Big Woods Read online

  I parked behind a giant, shaggy oak tree, its branches splayed out like pudgy arms: the perfect cover for my old station wagon. I strapped the camera around my neck and slipped an old fishing knife of John’s down the ankle of my boot.

  With the sun setting, the sky was lit up in blues and peaches so that the silhouettes of the oaks looked like dark, shifting figures moving against the skyline. I walked along the edge of the woods, careful to stay far from the road, and tried to blend in with the trees. The previous night’s rain helped to soften my footsteps. My plan was to find a spot to hide and wait there until nightfall in the hopes I would be able to snap some photographs and then slip away unnoticed.

  Walking near the cemetery, I found an old stone structure—like a mausoleum—the perfect hiding place, and I was just about to reach it when I saw a man dressed in a white robe and hood striding out of the woods.

  I froze in place but it was too late, he started running for me. I bent down and grabbed the knife out of my boot and slipped it out of its case, then turned to the station wagon and started running as fast as I could. I looked back over my shoulder and to my relief, the man took off in a different direction. I kept running until I got safely in my car, but then saw that he was running for a white truck parked behind a stack of hay bales that I hadn’t noticed before.

  I started the engine and turned the car around and was speeding down the red dirt road as fast as I could, the undercarriage banging on the dips, when he came roaring up behind me with his brights on, getting as close to my bumper as he could. He layed on the horn and started hollering out his window and flashing his lights at me, but I didn’t slow down until it was time to turn onto the blacktop. Instead of turning left, to the interstate, I turned right and floored it.

  He was right on my bumper and I thought he was about to hit me, but then he swerved around and passed me. I wouldn’t look his way, but I eased off the gas and let him pass. To my surprise, his truck sped off in the distance, as if he were trying to get away from me.

  I pulled over on the side of the road for a few moments to catch my breath. The adrenaline rush had leeched my body of any power. My arms and legs felt slack, but I couldn’t seem to slow my heart rate down.

  I made a U-turn on the blacktop and headed back to the highway. The moon had risen and was bright, but bluish-black clouds drifted across it, clotting its surface. My body was drenched in sweat so I cracked the window to let in some fresh air.

  The road dipped down and just as I was about to reach the basin I heard a car blast out of the woods to my left, its headlights slicing through the trees. I thought it would stop when they saw me approaching, but instead they raced out of the drive and pulled straight across the road, stopping and blocking my path. It was a dark brown El Camino with two figures in the cab. I braked hard, stopped, and threw it in reverse and was trying to back out when I saw the white truck pull up behind me, parking perpendicular like the other car, completely boxing me in. I rolled up my window and kept the engine running. Blood pounded in my temples.

  Two men got out of the El Camino and also, out of the white truck, surrounding my car. They were all dressed in the same eerie outfits—the white hoods and robes.

  “Get out!” one of the men shouted at me. “Out! Or we will kill you!” He was waving a snub-nosed pistol in my direction.

  I opened my door and stepped out with my hands in the air. My camera still hung stupidly from my neck, swinging clumsily over my breasts. The man who shouted at me saw it and ripped it off my neck, the cord burning the skin, and smashed it into the ground and then kicked it with his cowboy boots until it was just a pile of shards.

  “Our friend here has told us that he saw you at the cemetery. Tonight and, also, the other day.”

  “I’m just an old lady, and I’m confused, I was looking for my great aunt’s grave,” I managed to say.

  “Well this is our town,” said the man from the truck who chased me through the field, giving me a hard shove, making me stumble. “You have no business here.” Another man was behind me and put a black-gloved hand over my mouth. I thought he was going to suffocate me, but then he put a burlap sack over my head and pushed me to the ground.

  Through the burlap sack, I could still hear the men but their voices were muffled. They seemed to be having some kind of discussion, probably about what to do with me. I was bracing myself for a kick to the gut, or worse, a gunshot, when I heard one of the men say, laughing, “Trust me, she won’t be coming out here again.”

  When I heard his voice, and especially his laugh, my blood went cold. I lay there on my side, still as I could, until I heard them walk away and heard the succession of four doors clapping shut and both vehicles pulling away.

  58

  Leah

  Friday, December 8th, 1989

  Lucy missing 10 weeks

  Today is our birthday. I can’t believe we’re not together. I can’t remember a time when I celebrated a birthday without her. I know I have. I’ve seen the pictures from my earliest birthdays before Lucy was born—me at one year old with cake smeared all over my face and highchair; my second birthday, me toddling around our backyard in a red pea coat—but all of my memories are of carting her around and us wishing each other a happy birthday all day long. Happy birthday, Lucy, Happy birthday, Leah, our own private volley.

  My fever finally broke in the middle of the night, soaking my sheets through. Mom has stripped the bed and I’m running myself a bath, filling our coral tub with the hottest water I can stand. I haven’t bathed since I’ve been sick. I step out of my pajamas and slip into the scalding water. I lather up my hair in the tub, then drain the water, letting the suds foam at my feet and run a pounding shower and wash my hair a second time. After I’m scrubbed clean I get dressed in a long wool cardigan and jeans.

  Mom has fixed us French toast for breakfast and I devour the buttery, spongy squares—the first real meal I’ve eaten in days. When she goes upstairs to shower, I step outside.

  It’s bright and clear and when the sun hits my eyes, it feels like they’ve been bruised; it’s been so long since I’ve seen daylight. The wind is cold, sharp, and I pull my sweater tight around me as I walk to the edge of our woods kicking football-sized pinecones as I go.

  “Happy birthday, Lucy,” I say, as boldly and as loudly as I can, but as soon as the words leave my mouth, the wind picks them up and slaps them to the ground.

  At the car dealership, Mom and I sit at a round, gray table while an old man with a thick cough and polished shoes shuffles through paperwork for Mom to sign. Dad’s a no-show.

  “Oh! I forgot the most important part. The keys!” he says, pushing back from the table, his polished shoes clicking across the even-more polished floor.

  Outside, Mom hands me the keys. “Happy birthday, darling,” she says, and tears prick both of our eyes. We were supposed to have an early dinner at Steak and Ale, but without Dad, we’ve decided to head home and order pizza.

  I climb into my new Ford Tempo and for a brief moment, I feel giddy. The car is immaculate with creamy leather interior and that new-car smell, and it’s the first car we’ve had with power windows.

  I lower the windows and turn on the radio, fiddling with the dial until I find the top-40 station. “Shout” by Tears for Fears is playing. I turn up the bass and blast it, and dance in my seat. I sing along and am in a happy bliss until the next song comes on. It’s that “Rock Me Amadeus” song and a memory of Lucy rips through.

  We are younger—she is eight and I’m twelve. The song has just been released and the radio plays it nonstop. One Saturday afternoon Lucy was alone in the den watching MTV and I walked in and the song was playing and Lucy was singing into a pretend microphone, standing on the coffee table, but she got the words all wrong and was singing, “Rock me on my desk.”

  “What, do you mean like on your school desk?” I teased her and it became a runni
ng joke between us.

  I’m a hot puddle of tears by the time I pull into the driveway, but I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my cardigan and try and make myself sound chipper when Mom asks me with childlike excitement, “So, how does it drive?”

  We sit together in front of the TV eating our pizza, my legs draped across Mom’s lap. She has made us a tray of brownies and we each eat two before we climb the stairs to go to sleep. We kiss each other goodnight at the top of the stairs and I turn to go to my room but decide to sleep in Lucy’s room instead. I fold myself into her bed and whisper, one last time today, “Happy Birthday, Lucy.”

  In my dream, I wake up in the middle of the night in Lucy’s bed. Her nightlight is on and she is sitting cross-legged in front of it, playing with her Lite-Brite. She sees me and smiles and turns it around. In a rainbow of colors, it says Happy Birthday Leah! I leap out of bed and hug her and take it from her and make one that says Happy Birthday Lucy! I spin it around to show her and she squeals, but then I take it back and write Where are you? She takes it from me and furrows her brow, and fiddles with it forever before finally spinning it around.

  In the Bad Church.

  Then all of the words fade away and it forms itself into other words.

  Hurry Leah!

  When I look up from the Lite-Brite, Lucy is gone.

  I wake up covered in sweat. I go over to her closet and her Lite-Brite is on the top shelf, packed away in its box.

  I think about the blacktop road from my dreams and the church that I fly by, but the only church I can think of near Big Woods is Shiloh and it looks nothing like the church from my dreams.

  I climb out of Lucy’s bed and step lightly into my room. I open my diary and record the dream, and then take my pink phone into the closet—I can tell that Mom’s already awake—and I call Nicolette.

  “Heeeey,” Nicolette yawns into the phone. “I’m just waking up. How are you?”

  I’m sitting on the floor, leaning against my laundry bin, and say as quietly as possible, “I had another dream. About Lucy.” And I try and describe the dream as best I can. “We’ve got to go back out there.” I’m twisting the cord around my index finger, turning it purple.

  “I dunno, Leah.”

  “But you believe me, right?” I say, my throat tightening up with emotion.

  “Of course, of course I do. It’s just—” she stammers. “I just don’t know what we can do about it,” she says. She sounds scared. “I don’t want to go out there again, I don’t want you to go out there again. I don’t want you to get hurt,” she says, her voice rising, and I know there’s nothing I can say that will make her change her mind.

  I think about taking the new car, but I’m only legally allowed to drive it to school and back and to extracurricular activities. But Mom has a staff meeting after school every Monday, so I make a silent plan that I’ll go out there then, and I whisper, quietly in my closet to Lucy, “I’m coming. Hold on until Monday.”

  59

  Sylvia

  I drove around in circles all night, trying to make sure I wasn’t being followed. My heart was racing and I jumped at every pair of headlights I saw. I even parked outside my church for a while, to see if I had really lost them, and waited until just before sunrise to head home.

  I walked through my back door and went upstairs to my altar and knelt and prayed to my long-gone mother, to John up in heaven, and also to St. Michael, the patron saint of protection.

  I crept back downstairs to the kitchen and made a quick cup of tea before heading back to the church. They opened the doors at dawn and I stepped inside the musk-scented sanctuary, choosing a pew near the front, and I prayed some more. The night man, Ray, was just finishing up his cleaning and he gave me a friendly nod as he slapped the wet mop against the wooden floors. He was a stout man and the sound of his keys jangling as he worked gave me some added comfort, knowing I was not alone.

  When my prayers were finished, I sat back in the pew and tried to calm my mind by staring at the chalky-white monastic walls of our little sanctuary. Ruby-red light was streaming through a window cut in the shape of the cross along the eastern wall, and through another window, I could see the tender, pink tips of a tulip tree beginning to bloom.

  I tried to focus on taking slow, deep breaths and after a few moments, I became so relaxed that I thought I might drift off to sleep. So I rose to leave, nodding goodbye to Ray, and made my way to the entrance of the church, pausing at the stone bowl to take some holy water to try and further shake the evil off.

  Outside in the sun-dappled parking lot, my station wagon sat next to Ray’s gray work truck, but there was not another car in sight. I was still safe, it appeared, but even though I had lost the men last night, one among them knew where I lived.

  My only hope was that hidden behind his hood and robe, he thought he was immune from me identifying him. And he would’ve been, had it not been for his heinous cackle, as wretched and distinct as it was when he was a boy.

  And now, I must also pray for something else: forgiveness. I pray that I’ll be forgiven for just now sharing this, but it’s something I buried many years ago and couldn’t bear to tell anyone. I never even told Hattie. The dreadful secret I’ve been carrying around all these years is this: one of the men behind those robes—the one that Delia knew as the preacher—he is my son.

  60

  Leah

  Monday, December 11th, 1989

  Lucy missing 10 weeks, 3 days

  In sixth period today, I wait until everyone else is busy with projects, and then cross the room to talk to Mrs. Nicholson, our yearbook staff teacher.

  “I’ve got my license now,” I say, matter-of-factly. “Can I get a pass to go and sell ads this afternoon?”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Nicholson says warmly, tearing off a crisp pink slip and fixing her silver-rimmed glasses on the edge of her nose as she fills it out. “Want to just go on home afterwards?”

  This is what I hope she was going to suggest. “Sure.”

  Big Woods is closer to the high school than my house, so I’m pretty sure I can beat Mom home. It’s strangely warm today and I peel off my jacket before getting into the car. I start the engine and notice my hands are shaking. This is one of those times when I wished I smoked like everybody else.

  When I reach the road that leads to Shiloh, I turn down it and see a long line of cars slowly streaming by. It’s not until I pass the hearse that I realize it’s a funeral procession. I pull over and wait for it to pass before heading on to Shiloh.

  When I finally get there, I can see that the gate to the graveyard is unlatched and opens to the scene of a just-finished funeral and burial. A black tent is still up with bright green AstroTurf underneath and a team of men is lowering a casket down into the red earth. With people around, the cemetery doesn’t look haunted; it looks normal. I park across the road, in front of the school, a hulking red-brick building with the roof blown off and the windows busted out like two eye sockets from a skeleton. Moss clings to the brick and the wind whistles through the empty building. I look across to the church and there’s an old man, tall and thin, locking the doors. I walk across the road. The man is dressed in a suit. His fingers are long and they dance over the keys like spiders.

  “Help you with somethin’?” he says. From inside the church, I can still smell the smells of funeral food: fried chicken, casseroles, cobbler.

  Tears flood my eyes. “I was just, I was just looking for someone.”

  The man looks at me with a grave look, a look of understanding, and lowers his head. “Sometimes when we lose things, important things, we can’t understand why. And we search and search and try and understand it, but some things we can’t ever understand, it’s just a mystery; it’s God’s plan,” he says, his voice raspy like old paper. He’s wearing thick glasses and has a cataract the shade of Mom’s milk glass pitcher.

&n
bsp; I stand there staring at the steps, twisting Lucy’s bracelet around my wrist.

  “But I do hope you find what you’re looking for,” he says, and places a firm, caring hand on my shoulder.

  I sink back into the car and feel foolish. Whatever this church is, it isn’t bad. I haven’t been able to find Lucy so far, so maybe she really is gone, like everyone else believes. Maybe the dreams really are my imagination. I start the car and roll past the cemetery and maybe it’s because of all the graves, but I can’t get this image out of my mind: Lucy’s name, etched on a black tombstone with her birthday followed by a dash and a set of dates I can’t make out and I pound on the steering wheel and say, “No no no no no.”

  I step on the gas and accelerate, but then I see flashing lights in my rearview mirror. My stomach clenches in a knot; it’s the police. I ease over onto the shoulder and watch as a chubby policeman heaves himself out of his car and walks toward me.

  I lower my window. The officer’s badge catches the afternoon sun and in tiny letters, above the badge number, it reads Sheriff Meeks, Starrville PD. It hits me then that I’ve seen this man before, the day we followed Carla Ray around at Caney Creek.

  “Leah, isn’t it?” the sheriff says. I nod. “I was trailing the funeral procession when I noticed you driving past,” he says, “so I figured I’d circle back to see if I could help you with something.”

  My heart is pounding and even though he hasn’t asked for my hardship license, I find myself fishing it out of my back pocket and thrusting it toward him. He waves it off. “That’s not necessary, hon, I’m not gonna ticket you.”

  I’m flooded with relief, but my mouth goes dry picturing Mom beating me home. “I was just, I was—” I start to explain but he interrupts me.

  “Listen, I’m sorry about your sister. And I think I know why you’re out here, Leah. And I can appreciate that.” Sweat pools on his upper lip; he wipes it away with a handkerchief. “But we are patrolling out here all the time, and if we find something, believe me, you’ll be the first to know. It’s dangerous out here, Leah,” he says, fixing his watery eyes on mine.