What Remains of Her

by Eric Rickstad

  The doll lay on the floor where Lucinda had left it.

  Lucinda knelt and picked it up, set it on the desk.

  She could hear Dale breathing behind her in the doorway as she pulled the badge and button from her coat pocket and set them beside the doll, pulled out the drawings and unfolded them on the desk.

  “What is it?” Dale said. Lucinda glanced at him to see he held the doorframe for balance, then turned her attention back to the doll and the other artifacts. She studied the drawing of the stick girl with one button eye and one red X for an eye.

  She looked at the rag doll.

  One button for an eye.

  The other eye: A red x of thread.

  A button missing.

  She took out the button that had fallen out of the pants of her father’s uniform.

  Compared it to the button eye on the doll.

  “It’s not like mine,” she whispered.

  She turned to Dale.

  “It is mine.” She shook the doll at Dale, its stuffing flying from where earlier she’d ripped it open. “This is my doll. Beverly.” Lucinda fought back a sob; it’d do her no good now to let emotion overwhelm her. “Not hers. Mine. The button. And the evening star in Sally’s black crayon drawing. It’s not a star. I need to get to Jonah. Tell him. I know.”

  “You’re not making any sense. You need to calm down. Wait till tomorrow.”

  “This is not waiting until tomorrow. It’s waited twenty-five years.”

  Into the Cold

  Lucinda attempted to study the drawings on her lap as the Wrangler bucked its way up Gore Pass, up beyond the farm fields, up into the Gore, leaving the town far behind as the road disintegrated to what seemed a rock-strewn creek bed, the tempest of snow obliterating visibility beyond a few feet.

  Lucinda’s head ached as she thought of confronting Jonah.

  “Where the heck does he live?” Dale said.

  “Keep going, it’s up here, somewhere,” Lucinda said. She was not certain where Jonah lived. She’d not been this way in years, but she knew roughly where he parked his truck off the road, and that there was a small trail from there to the cabin, though she was unsure how she and Dale would find their way in the snow and near darkness. There were mines up here that would swallow you and never give you up, and she was no longer a girl naive enough to believe herself immune to their dangers.

  As the Wrangler lurched upward, the snowfall diminished.

  Lucinda stared at her reflection in the sideview mirror. She’d forgotten about her injured face. She looked disfigured. The eye had shut tight as a walnut shell, swollen and tender with fluid. The gash, crusted black with dried blood, would leave a scar. What karmic forces are at work that I deserve this? she wondered.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, leaning across the seat to lay her head against Dale’s shoulder, and the Wrangler shuddered. She was bone-achingly cold, and tired—

  As the road crested, she saw through the now gentle snowfall a glint of chrome through the trees.

  “Stop!” she shouted. She thrust her finger toward the truck in the trees.

  “There?” Dale said. “There’s no—”

  “Pull in.”

  Dale cranked the Wrangler steering wheel as far to the left as it would go, the steering column clacking and whining. He eased the Wrangler in toward the trees, branches screeching on metal.

  “You’re shitting me,” Dale said and tucked the vehicle into the trees beside the truck, forced to pull onto a flat, precarious ledge, the Wrangler cockeyed and half off the ground. Lucinda wondered if they’d ever be able to back the Wrangler out, but that could not be a concern then.

  Lucinda got out and stood in the small clearing. The snow here was deep, up to her knees.

  The dusk woods were quiet and still, and the snow had stopped save the slow sifting of it as it fell through hemlock bows. The world crystalline. Purified with its cold. The scent of the hemlock made her think of the pit. It was near here, wasn’t it? Or had they passed it, farther below? They must have gone by it long ago. She and Sally had never ranged up this far. Had they? Perhaps the slow going and the dark had only made it seem she was now farther up in the Gore than she actually was, or perhaps as girls she and Sally had ventured farther up into the woods than they realized. She could not be sure. The woods had changed in the past decades. They were not the same woods. They’d grown all the more dense and forbidding. And she’d never entered them in the dark.

  She searched for the path that led to the shack, turned on the headlamp as darkness descended, the light a trifling against the deep black of the woods. She could not locate a path, though she knew one must be there, somewhere. If she could not find one, she’d make her own.

  “Now what?” Dale said.

  “We hike.” Lucinda pointed into the woods, spotting what seemed a wisp of a trail.

  “We shouldn’t be here in the dark.”

  But Lucinda was already pushing into a darkness so absolute it now seemed a physical presence, the headlamp beam lighting only the tangle of branches most immediate, the blackness folding in behind her as she passed.

  The wind picked up again, screamed in the treetops. Icy snow bit into her wounded face. Several times she stopped, searching for the phantom trail she was sure she’d lost for good. The blowing snow covered their tracks behind them. She picked up the ghost of a trail again and forged on.

  She slogged ahead in the deep snow, eyes wet from the cold shearing wind, her hope for finding the cabin fading as her fear of being able to find their way back to the Wrangler intensified.

  “We’re close,” she said, though she had no idea if they were closer or farther from the cabin, or about to fall into a mine shaft with the very next step.

  Too Late

  The wind cried beneath the tin roof as Jonah seared a steak on the stove and Sally slept on the couch.

  She needed to eat so they wouldn’t have to stop until they were long gone. He’d wanted to leave earlier, but the blinding snow had come in so fast and hampered him, and he’d decided to wait it out. Despite the few gusts of wind blowing snow now, the storm had passed. It was time.

  He laid the rifle on the table, grabbed an extra box of rifle cartridges, and dumped a handful of cartridges into his trouser pockets, to have them at the ready.

  He flipped the steak.

  What was that sound?

  Cries? Voices?

  No.

  It was the wind.

  There it was again.

  Voices?

  Yes.

  Out on the porch.

  “Get up,” Jonah barked at Sally, who rested on the couch. “Wake up.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder and gently shook her.

  She did not move.

  “Wake up,” he said.

  He shook her shoulder, but she didn’t move. She was as limp as a rag doll.

  What was wrong with her? Why wouldn’t she wake up?

  He cupped her chin in his hand and lifted it. Her head lolled, loose on her neck, like a sunflower too heavy for its flimsy stalk.

  “Wake up!”

  The voices outside rose.

  The sound of boots on the porch.

  Something was wrong with Sally. She was cold. Too cold.

  “Wake up,” he pleaded. “Please.”

  He placed his cheek to hers. It was cool. Waxen.

  “Please.”

  He shook her by the shoulder. Hard.

  “Wake up. We’re leaving. Going home.”

  He shook her harder.

  She moaned. Thank God.

  A knock came at the door.

  “No,” she said. “No no no.”

  He looked around as if for help, but there was no help to be had. He was alone.

  The knock came again.

  Who would come for him in this darkness?

  Not the loggers.

  The law. They knew. Somehow they knew.

  He looked into her eyes, his daughter’s eye
s.

  They were catatonic with fear. “No one will hurt you,” he said, “no one will take you from me again.”

  He scooped her up in his arms and rushed her into the back room, looked around for a place to hide her. Where. Where. There was but one place.

  The trunk. Open and empty.

  He knelt and set her into the trunk as carefully as he could. She made an odd soft crying sound, barely audible. Then fell silent.

  “Shhh,” he said. “Shhh.”

  He started to shut the trunk lid.

  “No,” she mewled and held up a palm against the underside of the trunk lid.

  “It’s the only way,” he said. “They’re here. They’ve come for you. They’ll take you. I know. I know it’s dark in the trunk. But it’s safe. It’s just like closing your eyes. Close your eyes and dream a nice dream and I will be back before you know it.”

  A fist pounded on the cabin door.

  “Please,” he said. “We’re out of time.”

  She nodded, a tear leaking down her face.

  He shut the lid and stepped to the doorway, looked back at the trunk. The lid remained closed. He shut the door behind him and hurried to the front door as its latch was jostled, and a voice cried, “Jonah!”

  Jonah grabbed the rifle from the table and eased open the door a crack to see her standing on his porch. Lucinda, and her man. The collar of her deputy’s jacket flapped against her neck in the wind.

  “What?” Jonah said.

  “How’s your hand?” Lucinda said and looked behind him to see into the cabin.

  “Better.” Jonah lifted his hand to show her.

  “That’s not better,” she said.

  “Better than it was. Better than your eye.” Her eye, her face, jarred him. It looked as if she’d been struck by a shovel. “Now you’ve seen it, go.”

  “I’d like to come inside. Talk.”

  A noise behind him disrupted his thoughts, but he dared not turn around to see what had made it.

  “No,” he said.

  The noise came again.

  Logs settling in the woodstove?

  Her?

  Had she sneaked out of the trunk?

  “We’re freezing out here,” Lucinda said. She smiled, trying to persuade him.

  “That’s not my fault.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Lucinda said.

  “Sit out on the porch all you like.” He made to shut the door.

  “Please. Look. Look at these.”

  She held something out to him, folded sheets of paper.

  He looked back up at her. “Leave me be. I told that asshole I’d be gone by spring.”

  “Why’d you go to your house the other night?” Lucinda said.

  How did she know he’d been in his house? Had the police been watching him? Had the ATV man been up here under false pretenses? Had Jonah been under suspicion the whole time? How long had they known he had her up here with him, how long had they planned to move in and take her from him?

  A hissing noise came from behind him. The steak, sizzling in the cast-iron pan. Fat melting. Burning. He’d forgotten it. If it got too hot, it would catch fire.

  “Please leave.” He tried to push her from the open door. But she would not budge.

  “Why were you in your house?” Lucinda wedged a boot between the door and jamb.

  “I wasn’t.”

  He could smell the butter now. Scorching. Its acrid smoke.

  “I know it was you,” she said.

  “So what? It’s my place. It’s my house.”

  “I found these,” she said.

  She thrust the papers toward him.

  “Everyone’s shoving papers at me,” he snapped. He eyed her. And her man who stood behind her. Why must she torment him like this? Why didn’t she just come in and take her? If she wanted to arrest him, arrest him and get it over with, end it. Maybe she was trying to ease into it, knowing he would not give her up without a fight. Not now. He clutched the rifle more tightly.

  “You have no right being in my house. Taking my stuff.” His fear of being caught with Sally was being edged by his ire at his privacy being trampled.

  “Have you seen these?” Lucinda said. “Please, Jonah, look at them.”

  For a moment Jonah saw the girl Lucinda had been; the heartbroken innocent girl who’d thought she would stop by to see if Mr. B. wanted to go find his daughter with her in some pit in the woods. Sweet little Lucinda.

  “I got a steak burning,” he said.

  The pan spewed smoke. Any second now, it would erupt into a wild grease fire.

  “Look at the damned papers, Jonah!” Lucinda shouted. “Look at them!”

  The pan burst into flames.

  “Jesus!” Jonah yelled and raced to the fire.

  Flames leaped from the pan as he grabbed a pot lid and slammed it down, killing the flames.

  A shadow passed at the bottom of the door to the back room.

  Or he thought it did.

  Damn it.

  He wheeled around. Lucinda stood inside the cabin now as smoke hung between her and Jonah. Her man stepped inside, snow blowing in behind him and melting on the floor as he shut the cabin door.

  “This has nothing to do with the logging company. This has to do with Sally.”

  So she knew. His heart squeezed into a rock.

  He moved up close to her. Close enough to see her good eye twitch at the corner. He clenched the rifle in his hand.

  He bit into the inside of his cheek, tasted copper as blood seeped.

  Lucinda unfolded a paper. What was it, a warrant for his arrest?

  His thumb worried at the rifle hammer.

  “Look,” she said, shaking the paper at Jonah. “Please.”

  Jonah finally looked. Nausea rose in him. The paper was a drawing. A black sky and a silver evening star in it. Stick figures streaked with red crayon.

  His own blood rushed out of him as if he’d been gutted.

  “Where’d you get these?” he said.

  “Her room.”

  “You have no right.”

  “I’m a deputy. I got a report someone was in your old place.”

  “Those weren’t in my house.” Jonah nodded at the drawings. “Those were not in my daughter’s room. I’d know. What are you trying to do? Why are you doing this?”

  “They were behind coloring book pages tacked on her bulletin board,” Lucinda said.

  “I had enough of getting blamed years ago. Arrest me if you’re going to arrest me.” But he would not be arrested. He would not allow it. He’d gone too far. If it all ended here, so be it. “Leave me be. Or I swear—”

  Lucinda laid the drawings out on the table. “She knew. Sally knew or sensed something wrong.”

  “I know all about the drawings,” he said. He lowered his voice, worried she would come out from the back room to see what was wrong. “Not these exact drawings. But I saw some. Your father found them and wanted to keep them. But we knew the state police would use them against me somehow. Twist everything all around. They were dying to pin it on me. Like they used everything against me. So I tore them up. He wanted to keep them, as possible evidence. But he left it up to me in the end, what came of them. He was a friend. The only one I had. Ever had. I don’t know what Sally saw to make her draw such things. Or maybe she saw nothing. Maybe they’re just a kid’s drawings. You two were hiding out in that awful pit. Scaring yourselves.”

  A shadow passed at the bottom of the door again.

  “There’s a girl missing,” Lucinda said. “The same age as Sally was.”

  So this was it. She’d been leading up to it. He was trapped. His hands were slick with sweat around the rifle. “I heard,” he managed to say.

  “And?” Lucinda said. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think anything.”

  He looked at the drawings. Glanced at the door to the back room.

  “The girls are the same age. Sally and this new missing girl. Same eye colo
r. They look a lot alike. Could be sisters, or even—”

  Not the same eye color, Jonah thought. The same eyes.

  “There’s a lifetime between their disappearances,” Jonah said. “It’s got nothing to do with me.” A shadow seemed to pass under the door to the back room. “Go.” He jerked the rifle up at his hip and pointed the muzzle at her gut.

  “Hey,” her man said, stepping back. “Easy.”

  Jonah lifted the rifle to his shoulder and squinted down the barrel at Lucinda, at the center of her chest. No missing from here.

  His thumb rested on the hammer.

  “Easy,” her man said again.

  Easy was right. Jonah could shoot them both right here. Easy. Hide her Wrangler. The bodies. Drop them down a mine shaft. Never to be seen again. Easy. He’d do it. He would. He’d be gone a month before anyone found Lucinda and her man up here. If anyone ever found them.

  “There’s no need for that,” the man said, backing up more.

  “I decide what there’s a need for in my home,” Jonah said.

  He heard a sound behind him. If she came out now, she’d ruin everything. He did not want to shoot them in front of her. But he would, if forced.

  He held his breath tight. His trigger finger buzzed against the trigger.

  “You were a good girl,” he said. “You were my daughter’s friend. You knew me. You knew us. We let you come and go as you pleased. You were family. How could you think that I did—”

  “You? I don’t think you did it. Listen to me. Trust me.”

  Trust. He’d abandoned it twenty-five years ago.

  “The star,” Lucinda said. “It’s not a star. She had my doll. Sally, she had my doll. It was Beverly at your house.”

  Jonah didn’t know what she was talking about. Nonsense to distract him. He pushed the rifle muzzle at her.

  In his periphery the shadow passed under the back door.

  Lucinda’s eyes followed his.

  “What is it?” she said, staring at the door to the back.

  “Rats,” he said.

  “Luce,” her man croaked, “let’s go, before he kills us.”

  “Wise words,” Jonah said.

  Lucinda stepped toward Jonah, looked him in the eye. “You never killed anyone,” Lucinda said. “You aren’t going to start now.”