Page 84 of The Woods

Alice is about to get out of the car, but on an impulse tries a different tack. “Not long before she died, Ruth told me her sister’s story. How she went crazy because her family abandoned her and then got into some dark stuff. Witchcraft. Apparently conjuring something. A local man said that some kids claim to have seen it. That they called it the Witch in the Woods. Did you notice that weird symbol painted on the floor at the front door of Ruth’s house? With a Latin inscription? Donum Silvis. It means ‘gift of the woods.’ Do you think there’s any way it could all be related?”

The officer shifts in his seat to turn and face her, eyes narrowed as he scrutinizes her in the light from the house, probably to see if she looks as crazy as she sounds. “Ruth Crowley was always a big storyteller. And yeah, her sister went a bit crazy. Had to be institutionalized. But she was no witch. Just a sad old gal. Only thing she could conjure were complaints from the neighbors about how run-down she let the place get.”

“But the symbols. On the floor at Ruth’s front door. Could they mean something?”

“Only if we could be sure Ruth didn’t put them there herself. That could be pretty hard to determine though, with her dead and all.” He sighs again and rubs a hand hard across the rough skin of his forehead. Alice senses that his patience with her is running out. “Look, Ruth Crowley was an eccentric, lonely old woman. Losing her sister like that had a terrible effect on her, made her paranoid and angry. So, try not to overthink anything she told you. She’s in a better place now. Not stuck out in the woods all by herself.”

A shiver runs through Alice at his last few words.

The officer gets out of the car and comes around to open Alice’s door for her. “Don’t leave town for a few days,” he says before she can get out. “You’re not a suspect or anything, but we still may need to get in touch.”

“Thank you for bringing me home,” she says as she slides out of the backseat.

The officer glances at the woods around them. “No problem. Hope you can get some sleep after the night you’ve had.”

A crow caws as if on cue, causing both Alice and the officer to jump. They laugh together at their dramatic reaction. “Yeah, I’m not gonna lie,” he says, “these woods put me on edge.” He takes one last look around before getting back in his car.

Alice steps into a house that is dark and quiet. She’s glad none of her family are awake. She’s not up for a retelling of the night’s events. Despite being bone-tired, she goes to Quinn’s bedroom before her own. After his flurry of frantic texts, she didn’t hear anything back. She asked Geoff if he was okay when she called, and he’d said Quinn was doing great. Alice found that hard to believe but she let it drop, deciding she’d get Quinn’s version when she was home.

Panda is lying across the threshold to his room, guarding the closed door. She whimpers when Alice approaches.

“What’s up, girl?” Alice whispers, bending down to pet the dog. “Did you get locked out?” She stands up and opens the door, nudging Panda gently with one foot to go into the room. Instead, the dog hops up and scurries away.

Panda stands at the entrance to the kitchen, staring back at Quinn’s door, whimpering. Alice shushes her, and the dog skirts around her to resume her position on the floor in front of the room, but not in it. “Silly dog,” Alice whispers, scratching her on the head. “Are you keeping him in or keeping us out?” Her own question stops her short.

Opening Quinn’s door, she steps over the dog and tiptoes to the side of her son’s bed. Bending over to get a closer look at him, she inhales that all-too-familiar smell—damp earth, leaves, the woods. She wants to shake him awake, ask him if he went into the woods after her, if he feels any different. She wants to look into his eyes and make sure he’s still her Quinn. Something stops her. Instead, she leaves his room and goes to check on Polly.

Polly’s door is open just a crack, so she’s able to slip in without a sound. Her curtains are pushed wide open, revealing the wall of trees that sits just beyond. Alice tiptoes to the side of Polly’s bed and listens to her breathe, just like she used to when she was little. Back then, she listened for two sets of breaths. Polly and Lucy slept in the same bed for the first nine years of their lives, arms and legs entwined so that at times it looked like one body and two heads. Impossible to tell apart.

Bending down the same way she did over Quinn, Alices inhales as quietly as possible. Laced with Polly’s fragrant shampoo, it’s there, unmistakable—damp earth, leaves, the woods.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2023

Alice

Alice has no idea what time it is, but weak gray light makes its way through her bedroom curtains. Geoff is not in bed beside her, and the house is silent. Is it early morning, late afternoon? Thanks to Ruth Crowley’s tea, she ended up sleeping so deeply she’s lost all sense of time. After going into the kids’ rooms, Alice was shaken to the core, but she had no idea what to do about it, so went looking for the sedative samples in her work bag. They were all gone.

She took an extra-hot shower, hoping that might work. She was so tired, her eyes were burning, but every time she closed them, the horrible things she’d seen earlier that night came rushing back in high definition. The figure in the woods with its ashen, wrinkled face and black eyes, and Ruth Crowley lying dead on the floor surrounded by her confused, scared animals. Alice tried to breathe through it, visualized calming places, counted backward from one hundred, but nothing worked.

Finally, she went to the kitchen to dig out the tea that Ruth Crowley had given her. She was reluctant, having no idea what was in it and remembering the state of Ruth’s kitchen, but she was also desperate to rest.

She was able to get through only half a cup of the pungent, earthy brew, but that was enough. She went back to bed and within minutes fell into a deep sleep. She dreamed that she was out in her backyard in the middle of the night. She was wearing her pajamas but didn’t feel the cold. A deer stepped out of the trees and nodded at her to follow, so she did.

The deer led her to a clearing where a table was set with a tea service and a tiered cake stand piled high with cupcakes. Ruth Crowley sat at the head of the table looking very much alive, beautiful even, with flowers through her wild gray hair, a glow to her skin, and the one-winged owl on her shoulder. The one-legged raven sat at the spot on her left, and the blind fox sat at the spot on her right. Ruth motioned for Alice to sit down across from her, so she did.

“I finally figured it out,” Ruth said to Alice before biting into a purple cupcake piled high with icing.

“Figured out what?” Alice asked.

“Why my sister did it. Why she conjured the thing in the woods. All she wanted was a second chance.”

“A second chance for what?” Alice asked, looking down at a beetle crawling out of her teacup.

“A second chance to love her family. Properly this time. Without the resentment or the rage that ruined everything the first time. The gift of the woods is rebirth.” Ruth pointed at Alice. “But not for you. Or for my sister. Or for Justine Gordon.”

“What do you mean?”

“When the others went in the woods, they came back changed. They came back better. But not my sister, not Justine Gordon, and not you. Because you’re the mothers. You hold all the memories, good and bad, of your families. All the responsibility. Someone must hold it, and that someone is you. That’s what mothers do. The others come back better, but the mothers stay the same.”