The Boy in the Woods

by Carter Wilson

  This wasn’t Lind Falls. It might not be too far away, but Tommy didn’t recognize anything. ‘Where is this place?’

  ‘This is where we get out.’

  ‘And do what?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Devereaux. I’m just doing what I’ve been paid to do.’ The car locks popped open. ‘Get out please.’

  Tommy opened the door. The fresh air was heavy on his face, as if rain was imminent. He took his bag and got out of the car, scoping the area around him. There was only one other car in the cracked and faded parking lot. It was a brown Subaru wagon that looked older than the gas station. Tommy guessed it belonged to Nelson.

  Antoine got out of the driver’s side and walked up to Tommy. Tommy instinctively put his right foot back and shifted his weight, not knowing what exactly Antoine was going to do next.

  ‘Relax, Mr Devereaux.’

  Tommy took a step back. ‘I don’t think I remember how to relax anymore.’

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ Antoine said. He held up his hands in the universal but meaningless gesture of peace. ‘But I do need to check your bag.’

  ‘Check it for what?’

  Antoine ignored the question. He grabbed Tommy’s suitcase, then walked over and placed it on the trunk of the Town Car. He seemed to keep one eye on Tommy while he rifled though the bag. When he was done, he zipped it back up and placed it on the ground. He turned to Tommy.

  ‘One more thing. I need to pat you down.’ Antoine walked up to him and stood just a foot away. Tommy noticed a small scar on his left cheek, one that had probably been there for decades. ‘Please raise your hands, Mr Devereaux.’

  Tommy did as he was told.

  Antoine patted him down quickly and professionally, and Tommy guessed he had done it hundreds of times before. He removed Tommy’s phone.

  ‘Why do you need that?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘I don’t,’ Antoine said. Then he slammed Tommy’s cell phone on the asphalt, and Tommy watched it shatter into three visible chunks and probably countless microscopic ones. ‘I just need to make sure you can’t use it.’

  ‘Motherfucker,’ Tommy said.

  ‘No need for names.’

  Tommy stared down at the pieces of his phone. ‘You could just have taken it.’

  ‘I have my instructions.’

  Tommy looked at him and realized Antoine was probably very good at obeying instructions.

  Then Antoine reached around and grabbed Tommy’s wallet from his back pocket. He removed the cash and handed the bills back to Tommy before sliding the wallet into his own jacket pocket.

  ‘Seriously? How the hell am I going to fly home without a license?’

  ‘Like I said. Instructions.’

  Tommy felt his muscles tense and willed himself to stay calm. Maybe he wasn’t going to be flying home at all.

  ‘So now what?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘Now I leave.’

  ‘And what happens to me?’

  Antoine shrugged. ‘I have no idea, Mr Devereaux.’

  Tommy watched Antoine walk back to the car, feeling both anxious and relieved to know he was leaving. Before he got into the car, Antoine turned around.

  ‘The Blood of the Willing. That was my favorite book of yours. I liked that there was a cat in the story. You should use cats more often. Made me like the guy, you know? Anyone who would stick his neck out for a dumb cat, ya gotta like him.’

  Tommy couldn’t seem to do anything but stare at him. By the time he managed a feeble ‘thank you’ Antoine was already pulling away in the Town Car. Tommy watched it until it disappeared over a distant rise.

  Seconds later, a phone rang.

  Tommy looked behind him and saw the ancient pay phone. The once-black handset was faded gray from years of exposure, and a large crack ran down the back of the earpiece. Tommy couldn’t remember the last time he’d even seen a pay phone, much less used one.

  The phone kept ringing. No, it wasn’t ringing. It was screaming.

  Tommy knew who was calling.

  He lifted the phone off its receiver and held it up to his ear. The warm plastic handset felt reassuringly heavy. Weapon-like.

  ‘Hi, Elizabeth.’

  ‘Hi, Tommy.’ Her voice was so clear he thought for a second she was standing behind him. He couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder.

  ‘Welcome back to Oregon.’

  ‘Antoine broke my phone.’

  ‘You’re a multi-millionaire. You can afford a new one.’

  ‘I was hoping to hear from my children,’ he said.

  ‘That would only be a distraction, Tommy. I need you all to myself for now. I need you to focus.’

  Tommy looked down at his bag. ‘Why all the cloak and dagger?’ he asked. ‘Why not just let me rent a car?’

  ‘Because I need to make sure you’re completely alone,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’ve been thinking about calling the police. Leading them to me. I’d be thinking the same thing if I were you. So I need to be in control of how you move and how you communicate. It’s the only way I can be assured you’re going to do what you’re here to do.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘Now you walk.’

  ‘Walk?’

  ‘Yes, Tommy. Walk. Your fancy little suitcase has wheels, doesn’t it?’

  Tommy didn’t answer. His muscles tightened again.

  ‘Antoine left you some cash. You can stop in the store and buy a Ring Ding if you want to. You might get hungry.’

  ‘Where am I walking to?’

  ‘West. Take the road right in front of you and head west. You’re going to go just over two miles and you’ll get to an abandoned farm house with an American flag painted on the barn. When you get there, go inside the barn.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound promising.’

  ‘Are you questioning me?’

  ‘I haven’t stopped questioning you. I’m might be doing what you want me to, but contrary to what you think I’m not stupid. Walking blindly inside some barn sounds pretty stupid.’

  ‘What do you think is going to happen, Tommy? You think I’m going to kill you? Get you all the way here to do that?’

  ‘So what happens in the barn then?’ he asked.

  ‘Whatever I want to happen. Remember? You do what I say. That’s how this all works.’

  Tommy hung up the phone. If she had anything else to say, she’d call back. She didn’t.

  Tommy knelt and picked up the pieces of his phone. Instead of throwing them away, he put them in the bag, hoping that at least the SIM card could be salvaged.

  He considered going inside the small store to buy something. To see another human, at least. Then he decided it would do no good. It wouldn’t make a difference.

  So Tommy rolled his bag over the loose gravel on the asphalt and headed west.

  FORTY-THREE

  Walking two miles wouldn’t take long, but he wanted to make it last. The fall day was gray and growing long. A small breeze goosed his skin.

  The country road stretched straight and long, rising up to a peak where he’d last seen Antoine in the black shiny Town Car. Spruce trees lined the south side of the road, and every now and then a bird would call out from within one of them, warning others ahead that a stranger was approaching.

  No other cars came. The road seemed too worn and in too much disrepair for the little use it likely received. The smoothest part of the road was in the middle, right on the faded striped yellow line, so Tommy walked there, knowing that if a car did come he’d hear it from far away. He walked up the small rise, the rolling of the plastic wheels constant and assuring. His body ached for exercise. He wanted to run. To burst down the road at full speed, feeling his body itch with the first small beads of sweat, then his shirt soak through as his heart rate reached its peak.

  Tommy finally reached the top of the rise. From there, he could see the farm house in the distance. It was about a half-mile away, and it gave him something to focus on as he walked. Even from a dist
ance he could tell the farm house was abandoned.

  As he got closer he saw that all the windows of the main house were broken. The wood siding was faded and worn, appearing layered in elephant skin. Shingles on the roof were sporadic, revealing faded tar that had surely long since lost its tack.

  The barn was just on the far side of the house. Sure enough, the side of the barn was painted with a massive American flag, but it was so weather-worn that it appeared more as an after-image, a fading ghost on a cooling TV screen. It was both picturesque and depressing at the same time. At some point, years ago, someone had spent a lot of time painting that flag, and when the artist was done, the family who had lived in that house gathered around and stared at it, thinking it the best thing they’d ever seen.

  Now they were all gone, the house rotted into the ground, and the flag disappeared a little more each day.

  Tommy could feel himself being watched as he approached.

  He sucked in a breath. Today was the day. However it turned out, he had made his decision. The hard part would be making sure he committed to it. A moment of indecision could be the difference between a future of happiness and none at all.

  Can you do it, Tommy? Can you do what you need to do?

  He finally passed the house. The weeds alongside the foundation reached higher than his waist. Two of the four steps leading up to the front porch no longer existed. The front door once had a window in it, and an ancient cotton veneer wisped in front of the gaping hole like an abandoned spider web.

  He continued past the house and made his way to the barn. The weeds became difficult to navigate with his suitcase so he left it behind, figuring it wasn’t going to be stolen by anyone.

  Fresh tire tracks cut swaths in the weeds that led directly to the massive barn door. It was closed.

  Tommy went up to the door and stood in front of it. The wooden arm that would lock any livestock inside was down, and all Tommy had to do was pull on the rusty metal handle to swing the door open.

  Tommy looked behind him. Nothing but the road. The smell of dirt and damp weeds filled the air.

  He pulled on the handle and the barn door creaked. It opened with almost no effort, and a shaft of light from outside spotlighted the front of a vehicle parked inside. White van, dusted gray by dirt.

  Tommy walked inside the barn, his steps short and cautious, his shoes crunching on scatterings of hay.

  The van belonged to Elizabeth, he knew. Had to be. And she had gone to the effort to back it into the barn, making it easier for her to drive out quickly.

  He stood a few feet inside the barn and stared at the van, waiting for something to happen. The barn seemed impossibly cavernous on the inside, but maybe that was because most of it hid in the darkness, though some cracks in the wood allowed for jagged scars of light. The smell changed to mold and ancient cow shit.

  Tommy took another step and waited.

  Nothing.

  Of course, he thought.

  He knew that he was meant to go around to the back of the van. Whatever was waiting for him would be there. Elizabeth liked to create a scene, and she was certainly painting a beautifully creepy one now.

  Tommy passed the passenger side and looked into the window, seeing nothing. The rear of the van was windowless. He reached the back of the van, turned, and faced the entrance by which he’d come in. The vehicle was silhouetted by the light streaming in from the open barn door, and Tommy could barely make out any of the features of the back of the vehicle. He reached forward and felt for the cargo door handle, and his fingers quickly found the cool, metal latch.

  The darkness of the barn began to suffocate him, like a python beginning to coil around his legs and slowly making its way around his waist. And then chest. And then face.

  Tommy pulled the latch and the cargo door opened.

  The smell of vinyl and perfume washed over him.

  From the even deeper blackness inside the cargo area, her voice.

  ‘Hello, Tommy.’

  FORTY-FOUR

  ‘Get in and shut the door,’ she said.

  Tommy could see her outline, but nothing more. He’d gone this far, he’d go further. He stepped into the cargo area of the van, reached behind him, and pulled the van door closed.

  Blackness cloaked them. The air in the van was easily twenty degrees warmer than outside. The smell of her overpowered all other scents.

  It was the perfume. He remembered it. The smell was distinct, and it washed over him with a mix of horror and sensuality. She’d worn it the day she smashed a rock into Rade’s head. The smell of excitement and anticipation. No one would have believed him if he’d said that he recognized a smell he’d only known for an hour thirty years ago, but Tommy knew it was true. In the darkness of that van, Tommy briefly wondered what the odds were the same perfume would even still exist thirty years later. She probably has the same bottle, he thought. Saved it for an occasion just like this.

  A small noise. The van rocked slightly. Then, directly in his ear:

  ‘Can you, Tommy?’ Her hot breath flowed over his ear. ‘Can you follow instructions? Will you do everything I say?’

  He felt the flicker of her tongue on his earlobe.

  Her essence surrounded him. He saw her as she was, back then. He saw her perfect skin as she removed her shirt. Her puffy, almost-a-junior nipples. He saw her broad shoulders sloping to a narrow perfect waist as she straddled Rade.

  The tongue went in his ear. Tommy reached out and pushed her away.

  ‘That’s why,’ he said. ‘The darkness. The perfume. It’s the only way you can bring me back to that day. Fully.’

  ‘You think you don’t want to remember,’ she said. ‘But I think you do.’

  He spoke into the darkness. ‘Why would I want to remember any of that?’

  ‘You need to be in that day, because today will be just like it. Only this time, you get to be me.’

  ‘I’m nothing like you.’

  ‘You need to be. At least for a while.’

  A shaft of light exploded in the back of the van, startling Tommy. Elizabeth held a flashlight, pointing the beam up toward her face, the way a kid would when telling a ghost story to his friends at a sleepover.

  Her lips were a deep red. ‘It’s time,’ she said. Then she swung the flashlight down and the beam swept across the floor of the van.

  There was a body in there with them.

  Bound. Duct tape covering his mouth. A man, motionless, lying on the floor, as lifeless as a rolled-up carpet.

  Alan Stykes.

  ‘Jesus,’ Tommy said. ‘You killed him?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Elizabeth grinned. ‘What would the point of that be? He’s very much alive. Just a little sleepy at the moment.’

  Alan Stykes did not move. Elizabeth must have drugged him and then loaded him in the van, Tommy thought. Tommy leaned over and could hear a faint wheeze come from Stykes’s nostrils every few seconds, confirming the man was very much alive.

  Tommy looked at her. ‘We’re going to the woods, aren’t we?’

  ‘Of course we are.’

  ‘How did you get his body into the van?’ Tommy asked. ‘You’re strong but you’re not that strong.’

  ‘You’re concerned there’s someone else helping me,’ she said, nodding her head in professional concern. ‘And maybe that person is also a threat to you.’

  ‘Everything’s a threat to me.’

  ‘There’s no one else,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I’m glad I can just take you at your word.’

  Her hand grabbed his wrist. ‘Tommy, you’re not going to die today. Unless you try to do something very stupid.’

  Tommy only heard the word today.

  ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘how do you know he didn’t come into the van willingly and I drugged him in here?’

  Tommy looked around, absorbing only what the single flashlight beam allowed. There was nothing he could see that would entice anyone to come in here, he thought.

&nbs
p; ‘You stay in the back,’ she said. ‘I’ll take your suitcase up front with me. You brought your manuscript?’

  ‘I did. In the suitcase.’

  ‘Good.’

  With that, Elizabeth opened the back of the van and stepped out, taking the flashlight with her. She closed the door and Tommy disappeared back into blackness. The wheezing from Stykes continued. Growing louder.

  Sssssssssss

  He heard a click and knew she’d locked him in.

  The van rumbled to life and moved for a few seconds before stopping. The driver door opened once again.

  Closing the barn door, Tommy thought.

  The seams along the back doors of the van allowed tiny shafts of light inside, but not enough to feel any sense of orientation. Already seated on the metal floor, Tommy crossed his legs and bent forward, leaning over his thighs. He closed his eyes and tried to escape within himself. Find some degree of calm.

  The van started up again and Tommy lurched as it turned on to the paved road. There would be calm, he knew. It would be hard enough just to keep his balance.

  Now he could smell Stykes. Sweat. Dirt.

  Tommy’s foot made contact with Stykes in the dark. The man’s leg felt like a tree trunk. Tommy poked at it with his sneaker. Once. Twice.

  More wheezing from the floor.

  The van slowed and came to a stop. The motor grumbled as it accelerated once again.

  Tommy reached out this time with his hand. Slowly. His fingers poked the blackness until they found Stykes’s torso. Solid, but soft at the same time, like an out-of-shape fighter.

  Tommy pulled back before reaching out again. This time he touched Stykes’s bare arm, feeling the warm skin through thick hair. Tommy wondered how many little boys’ final memory was of Stykes’s hirsute arms.

  Tommy thought of Chance. Thought of this monster killing his own little boy. The thought didn’t just make him angry. No, the feeling of anger was almost intangible. Angry was what you got when you read about a child killer in the news. But when you were actually touching the naked arm of the monster himself and thought about what that monster had done, you didn’t get angry.