In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  “Where are they, Grace?”

  The words came out so quiet that Grace believed she’d imagined them at first. Then she saw Kate’s face turned nearly to hers.

  “They’re somewhere,” she answered. “I know they are. We’ll get them home, Kate. We have to.”

  “This was all because of that Nativity. All of it. A piece of plastic.”

  “It wasn’t a piece of plastic to Allie.”

  Kate shook her head, said, “I know. Just as I know Zach had to go with her. He promised me he wouldn’t go far, Grace. So did Allie. How’s Marshall doing?”

  “He’s holding up the best he can.”

  “And how are you, Grace?”

  Kate looked at her now, and in that gaze Grace shriveled.

  “I’m trying to be strong for him. It isn’t easy. I love Allie.”

  “And him?”

  “What?”

  Kate looked away, back to the tree. The wooden crosses hanging on the limbs swayed in a frigid breeze.

  “I loved Mary, Grace. Everyone did. I know the two of you were always close. I’m glad you were there after her funeral. Marshall shut out everyone in town after that, Jake and me especially. He had to have someone to blame. Things sometimes feel better that way, even if they aren’t. I remember your daddy and how things got when the darkness took him. I know you see him in Marshall and yourself in Allie. But people talk, Grace. What’s in the past can carry forward. If anyone knows that, it’s me.”

  “I don’t . . .” was all Grace could manage.

  “Don’t think wrong of me, Grace,” Kate said. “I mean no ill. I just want my son back, and I want Allie back, and I’ve been struggling for days between praying to God and cursing Him. Things don’t always work out the way we want, the way we know things should. If they don’t, Marshall will need you more. He’ll go back into his hole and have nothing but his sadness, and you know how that ends.”

  It was Grace’s turn to fall silent. She did know how that ended. She knew well.

  12

  It was the wrong way. Allie knew this with a sureness that opposed her every step, slow and clumsy as those steps were. She thought Sam knew it as well. He was still ahead of Zach, though not by much, and his steps had slowed to an almost imperceptible padding of his paws. Only Zach seemed ignorant. His eyes were set straight upstream, doing his best to help support Allie’s weight. It was a task made a bit simpler by the chunk of driftwood he’d found and broken in half across his knee. He held one section in his left hand. The other rested in Allie’s right. There was no talk of staffs or weapons. These were crutches, and both of them knew it.

  In fact Zach knew he had made an unwise choice in continuing upstream. Not in the sense that the direction was wrong (he was sure it was not, Zach had stopped at Miller’s Bridge only a million times in his life to watch that water and knew just how it flowed), but in the sense that the air itself was heavier and laden with a stench of a rotting something that wasn’t the fish in Allie’s pack. But what choice did he have in the end? They were hurt, sick, and exhausted, and the only hope they had lay in the fact that Zach knew the way home. Upstream was the only way.

  What continued to vex him most was why the beast had crossed so far up the bank. For that matter, why It had not snatched them back in the darkwood. The path had been their only way through, so why not lie in wait there, just inside the tangle? Yet It had chosen to hide deeper in the trees, and Zach had begun to piece together why. Unfortunately, the only way to finish that puzzle was for him to lead Allie and Sam where they all knew they shouldn’t go.

  They moved in silence for the next mile, which took so long that the sun had reached the top of the sky and was now beginning a slow descent. The smell of rotting leaves and spoiled water wafted up from the river. They had come to a shallow part, where the current washed over an assembly of smooth stones and debris, narrowing the bank. The rushing noise muffled the stones clacking beneath their feet. They could hear nothing, not even a growl.

  Twice Sam stopped ahead to peer deeper into the darkwood to their left. The low growls he uttered shook his jowls. Zach and Allie stopped each time, and each time her grip strangled his shoulder. Neither of them realized Sam’s snarls had driven them closer to the water’s edge. Zach had made no plan of what to do if—when—they were attacked again. He didn’t think he needed one. If

  (It) (the demon) (Mr. Scary)

  the beast came for them there along the banks, all they could do was jump in the river. It would mean death, but getting to heaven soaked and shivering felt much better than getting there without a head.

  Allie whispered, “To me, Sam. Don’t you tarry.”

  Sam remained in his place not a dozen feet ahead. His tiny, razored teeth lay bared against the cold. He gave a bark that ended in a low growl toward the scrub.

  Allie called louder, “Sam?” Her voice trembled. The water churned beside them while just to their left—close enough that Allie could nearly reach out and grab it—lay darkwood so deep it held night inside. Her feet had died again, buried in a layer of soggy pine needles and worn canvas, and she was cold. So very cold. “To me, Sam. Please to me.”

  Sam refused. He only stared at what he saw crouched and waiting just inside the crooked wood. The dog’s next step was toward the clench rather than his master. The darkwood was quiet and still. Allie wanted to go to him, grab him by the scruff, but she was too afraid to move. She squeezed Zach’s shoulder and felt the tremor there.

  “Sam?” Zach asked. “Please come on.”

  Sam tore into the brush with a sound Allie had never heard before, one long woof of rage and fear. Zach let go of her and ran for the spot where the dog had disappeared. Allie screamed, begging for Zach to come back and Sam to come back and please don’t leave me here all alone. The darkwood exploded in volleys of shaking trees and snapping limbs, followed by a roar that stopped Zach’s heart and sent him scurrying back. Allie grabbed him. She pressed her face hard against his back, keeping Zach between her and the God she feared, screaming for Sam, for help. That scream was cut off as the sounds of Sam’s thrashes and barks ended in one final yelp that gave way to silence.

  13

  Zach felt the mud and rocks rise up over his boots, sealing them to the riverbank. There was no sudden surge of adrenaline to force him into choosing between the foolishness to fight or the hopelessness to flee. His very spirit abandoned him, unwilling to remain behind and suffer the same fate as the doe and now Allie’s poor pup. All that remained of Zach Barnett was a trembling shell hollowed out but for the fever in his bones and the poison in his lungs.

  Allie stepped out from behind him and took his hand. Her pigtails dangled limp and filthy and smelled of rotting leaves. Streaks of drying dirt ran from her cheeks. Her bottom lip quivered.

  “Sam?”

  She took a single step away—enough to stretch Zach’s arm out as far as it was able. The next step Allie took broke their hold. She looked at him, wanting him to follow, but Zach couldn’t. It’s the rocks, he wanted to say. See all the rocks, Allie? They won’t let me move no more.

  Allie asked again, “Sam?” Louder this time and with a hitch in her voice. She took another step and then another, pausing to let her crutch come alongside, and then she didn’t stop at all.

  “No,” Zach said. “Don’t go in there, Allie.”

  She turned and gave him the only three words she needed to say—“He’s my dog.”

  Zach tried to move. He managed only to wiggle the first three toes of his right foot. Allie peered into the darkwood, calling for Sam again. There was no answer from inside, no noise at all. She ducked beneath a fallen trunk and disappeared through a jumble of dead branches and what looked like dry, decaying vines. What came next was a shuffling noise and the sound of limbs cracking, and at last a pained, almost tearful cry of, “Zach, please help me.”

  He did not know how the riverbank released him then, though a part of Zach understood that it had nothing at all to do
with his own strength. He was simply stuck there one moment and in the darkwood the next, pushing through the branches as they struck his face and neck. He called out for Allie, asking if she was okay. Her answer was neither yes nor no, only that same plea for help. Zach shoved through and glimpsed a sliver of blue backpack. Allie knelt in a tangle of bare bushes, her back to him. Her eyes watered as she turned. She bit down on her cheek, sucking back the tears from her eyes.

  Sam lay on his side in front of her. His hindquarters had been flayed open to reveal the snarl of bone and muscle beneath. Blood poured from the wound. His back legs lay limp and dead, his head still. Two small, brown eyes gazed up at them.

  “Sam?” Allie pled. “Samwise?”

  The dog thumped his tail once, barely raising it off the ground. Allie stroked his head and bent to kiss the side of Sam’s face. Zach knelt beside them and turned his head. Not at the sight (which was bad enough to force up a fishy urp from his belly), but the smell. Sam had messed himself sometime during the attack; the waste mixed with the gore to swoon him and Allie both. But there was another, more putrid stink. The demon, Zach thought. Had to be. And if the smell was that strong, It was close. He set that aside long enough to study Sam’s damage. The wound was deep, made by the same sharp edges that matched the ones they’d found along the riverbank. Even if Sam lived, Zach doubted Allie’s dog would ever walk again.

  He untied Allie’s scarf from around his head and laid it over Sam’s back legs, trying to stop the blood and cover the exposed bone. Sam yelped when the wool touched his wound. He nipped at Zach with what strength remained. Zach shushed him, saying it would all be okay, though the look on his face betrayed his doubt. He slipped the scarf under the dog and then around, diapering him. He ended with a slow but tight knot.

  Allie thought she heard movement from behind. She looked and was met only by a great wall of mangled wood.

  “He can’t walk,” Zach whispered. “We gotta carry him. We have to leave here, Allie.”

  Allie picked Sam up and tucked him inside her jacket, cradling him like a babe. Zach handed her staff over. They pecked their way through the darkwood at a creeping pace that was both necessary and terrifying, careful to choose their steps with care and yet knowing care no longer mattered. He or It was still in there, could see them, and both Allie and Zach knew it.

  Zach followed the sound of rushing water and looked back more than ahead. Sam lay shivering and whining in Allie’s arms. His tiny eyes were shut. Blood leaked through the scarf, staining the pink leopard print of Allie’s jacket. They reached the riverbank and kept walking. Downstream now, away from home and as fast as they could, which wasn’t fast at all anymore. Allie’s feet landed hard on the rocks, almost like a stomp, lifting her feet by will and letting gravity slam them down. She tripped when the brace on her foot clipped her left calf. Sam woke long enough to squeal. Zach reached out, trying to steady Allie and keep her moving at the same time. He turned to see if anything followed.

  “Can you walk alone?” he asked.

  Allie looked at him as though he’d gone mad. “What do you mean?”

  “I need to try something.” She stopped. Zach pushed her on. “Keep walking. I’ll be right back.”

  “No. Zach—”

  He spun and raced the other way as mud and spray kicked from his heels. Allie cried out again. Zach heard her but only dug his boots in more, pumping his legs as fast as they could carry him and ignoring the stabbing in his chest. He reached nearly ten feet past where they’d found Sam when thunder vented from the trees again. Zach stopped and turned back, yelling for Allie to run. She couldn’t, not with the bottom half of her body dying ahead of the top, but the small act of trying was good enough. The scrub quieted again.

  Nothing about their last days in the woods had gone right. The grand adventure, the noble quest, their high calling—all of these things had been proven false. Zach had enough food and water to survive, but no fire to warm them. Allie’s feet were rotting, her ankle likely dislocated. Zach could not bear to ponder what ravaged his lungs. Sam was near death. And though they had wandered those wide woods for days, now they were truly and finally lost. Zach’s final gift to his parents would be for them to gather what sparkly packages lay waiting to go under the tree and hide them away forever. But there was a sense of calm in his heart now, despite all of those things. Zach didn’t know how much longer the demon in the darkwood would let them live, but at least now, finally, he knew what It was doing.

  Allie stumbled ahead, pitching her crutch and nearly pitching Sam. The look she gave Zach was one of pure horror that melted to confusion at his slowing pace. He walked to Allie and rubbed Sam’s ears. The dog did not stir.

  “It’s okay,” he told her. “We ain’t gotta run anymore. All we need to do’s go straight downriver. We’ll have to stop soon and make camp. That’ll be okay too. We won’t be bothered.”

  Allie shook her head and looked over Zach’s shoulder. He didn’t have to turn to know nothing was there, that the trees had gone silent again.

  “It’s gone, Allie. For now, anyway.”

  “How you know that?”

  “It chased us away from east so we could find the doe,” Zach said. “Just like It chased us from the darkwood to the river, and from upstream to here. Don’t you see, Allie? All this time, I thought we were being hunted. We ain’t. We’re being herded.”

  14

  It wasn’t what happened with Bobby Barnes that became Marshall’s undoing, it was the trip down the hallway that evening to gaze once more into his daughter’s empty room. He stood there recalling all those times he’d found her staring out of the window to check their wind gauge or to make sure the Mary was still in the front yard where she belonged. All those times Marshall would watch as she played with Sam and pretended not to. Yet not even the stillness struck him as much as the smell—a growing staleness seeping into the comforter on the bed and the paint on the walls, as though no one had lived in Allie’s room for a long while. That was what finally cracked Marshall open. That long scent was what nudged him over his own sharp edge.

  He had spent the last days wandering through a darkwood of his own, one crafted not by the slow decay of nature but the slow decay of his life. It was a place of shadow and despair, a thick and unending tangle of dead faith and dying hope, and shrouding it all was the haze of a future planned no further ahead than the end of a work shift or the start of a weekend. In that scrub Marshall had found all but two of grief’s stages. He had denied and grown angry, had fallen into a depression so thick he had ceased struggling against it. Still Allie had not come home. Would not, because Marshall had been nothing to her and the Mary had been All I Had, and now even the memory of her presence in his life had gone musty.

  Allie was gone, just as her mother before, and there was nothing Marshall could do about it. This weighed upon him more than anything else. There is no greater fear than that of a parent for his child. That wrinkled lump of screaming flesh you are handed is more than person and soul, it is a part of yourself, and what you discover as the years wind on is that the tiny boy or girl is the very best part—the You that you could never quite be. The world does not shrink when you have children, it expands, and with it comes a beauty you never knew was there and monsters you never knew existed. They lurk in a loosely wrapped crib blanket or an exposed electrical outlet, a tub too full of water. Those monsters are there at every busy intersection and every day of school, and you can pray and instruct but you know deep down that sooner or later one of those monsters will slip through your guard and strike. That was Marshall’s weight—the hopelessness of it all, and the knowledge that in the end, the monster who had driven his child away had not been God or the wind—it had been himself.

  He could no longer look in the mirror. What Marshall found looking back was a gaunt and old face cracked with lines and black circles orbiting two bloodshot eyes. Nor could he bear to look at the world and see those sorrowful stares given by the townspeopl
e on their way back from the day’s search. Marshall could not even close his eyes without seeing Allie cooking her macaroni and hot dogs or decorating the tree with a smile on her face that did not cover the pain and sadness in her heart.

  Having nowhere else to cast his gaze, Marshall Granderson finally looked up. Then came the bargaining.

  It was his fault, he told Grace, and his alone. It was the way he’d lived his life since Mary’s passing and how he’d given himself to anger and doubt. How he’d never hurt Allie with his fists but often had with his words, and those bruises went deeper. How he’d turned away from the God of heaven and embraced the god of the bottle. And as he wept and cursed his very life, Marshall thanked Grace for always being there and never giving up on him, even when he himself had. And so it was that Grace Howard found herself on the Grandersons’ back porch that evening, watching with a mixture of pity and awe as Marshall brought out what was left of his beer and whiskey.

  He emptied them all beneath the same cold and moonless sky that Allie and Zach now traveled. They followed the flow of the river beside them, heads bowed rather than forward, willing their bodies to keep moving. Zach had crept out front as the wind began to gather and blow. It whistled over the water and swirled in his face, where it buried itself into his lungs and the wound on his head. He would have given anything for his hat just then, or even Allie’s scarf.

  Allie crept along behind. The wind played with her pigtails, making them flutter. She’d abandoned her crutch so she could cradle Sam tight. Zach hung on to his own. It didn’t feel right, knowing Allie was just as hurt as himself but could hobble on anyway. He considered tossing his crooked branch aside as well, then thought better of it. The wind stole his breath as much as it stole his strength. The going was made harder with one of his shoelaces now wrapped around Allie’s ankle and the other nearly frayed in half on his boot. He needed the driftwood to lean on if they were to keep moving; the time for pride had long passed.