Still Waters (12 page)

They slowly pushed their bikes over. The woods stopped abruptly at the clearing, as if a curtain of trees had been lifted. At the center stood a tiny church which must have been white at one point but which was more gray now. Its windows were boarded up and part of the roof sagged dangerously. Around the church, gravestones stood in roughly concentric circles. Even from a distance, Hannah could tell they were old ones—some lay tumbled
on the grass, others were stained with long dark green streaks.

“What is this place doing back here?” She felt like she should whisper for some reason.

Colin raised his camera to his eye and clicked off a shot, then walked into the clearing. “There were probably other houses around at one point, something like that,” he said. “Look at that one.” He stopped and pointed to one of the graves, a large cross which had fallen over and was partly covered by tall grass, pinning it to the ground. “Dorcas Rejoyce,” he read.

Hannah bent down, pulling aside the dry yellowing clumps, and inspected the barely-legible etching. “1805. Over two hundred years.” She focused her camera on the grave. It looked different through the lens, removed, like a picture she was about to paint. Beside her, Colin’s shutter clicked again and again as he photographed a worn granite angel on top of another grave. Just then something rang, faintly, like bells. Hannah looked around and, for one dream-like instant, thought that one of the graves was ringing. Then she realized it was only Colin’s cell phone.

He dug the phone from his pocket as it rang once more, then stopped. Colin glanced at the screen.

“Who was it?”

“My mother. There’s no service here though. Zero bars, but that’s a good thing. Gives me an excuse not to talk to her.” He thumbed the keypad rapidly and then stuffed the phone back in his jeans. “I just texted her that everything’s fine. That’ll keep her off my back for a few days.”

“But there’s no service. Will she even get it?” Hannah turned
from Dorcas’s grave and wandered toward the church.

“I don’t know. No?” Colin laughed a little. “It’ll go through once we’re back at the house. There’s some reception there.”

Hannah knelt down and angled her camera upward, peering through the viewfinder. The church reared up against the overcast sky, gray against the whitish clouds. The boards on the windows stood out like wounds. Hannah lowered her camera and rose, looking around for Colin.

For an instant, she didn’t see him among the gravestones, and her heart did a quick double jump. Then she spotted him, standing up on the steps of the church.

“Colin, what are you doing?” she called.

He was trying to peer through a small window to the right of the door, the only one unboarded. “Just checking things out,” he said. He rattled the iron door latch, but it was locked tight.

Hannah glanced quickly through the dusty glass. She couldn’t see much, just the looming shapes of some furniture draped with white sheets. Still, it was like looking through someone’s bedroom window. She grabbed Colin’s arm. “Come on. This place is giving me the creeps.”

Colin rolled his eyes. “Worried the ghosts are going to get you?” he teased as Hannah hurried down the decaying steps.

“Yes, if you must know,” she said over her shoulder.

Colin followed behind her but suddenly stopped. “Hey, cool,” he said.

“What?” Hannah said impatiently.

He vaulted off the last few steps around to the far side of the
church. Blueberry bushes grew thickly along the side of the old stone foundation there, basking in the heat of the western sun and clustered with so many of the bright, fat berries, they were almost sagging under the weight.

“Awesome,” Hannah breathed. She climbed off the steps and plucked an experimental berry. It was soft and rich, hot from the sun. “Mmm,” she said, busily plucking and eating.

Colin grinned at her. “I thought you wanted to leave.”

Hannah couldn’t help smiling back. “I do. After we get enough for a pie or something.” For several minutes, they picked side-by-side in silence, the sun burning through the cloud cover, hot on their backs. The air was very still on this side of the church and scented with the rich, syrupy berry smell.

Then Hannah looked around, both hands full of berries. “I need a bucket.”

Colin looked around also and then pulled his T-shirt off over his head. Quickly he tied a knot in one end, and held out the makeshift bag triumphantly.

“Nice.” Hannah laughed, admiring the way the sunlight gleamed off his tan shoulders. The smooth muscles in his back rippled as he bent over the bushes once more.

Without thinking, Hannah leaned over, turning her head sideways, and laid her cheek down on his smooth back. His skin was hot from the sun and smelled deliciously of Irish Spring soap. Colin straightened up and turned around, wrapping his arms around her waist. Bending her backward, he pressed a long kiss against her throat. She could feel her pulse
beating hard. The quiet forest noises around them—the rustling pine boughs and the occasional squawk of a robin from the trees—disappeared, and the world narrowed to a point as she focused entirely on the pressure of his cushiony lips against hers.

After a few minutes, Hannah straightened up, a trickle of sweat running down her side and into the waist of her shorts. She stood for a minute, heavy T-shirt bag in hand, looking out into the woods.

Colin put his hand on her back. He smiled at her a little and took her hand. “Come on. We’ve got plenty.”

Hannah followed him around the side of the church, glancing behind her once as Colin led them back to the path and the bicycles. For a moment, she half expected to see someone standing there among the graves, someone like Dorcas, waiting for them, and her body tensed in anticipation. But there was no one, of course. Just the tall dry grass lying over in swathes and the quiet, patient gravestones.

They collected the bikes, and Colin tied the blueberry bag to his handlebars, where it swung heavily. The path continued past the church clearing, curving to the left and into the trees. Colin pointed. “You want to take that way back? It’ll be more interesting than the main road.”

Hannah wrinkled her forehead. “Are you sure that’ll take us back?”

“Hannah, lighten up. It curves around. It probably meets up with the main path farther up. He started walking, pushing
his clanking bike. “Come on,” he called back over his shoulder. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“My sense of adventure is fully intact,” Hannah called after him, shoving her bike along. “Who was the one who thought to check out that old shed, anyway?”

They walked slowly down the path that wove like a stream through the tree trunks, following some unseen course of its own. This path was smaller than the one they’d taken on the way in, with roots lying in knotty lumps while branches reached down, gently scraping Hannah’s scalp and lifting her hair as if with caressing fingers. Riding the bikes was impossible, so they walked on and on for what seemed like hours, but which Hannah knew was probably no more than thirty minutes.

Finally she stopped, leaning the bike against her legs, and flexed her aching wrists and arms. Rust flakes had rubbed off of the handles and were now sprinkled between her fingers. She wiped her palms on the back of her jeans. “Colin, I’m getting so tired,” she called out.

He turned around. “Just a little farther, I think. The path might get wider up ahead and then we can ride.”

“How much farther, do you think?” Hannah asked, squinting into the distance. Just more shadowy trees. Her watch said two o’clock, which meant they’d been walking for over an hour. It was hard to gauge the distance back since they’d been riding the bikes. And that made her a little nervous.
The Blair Witch Project
flashed into her mind.
Don’t be stupid,
she argued with herself.
It just seems remote because you can’t see far ahead. There’re
probably roads and houses all around here.
Her stomach gave a loud gurgle, distracting her momentarily from her ruminations. She pushed up next to Colin and dug into the T-shirt bag swinging from his handlebars, shoving a handful of plump blueberries into her mouth. She was beginning to wish she’d never let Colin convince her to take this way when suddenly, the trees grew thinner up ahead.

“Look, Colin!” she pointed. A band of gray had appeared beyond the trees, layered with the blue sky.

“Oh, nice,” Colin said, walking a little faster. “I didn’t know this would take us to the lake.”

The path ended at another small, rocky beach, similar to the one in front of Pine House. They stepped onto the crunchy shingle and looked around. “There’s the house,” Hannah said. Pine House was about half a mile away, clearly visible against its dark green backdrop of trees. She could even see the blue towel she’d draped over the porch railing that morning after swimming.

“I don’t think it’ll take us too long to get back if we just follow the shoreline,” she started to say before she realized that Colin was no longer standing by her side. “Colin?” She turned. The beach was empty. “Colin!” she called.

There was a crashing in the underbrush. Hannah whirled around in time to see Colin’s bare back disappearing back into the woods.

“Colin! What are you doing?” she shouted. She sprinted after him, but he didn’t stop. He was zigzagging around the trunks of the trees as he hurtled back down the path into the woods again.

Hannah’s feet pounded on the hard-packed dirt. Her breath whistled in her ears. “Colin!” she shouted again. The beach was rapidly disappearing behind them, the path weaving into the darkness. Hannah forced her feet to run faster. A branch whipped her in the face.

Up ahead, she saw Colin stumble on a root. She closed the few feet in between them and grabbed his arm. She was shocked to find the muscles hard as a rock beneath her grasping hand.

“Colin, what are you doing?” she panted. He turned around slowly. A thrill ran through her when she saw his expression—it was blurred, dreamy, as if a sculptor had passed a hand over his face, half rubbing out his features.

He stared at her as if he couldn’t remember who she was.

“Colin?” Hannah could hear her voice rise. He blinked, and the blurry look disappeared. His expression returned to normal.

Hannah dropped her hand slowly. Her heartbeat slowed. Colin looked around.

“Why’d you come back here, Han?” he asked. “I thought we were going home.” He turned and started down the path again toward the beach.

Hannah stared at him. “Colin, what is the matter with you?
You
started running back down the path.”

Colin’s brow creased, as if he were concerned about her, and he placed his hand on her shoulder, rubbing it for a second before dropping his arm to his side. “Hey, we’re both tired and hungry. I don’t know why we’re arguing. Let’s just go home, okay?”

Hannah stared right into his familiar blue eyes. He looked back at her—his face as clear and sweet and open as always. “Okay,” she said slowly. “That’s probably a good idea.” She swallowed and took his hand. It was ice-cold.

The air in the bedroom was dampish when Hannah awoke from her nap later that afternoon. The window was gray, as if someone were pressing a sheet of metal against the pane, and the thick, rank smell of the lake hung in the room. Hannah shivered and, turning over, pressed herself more firmly against the warm, sleeping bulk of her boyfriend, groping around at the same time for her phone, lying beside her. She picked it up and squinted at the screen. Six o’clock. Jesus, they’d been asleep for almost two hours.

Hannah closed her eyes to see if she wanted to go back to sleep. But after a minute she opened them again. She was awake—might as well get up.

Colin was still sleeping peacefully, lying on his side with the blanket pulled up under his chin and his hands tucked under his cheek. On impulse, Hannah fumbled on the bedside table for her camera. She’d take a couple shots of him sleeping like that and show it to him later.

She bit back a giggle and groped around some more, then raised her head. On the bedside table were the drippy remains of a candle stub stuck in a saucer, a battered book of matches, and the stack of books, but no camera. She laid her head back onto the pillow with her hand on her forehead as she tried to remember where she’d put it. Where did she have it last? She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember. At the cemetery. She’d snapped those shots of the gravestones. And then she’d set it on the church steps to pick the blueberries … damn it! She’d left it on the steps.

She made herself take a deep breath.
Stop worrying. It’ll be there later. It’s not like someone’s going to steal it out there in the woods.

But it was so cloudy out. Hannah slid her legs out from under the warm covers and padded across the floor to peer out the little window. She could just see the edge of the lake and the side of the weedy lawn. The gray clouds hung heavily, so close to the lake that they seemed almost to touch it. Far away, Hannah thought she heard the rumble of distant thunder.

That was it. Quickly moving as quietly as she could, she stuffed her feet into her sneakers. Colin made a muffled noise and turned over on his back, his eyes still closed. He threw an arm over his head.

Hannah paused with her hand on the doorknob and looked back. His eyes were sweetly closed with his thick lashes lying in crescents on his cheeks. She could wake him. But no. She remembered how to get there. At a brisk walk, she’d be back in an hour.

Moving as silently as she could, Hannah cracked the door and slipped out into the shadowy hallway. She glanced at the
cloudy sky and grabbed Colin’s navy hooded sweatshirt from where it lay on the couch. All around her, Pine House lay quiet and still, like a sleeping dog. Hannah was tempted to remain, curl up on the couch with the big sweatshirt wrapped around her, and fall asleep for another couple hours.

Instead she forced herself to picture her Pentax sitting on the lonely church steps like a patient turtle. She turned resolutely and slammed out the door.

Outside, the mud smell seemed more pungent than ever. The thunder came again, closer this time, like a wolf growling and advancing.