Page 3 of Call Off the Dark

Suddenly, near the ground at the shed’s entrance, two pinpricks of light began to glow. Eyes. Yellow.

Helen’s finger moved to the trigger as a small creature scrambled out of the shed. The yellow eyes gleamed at her from its shrunken face, and she realized it was just a raccoon.

It stopped and stared at her, and she had the strangest sensation that it felt sorry for her. They both waited to see what the other’s move would be until, finally, Helen stomped her foot, and the raccoon bared its teeth and skittered away.

From the entrance, Helen could see only the vague shape of Wade’s supplies piled on the shelves and leaning against the walls, but somehow she knew the shed was empty. No one was there after all. The latch on the door had simply come undone.

She tossed the ax onto the grass and closed the door to the shed, gingerly handling the rough wood. That stupid door had given her more than a few splinters. Then she picked up the ax and turned back toward the house.

In the early days with Wade, this place had held a hopeful kind of charm. If a stranger were to venture all the way down their long dirt driveway and not notice Wade’s ’60s Ford pickup truck parked under the red alder tree, the stranger would think he’d stumbled upon a snapshot from a hundred years ago, with Helen and Wade presenting as a couple from the early 1900s.

Every day, Helen wore one of the dresses she’d sewn herself, different fabrics but only slight variations of the same pattern, the only pattern she’d been able to master. It had taken her seven months to get it right. Before that, her dresses had looked like gunnysacks, and she’d cinched them at the waist with fabric belts. But she’d kept at it. She certainly had the time to practice, and now the dresses were pretty. Fitted in the bodice, loose skirt.

Wade’s attire was less remarkable: work pants, shirt, boots, jacket in muted colors. Men’s utilitarian clothing was timeless in many ways. Only hats had noticeably changed over the years. Wade normally didn’t wear one, but when he did it was either a flat cap or a narrow-brimmed felt cowboy hat. When they had first dated in the city, he had worn a baseball cap to dinner once and he’d looked good in it, boyish almost, which was unusual for a man who awoke with a five o’clock shadow. The outdated hats he wore now made him look like an actor at the dinner theater. But who was she to judge? She was spending her days dressed like Virginia Woolf.

Helen hadn’t been to a salon either since disappearing into the woods. No more subtle highlights and long layers fashionably cut into her hair. Now it hung halfway down her back in waves, a soft brown. Sometimes she braided it. Sometimes she wrapped it into a bun. Sometimes she twisted it into a coil and wrapped it around her neck just to imagine what a noose might feel like.

Helen rounded the corner of the house to find the side yard empty still. She set the gun in the grass and gripped the ax handle with both hands, set her feet, and gave it a good swing. The blade landed squarely in the middle of the stump just like she’d found it.

As she retrieved the gun from the grass, a chilling feeling crept back over her. She spun in a circle, listening, looking, but seeing nothing. She continued cautiously around the house until she was standing at the back of it, peering out at the dark, thick trees beyond the open meadow. Nothing there either. Just the silhouette of branches, gnarled like monster arms.

And yet, she sensed a presence.

The longer she stood there, the more she realized it didn’t feel menacing.

In moments like this, her heart always expanded a little, opened up in hopes that it was Tyler finally visiting her. He was a man who had loved her so much in this world, every one of her little weird eccentricities. He used to gaze at her like she grew flowers from her eyes and diamonds from her smile, and if there was a way for him to reach back to this time and place, she knew he would. And so, always, she was waiting.

“Tyler?” she whispered. Just in case.

The only answer she heard was the murmur of wind through the trees. Then a gentle breeze lifted a strand of hair across her face, like a caress.

She closed her eyes, and that’s when she heard the footsteps.

Helen turned back just as a dark figure stepped around the corner of the house.

Chapter Three

Helen raised the gun and pointed it right at Wade’s chest, but for a moment, she didn’t see her husband in his maroon pajamas. For a moment, she was standing face-to-face with the masked man once again, gun in her hand, life or death stakes. Split-second choice.

Wade put his hands up, open palms imploring. “Helen!”

Helen blinked. Wade. Her husband. Her new husband, that is. She lowered the gun.

“Don’t do that.” Helen shook her head. “You startled me.”

She pointed the gun at the ground and uncocked the hammer.

“Did you have that cocked? Jesus.”

Helen didn’t respond. Wade already knew the answer.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I heard something.”

“So did I.”

She lifted her head, alert again. “You did?”