Jane Was Here

by Sarah Kernochan

  “Thought I heard their copter,” says Bern D’Annunzio, who volunteers Friday nights. “Wonder what it’s like to be that rich.”

  “Don’t look at me.” The postal service doesn’t pay Thom diddly, but he still feels a secret pang of guilt for taking that money from the old guy, the P.I. from Virginia. It isn’t technically a bribe; all Thom has to do is keep his eyes peeled for the girl when he makes his rounds, then call Fancher if he spots her. It isn’t very much money, either, but there must be something unethical about it if he’s ashamed to tell his pals.

  Bern changes the subject to the Goldilocks case. Last night there was another incident down the road on Rabbit Glenn. Tisha Baxter called in hysterical, said a bear wandered in from Rowell Hill and snatched some barbecue chicken cooking on the patio. “Her husband Lonny says it wasn’t a bear. He’d seen it from the bedroom and it was a longhaired woman or a hippie. ‘There ain’t no bears on Rowell Hill,’ says Lonny, ‘and even if there was, they wouldn’t lift the lid up and close it after taking only one piece of chicken and some napkins.’ Brenda just about hit him over the head with the spatula. ‘You didn’t see nothin’, you been passed out in your frickin’ chair in front of the TV since the ballgame ended!’ She made us write it down as a bear attack just to back her up.”

  Their laughter gets drowned out by the bawling of the firehouse siren: it’s sundown. Hoffman goes outside to check the grill.

  He finds two hot dogs missing, and some napkins.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  They haven’t even reached the halfway point on Rowell Hill when for the third time Brett Sampson has to stop, gasping for air. He sinks onto a rock to suck on his inhaler.

  Collin glances nervously around the chaos of snarled foliage and topsy-turvy trees, branches and vines so dense that the sunlight shatters into mere specks when it reaches the forest floor. The boy looks down at the half of the hill they’ve already hiked. Collin was given the map and the compass to carry in his backpack, while Brett hacked ineptly through the brush with his new machete.

  The boy points to a bush near Brett’s elbow. “Is that poison ivy?”

  “Let’s…assume so,” Brett wheezes. “Don’t touch it.” Tanned and fit from bike riding with Gita Poonchwalla, Collin hasn’t broken a sweat after an hour of climbing. He’d be with Gita right now, except that her parents just got back from Mumbai and they took her shopping for back-to-school supplies.

  Anyway, she seems less interested in spending time with Collin, now that Jane’s gone. “Our mission is complete,” she told him the other day. “Shaarinen has fled.”

  Collin misses her daily company, and the urgency of their work; he’ll probably never see her again after summer’s end. Our Gana Mother of Fire…He prays to the goddess for a fresh challenge that would reunite him with Gita, at least for the remaining two weeks before Brett drives him home to his mother.

  “Let me see the map again,” says Brett, his breath returning.

  Collin hands it over. Brett spreads the photocopied map on his knees, studying the faint property lines, the elegantly penned names of land owners and lot measurements, the wriggle of streams, the date “1848” and surveyor’s signature at the bottom.

  “I don’t get what’s the big deal about an old wall,” Collin mutters.

  “It’s about history.” Brett kneads his right shoulder where it aches from swinging the machete. “History’s fascinating because you try to imagine how things used to be, a long, long time before you were born.”

  “But there’s nothing on this map that’s here anymore. Just woods.”

  “Then think of this as a nature walk. At a minimum you’ll learn something about the woods, okay?”

  Collin grunts derisively. Why is Brett so obsessed with this map, this so-called “nature walk”? He’s got some other reason he’s not letting on.

  Brett adds, “I just wanted us to do something together.”

  Not true: his dad was forced to take him hiking because Collin couldn’t go to Gita’s and the boy couldn’t be left home alone. Ever since Jane ran off, Brett’s been mad at him. He doesn’t understand that Collin saved him by betraying Jane. His dad was in danger every minute he spent with the Maximum Evil; he would have ended up as a pile of bones she’d picked clean.

  “Here’s where we’re headed.” Brett’s finger marks a spot on the map. “Pease Pond.”

  AFTER THEY CREST the hill they come upon a small, desolate lake.

  Brett looks as if he’s about to pass out; his tortured breathing has worsened. Nevertheless, he busies himself with the compass and the map while Collin eyes the shimmering pond. Even though he’s learned to swim, he still recoils inwardly, feeling himself dragged inexorably toward the water’s baleful edge.

  “It sucks here.”

  Brett doesn’t look up from the map. “Bet there’s lots of fish.”

  “I don’t like fishing.”

  “Not that you’ve ever tried it.” Folding up the map, Brett stuffs it in Collin’s backpack. “We’ll go ‘round the pond to the other side and then keep heading west.”

  Brett starts picking his way around the pond’s edge, balancing on precarious rocks and climbing over roots, his boots sometimes slipping into the silty water.

  “This is so wack.” Collin tries to keep the hysterical edge out of his voice. “We’re not going to find anything, and we’ll get lost.”

  “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  Sullenly Collin looks down at his sneakers as he hops from rock to rock. The next time he glances up, his father is some thirty yards ahead. Jumping up on the trunk of a fallen tree, Collin walks its gnarled length to the root mass that, clotted with dried mud, hangs over the pond. Tempting his fear, he clambers over the roots, crawling out as far as he dares.

  When he looks down at his reflection in the water, a proud, courageous boy stares back. The avatar, mortal enemy of Shaarinen.

  “Son!” his father calls. “Hurry up!”

  Collin’s reflected face frowns with annoyance. Then he tenses: there’s something underneath his image in the water. As he shifts uneasily, his face slides away like a mask, revealing someone else’s head.

  He stares into the empty eye sockets of a drowned woman.

  The water over her face is glassy, motionless, her hair snarled in the pebbles and grass of the pond bottom; pale rags of flesh curl away from her skull.

  Collin’s scream rips the quiet. “Dad!”

  Brett comes running. Jumping off the tree trunk, Collin clings to his father’s waist. Brett strokes his curls awkwardly, patting his slender back.

  “What happened?” Collin points a trembling finger toward the pond’s edge. Brett peers into the water. “I don’t see anything. What was it, a snake?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “We’re not turning back,” Brett says firmly. “It’s better to face your fears than run away.”

  Collin pulls away. “I’m not afraid of anything!”

  “Something scared you.”

  “Nothing scares me!” Collin’s voice rises to a shout. “I’m a god!”

  Brett’s eyebrows lift in amused surprise. “Cool. Then we can keep going.”

  PERIODICALLY CHECKING the compass, Brett leads them through a crowd of conifers. The ground cover changes to grasses and dried pine needles.

  A little distance further, they find what he’s been searching for: an old, tumbledown stonewall. Brett practically breaks into a dance. “It’s still there—right where the map said it would be!”

  “So what.” Collin sits on the wall, which stretches in both directions, snaking out of sight.

  His father ignores him, puzzling out loud, “Which way do we go from here, though? Right or left?”

  Collin notices the ground slopes gently downward to the south. Downhill means home. “Left,” he says quickly.

  As they trek south, the wall sometimes crumbles away, stones scattered and hidden by overgrowth; further on, it magically reass
embles, like a film forwarding and reversing.

  Collin’s mind drifts back to the woman in the pond. His heart beats faster; a confusion of images crashes over him: all his nightmares of tidal waves and undertow and plummeting down dark water, mixed in with the corpse’s submerged face, the vacant eyeholes.

  She wasn’t really there. It must be Shaarinen filling his head, messing with his courage.

  But Shaarinen is gone. They chased him off.

  Gita could explain what happened at the pond. She always fits the pieces together.

  “Over here!” Brett beckons with the machete.

  Pushing through the trees, they arrive at a clearing. In the center is a primitive lean-to shack made of old splintered planks.

  Brett approaches the latched door, putting his finger to his lips. Knocking lightly, he calls, “Anybody home?” He presses his ear to the wood. Getting no response, he lifts the door latch, flashing a conspiratorial grin. “Let’s check it out.”

  Collin can’t see much of interest inside the shack. Just a bench and some camp stuff: utensils, a folding stove, a large skillet, a box of glass jars, measuring cups and spoons, coffee filters, and plastic gallon jugs of water.

  Propping up the hinged flip board to let in some air, Brett starts poking around under the bench. Finding a metal footlocker, he tries the catch; it’s locked.

  Collin moans impatiently, “I gotta pee.”

  “Go outside. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Only too happy to comply, Collin goes behind the shack. Pointing his stream at the base of an oak tree, he lifts his eyes to the leaves overhead.

  He spots a sliver of pink showing through the rich greenery. Pulling up his shorts, he ducks under the oak’s canopy, pushing aside branches for a better view. Something is squashed into a crook of the tree, at arm’s length. As he rises on tiptoes, reaching toward it, his fingertips touch nylon fabric. With a little jump, he catches hold of the object, tugging; it falls into his hands.

  Jane’s duffel.

  He listens for his dad thumping around inside the cabin, then opens the zipper on the duffel, finding her toiletry kit and balled-up purple anorak inside. His knees tremble; an ecstasy he has never felt seizes him: rapture mixed with rage.

  All along his father has been looking for Jane. He is still possessed by the demon. Even though she’s been gone from their house for almost a week, Brett’s concern is all for her, with none left for Collin.

  But now, with Jane’s duffel in his hand, the power of knowledge is Collin’s, with none left for his dad. Because Collin will keep it a secret. He stuffs the bag back in its hiding place.

  When Brett emerges from the shack, Collin is squatting on his heels, pretending to examine a bug. His dad looks deflated. “Not much here. Guess we should keep following the wall.”

  As they set off downhill, Brett points out the flattened grasses alongside the stone wall, trodden by someone making numerous trips to the shack: “Probably a hunter. That shack was a hunting blind. You can tell by the flip board. That’s how the hunter makes an opening so he can see game approaching and stick his rifle out to shoot it.”

  I am the hunter. The reincarnation of Yenu Krishna, the Tawny One destined to track down and defeat Shaarinen. You’ll never find Jane. Not until we destroy her. Can’t wait to tell Gita.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Jane scrapes dirt from the rock with the spade, then slips her fingers underneath, exerting all her strength to dislodge the big stone. Her nails are broken to the quick from digging a little further down every day. By now the hole is four feet deep, the rim almost to her shoulders as she stands in it to work. Over in the shade sits the leather satchel she unearthed last week. Inside she found, wrapped in a silk square, Jane Pettigrew’s crumbling letters. She has read and reread the letters, each time finishing in tears and clamorous questions. Did Lysander come for me that day? Did we run away together? Why did I bury my bag? What happened to me? Why can’t I remember? She digs because she does not know what else to do. Perhaps she will find something else that might provide answers, something that was buried further down, beneath the satchel. She climbs out to drink from the water jug. Her empty stomach is growing fretful. When the sun is low, she will take the battery lantern from the shack and climb down Rowell Hill to look for food, searching the outskirts of town for an unoccupied house with an empty driveway and unlocked door.

  As she continues digging, the shovel clanks against something, meeting resistance. When she clears the soil away, she finds yet another rock. Wearily she scours more dirt off it, then realizes: this stone is bigger than any of the others. To uncover its edges she will have to widen the hole. Even if she is able to do so, how will she lift it by herself?

  Despondent, she pulls herself up from the hole, lying on her back in the grass. A pine tree looms sympathetically over her, brushing her face with cool shadows.

  Eden, we called this place. Truly it is heaven.

  She closes her eyes; feels the vague weight of the gold brooch over her breast where she pins it to her shirt every morning before leaving the shack, wary of leaving it in her duffel in the tree. Ellis gave it to me…

  Light and shadow play on the carmine underside of her eyelids. As she melts into drowsiness, a shivery wave ripples from her toes to her head.

  She feels lifted infinitesimally from her body and then gently settled back again, somehow rearranged.

  The ground throbs under her head: a sinister drumming sound reaches her ears.

  A horse’s galloping hooves, fading away.

  Then a fiery pain explodes in her abdomen. Her eyes fly open. She sits up, momentarily blinded by dizziness, hand moving to her belly.

  When she looks down, she is wearing a long white skirt, its linen fabric wrinkled, crushed, and the front drenched with fresh blood. Is it hers or someone else’s? Her chemise is torn away from her bosom.

  The pain in her abdomen intensifies, burning. Help— oh, help!

  Struggling to her knees, she looks about desperately.

  She is in a maze of low scrub trees, her blue-ribboned straw bonnet lying nearby in the dirt. Her satchel is flung onto a patch of grass, striped by the amber rays of a descending sun.

  Must move. Walk to safety, before nightfall. Shan’t think about the blood. God has spared me—I am alive. And help is near—Lysander waits—in Eden—!

  She reaches for her satchel and bonnet, stumbles to her feet. Each step brings agony; yet she wills herself forward.

  She must find her way back to the wall.

  The distant bleating of sheep guides her to a breach in the trees, where she sees the familiar rock fence bounding Farmer Quirk’s acres of pasture. Summoning the last of her strength, Jane follows it north, too intent to acknowledge her pain or weep for her terrifying condition.

  A horse stands tethered inside the glade ahead.

  He is there.

  Only a few more steps, and she is pushing the branches aside, staggering into the clearing.

  To her shock, it is empty, except for the plastic water jug by the stump where she left it. The shovel leaning in the hole. Her pants covered with dirt from her labors.

  The bloody skirt, the pain that cleaved her—gone. His horse gone. A cry in her heart: Lysander! Where are you?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Pearl stands anxiously in the corner of the curtained hospital cubicle while a resident examines her mother. He pokes the mole on her cheek with his plastic-gloved finger. When he brings it away, there’s a smear of blood on the tip.

  “When did it start bleeding?”

  “This morning.”

  Marly hadn’t wanted to go to the hospital, arguing that they couldn’t afford the time off from work to drive all the way to Quikabukket.

  Pearl can’t very well tell Marly that she quit her job weeks ago.

  Already she has made more money off Seth Poonchwalla than she could have earned in six months at Valyou Mart. Seth brings her pleasure, but she doesn’t love
him—maybe because the whole thing started off as a money transaction, or because he’s going off to college at MIT in a few weeks. Whatever the reason, love is not in the equation. But she is happy. All her life Pearl has personified her mother’s folly, her error in judgment. Now she is somebody’s idea of a sex goddess.

  She still keeps up the pretense of working, allowing Marly to drop her off at the Graynier Outlet Center every morning. She spends the day at the food court, or in the multiplex, or shopping for clothes for her going-away wardrobe. Soon Pearl will be so gone from this nasty bunghole town.

  The only thing that might keep her in Graynier is her mother’s alarming decline. Plagued by nightmares, Marly stays up until dawn. The woman who used to be all sun and bubbles, who never left the house without a pound of makeup on, is now surly and secretive, and never even looks in a mirror, as if afraid of what she’ll see. Pearl was the one who noticed the black blotch growing on her mother’s cheek. Then this morning it started to leak blood.

  The resident sends them upstairs to the chief of dermatology, a woman with minty breath and binoculars on her eyeglasses. She measures the mole, calling it “remarkable,” takes several photos, then dictates rapidly into a cell phone.

  She turns to her patient. “In all probability this is a melanoma. It must be excised at once. A biopsy will determine if it has metastasized.”

  Then she schedules Marly’s surgery for the following morning.

  HER EMPLOYER AT the Graynier B & B is not happy to get Marly’s call. “You want another entire day off to have a mole removed?”

  “It’s an outpatient procedure. I’ll be back at work in the morning.”

  Mrs. McBee snorts. “What’s next, liposuction?”

  “I might have cancer.”

  In the silence that follows, Marly can almost hear the gears clicking in the old woman’s head: runaway hospital bills…rising employer insurance premiums…