In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

Something snapped to their left, halting them. Allie’s eyes were wide and searching. She managed a single sound:

  “Hide.”

  Zach shook his head. To stay put was to invite their end. He held a single wobbly finger to his mouth, needing only one more sound, a single step on a single limb. That sound came seconds later, ahead and to the right.

  He moved his finger from his lips and mouthed quiet, then pointed left and led Allie on. She covered Sam’s mouth. They stepped slow and soft, minding the snarls of limbs and leaves at their feet, taking care to move the branches around their legs and chests just enough to let them pass. The darkwood fell silent again as Zach led them up, bearing left more, to where the bear had already passed.

  Allie let him lead and kept a cautious eye behind. Zach held the branches back for her to pass. She did so, keeping her body as far from their tips as she could. Her numbed feet and swollen ankle seemed intent on steering Allie straight into them, rubbing her scent on every limb and shriveled leaf, leaving behind a smell that might as well have been a neon sign pointing the bear their way. She heard another crunch, this one more distant and farther behind. Sam squirmed in her arms. Allie hugged him closer, pressing the scarf over his wound against her jacket.

  They were guided more by the day’s fading light than Zach’s senses. Pockets of early evening oozed through the scrub, and these open spaces became their map. Allie’s legs burned for rest. Zach had given himself over to long gasps through his mouth that came back out in whistles, as though his breaths were mired in their own darkwood. They found the trail the bear had blazed, a wide strip of broken scrub that allowed them to move in relative silence. Zach kept them left, from where the beast had come. They spotted a break in the trees. Zach took her hand again and led Allie there, using his staff to ease away the few limbs the bear had missed.

  Ahead the darkwood ended in what appeared to be another meadow. The soggy stink of the scrub turned sweeter in the open air, mixing with the scents of cedar and pine. A marbled gray sky stretched before them. To their left, past a line of sickly evergreens struggling in the rocky earth, glimmered a sunset Zach would have taken a particular interest in had he stopped to notice it. But Zach didn’t see that sunset at all. His eyes were ahead instead, and full of terror.

  There was no open land in front of them, only a tapered channel that faded and disappeared fifty feet ahead, where the sound of rushing water rose from far below. From their place atop the cliff, the river appeared as a thin artery winding its way through a body of a dying giant. Zach spun and faced the darkwood. The only thought in his mind was if where he stood now was where his coffin had stood in Allie’s dream.

  He found her standing to his left, holding Sam tight.

  “We have to leave, Allie,” he said. “We gotta go right now.”

  Allie heard his warning but couldn’t move. Her eyes had been drawn to the left, where she’d turned to the small, withering pines that lined the very edge of the cliff. Some part of her mind understood that Zach had led them to the cliffs even if it was the one place both of them had sworn not to go. It was where the bear would be. Where the coffin had been. But that tiny bit of comprehension had been overridden by the trees in front of her. A sliver of sun setting over the hill beyond struck there and lit the thin spaces between the limbs, making the branches and needles glow from dull green to light brown and finally—

  “—Red,” she whispered. “Zach, the trees are red.”

  “What?”

  Zach stared not at the trees but back to where they’d come from, watching as the darkwood began to part. To his mind, the bear appeared not to come out of the brush but grow from it—as though it were more trees and plants and forest than flesh and blood and teeth.

  It crept onto the cliff top. Zach placed Allie behind himself and backed them both farther onto the cliff as she screamed, “Momma, I’m here Momma!” and the red and white eyes bore down. Zach backed them away more, trying to keep himself upright.

  “Momma, Momma, where are you?” Shouting it as she scanned the narrow bluff—behind the few trees; down the sheer stone side beside her; into the darkwood itself, seeing nothing but emptiness and the bear moving toward them. Sam bucked in Allie’s arms. He wailed at the pain in his crushed body and growled through his cries.

  Those eyes bore in on Sam. The bear growled back. There was thunder in that call, the noise of wind and crumbling stone. Close now, that moving mountain taller than many of the pines they had passed and wider than every place they’d sought shelter. Coming for her.

  “Momma,” Allie tried once more, and in a voice so low the bear’s huffs swept it away, she added, “please help us.”

  And yet even then, Mary Granderson would not answer. Allie backpedaled on one bad ankle and two blackened feet as the bear crouched, digging his claws into the dirt. His eyes pulsed and shimmered. No help would come. Allie knew this with the same certainty with which she knew the bear would cleave her in half, but it wouldn’t be the claws and teeth that ended her. Hope would do that—hope dashed. That was what had killed Allie time and again ever since The Storm. At least this death would come only once.

  Zach moved Allie back as far as he could. A clump of withered pines stood just behind them. Beyond was only sky. He stopped as the bear slowly closed in. Its head lay low and forward, body crouched—just as it had on the riverbank before sprinting for them. Its mouth moved but it did not growl. To Zach, the beast seemed to be smiling, mocking its prey.

  All their time in the woods, he believed he served little more purpose than to be the well from which Allie drew her strength. Now at the end, he found Allie was the source of his. Zach no longer saw the bear. He saw only Allie screaming for a mother who wasn’t there and her world crumbling before her very eyes, and he knew that would be her final memory of this world. All the thoughts of all his failings fell away in that single moment. What replaced them was a burning to fight, to protect the one he loved even if it meant his own end. There is a kind of bravery born from understanding that what lies in front of you is merely the end result of every choice you’ve ever made, and there is nothing left but to follow that path to its end. And if death should indeed sling its arrows, Zach swore they would pierce his chest and not his heels.

  The hunk of wood in his hand shot forward even before Zach willed it. He took one step and raised his arms high, and when he screamed it was a call of both war and defiance that echoed over the cliffs and the bear into the very darkwood that had haunted him for days. He stood forward this once and final time. For himself. For Allie.

  Zach Barnett would run no more.

  8

  The bear stopped as Zach’s cry of war washed over it. Its front left paw hung in the air. That wide, compact head swung away from Allie and to him. The eyes became flaming slits. A long string of drool fell in a wet line from its bottom jaw onto the dust and rocks. Canine teeth the color of chalk grew from the bear’s jowls, each longer than Zach’s index finger and twice as wide.

  That look did little to strengthen Zach’s conviction, but the bear’s pause did. The branch of oak in his hands appeared as a toothpick against the hulk of fur and muscle now turning to him. His father’s words came back to him about what to do should Zach ever find himself in the path of a bear—don’t run, don’t look it in the eye, make yourself as big as possible, slowly back away. Zach had declared the first no longer an option. Nor the last—he could back up only to Allie, who had retreated to the scrawny pines behind them, screaming for Mary to come. He could not back away more, had to keep as much distance between the bear and Allie as he could. Besides, moving back would mean Zach would have to look away from the bear, and he couldn’t seem to do that. Those lights held him. They were horrible. They were beautiful.

  The bear landed his left paw. A low growl worked up from its chest. Zach did all he could of making himself big, arching his back and puffing his shoulders, waving the staff in wide half circles.

  “Turn off,” Zach yelled. �
�Get on, beast. Go back to the hell you come from.”

  He jabbed the air—“Back!”—moving the bear away as Allie stooped to lay Sam in a ball upon the ground, “Back!” as the bear began a slow retreat away from the cliff an inch at a time, “Back!” as he realized too late that the bear was not backing away at all, but only crouching for a pounce.

  Zach let out another scream and charged before the bear could do the same. He brought the staff down at an angle from his right shoulder to his left foot, aiming for the snout. A paw larger than Zach’s own head shot out and up. The bear’s claws sheared the chunk of wood in half before it came near, peppering the air with splinters that struck Zach’s face and eyes, blinding him. The blow came so fast that his hands didn’t have time to let go of the wood. Zach felt a tearing sensation in his shoulders and flew sideways, rolling headlong into the rough trunk of a cedar. He looked up, blinking away the fog falling over his eyes, that same black-and-gray mist that had fallen over Zach when the woods emptied at the pond and when he fell away near the rocks, shadows that fell over his eyes. He couldn’t see. The fog consumed him. He curled into a ball as the fog was pierced by the lights of two blinding eyes.

  The bear rose on its hind legs, eclipsing the darkening sky. Its jaws opened. And though Zach had vowed to stand firm, he had made no such vow to do so quietly. His scream was different this time, full of fear rather than courage. It came nearly as loud as the bear’s roar.

  The first rock came then, clipping the beast where Zach’s staff had missed, square on the snout. The bear rocked sideways and landed its front paws mere feet from Zach’s head. Another rock followed, finding its ribs, angering it even more. Zach turned his head to see Allie making a slow march forward. Her left arm lay folded in front of her body. In the space where Sam had been were now three stones the size of her fist. She drew back and fired the next, letting out a sharp “Momma!” as she did, the way pitchers sometimes oomphed when trying to sneak a fastball by a ready batter.

  The rock thudded against the hump on the bear’s back. She watched its eyes shrink, as though the bear were staring down the sights of a loaded gun. It wheeled in Allie’s direction. She began to shake as she backed toward the place where she’d laid Sam. She tripped over her pack and called for Mary again. The bear took three quick steps forward. Allie picked herself up and backed away more. The first branches of the lonely pines near the cliff’s edge brushed the edge of her jacket.

  Two rocks. Two rocks left. She aimed the first and threw it as hard as she could, willing it toward the eye that glowed white. The stone caught nothing but air and sailed past, skittering into the darkwood. Sam crawled toward the bear on his two good legs, lips drawn back in a snarl. Allie called for him to attack, but Sam could do little more than drag her bloodstained scarf behind him. Allie’s last rock flew no better than the one before. By now she was shaking so hard and breathing so fast that her body had left her control. That last pitch fell short. The bear kicked it away and lowered its head once. She took one last step back and tripped again, tumbling beneath the bottom branches of the pine. She pushed her feet against the ground, trying to move her body farther in, but the tree was too small. The beast bared his teeth. Smiled.

  She heard the river roil below and felt the cold breeze against her face, saw a faint curve of moon peering from an otherwise blank sky. Allie had been so afraid of life ever since her momma left, could not bear the thought of carrying on. But there at the cusp of death, to carry on was all she wanted. One second longer, one breath more. It was the final lesson of their long journey, one as bitter as it was sweet.

  She cried out. It was Zach who answered. Allie had drawn the bear’s attention away long enough for him to gather himself up and make a final charge. He ran across the narrow strip of earth full bore, ignoring the swelling in his lungs and the weight in his legs, and just as the bear leaned back, Zach yelled and leaped. He landed hard on the bear’s hump. All Allie heard was that scream, and all she saw were two skinny arms searching for a place to grab in all that hide and might.

  His arms barely reached past the sides of the bear’s neck, but it was enough for the bear to be caught in surprise. Zach beat his fists on the bear’s head and ears, and though that pummeling would have stopped any child and even most men, it did nothing to slow what Allie had come to view as the inevitable. The bear reared back again and then flung his weight forward, dipping his head to the ground. Zach spilled forward in a writhing heap of arms and legs, landing hard on his back just to Allie’s side. His eyes were open but blank. He tried sitting up, wanting to keep himself between the bear and Allie. He couldn’t. The world spun too fast. It held too much pain.

  Allie felt beneath the pines behind her for anything, everything. She threw pinecones and handfuls of needles and what rocks her hands could find. Still the bear inched forward, eyes shining, mouth open in a grin. Her fingers closed on a smoothed section of branch. Allie sat up, putting herself between the bear and Zach. The bear drew his paw back, aiming at the place where her pigtails once were. She raised the branch high over her head and tried to scream. Nothing came from her throat but a tired squeak.

  The cliff grew still for what felt to Allie like eternities. Only the wind moved along the cliff top, and only enough to gather in the fringes of her hair. The bear’s eyes dimmed like two falling stars as its paw eased back upon the ground. Its ears, perked straight as Sam had once perked his tail, flattened behind his head. Allie saw that one of them had been bloodied by Zach’s flailing. It backed away slowly and turned when it got farther on, easing toward the darkwood with a gait that reminded Allie of something far old and fading.

  Zach struggled to his elbows and then his knees. The first fingers of night crept over the wood, making the beast appear as a waving brown blob in his cluttered eyesight. His breaths were throttled with fear and gunk.

  “What happened, Allie?” he asked.

  Her voice shook—“I chased him.”

  But that didn’t sound right, couldn’t be. Nothing like that could be chased.

  Allie lowered her arm as the last shadows of evening settled over what rested in her hand. She moved her fingers across the branch, feeling the chips and cracks. And then the hairs on Allie’s arms straightened as she realized it wasn’t a piece of wood at all.

  It was a bone.

  9

  Allie dropped what she held in her hand. It made a clinking sound as it landed in the dirt, as though hollow inside. The tip bounced and landed against her left leg. Zach’s head swooned as he crawled forward from the pine and stood. He felt as able to walk as Sam, but he wouldn’t let the dog be so far away. Right then, he felt they all needed to be as close to one another as possible.

  The sight of him scooping Sam into his arms and stumbling back was something Allie saw only peripherally. Her attention centered upon the splintered and dulled piece of ivory against her thigh, barely aware that her stomach was fluttering in a way that meant neither nausea nor a woman’s labors. Zach sat beside her and faced the tangle. He didn’t think the bear was done, at least not yet, though the manner in which it had left at least signaled that something had changed. Evening was near gone. On its heels was a dark he no longer feared. Zach knew now what monsters lurked in that wood—the Bad Things, as Allie had said once.

  His hand searched for her knee and settled on something hard. A quiver settled over him when he looked down.

  “What’s that?”

  Allie lifted her head and then the bone. It tingled in her hand.

  “Where’d you find that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I was just grabbing for stuff to throw and grabbed this.”

  She turned around and felt beneath the first sagging pine. Zach laid Sam down. Neither of them spoke as they rooted; both were too afraid of what words the shaking inside them would form. Sunk just beneath a thin layer of browned needles were more bones, scattered in a rough line extending perhaps five feet behind the tree. Zach found part of a rib and h
alf a pelvis. Allie, a hand and the mate to the bone that had chased the bear. A lump lay buried beside a rotting pinecone. She brushed the needles off and pried it away.

  Allie had gone so long without taking a breath that she’d begun to think she’d forgotten how. As she took in the dark outline of the skull in her hands, she remembered once more. The cold air of the woods entered into her lungs in a short, stuttering gasp and was held there, trapped. She tilted the skull to the sky. Cracks spider-webbed down from the crown to the two empty holes that had once held eyes.

  The tip of a lower jaw rested in the depression. Allie handed the skull to Zach and dug it free. She saw a thin, glimmering strand beneath and pulled it from the earth like a loose thread.

  The chain had dulled to a muddy brown from so many seasons, but the gold cross still shone. It was not as bright as Allie had seen it along the riverbank, but enough to illuminate the fingers that held it.

  “Allie,” Zach whispered. He looked from the necklace to the skull in his hands (it had become heavier these last seconds, almost too much for him to hold) and laid it on the ground with a gentle reverence. He wanted to brush his hands against his coat and cursed himself at the thought. “It can’t be, Allie. It just can’t.”

  She rubbed the cross, smearing it with blood that leaked from a slit on her thumb. Allie shook her head. She had cut herself at some point, scrambling up the rocks or through the brush or along the cliff top or all three, it didn’t matter because her whole body felt cut just then, felt bleeding, and it also didn’t matter because Allie did not care about any of those pricks now, no more than she cared about the blisters on her feet or her swollen ankle. There was only that pressing at the backs of her eyes and the burn in her nose, and how the world had blurred like she’d gone underwater.

  The first tear gathered in the corner of her left eye. It waited to be beaten back with a bite of the lip or a shake of the head, but Allie only sat there. The drop swelled. It freed itself in a single bead that raced down her cheek past the corner of her mouth, settling at the top of her chin. There it dangled before falling with a faint slapping sound to the ground, one that Allie barely heard and Zach heard not at all. All those miles in the wilderness, the unending cold and gnawing hunger, even the bear that surely stalked them still, none of these entered Zach’s thinking. He could only stare at the bones of Mary Granderson.