Laymon Laymon: The Woods Are Dark

“What do you suggest?”

He looked at the telephone, and immediately gave up the idea. No way to call out for help, not without going through the motel switchboard. “We could go for help,” he muttered. “There must be police, a sheriff…”

Ruth reached for the doorknob.

He grabbed her wrist.

“I’m going out there and finding my daughter,” she said. “Now let go of me.”

“Wait! We’ve got to think.”

“My ass! While you’re thinking, God-knows-what could be happening to Cordie.” She jerked her hand free, and gripped the knob. She tugged the door open.

Lander dropped backward, slamming it shut. “Damn it, Ruth!”

“Let me out!”

The telephone rang, its harsh clamor sending a shock of alarm through Lander. Ruth’s head snapped sideways. They both stood motionless, staring at the black instrument as it blared again.

Lander suddenly rushed to it. As it rang a third time, he picked it up. “Hello?”

“Mr. Dills, this is Roy in the office.”

“Yes?”

“Your daughter’s here with me. She would like a word with you.”

Lander waited, his eyes on Ruth.

“What is it?” she mouthed, the words barely coming out.

Lander shrugged.

“Daddy?” His daughter’s voice was shrill with panic.

“Honey, what’s wrong?”

“Oh Dad! They… Ben! I think he’s dead!”

“Where are you?”

“No. Don’t come. They’ll kill you.”

“Are you in the office?”

“Don’t let them get you!”

He motioned to Ruth. “Here, your mother wants to talk to you.”

She hurried across the room. He handed her the phone. “Hello, Cordie?”

“Keep her talking,” Lander whispered.

Ruth nodded.

He ran to the door, jerked it open, and rushed out. Something—a wire?—snagged his foot. As he pitched headlong, he glimpsed a grinning old woman sitting cross-legged on the hood of his car, cradling a hammer. He slammed into the dirt by the wheel.

With a squeal of delight, the woman pounced.

The pickup truck lurched over a rough, dirt road. After the flare-up about Timmy, the men had kept a cold silence.

Neala wished they would talk, even fight. Their quarrel over the horny creep of a kid had pulled her mind away from thoughts of her own situation. Now, the distraction was gone. Her fear returned, black and paralyzing with images of rape and slaughter.

She began to cry. She didn’t want to, didn’t want the men to see her weakness, didn’t want Sherri to draw more fear from her own desolation. She couldn’t help it, though. She felt alone and helpless. Like the time she was lost in the woods.

She’d been only six, then, but she still remembered how it felt. Her family had been camping near Spider Lake in Wisconsin. Dad told scary stories by the campfire, while they all drank hot chocolate. The hot chocolate did it: she woke in the middle of the night with a horrible strain on her bladder. She shook Betty awake, but her older sister refused to budge from the sleeping bag.

Neala had to go so badly she didn’t bother to dress. Wearing only her underpants, she crept out of the pup-tent. The chilly breeze made her shake. She crossed the campsite barefoot, the ground moist and cold under her feet.

Her dad had dug a hole, off behind the camp. A “latrine,” he called it. Neala had been there several times, but not at night.

She wandered far into the dark woods, searching for the latrine. She couldn’t find it. Finally, she gave up and squatted beside a birch tree. Relieved, she headed back for camp. She thought she knew just where it was. But she walked and walked. When she came to a strange, moonlit pasture, she knew she was lost. She called for Mom and Dad. She called for Betty. Nobody came.

That’s when it hit her: the awful fear of being alone and helpless in the night. She wandered the pasture, blind with tears, wailing her anguish, hoping they would hear and come for her.

But what if someone else heard, and not her parents? One of those bogeymen Dad talked about at the campfire? Or the awful Windigo? Or a witch like the one that tried to eat Hansel and Gretel?

Covering her mouth to stop the squalling, she ran from the pasture. In the woods, she ran as fast as she could, not daring to look back because something horrible might be chasing her. Roots tripped her. Webs stuck to her bare skin. Switches whipped her. But she kept running until she broke into another clearing and saw the moonlit car.

Their car.

They’d left it behind, and hiked a long way before making camp. She wasn’t sure why.

The doors were locked, so she crawled underneath the car. The grass beneath it was dry. She lay there, safely hidden, and shivered through the night.

In the morning, when Dad found her, he cried. They both cried, because everything had turned out all right, after all.

And they lived happily ever after, Neala thought, until four men and a boy put the girl into a pickup truck and drove her to a secret place in the woods, and…

The truck stopped.

Robbins and Shaw climbed out. “You wait here,” Shaw told his son.

The man at Neala’s feet jumped over the tailgate, and unlatched it. The gate swung down with a groan and clank. He grabbed Neala’s ankles and pulled. She slid along the metal floor.

Timmy, crawling at her head, reached down suddenly and tore open her blouse. She tried to knock him away with her one free hand, but he was too quick. He squeezed her breasts as if he wanted to rip them off. Neala cried out. Her fist caught him in the face so hard it hurt her knuckles, and he fell backward, crying.

Then she was on her feet behind the truck, Sherri at her side.

“Are you all right?” Sherri asked.

“Shut up,” Shaw said.

“Let’s go,” said Robbins. His grip on Neala’s arm was firm, but not painful like that of the other man.

They walked to the front of the truck. The driver had left the headlights on. The beams lit a path through a clearing, a clearing not too different from the one where Neala had wandered, lost, as a child—though that was two thousand miles away, and twenty years ago.

After a distance, the downward-slanting head beams seemed to bury themselves. The field ahead lay in darkness.

“Why the hell didn’t you park closer?” Shaw whispered to the driver.

“Shut up.”

“Man, they’re probably all around us.”

“They don’t attack delivery parties,” said the man on Neala’s right.

“Always a first time, Phillips.”

“I wouldn’t sweat it.”

“I still don’t see why he had to park so goddamn far away.”

“I felt like it,” the driver said. “How about shutting your face?”

Ahead, a line of six trees stood in the clearing. Neala stared at them. They were tall and thin-trunked. Their high branches, reaching into the moonlight were bare of leaves.

They shouldn’t be bare, not in summer. They should be full, their leaves fluttering in the breeze.

The trees are dead, Neala realized.

Six dead trees all in a row.

“No,” she said.

“It’s all right,” Robbins whispered.

“No, don’t take us there. Please.” She tried to hold back but the men thrust her forward.

“Just take it easy,” Robbins said.

“Please! They’re dead! I don’t want to go there. Please!”

Pain stunned her right leg as Phillips shot a knee into it. “Now hold it down, sister,” he said.

“You okay?” Robbins asked.

“No!”

“Christ, Phillips.”

“You’ve really got it bad, pal. You better watch yourself.”

“Everybody shut up,” the driver snapped.

Under the tree, they stopped.

“Lean back,” Robbins said.