Jonathan Kellerman - Self-Defence

Maybe the best thing was to stay with her. Even if she found the gravesite, she'd learn soon that exhumation with one shovel was beyond her physical capabilities. And the thought of her out here, alone, scared the hell out of me.

Maybe I was overestimating the danger. Lowell was a monster, but in his own sick way he'd been reaching out to her. Would he sentence her to death?

She'd gone only a few yards but the vegetation had closed over her like a trapdoor and I could barely make out her plaid shirt. I looked over my shoulder. The house was obscured, too. No visible pathway, but as I followed Lucy's footsteps, a troughlike depression in the earth became evident.

Long-buried trail.

She was moving as surely and quickly as the brush would allow.

Knowing where she was going.

Guided by a dream.

I clawed my way through the vegetation and got right behind her. The plants were taller, the treetops thicker, and soon there was more green than blue in the sky. Things slithered and scampered all around us, but other than a suddenly vibrating leaf or tendril, I saw nothing move. From time to time, I heard the broom-sweep of wings flapping in panic, but the birds stayed out of sight, too.

The growth became jungle-thick. Lucy swung the shovel like an ax, sweat running down her face in sooty streams, her chin set, her eyes hard and clear. I took over and got us through faster.

We came to the first of the small cabins, a fallen-down roofless thing, nearly hidden by emerald clouds. Lucy barely looked at it. Tears were diluting the sweat tracks, and her blouse was sodden. I wanted to say something comforting but she'd just been raped by words.

A second cabin appeared a few minutes later, just a loose pile of logs managing to support a tar roof. Shiny, black, wasplike things buzzed through holes in the tarpaper, swooping in, then jetting out like tiny dive bombers.

Lucy stopped, stared, shook her head.

We kept going.

Our silent trudge took us past three more cabins.

Gnats and chiggers were having fun with our faces. The sudden takeoff of a huge brown bird nearly stopped my heart. I managed to catch a glimpse of the creature as it forged up through the treetops. Big square head and five-foot wingspread. Horned owl. The silence that followed was unsettling.

Lucy didn't seem to notice. Pinpoints of blood pocked her face where the bugs had gotten her, and her palms were raw from wrestling with vines.

"Give your hands a rest."

She said, "No," but she complied.

Getting through wasn't easy even with my pushup-tightened arms. Hers had to be numb. I ripped and sliced, wondering how much grace time we had. Knowing we were leaving an obvious trail for anyone who followed.

"Even if you find her," I said, huffing, "after all this time, she won't look like a person. There may be nothing left at all. Animals carry off bones."

"I know. I learned that at the trial."

The trough deepened and I had to fight for balance. Lucy was looking up at the trees.

Something lacy? Trees of all kinds were everywhere, an untidy colonnade rising through the undergrowth.

It was two-forty. The sun had peaked and was falling behind us, dancing through holes in the overgrowth, a tiny, brilliant mirror.

A new sound: more of the groundwater, a trickle that recalled the one I'd heard driving up.

The kind of moisture that hastens decomposition.

"Even if you find her, what will you do?"

"Take something back with me. They can do tests and prove it's her. That'll be evidence. Something."

I heard something snap behind me and stopped. Lucy had heard it, too, and she peered at the forest behind us.

Silence.

She shrugged and wiped her face with her sleeve. It was hard to gauge how far we were from the lodge house. I tasted my own sweat and felt it sting my eyes.

We started walking again, coming upon a knotted mass of thick, ivylike vines with coils as hard as glass. It refused to yield to the shovel. Lucy threw herself at it, yanking and tearing, her hands wet with blood. I pulled her away and inspected the plant. Despite its monstrous head, its root base was relatively small, petrified, a two-foot clump of burl.

I chopped at the shoot right above the root. Dust and insects flew, and I could hear more animals fleeing in the distance. My biceps were pumped and my shoulders throbbed. Finally, I was able to sever enough tendrils to pull back the clump and let us pass.

On the other side of the vine, things were different, as if we'd entered a new chamber of a great green palace. The air cooler, the trees all the same species.

Coast redwoods, great, repeating roan columns, spaced closely, their top growth a black fringe. Not the three-hundred-foot monsters of the north, but still huge at a third that height. Only a scatter of ferns grew in their shadows. The ground was gray as barbecue dust, mounded with leaves and bark shards. Through the fringe, the sun was a speck of mica.

The fringe.

Lace?

Lucy began weaving through the mammoth trunks.

Heading toward something.

Light.

A patch of day that enlarged as we ran toward it.

She stepped into it and spread her arms, as if gathering the heat and clarity.

We were in an open area, bounded by hillside and the same kind of mesquite I'd seen on the highway. Beyond the hills, higher mountains.

Before us, a field of high, feathery wild grass split by dozens of silver snakes.

Narrow streams. A mesh of them, thin and sinuous as map lines. The water sound diffuse now, delicate…

I followed Lucy as she made her way through grass, stepping in the soft ground between the streams.

Down to a mossy clearing. Centered in it, a pond, brackish, a hundred feet wide, its surface coated by a pea-colored scum of algae, bubbling in spots, skimmed by water boatmen. The globular leaves of hyacinth floated peacefully. Dragonflies took off and landed.

On the near bank was another cabin, identical to the others.

Rotted black, its roof a fuzz of lichen, a decaying door dangling from one hinge.

Something green running nearly the width of the door. I ran over.

Metal. A plaque, probably once bronze. Grooves. Engraving. I rubbed away grime until calligraphic letters showed themselves.

Inspiration

I pushed the door aside and entered. The floor was black, too, ripe as peat, oddly sweet-smelling. Through empty window casements I could see the flat green water of the pond.

These log walls were perforated with disease. Remnants of furniture in one corner: a small metal desk, completely rusted and legless, blotched with green and teeming with grubs and beetles. Something on the desktop. I flicked away insects and humus and revealed the black-lacquer keys of a manual typewriter. A bit more scraping produced a gold-leaf Royal logo.

Next to the desk, a leather chair had been reduced to a few curling scraps of dermis and a handful of hammered nailheads; on the ground, near the desk, three metal loops attached to a rusted spine.

Rings from a looseleaf notebook. Something else, copperish with a green patina.

I kneeled. Something crawled up my leg and I slapped it away.

The patina was moss. Not copper, gold.

A gold bullet-shaped tube with a white-gold clip.

The cap of a fountain pen.

Etched in the head: MBL.

I pocketed it and kicked at the loose, fragrant dirt. Nothing else in the cabin.

Lucy hadn't followed me in. Through the window hole, I saw her make her way to the water's edge and stare across the pond.

Two trees on the far bank.

Giant, lush, weeping willows, their surface roots worming into the pond.

Branches of knife-blade, golden-green leaves, looping to the ground, then bending and resuming in a relentless horizontal growth.