Edward Lee - The Backwoods

She couldn’t close her legs for the life of her.

She couldn’t cover herself.

How can there be moonlight in the room? she thought. The curtains are closed. I know they are. I just closed them . But of course she thought that, for it didn’t occur to her yet that this was a dream. . . .

She thought on through a tingling fear, concluding her question: Someone must have opened the curtains.

Then:

The window . . .

She was determined not to look, but just as she’d given the order to herself, some force—the ghost of her father’s hand, perhaps—pushed her head up and made her look.

She looked straight ahead between the mounds of her breasts, down her stomach, through her spread legs. The tiny tuft of pubic hair drew a bead like a gunsight to the window.

The curtains weren’t merely open; they were gone. The moonlight shimmered in an unwelcome guest now. She felt humiliated, ashamed. If someone was outside, they could look in and see her totally bared, the most private part of her body displayed as if on purpose. What would they think of her, lying on the bed like that, utterly naked?

But . . .

Thank God. There’s no one there.

The hall clock began to tick louder than normal, and more rapidly. She kept looking down her body at the window, saw her breasts rising and falling faster now, her flat abdomen trembling, and then, beyond the ticking, she heard something else.

Crunching.

Footsteps, she knew.

Patricia’s paralysis intensified; she felt made of cement, a prone statue. When the shadow edged into the window frame, her scream froze in her chest.

It was Ernie.

Cadaverous now, he leered in with a rotten grin, his eyes like raw oysters, his skin fish-belly white. He was masturbating, his dead hand shucking a rotten penis with vigor. Worse than the act—and the dead, wet gleam in his eyes—was the gap that shone through the grin: the two front teeth missing. At one point he pushed a black tongue through the gap and wriggled it.

Soon another figure joined him: David Eald and his dead young daughter, both blackened corpses, the Hilds now naked, gut-sucked stick figures. Chief Sutter, as bloated in death as he was in life, his dead face the color and consistency of cheesecake, with two thumbholes for eyes. And finally Judy herself, naked and sagging, the skin of her face stretched across her skull like a stocking mask, the steam of rot wafting off her flesh.

Yes, they’d all congregated now—this cadaverous clique—to paint Patricia’s nakedness with their spoiled grins. Ernie painted the windowsill with something else, his bony hips quivering and cheeks bloated—putrid semen spurting. In his enthusiasm, Patricia noted that he’d actually wrung the skin off his penis at the climactic moment. She also saw that maggots frenzied in the sperm as it shot out.

Thank God the window’s locked , Patricia thought.

Then Ernie’s and Sutter’s cheesy-dead fingers began to open the window. First they’d reveled just to see her, but now they were coming to touch. . . .

When the stench poured into the room, Patricia wakened and screamed loud as a truck horn.

Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God . . .

Was she going insane? Her hand shot to her chest; her heartbeat felt like something exploding in her. But at least her clothes were on—at least now she knew it had been a dream.

The grainy dark hung before her, a veil. The hall clock ticked but was back to its normal, quiet pace. When the house frame creaked again, she actually found it comforting—because she knew it was real.

The window seemed to beckon her, though. Of course its curtains remained closed, just as she’d left them. But . . .

Her paranoia raced back to snare her. Damn it, she thought. Damn it, damn it! She needed to know, just to be sure. . . .

She swung her feet out and rose, giving herself a moment to fully come awake. When the time came to move, she faltered. Come on, Patricia. What are you thinking?

What was she thinking? That she’d pull the curtains back to find a cluster of dead faces leering in?

Ridiculous .

But still, she had to prove it to herself; otherwise she’d get no sleep at all.

There! See? She was almost ecstatic when she looked behind the curtains to find nothing there. The backyard faced her exactly as it had earlier. No movement, the night flowers standing open, moonlight shimmering.

Then her heart slammed once.

Wait a minute. . . .

There was one thing outside that hadn’t been there when she’d looked before. At first she hadn’t seen it.

Ernie’s pickup truck.

The first foot of its front end protruded into her view. That’s impossible! She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. Ernie’s dead. I saw his dead body. And his truck wasn’t there before!

She was certain, absolutely certain it hadn’t been there before.

And next the thought exploded:

Oh, my God, maybe it’s Judy! She must’ve borrowed his truck earlier and gone off somewhere! And she came back but didn’t wake me up when she came in!

Now it was joy that propelled her out of the bedroom. “Judy! Are you back?” She raced down the hall, out to the foyer, and up the stairs. She swung into her sister’s bedroom and snapped on the light.

“Judy?”

The bed lay empty, neatly made.

Then she’s downstairs somewhere ! Patricia felt convinced. She has to be! That’s the only thing that could explain Ernie’s truck being in the backyard. She’s downstairs right now in the kitchen, getting something to eat!

Patricia collapsed when she burst in and flicked on the light. Her knees thudded to the floor. She shrieked.

Judy was in the kitchen, all right. But she wasn’t getting anything to eat. A cane chair lay tipped over on the floor, along with two sandals. Judy was hanging by the neck from a kitchen rafter.

The rope creaked, a sound not unlike the house frame. Judy’s face ballooned, bright scarlet tinged with blue, tongue sticking out. She wore the flowered sundress Patricia remembered her wearing at the clan cookout. To make it worse, the process had snapped the neck entirely, and now beneath the noose, the neck stretched a foot. Lividity had turned her sister’s bare feet something close to black, and the lower legs too, veins bulging fat as earthworms.

Oh, Judy . . . Oh, my God, my poor sister . . .

She’d never been that stable to begin with, and she’d never liked change. That was why she’d stayed with Dwayne so long, even in the midst of all that abuse, and that was why she’d never left this house. She was happy only when things were the same.

But suicide? Patricia dragged herself up, the horror replaced by the reality of the despair. Squatters betraying her, selling drugs while they took a paycheck from her? Police on the property every other night for murders and burnings? Yeah, things have definitely changed around here.

It was inexplicable, but it happened every day: people killing themselves. It was the only cure to a horrid symptom they had to live with for God knew how long, and with nobody else even knowing there was a problem.

I have to call the police right now , Patricia realized. Knowing that her sister’s body hung dead behind her couldn’t have been more distressing, but Patricia simply didn’t have the strength to take her down herself. She turned for the phone—

—and almost collapsed again.

Sergeant Trey stood in the doorway to the laundry room, as if he’d just come in through the back. He seemed as startled as she.