by Billy Coffey
She kept her eyes on Zach, needing his answer. And though Zach’s pride had remained just enough for him to make the wavering he showed seemed real enough, in truth he’d made up his mind the moment Allie had told him of her last dream.
“Are you scared?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Are you?”
She nodded slow. “Momma said I gotta be brave, though, so I will. I don’t think it matters much whether you think she told me that or not, it holds true. You know that. Right?”
Zach did. But knowing a thing was right wasn’t near the same as believing it, and believing it was a far cry from doing it.
“All I wanna do’s go home,” he said. “Why’d this have to happen, Allie?”
Allie panned across the darkwood and over the water, all the way to the looming cliffs, hoping something’d catch her eye that would answer his question. She saw how in some places the river swirled in tight whirlpools that unwound themselves and disappeared into the current, gone in a breath. Vast and cramped trees stretched away from the darkwood. Their limbs reached high into that thick, gray sky as though trying to rupture the bottom of heaven itself. It was the cold breeze that swept down through her hair and the way the river rocks lay dappled with every color Allie had ever seen and others she never had. She realized then that even in the deep woods, there was beauty. It was hidden and ragged, but there. It moved like a hidden river that wound its way around the hills and scrub and entwined itself around every splintery limb. It was everywhere, that beauty, and it had no need to return to itself because the fount from which it flowed never dried. And though she felt death lurking all around them, Allie Granderson found herself thankful for it. She had found a peace that only the brevity of life could bring.
“I still see that twister bearing down,” she said. “I feel the wind trying to pick us all up and the rain smacking my legs like little pieces of glass. I can smell Mr. Barney’s basement, all soggy and sour with fear. I can still hear me screaming for my momma because she wasn’t there. But you know what, Zach? I still believed. Even then, I did. I kept my faith because I thought that was what would make everything all right again. I kept it when all that wind was gone and we all climbed out and seen everything gone. ‘It’s still all right, Allie,’ I told myself. When me and Mr. Barney went running to look for Momma, I believed. When I hollered her name until I was hoarse, I believed. It was only when we stood there looking down at the place where Momma got taken from and seeing her pink shoe that I didn’t believe no more. That’s the worst part of any storm, Zach. It ain’t the during. It’s the after.”
“But you still made it,” Zach said. “We made it.”
Allie shook her head. She curled a bit of hair behind her ear and looked away, toward the river. “You made it. I didn’t. It was easy for you. You had your momma and Sheriff Jake. I only had my daddy, and by then he was broken. I was broken too. Or am. The days pull on me, Zach. They try to get me to carry on. But I can’t and I don’t want to, because carrying on means leaving my momma behind. I won’t do that. I’m gonna find Momma. We’re gonna take her home. She said so. Then we can all move on together. Me and her and Daddy, like it should be.
“We ain’t all the way out here just to find my momma, Zach. I’m looking to find my faith and lose my fear too. Here we sit all cold and sick and beaten up, but I believe again. Almost, anyway. But I can’t move on. Momma said I had to be brave. I don’t think I can. I’ve been scared ever since she left. I didn’t want to love nobody anymore, because it’s the ones you love that you always lose. But we’re coming to an end now one way or the other, so I’ll just be bold and say I love my daddy. I love Sam. I might even love Miss Grace a little, for all she’s tried to do. But I love you most of all, Zach Barnett, and I just thought you should know.”
Zach sat there for a long while, peering first at Allie and then the river. The cliffs followed next. The darkwood behind them came last. It didn’t seem right, going through all of what they had just so Allie could find her happiness again. He loved her and still wanted to save her, but all things considered, he’d rather she’d stayed sad back at home.
“Don’t you wish everyone could just have everything they thought would make them happy?” he asked. “No one’d have to go out looking for any of it at all.”
“I used to, but no more. I think it’d make a horrible world.”
“Why you say that?”
Allie stroked Sam’s muzzle. His eyes opened some. She looked at Zach and offered him a tired smile. “Because then there’d be no place for love.”
5
That Zach hadn’t bothered to share any particulars of the plan he’d designed was enough for Allie to wonder if he’d ever had a plan at all. If he did, they’d surely be doing something besides sitting there talking about secrets and feelings.
“What’re we gonna do?” she asked.
“We go on. I don’t know if It’s still in the scrub or up on those cliffs or nowhere at all, but we ain’t in no condition to poke It. We try goin’ back, I think that’s what’ll happen. We stay here too long, I think that’ll do it too. So that means straight on.”
“What about the cliffs?”
“We go under as quiet as we can. River’s making such noise that if It’s up all that way, It won’t hear us. Problem’s gonna be if It sees us. Up there, I figure a body can see for miles.”
That thought kindled another in Zach, one that burned only briefly but long enough to make him wonder. He picked up a stone and tossed it into the darkwood behind them. It crashed and settled. Silence followed. The demon had either moved on or was sitting quiet.
“Maybe It really is up there, Allie. If It is, I bet that’s where It’s gonna stay. It’s lyin’ in wait, thinking that’s where we’ll head. That’s where I meant to go before you told me about your dream. That’s where anyone who knew about the woods would go.”
“God,” Allie corrected. “Where God is, Zach.”
“Whatever, it don’t matter. What I’m sayin’s maybe It ain’t up there to spy on us, but to make sure we don’t climb up and take a look. We stay along the bank, maybe we’ll be left alone.”
“You sure about that?”
He shook his head. “But right now that’s all I got.”
They set out as smartly as they could, just in case either of them changed their mind. Sam was already loaded in his cart. Allie took the left handle and began pulling, Zach the right. He eased toward the tree line just long enough to pry a thick limb from among the scrub. Part of him lied and said he wouldn’t need a club. Another part said a hunk of branch would prove no more worthy a weapon than the one he’d carried before. It felt good in his hand nonetheless.
No noise could be heard other than the hiss of the water and the rat-a-tat of the travois over the rocks. The stone face of the cliffs had looked smooth far back. Now it appeared more layered, checkered by bushes and trees that somehow hung on by their roots, defying gravity. Zach thought he caught a flutter of movement at the top. Sam’s eyes opened again, his nose catching a scent. He offered a weak but rebellious growl.
“Can you go faster?” Zach asked.
“Yes.”
Allie pulled with all her might, willing her legs to move. She stared at the ground, not wanting her dead feet to misstep and not daring to look up, to find those eyes looking down at her. Zach guided the travois closer to the river’s edge, meaning to keep as far from the side of the cliff as possible. His chest began to seize. He coughed and spit onto the rocks. Shadows danced in front of his eyes.
As they neared, Zach saw a mound of rocks stacked along the bank on the other side of the cliffs. Hundreds of them, as big around as he was wide, forming a barrier between the darkwood and the bank in a long parallel line. In all their time in the woods, Zach had only seen one thing crafted by human hands. Now there were two. There was something about that pile of stones he found familiar—something he felt he should know—but the only thing Zach could settle upon was that
the mound was no more natural than the sign they’d found reading WARE, NO FARTHER. A thought so quick and unlikely that he believed it could be true sprouted in his mind—Allie’s momma made that to warn us away.
Their pace had grown to a near jog, bringing them into the cliff’s shadow. Twenty more steps and they’d be on its other side. Fifteen, if they hurried more. And then what? Keep running, he thought. Run until they could run no more, and then find a place to hide. Survive. That’s all living was, anyway. The woods had taught Zach that. He parted his lips to let the cold air in. The pain in his chest was unbearable, as was the nail hammering into Allie’s ankle each time her right shoe slapped the ground.
In ten feet, they met the cliffs. In twenty, the cliffs were behind them. Allie tried steering them close to the mound, using it to hide them. Her right foot caught against her left ankle. She stumbled into the wall of rocks, knocking three of them free and onto the travois. Zach’s pole was yanked from his hand, spinning him around. Allie’s yelp as she fell was drowned by Sam’s howl as he was thrown onto the bank.
Allie tried to stand as Sam crawled to her. Only his two front legs worked, and those only barely. She took him in her arms.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I slipped, Zach.”
Sam trembled against Allie’s chest. Zach waved his staff like a bat, moving it in wide circles. He searched the darkwood for any movement and saw none. Allie’s side of the travois lay tilted, its back pole sunk beneath a layer of the mound’s rocks.
“It’s stuck,” he said.
He ran to the back of the travois and tried pulling the pole away. It wouldn’t give. Allie remained in a position that was half sitting and half lying down. Something stirred in the darkwood ahead, turning all three of their heads.
“Help me, Allie.” Zach’s voice sounded cracked and near frantic. “Help me get these rocks off. Do it quick.”
She laid Sam down and scurried to where Zach knelt. The stones were big, larger than basketballs, but thicker and much heavier. Moving them felt like moving small mountains. Allie managed to roll one free, Zach another, but the last was too heavy and something was moving in the trees, something big and hungry, and when that something growled it frightened Allie so purely that she rose to scream, her broken mind wanting to ask God to please give them Just one blessed minute, and the words came out a sob as she watched what made its way onto the riverbank a few hundred feet in front of them. Moving from the darkwood over the rocks like a brown mist. One that gathered and grew into a shape more towering than Allie could grasp.
From that body grew two eyes, one white and one red, that burned as bright in the day as they had in the night.
It wasn’t a demon, as Zach had thought. Nor even Allie’s God.
It was something worse.
6
Allie thought it was a bear until she realized no bear could grow that size. It stood as motionless as the rocks beside them on a wide part of the riverbank that shrank to a narrow strip on either side of its massive body. Its coat was a dense layer of matted brown broken by a patch of white that ran from four long legs as thick and strong as a horse’s thighs to the center of a chest that was higher than Allie could reach on tiptoes. Meaty shoulders twice the size of the rocks she and Zach had just tried to move rose above that chest, leading to a thick neck crowned by a domed head. The bear’s snout was short and cropped, with black nostrils that flared in the wind. A cloud of fog gathered in the air as he sniffed. His eyes, not forward of his head but almost to the side, glowed.
Even from that distance, Allie could see the long black knives at the end of the bear’s paws, and how they almost curled downward into the rock and mud. Talons more than claws, and able to cleave flesh and bone with even less effort than they had the oaks and maples back at the pond.
The bear took a single step forward. Muscle churned beneath rippling fur.
“Don’t look at him, Allie,” Zach whispered. “Look down.”
Allie did as he said. She slowly bent and scooped Sam into her arms, telling him not to move, not to make a sound. Sam obeyed the latter well enough, but nothing Allie did could settle the shivers that had fallen over him. The dog’s eyes were wide with fear. The bear remained where it was, staring at them. Smelling them. Tasting them already.
She felt those eyes pulling at her. Wanting her to look.
“What do we do, Zach?”
Zach didn’t hear. He’d told Allie to look away but couldn’t do so himself, overcome by the impossibility of a living thing so large. A bear, he’d thought at first. Zach still believed that true, even if the thing watching them was unlike any bear he’d ever known. A bear would be a terrible thing, yet it would almost be a relief given what his mind had conjured living behind the eyes that had chased him. But this bear stood well over six feet on his four legs, taller than Zach’s father. And when it moved three steps closer, it was with the quiet grace of a wolf.
“We can’t run,” he said. “That’s what it’s waiting for us to do, Allie. That’s when he’ll charge.”
“What do we do?” she asked again. Allie would not look up. Had she, her eyes would have filled with what Zach saw next—the bear dropping to a low crouch, his left legs a short distance ahead of his right, taking the position of a sprinter ready to explode from the blocks. Neither of them expressed it, but both longed for their fathers in that moment. Mothers promise their children comfort from hurt and fathers promise protection from the bad things in the world, and what Allie and Zach saw in that bear was all the bad in the world. Yet as the bear took another step forward, Jake Barnett was miles away, knocking on doors to tell the people who opened them of the midnight service. Marshall Granderson was farther still, standing with Grace Howard at the foot of a grave that held a single pink shoe and mourning the knowledge that what would go into the grave beside it was the scarf he’d found in Bobby Barnes’s truck.
“The rocks,” Zach finally said. He gripped the staff in his hands. “We gotta go up the rocks, Allie. We have to do it slow.”
“It can get up on the rocks, Zach. It’s bigger than the rocks.” Her head still down, yet Allie felt the bear’s eyes upon her, that unwavering stare wanting to lift her chin.
“The water, then. I’ll take Sam. We’ll jump in and swim to the middle. The current will take us.”
“We’ll die.”
“We’ll die here too.”
The pull on her was stronger now, as though Allie was being hypnotized from far off. The buzzing sound returned to her ears, followed by a throbbing in the center of her stomach. She shook her head no, even as the rest of her said yes. The small voice inside her that had spoken often in the woods now spoke for a final time:
There’s nothing you can do, Allie. Do you understand now? There’s nothing you could have ever done about anything.
Allie lifted her chin. The bear’s eyes blinked, the red one first and the white one second, like a ripple. And with a roar like a wind she had heard only once before, it charged.
7
The bear covered half the distance between them before Zach understood what was happening. Even then, he could not move. The link between his eyes and his mind had been muddied by the spell of such power and speed. The muscles beneath the bear’s thick hide pulsed as he raced forward. Claws longer than the fingers Allie used to cover her eyes clacked against the river rock. Each paw landed in the precise spot where the ground would not give way, propelling him forward. Huffs of breath streamed from his nostrils like steam from an engine. The red and white eyes narrowed into slits that only magnified their light. To run seemed less than fruitless. Seemed, almost, an irreverence. They were in the presence of something so far beyond themselves that it could not exist even in their dreams, and so Zach could only do what he’d done on Carnival Day as that dark funnel bore down—he lowered his head and waited for the end.
It was Allie’s scream that saved them, one filled not only with terror but despair and anger as well, lifted from her very dept
hs. The sound crashed into Zach. He lifted his head to the sight of the bear slowing—only for a moment—and its eyes widening in surprise. Zach took hold of Allie’s arm and pulled her up the rock pile’s slope, gripping her as she gripped Sam. Their legs became pistons struggling to find traction on the boulders. When no traction could be found, they fell to their hands and knees and scrambled. Zach’s chest tightened. His breaths came in shallow spurts as he crested the pile. He scurried to the other side just as the bear reached the edge of the mound and yelled for Allie to move faster. He grabbed her shoulder and jerked her over the side as the bear began to climb, caring not what part of her or Sam he damaged in the process. Allie wrenched herself free long enough to collect one small rock. She threw it at the beast, striking him in the neck. The stone bounced away like a swatted bug, making him roar again.
Allie stumbled down, crying out again as she landed on her sprained ankle. The riverbank ended there and the darkwood began. There was no deliberating this time, no pondering dangers and what-ifs. They ran headlong into the tangle and wormed their way through the thickets and brambles. Moving as fast as they could without regard for the clamor they made. Wanting only to get away.
Zach used his best judgment to navigate. The darkwood rose in a shallow climb over a rise. The cliffs stood to their left, the bear to their right. Escape could only come straight on and only through speed. He gripped Allie’s free hand. Branches whipped at their faces, scraping Allie’s brow and the wound on Zach’s head, bringing tears to his eyes and small cries that escaped his lips.
They heard nothing. The bear had either lost them or had decided to take another way. Allie stumbled. Her hand slipped from Zach’s and she fell hard, first to her knees and then her stomach, rolling at the last moment so as not to crush Sam beneath her. Zach picked her up and dragged her on as the ground sloped upward. The crowded shrubs and trees smelled dank and earthy, like something rotting. Nothing beyond the reach of their arms could be seen.
