by Shea Ernshaw
Wishing I had never snooped in the first place, I slide the pouch back into the pocket. But I feel something else.
Smooth and cold.
I pull my hand back out and watch a small chain unravel, something bulky and shiny at one end.
It makes a soft clink sound, and I quickly cup my palms over it, to keep from waking Oliver. My knees ache on the hardwood floor, but I shift closer to the window, opening my palms like a clam unveiling a single pearl inside, and there, resting in my hand, is a silver pocket watch. The chain is broken—one of the links bent, the rest of the chain missing. But a soft ticking sound emanates from inside, the hidden gears clicking forward, tiny mechanisms fluttering in soft unison. It still works. I run my thumb over the glass, peering in at the white face of the watch, the gold hands keeping time.
It’s a simple pocket watch, skillfully crafted. And I wonder if it belonged to Oliver’s father or his grandfather. A memento maybe. Or perhaps he found it in the Wicker Woods—a lost item he plucked from the forest floor.
I turn the watch over, feeling the weight of the metal in my palm, gauging its worth, its value. It’s not particularly old, but it’s well made. Crafted by someone who knew what they were doing. I tilt the watch so I can see it more clearly in the moonlight. Lacelike designs are etched across the back, careful and delicate. But that’s not all. There are letters, too. A name. This was made for someone. A gift—a birthday present maybe.
It reads: For Max.
I drop the watch from my hand and it hits the floor with a blunt thud.
Shit, shit, shit.
My eyes cut over to the bed where Oliver has stirred, shifted onto his side, but he doesn’t wake. Doesn’t sit up and see me at the window—picking up something from the floor that doesn’t belong to me.
Something that doesn’t belong to him, either.
He didn’t find this watch in the woods.
It belonged to Max. The boy who is dead.
* * *
Lies sift along the floorboards like mice searching for a place to nest.
I touch Fin gently behind the ear, so I won’t startle him. His eyes open in one swift motion and I whisper, “Come on.” He rises and stretches on the rug before plodding after me to the stairs. His paws make soft clip clip clip sounds down each step, and I cringe at the noise, hoping no one will wake.
In the living room, I pause beside the door and look to Suzy, one arm draped off the edge of the couch, her face pressed into a cushion, snoring. She won’t be waking anytime soon.
But looking at the soft slope of her nose, the gentle flutter of her russet eyelashes, I wonder suddenly if she knows more than she’s saying. If little secrets bounce along behind her eyelids. Was she there that night, when the storm blew over the lake and they gathered in the cemetery? Was she there with the others?
A hard wedge of mistrust slams through me. Two strangers in my house. And maybe I can’t trust either of them.
I don’t take a breath, I don’t swallow the feeling of dread expanding in my chest. I turn for the door and run out into the pale dawn light.
For the first time since the storm, for the first time in a very long time, I actually wish my mom were here. Someone I can trust, who can see things clearly.
But I know this is a stupid thought. Mom would never believe me, never believe all the things that have happened. She would look at me with numbness in her eyes. Indifference. She wouldn’t be able to make anything right.
So I sprint down to the lake, ducking through the trees—heading toward the only place that feels safe.
I veer up along the shore, deep inhales and ragged exhales burning my lungs, and I glance back over my shoulder to see if Oliver has woken and come to look for me. If Suzy is standing among the pines. But I’m still alone, crashing through the snow. Gasping for air. Legs burning.
The light changes around me—becomes pale and milky. Night transforming to day. Yet, the morning birds don’t wake and chatter from the limbs. It’s too cold. The world too silent. Or maybe they’re too afraid. A Walker girl stirs among the trees with fury in her eyes—safer to stay quiet. Safer to stay hidden.
Thin ribbons of smoke rise up from the chimney of the small cabin beside the boathouse, and a candle gleams from one of the windows. Mr. Perkins is awake.
I hurry up the shallow steps to the porch, my breathing still sandpaper. And I knock on the door.
Breathe in, breathe out.
I flash a look over my shoulder, but the lake is still silent, a few soft flakes swaying down from the sky, remnants of last night’s storm. Late to arrive.
There is no sound from the other side of the door, and my body begins to shake, the cold settling beneath my skin. And inside my coat pocket is the silver watch—I can feel it ticking, the tiniest of vibrations against my palm, becoming a part of my own heartbeat. I stole it. And when Oliver wakes… how long until he realizes it’s gone?
I knock again at the door, and this time I hear the shuffling steps of old Mr. Perkins inside. Making his way slowly across the creaking wood floor—too slowly. A moment later the door swings inward, and Floyd Perkins peers out at me with the keenness of a bird, sharp eyed and watchful. “Morning,” he says, blinking as a winter wind blows through the open doorway.
“Can I come in?” I ask. My voice sounds broken, worse than I expected it to.
The wrinkles around his eyes draw together and he grumbles—not out of irritation, but rather the stiffness of old joints as he pushes the door wide. “The wolf stays on the porch,” he says, giving Fin a quick glance. Mr. Perkins has always thought Fin was too much wolf and not enough dog. He’s a wild animal, he said to me once. I don’t trust anything that could kill me in my sleep.
Fin obeys and lowers himself down to the porch—he prefers to be outside in the cold anyway, instead of in the cramped oven of Mr. Perkins’s cabin.
I step through the doorway and the roaring wave of heat is almost unbearable, the scent of smoke filling my nostrils, beads of sweat already rising across my forehead.
“Awful early to be out in the cold,” Mr. Perkins says, ambling across the living room and settling into one of the old rocking chairs beside the fireplace. “Only those looking for trouble or trying to escape it are out this early.”
I glance around his cabin, a perfect square. Barely enough space to fit a kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom at the back. There is no light glowing from the tall metal floor lamps in the corners; only the fireplace casts an eerie flicking glow across the walls and ceiling. Mr. Perkins built the home when he was still young and had a strong back, after he found gold in the Black River. Unlike most miners who fled the mountains when the gold ran out or their fear of the woods grew too deep—the cold whisper of the trees always against their necks—Floyd Perkins stayed. I suppose he belongs here just as much as Walkers do.
“Is your phone working?” I ask hastily, even though I’m certain that if mine isn’t working, neither is his.
He eyes me and I know I must look panicked, my jaw clenched so tightly that a headache stabs at my temples. “Still nothing,” he answers.
I scratch my fingers up my arms and watch the flames chew apart the logs inside the stove. A soothing sight. Familiar. If you have a fire, then you have something, Grandma would say.
“Why do you need a phone? Did something happen?” Mr. Perkins’s gray eyebrows flatten.
I’ve come because I don’t know where else to go. But with Mr. Perkins looking at me with concern in his eyes, waiting for me to explain why I’m here, the reasons feel too jumbled up. My thoughts too scattered.
“I found a boy in the woods,” I say, rubbing my palms together over the flames even though sweat gathers along my spine.
His gaze narrows and he leans forward in his chair. “Which wood?”
The air feels too thick, the scent of woodsmoke sticking to the walls and in my hair. I let my gaze sway around the room, to a row of handmade picture frames along one wall—each filled with a differ
ent species of fern or wildflower or insect, the scientific name for each handwritten at the bottom. “The Wicker Woods,” I tell him.
“You found him alive?” he asks, tapping his slippered foot against the floor. Mr. Perkins has never been inside the Wicker Woods—he knows better.
“He was hypothermic,” I say, “but alive.”
He stops tapping his foot. “How long was he out there?”
“A couple weeks, I think.”
“Ah.” He nods with the slow cadence of a man with all the time in the world—to sit and ponder, to assess the strangeness of my discovery. “Perhaps the woods grew fond of him. Decided not to devour him after all.” His eyes shimmer like he’s making a joke. But I don’t laugh.
“And there’s something else,” I say, pushing my hands back into my coat pockets, watching the fire toss sparks out onto the rug, expecting one of them to ignite—to catch on the curtains and torch the whole tinderbox in seconds. “I think a boy has died.”
His jaw makes a circular motion, but he doesn’t speak.
“I found his pocket watch,” I continue, pulling out the watch and holding it by the broken chain, letting it hang in the air for Mr. Perkins to see. He squints but doesn’t make a move to touch it, to reach out for it. “Maybe he went into the woods,” I suggest. “Maybe both boys did, and only one returned.” Maybe Oliver and Max went into the Wicker Woods that night and something happened, something Oliver would like to forget. “Maybe—” I begin again, “one of them is to blame for the other’s death.”
My fingers tremble, and I worry I might drop the watch, so I place it back in my pocket. My head thuds and my vision darkens, making it hard to focus, to see anything clearly—to be sure of what I know from what I don’t.
“You found the watch in the woods?” Mr. Perkins asks. I can tell he’s starting to worry, the creases deepening along his jaw, around his weary, tired eyes.
“I found a boy,” I clarify. “And he had the watch hidden in his pocket.”
“And you think he did something to the boy who died?”
I pull my lips in, not wanting to answer.
Mr. Perkins leans forward, his hands quivering in his lap, arthritis in the joints. “Many miners died in these mountains over the years,” he says, facing the flames. “A felled tree once crushed a miner’s tent, flattened him where he slept. Some miners broke through the ice on the river and drowned, some got lost in those woods and froze to death, their bodies recovered in spring. But mostly, the men killed one another over gold claims and theft. Those woods up there are dangerous,” he says, nodding up at me, knowing that I understand, “but not as dangerous as the men themselves.”
I know what he’s saying: There is more to fear in men’s hearts than in those trees.
He leans back in the chair, his eyes clouding over, like he’s drifting into a dream or a memory. “Some say they still wander the lake and the forest, lost, not realizing they’re dead.”
I feel cold suddenly, even though sweat drips from my temples. I think of the boys at the bonfire, how they said they heard voices, something in their cabin, in the trees. Not the voices of miners, but maybe something else. Someone else.
Max.
“Those early settlers were superstitious,” he adds, circling around a point he’s trying to make but not quite getting there. “They would make offerings to the trees, to the mountains.” He taps a finger against the chair, his expression turned serious. “They thought it would appease the darkness that lived in the Wicker Woods. They dropped their most precious items into the lake, letting the water swallow them up. They believed the lake was the center of everything, the beating heart of the wilderness.”
“Did it work?” I ask, feeling like a little girl asking about a bedtime story, a fairytale that was never real. “Did it calm the woods?”
His eyes squint nearly closed, mulling over the question. “Perhaps. Who’s to say where a bottomless lake might end.” He pushes up from the rocking chair and walks to one of the front windows, looking out at the frozen lake, a cluster of empty summer homes, and a boys’ camp across the way. “But you can’t always blame the Wicker Woods,” he adds, “for the bad things that happen.”
I push my hands into my pockets and look past him through the window, at an ocean of spiky green trees for as far as I can see. And beyond, the snow capped mountains poking up into the dark clouds. A place that is rugged and wild. Where bad things happen.
A boy goes missing.
A boy dies.
Who’s to blame?
The morning sun breaks through the clouds, and for a brief moment it passes through every window in Mr. Perkins’s home—illuminating every dark corner, every dust mote tumbling across the wood floor, the stacks of books lining the walls, the old picture frames hanging from bent nails, the cobwebs sagging between the rafters like silky ribbons.
I had hoped for something in coming here, but I’m not sure what. Answers to the wrong questions, answers that Mr. Perkins doesn’t have. If my grandmother was alive, I would go to her and she would draw me into her broad arms and hum a melody only she knew until I drifted off to sleep. And in my dreams, she would whisper answers to all the things I needed to know. When I woke, my heart would feel clear and raw and new, a feeling like being untethered. A dizziness that made you want to laugh.
But she is gone and my mom is not here and all I have is Mr. Perkins.
I am alone.
“Thanks,” I tell him, my voice solemn. I walk through clouds of heat to the front door and pull it open. I feel weighted and worthless and adrift. A Walker who doesn’t know what she should do next. Who to trust.
Before I can escape out into the cold, Mr. Perkins clears his throat, now standing behind me. “A moth follows you,” he says.
My eyes lift to see a white bone moth skimming along the porch roof.
My heart stills in my chest—afraid to move.
“I’ve seen it many times now,” I say softly, the cold cutting through me. The truth I can’t avoid.
“And you know what it means?” he asks from the doorway.
My jaw clenches, and when I open my mouth to speak, I feel the stiff edge along each word. “Death is coming.”
Mr. Perkins’s hands begin to tremble again. “It means you don’t have much time.”
I swallow and look back at him, his expression grim, as if I were the one who was closer to death, not him. A sharp chill settled in the air between us.
“Be careful,” he says at last, turning his gaze to the fireplace—nothing else to be said. That could be said. My fate already decided.
Death is coming for me.
I watch the moth wheel away into the forest beyond Mr. Perkins’s home, vanishing into the rays of sunlight peeking through the dense trees. “Leave me alone,” I hiss up at it, but it’s already gone.
Death lingers. Death is already here.
OLIVER
The pocket watch is gone from my coat.
Nora found it. She knows.
I stand at the window, my heart caving in, and I know nothing will be the same now. She fled the house. Escaped into the dull morning light. And I lied to her. Told her I didn’t know how Max died, didn’t remember. But I had his watch in my pocket.
And she’ll never trust me again.
The wolf is gone too, and when I walk downstairs, Suzy is still passed out on the couch, snoring softly, muttering to herself. I leave through the front door, because I don’t belong here. Not now. Maybe I never did—only fooled myself into believing it. Fooled myself into thinking I could sleep in her home, in the loft, the scent of her pillows like jasmine and rainwater, the feeling of her hand in mine. That I could stay and my memories wouldn’t find me. I could stay and the dark would be kept at bay. Always the dark. Knocking at my skull, finding a way in.
Nora’s footprints pass through the trees, a trail in the snow. But I don’t follow.
I walk around the lake, every step heavy, each inhale a pain in my chest. I s
hould have told her the truth—but the truth is gray and pockmarked, no clear lines separating it from the lies, gaps still marring my memory of that night. My mind an untrustworthy thing.
But the watch was in my coat when I woke in the woods.
And it can only mean one thing.
I reach the boys’ camp and pass the mess hall—everyone already inside for breakfast. They won’t return to their cabins until after dinner, when they will sneak cigarettes and eat the candy bars they keep hidden under their mattresses, where the counselors won’t find them. But the counselors are lazy. They’ve barely taken notice of my return and then immediate disappearance again. I’ve spent only one day in my bunk since I returned from the woods, and not once did a counselor come to speak to me, to haul me off to the main office where the camp director could ask me questions about where I’ve been. About where I was the night a boy died. They’ve stopped caring.
Or maybe the other boys told them a story, a lie. Said I ran away again. Said I made it down the mountain.
The fresh layer of snowfall from last night dusts the landscape, and I make tracks through the trees until I come to cabin number fourteen, and slip inside.
The room is as unremarkable as it was the last time I was here. But this time I’ve come looking for something: a memory maybe, something to explain the black spots in my mind.
Something to make all the pieces fit together.
The cabin smells of damp earth, and I walk to the bunks, willing my mind to remember the rest, to remember what happened that night. The cemetery. Jasper and Rhett and Lin. And Max was there too—he was there and we were all drinking. We were laughing about something, our laughter ringing in my ears. A bell that won’t stop.
I climb the wood ladder and lie on my bunk. Lin’s bunk below mine. And on the opposite wall, Jasper’s and Rhett’s. Four boys to a cabin.
But where did Max sleep? Not here with us—somewhere else.
In a different cabin?
