Page 73 of The Woods

She tries calling out for Quinn, but her voice is weak, and the wind is loud. It howls around the house. Very slowly, still on all fours, the photo clutched in one hand, she crawls in the direction of her room. There is not a sliver of light to break up the blackness she moves through. Even at a snail’s pace, she bangs her head on the back of the couch; bumps her hip on the antique trunk they use as a side table. No pain is comparable to the one that has taken over the lower half of her body though—a hot, sharp knife stabbing into her belly.

When she feels the cool tile of the kitchen floor beneath her hands, she tries calling out again for her brother. The sound of him answering back floods her with relief. Then the flashlights from three different phones bob in the doorway of the kitchen and move toward her, blinding her as they approach. She slowly lowers her body to the tile, surrendering to the darkness and blinding pain, releasing the photo from her tight grasp.

“Are you okay?” Quinn asks.

“My stomach. It hurts so bad.”

The power surges back on, and the sudden brightness startles them all. Polly closes her eyes against it just as Sierra says, “Oh my God, is that blood?” In that moment Polly’s brain connects the hot, sticky feeling between her legs with the metallic scent in the air.

Polly reaches up and grabs Sierra’s wrist. “Is he here?” she whispers.

“Is who here?”

“Gray Gordon.”

Sierra looks over at Quinn and Ethan, her eyes full of apprehension.

“What happened?” Polly asks, then winces in pain.

“It doesn’t matter,” Quinn shoots back. “We need to get you to the hospital.”

“Tell me!” Polly uses the little strength she has left to yell.

“I was making fun of Sierra,” Quinn says. “Imitating her calling in the older Gordon kid. It was just a joke. But the framed photo of you and Lucy fell off the wall.” He pauses, his eyes darting over to Sierra and Ethan. “And then the power went out and a rock, or something hard, smashed against your bedroom window.”

Alice

They dressed as deer for the party. It was Geoff’s idea. He found headpieces made of deerskin, with the antlers attached. They both wore all brown clothing, and Alice painted their faces with white and brown face paint to finish the look. It’s the first time they’ve ever dressed in couple costumes. Alice had never thought of them as that kind of couple.

It’s Libby’s annual Halloween party. Alice didn’t want to come, but she promised Libby that she would. She’s not doing well—paranoia, jittery feeling, hot flashes, stress, fast heartbeat, irritability, restlessness. She’s experiencing it all and can’t decide if it’s because she’s perimenopausal or scared of her own house. She had to take an anti-anxiety pill from her bag of drug samples just so that she could come to the party. The kind of pill that makes her feel like there’s a thin glass wall between herself and her anxiety. That makes the woods feel very far away and not threatening at all. She doesn’t make it a habit, but when you walk around every day with a pharmacy in your briefcase it’s hard not to take advantage when you’re desperate.

Leaning against the kitchen counter, her deer head discarded, her fourth glass of wine in hand, her stomach sore from laughing, loose-limbed and relaxed from the alcohol and the pill, she knows it was the right decision to come. It was good to get out of the woods for a while and back to a life that still feels familiar. She can’t count how many nights she’s spent drinking wine in this kitchen. Nights when Lucy was alive and safe, only a few streets away in their old house, nights when early motherhood was so overwhelming that the freedom of escaping it for a few hours meant she drank way too much and hated herself the next day, nights when all she did was complain to her friend, having no idea how hard things would actually get.

Libby, who’s dressed as Frida Kahlo, is refilling the meat in a skeleton-shaped charcuterie board. Ralph is dressed as Diego Rivera. They only ever do couple costumes and have for the past twelve years. Her other close friend, Kathy, is sitting on the kitchen counter, dressed as a zombie nurse, while her husband has come dressed as a zombie doctor.

Alice has been telling them about life in the country. Including the story of the night Geoff got lost in the woods, and the few hours that her mother did as well. She tells them about the changes in Geoff that started after. Kathy asks if she can bring her husband over to get lost in the woods for a night as well. They all laugh. The whole thing does sound ridiculous, Alice thinks. Maybe that’s why she goes on to tell them about falling into the field of ferns and seeing what she thought were her husband’s and mother’s dead bodies. She’s hoping that her friends will find a way to lighten that experience too. They don’t. When she finishes telling it, they both stare back at her in silent shock, eyes wide, mouths open.

Libby abandons the skeleton charcuterie to come over to Alice. “Do you think you got a concussion?” She peers into Alice’s eyes. “Have you had any other hallucinations?”

Alice gives her a gentle push away, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. “I’m fine. I went to a doctor. And anyway, it was weeks ago. I haven’t seen anything like that again. All I’m saying is that the woods are a strange place. They feel…” She pauses, searching for the right word.

“Fucking creepy?”

Alice takes a hand off the counter and slips slightly to the right. “Yes, Kathy! Fucking creepy! Even the woman who owns the other half of the property warned me not to go too far in there.” Alice hadn’t planned on telling her friends everything, but the wine and the familiar surroundings are making her loose-lipped and needy for trusted opinions. She hadn’t realized how isolated and lonely she’d been feeling without her friends.

“Okay, wait, what?” Libby says, now filling up a Ouija-board bowl with chips. “Who warned you to stay out of the woods?”

“Are you telling stories again, Alice?” Geoff says as he walks toward the kitchen. Just before the threshold, while he’s still in the dark of the hallway, the light from the kitchen hits his eyes and they shine all black. It’s only a split second, because when he steps into the room, the effect is gone.

“Oh my God, are you wearing Halloween contacts?” Kathy asks, squinting at Geoff. “Your eyes looked so wild there for a second.”

Alice lurches forward and grabs her friend’s arm. “Okay, wait. You saw it too? That black shadow in his eyes?”

Kathy glances over at Geoff. “Umm, I’m not sure what it was. His eyes looked different for a second. I thought it was part of his costume.”

“Ha,” Alice says triumphantly, pointing at Geoff. “I told you something weird was going on with your eyes, but you said I was seeing things. My mother too; it happened to her, and she said it was because I was getting a migraine, but I never did get a migraine, did I, Geoff? And Ruth’s cardboard box disappeared but you and my mother told me you never saw it, that I must have just forgotten where I put it. Everyone acts like it’s me, but it’s not me. It’s them.”

Geoff is trying hard to ignore her, focusing on finding the right piece of cheese in the skeleton charcuterie, refusing to engage. She glances over at her friends, hoping for some validation, but they look confused. An awkward silence hangs in the room and Alice’s relaxed party mood quickly evaporates.