Page 60 of The Woods

911 Operator: What? Who’s helping you? Who’s with you now?

Quinn hears a sharp click as the call is disconnected.

He listens to the call again and again. By the time he slides his headphones off he has the entire thing memorized.

He doesn’t dare look out his window.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2023

Alice

Alice pours a generous glass of wine. It’s been a bad day. No, not bad, strange. It’s been a strange day. She bundles up in her winter jacket and grabs a blanket to go sit outside on the back deck. Geoff has gone into town to pick up dinner, so she has about an hour to herself. Polly is working and Quinn is sleeping over at his friend Jason’s house. Her mother is lying down.

The strangeness started this morning. Before work, Alice had gone into the local branch of her bank to order checks with their new address on them. Standing in line, she’d noticed the person ahead of her, an older woman, looked like she’d crawled out of an earlier time period. Her gray hair was wild, encircling her head like a storm cloud. She wore a long-sleeved brown dress in some kind of rough cotton. When the woman was called up to the counter, Alice noted a slight limp on her left side and a cane on her right, a piece of gnarled, polished wood. Something about her made Alice sad; it was an air of neglect and loneliness. The woman had no one in her life to tell her how much she’d let herself go. Then it was Alice’s turn, and she moved to the window beside the old woman to take care of her own business.

As soon as Alice exited the bank, she heard a gruff voice to the right of her say, “Excuse me.” She turned to see the old woman who’d been ahead of her in line.

“Did I hear you say that your address is 3834 Waverley Lane?”

Alice cringed. Another local interested in the murder house. “Yes. Although I’m not sure what business it is of yours.”

Seemingly unbothered by Alice’s rudeness, the woman nodded. “My sister used to own that property. I live on the other side of the woods. I’m Ruth Crowley.”

“Oh,” Alice replied, shocked that this eccentric old woman was her neighbor. She automatically summoned her warmest voice, the one reserved for the elderly and infirm. “Good to meet you, Ruth. I’m Alice. I guess we’re neighbors, then.”

The old woman grunted. “You getting along okay out there?”

“Absolutely,” Alice said, faking enthusiasm. “We love it. The property is beautiful.”

The woman looked down at Alice’s wedding band. “You live there with family?”

“Yes,” Alice answered, growing a little uncomfortable. “My husband, my mother, and my kids.” It was on the tip of her tongue to spin some tale about Lucy alive and well and excelling at university, but something about the way the old woman sized her up made her think twice about lying. “Do you have family, Ruth?”

The old woman gave a quick nod. “Not much left. But I got my animals. That’s the kind of company I like. We’re getting ready for the cold weather.”

“So are we. We’ve closed the pool, and we’re getting ready to hunker down.”

“Good.” Ruth’s tone was all business. “Just be careful of those woods, Alice. My advice,” she said, leaning in to deliver her warning, “admire them from afar. Don’t go wandering about.”

“Really?” Alice replied, choosing a charade of innocent curiosity.

Ruth’s gaze was direct and unrelenting. “Nothing good ever comes out of those woods. After what happened with the last ones, those Gordons, I regret that I never said the same to them.”

Alice was suddenly overcome with emotion and her eyes filled with tears. Ruth peered at her. “Spit it out, Alice. Unburden yourself.”

Alice took a step closer to the woman, so close she could smell her musty body odor, dirty hair, and the pong of wet animal fur. “Things are not okay,” she whispered. “Those woods are not okay. First my husband, then my mother, they— What’s out there?”

Ruth frowned, then glanced over her shoulder as though someone might be eavesdropping on their conversation. “Things that cannot be spoken about. You just stay out of there from now on, you hear? And keep your kids out.”

Alice had considered the things she could not speak about. Like pale corpses and eviscerated animals, like occult symbols carved in her daughter’s bedroom floor.

The horror must have shown on her face because Ruth nodded and said, “yes, those kinds of things.” nodded. “Yes, those kinds of things.”

Alice gasped.

“Stop thinking and talking about those woods. They’ll hear you.” She glanced around nervously again. “You be safe out there. And keep an eye on your young ones.”

The exchange stayed with Alice all day, popping up in her head between meetings and emails and phone calls. An internal debate raged in her brain: Was Ruth a crazy, paranoid old lady living alone in the woods, or was she perfectly sane and wise and cautious? Alice wondered if she should have told Ruth about discovering her husband’s and mother’s dead bodies. Maybe that would have compelled the old woman to help her.