In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  “I can’t walk no more,” she whimpered. “My feet hurt, Zach.”

  The world swirling, the cold reaching through him, scraping his nose and the back of his throat, eating Zach from the inside out. What little remained of Zach’s steel and faith came out in one chattering word—“Rocks.” He pushed Allie on. She took a step, pulling him forward, and that inertia allowed him to pull her forward again. Step by step, each of them feeding off the other’s last reserves as Sam looked on and whined.

  They would have stopped to rest right where they were, never to get up again, had the thunder not erupted in the woods behind them. Sam yelped, lowering himself to the ground as he trundled away. Allie recoiled at the crashing sound of snapping trees. Her head swung up and nearly clipped Zach’s chin. The world spun as he turned. He heard Allie calling his name. Her voice was hidden in a black-and-gray fog descending over Zach’s eyes that reminded him of the birds that had flown past them, seeking an escape. He felt himself falling away (like Allie haha!), and in that moment the world slowed and shrank until it was nothing at all but the trees parting and Allie screaming and the rock racing up from the ground.

  A bright light came next. And then came nothing at all.

  6

  To Allie the world was ending, and it had come in a shout rather than a whisper. The crack of trees, mangled and sheared away, came so loud and felt so close that her eyes shut in reflex. When she forced them open, two competing thoughts vied for her attention: That sound was gunfire. That sound was the wind coming to take her away.

  She screamed for Zach. The trees shook far behind them, followed close by the crunching sounds of stumps uprooted and saplings torn away by edges sharper and longer than she ever thought possible. Sam yowled. Allie screamed for Zach again, her eyes pinned to the parting forest and her mind flashing with memories of how Zach was the only one she could talk to about her father’s slow descent into someone else and how everyone had turned to God or drink

  (Zach what is that it’s coming Zach do something)

  after The Storm but Allie had turned to him, always had. Zach was brave and she needed him, because not seeing a thing don’t mean it ain’t real or that it ain’t watching even now.

  She reached out, grabbing for his sleeve, but grabbed nothing but air. It was like Zach had become more marionette than boy, and the coming Someone had cut his strings. She tried catching him. He was too heavy. Allie watched him fall, helpless to battle both her fears and gravity, and heard the harsh crunch of his head hitting a rock sunk into the ground.

  Sam charged forward from his hiding place farther up the slope, putting himself between Allie and the ruckus. Another tree snapped. Allie could not judge how far away He was, but it sounded closer this time, much closer. Her mind pieced together an invisible line of destruction leading from where they’d laid the doe to rest to where Allie now stood. She bent her knees to the hard ground. The backpack shifted, slipping from her shoulders. Allie cursed and pushed it back, shook Zach, screaming, “Wake up Zach please wake up.”

  He didn’t move.

  Sam bent low. His tail swished as fast as the needle on Allie’s compass when it had wanted to point the way. She rolled Zach over and cried out again as his hat slid away. Blood streaked the entire right side of his face. Allie traced the flow backward from the base of Zach’s neck to the side of his chin, up past his cheek and eye, where it gushed from a deep hole above his brow.

  Sam’s barks grew so loud and fast that they melted into a shuddering howl.

  Allie called loud and fast—“Sam, to me.”

  The dog did not turn. Another crash, the closest yet. Too fast. Everything was too fast for Allie to know what to do. Even the voice inside her had gone quiet, chased away like the deer and birds. Only one word came to her mind then, the last thing Zach had spoken.

  Rocks.

  Allie whipped her head, trading the swaying trees for rocks that had stood unmoved for eons. They had managed to make it halfway up the slope; she judged only fifty feet or so remained. Not a great distance in the world of Mattingly, only as far from the porch to the Nativity, but in the world of the deep woods it looked infinite. Allie stood and grabbed the legs of Zach’s jeans. She pulled once. He didn’t budge. Sam took three short steps forward as another tree shook. She pulled on Zach again, budged him some—forty-nine feet instead of fifty. It wouldn’t be enough. She jerked again, as hard as she could, using her legs and back for leverage. Pain stabbed her stomach. The coming ruckus from the trees was now close enough to rob Sam of what fight he had. His tail stopped whipping and his ears flattened. He turned and ran back to Allie.

  “Help me, Sam,” she said. “Please help me. You gotta pull.”

  Perhaps Sam would have had he understood, but even Zach would have confessed a keen mind was not Samwise the Dog’s most shining attribute. What understanding the pup possessed had yielded to the fear of what was about to step forth from the trees. Allie pulled Zach again. Zach’s eyes shot open. His body went rigid.

  “The trees,” he said. “Your momma’s waiting by the trees, Allie. They’re red.”

  “What?”

  His brown eyes fluttered and turned up, showing only the whites, and his bones turned back to liquid. Allie screamed for Zach to wake. She managed a few more feet. Her feet grew numb and her fingers cramped. The sounds from the trees lessened, as if what had found them had just lost track of them again. Pulling on, grunting against gravity and Zach’s weight, her rotting Chucks trying to find traction on the sloping ground. Forty feet. Thirty. Twenty. The rocks grew bigger each time Allie chanced a look behind, changing from a loose collection of boulders to giant chunks of limestone larger than her father’s truck. She cried out as her fingers weakened and one final snap echoed through the woods, this time so close that she saw the sapling fall.

  She made one final pull and found her heels on level ground. Zach’s blood continued to pour. The wound had opened like petals on a flower. Sam disappeared behind the rocks. Allie tried sitting Zach up and lost her grip. He hit the ground again, thudding the back of his head so hard that it bounced. He let out a weak, “Hey . . .”

  “Zach?” she asked, and a smile crept across Allie’s face in spite of it all. “Keep awake, Zach. Please stay with me.”

  The sun was at their backs, casting black lines that reached down the slope and into the trees. Allie thought she saw a shadow moving there and dragged Zach faster, aiming for a spot out of sight behind the limestone wall. She turned to find that the back end of the hill formed almost a sheer drop. Sam yapped from a spot to her right. Only his front half was visible. The rest was hidden in the darkness of a large hollow between two of the largest rocks.

  Allie pulled Zach’s body the rest of the way there and then turned, backing them in. The hole was deep enough to hide from the sun and wide enough to make a small room. The rocks pushed against her backpack, crowding her lungs. Allie felt like she was being swallowed alive. She heard nothing of the forest below, but she felt Him.

  Close.

  He could smell her. He smelled her now, and He knew exactly where they were, and there was nowhere left to run. Sam lowered to the cold floor of the cave and placed his chin on his front paws. He whined once. Allie’s hand found the fur of his head. She rubbed him there and told him it would all be okay as a great shadow passed over the mouth of the cave, blocking out the orange of the setting sun. It lingered there like a fog, seeming to reach just inside those hard walls, and then moved on. Zach’s hand moved to his head. He flinched from the pain, tried to speak. What came out sounded like gibberish.

  “You gotta be quiet,” Allie whispered. “He’s here, Zach. He’s right close.”

  It was either that Zach understood or that he remembered. He nodded once and shut his eyes, leaning back until he met the slope of the rock behind him.

  They remained there, shaking and silent for a long while.

  7

  She covered Zach’s wound with the scarf, cinching it t
ight enough that it stayed most of the bleeding but not so much that it made his pain worse. He was awake now. Not nearly all the way—he reminded Allie of someone who’d just come out of a long sleep and was unsure if he’d woken to a dream or the real—but enough that he could talk a little. His back rested against the smooth side of the cave’s far wall, his neck leaning to the left so the gash on his head tilted up. One of the juice boxes was in his hand. Most of the water had spilled on Allie’s jacket when she’d pulled Zach up the hill. Zach coaxed out only a few small sips, but it was enough to strengthen him. Sam placed a paw on the leg of his jeans and licked Zach’s hand. Allie shrugged off her backpack and took out the fire maker. Her ears buzzed. She stuck a finger in each one and wiggled them, shook her head. The buzzing was still there. Probably just the adrenaline, she thought. Soldiers and Roman gladiators probably got buzzes in their ears like that all the time. It was near dark inside the cave. The air was cold enough for Allie to see the faint outline of her breath, but it was still better than being outside. She leaned Zach forward just enough to place the pack behind his head.

  “It’s soft,” she said.

  He closed his eyes and nestled back. The pads scrunched against his head, making the sound of paper crinkling.

  “What else you got in there, anyway?” he mumbled.

  “Just some nunya is all,” Allie whispered.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nunya business.” She smiled through chattering teeth. It was a strange sort of sensation, that bending at the corners of Allie’s mouth. It felt good, like finding a favorite thing long misplaced. “I’m really glad you didn’t die, Zach. I don’t know what I’d do.”

  He nodded. Already a blotch of dark red had wormed its way through the scarf’s thick yarn. At least it wasn’t growing any bigger.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. We were just walking along and then the woods started blowing up. I turned around and started screaming, and you fell. Scared me to death. I thought He was gonna get us for sure.”

  Zach grimaced from the pain above his eyes. “Where is It?” he asked. “That thing in the woods.”

  “I don’t know. It passed by, Zach. It came right past here. I seen—” Allie stopped there and scrunched her eyebrows, thinking. What had she seen? The thing that had chased them all the way up there had near blown up the whole forest trying to do it, but whatever had gone past the door of their cave hadn’t made a sound at all. “—Something,” she finished. “You said something, Zach, back when you fell. Something about my momma. Do you remember?”

  He couldn’t remember anything.

  “You said momma’s waiting where the trees are red.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I was hopin’ you did.”

  Zach breathed hard and curled his upper lip at the pain in his chest and head. “How’d we get up here? Did I make it?”

  “No. I drug you.”

  He looked at her. “You drug me all the way up this hill?”

  “It was only partway,” Allie said. “Sam cheered me on.”

  She rubbed the dog’s ear and got a lick of her own as a thank-you. Allie thought her quarrel with Sam was over now. Funny how nearly being eaten alive could make most everything else seem a trifle.

  “Where’d It go?”

  Allie shook her head. “I got you on the other side of the rocks and lost Him. I ain’t heard nothing in a long while. I think maybe He’s gone now. This is a good place, Zach. It was all your idea to get up here. You told me that before you almost died. You said, ‘Rocks,’ and so that’s where I brung you. You saved us again.”

  She thought that might bring a smile out of him. It did, though barely.

  “You really think I did?” he asked.

  “Sure. We’d’ve gotten eaten,” she said, “or worse,” thinking of that poor momma deer. “What’s out there’s big, Zach. Bigger than anything should ever be. Did you see?”

  “No. I don’t remember.” Eyes still closed. “I kinda remember the trees snapping, but I don’t know. Were you freaking out? You know things seem a lot worse than they are when you’re freaking out, Allie. Maybe it was just more deer running off, like back at the pond.”

  “Do you really think that?”

  Zach didn’t answer at first. Then he said, “No. I guess I don’t.”

  “Me neither. I know what He is.”

  “What what is?”

  “I know who’s chasin’ us, Zach.”

  “Who?”

  Allie reconsidered and didn’t say.

  “If It didn’t see you when you and Sam came up here,” Zach said, “then we’re safe so long as we stay.”

  He leaned forward, letting the backpack slide down a bit, and put his left hand to his forehead. Zach rubbed the smooth wool of the scarf Allie had wrapped around him and thought, trying to figure out what had happened, what they should do next. That hand kept working when no answers came and eased from his forehead to his hair to the back of his head. It stopped there. Zach’s eyes flew open.

  “Where’s my hat?” he asked.

  “What?” she asked.

  “What’d you do with my hat, Allie?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it got left.”

  Zach bolted upright. The pack thumped to the ground (which only served to further scare an already skittish Sam, who jumped away so fast that he nearly tumbled backward). Allie felt a moment of sheer panic when Zach’s head came within an inch of banging the cave’s roof. The thought of him slicing his skull all up and lying there looking all dead and ghostly again was more than she could bear. Besides, she was out of scarves.

  “You left my hat down there?” he asked. “How could you do that, Allie?”

  Allie hoped the buzzing had garbled Zach’s words and she hadn’t just heard what she thought she had. She pushed her hands down into her Chucks, meaning to itch her feet, but found her fingers could no longer fit inside. Zach kept going on and on about his stupid hat, wanting to know how Allie didn’t think of bringing that back up the hill too—it wasn’t like it was heavy or anything—but Allie couldn’t answer because she was too busy trying to figure out how her feet had gotten so swollen.

  “What’d you expect me to do, Zach? Leave you down there but rescue your stupid hat? You might not know it, but I didn’t know what to do. That was your job, but you weren’t around. I got your knife.” Allie dug into her jacket pocket and tossed it to him. It clanged against the rock, making Sam flinch again. “You want your stupid old hat, you go get it. Tell Who’s waitin’ out there I said hi.”

  She crossed her arms in front of herself and cinched her collar tight, trying to hug away the cold. Sam sat between them. He whined and refused to take sides. Zach leaned back against the wall and rubbed the scarf again, which had in the last few moments taken on a deeper shade of crimson. He shook his head.

  “A man ain’t nothing without his hat, Allie. That’s rule number one. Just ask my daddy.”

  “Maybe I should ask your momma,” she mumbled. “Bet she’d say something different.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Don’t think I want t’understand something as dumb as that, Zach Barnett.” She cocked her ear. “You hear something?”

  “No. And it ain’t dumb.”

  It wasn’t, not in Zach’s eyes. That was the hat his own father had worn while braving the ghosts and spirits of Happy Hollow in pursuit of a madman. Now it lay somewhere in the filth of the forest below them. Left there. By Allie, yes, and Zach was quick to settle on that point in his mind. But his daddy’s hat had also been left behind because Zach had decided to clock out of reality at the worst possible time. In the end, that was what made him so angry.

  Allie could not understand that.

  Marshall Granderson certainly could, standing outside Bobby Barnes’s auto shop nearly a dozen miles away, telling Grac
e he had to take care of just one more thing before putting an end to another day of searching for someone he was coming to believe would never be found again. Bobby had seen him coming across the street from the town square, had seen the drawn look on Marshall’s face and the trembling in Marshall’s hands, and was ready with a cold one in his hand before Allie’s daddy could even knock just above the Closed sign on the door.

  Few words passed between them in the next minutes. Marshall had heard enough of “Keep your chin up” and “I’ll be praying” and “You just gotta have faith, Marshall; that’s all there is now,” and he would explode if one more preacher confided that God’s ways were so mysterious that He would misplace two children in order to bring a whole town together again. Bobby, ever the realist, couldn’t bring himself to offer his only friend in the world such lies. They stood behind a wooden counter that stored an old telephone and two ashtrays and a cash register that hadn’t rung in a long while, staring out at a street full of traffic heading out of town. Cars and trucks, SUVs and jalopies. All filled with people going back home. Going back to their families.

  Marshall asked Bobby for something a little stronger. Bobby obliged by saying there was a bottle in the glove box of his truck. The good stuff, guaranteed to put Marshall out good. Marshall tipped his head (If ever there was a finer man than Bobby Barnes, he thought, I’ve never met him) and walked out the door, careful to make sure Grace or Jake or Kate wasn’t approaching.