of them made a sound for a long while. Zach bled from cuts to his face and arms. A mockingbird feather hung from the brim of his hat. Allie found her hand still in his. She left it there and realized that fear could do a great many things. It could make you forgive someone who’d hurt you and make you forget about being tired and cold and hungry. It could make you run faster than you’d ever dreamed and scream louder than you ever thought possible. It showed you who you were deep down in places where you’d never looked before.

  “I think it’s over,” Zach said.

  Allie’s eyes gathered in the silent woods around them. The forest looked darker somehow. Fuller. For the first time, she felt they didn’t belong there—that they should have wared and gone no farther, because there were bad things in the deep woods that wouldn’t let them go. For the first time, she was truly afraid. Had the fear in Allie let her speak, she would have said maybe it wasn’t over at all. She would have said maybe it had all just begun.

  7

  The decision to stay put was silent and unanimous. Neither of them cared much to go traipsing through the woods so close to night, not with something maybe out there that had scared away every living thing for miles. Zach was too tired, Allie too cold. Taking one step more was impossible.

  There was this last, most important point as well: with the compass gone, Allie didn’t know which way to go. Ahead through the shallow pond, or back to where they’d come? Should they go left, past where the pond became the stream? Or were they supposed to go to the right and farther into the trees? Allie didn’t know. She only knew whichever direction they chose stood a three-in-four chance of being the wrong way, and that would leave them more lost than they’d already gotten.