Page 67 of The Woods

“He called the police,” she continues, her whisper dropping lower with anger. “They took her away. Put her in an institution—”

Spittle lands on her ear, but Alice does not wipe it away. Instead she leans in. “If your sister didn’t mutilate those animals on my lawn, who did?”

Suddenly there’s a loud bang on one of the windows and a bird ricochets off the pane. Ruth jumps up to go see and Alice follows. In the grass lies a small brown sparrow, one wing tucked tight against its body, the other jutting out at an awkward angle. Ruth pulls Alice away from the window.

“You need to go,” she whispers. “They don’t like when I talk about them.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Alice asks, more confused than ever.

“The woods,” Ruth hisses.

“I don’t understand,” Alice says, fighting against Ruth, who is now pulling her toward the door.

“The last time I saw my sister alive, she told me, ‘Don’t ever try and stop it, don’t ever get in its way, and don’t tell anyone what you know.’ ”

“But what is it exactly?” Alice says through gritted teeth.

“Whatever my sister conjured,” Ruth whispers. She puts the leather-bound book into the cardboard box and then picks the whole thing up and shoves it into Alice’s arms. “Maybe you can find some answers in here.” She pushes Alice toward the front door again but then stops suddenly. “Hold on.” She rushes out of the room.

When she returns a minute later, she’s carrying a small brown paper bag and talking normally. “Some of my tea for you.” She drops it into the box. “It’s like the one you just had but with something a little extra. For those nights you can’t sleep. Women reach a certain age, and the nights become long.” Alice nods, unsure if she can talk freely yet. “Use a tea ball and steep for at least five minutes,” Ruth adds before guiding Alice toward the front door again. “Come see me at the farmers’ market if you want more of it and we’ll talk there.” She opens the front door and practically pushes Alice out.

Alice hurries to her car, feeling like a million eyes are on her. She gets the box in the back as quickly as she can and is just pulling the driver’s-side door open when she detects movement in her peripheral vision. A doe steps free of the trees, then two smaller deer follow. The three animals stand in a line, staring intensely at Alice.

She glances back at the house, wondering if Ruth sees the deer too. Are they part of her animal family or are they a threat? Ruth stands at the window, but she’s not looking at the deer, she’s watching Alice.

Driving down the narrow dirt road, Alice catches glimpses of the deer as they move through the trees alongside her car. Only once she’s pulled free of the driveway and out onto the road does she exhale.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2023

Polly

Polly can feel something growing inside of her, squirming and scratching deep down in her gut. Somehow, she’s able to see down her own throat and into her belly. Nestled against the pink walls of her womb, she can make out a small patch of thick black-and-gray fur. While she watches, it starts growing bigger. Claws unfurl from the mass of fur, stretching upward, then dragging down the inside of Polly’s gut, leaving trails of bloody, pulpy flesh. A long snout lifts out of the black fur, and Polly sees two yellow eyes looking up at her from her own depths. She’s sure it’s going to split her apart but instead it begins to devour her from the inside. She feels herself being sucked down the wet throat of the creature, her screams becoming muffled, the sense of her own body disappearing, until she’s the one looking up from the depths of its belly.

Polly wakes with a start, the back of her neck slick with sweat. Her covers are twisted around her legs, and she kicks furiously to free herself.

She used to crawl into bed with her sister whenever she had a bad dream. Her sister never said anything, just pulled back the covers and made room for her. All Polly needed was the warmth of her sister’s body next to hers, the sound of her breathing and the sugar-cookie smell of her to soothe the nightmare away.

“Hey,” she whispers into the dark. “Can you hear me?” She hasn’t heard her sister’s voice since the night in the cave. It makes her wonder if she wasn’t imagining it all along. Some kind of hallucination to help her deal with the grief.

Lying there, awake in the dark, her mind inevitably travels to Gray. What started as a harmless flirtation with a boy has turned into something more like a dark fairy tale. One that has her obsessed and full of longing. It’s like he’s cast a spell over her. Wanting to escape thoughts of him, and the lingering images from her nightmare, she gets out of bed and goes out to the kitchen.

“Polly?” her mom calls out softly from the living room. She’s sitting on the couch in the dark, wrapped in a blanket. Polly glances at the clock on the stove. It reads 3:04 a.m.

“What are you doing up?” Polly whispers back, going into the room to sit down beside her on the couch, pulling on the blanket to cover her bare legs.

“I couldn’t sleep. Again.” Her mom tries to be subtle about wiping tears from her cheeks, but Polly can tell that she’s been crying. “One of the perils of being a middle-aged woman.” She laughs, but the emotion is so thick in her throat it sounds like she’s gagging.

Polly shifts so that she’s farther under the blanket and leans against her mom’s body. “Are you feeling sad because of Lucy?” She hears a catch in her mom’s breath. That’s her answer.

“I was too,” she says. She wishes she could tell her mom everything. About Gray. About the night her sister died. She wishes she could unload everything into her mom’s lap and ask her what she should do, but that would mean telling her mom about smoking weed at the side of the house, having a boy in her room without permission, doing mushrooms, and having sex in a cave when she said she was sleeping over at Natalie’s.

She’s gotten used to keeping secrets. It’s easier than one would think, which makes her imagine that everyone in the family probably has them. That maybe family members don’t know each other as well as they may think. That they’re all imposters in some way.

Polly rests her head on her mom’s shoulder, soaking in the warmth and familiarity of it, even reaching out to take one of her hands. “Do you think it will ever stop hurting?”

“I can’t imagine it will,” her mom answers with a sigh. “But if I figure out how it can, you’ll be the first one I tell.”

“Mom?” Polly says, lifting her head and shifting so that she can see the outline of her mother’s face in the dark.