In a Dark Wood (6 page)

“Tim.”

I glanced back. Luke was at the rear door of the house. He gestured with his chin.

I threw one last uneasy look at the bushes and moved out from the shadow of the house. Bloodred autumn leaves blanketed the ground, crackling underfoot.

Just like that, the ground gave beneath me with the shriek of rotten wood and corroded hinges. I crashed down through a pair of crumbling cellar doors and slammed into the hard-packed dirt floor.

Stunned, I lay on my side for a few seconds trying to process what had happened while dry leaves floated gently down around me.

In a dark, dark wood…
The words from the old children’s song ran through my mind in dazed refrain.
There was a dark, dark house…

My ankle hurt. My knee hurt. My hip hurt. My wrist felt broken. Somehow I’d managed to protect my head, but that had been hurting before I ever fell through the broken doors — and this wasn’t helping.

Thank God I hadn’t fallen on my back and shot myself.

And in that dark, dark house…

Light from the hole in the doors above me illuminated burnt and jagged timber — thank God I hadn’t landed on any of that — wooden shelves with dusty jars and dusty cans, some broken furniture. A kerosene lantern swung precariously over my head, creaking on its rusty hook.

“Tim, can you hear me?”

I realized Luke was calling to me, that he had been calling for some time now.

“Tim? Can you answer me?”

“I’m okay.” That was a slight overstatement.

“Tim!”

“I’m okay,” I called more loudly. Gingerly, I made an effort to push up. My muscles screeched protest. Maybe my wrist was sprained, not broken. I cradled it against my chest, tried flexing the fingers.

“Jesus Christ,” Luke’s voice echoed with relief. “I thought…look, don’t move. I’m coming down.”

Don’t move. Right…

I stared up. It was about a twelve-foot drop. Several steps led up to the broken doors, but they were blocked off by the broken timbers. The room itself was twenty feet long. Another set of stairs, probably leading up to the kitchen, vanished into the shadows.

Luke’s head withdrew from the broken opening in the cellar doors. A moment later a shadow flashed across, and then was gone.

What…? Was that a bird?

I heard a thud. Swift, hard. And then another.

Hair prickled on the back of my neck. I yelled, “Luke?”

Nothing. No answer.

I listened tautly. Listened…and heard something like…a sodden dragging sound.

I opened my mouth to shout for Luke again, but something held me silent. I swallowed hard, and crawled out from under the opening in the cellar doors.

Grabbing onto one of the broken timbers, I painfully pulled myself upright. Okay, I was still in one working piece. Now I needed to focus on getting out of here. I could try climbing through the debris blocking the cellar doors and breaking out that way, but that might be what someone was expecting.

I picked my way across the junk-strewn floor and hesitated at the foot of the stairs.
And in that dark, dark house…

Maybe I was…confused. Maybe everything was fine topside, and I needed to wait for Luke just like he told me to. The inner door was probably locked anyway.

Luke was pretty damned tough and pretty damned experienced. Nothing was going to happen to Luke that he couldn’t handle. Me, on the other hand…

My gaze fell on the shelf of dusty mason jars next to me. I stared. Picked up one of the jars. Wiped the grimy front on my shirt, studying the murky contents. Not peaches. Not tomatoes. I shook the jar gently and something small and round and unmistakable floated next to the glass, staring back at me.

I dropped the jar. It smashed on the floor, liquid mush spilling out.

“Oh, sweet Jesus…”

I reached out to steady myself on the shelf, and pain from my sprained wrist twisted through my nerves and muscles, snapping me back to awareness. I fumbled under my shirttail for the comforting weight of Luke’s .38.

I went up the short flight of stairs and tried the door. It creaked open onto a short dim hallway. Faded wallpaper and moldering carpet gave way to an old-fashioned kitchen.

A sweetish sickly pall seemed to hang in the dead air. It was hard to see. The only light came from the small window in the door that led out to the clearing behind the house. I could just make out dingy wallpaper, a grimy wall thermometer in the shape of a fish, and some filthy decorative plates on the wall — all in shocking contrast to piles of empty jars, broken dishes and bones.

A meat cleaver lay on the counter. A butcher’s knife lay on the floor. There were bones of all different sizes and shapes: like a macabre soup kitchen. Giant kettles sat on the cold stove and in the sinks and on tables.

There was a table in the center of the room. Feeling like I was sleepwalking, I moved over to it. The wooden top looked ink-stained. There were sheets and sheets of butcher paper covered with the crayon scrawls of a berserk child. Pictures of somber and serrated woods, tormented figures, and fire — fire or fountains of blood?

I crept over to the back door and peered out the grimy window. It would be dark soon. The clearing behind the house looked empty. No sign of Luke. No sign of anyone. But a shovel lay in plain sight on the bed of red and gold leaves. A shovel where there had been no shovel before.

I tried to hear over the thunder of my own heartbeat.

Evening sounds. Crickets. Birds. Frogs.

What the hell was I supposed to do? I had no idea. Even if it were possible for me to escape into the woods, I couldn’t leave Luke. Not until I knew…for sure.

I looked across the kitchen, across the boiled bare carcasses and glass lanterns and knives, to another doorway leading into another dark room.

Would he have had time to drag Luke inside the house? Or was he butchering him out in the woods right now?

Or was he hunting for me?

I glanced back at the cellar door. It gaped blackly.

I picked up one of the candles from the table, scrabbled around till I found matches, and stepped inside the adjoining room. Leaves and branches were strewn over the wooden floor, but otherwise the room looked startlingly normal: old-fashioned moth-eaten furniture, tattered draperies, china. There was a fireplace with the burnt remains of clothing and a shoe. Over the fireplace hung a large, framed photo of a WWI soldier.

At the far end of the room stood another doorway and a staircase beyond. The upstairs windows were not boarded. I’d have a better chance of spotting Luke and his assailant from the second floor.

Glancing down at a little pie-shaped table my attention was caught by the small pile of odds and ends: coins, hair barrettes —
large daisy barrettes
. I stared at them for a long moment. No worse than any of the rest of it, right? If I was responsible for this, I was responsible for all of it. All of it. All of these things had belonged to someone: buttons, keys, a silver pen…and one boy’s bone-handled penknife.

I reached out automatically. I recognized that knife. I’d lost it twelve years ago in these woods.

Picking it up, I was surprised to see that my hand was steady. Nothing like the anesthesia of total shock. I slipped it into my pocket, started warily up the stairs, gun at ready like I’d seen in a million TV shows. For all I knew there was a whole house full of these murdering freaks.

Halfway up the staircase I heard the kitchen door bang. I heard voices. An unfamiliar mumble and a groan that sounded like Luke.

He was alive.

My heart sped up with a hope I hadn’t dared entertain until then. I snuck back down the squeaking staircase and darted over to the kitchen doorway. I had a quick glimpse of long gray hair, a massive back, giant hands the color of mahogany. He was dragging Luke by his hair and collar across the floor. I could tell Luke was only partially conscious; he struggled feebly, kicking out like he was trying to get to his feet. His hands struck ineffectively at the powerful arms hauling him towards the cellar.

The Forester slid him like a sack of potatoes across the floor.

Luke groped blindly, and his hand found the butcher’s knife on the floor, closed on it.

The Forester, still muttering that incoherent litany, kicked the knife out of his hand, and then reached for the meat cleaver on the counter.

I stepped into the kitchen, thumb-cocked Luke’s revolver. “Stop,” I said breathlessly.

He tossed Luke back down, and turned, cleaver in hand. His face was seamed with scars and grime, tanned like old leather. There were leaves and twigs in his hair. His eyes were muddy and lifeless. I saw that there was not going to be any reasoning with him, but I said, “Don’t do it.”

He stepped toward me, and I instinctively stepped back, which I knew was a mistake. There was no way I was walking out of here while he was still standing. He lumbered toward me, and Luke grabbed for his ankle. The Forester slashed down at him with the cleaver — like you would swat at a mosquito.

I fired.

Saw the muzzle flash in the dim light, felt the gun kick in my hand. The bullet hit him in the shoulder. I’d been aiming for dead center, so that wasn’t so good. But I’d been distracted by my abject relief that he hadn’t cut Luke’s head in two, the cleaver crunching into the table leg, and missing Luke by inches.

The bullet didn’t seem to faze The Forester. He yanked the cleaver free and flew at me. I clamped down on the trigger and emptied the remaining five bullets into his chest. He piled right into me, heavy and hot and stinking like a bear, and I banged into the door frame and then crash-landed on the floor — with him on top.

The coppery smell of blood was in my nostrils; it was too dark to see him clearly anymore, just a black bulk crushing me. Wet warmth soaking into my jeans and shirt. I felt his teeth snapping against my throat, as I wriggled and kicked frantically to try and get free. Every second I expected to feel the meat cleaver chop into my bones. I swore and prayed and fought for my life.

I managed to get out from under him; he didn’t come after me. I backed up along the floor. He just lay there twitching and shuddering, his breath rattling in his throat.

Blood drenched my clothes, but I was pretty sure none of it was mine.

“Tim?” Luke reeled into the doorway.

“Hi,” I said faintly.

He staggered forward, nearly fell over the Forester’s body, and then dropped down beside me, feeling me over blindly. “Are you okay? Did he get you?”

“No. I mean, yes, I’m okay. He didn’t get me.” I put my arms around him. I needed contact with someone alive and warm and reasonably sane. I needed to reassure myself that Luke really was alive.

He hugged me back. Hard. “You’re
covered
in blood. Are you sure… ?”

“I’m sure.”

And then neither of us said anything. After a time the thing on the floor stopped moving. Stopped breathing. I wondered if I should be feeling guilty about that too.

Head buried in Luke’s shoulder I thought that somehow we were going to have to get back to Luke’s car, drive to where we could call for help, lead the police back here, spend the rest of the night giving our statements. I would probably be arrested, self-defense or not. Not held for long, hopefully, and I was pretty sure Luke would help me every way he could, and if I was lucky it wouldn’t even come to trial…