Adam's Woods

by Greg Walker

  Adam's Woods

  by Greg Walker

  Copyright Greg Walker 2012

  Adam's Woods is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To small towns, simple faith, and those that seek to make sense of it all.

  Prologue

  The boy lay still in his bed. He was ten years old, but older than that, really. What time it was he didn’t know, but the darkness and calm of the house indicated that his parents had gone to bed, and he didn‘t hear even the curious squeaks and intense whispers that sometimes escaped from their room before the night’s final silence. He had always liked to lie awake in the dark and listen: in springtime to the peepers singing from the swamp at the edge of the woods, in summer to the ratchet of cicadas and chirps of crickets or the low rumble of a distant storm, in winter to the arctic winds flinging snow against the house - winds that with any luck would close the school in the morning. He listened tonight but for something else, something that made him older than ten.

  He knew the man would come but not when, and so remained vigilant tonight as he had each night for several months. He listened for the creak of a stair, punctuated by silence, before the next. His saw in his mind the knife the man carried on his ascent. When the man reached the top of the stairs, the boy would see his silhouette in his doorframe, black against the faint moonlight leaking into the house. He wouldn’t see the smile on his lips but would know it was there. The boy's bed lay in the corner against the wall, diagonal from the door. The only escape existed in leaping from a window to the driveway or the backyard two stories below. But he knew there wouldn’t be time for that.

  The boy took a deep shuddering breath, his fear like a drug that numbed his whole body and turned his thoughts sluggish. He wanted to cry, to scream, but he’d done that and his mother had at first been sympathetic, then irritated, then angry. She’d pulled the ghost story books from his backpack and insisted they be returned to the library at school the next day. She had thrown away a collection of scary stories ordered from the book-fair flyer handed out in his classroom. He didn’t know why they fascinated him, so innocuous in the sunlight, the illustrations mild and almost amusing. But at night the images of corpses and witches and beasts took on flesh in the dark. Even at ten, he knew it illogical to believe that such things would exist simply because he feared them; that a ghost would haunt him only when it learned of his horror, drifting to his bedside, sniffing and tasting the summons on the wind. Yet he did believe it, because the man would come, and come wrapped in his gift of blood and bone and breath from a mind poisoned with stories of terror and the active ingredient of paralyzing dread they invoked.

  He didn’t want to die, considered that if he could stay up long enough to wake his father and his brother at the first sound of the intruder, together they could stop him while his mother called the police. But invariably, the terror gave way to sleep. He never knew the moment it happened. For hours he stared at the doorway and then opened his eyes and it was morning. He never feared the man in his dreams because that wasn’t where he lived. No matter what his mother said, the man would come, and he must be ready.

  Tonight - the first real cold night of autumn that would frost his window by morning in intricate, feathery patterns and fringe the edges of the leaves with a delicate, crystalline halo - he actually felt the drift towards sleep, his mind begging for childhood and the refreshment of innocent rest. And for a moment he forgot to be afraid; he was ten and just a boy. He almost laughed out loud at the lightness he felt, glad the blankets kept him from floating up to the ceiling. The stories suddenly seemed as benign here in the dark as on the bus ride home of nearly an hour, where he would slouch down in his seat against the cracked green vinyl and prop the book up on his knees and read. He would apologize tomorrow to his mother for making her worry, before digging into his Lucky Charms, understood that her anger revealed feelings of inadequacy to help him. He would stop getting those books from the library, find stories to read with characters drawn from this side of the grave. He dared to consider that no one was coming up the stairs for him.

  He closed his eyes, for once letting the imprint of the doorway’s rectangle fade from his vision without refreshing it, breathed slowly and deeply, each breath exorcising his dread. For good he hoped. But that would be up to him, wouldn’t it? He thought about the pile of leaves that tomorrow, Saturday, he and his brother would leap into, their father patiently raking them back up nearly to his own height for another go until finally being set alight in the back yard. The boy loved the musky, acrid smoke that watered his eyes, loved how the ashes fanned back to crimson at dusk as the cool October wind pushed through the smoldering pile with its message of winter. He thought he might be a masked serial killer for Halloween this year, just to taunt his fears and show them their master.

  The first creak sounded on the stair.

  Chapter 1

  Eric Kane stared at the computer screen, at the prologue for his new novel, reading the lines for emotional impact. Would the reader understand the boy’s palpable fear, what it was like to lie in that bed? Doubtful, he almost deleted the whole thing, but instead saved it as “Untitled”, backed it up twice, and shut down the computer for the night. He would look at it again in the morning and decide; often what seemed like fresh drivel became passable prose with the benefit of a little time. But he would be extra critical of this one, because in a way it was an autobiography masquerading as a horror novel. If there was enough material for a novel. If not, maybe a short story. He had some others he could add it to, perhaps form a collection. Maybe better to mix in with stories less personal, just another suspect instead of a stand alone work holding a smoking gun before a jury of critics.

  In a way, everything he had written had been autobiographical because all of the stories flowed from a common spring. But this time he’d drawn closer to the actual source instead of the less toxic waters downstream. He didn’t know the wisdom of this choice yet, or his resolve to finish it, or if he did whether he could send it to his publisher for the world to read. Well, the world was a stretch. He wasn’t Stephen King, but had gleaned a large enough readership to live comfortably and know at least someone checked the shelves at the bookstore for the new Eric Kane. Eric hoped that someday Mr. King might agree to put a blurb of praise on the back of a book and thereby guarantee an increase in sales. The man had said that he could publish his grocery list and people would buy it. Ditto for a book he endorsed.

  But even without the celebrity angle, Eric had done all right, had published four novels so far and had begun his fifth. He saw his first fan website pop up two years ago, and had a good time slipping into the forums occasionally to discuss his work with delighted readers and answer their questions. The first two books were old-fashioned ghost stories, dark and Gothic in style, and one reviewer had dubbed him a latter day Poe. That had felt great, especially as an antidote to the ones that trashed his work and the genre in general, some wondering whether horror had any relevance in a post 9/11 world; who wanted the cheap thrills of goblins and ghosts during lunch break when terrorists might be homing a 747 on the window grid of the building? Eric believed that people liked thrills they could walk away from, fear they could conquer by putting down the book or covering their eyes. Fear they could control.

  But whatever way it was, Eric had no choice. Horror and the macabre had selected him. Following his brother’s murder and the period he lay terrified in his bed after, he had risen somewhat whole, but the experiences colored his entire world in dark shades that found expression in his writing. He had even begun something with anoth
er theme, historical fiction, a genre he enjoyed immensely in his personal reading. It started off well, but twisted into a story of a Special Forces squad formed during the Civil War comprised exclusively of the undead. It dismayed him that he couldn’t write what he’d intended, as though someone else had hijacked his mind and hands and forced it to the page. But the story didn't feel like it belonged to him until he added them. It sold so well he wrote another, this time vampires and werewolves versus the Nazis.

  These volumes had garnered critical accolades beyond the first two, and much of the praise found its source in the research he did to bring the battles to life. He had toured the killing fields of both wars behind expert guides, read dry military treatises and first-hand accounts and other works of fiction based on the facts, interviewed World War II veterans, both American and German; completely immersed himself in these worlds to seamlessly merge them with the supernatural.

  Now, approaching this next story, he felt the same pull towards that immersion. But this wasn’t someone else’s life, not immersion as much as a submersion into the past. The readers would never know, of course. They didn’t know either the depression he’d flirted with, or how this tale would be surgery for pain he’d ignored for too long. Whether it healed or killed remained to be seen. His greatest fear was that it would leave him with open wounds that could never heal or even be sutured closed again.

  Sitting on his sofa with the remote control in hand but the TV off, he would have had a drink if he drank, but refused anything in his system that impaired his ability to react; a throwback to those childhood days he couldn’t shake.

  Thinking about it didn’t help, and he dismissed the remote and its promise of two-hundred channels and nothing on, and opted for bed. Sleep eluded him. Instead, he lay awake listening; to the bass of some idiot’s music played loud enough to rattle his window and wondered what it was doing to the guy’s eardrums, a horn answered by another, and then the flow of traffic as the light at the intersection below his third story apartment in Pittsburgh turned green. Someone shouted. He yearned for the spring peepers, but he had moved into the heart of the city for the express reason of silencing them. Silencing it all. And lately, perhaps because of the banishment it clamored all the more. Harry, his agent, had suggested seeing a psychologist, but he’d flatly refused. He had tried that twice: the first against his will as a child and then in college with a counselor the school kept on staff. The university man’s detached manner and flippant way of approaching his innermost demons made the visit one and done.

  He did fall asleep sometime, and dreamed of his brother Adam, eight years old and holding his hand, always eight while Eric grew ever older and drifted further away.

  Eric drove his Corolla up Interstate 79 towards Erie. Towards home. Funny how after over twenty years he could still think of it in those terms. He dialed his agent Harry’s number and got voicemail.

  “Harry, it’s Eric. I’m going to be out of town for a few days researching the new book. I have my cell if you need to reach me.”

  He hung up and wished he had someone else to call, but his supply of friends began and ended with Harry. He had acquaintances; his writer group that got together to discuss current projects and toss around ideas, but none of them qualified as real friends. There were a few girlfriends over the years, but when those relationships naturally moved beyond sex to a stage requiring deeper intimacy and commitment, he had balked and fled. He had finally stopped dating altogether, felt wrong using women for their bodies when he knew he couldn’t give more. He sighed and turned up the radio instead of dwelling on the things that might have, should have, been.

  Of course, his characters rode along everywhere he went, so real at times that he thought he could converse with them. But if he started doing that, he should follow by taking the exit for the nearest loony bin.

  The drive would only take him a few hours. He didn’t know what he’d do when he got there. The village of Lincoln Corners, Pennsylvania took up about two blocks of rural real estate. It had no post office of its own but instead each address was the same rural route. It didn’t matter. The postman knew where to find everyone. The town had a Baptist church, a hair salon annexed to the stylist's home, a small grocery store and a lumber yard, and a few dozen houses and that was it. He could cruise by his old house, but that would take all of ten seconds if he went slow. He would certainly attract attention. Strangers might as well hold a neon sign and wear a cowbell. Not that he was a complete stranger, but his unknown car would have telephones ringing throughout the close-knit community if he did anything but drive through, if it was anything like he remembered.

  He approached the exit for Meadville and took it, and chose a fast food place amongst a good showing of its competitors in which to eat lunch and think about the trip. If he’d stopped closer to Pittsburgh he might have just turned around and gone back, even found a new story line to pursue if it came to that. But from Meadville he had maybe forty-five minutes to go, and he would at least do the drive through. He could always visit Adam in the small cemetery on top of the hill afterwards.

  Sitting amongst the other diners - truckers eating alone and staring vacantly at the highway, families with small children and frazzled parents, businessmen looking at newspapers and watches - he wondered who else here had been touched by the murder of a relative or friend. He wondered who had been abused, who would go home and hit their wife or child again, or if there were any murderers at large enjoying a combo meal. Most of what people displayed in public was bullshit, he believed, as fake as the pictures of the food above the counter.

  A young woman walked his way. He knew the look on her face and put his head down and tucked into the burger, hoping she’d see him chewing and leave him in peace. He liked meeting fans, but didn’t feel up to it right now.

  “Excuse me…I’m really sorry to bother you…but are you Eric Kane?”

  He glanced up and studied her blue eyes and long brown hair that shimmered as a tress fell over her shoulder when she leaned forward expectantly: maybe twenty-four, conservatively dressed in a long skirt and a blouse with a floral print, probably a Republican that loved Jesus. Nothing wrong with that. So had he, once upon a time.

  He nodded to her, his mouth still full, trying to decide whether to take another bite and send a message for her to get lost, or finish chewing and smile and answer. He finally decided he felt lonelier than irritated and chose the latter.

  “Yes, I am.”

  Her eyes lit up, and he found himself entranced by the beauty and innocence that co-mingled in her smile and trusting expression. Only in rural America, at state fairs and small but generally full churches and the potluck dinners after the service could you find reactions such as these. His city “friends” would snicker behind their hands at these backwoods people, he knew. But they were generally smart and shrewd and so much less jaded than those that chose to jam themselves into concrete and steel structures and receive a magnified dose of human nature that produced cynicism as an antibody. They laughed at innocence because they couldn’t find it in themselves anymore, and called this paucity of the soul sophistication. Of course there were the rednecks that perpetuated the stereotypes, but every culture had a poster child, and usually it ended up being someone exemplifying the traits most wanted to deny.

  “Hi, my name is Katy, and I’m a big fan, especially of “Shadow Lake”. I know you’re eating, and it‘s probably rude, but I actually have it here in my backpack and it would mean so much to me if you’d sign it.”

  An apologetic but hopeful smile finally cut through his reluctance and he returned it genuinely. And at the same time Eric caught himself wondering if he could seduce her and felt ashamed.

  “Sure, Katy, I’ll sign it.” He had a hard time meeting her eyes, did not want her to see his discomfort or guess at its reason. He feared most seeing a flicker of interest if she did. But that was wishful thinking. She’d probably denounce him as a pervert and throw the book in the trash on
the way out.

  She pulled out the hardcover book, well read and worn, from her backpack. He opened it up to the title page and wrote, “To Katy. Thank you for journeying with me to Shadow Lake. May it haunt you forever. Eric Kane.” Maybe cheesy, but the best he could come up with on a half-eaten burger and struggling with his own ghosts.

  Katy smiled brightly after reading the inscription. “Perfect, thanks so much. What I like best is the depth of your characters, especially Molly. She’s so conflicted but brave in facing the unthinkable. Her struggle is so poignantly written it just broke my heart the first time I read it. I’ve always wondered, I know this personal and you don‘t have to answer, but have you…just from some of the things you write…are you a believer?”

  His good will faltered a bit, but he managed to keep a smile and after a brief glance out the window answered, “I was once, I guess. But Jesus and I went our separate ways years ago, and I don’t think he’d like what he found if he came around looking for me.” He surprised himself with the honest explanation.

  She laid his hand on his, and he marveled at the audacity and looked at her delicate fingers but didn’t pull away, heard the gentle sincerity in her voice as she said, “He‘s never stopped looking, Mr. Kane.”