Page 37 of Wildwood

“Elinor! Hi, Elinor?” Patty is speed walking to catch up to me, my umbrella in one hand.

“Oh, thank you,” I say. “Sorry, pregnancy brain.”

I expect Patty to turn and hurry back inside; she doesn’t even have a raincoat on. But she stands a moment, shifting from foot to foot. My stomach feels a lurch of excitement.

“If you want to learn more about Newfield Village, you should talk to Alice Clark.”

The name rings a bell, but I can’t place her.

“She’s your neighbor. The house on the right, just before your property begins.” Patty glances over her shoulder to the historical society door. I would say she seems nervous, except that she also seems like the type who is constantly in motion. She has that energy about her, like there’re muscles in her body that never fully release.

The Goat Lady. I almost say this out loud, but thankfully I don’t.

“Has her family been there a long time?”

“Not exactly.” Patty is already turning to walk back inside. “Talk to Alice.”

Chapter 30

My rubber boots feel clunky as we move through the woods. The rain has stopped but the ground is still damp. At one point, I trip on a tree root and stagger forward, catching myself on a sapling, just before falling. Behind me, I can hear Topher making his way over roots and stone, emitting occasional grumbles.

“Almost there,” I huff, trying to sound encouraging.

“Okay,” he calls. “Remember I only have forty-five minutes before I have to leave.”

“I know!” I call back. “Really, we are almost there.” I think.

My eyes flick to my watch, to the little flashing dot we are slowly but surely making our way toward. But shouldn’t we be there already? I pause, feeling light-headed. Worried, suddenly, that I’m going to have a vision right here in front of my husband. I don’t think that would help anything. Topher’s a man of science. He doesn’t operate in a world of visions and oracles. He operates in a world of evidence. So that’s what I’m going to give him.

I’m beginning to worry that I’ve made a mistake when I see them. Sad, gray shapes take form in the mist. We’ve made it to the gravestones.

“There they are!” I call, pointing triumphantly.

Topher comes up beside me, sweat beading on his hairline. He takes in the three headstones standing, one lying on its face, being slowly consumed by the forest. And farther back, in their sad, distant row, the four unmarked graves. I step toward them, breath bated, and I feel, like I did the first time, the sensation of the forest moving around me. Not the animals. But the trees themselves. Like they are breathing.

My eyes jump to Topher. Are you feeling this too? But he’s just standing still, looking at the graves. I pull a piece of paper and pen from my pocket, and write down the names from the three standing graves. Lavinia Brown. Amias Smith. Hester Proctor. Who are you? I crouch down by the grave that lies flat on its face.

“Can you help me?”

Topher kneels down next to me, and together we try to lift the stone.

“Damn,” he curses. “I can’t really get a good grip and it’s basically grown into the earth.”

We try again, and I feel a nail crack against the stone. I let go and fall back onto my bottom.

“I don’t think it’s coming up,” Topher says, helping me stand. “We really need a shovel or something to get leverage.”

I nod, but bite my lip, frustrated.

“So?” I ask, not wanting to look him in the eye. “What do you think?”

Topher is silent and when I finally do raise my eyes to meet his, I know immediately that I’ve failed. He doesn’t feel what I feel here. And seeing the graves hasn’t convinced him of anything. I don’t know why I thought it would. Maybe part of me thought he didn’t believe me that they existed. But if he saw them, felt the woods around them, surely he’d see that there’s a history to Wildwood that no one knows about. Surely he’d see there’s something otherworldly in these woods.

“It’s creepy. I agree, Elinor. These gravestones are creepy.” He laughs, not exactly in a patronizing way, but maybe in a humanizing way. “I don’t particularly like owning a graveyard. That’s not exactly what I had in mind when we came up here. But I don’t think this means Wildwood is haunted. I think it just means that something sad happened here, a long time ago.”

“So why do I feel things here?”

“In the woods?” Topher looks confused, turns his head back and forth, as though hoping he’d see something concrete. An actual monster creeping toward us, perhaps.