Adam's Woods (16 page)

"John Thomas...JT...I don't know what..." He felt angry again, that JT would drop this on him, but understood the reasons behind his silence, even if he didn't completely agree.

"I drew you a map."

"Wh…what?" Eric stammered, eyes wide.

"A map. To get to the kids. I thought you might want to see it for yourself before you told anyone. I put myself in your shoes, before you came over, and thought if it were me, I'd want to know for sure before I got messed up in it. Before I left the spot, I used my knife to gouge a big oak tree on the edge of the depression. You should be able to find it."

"I don't know if I want to see anything. And even if I did...why can't you take me?"

"I haven't been back there since. Not the exact spot. Didn't want to mess it up, scare off the killer maybe. And I'm not taking you, because it won't do for me to be seen with you heading up there, right before the news comes out. Plus I don't walk like I used to anymore, and I'm not sure I could make it."

He got up awkwardly as if to emphasize his point and disappeared into the kitchen again. He returned with a scrap of paper that Eric reluctantly took when thrust at him.

Pointing at a squiggly line, JT said, "This is the creek that you'll hit a few hundred yards in if you go straight back through Adam’s Woods. Flows parallel to the cornfield so you can't miss it. You should remember it anyway. You'll need to follow that for I'd say two miles or so. It turns back deeper into the woods. From here, where these rocks are, you'll need to bushwhack about a quarter mile to the east, but it's pretty easy going. There's a stand of evergreen trees that you'll run into, and once you're through you'll head down this slope. The oak tree is at the bottom, and so is the depression."

"What if I don't do anything with this, JT? What makes you think you can just put this all on me?"

"Because your brother was killed. And I've done my share. I'm getting sick of caring about it. Like you said, I could go somewhere else and it would be easier. And I've been thinking of doing that. You showing up was fortuitous in some ways.

“So look, I'm going to head out soon. Talking about this, I feel the need to get on the road for a while. I've got another bike, if you want to come."

Eric shook his head."No, I need to think about this on my own."

"I get it, no problem. Eric, I'm sorry. I know it's a hornet's nest I just dropped in your lap, but I didn't know what else to do with it. Probably something a long time ago, but I didn't, so there you go. Maybe we can get together again soon and talk about when we were kids. Had some laughs, right?" The offer was hollow, and Eric knew they both understood that. Dead children couldn't be set aside to reminisce about JT stealing his father's pistol and making bike jumps out of particleboard and cinder blocks.

"Sure, John...JT," he answered, fulfilling his part of the charade, but his thoughts were miles away. He got up to leave, his sweat soaked shirt peeling away from the leather.

"So I can just walk past the dogs then? They'll let me go?"

"Yep. And if one of them gives you any trouble, just smack him on the nose and tell him JT sent you. Take care, Eric."

Eric pulled up to Mary's office and sat in the car without turning off the engine. He'd left JT's house and driven north to Erie, to the lake. He wanted to find the same peace in the rolling waves and cries of seagulls as while grieving for Adam. But he couldn't. Because Adam's death
was
an event to grieve, something he couldn't alter or fix. This...he didn't know what this was. He'd nearly called the police several times, but each time thrust the phone back in his pocket. He'd decided to talk to Mary, to get her insight, but his resolve had sprung a leak on the drive to Drake City. Did she really deserve to be blindsided with this, as JT had done to him?

He sat with his eyes closed, thinking, so wasn't aware of Mary at the window until she tapped lightly. He jerked, startled, and her smile gave way to concern. Eric smiled back weakly, knew she wasn't buying it by the further furrowing of her brow. He got out of the car and gave her a quick kiss.

"What's the matter Eric? Something happen with JT?"

"Yeah, you could say that...listen, Mary. Can we talk? If you're not too busy. Because if you are, I can wait until tonight."

"What's wrong, Eric? Now is fine. If you have something to say to me, just say it now."

Her voice contained a flat detachment, devoid of her usual warmth, and Eric understood that she interpreted his behavior as the beginning of an awkward break up, or rather a change of heart if break-up could describe how far they had gotten. A part of him, although he had no intent or desire to do so, wished it were that simple. Easier than telling Mary that at least five children were lying in unmarked graves up in the Big Woods.

"No, Mary. It's not like that. Not at all." He pulled her into a hug that she at first resisted, then as her taught muscles slowly uncoiled she returned.

"Are you sure? I'd rather know before this goes on any further."

"Mary, I promise. I'm not here for that, okay. Furthest thing from my mind."

"Okay," she said with resolve, "I'm sorry, Eric. I'm just a little jittery, haven't really let anyone in since Phil." She pulled back and looked at him. "But something's bothering you. Whatever it is, you can tell me, okay?"

He studied her, wishing he could test the strength she had inside, and decided he'd have to try. This wasn't something he could ignore, and not something he could hide from her, at least not the effects of it on his own state of mind.

"Let's go inside," he said.

"Oh my...Eric, was he serious?" Mary's face had gone white, and she sat slumped back in her swivel chair, which protested with an angry squeal. Her office was a tidy one-room affair with a desk, filing cabinets, and a few personal knickknacks: Pictures of Lake Erie, Allegheny National Forest, Drake Well - where oil had first been discovered in nearby Titusville - decorated the walls. Even the skyline of Pittsburgh, with an incline heading up Mt. Washington in the foreground and the Point where the Monongehela and Allegheny Rivers met to form the Ohio, had representation. Nothing from Drake City, which didn't surprise him too much. It had never been more than a small town without ambition, but when the furniture manufacturer and a tool and die company both closed and took most of the available stores of hope with it, it devolved into a derelict that let itself go. The streets were dirty, and many if not most of the shop fronts vacant. The most optimistic of them had For Sale or For Lease signs in windows filthy with exhaust fumes and negligence, but the signs themselves looked set in fonts that were in vogue a decade past. Yet Mary told him that she did okay, primarily because the property values were so low and therefore the houses affordable. She still held out hope that the town could experience a revival, even had joined a committee to that end. But the pictures seemed to suggest that for now the good life required a series of day or weekend trips.

"As far as I could tell, yes. He was serious. The question now is what do I do about it?"

"You call the police. What else can you do?"

"Well...I'm actually thinking of going up to see for myself."

"Do you really think it's necessary?"

"My encounters with JT so far have been bizarre, to say the least." Along with this new revelation he had told her about their first meeting in the woods. "I don't know who he is now, certainly not the kid I knew. And you don't really either. I have no idea why he would lie about something like this, but maybe he's not all there anymore, you know? The accident might have taken more than his ability to play football." Even as he said this, he didn't really believe it. JT had seemed possessed of all his faculties. Unless he'd fostered an award winning ability to lie.

Mary said, "Did you ever consider...just let me finish before you say anything...but did you ever consider that maybe JT did do it? Kill Adam. Because I'll be honest with you Eric, this is just weird. I mean, I'm not a psychologist or one of those profilers, but maybe he's trying to confess but he can't just come out and say it. I know the police didn't accuse him of anything but maybe not because they didn't think he did it. Maybe they just couldn't prove it. Or what if he's trying to set you up, somehow?"

Eric shook his head, a knee-jerk reaction based on mostly untested assumptions twenty years old, but lacking conviction when considered through the objective eyes of a man and not the emotional turmoil and naivete of a ten year old boy discovering his murdered brother.

He'd found JT with blood on his hands, and had always assumed that he'd tried to help Adam. There was no weapon found, but the swamp was right there. He had unintentionally fallen into it as a child and knew that the thick layer of black, stinking mud that lined the bottom that could easily swallow a knife forever. JT didn't have a knife with him that Eric knew of, but this was the kid that had smuggled his father's pistol out to the cabin.

Not long after the smuggling incident, JT's father had left. His mother, it was rumored and perhaps a catalyst to his father's departure, was the good time number on the bathroom wall at several area bars. His clothes were never new or looked, smelled quite clean; a boy with something to prove to the world, desperate for a reputation other than the hand-me down one bestowed by association through the bad choices of adults.

And now he considered, in this new light, that perhaps Adam had seen somehow, had threatened to tell about the magazines when JT had found him at the swamp. Eric suspected that his father would have forbidden them to hang out with him, and to a boy already craving acceptance here came a blow he couldn't absorb. So he pulls the knife to scare Adam. It would have worked, but he knew Adam would have been angry too, already pissed about being left out and threatened earlier. So Adam does something: rushes him, tries to walk by, says something to inflame the older boy, and it's done in a second's fury and can't be taken back despite the remorse of the next. It seems so plausible now that he can feel hatred looking for a suitable place for a nest within, as if he'd witnessed the actual event and had only now remembered. But then JT was only fourteen. And where would he have gotten these kids? But it was possible...

"It could have been him," he said without explaining any of this, but then maybe Mary had her own reasons and insights unknown to him from which to draw her conclusions.

"Yes. And if you plan to go up there, Eric, I'm going with you."

They made plans to hike into the big woods the next day, and after a somber dinner Eric went home to sleep but he couldn't. He kept thinking about the cemetery up in the woods, wondering what they'd find, wondering who these children could be if indeed they lay murdered and concealed in the forest.

And the story he'd been writing took on a new life. With sleep denied him, he sat down and picked up the thread.

Sean woke on the couch where he'd fallen asleep. He heard a noise, like the wind in the trees. No, not the wind, a whisper. Many whispers, spoken at once. Most of it sounded like gibberish, but he picked out a few words that he understood. He'd never heard anything like it. He got up quietly from the sofa and walked to the front door, standing on tiptoe to look out the window set into it. A flicker of movement flashed at the edge of his vision, and when he turned to see there was nothing at all.

But the whispers continued, and they seemed to be coming from the back of the house. He padded through the dark building that had once been his home and looked out of a window in the den. Behind the house lay a field in which he and Randy and other neighborhood kids or friends from school borrowed for the weekend played football or baseball or viewed stars lying flat on their backs. And the field seemed to be filled with children now.

But he could see the woods through them. Ghost children.

He expected to be afraid, and perhaps on some level he was. But the heights of terror induced by the man had inoculated him against something so minor as ghosts. He bit his lip to stop from laughing hysterically at the thought. And he felt another odd sensation. Relief that he wasn't alone.

The whispering had ceased, and he noticed that they had all turned towards him. He felt like the speaker at an assembly in the gym at school, all the kids expectant, waiting to see if he was worth listening to.

He opened the back door and stepped out, suspecting that when he got in the yard, the specters would be gone, figments of his imagination or another trick of the man. But they remained. There had to be a hundred of them. They stood evenly spaced apart, not in groups and clusters and the perennial odd kid out found at any given recess. They seemed to shimmer in and out, sometimes more solid, sometimes almost gone. A field of ghost fireflies.