Dark woods, p.21
Dark Woods, page 21
Bernie turned and opened the door and Barlow went inside and then Lance and Bernie were alone.
“Good dog,” Bernie said.
“Yes.”
“Sad.”
“Yes,” Lance said.
Bernie sipped his coffee. Lance sipped his.
“My brother was like you,” Bernie said.
Lance was still. The night seemed to grow quiet. A vacuum of time and space created between the two men on the porch. It was a sentence ripe with meaning.
“Tall?” Lance asked.
There was a beat of silence, and then Bernie laughed. Loud and fast, an expulsion of air that turned into a snort. True laughter that had taken the man by surprise.
But then something changed. The laughter was stifled and replaced by the sound of heartbreak: quiet sobs. Bernie’s large figure bent at the waist in Lance’s peripheral vision, and the man rested his elbows on the railing. With the hand not holding the coffee mug, Bernie reached up and removed his glasses and then wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. Pinched the bridge of his nose with thumb and index finger and held it that way for several seconds while his sobs grew softer and his shoulders trembled less and less.
Lance let the man have his moment, let him compose himself of his own accord.
Bernie took in a deep breath and straightened himself again and took a fast sip of his coffee. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I…” He cleared his throat. “It’s been a long time since I cried over my brother.”
Lance turned and placed a gentle hand on Bernie’s broad shoulder. “I don’t cry much either,” he said. “My mother had a funny idea about crying. Though…” And now it was Lance’s turn to pause, take a moment for himself. “I’ve cried more in the last couple months than for as long as I can remember.”
“You lost her?” Bernie asked.
Lance nodded. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry. Losing a parent is tough, ’specially if you’re close.”
Lance nodded again. “Yes.” He wouldn’t go into more detail now, for this conversation was not about him. This was Bernie’s forum, as he’d been the who’d called this informal meeting.
Lance waited. Watched as Bernie’s gaze floated out across the yard again, his eyes focused on nothing, and a grin filled his face as he must have stumbled into a pleasant memory. The light from the kitchen windows and doors cast his long and monstrous shadow on the grass below.
“No,” Bernie finally said. “Not tall. Though we were both big for our age.”
Lance felt a tingle of excitement at what he thought Bernie might be heading toward. “Then what?” he asked. “How were we alike?”
“Jonny was …. special. Jesus, after all these years that’s still the best word I can come up with.” He shrugged. “But that’s what he was. We were both smart, good grades and all that, didn’t really have to try too hard. But Jonny had this … hell, it sounds crazy to say it out loud.”
“Sir,” Lance said, “there’s absolutely nothing you could say to me that I would think is crazy. In case you’ve forgotten, we just had a lengthy palaver about a devilish entity who lives in the woods and possesses people for sport and is quite intent to rip apart my soul.”
Bernie nodded. “I know. That’s what I’m getting at. You’re like him. You … you’re not like us, are you? The rest of us who are normal? You know things that you can’t explain how you know. And from the sound of things, you can see things others can’t. I don’t think Jonny could do that, but the other thing”—he tapped his temple with his index finger, exactly the way Lance had at dinner—“Jonny had that. He always had this extra sense about him, little things like knowing when there was going to be a pop quiz in school and when the school bus was going to be late. But bigger things too, like the time he knew exactly where to find Mrs. Jacobson’s dog who’d gotten out of the fence and had been missing for two days, and the time he looked me dead in the eyes at the homecoming dance our freshman year and told me under no circumstances was I to kiss Jenny Hodges, who I was sweet on at the time. The following Monday she wasn’t at school and missed three weeks sick with mononucleosis.”
Then Bernie’s face fell a bit, and he said quietly, “And sometimes … he knew when folks were going to die.”
Lance, who’d been astonished that he was hearing of yet another person who shared at least some of his gifts, now felt his eyes grow wider. “What?”
Bernie nodded. “Ma always dragged us to church. Come Sunday morning, Jonny and I would sit in the back, trying not to get in trouble, and sometimes Jonny would get real still, almost to the point he was barely breathing, and when I looked over at him he’d be staring straight at some other person in a pew, this look of … hell, I guess it was what it was—he just knew.”
“That they were going to die?”
Bernie nodded. “Mostly it was elderly folks. You know, the ones whose, let’s face it, time was limited. But sometimes it wasn’t. I’ll never forget the Sunday he stared at Brian and Martin Straub’s father for nearly the entire service. The guy couldn’t have been more than forty. Killed in an auto accident later that week. Brian and Martin and their mom moved to be with their mom’s sister shortly after.”
Lance was stunned at this. Despite all his own abilities, the idea of being able to predict people’s death seemed to be a whole different level of—
“Scary,” Bernie said. “Once I understood what was happening, that look of his scared the hell out of me, Lance. I used to have nightmares that I’d wake up in the middle of the night and Jonny would be standing over my bed, staring at me with that look on his face, and I’d know that I was next to go.”
Lance said nothing.
“But you’re stronger than he was, aren’t you?” Bernie asked. “I think you can do more than he ever could. A lot more.”
“Sir?”
“You see, back then, whenever Jonny would have these moments where he was finding things, or predicting things, or … watching people in church, there was this feeling I’d get along with him. I don’t know if it was some voodoo twin stuff, a link in our brains or whatnot, but it was like this little buzz, or maybe a tremor that I felt inside me … like static electricity in my soul.”
Bernie stopped talking, let Lance figure it out on his own.
“You can feel the same thing coming from me?”
Bernie shook his head. “Not exactly.” He thought for a moment, then said, “The feeling with Jonny, it was like he was a radio that would occasionally tune in to exactly the right frequency, and that’s when I’d feel it too, the signal crystal clear. But with you … you’re not a radio. You’re the broadcast tower.”
Lance wasn’t sure if the fact that Bernie could pick up on whatever psychic signal Lance seemed to be emitting was specifically because of some leftover connection between the man and his dead twin or if perhaps Bernie also carried a tiny bit of whatever gifts had inhabited Jonny. Voodoo twin stuff, as Bernie had put it.
“I felt it as soon as you sat down next to me at the diner this morning,” Bernie said. “And then, as we talked, I just found myself…”
“What, sir?”
Bernie laughed. “It was like I’d known you all my life. It was as if, in the span of only a matter of minutes, I had developed more trust in you, Lance, than anybody else on the entire earth. And when you asked me about the devil in the woods, I guess a big part of me got excited.”
Lance questioned the choice of wording. “Excited, sir?”
Bernie stood straight. Tossed the remaining dregs of his coffee over the railing and into the grass below. “Damn right. You see, Lance, there’s something else I haven’t told you. Something I’ve never told anyone, actually. Jonny’s death…” The man paused and swallowed down the emotion that tried to escape. Cleared his throat. “Jonny’s death was my fault. I killed him.”
Lance was confused. “Sir?”
“The part of the story that I left out earlier—hell, the part I’ve been leaving out all my life—is that after Jonny and I had finished our work that day and Daddy finally cut us loose to do what we wanted, Jonny didn’t want to go swimming. Didn’t want to go into the woods at all. Said we should try and hitchhike into town and see a movie instead.”
Bernie looked at Lance, his eyes red and still glistening. “But I was hot and sweaty and exhausted and all I wanted to do was get into the shade of the trees and soak in the creek’s cool water and I told him he was crazy for not wanting the same. And you know what he said to me, Lance? Do you know what my brother said to me only a couple hours before he was murdered?”
Lance shook his head.
“He said, ‘Bern, the woods are no good today.’”
He knew, Lance thought. He knew there was something bad in there.
“And you know what else?” Bernie asked. “When he said that to me, when he tried to warn me, I felt that fizzy feeling coming off him. Felt it right in my chest, and it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. But I didn’t care. I was a dumb young teenager with more swirling hormones and emotions than common sense or the ability to see logic. I told him I didn’t need him to come with me, that I’d go on without him.”
Oh no, Lance thought, thinking he knew exactly how Bernie was about to explain to him what had happened next.
“And that did the trick, Lance,” Bernie said. “Jonny stopped protesting and said he’d come with me, that he didn’t want me going alone. I told him he was being stupid, and if he wanted to go to the movies to go ahead, I didn’t need him to hold my hand—we’d been in those woods and that creek a thousand times. But he was adamant, and now he’s dead. All because of me.”
Lance was about to speak, to tell Bernie that it wasn’t his fault, but Bernie didn’t give him the chance.
“He sacrificed himself for me, Lance. He knew what was waiting for us in those woods—waiting for me, if I’d decided to go in there alone. So he went with me and that thing killed him instead of me. And, I mean, of course it did. It all makes so much more sense now.”
“Sir?”
“Think about what we’ve been talking about tonight. How you’ve been going on about how this thing wants to tear apart your soul, because it knows what you are, knows what you can do. Whatever side you’re on, this thing is clearly playing for the other team, right? Raging some unspoken war?
“It must have been the same thing with Jonny and me that day, right? Two kids asleep on some rocks, sitting ducks for a hunter who’d been waiting. Of course it would take Jonny—the one with the gifts. The one who might have been a threat. Snuff out a little light that was shining into its world of darkness.”
Bernie was talking fast now, his voice rising, his eyes glowing with anger that was resurfacing all these years after his brother’s death. He grabbed Lance by the shoulder and pulled him closer, leaning in as he said, “And that’s why I was excited when I understood what you might be, Lance. It’s why I invited you here. You’re my chance to make things right. A chance to avenge Jonny’s murder and, in doing that, help me ease some of my own guilt. I could never do it by myself. I’m not strong enough. I’m not like you and Jonny.” He loosened his grip on Lance’s shoulder and stepped back. “I’m just an old man who misses his brother.”
Both men were quiet then, silence working to clear the air between them, reset the mood.
“I’m sorry,” Bernie said. “For not telling you earlier. But…” He shrugged. “It was for your ears only. You understand, don’t you?”
Lance nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Bernie looked out into the trees for a long time, what felt like minutes. Lance finished his coffee and set the empty mug on the railing, his own gaze drifting to the trees as well, wondering what exactly it was he’d find in there. He asked, “Sir, I’m sorry if this is rude of me to ask, but I’m curious about something. When Beck was, uh, informing us of the town’s perception of you, she mentioned you’d been arrested for being drunk in public. That you showed up to the sheriff’s station waving a gun?”
Bernie sighed, and he sounded weary when he spoke. “I didn’t have a gun. That’s the town gossip working for ya. But yeah, I had too much to drink, got angry, and went down to the station and started yelling for them to find me some answers.”
“Answers to what?”
Bernie shook his head. “It was the anniversary of Jonny’s death, and I got sad, and then I got stupid. I knew they couldn’t do anything, but…” He trailed off.
“Rogers arrested you, didn’t he?” Lance asked, sliding pieces into place.
Bernie grunted.
“Sometimes I swear I hear his voice,” Bernie said softly.
Lance felt a chill run up his spine. “Who, sir?”
“Jonny’s. From out there, in the woods. It’s always faint. Never clear. But he calls my name, like he’s got something he needs to tell me. Sometimes I call back, but I can never make out what he says next. Like … like the signal’s not strong enough. Like I’m not strong enough.” Bernie turned back to look at Lance and said, “That thing about the devil destroying your soul … do you think that’s what it did to Jonny? Do you think he’s gone? Like, entirely gone, from this world and any other?”
Lance wanted desperately to say no. “I honestly don’t know, sir. I hope not.”
Bernie stared at him for a moment, then offered the smallest of sad grins and said, “I think I’ll be heading to bed soon.” He reached out to shake Lance’s hand. Lance shook it, firm and solid. “When are you heading in there?” Bernie asked, nodding toward the woods.
Lance thought about Leah, waiting somewhere in the house for him. “The morning, I think.”
Bernie nodded. “Good. Better not to go in the dark.”
Then the man turned and headed inside, leaving Lance alone on the porch.
29
Alexa took her mug of coffee from the kitchen and walked down the hall to the foyer, irritated at the sound of Beck’s soft footsteps following her.
She was irritated for a couple reasons. First, because she’d been wrong about Beck—they all had been, but that didn’t change anything. The woman who she’d shared the night with, the woman who she’d caught herself liking for more than just a quick sexual frolic, wasn’t the one who’d left the threatening note and called the police to try and get Alexa arrested. Which meant Alexa would have to apologize for the way she’d treated Beck when Lance and Leah had brought her along with them. Abducted her, if Alexa wanted to be blunt about it, which she supposed was even more reason to offer up her apology.
Alexa hated admitting she was wrong, and she hated apologizing. It was, perhaps, the most unnatural thing she was forced to do from time to time.
The other reason she was irritated was that, now that she had no valid reason to find immediate fault with Beck, she had no immediate reason to end things with her. The thoughts of finally trying to find some solid ground in her life, to pick a place to attempt to settle down, hadn’t left her since her conversation with Bernie on the porch. But she knew that place to settle would not be here—not after everything that had happened, and everything that might. Whether or not Lance succeeded in his battle against whatever waited for him in the woods, the outcome for all of them would be to get the hell away. Fleeing a place where it was unsafe for them to stay either because of questions asked and law enforcement officers prying into their pasts and wanting answers to the questions that they could not answer, or because there was still a demon who was hungry for them.
So, since Alexa couldn’t stay, Beck would have to be left behind. Unless…
No. No way. I barely know her.
Alexa stopped in the foyer and picked up her duffle bag, carefully slinging it over her shoulder without spilling coffee. Though she knew it was only in her mind, she took solace in the comforting weight of the plastic pill bottle she knew to be safely tucked away inside the bag. But the immense gratitude she felt toward Lance and Leah for taking the risk of retrieving it was tainted with guilt. They could have died, she thought. Then, surprisingly, she wondered for the very first time if she planned on keeping the bottle for the rest of her life. If she did in fact find a place to start a life for herself, would the pill bottle be a permanent fixture, or would she finally allow herself to leave her past behind? Let the memory of her father vanish away with all the pain she’d carried all these years?
Alexa pulled herself away from her thoughts and found Beck standing a few feet away, holding her own mug of coffee in both hands and watching her with what might have been trepidation. The two women stared at each other silently, both apparently waiting for the other to go first. Leah emerged from the kitchen and walked down the hall to join them. She grabbed her suitcase off the floor and said to Beck, “I’m sorry we kidnapped you, but I hope you can see why we were suspicious. Lance might be comfortable with all this craziness, but I’m pretty new to it all. I could have handled it better, and again, I’m sorry.”
Beck shrugged. “After hearing everything, I suppose I might have done the same. You know, if I was crazy like y’all.” She smiled, but Alexa thought there was still truth behind the words, as if Beck still wasn’t fully invested in all the talk of devils and possession and soul destroying. And if she wasn’t invested in any of that, it could be assumed the only reason she was still here, not walking out the door and calling friends to come pick her up at the crazy man on the hill’s house, was because she was hoping to be invested in something else.
Somebody else, to be more specific.
Me, Alexa thought. Shit.
Leah smiled at both of them. Turned to head up the stairs and said, “I’m going to find a room and then take a shower. I feel gross, like I’m still covered in devil slime.”
Alexa studied Leah’s face, watched the girl turn and start the climb up the wooden staircase. When she was out of sight and the sound of footsteps grew quiet, Alexa turned to Beck and said, “She’s worried about him.”
