What Remains of Her

by Eric Rickstad

  “What—”

  Maurice brandished his massive palm for Jonah to stop. Being shut up triggered in Jonah an innate desire to lash out that he’d developed as a kid. He bit back the urge, having learned long ago such reactions only exacerbated situations.

  “If they are not found right away,” Maurice said, “there will be questions. Brutal. Intrusive. Unkind questions. Aimed square at you. From unexpected angles, by people who don’t know you like I do, and who will see you only as a suspect.”

  The kitchen faded in a fog until only Maurice’s face popped out from the murk in garish relief, as if Jonah were looking at his friend through a preposterous magnifying glass, Maurice’s spittle lathering, the papillae of his tongue and the pores of his nose grotesquely cavernous. His voice boomed, though his mouth moved with torpor.

  Jonah shook his head, failed to clear the fog, a metallic, burnt odor in his nostrils.

  “I need to prepare you,” Maurice said. “Just in case.”

  Jonah felt a distant pressure on his hand and looked to see Maurice had placed his own hand on Jonah’s. “Whatever this is,” Maurice said. “We’ll sort it out. Together.” He retracted his hand and tapped his pencil on his notepad.

  Except at the very edges of Jonah’s vision, the fog in the kitchen had receded, and Maurice’s face reverted to its natural proportions. Jonah readied himself.

  “Did you and Rebecca argue recently?” Maurice glanced at the flowers.

  Jonah’s heart jerked; a shadow slunk by in the other room, at the periphery of his vision.

  “You can’t hold back,” Maurice said.

  One thing had nothing to do with the other. Jonah and Rebecca had argued. The nature was the same as always; marital, private, and nothing to do with this. It was a typical, petty, regrettable spat during which Jonah had allowed his insecurities to get the better of him. Again. Overreacted. Again. His MO. He promised himself now: no more beer that might barb his tongue. Not even with Maurice. The fight, the argument, wasn’t really even about his suspicions, had not started out that way, but about money, about Jonah needing to be more aggressive pursuing a tenured position, even if it meant applying to a community college or a high school. Better to be a tenured big fish in a small pond than an adjunct minnow in an ocean, with no benefits, no health insurance. He’d been angry. Asked Rebecca why she didn’t help more, get a real job, too, instead of the part-time clerk’s job at the Dress Shoppe where she worked so she could gossip and take advantage of discounts on clothes, and where— The argument had nothing to do with this. It couldn’t.

  “Did you?” Maurice said.

  Jonah wondered if his hesitation had stamped the truth on his face: Yes, we fought. Argued. But it has nothing to do with this.

  “No,” Jonah said. Because it wasn’t a fight. Not in that way. He’d not harmed her. He’d never harm her. Or Sally. No matter how upset. “No,” he said again, trying to firm up his voice even as it quavered.

  Maurice scratched a note in his pad.

  “What happened tonight?” Maurice said. “Be honest, as a friend. Did Rebecca take off in a huff with Sally, and now you’re worried? If so, we have less to worry about than if you—”

  “This is ludicrous, accusing me of—”

  “Slow down. I can’t accuse you of anything when we don’t even know what happened. My question isn’t ludicrous, considering the chair I’m in was knocked over. And that gash on your head. And the flowers, and”—his eyes flicked to the floor in front of the stove—“the blood on the floor there.” He clasped his hands and set them on the table. “Before anyone else gets here, I suggest, strongly, as the closest person I’ve had to a brother, you tell me the absolute truth. Exactly what happened. You lied about drinking, don’t lie about anything else.”

  “I didn’t lie, I—”

  “Fibbed. As our girls say. You don’t want to lie about this. I’m telling you. If the state police get involved, they will tear you apart. If they catch you in even the most innocent lie, they will smell blood, whether there’s blood to smell or not.”

  A prickling sensation spread across Jonah’s face and spidered down his back.

  “We did not fight,” Jonah said.

  “What about the chair?”

  “I knocked it over.” To convey sincerity, Jonah locked his eyes on Maurice’s; but looking people in the eye made him nervous, and he rarely did it. Maurice knew this better than anyone. Knew Jonah was put off by those who looked him in the eye as a cheap tactic to win trust, a ploy out of a Holiday Inn self-esteem conference.

  Maurice waited, calmly looking square into Jonah’s eyes, straight through Jonah.

  Jonah’s unnatural attempt at eye contact was alerting Maurice to a counterfeit behavior. But Jonah could not blink first now.

  He had nothing to hide.

  “When I realized how late it was,” Jonah said, his throat dry, “I rose too fast and got light-headed, maybe from the coolers and not eating all day and having been lost in the papers for a couple hours. I lost my balance and hit my head.” He was speaking too fast, on the brink of hyperventilating. He touched the gash on his forehead, felt now how swollen and tender it was. A knot of bruised flesh. What the hell did it look like? Had he bled? He’d not realized he’d struck himself so badly.

  Maurice must have noticed his wound straightaway, but nothing in his manner or eyes had betrayed it. Had he been waiting for Jonah to volunteer how he’d wounded himself?

  “It’s the truth,” Jonah said.

  Maurice stared at Jonah.

  “It is,” Jonah pressed.

  “I believe you,” Maurice said. “Why wouldn’t I? We need to hope others do. Did you check the rest of the house?”

  “I went in Sally’s room because sometimes she gets so engrossed in a book or her rocks and ‘artifacts’ it’s like she’s in another world and she wouldn’t know if the train went off the tracks and slammed into the house.” He said nothing of the soft cry he’d imagined he’d heard. It had been the doll anyway. Hadn’t it? No one had been in the house.

  “And?” Maurice said.

  “And what?”

  “She’s not in her room?”

  “Why would I call you if she was in her damned room?”

  “Did you check it well?”

  “It’s a small room.”

  “Under the bed? Behind the door? In the closet?”

  Jonah’s stomach soured.

  “Did you?” Maurice asked. His voice was patient, kind. This frightened Jonah, the tenderness and sadness in his oldest, and only, friend’s voice.

  “I didn’t think to check,” Jonah said.

  “I better.” As Maurice rose, a shriek from Sally’s bedroom cut through the quiet house and died with the abruptness of a slashed throat.

  Evidence?

  Maurice shouldered past Jonah and charged down the hall.

  Jonah followed.

  Sally’s bedroom door was shut.

  Not a breath of sound whispered from behind it.

  Maurice threw open the door.

  The room was empty.

  No.

  A child sat hunched in the far corner like a wounded animal, wedged between the bed and the desk, rocking and sobbing.

  Lucinda.

  What is at work here? Jonah thought.

  From a face slack with shock, Lucinda’s lost eyes stared under Sally’s bed.

  “What is it?” Maurice said quietly, as if to speak at a normal volume might upset an unseen threat in the room. “Lucy?” He stepped slowly toward his daughter.

  Jonah remained fixed, though an urge to run coursed in him. He did not need to see whatever horror was under the bed. If his daughter had been under her bed this whole time—

  Maurice approached Lucinda as if she were a feral puppy that might lick his hand or shred it with its needle teeth. He crouched, eyes level with his daughter’s eyes.

  “Lucy?” he whispered. His squared, lumberjack shoulders seemed to slope now, his comma
nding stature deflate in the face of his daughter’s palpable terror.

  Lucinda pointed her slim, quaking finger under the bed.

  Jonah’s eyes tracked with Maurice’s eyes as Maurice pivoted on his heels. Jonah could not see under the bed from his vantage. Did not want to see.

  Again, the urge to flee consumed him.

  Maurice lowered himself, pressed his cheek flat against the floor, and looked under the bed.

  His face was turned from Jonah.

  His chest rose and fell with deep measured breathing.

  Jonah needed to sit.

  Slowly, Maurice lifted his cheek off the floor and knelt again.

  He took his daughter’s fragile shoulders in his hands.

  “Lucy?” he said. “What did you see?”

  What was Maurice talking about, couldn’t he see whatever was under the bed that had terrified Lucinda?

  Lucinda looked at her father gravely. “A . . . spider. A humungous spider.”

  “A goddamned spider?” Jonah said.

  Maurice wheeled on him. “Watch it,” he snapped and turned back to Lucinda, a palm to her cheek. “It’s okay. Go back out to the couch. And, stay there, like Daddy told you in the first place. Don’t move. Hear?”

  Jonah was nearly felled by a terrific envy and loneliness as Maurice spoke to his daughter, as if any ill befalling them was an impossibility, their lives would continue forever, blissful in their normalcy. The fatherly display felt like a malicious twist of a jagged knife.

  “Stay put, all right?” Maurice said.

  Lucinda nodded, teary, gnawing her bottom lip. “It wasn’t just a spider,” she whimpered. “It was a monster spider. Where’s Sally?”

  “Never mind the spider. Or Sally. Just get out to the couch.” Maurice stood and put his hand on her head and nudged her toward the door, patted her bottom. “Go on now.”

  She inched past Jonah to pad down the hall. Maurice’s gaze found Jonah, and Jonah tried a meek smile.

  “How’d the hole get in the wall?” Maurice nodded at the hole behind the door. “Looks recent.”

  “The doors stick. I had to put a shoulder into it. Lost my grip.”

  Maurice nodded, his gaze fixed on Sally’s desk. He picked up a piece of paper that peeked out from under a book on fossils. He looked troubled.

  “What is it?” Jonah peered at the paper.

  Two crayoned stick figures lay crooked at the bottom of the page. A girl and a woman, maybe. Judging by the hair. Red Xs for eyes. The rest of the page was scribbled in black crayon, except for a bright evening star shining in the top corner.

  The drawing unsettled Jonah.

  Maurice pulled open the desk drawer to find three more similar drawings. Red crayon was scribbled at the bottom of one page, so the stick figures appeared to be bleeding.

  Maurice lifted each drawing by a corner, laid each on the desk.

  Jonah reached for the drawings.

  “No,” Maurice said and picked each drawing up again and slipped each into the pocket inside his jacket.

  “What are you doing?” Jonah said.

  “Evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  “Why would Sally draw such things?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No?” Maurice said.

  “Of course not.”

  “Why would any kid draw pictures like these?”

  “Maybe something scared her.”

  “Something?”

  “Or someone.”

  “Like? Who?” Maurice said.

  “I don’t know. A stranger.”

  “A stranger has been scaring your daughter and you don’t know about it? Wouldn’t she come to you about it?”

  “Of course. I hope.”

  “Did she come to you? About anything weird? I know Lucinda would come to me, pronto.”

  Terror raked its claws into Jonah as he thought of a stranger harming Sally or Rebecca. Yet there was a scenario worse than that of a stranger or, even worse than that, of Jonah’s irate behavior the previous night being responsible for his wife and daughter’s absence. Shame flooded him for even thinking it, and he knew he could never reveal it. Because if it were true . . .

  “If these drawings indicate a real fear or danger,” Maurice said, “which they may or may not since kids draw a lot of crazy stuff for no reason at all, the state cops will ask which is more probable: a total stranger troubling your daughter enough to make her draw these, or someone close to her?”

  “You can’t think she drew those because of me?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “It does to me. Your turn to be honest. Do you think—”

  “I think these are crazy kid drawings. Mildly disturbing, but a hell of a lot tamer than the crap we used to draw. Decapitations, warring beasts. Remember? But. It’s not up to me. The state police will filter everything through the spouse first.”

  Jonah needed to find Sally and Rebecca. Now.

  “Let me see one of the drawings. I won’t touch it.”

  Maurice placed a drawing on the desk. Jonah studied it. The stick figures might easily have been asleep under the night sky, instead of dead. Even with the X eyes. And they might not be Sally or Rebecca. Maybe not even female. Maybe they were Sally and a friend. Lucinda. Or the bossy older girls Sally and Lucinda were always talking about being mean. Maybe Sally wasn’t scared of being a victim at all, maybe the stick figures were her victims: a fantasy of revenge against the mean girls. This frightened Jonah even more, that his daughter could be the aggressor, even if it were only played out in dark, imaginative drawings. All said, the drawings were works of imagination. No telling what they meant. If anything. But if Rebecca and Sally were not found right away, the drawings would put the spotlight on Jonah. Take the focus off whoever it should be on. Jonah couldn’t afford that.

  “You don’t think they mean anything?” Jonah said.

  “No.”

  “Then, maybe,” Jonah began, tentative, “we’d be better off if—”

  “Do not ask me to tamper with evidence.”

  “If you don’t think they mean anything, and we think we’re going to find Sally and Rebecca safe, the drawings aren’t evidence. They’re a distraction.”

  “It’s not up to us to decide that.”

  “You can’t let drawings you don’t think mean anything be used against me.”

  “They won’t be if we find Sally and Rebecca—”

  “If.” Jonah swallowed hard. “Now it’s if? I can’t have fingers pointed at me. You see that. You said yourself we both drew crazier crap as kids.”

  “And you thought Sally drew them because a stranger scared her. Now you want to tamper with them to avoid the chance they might be used against you?”

  “Used wrongly. Waste time. Kids can be scared of anything. TV. Movies. Bedtime stories. Let me have the drawings. They’re my property. And even if they point to someone, a stranger, there’s no way to tell who they point to, just Sally’s potential state of mind, if that.”

  Maurice stared at Jonah.

  “Please.” Jonah felt the plaint in his voice, raw at the back of his throat as he pleaded for Maurice to risk his profession.

  “I can’t destroy them,” Maurice said. He drew a deep, unsteady breath, took the rest of the drawings out of his jacket. “But. I can leave them here.” He set the drawings on the desk.

  Jonah’s heart pounded.

  “I need to check your bedroom,” Maurice said. “Stay behind me. If I tell you to leave, leave. Immediately.” He stepped into the hall.

  Jonah snatched the drawings, tore them up, and stuffed the shreds in his pants pocket, a twinge of panic and guilt needling him the instant he did it.

  The Man in the Woods

  Lucinda sat on the couch chewing the inside of her cheek.

  She was in big trouble. Humungous trouble. She’d fibbed. Again. First about playing with fire, now about a stupid spider. Well. She had seen a spider,
and it had been humungous. And she had thought it was going to bite her. So she hadn’t really fibbed.

  But the spider was not why she’d screamed. She’d never scream over a stupid spider. Humungous or not, a spider was still just a spider, still small compared to her. It wasn’t like Vermont had tarantulas. And she knew from books spiders never really bit, except for that one with the funny name. Hermit spider. No, that was a crab. Rescue spider? Recluse. And she could still easily splat that kind of spider with a shoe. Spiders were just all skin and black juice, and she’d splattered tons of them in the pit, where Sally had first told her the secret; told her about the man in the woods.

  At the thought of the man in the woods, Lucinda bit down harder on the inside of her cheek, blood leaking. She pushed her tongue against the wound, sucked at the blood, hot and salty. She took a rock from her coat pocket. She’d found it under Sally’s bed. A rock. Not an arrowhead, as Sally had insisted, although it did kind of look like an arrowhead. It was thin, with a sort of scalloped edge and kinda sharp edges, but it was soapstone, and soapstone wasn’t used for that. At least none of their books and magazines said so. It was talc schist. A metamorphic rock. A pretty swirl of green and gray, the piece of rock felt soft and slippery and comforting in her hand. It was everywhere under the mountains and up in the Gore.

  She turned the thin chip of rock in her hand.

  She wondered if her dad knew she was fibbing. He’d had that look in his eyes that said, What are you hiding, what are you fibbing about? When have you ever been scared of a spider?

  All Lucinda knew was she couldn’t tell him what had really scared her. She could never tell anyone about the man in the woods. Ever. She’d made a pact with Sally. Friends didn’t break pacts. Everyone knew that. No breaking pacts. Especially to parents. Sally would be so mad. She probably would stop being friends. And that was more important than anything. If Lucinda told her dad what she’d seen out Sally’s window, or thought she’d seen, Sally would never ever forgive her. Besides, maybe it had not been him, maybe it had been nothing. Maybe it had been a trick of the light, or a trick of the dark. Maybe what she’d seen out Sally’s bedroom window had only been a shadow, a tree, or a branch, or something. It could have been almost anything besides a man.