A history of wild places, p.1
A History of Wild Places, page 1
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For Jess, my agent
There is always danger for those who are afraid.
—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
FOXES AND MUSEUMS
Excerpt from Book One in the Eloise and the Foxtail series
The green eyes of a riddle fox peered into Eloise’s bedroom window.
It was a Wednesday, and the sun had long since dipped beyond the whispering evergreens. Eloise should have been asleep, but she kept thinking about the woods, about the lean-to fort she and her little brother had made at the base of a pine tree, and if it was strong enough to withstand the winter storms.
It was surely a dream—those eyes that stared at her through the glass, snow whirling and catching against the wool of its pointed face. Riddle foxes were rare this deep in the mountains. But dreams were nearly just as rare. Eloise never saw images when she slept anymore. They were fanciful and indulgent. The world wouldn’t allow for dreams.
Even nightmares were scarce.
PART ONE THE BARN
Death has a way of leaving breadcrumbs, little particles of the past that catch and settle and stain. A single strand of copper-brown hair, the follicle ripped from a skull, snagged by a door hinge or cold, clenched fingers. Drops of blood and broken skin, carelessly left at the bottom of a bathroom sink when they should have been scrubbed away.
Objects leave hints too: a bracelet broken at the clasp, dropped in the red-clay dirt; a shoe kicked off during a struggle, wedged behind a rear truck tire; a contact lens, popped free when the person screamed for help in some deep, dark part of a backwoods lot where no one could hear.
These things, these artifacts, tell me where a person has been. The last steps they took.
But not in the way you might think.
The past sputters through me, images reflected against my corneas, revealing the strained, awful looks carved into the faces of those who’ve gone missing. Who’ve vanished and never returned home.
I see them in a sort of slideshow staccato, like the old black-and-white nickel films. It’s a terrible talent to hold an object and see the likeness of the person it once belonged to, their final moments shivering and jerking through me as if I were right there. Witnessing the grim, monstrous ends of a person’s life.
But such things—such abilities—can’t be given back.
Snow blows against the truck windshield, icing it over, creating a thin filigree effect—like delicate lacework. The heater stopped working three days back, and my hands shake in my coat pockets as I peer through the glass at the Timber Creek Gas & Grocery, a tiny, neon-lit storefront at the edge of a mountain town without a name. Through the gusting snow, I can just make out a collection of homes sunk back in the lodgepole pines, and several businesses long since boarded up. Only the small firehouse, a tow truck service, and the gas station are still up and running. A stack of cut firewood sits outside the gas station with a sign that reads: $5 A BUNDLE, SELF-SERVE. And in smaller print: BEST PRICE ON MOUNTAIN.
This town is merely a husk, easily wiped off the map with a good wind or an unstoppable wildfire.
I push open the truck door, rusted hinges moaning in the cold, and step out into the starless night. My boots leave deep prints in the fresh two inches of snowfall, and I cross the parking lot to the front doors of the gas station, sharp winter air numbing my ears and nostrils, my breath a frosty cloud of white.
But when I pull open the gas station door, a tidal wave of warm, stagnant air folds over me—thick with the scent of motor oil and burnt corn dogs—and for a moment I feel light-headed. My eyes flick across the store: the shelves have a vacant, apocalyptic feel. Dust molders on every surface, while a few solitary items—starchy white bread, Pop-Tarts, and tiny boxes of travel-size cereal—seem almost like movie-set props from another era, their logos sun-bleached and outdated. At the back wall of the store sits a droning cooler lined with beer, cartons of milk, and energy drinks.
This place isn’t haunted—not in the way I’m accustomed to—it’s paralyzed in time.
At the front counter, a woman with feathered gray hair and even grayer skin sits perched on a stool under the headache-inducing florescent lights. She’s tapping her fingers against the wood countertop as if she’s tapping a pack of cigarettes, and I move across the store toward her.
To the left of the cash register sits a coffee maker coated in a heavy layer of dust—I’m tempted to reach for one of the stacked paper cups and fill it with whatever stagnant, lukewarm liquid is waiting inside, but I suspect it will taste just as it looks: like oily truck tires. So I let my gaze fall back to the woman, my hands clenching inside my coat pockets, feeling the burn of blood flowing back into my fingertips.
The woman eyes me with a nervy-impatience, and a hint of suspicion. I know this look: She doesn’t like me at the onset. The beard I’ve been cultivating for the last month doesn’t rest well on the features of my face, it makes me look ten years older, mangy like a stray dog. Even after a shower I still look wild, undomesticated, like someone you shouldn’t trust.
I smile at the woman, trying to seem acquiescent, harmless, as though a glimpse of my teeth will somehow reassure her. It does not. Her sour expression tugs even tighter.
“Evening,” I begin, but my voice has a roughness to it, a grating unease—the lack of sleep giving me away. The woman says nothing, only keeps her paled eyes squarely on me, like she’s waiting for me to demand all the money in the register. “Have you heard of a woman named Maggie St. James?” I ask. I used to have a knack for this: for convincing people to trust me, to give up details they’ve never even told the police, to reveal that small memory they’ve been holding on to until now. But that talent is long gone, sunk like flood waters into a damp basement.
The woman makes a half-interested snort, the scent of cigarette smoke puffing out from her pores—a salty, ashen smell that reminds me of a case I took out in Ohio three years back, searching for a missing kid who had been holed up inside an abandoned two-story house out behind a run-down RV park, where the walls had the same stench—salt and smoke—like it had been scrubbed into the daffodil and fern wallpaper.
“Everyone around here’s heard of Maggie St. James,” the woman answers with a gruff snort, wrinkling her stubby nose and looking up at me from the nicotine-yellow whites of her eyes. “You from a newspaper?”
I shake my head.
“A cop?”
I shake my head again.
But she doesn’t seem to care. Either way, cop or reporter, she keeps talking. “A woman goes missing and this place turns into a damn spectacle, like a made-for-TV movie—helicopters and search dogs were swarming up in those woods, found a whole heap of nothing. Searched through folks’ garbage cans and garages, asking questions like the whole community was in on something, like we knew what happened to that missing woman but weren’t saying.” She crosses her arms—all bony angles and loose, puckered skin, like a snake slowly shedding her useless outer layer from her skeleton. “We’re honest people ’round here, tell ya what we think even if you don’t ask. Those police made people paranoid, creeping around at night with their flashlights, peeking into decent folks’ windows. Most of us didn’t leave our homes for weeks; cops had us believing there was a murderer out there, snatching people up. But it was all for nothing. They never turned up a damn thing. And all for some woman who we didn’t even know.” At this she nods her head, lips pursed together, as if to punctuate the point.
The locals in this town might not have known who Maggie St. James was when she turned up in their community then promptly vanished, but a lot of people outside of here did. Maggie St. James had gained notoriety some ten years ago when she wrote a children’s book titled Eloise and the Foxtail: Foxes and Museums. What followed were four more books, and some fierce public backlash that her stories were too dark, too grisly and sinister, and that they were inspiring kids to run away from home and venture into nearby woodlands and forests, searching for something called the underground—a fictional location she wrote about in the series. The underground was supposed to turn ordinary kids into something unnatural—a dark, villainous creature. One quote in particular from a noted literary journal said, St. James’s take on the modern fairy tale is more nightmares than dreams, stories to make your children fear not just the dark, but the daylight, too. I wouldn’t read this to a serial killer, let alone to my child.
Shortly after her fifth book was published, a fourteen-year-old boy named Markus Sorenson ventured deep into the Alaskan wilderness in search of this underground and died from hypothermia. His body was found seven days later. I remember the case because I got a call from a detective up in Anchorage, asking if I might come up and see if I could assist in finding the boy. But they found him at the entrance to a small rocky cave the following day, skin whiter than the surrounding snowfall. I wondered if in those final moments, when the delirium of cold began to make him hallucinate, did he think he had found the underground?
After the boy’s death, Maggie St. James just sort of slipped into obscurity—with g ood reason. According to Wikipedia, there was a planned sixth book in the Eloise and the Foxtail series. A book that would never be written, because the author, Maggie St. James, vanished.
“Do you remember her stopping here?” I ask the woman, whose pale blue veins are tightening beneath the waxy skin of her throat.
She raises an eyebrow at me, as if I’ve offended her in suggesting that she might not remember such a thing after five years. I know Maggie St. James stopped at the Timber Creek Gas & Grocery because it was in the police report, as well as a statement from a cashier who was not named. “She was unmemorable at best,” the woman answers, what’s left of her thinning eyelashes fluttering closed then open again, dark mascara clotting at the corners. “But lucky for the police, and you, I remember everyone.” She glances to the oily storefront windows—snow spiraling against the glass—as if the memory were still there, just within reach. “She got gas and bought a pack of strawberry bubble gum, tore open the package and started chewing it right there, before she’d even paid for it. Then she asked about a red barn. Asked if I knew where she could find one around here. Of course, I told her about the old Kettering place a few miles on up the road. Said it was nearly collapsed, a place kids go to drink, and hadn’t been properly used in twenty years. I asked her what she wanted with that old place, but she wouldn’t say. She left without even a thanks, then drove off. They found her car the next morning, abandoned.” She snuffs, turning her face back to the windows, and I get the sense she wants to make some comment about how rude city folk can be, but catches herself just in case I might be city folk. Even though I’m not. And from what I knew of Maggie St. James, she wasn’t either.
I clear my throat, hoping there might be more beneath the surface of her memory if I can ask the right question and pry it loose. “Have you heard anyone talk about her in the years since?” I ask, tiptoeing around the thing I really want to ask. “Someone who saw her, who remembers something?”
“Someone who remembers killing her, you mean?” She unfolds her arms, mouth tugging strangely to one side.
I doubt there’s a serial killer in the area—there’d be reports of other disappearances—but perhaps there’s someone who keeps to themselves, lives alone up in these woods, someone who maybe hadn’t killed before, but only because he had never encountered the right opportunity—until Maggie drove into town. Someone out hunting deer or rabbit, and a stray shot tore through a woman with short, cropped blond hair—a woman whose body now needed to be disposed of, burned or buried. Accidents can turn people into grave diggers.
“I can’t say for sure that some folks around here don’t have a bolt untightened from the mind, a few cobwebs strung between the earlobes, but they aren’t killers.” The woman shakes her head. “And they certainly can’t keep their mouths shut. If someone killed that girl, they’d’ve talked about it by now. And soon enough, the whole town would know of it. We’re not much for keeping secrets for long.”
I look away from her, eyeing the coffee machine again, the stack of paper cups. Should I risk it? But the woman speaks again, one eyebrow raised like a pointed toothpick, as if she’s about to let me in on a secret. “Maybe she wanted to get herself lost, start a new life; no crime in that.” Her eyes flick to the pack of cigarettes sitting beside the cash register, a purple lighter resting on top. She needs a smoke.
I nod, because she might be right about Maggie. People did sometimes vanish, not because they’d been taken or killed, but simply because they wanted to disappear. And Maggie had reason to escape her life, to slip into the void of endless highways and small towns and places where most don’t go looking.
Maybe I’m chasing a woman who doesn’t want to be found.
Behind the cash register, the woman finally reaches for the pack of cigarettes, sliding it across the counter so it’s resting on the very edge. “Maybe it’s best to just let her be, let a woman go missing if that’s what she wants.”
For a moment, she and I stare at one another—as if we’ve reached some understanding between us, a knowing that we’ve felt that same itch at the back of our throats at least once in our lives: that desire to be lost.
But then her expression changes: the skin around her mouth wrinkling like dried apricots, and a shiver of something untrusting settles behind her eyes, like she’s suddenly wary of who I am—who I really am—and why I’ve come asking questions after all these years. “You a private detective?” she asks, taking the pack of smokes in her hand and tapping out a single cigarette.
“No.” I scratch at my beard, along the jaw. It’s starting to feel too warm inside the little store—humid, boxed-in.
“Then why’d you come all the way out here in the middle of winter, asking about that woman? You a boyfriend or something?”
I shake my head, a staticky hum settling behind my eyes—that well-known ache trying to draw me into the past. I’m getting closer to Maggie, I can feel it.
The woman’s mouth makes a severe line, like she can see the discomfort in my eyes, and I take a quick step back from the counter before she can ask me what’s wrong. “Thank you for your time,” I tell her, nodding. Her mouth hangs open, like the maw of some wild animal waiting to be fed, and she watches as I retreat to the front doors and duck out into the night.
The sudden rush of cold air is an odd relief. Snow and wind against my overheated flesh.
But my head still thumps with the heavy need for coffee, for sleep—but also with the grinding certainty that I’m getting close. This gas station was the last place Maggie St. James was seen before she vanished, and my ears buzz with the knowing.
I climb back into the truck and press a hand to my temple.
I could use a handful of aspirin, a soft bed that doesn’t smell like industrial-grade motel detergent, the warmth of anything familiar. I crave things I’ve forgotten how to get. An old life, maybe. That’s what it really is: a need for something I’ve lost long ago. A life that’s good and decent and void of the bone-breaking pain that lives inside me now.
The truck tires spin on the ice, windshield wipers clacking back and forth, and I swerve out of the gas station parking lot back onto the road. I glance in the rearview mirror and see the woman watching me from the window of the little store, her face a strange neon-blue glow under the shivering lights.
And I wonder: Did Maggie St. James see that same face as she sped away five years ago? Did the same chill skip down her spine to her tailbone?
Did she know she was about to vanish?
* * *
The truck headlights break through the dark only a few yards ahead, illuminating the icy pavement like a black, moonless river, and casting ribbons of yellow-white through the snow-weighted trees that sag and drip like wet arms.
I drive for an hour up the same road that Maggie St. James followed, passing only one car going in the opposite direction, and a scattering of small, moss-covered homes.
Until at last, through the tall sentinel pines and sideways snow, a red barn appears.
What’s left of it.
The woman at the gas station had been right, the entire left side is caved in, a heap of splintered wood and old nails now buried in snow. But a metal weathervane still sits perched at the highest peak, the moving pieces locked in place by the cold or rust. It’s the same barn I saw in a police photograph that Maggie’s parents showed me. But in the photo, parked in the foreground, was a pale green, four-door, newer model Volvo: Maggie’s car. She had parked here alongside the road, gotten out of the driver’s seat, took her purse and her cell phone, then vanished.
I ease off the gas pedal and pull the truck onto the shoulder of the road, stopping in the very same place where she did.
It was midsummer when Maggie was here, the leaves on the trees a healthy, verdant green, the sun crisp and blinding overhead, and it must have warmed the inside of her car. Perhaps she had the windows rolled down, smelled the sweet scent of green manzanita and wildflowers growing up from the ditch beside the road. Perhaps she closed her eyes for a moment while she sat in her car, considering her options. Perhaps she even thought back on all the things that led her here: the faraway moments, the fragmented pieces of her life that only come into focus in times like this.
