Page 29 of The Woods

Polly calls out a firm no.

She stares down at the jersey on her lap, thinking of her dead sister, wondering if someone, somewhere, has a piece of her clothing that they’re holding on to.

Polly feels such a strong connection to the Gordon brothers in that moment that she’s worried she may burst into tears. She lifts the jersey to her nose and is about to inhale deeply when a loud thud against the front door startles her. She tosses the jersey back onto the coffee table and jumps up off the couch as though she’s been caught doing something shameful.

There’s another loud thud and then the front door bangs open, revealing their coworker Ethan standing there with a pizza box in his arms. “You didn’t tell me we had company, Sierra,” he says, his voice sharp with annoyance. “I was only able to get a medium Hawaiian.” He kicks the door shut with one foot as he moves into the apartment. He drops the pizza box on the coffee table amidst the mess of Gordon-murder memorabilia. “Oh hey, you’re the new girl at the café,” he says, squinting to make out her features in the dimly lit room.

Polly nods and then starts toward the front door. “I better get going. My dad needs his car.”

Sierra emerges from the kitchen with a fresh beer in her hand and a frown. “But you just got here. We haven’t even talked about living in the murder house yet.”

“I’ll come back again. I promise.”

“Fine,” Sierra replies, pouting her pierced bottom lip.

“You wanna take a slice for the road?” Ethan offers. “We get it free from downstairs.”

“That’s okay,” Polly says, moving closer to the exit. “Thanks for the beer, Sierra.” She’s got one hand on the doorknob and is gently guiding the cat out of the way of the door with her foot.

“Which room is your bedroom?” Sierra calls out before Polly can make her escape. “The one at the side of the house with the tall windows or the one at the back of the house?”

“Umm, the one at the side,” Polly says, her hand still on the doorknob, glancing back over her shoulder.

“That was his room,” Sierra says, her pout turning to excitement. “The older Gordon boy. A girl I knew went to his house once and she told me all about it.” The line of sweat down Polly’s spine turns cold, and she shivers despite the heat of the place.

“Oh my God,” Ethan says with a mouthful of pizza, a small piece of pineapple flying from his mouth. “Would you shut the fuck up about the Gordon murders?”

Polly yanks open the door and races down the smelly steps. She’s relieved when she reaches the street, away from the heat and the smell of rising dough and cat piss, and stops to drink in the cool night air. She tries to shake the sorrow that feels heavy in her limbs after holding that basketball jersey in her hands. The idea of going home to curl up in her bed and wait for Gray is no longer as appealing as it was before.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

Alice

“It’s too nice a night to sit inside,” Geoff had said to Alice after dinner, proposing instead that they have a glass of wine on the back deck while the sun sets. She nodded, told him she was going to take the recycling out and would meet him there. She hoped he’d offer to do it for her, but he was too busy pouring the remainder of the bottle into his glass. Leaving none for her. She grabbed the recycling and headed outside, hoping by the time she got to the back deck she would have walked off her irritation.

Going around the side of the house, she notices what looks like a path into the woods, just outside of Polly’s room. Stopping to get a better look, she finds footprints in the soft dirt. Footprints that lead away from the house and are far too big to be Polly’s. Without thinking, her mind already imagining a million scenarios of serial killers, rapists, and serial-killing rapists stalking her daughter, she knocks hard on Polly’s window.

Polly’s there within seconds, yanking the curtain back, a wide smile on her face, which immediately disappears as soon as she clocks Alice. “What the hell?” she says through the screen. Ugly irritation all over her pretty face.

Alice points at the small path into the woods. “There are footprints leading into the woods,” she says loudly, so that Polly fully understands her concern. “Big ones. Man-size.”

Polly shrugs, her eyes narrowing. “So?”

“Have you seen anyone out here?”

Polly’s eyes widen and then roll back so only the whites are visible. “Jesus, Mom. You’re such a paranoid freak sometimes. It’s probably an old path from the people who lived here before.” She closes her curtains on Alice, ending the conversation.

Alice’s fear quickly drains away. Nothing can make you feel like a fool faster than your teenage daughter, she thinks. Looking back at the path, her paranoia is replaced with suspicion. Polly doesn’t seem concerned at all about male footprints right outside her bedroom window, which makes Alice think that she probably knows who they belong to. A boy. Could Polly already have some boy traipsing through the woods for secret visits? If anyone could, it’s Polly.

Stepping onto the path, Alice parts branches to make her way deeper into the trees to follow the footprints. They lead about thirty feet into the woods and then suddenly stop. Alice glances around to see if they pick up anywhere else, but all she sees is undisturbed ground and fallen leaves. Turning to go back, thinking that maybe Polly was right, it’s an old path that’s just slowly being covered over, she spots a tree a few feet away with a symbol carved into its base.

Moving closer, she knows right away that she’s seen it before. It’s one of the symbols carved into Polly’s floor—an upside-down triangle with a spiral in the middle of it and an X on the inverted tip. She searched it on the internet but could only find meanings of the individual parts: the spiral meant rebirth and the inverted triangle was feminine energy. Something is carved in the upper-left corner of the triangle. It’s tiny, so Alice has to lean down to get a better look.

The sun has started its slow descent and shadows have crept in, darkening the carving so that no matter how close she gets, she just can’t quite make it out. Putting a finger to it, she traces the lines of it, like reading braille—P. She gasps, pulling her hand away.

P for Polly.

Stumbling out of the woods she races around the corner of the house to where Geoff is sitting in a deck chair, halfway through his large glass of wine, scrolling on his phone.