"What!"
"Shh!" She warned. "That way," she whispered, and nodded toward the woods. "That's the path we have to take, to keep away from animal traps."
"Traps?"
"Shh!"
She didn't speak again, only pointed the way with her flashlight and pushed him ahead of her. The flashlight revealed a barbed wire fence, the old fashioned kind. Farmers who were serious about keeping people off their property put up stronger barriers, with coiled, barbed wire at the top and bottom. Some even used electrical wire. Fortunately this fence was made of four strands of barbed wire stretched between wooden posts. They could make it through.
Winston pinched one of the middle strands and lifted it carefully. It crossed his mind to offer Connie Sara the first passage, but this seemed like the kind of gesture guaranteed to make her mad. So he pulled the middle strands of wire as far apart as needed and gingerly climbed between them. Connie Sara followed. At the last second one of the strands popped back into place, catching her hair and skewing it out of its pigtail.
Once they were past the fence, Winston stumbled along a dirt route so narrow it was nothing but a footpath scuffed up between the trees. He took hold of leaves and branches along the way and pulled himself forward, up inclines and around swollen roots protruding from the earth like the knuckles of giant fingers. As he approached a big-leaf maple, he caught hold of a licorice fern sticking out from its mossy trunk. He pulled himself forward with all his might. As he did, his right hand stripped the fern bare, leaving a slender, jagged cut across his palm. It stung so bad his eyes watered, but he didn't complain.
When they had been walking for a while Winston began to have the feeling that they were traveling in a wide circle, but he couldn't prove it. He wished he had brought his dad's compass. He wanted to tell Connie Sara, but then he thought: maybe this was part of her plan to sneak up on the witch. Or maybe it was a test.
If he hesitated for more than a second, the sharp point of Connie Sara's index finger would jab him between the shoulder blades until he moved on. By the time she stopped prodding him and they reached a clearing, he was out of breath and his shirt clung damply to his skin.
"This is it," she whispered.
Winston opened the pillowcase and withdrew the rope, which was thin and bristly. It was pilfered from his father's garage, where it had hung on a nail for as long as he could remember, so he didn't think it would be missed before Tracy was rescued and he returned in glory. Now he noticed for the first time that the rope had a worn spot, almost a break, and he cursed himself for not checking it more carefully before stuffing it, still coiled, into the pillowcase.
Connie Sara pushed leaves and twigs aside on the ground, until Winston could see a mottled sheet of old wood so green and mossy it looked like part of the forest floor. She picked up one corner and motioned for Winston to do the same. They lifted the wood aside, revealing a deep, narrow, impenetrably dark hole in the ground. At once the air around them filled with two sensations: icy cold and a stench so foul Winston dropped his flashlight and covered his mouth and nose with both hands.
"Aw!" He moaned through the fingers he held against his face like a muzzle. He spoke from behind his hand. "What is that? It's awful!"
He pinched his nose and tried not to gag. Connie Sara was watching him carefully. She seemed not to be bothered by the foul smell emanating from the hole in the earth, so he tried to take his hands from his face. But he could only breathe in once before a current of nausea shot through him. He clapped one hand back over his face and stood shivering in the midnight air.
"Where does it come from?" He mumbled.
"There used to an outhouse here," she told him.
"I thought we were going to the witch house," he said.
"I said we had to get Tracy out of the dungeon. This is it."
"Where's the house?"
"A couple of miles away. No trees there any more. Once upon a time there was a cottage there, with a roof made out of cedar. It burned down."
Winston's eyes smarted and he blinked at her.
"Who burned it down?"
He was trying to speak normally, trying not to shiver. The effort made his knees and his neck stiff. He was afraid because of the hole in the ground, and because he was so far from home, but also because he now remembered that Connie Sara had said the witch house was invisible, not that it had burned down.
"Who did it?" He asked again.
Connie Sara smiled.
"I did," she told him.
Winston studied her face.
"I set it on fire," she said. She laughed lightly.
Winston found he couldn't move. So he tried the only answer that might make sense to him.
"Did you do it to kill the witch?" He asked.
He was sucking in short bursts of air between his fingers, but it was agony to breathe in the stench flowing upward from underground. Connie Sara was pointing her flashlight toward the hole. She had draped the coil of rope over her shoulder. She stood watching him. Waiting.
"Go on," she said. "Take a look down there. Get closer, so you can hear Tracy."
The cold, the clouds obscuring the moon, and the rush of rotten air from the ancient latrine combined to make him shiver so hard his teeth made a chipping sound like a woodpecker. Sweat trickled from his scalp, collecting strands of his red hair in little tapers at his temples. He didn't swallow for fear of throwing up. High up in a canopy leaves rustled and an owl gave a careless hoot.
With a sudden resolve to get this over and get home, whether they found young Tracy or not, Winston took Connie Sara's flashlight and turned it toward the ground. The beam swept across green leaves and scarlet berries, a small, bright cluster of devil's club near the hole. With a swift, smooth, arcing motion he directed the beam of amber light into the center. Last of all he took his gaze from Connie Sara's face, followed the light beam and squinted down into the foul-smelling earth.
The inner sides of the pit were soft mounds and dimples. He couldn't tell if they were mostly dirt or dung. Roots had burst forth in several places and trapped a few leaves that fell into the hole when the wooden cover was removed.
By aiming the light beam and staring straight down through a tangle of roots about five feet from the surface where he stood, Winston could see more clearly. There was a larger mound, caked in mud and slime. It reminded Winston of a half-digested mouse he had once seen when his uncle cut open a snake he killed in the yard.
Winston scanned the shape with the flashlight. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was staring into a great, open mouth and this was its tongue. Then he reached its top end, near the surface. Tilted upward, in a grimace of pain, was the rotting face of a little girl.
Winston heard himself scream. The flashlight tossed a wide arc of amber into the air to be extinguished when the underbrush consumed it. Winston stepped back from the hole and the ruined body, slick with dirt and worms. He bumped into Connie Sara and felt the sharp pressure of her fingers on his back, shoving him forward, pushing him toward the gaping hole and the rotten corpse of little Tracy. Her hands took hold of his shoulders and forced him downward.
The dread that engulfed him was worse than the day Troy and his friends had cornered him in the bathroom stall. That day he was afraid, and humiliated by his fear, but he knew with absolute certainty that Troy wouldn't kill him. Whatever Troy did to him, he would be alive when it was over. This was different, and he knew it. He panicked. He swung wildly at Connie Sara, connecting with her jaw, knocking her to the ground.
At once Winston was in motion, running, hurtling away from Connie Sara. He fell with his full weight onto one side, righted himself with flailing arms and legs, and ran again. His feet skidded until he found traction, then they pounded the earth. He ran to a drumbeat in his chest, thinking only of distance.
He tried with all his might to scream again but now, just like in his nightmares, no words would come. His throat was dry, caving in on him. The barbed wire fence was in the
other direction, he thought, but he wasn't sure any more. While he tried to get his bearings, he kept moving, and suddenly he was shocked to find himself sliding uncontrollably down a bank into the wide trunk of an oak tree, which he hit full-on with both hands.
Something popped in his left arm, and a burning pain ran up his side. He scrambled to his feet, crying, and kept running. Covered in dirt and sweat, he fell again, tumbled and rolled, hit the ground, and shook his aching head. His arm throbbed with pain.
Worse than the hurt and confusion, he could hear Connie Sara running after him. She was up there, above the bank he had slid down. She had found the flashlight. He saw the beam bounce up and into the trees overhead. She was looking for him. That meant she wasn't sure where he was, and he had a chance.
He hunched over and ran, and soon he found he was on a wide dirt path. It was one of the routes cut years ago by loggers to haul timber out of the forest to the main road, where they would transport it to the lumber mill. He knew this, and knowing gave him a glimmer of hope. He ran on, with the dirt walls rising at sharp angles on either side of him, until the rubber toe of one sneaker caught a twig and sent him tumbling head over heels.
Sitting there with the wind knocked out of him, Winston looked up at the dirt wall to his left. He could see devil's club sprouting from the red-brown soil. While he tried to catch his breath, a narrow beam of light cut through the trees above him. Connie Sara knew how to track a wild animal, especially an injured one. She was coming for him.
He scuffled along on the ground. He thought of an injured crab one of his cousins had tormented at the beach last summer, the crab scrambling in circles, trying in vain to escape its enemy.
He looked up once more at the maple-shaped leaves and crimson berries growing inexplicably from the dirt wall, and decided it must be a sign. Here was the only hiding place he could find.
He pulled himself up against the dirt wall of the truck path, scrambled back and forth and found a shelf, a pocket or a tunnel, maybe a vein from an old mine that had been left there when the makeshift road was plowed. The ledge inside the dirt wall was just wide enough for him. He shoved his way in, and found that he fit.
By the time Connie Sara reached the edge of the hill directly above him, he was entirely concealed. The light flashed down, slowly scanned the dirt and swept up the wall on the opposite side.
"Winnie!"
He heard her slow, keening voice and his heart turned over. All he wanted was to hear his mother calling that name, instead of this high, cold sound in the night air.
"Winnie, oh, Winnie the Poop. Where are you?"
How could she know? How could she know? His blood felt electric, pounding in his temples. He tried not to make any noise breathing. The pain in his arm and side made tears run down his face, but he bit his lip and held back until the light above swept up, and down, up and down, and away. He waited. Yes. Yes! She was moving away. She had given up on this part of the woods. She was going away.
Slowly and in pain, Winston started to shift his weight again, to climb out of the shelf. He would have to look around, and it would take him some time to figure out how to get home from here. But he thought he recognized this path from long ago, a walk in the woods with his father, who had warned him not to climb inside caverns and dirt shelves like this one.
Wouldn't his dad be amazed when he learned that Winston had saved himself by doing the very thing he was told not to do? Wouldn't he be proud, instead of angry?
His mother would kiss his face and hold him in her arms. She wouldn't be mad that he had sneaked out at night, or that he had trusted the terrible girl she warned him not to play with. She would only be happy to see him safe. And he would never leave her side again. He wouldn't make fun of her. He would listen to her stories about the birds that go to heaven.
Winston pressed down and out with both feet for leverage, preparing to hoist himself free. As he did so the damp earth gave way, ever so gently, all around him, filling his eyes and nose and mouth, muffling all the sounds of the night and quietly surrounding him with darkness.
Marietta and Beverly
"Do you promise to go by what I say, and do what I ask? Because it might sound like a bad thing to do."
This was the fourth time they had met since Beverly discovered Baretta's remains in her tulip bed. Marietta was easing her into it, she said. There were things Beverly needed to know that she might not like or approve of.
"How bad?" Beverly asked.
"It's a terrible thing, Bev. An awful thing."
"Well," said Beverly. "Tell me what it is, and I'll see if I can do it."
"That's just it," said Marietta. "If I tell you the rest of what I know, then you've got to do what I ask. If you hear it, you won't be safe unless you do exactly what I say, no matter how it strikes you."
Beverly took a minute to consider this. She looked at her hands, and then she looked at Marietta.
"How long have we known each other?" She asked.
"Since we were little girls. Since the first day of school we've been friends, you and Ethel and me."
"Why?" Beverly asked. "Have you ever wondered that? Different as we are, the three of us, how is it that we decided that day to be best friends, and we've never been otherwise?"
"That's not really true," said Marietta. "About best friends. We let you down. We let you have a baby by yourself, and all we did was write you notes about who said what at school."
Beverly shook her head. Then she asked:
"How did you know?"
"Because I saw your baby in a dream. I never told Ethel."
Beverly said nothing. The two women watched one another closely. Marietta reached across the table and took Beverly's hand.
"Listen to me. Your daughter isn't part of this, because she got away. She's safe, because you gave her away. You don't have to regret that."
"My family made me do that, they said I couldn't have a baby."
"You let her go. You saved her life when you decided to do that, before she was even born."
"How do you see these things? How?"
"I don't know. It comes to me. It isn't what I want to see, Bev. It just comes to me."
Beverly was silent for a while. She took a tissue from a box on the counter top and blew her nose. At last she said:
"What if my daughter, somehow, comes back here?"
"Why would she do that? She doesn't know you at all, does she?"
"No. But if she did, what would happen?"
"Nothing. I think nothing would happen."
"How can you say that for sure?"
"After we do what we're going to do, this will be over."
Beverly laughed, a bitter little sound. She touched the tissue to her nose and then said:
"Over and done?"
"Yes," said Marietta.
"Well, what is it? What is it you have to tell me?" Beverly asked.
"It's a story my aunt told me. Not all at once but gradually, over the years, like a bedtime story that never ends."
"All right, then. Let's hear it."
"The whole thing started here," said Marietta.
"In Skillute."
"On this property. Right where we are right now."
"There was nothing here before," said Beverly.
She watched the windmills on the lawn. One of the wooden geese had fallen over.
"Are you sure about that?" Marietta asked. "Think back."
Beverly shook her head no, then stopped. Recognition came into her eyes.
"The first time Rex brought me to see the lot?"
"What did you see?"
"Steps," Beverly said. "There was a set of three steps in the grass, not leading anywhere, just standing alone. What was that?"
"There was once another house here, a cabin, on the spot where this house stands. Another family lived here, and they weren't very happy to leave."
Delphine
The Dempseys were among the families that migrated west from the Dust Bowl dur
ing the Great Depression. They loaded up what little they owned and moved to the coast, where they logged and fished for a living and worked in the canneries and sawmills.
There were three brothers and their wives with two-dozen children between them. They couldn't make ends meet, so they squatted wherever people would let them and camped as long as they were tolerated. This went on for years.
Eventually two of the brothers rented homes. The third brother moved with his wife and kids into an old miner's cabin on a backwoods road that wasn't important enough to have a name. He must have figured nobody would notice his family there.
That third brother and his wife had eleven children. Three died, one from typhus, one from a hunting accident, and one just stopped breathing in its crib. Their last daughter was born when the Dempseys were almost forty. The whole clan was broke, barely getting by, and the kids would do any odd job for cash. It was hand-to-mouth and had been for a good twenty years.
There was also at that time a midwife in town. She was known to both deliver babies and set women free of babies.
Not the Dempsey women. They didn't believe that way, although they knew of the midwife. She cooked remedies and cast harmless spells and told homely women they would find happiness with a handsome man. She earned a tiny income. Her added means of getting by was to broker deals for neighbors. She would match a lonely man with a pig farm to a man with an aging daughter he wanted to marry off. She would put a carpenter in touch with a handyman so they could trade favors, and then she got a little work from both of them when she needed it.
One spring she worked a deal she came to regret. She tried to take it back after a while, but it was too late. This is how it happened.
Not long after the Second World War the interstate highway came to Longview and Kelso, and finally to Skillute. Up until then the place was just a nameless cluster of farms and houses, a couple of small ranches and a few paper mills owned by Weyerhaeuser. There were logging camps and companies hauling timber away to the mills and to the coast for shipment.
Most people were excited by the prospect of the highway, looking for new jobs to come. Quite a few people did get work. But a lot of the good-paying jobs went to men who were brought in to oversee construction of the freeway. One of these men was William Knox, who had managed several road-building projects for the government back east.
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