In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  Fog lifted from the ground like fingers. Zach rested the tip of his staff against a jutting rock. He peered through the wall of branches and brambles and tried to remember how they’d gotten there. He couldn’t. It was as though he’d slipped into another dream (though a much better one than what he’d endured the night before) and had gone walking in his sleep, only to wake at the edge of that darkwood. He looked at Allie, almost as surprised to find her there as himself.

  “It’s a bad place, Zach.”

  He nodded, knowing what Allie would say even before she said it. “This whole wood’s a bad place, Allie. You stay here.”

  Meaning, of course, Don’t move, because I’m the one who’s charged with keeping you safe, and so I’m the one who has to take the chances. But Zach didn’t move either, at least not for the first few seconds. Nor did Sam, who had found safe harbor behind Allie’s trembling knees.

  Zach judged the span between them and the darkwood’s first reaches no more than twenty steps. He halved that distance in short order but then slowed to a near crawl, overcome by the sheer enormity of the maze. Allie plunged a thumb into her mouth and bit hard on the nail, ignoring the dried muck that had accumulated there. She wanted to call Zach back before he got too close but dared not, believing—knowing—the sound of her voice would carry. It would make Him come charging out.

  The bare limbs forming the scrub’s outer wall shuddered. Zach raised his staff and stepped back. His lips tightened when he realized that movement was only the wind sighing through the forest. He turned and cast Allie a long look, hoping she hadn’t witnessed his cowardice. She had not. It was Allie’s heart, not her eyes, that she looked through now. That made her see deeper and know clearer.

  “Zach. He’s in there.”

  Zach took the final steps, even managed to brush the first clump of thornbushes and fallen trees with the edge of his staff. Other than drawing a low woof of warning from Sam, nothing happened. He walked the edge, dipping from his waist with every few steps, trying to peer inside. Allie’s head began to swoon. From the cold or the danger, she did not know, though the voice within bid her to think of those things as one and the same, for her good and for Zach’s. Her toes itched. She bent and shoved her fingers as far into her shoes as she could manage (which wasn’t far at all). When she scratched, all Allie managed was to shift the last remaining bits of pine needles to her ankles.

  “Hey,” Zach said.

  He called slow, but the sound still rocked Allie back into her heels. She wobbled and regained herself, then lifted her head. Zach had moved perhaps a dozen feet to her right. A smile lit his face.

  “There’s a trail right here,” he said. “Come see.”

  Allie stood well enough, but only because that didn’t involve relocating her feet. They stuck to the ground. She didn’t think the cold had anything to do with it.

  “It’s okay,” Zach said. “Ain’t nothing in here, Allie.”

  She forced herself forward, telling herself she would get to Zach much like they’d gone all the past days—one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. Allie turned and saw that Sam had not moved. He stood shaking in the very spot Allie had left him, his tail scraping the ground.

  “To me, Sam,” she whispered.

  His ears perked. All else remained still. Allie stood there, penned between Zach and Sam—between her want and her better judgment. Had she not led them this way from the rocks? Had it not been her faith and her belief that had brought them to the edge of that scrub?

  She edged her way to Zach, who stood straight again. He pointed his staff through what looked like nothing but one tangled bush among a billion. Yet as Allie drew closer, she saw the empty place beyond it and how it wound and cut through the scrub before disappearing at a left turn some fifty paces away.

  “Deer trail,” he said. “Gotta be, ’cause it’s so wide. Not wide enough for us to walk beside each other, but enough that the brambles won’t get us. And it’s tall too. See?”

  Allie nodded. Whatever animals used that trail had certainly been tall enough to be deer. The young trees growing on either side had yet to be choked dead. They grew almost in a bow, forming a canopy that extended over the slender path. Not only could they walk—should they choose to—without being stuck and prodded by all those sharp branches, they could travel without so much as having to duck their heads.

  It looked safe. Fine, even. Had Allie been a believing girl rather than fallen away, she would have seen that trail as a blessing. But it was not.

  Was, in fact, “A bad place, Zach.”

  Zach sighed and rubbed his head, pulling down the scarf that covered his wound before the icy breeze could enter there. That small act only served as a reminder of everything the woods had stolen from him. He had stepped into that forest as sure and strong as any who had ever walked, and all that had happened since had stripped him of every dignity. That land had turned Zach’s body against him, forcing him to lie in the darkness shivering against a fever so great he felt near delirium and squat half-naked over a hole he’d dug with his own hands as the diarrhea burned out of him. It had forced him to make his way not under his own power but by leaning on a branch. Zach thought of the confusion he felt over not knowing where to go, how he could not even manage to start a fire to warm them nor find food to feed them. But most of all, he thought of how he’d left his daddy’s hat behind and how it had now been traded for a girl’s scarf knotted around his head.

  They could not skirt that wide spread of darkwood as they had done the day before. The air was too cold and they were too weak. But more than that, Zach understood that he had suffered long enough, and now it was time to show that desolate place he was indeed a man. It was time to show Allie. Most of all, it was time to show himself.

  “We go through,” he said. “Right here. You spoke the way, Allie. You said we go this way and we’d be good and I said yes. But how we go is up to me, and you said I’d lead.”

  “What about Sam?” she asked.

  They looked at the dog, still minding his spot away from the scrub. He did not perk his ears at their attention, nor did he offer another woof. His silence was his warning.

  “Can you carry him?” he asked. “You carried him all the way to town on your bike. If he wanders off in there, Allie, we might not find him.”

  Zach waited as she made her way back. He reached for the knife in his pocket and locked the blade open. Sam did not fight Allie when she lifted him into her arms, though he sank what little weight he had left. Lifting him was like heaving a cinder block. She brushed his face with her hand and cooed in his ear, telling him it would be all right.

  “We’ll go fast,” Zach said.

  They set out on the trail in silence, brushing past the few limbs that managed to slow their way. The darkwood pressed in. It was as though what they traveled through was not a clench of old woods at all, but a live thing that meant to have them. What little light the sky offered paled beneath the arching trees, casting the tangle into dull evening. Sam quaked in Allie’s arms. She held him tight and stroked his head, but there were no more words of comfort left in her. Zach held the blade with one hand. With the other, he gripped his staff. The bushes were silent and still (not even the wind could penetrate that deep in the clench), but he found his heart fading. Soft whistles filled the air. He tried to silence his chest but could not. Thirty minutes later and a half mile through, he had managed to convince himself he was man enough now and they could go back. But as he turned to glance over his shoulder, Zach saw the way back too far and dark to chance.

  “Are you okay?” Allie whispered.

  Zach nodded. “Just making sure you’re still there.”

  “How much farther on?”

  He didn’t know. “Not far now. We’re close. Steady Sam.”

  Sam’s ears perked again. His eyes searched the dense wood to their left. Zach decided to move on before the dog could find cause to bark, but his legs were weary now, the knife heavy in his
hand. Brush crept over the trail ahead, forcing them around. Zach felt a shiver as he tried to find the way again but only found he could not. Allie did. By then, Zach was too afraid to feel slighted.

  On they went. The bush felt never-ending. Zach sparked his courage by singing—softly at first, so only he could hear. The tight space carried his words to Allie, who found the tune comforted her much as her mother’s singing once did, back when Mary Granderson would rock Allie to sleep by pressing her daughter’s head into her soft bosom.

  The words stilted, shaky—“Si-hi-lent night. Ho-oll-y night.”

  Zach whispering them, using that noise to calm them both. Telling Allie not to fear, that all was calm and all was bright.

  “Round yon vir-hir-gin—”

  “Zach,” came the whisper. He turned. Sam’s head was high in Allie’s arms, the muscles in his neck stretched tight and his ears raised. The dog’s mouth quivered.

  Zach nearly apologized, thinking Allie had stopped him before the next lyric wounded her. But Allie in fact had not heard them, nor would even her sorrowed heart object at the mention of “mother and child.” It was instead what she knew lay just inside the barrier of trees and tangles to their left, where Sam now looked. Something Allie could not see for the maze of leaning limbs and stunted bushes. Someone who even now called to Allie with a voice she could not hear but feel. Zach felt the pull of that presence as well. As did Sam, who could not decide whether to quiver or bark and so attempted both.

  Allie put a hand to her dog’s mouth

  (Run Allie!)

  and bid Sam quiet. The path beneath their feet widened here, almost enough for Allie to go to Zach’s side. She turned toward the tangle and took a step there instead, letting her toes leave the trail.

  “No,” Zach whispered.

  (Run Allie run!)

  But she could not. Allie’s eyes remained on that broken wall of twigs and trees. Listening.

  In a voice as timid as it was broken, she asked, “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  Silence at first, and long enough for her to think nothing was in there at all. Then from somewhere deep inside the thicket, a single low growl snaked its way through the darkwood.

  It was as if Allie’s body halved in that moment. Part of it focused on Sam—struggling to free himself from Allie’s grip, flashing his tiny, sharp teeth—and Zach, who now shook so much that his knife clattered to the ground. Allie’s other half—the half containing both the voice screaming for her to Run Allie run! and the shard of faith that remained from the sight of all those stars falling in silvery arrows that pointed the way—could only stare ahead as that growl came once more, swaying her to it like limbs in the breeze. Lower this time. Closer. She felt Zach pulling at her as the trees in front of her began to shake and part, and all Allie could do was scream.

  Zach watched the trees part in a straight line that would end in the spot where Allie stood screaming. His mind struggled to know what to do next. Exhaustion and cold—the unrelenting, bone-chattering cold—had turned his thoughts to sludge; all Zach could do was stare ahead and watch for his father’s old black hat, bobbing up and down as the Thing in the woods came forth to eat them all.

  6

  Zach saw more than the darkwood giving way. He watched the thrashing and growling grow ever closer and saw every illusion he’d carried from town give way as well. There in the midst of the end, he could not summon the stout heart he’d always supposed beat inside him. Zach could only react as his truest self commanded. That was well enough, because it was the boy he remained who saved them.

  He grabbed Allie’s arm and yanked with all his might. She stumbled sideways, away from the crashing brush. The sudden movement of her feet snapped Allie from the spell that growl had cast over her, forcing her back to the world. Sam struggled to free himself in her arms. Allie nearly dropped him. Zach broke into a run. With each step he pulled Allie more, making the gap between her arm and her chest wide enough for the dog to nearly slip through.

  Her screams at the splintering wood behind them mixed with exhortations for Zach to move faster and Sam to hold still. The words were like a whip to Zach’s ears. He ran faster, pulling Allie along the path as the world behind was devoured. His eyes wanted to look back. His mind screamed no, screamed for Zach to keep his vision to the path, the path would save them. The demon (to him, It could be nothing else) was upon them. It had yet to reach the path but was close, Allie could almost smell His breath, and she and Zach both knew that once what chased them found the trail, they were dead. And yet even a demon had to bow to the power of the darkwood. The more It thrashed and surged through the thick tangle of dead trees and stunted bushes, the more the scrub fought to push It back.

  Zach’s legs pumped, his lungs heaving. The path snaked ahead. A wayward branch jutting across the trail smacked him just above the wound on his head. Zach screamed out as silvery stars and black flakes covered his one good eye. His hand slipped from Allie’s arm.

  While Zach was smart enough to know a woodsman never takes his eyes off the trail, Allie had no such knowledge. The link between her and Zach now broken, she turned her head back to where they’d been. Trees and bushes exploded in the freezing air just past her shoulder. Another grunt, full of rage, reached through the mass of wood between them. It was a wave Allie could not stand against.

  Her body pitched forward too fast for her mangled feet to keep up. There came next the feeling of Allie’s toes stuttering and then leaving the ground altogether. For the briefest of moments the air caught her, and Allie believed her momma had saved them, was lifting the three of them up with the power of her love, and now she and Zach and Sam would fly to that green and flowered hill with red trees from where Mary Granderson had sent word. Zach felt his grip on Allie gone. He turned to reach for her and saw her flying, saw Allie and Sam arching back toward the ground. There was a cry when her right foot landed and the sickening sight of her ankle rolling under the weight of her body. Her chin slammed against the broken ground of the path. Sam slid forward with a yowl and rose up, turning his body back toward the approaching sound. He let out a bark far greater than his small body, one that convicted Zach of his own cowardice. Even Samwise the Dog had found a well of courage within him.

  Zach ran back for Allie. She stretched out her hand for his and pulled Zach down as he tried to pull her up, groping for him as though drowning. The trees still shook, the grunts from within still carried, but were those trees and grunts now farther off? Zach reached for his knife. It wasn’t there. Allie spoke in a cracked voice of fear and pain, begging Zach to save her, to save them all, and yet Zach knew he couldn’t and perhaps never could have. All the strength in him had gone. The demon changed direction and charged, homing in on Allie’s injured voice. A crack like thunder shattered the darkwood as It broke through the last of the tangle and found the path. Zach heard the grunt give way to a roar. The very ground beneath him shook.

  In one last yank, he pulled Allie from the ground and shouldered her. He scooped up Sam, who was so frightened by the sudden touch that he whipped around and bit into Zach’s sleeve, drawing blood. Zach never felt it and only later would see that mark, wondering what had left it.

  He struggled forward down the trail, his face contorted in an expression of agony as his chest and lungs began to fail. His legs refused to heed the sound of approaching death. They buckled under the weight Zach shouldered despite Allie’s screams to keep going, to run. Sam twisted in Zach’s arm, nipping at what flesh his teeth could find, wanting to be freed, to fight. Past where the path veered ahead came a great rushing sound, and in a fit of panic Zach believed the demon had flanked them. He spun, meaning to go back, and saw the trees behind them bend.

  Allie had shut her eyes just as she’d done on that long-ago Carnival Day. She opened them wide when Zach turned and stopped. A whimper escaped him. Allie understood that sound was not a cry of exhaustion, but one of surrender.

  “Don’t stop,” she yelled. “Please, Za
ch, don’t stop now.”

  And something inside him (the boy, yes, but also the first whispers of the man Zach would become) awoke then, propelling him on. He ran, using the last of his strength to charge toward the rushing sound on the path ahead. He heard the demon charging behind. Forty feet. Twenty-five. Ten. There was no scream upon Zach’s lips, only a yell of defiance as he took those final steps into the unknown. The evening into which they’d been plunged became the ashy white of the day they’d left. And when Zach leaped through the last of the darkwood, he found what greeted them was not death at all.

  It was a miracle.

  7

  Marshall, Grace, and the Barnetts returned from the BP with news that Andy Sommerville had indeed stopped by Bobby’s shop the day Allie and Zach had gone missing, and the shop had indeed been empty of children. They had no choice but to let Bobby go. He walked out of the sheriff’s office and through the waiting crowd, across Main Street beneath a banner that read Jesus Is the Reason for the Season and through the front door of his shop. He never turned the sign from Closed to Open that day.

  It would be the last real day of searching, spent looking in places that had already been scoured. Next would come a pall of depression over the town, along with a feeling that in some way, The Storm had claimed yet two more lives.

  8

  Allie heard the roar and lifted her head just as Zach broke free. Her hands found his hips and squeezed just as Zach’s boots slid along the smooth rocks, nearly rolling him forward. He was saved only by Sam, who shifted his weight back at the last moment and added it to Allie’s, righting them all. Allie tensed over Zach’s right shoulder. An odd embarrassment crept over him and the scrub continued to boom and shake, but all Zach gave himself over to was the sheer joy of being right—of saving them. For that stretch of tangle had grown so thick and endless because it straddled the forest’s lifeblood, protecting it like a sheath.