Into the Darkness (27 page)

I looked in on my parents in the living room.

“I’m taking a walk,” I told them.

“Oh? I thought your nature walker was gone for a while,” Dad said.

“But not nature,” I told him, and he laughed.

They returned to their reading, and I left the house.
Tonight we were having partly cloudy skies with a slightly stronger breeze. The darker shadows cast by the clouds seemed to slip and slide as if they were undecided about where to rest for the night. It was funny. For years, I had looked at Brayden’s house unoccupied, but it had never looked as dark and empty as it did tonight.
I guess it’s all my imagination,
I thought, and walked on, imagining him alongside me. When I reached the place where he had taken me off the road, between the Knotts and Littlefield homes, I paused.
Do I dare?
I thought, and surprisingly, with little fear or hesitation, I began to follow the path he had led me on that first night.

It was quite a bit darker, but somehow I didn’t step into any puddles or mud. I went through the woods easily and arrived at the small lagoon. Just as on that night, I saw all sorts of birds. The clouds shifted, and more stars began to appear. The twinkling light danced on the surface of the lake.
Why can’t it always be like this,
I thought,
quiet, beautiful, and inspiring?
When you thought about it, most of the grating and unpleasant noise in this world was made by human beings. Even the persistent caw of a crow had a place in the symphony of night. From way across the lake came the murmur of voices and some laughter. Either some people were in a boat that I couldn’t quite see or they were out in their yards facing the water. It was difficult to make out words, the sounds undulating and perhaps driven this way and that by the breeze. Strangely, all of this beauty suddenly made me feel even sadder.

And then I heard what sounded like branches cracking off to my right, deeper in the forest that surrounded the lake. It could be almost any animal, I thought, but
my heart tripled its beat. The cracking stopped and then started again and then stopped. Any other girl, even most of the boys I knew, would surely turn and hurry away, but I didn’t. I couldn’t explain it, but not only was I not afraid to remain, but I took some steps toward the sounds, listened, and moved ever so slowly between the saplings and older trees and bushes, listening keenly and studying the dark shapes ahead of me.

When I was a good ten or fifteen yards in, I saw a shadow slip between two trees. It was not a deer and certainly not a fox or a raccoon. I didn’t think it could be a bear. Could someone have seen me enter the woods and walk to the lagoon? Had I been too deep in thought to hear him following me? Of course, there were criminal events here and there in some of the other communities between Portland and Echo Lake, and a girl had been attacked on the highway when she had car trouble the year before. Was I a fool to be so oblivious to the possibilities that hovered around me in this world? Had the relative safety of life in Echo Lake made me careless, innocent, and naive after all?

As these thoughts occurred, my skin tingled with the cold chill that rushed up and down my spine. I saw the shadow move again. This time, I was positive. There was someone there. Who would be walking alone in the woods at this time of the night? I hesitated, took a deep breath, and thought about turning and running as fast as I could, but I didn’t. I would never be able to explain why I had come here at night alone to anyone, but even more difficult to explain, especially to my parents, would be why or how I drove back my fear and, instead of
fleeing, walked slowly toward the place where I saw the shadowy figure. From what well had I drawn this surge of courage? Why did I have such confidence? Or was it simply arrogance and stupidity? I took another deep breath. Finally, I paused and called out, “Who’s there?”

For a long moment, there was nothing but silence. Even the breeze stopped playing with the leaves, and I could no longer hear the sounds of music and voices floating over the lake. It was as if I had crossed into another, darker world, fallen through some black hole, but unlike Alice, I hadn’t dropped into a Wonderland but into a nightmare. I was too frightened now to cry out again. My legs seemed frozen. I could barely breathe.

“Who’s there? Is someone there?” I called. I waited for about ten seconds, and then I decided to turn and go home.

But it was too late.

“What are you doing here?” I heard on my immediate right, and spun around to see Brayden Matthews.

Starlight was captured in his eyes. The rest of him seemed to be cloaked in a shadow that began to lift away with a shifting cloud. For a moment, he looked larger, his shoulders broader, but I soon realized that was all part of the shock of seeing him appear seemingly out of nowhere. I stood staring at him, speechless.

“I thought it was you, Amber,” he continued, his voice soft, soothing, chasing the trembling out of my body. “When I heard someone walking around at the lagoon, I told myself it could only be you this time of night. Who else cares or knows how beautiful it is? Who else would come out here now? But why did you come tonight? Tell me, what brought you?” he asked like someone full of wonder, hoping to hear that it had something to do with him, something magical.

I wondered myself and stood there caught up in his question, but then I realized that this wasn’t a dream. He was really standing there beside me.

“The bigger question is what are you doing here tonight, Brayden? And why are you walking in the woods like this in the darkness?”

“I wasn’t walking through the woods. I heard you come looking for me. I’m going to stay here for a few days,” he said casually, as if it was nothing surprising.

“What? What do you mean, stay here? Why? What about your mother? Isn’t she still at the clinic? And your father? Is he still there? I don’t understand what’s going on. When you left, you implied that you would be gone for a while.”

“Things changed.”

“But . . . where are you going to stay for a few days? I don’t understand what you mean by staying here.”

“I fixed up that cabin I told you I found,” he said, nodding to his right. “Come on. We’ll talk there.”

He started away. When I didn’t move, he paused and looked back.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Come on.” He held out his hand.

I started after him and took it. He tightened his grip as if he never wanted to let go.

“When did you return?” I asked him as we walked.

“About two hours ago, I think. I can’t be sure.” He smiled at me. “‘Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.’”

“Never mind all that,” I said with a schoolteacher’s firmness. “Don’t try to distract me. Why are you here and not at home? And what do you mean, you fixed up the cabin? Why? When did you do that?”

“Questions, questions,” he said. “You’ll have no trouble being a mother.”

“I won’t keep asking questions if I can get some answers,” I replied, and he laughed but said nothing more.

We walked on until we came to a small clearing, and
there, as he had described, was a small log cabin. Trees and bushes had grown around the sides of it thickly enough to keep it well hidden from anyone coming from any other direction. It didn’t look much larger than someone’s toolshed, but I imagined that when it was built, it was considered at least average.

“I suspect this is quite old,” he told me. “I’m surprised some local historical society hasn’t laid claim to it. Whoever owns this land surely must be aware of its existence.”

“The family who owns this land isn’t very interested in preserving history. They’re interested in preserving wealth,” I said, and he laughed and turned to me.

“I’m really glad you came.”

“And I will be, too, when I know what’s going on.”

“Patience, patience,” he said.

He opened the cabin door and stepped in. The top of the doorway was low, so he had to bend a little. I did the same. He immediately turned on what looked like a battery-powered lantern. It wasn’t very strong but threw enough light for me to see his sleeping bag spread over the old wood-slat floor, a box full of other camping utensils, and what looked to be some canned food. The cabin did look cleaned up, but there wasn’t much to it. It was only one big room. The two windows were boarded up.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Why are you camping out here?”

He sat beside his sleeping bag and folded his legs before he looked up at me.

“Sorry there’s no furniture.”

“Brayden,” I whined.

“Okay, okay. It’s like this. My mother is going to be there for a while, and it’s better that I don’t visit her every day. I decided not to stay at some Bates Motel near the clinic.”

“Bates Motel?”

“
Psycho
. Remember the movie? You must have seen it.”

“Yes, my father insisted when he thought I was old enough to be scared half out of my mind, and my mother is still bawling him out for it.”

He laughed.

“What about your father? Didn’t he want you to go with him in the meantime?”

I lowered myself to the floor to sit across from him, hoping that I wasn’t sitting on or near any bugs that could come up through the slats.

“And do what? Hang out at a better hotel or motel? He works all day, with working dinners and sometimes working even into the night. Time and normal activities get lost in some fog for him and his associates when they’re into theoretical discussions. I accompanied him once and found myself more alone than ever. Half the time, I had to remind him that he had brought me along. No, going with my father was not an option.”

“Well, I still don’t understand,” I said, looking around. “Why would you rather camp out here than be at your house? I’m sure you have a lot to do there yet while you wait for your mother to get better, and . . .”

“It’s less lonely for me here,” he said.

“Less lonely here? It’s not exactly the place to meet people. Besides, I’d spend as much time as I could with you if you were home.”

“You could do that here, too, if you want. When you’re not working, that is.”

“But . . .”

“I guess I take the Thoreau thing more seriously than most people do. I need to feel myself in nature now. It restores me, keeps me wanting to be here.”

“I understand all that, but . . .”

“I’ll do fine. Don’t worry. In a few days, I’ll be returning to the clinic, and my mother will be released, and things will return to the way they were.”

“They weren’t that good,” I said. I was thinking now of my discoveries in his house.

“No, they weren’t, but they were tolerable before this episode.”

Something about the way he avoided looking at me when he said that told me that he was saying something he didn’t believe himself.

“Did you return to your house first?” I asked, wondering if there had been some way for him to discover that I had been in his house. Perhaps I had left a light on or hadn’t closed something.

“Actually, no,” he said, which really surprised me.

“You came right here instead of going home?”

“I didn’t see any reason to do otherwise,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, as if the reasons were perfectly clear. “I don’t have anything cold to drink, but there’s a bottle of some of that healthy water. You know, the water with electrolytes. My father always wanted my mother to drink it. He thought it would help somehow. Don’t ask me how. Would you like some?”

“No. I’m fine. But I don’t understand. If you didn’t
go to your house first, how did you get the water and all of these other things here?”

“I stocked the cabin two days ago,” he said.

“Two days ago, you knew you’d be here? But wasn’t that before your mother got worse?”

“I anticipated it, and I also wanted to have an alternative to what my father would suggest I do afterward,” he added.

“How could you anticipate it?”

“I’ve gotten so I can read my mother well enough to know when a time like this would come. That’s one advantage of being around someone this ill for so long, not that I want the advantage.” He looked at me with anticipation in his eyes, like someone who was waiting to see if the person he had spoken to believed him. I could accept what he was saying.

“You’re so much closer to your mother than you are to your father.”

He shrugged. “It’s not all that unusual, and it works just the opposite for some, I’m sure. Mothers are deserting their children a lot more than they used to. But let’s stop talking about my sad situation and talk about yours.”

“What do you mean, mine?”

“I don’t have to be a mind reader to feel that you’re burdened with something. Does it have to do with your date the other night with the boy who you said tried to change you?”

“Yes. Remember? You shouldn’t be surprised. You were the one who gave me a sort of warning about him.”

“What happened? When we took that walk, you
didn’t go into any real detail except to tell me you had asked him to go for a walk. I take it that wasn’t very exciting for him, but this sounds like a lot more went on.”

“I thought I could just forget it, but I see now that’s not possible. It’s like headline news around here now.”