by Hester Young
I hasten to the edge of the woods calling Raph’s name. I want to see him for myself, to make sure both Naomi’s sons are intact before I give her the all-clear. Adam sighs when he sees me tramping blindly into the forest.
“You’re going the wrong way,” he says. “Follow me.”
* * *
• • •
WE FIND ELIJAH FIRST, a dark blur moving through the trees with astonishing speed. Somewhere behind him, Raph cries for him to slow down. “I’m hungry!” Elijah barks. “Hurry up! I want something to eat!” He stops his breakneck pace only when he notices Adam and me waiting for him along the path.
“What do you want?” Elijah’s scowl is directed solely at his brother. I might as well be invisible.
Although Elijah is four years younger than Adam, he looks older in a side-by-side comparison. Elijah’s taller, for one, and his shaggy haircut reads hipster, not just do-it-yourself project gone wrong. Even his tight T-shirt conveys a certain style, hugs his skinny frame and gives him the appearance of a musician or an artist. His arms cross in a sullen, challenging stance quite unlike Adam’s puppylike deference.
“Where were you?” Adam draws himself up to his full if unimpressive height, assuming the role of older brother. The result is less than imposing.
“I took Raph to the beach,” Elijah says.
“The beach? How’d you guys make it all the way out to the beach?”
“Walked some, hitchhiked some.”
“Mama’s going to be furious when she finds out.”
“So don’t tell her.” Elijah shrugs.
“I can’t cover for you. She’s been looking for you. She’ll want to know where you’ve been all day. You should’ve asked her, Elijah.”
“I don’t ask her for permission because she always says no. I’m trying to give him a life, which you and Mama never do.”
“A sinful life,” Adam counters. “You’re teaching him disobedience. ‘Honor thy father and thy mother,’ remember that?”
“Yeah, well, Dad’s dead. And I can obviously never honor our mother as much as you do, so what’s the point? I’d rather be sinful than be her little puppet. Unlike you, I can still think for myself.”
They continue arguing against the sound of steady rain, Adam getting more and more shrill and Elijah goading him with smirks and mocking comments. At some point I become aware that Raph has joined us, that he’s watching his brothers fight, his mouth pursed into a tiny bud, his eyes tearing up at their open hostility.
I grab his hand. “Come here, sweetie. We’re going to call your mother and tell her where you are.”
I lead Raph away from his warring brothers. Adam must’ve said something that pierces Elijah’s thick skin, because they’re both yelling now, volleying insults at one another with abandon. This is the second personal argument I’ve landed in the middle of today. What is going on with the Yoon and Nakagawa families? They both seem on the verge of self-implosion.
Raph and I try to ignore them as we walk, but their voices follow us, just a few notches louder than the rain overhead. The thick canopy that protects us from the storm seems to trap their anger within the woods. And there’s something else, something deeply unpleasant hanging in the air. I remember what Marvel said, that she envisioned Lise’s secret as a black oil that coated the body. I know exactly what she meant.
I hustle Raph along, taking care not to trip over the plants that keep nipping at our ankles, the roots that burst up from the ground as if intent on upending me. Eventually we’re out of earshot or Elijah stomps off—I don’t know which. Beside me, Raph relaxes somewhat, but the quiet only increases the dark, swirling feeling in my gut.
Here, it says. Here.
A few yards ahead, something plastic hangs from a tree. My footsteps grow slow and heavy as I approach. Everything begins to tingle: toes, fingers, mind. A camping lantern, I discover. Someone drove a nail into the trunk of the tree and left it up there. But for whom? I flip the lantern on and off. The battery still works.
This place.
Suddenly dizzy, I grab a branch to steady myself. It doesn’t help. The night descends on me, asking me to shed my sense of self, to see with other eyes. Raph tugs on my arm. I want to stay with him, to remain me, but I’m falling under. I stumble toward a shrub and then collapse.
The last thing I see is the hammock, stretched out between two trees like a net.
Skin, damp to the touch. Her body pressed against a tree. The acrid taste of sweat.
Her shirt dangles from the nearby hammock, illuminated by an eerie shaft of moonlight. A mosquito settles on my arm and sips my blood, but I don’t care. Not with her standing there, arms above her head.
At last.
I place one hand on her wrists, lift her long black hair with the other. Lean forward and put my lips to her neck, knowing that I’ll leave bruises.
This is better than any grainy video on the Internet. This is a moment I’ll return to over and over again. At night, when I’m alone and hot with need, this is the image I’ll resurrect. Her hair spilling from my fingers. Her bare back shuddering against my touch.
I’m jolted from this unwanted image by a shouting in my ear.
“Hey!” Raph’s little forehead furrows with concern. “Hey, are you listening to me? I said I wanna go.”
I blink. Rise to my feet and wait for the sickening rush of adrenaline to settle. “Sorry. Got a bit light-headed there for a minute.”
Ahead of me, the empty hammock dangles, its fibers tinged with mildew. I think I might be ill.
“Raph,” I murmur, “do you know this place? Do you know who comes here?”
His mouth twists into a slight frown. “I don’t like it here. I wanna leave.”
I glance at him. Can he feel something, too? Something bad?
“Why don’t you like it?” I ask.
He shrugs, but I note the way his eyes scuttle away from mine, like two dark beetles anxious for a rock.
Does Raph know something? He certainly spends enough time exploring these woods. He might’ve seen things, things more concrete than the awful fragments I’ve been getting. In a perfect world, I’d leave the four-year-old out of it, but this world is far from perfect.
“You know Lise and Jocelyn, right?” I ask. “Elijah’s friends? Their dad, Victor, comes to visit you sometimes?”
The boy nods.
“Did Lise ever come out here? With Elijah?”
Raph snaps a twig from a nearby branch and tears it into pieces. I can’t tell if he’s evading my question or simply losing interest. I sit down next to him, my eyes on the clearing. It’s gorgeous here at dusk, sumptuous shadows and patches of pink peeking through cracks in the dense foliage, yet I can’t appreciate the beauty. It all feels tainted.
I try again. “Did you ever see Lise or Jocelyn out here?”
Raph’s lips press stubbornly together; he refuses to speak, but the anxiety on his little face tells me quite enough. He saw her, all right, and he didn’t like what he saw. But was this months ago, or the last night Lise Nakagawa was seen alive? Could there be a shakier witness than a preschooler?
I keep my voice neutral, careful not to scare him. “Was she here with Elijah?”
Raph stares at the ground. “She didn’t have any underwear,” he says.
I don’t react, though my insides are churning. “Did you feel scared?”
A nod.
“Why?”
He shrugs, and I don’t blame him. How could a small child articulate the wrongness of what happened to that girl?
Somewhere in the woods I can hear the sound of terse male voices. Evidently Elijah and Adam have called a truce and are coming to collect their brother.
I don’t have much time to pump Raph for info. “The night Lise had no underwear,” I persist, “was someone with her?”
Raph frowns. “It wasn’t Elijah. It was the Watching Guy.”
“Who?”
“The Watching Guy.” He peers slowly around the woods as if to ensure that we’re alone. “He comes to the woods sometimes when it’s dark. He waits in the trees.”
Despite the relatively warm temperature, my arms break into goose bumps. “You’ve seen this guy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What does he look like?”
“Big. A big shadow shape.”
Not the kind of description that would identify this guy in a lineup.
“Did you tell your mother about him, Raph?”
The boy shakes his head. “Adam says the Watching Guy’s not real and I don’t have to tell Mama. But he is real. I saw him when I was sneaking. Lots of times, right here.” His voice falls to a whisper. “He likes this place.”
Suddenly I am cold, so cold beneath my wet clothes. I think of the lights I saw in these woods the other night. The Watching Guy—was that him?
I run through other possibilities. Victor and Naomi are adults. They don’t need to conduct their affair out in the middle of the woods. Maybe those lights were just Elijah, off to meet someone. But Lise’s gone, and Kai reportedly threatened to kill him. Who would Elijah have been meeting?
I’ve already seen too much. Part of me doesn’t want to know what happened or what might happen, doesn’t want to dwell upon the violence that might be done to a young girl when I have two girls of my own. But I can’t forget. Couldn’t even if I tried.
I turn to Raph. “When you saw the Watching Guy with Lise . . . and she didn’t have any underwear . . . what was he doing?”
“He turned off the light,” the child says. “I didn’t see, but . . .” He pauses, breaks off part of a nearby fern and mashes it between his fingers. “I think it hurt.”
“Raph?” In the distance, a flash of white shirt signals Adam’s approach. “It’s time to go home. Come on!”
The little boy rises to his feet, grateful for the sight of his elder brother. “I’m here!” he calls, dashing off to greet him. “I’m here!”
Figuring Adam’s got it handled, I take Rae’s phone from my pocket and pull up Naomi’s number. She needs to know her boys are all right. The rain has slowed to a trickle, and the first chirps of the coquís sound in the damp air, their two-note cry rising at the end like a question. I have questions of my own.
Who is this Watching Guy Raph says he saw? He has to be the one I’ve been dreaming as, the one lying in wait. The older man Lise mentioned to Marvel, perhaps. Maybe even the one who has been taking photos of me with my phone. He must know the property well, to navigate these winding jungle paths in the dark. He must have come here many, many times.
Something crashes down from one of the trees, causing me to start. A long white branch strikes the hammock with its tip before bouncing to the ground. An albizzia, probably, one of those invasive trees with the secretly rotting limbs that Thom mentioned. In the wake of its impact, the hammock sways back and forth, as if someone were reclining inside.
The image of that young girl sharpens in my mind, needles to the brain. Her body against a tree, her hair in his hand. Was that statutory rape, or something more? Sexual assault? Abduction? Murder? I find myself running, racing through this tropical labyrinth unable to stop until I’ve made it out, returned to the safety of Koa House.
Only then, standing in the dim drizzle of Thom and David’s yard, do I finally call Naomi.
nineteen
That night, overwhelmed by the day’s events, I go for a soak in the outdoor tub. Rae has gone to the Thursday night market with Thom and David, off to sample local music, food, and wares in what constitutes a weekly highlight of this sleepy town. Normally, such a cultural event would be enticing, but crowds of people are the last thing I want to face right now. I don’t know who might be out there watching, snapping pictures of me. Tonight I just want to be alone.
The oversized tub promises the peace I crave. Located a few yards from the side of the house, the fenced-in bathing area boasts a spalike atmosphere. Inside its white wooden walls, an avocado tree sparkles with tiny holiday lights. David has provided me with a fluffy bathrobe, handcrafted soap, fruity shampoo, floating candles, and plumeria-scented bubble bath. In theory, it should be glorious, a relaxing soak beneath the stars, not unlike the hot tub Noah and I have in our backyard.
The moment I let my bathrobe drift to the ground, however, I feel anything but relaxed. Despite the fence that encloses the tub and the sliding bolt on its door, I can’t shake the sensation that I’m not alone, that my body is on display for unseen eyes, that pictures of me bathing will turn up on Instagram tomorrow.
I try to shake it off.
This Watching Guy is getting into my head.
I step into the claw-footed tub, grateful for the layer of bubbles that now conceals my naked body. Stupid, getting all paranoid. Nobody who stalks pretty teenagers would have any use for my old bag of bones. But still.
I nestle a little deeper into the bubbles, wondering what time it is. The floating candles bobble up and down in the water.
This is amazing, I scold myself. Quit inventing things to worry about and enjoy yourself.
But the theft of my phone is not an invention, and I don’t buy Victor as the likely culprit. He wouldn’t follow me to Marvel’s and then photograph me, would he? He wouldn’t leave me flowers. I swish the water with my foot. What if there’s someone living in those woods, someone who knows the comings and goings at Koa House and Wakea Ranch? A stranger who saw my phone, forgotten on the back patio, and seized the opportunity.
Or perhaps he isn’t a stranger. Victor and Adam and Elijah all seem harmless enough, but any one of them could have a dark side.
This bath is not working. Instead of calming me, it’s making me crazy. I reach over the side of the tub, trying to find my towel. As my hand closes on the soft terry cloth, I hear a noise, something on the other side of the wall, just a few feet from where I’m bathing.
I freeze. Sit upright in the warm, soapy water, listening.
Maybe it was just one of the cats prowling around.
I step from the bath, water dripping from my skin, and quickly wrap myself in my bathrobe. As I lean over to blow out the floating candles, I hear it again: something grazing the wooden wall. Not a cat—it’s much too high for that—but a person. Him.
The creeper who’s been following me, taking my picture and who knows what else. He’s out there.
My heart is in my throat, beating wildly. Can he see me? Is there some crack in the wall that I don’t know about, a peephole he’s been using? I pull my bathrobe tighter and scan the wooden slats. No obvious holes in the fence, but that’s hardly comforting. And the bolt on the door is a flimsy defense at best.
I could leave, but what if he’s out there, preparing to ambush me in the small stretch between the bathing area and the house? And I left the house door unlocked. He could wait for me inside. If only I had my damn phone, I could call Rae and Thom and David at the market. But he took care of that.
I have nothing. No one.
I think back to the women’s self-defense class I took years ago. If someone is following you from a distance, turn and stare them down, my instructor told us. Looking them in the eye lets them know you won’t go easy. Most attackers don’t want a real fight.
This situation isn’t quite the same, but perhaps the same principle applies.
“Hey!” I yell at the wall with a ferocity I don’t feel. “I know you’re out there!”
Silence, but for the chirping of the frogs.
“Don’t think you can mess with me, asshole,” I growl. “If you come near me, I will fucking break you.”
More silence. I begin to doubt myself, wonder if I’m losing it, yelling at the empty night like a nutcase.
Then foots
teps, the quick swish of grass. My worst fear confirmed: I’m not alone.
From the noises, I may have scared him away. Still, I’m not about to test that theory. Maybe he’s simply retreated to the shadows, found a more strategic place from which to assault me when I leave the outdoor bathroom. The sliding bolt on that wooden door could be the only thing that separates us.
For two hours, I huddle on the ground, listening, waiting, worrying, until my friend and hosts return. When at last I hear their loud and punchy voices in the house, I burst from the bathroom. Thom and David don’t know what to make of me, a distraught woman in a bathrobe rambling about “someone out there.” They dutifully search their home for signs of intruders at my request and lock every door of Koa House, but it’s clear they think I’m overreacting.
“It was probably a wild pig,” David tells me apologetically. “They come sniffing around every now and then. I’ll swing by the salon tomorrow and see if I can get some hair clippings. That always keeps the pigs away—they hate the smell of humans.”
“Wild pigs, yessss!” Rae exclaims, too tipsy from her night out to take me seriously. “Brayden told me about those! He said they come and eat Sage’s marijuana plants, that pigs wanna get high same as people.”
And just like that, my terrifying brush with the Watching Guy turns into a discussion of feral pig encounters. I could scream. I look from Rae to David to Thom, each one eager to share what they know of the island’s swine, each one sure that they are being helpful, and head upstairs without saying good night.
I know what I heard. And it was not a pig.
In my bedroom, I double-check the locks and draw the curtains to the balcony. I slip some cuticle scissors under my pillow just in case. Not an ideal weapon, but the curved metal could do some damage if it came to that.
I debate whether or not to call Noah. He’d believe me, even if Rae doesn’t. Without a doubt, he’d be on the next flight to Hilo. But is that really how I want Girls’ Week to end? I check the time. Two a.m. in Arizona. No sense alarming him with a middle-of-the-night phone call. There’s no way I’m falling asleep without some help, however. I take a sleeping pill, let it suck me down into a thick and dreamless sleep.
