Read The Girl in the Woods Online
Authors: David Jack Bell
The Girl in the Woods (9 page)
He shook his head. No, he just couldn't bear to do it.
He sank to the ground and almost cried. He felt the hot tears form behind his eyes, waiting to spring out and run down his face. But he fought against them. He knew what he needed to do. He knew what the clearing wanted him to do. And just thinking about it, there in that spot, made Roger feel better, like there was hope that he wouldn't always feel this way or always be alone.
And he knew that the problem wouldn't get solved out there, in the clearing, but had to be taken care of somewhere else. Someplace where there were people.
Girls.
He stood up, dusted himself off, and went to find the shovel. He had thrown it out of the clearing and into the knee-high grass that grew beneath the trees, but he needed it back to replace the dirt he had removed from the girl's grave. He didn't want to think about leaving her grave disturbed or imperfect. She deserved better than that.
But he didn't know if he could find the shovel in the thick grass. Roger moved in the direction he had thrown it, stumbling over some loose rocks and almost falling down. He thought it might be smart to just come back another time when his head was clearer, find the shovel then and take care of the grave, but he didn't think he could walk away knowing that he hadn't replaced the dirt. So he kept on going, eventually bending down and feeling in the grass with his hands. He felt dirt and leaves and touched something small and slimy that must have been a slug.
"Come on," he said. "I know it's here."
His hand felt a round rock, its edges surprisingly smooth. He was about to toss it aside and move on when his finger, his large right index finger, slipped inside the rock. He pulled his hand back, but curiosity got the better of him. It seemed like such an odd rock that he wanted to touch it again, bring it out of the grass and see it.
So he plunged into the grass again, feeling around. And he found the rock and slipped his finger into the hole. He got a good grip and lifted it out and up near his face.
It took a moment for him to see what it was. There was another hole next to the one his finger was through, and a smaller hole beneath that.
And a row of even teeth, grinning at him in the dark.
When he saw that, he almost dropped it, but somehow managed to keep his grip.
It was a skull. A human skull.
* * *
Roger looked up the road and saw her coming.
She rode her bike like she was training for some big event. Roger saw her pedaling down County Road 600, a determined look on her face. He passed her going and coming on the days he went to the grocery store. He had seen her many times, long before the last girl had died, and Roger made a note of her punctuality, her adherence to a routine. He liked that. It made him think the girl on the bike was special. And where he waited seemed like a good spot. It was a mile from his house, so people wouldn't automatically think of him, but it was close enough that he could do what he had to do and get home before anyone knew anything was wrong.
Well, not wrong, he thought. Wrong is...the wrong word. He remembered what his dad told him about taking a wife, and the way they used to do it in the old days, back when the elders met in the clearing.
"If a man didn't have a wife," his dad said, "why we'd find him one. Some fellows just need a little help, that's all."
Roger didn't need help. He had a plan. He was ready to go.
She came toward him on her expensive bike, her legs pumping, her red helmet reflecting the sun like a beacon. Roger had seen her a number of times now and thought she looked pretty. Prettier than the last girl, and he liked the thought of that. He was moving up in the world, getting a better wife and a better life.
He knew she saw him, but Roger stepped out into the road when the girl was still a good distance away. He hadn't thought of what he would do if she didn't stop. Roger just assumed she would. She seemed nice. Why wouldn't she?
He waved his arms at her, flagging her down, and for a moment, a scary moment in which his heart climbed into his chest, shutting off the flow of air to his lungs, he thought she wasn't going to stop after all.
But then he heard the gentle whine of her brakes, and he knew she was slowing down.
Roger waited, trying to look calm and innocent. She breezed past him, the air whooshing over Roger as she went by, and then she stopped about twenty feet past him, the bike turned at a slight angle toward the road so she had to turn her head back over her shoulder to speak to him.
Roger wanted to say something, but he couldn't find the words.
He froze.
The girl stared at him for a long moment, squinting against the sun. She reached down and pulled out a water bottle.
"You break down?" she said.
Roger saw that the girl was breathing heavily, and she took the water bottle and sprayed it over her face and then into her mouth, spitting some back out onto the blacktop.
Roger still couldn't find his voice. Up close, the girl was beautiful. Even sweating and in her biking clothes, she was beautiful.
Come on, come on,
Roger said inside.
You have the plan. Follow the plan.
But his voice wouldn't cooperate. She was too pretty. She was too good to be true.
Come on, come on,
Roger said inside.
You have the plan. Follow the plan.
But his voice wouldn't cooperate. She was too pretty. She was too good to be true.
The girl put the water bottle away and studied Roger. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
"I'd call somebody for you, but I don't have my cell. I'm sure someone will come along in a minute." She looked around. "Although on these roads, you never know."
She laughed, a bright energetic sound that made Roger's heart jump again.
The plan? The plan?
"Well," she said. "I'm sort of on a schedule, so..." She shrugged. "Good luck getting going."
She lifted her left foot to the pedal and was about to shove off when Roger finally spoke.
"I hit a dog," he said.
The girl turned. "What did you say?"
"I hit a dog. With my van."
"Oh," she said, placing her hand against her chest. Her face looked incredibly sad, and Roger knew at that moment his plan just might work. "Oh, that's awful."
"I think it's hurt."
"I'm so sorry to hear that."
The girl didn't get off the bike, though. She stood there, straddling it, while she gave Roger's face a longer look. Roger knew what was happening. He had seen it many times before. The girl was figuring something out about Roger, something that was also going to work in Roger's favor. The girl was deciding that Roger "wasn't quite right." But she wasn't thinking that he wasn't quite right in a bad way, in the way that a person—especially a girl—would want to avoid at all costs, but she was deciding that he wasn't quite right in a safe way, in the way that made a person want to help him. Sort of like the pretend dog that Roger hoped she really thought was lying under his van wheels.
Roger knew that the less he said the greater the likelihood she would think him special, so he pointed back toward the van and said, "The dog..."
"Right," she said. She gently set her bike down in the road. "Do you want me to come and look at it?"
Roger nodded, and the girl came toward him but stopped ten feet away.
"Is it over here?" she said, pointing toward the side of the van.
"Yes."
"Is it moving?" she said.
"A little."
Roger turned away, heard the scrape of the girl's shoes against the gravel, but when he went around the side of the van and looked back at the girl, he saw that she remained in place, having decided not to come farther. Roger saw that her lips were slightly parted, as though forming a question she didn't really want to speak. She seemed to be giving her next step a great deal of thought.
"You know, I should probably be moving on," she said. "It's getting late."
Roger looked at the still bright sky. He knew what the girl meant. She didn't trust him. But if she moved on, the plan was dead, and if the plan died today, without the girl coming with him, he had no idea when or if he could ever try again. This was the best chance, perhaps the only chance. And the longer they waited, the greater the chance a car would come driving by and ruin everything once and for all.
He just needed to get her to the side of the van, the side away from the road where the big door was open. If he could do that, he could make the rest of the plan happen.
Roger said the first word that popped into his head.
"Please?"
The girl looked back at her bike, then at Roger. She smiled.
"Okay," she said. "I'll take a look."
"Just look and tell me what to do," Roger said.
The girl came forward, toward the side of the van.
He knew the plan was going to work.
CHAPTER TEN
The new girl had surprised Roger by fighting with him.
He had managed to get her into the van easily. He outweighed her and could easily outmuscle her, but once she was inside, on the dirty, rough floor of the van's cargo area, she started thrashing and biting and scratching, and Roger again found himself with no choice but to punch her.
He hit her once, but she kept fighting. So he hit her again and then again, a little harder each time until she stopped moving, and Roger feared that he'd gone and killed her. She lay still in the van, her eyes closed, and Roger began to panic.
"No, no, no," he said.
Then he saw her chest move and heard her moan.
"Oh, yes," he said. "Yes, yes, yes, yes."
He grabbed the tape and the ropes and the gag and started working. And before he left, before another car came by and saw the van sitting there on the side of the road, Roger jumped out of the van and grabbed the girl's bike. He carried it back and threw it in next to her and drove off.
The bike was the most important part of the plan, and the plan was working.
He knew the girl wouldn't be happy in those first few hours in the house. He remembered how the other girl had cried for hours, begging him to let her leave until Roger felt ready to do it, to just drive back into town and shove her out the van door. He hated to listen to her crying. But he remembered something his father had told him, part of that long talk they'd had right before his dad died.
"Roger," he had said, "people don't understand the things we men do anymore. No one's going to feel sorry for you."
And Roger thought he knew what he meant. What he was doing looked bad to everybody else, and if he let the girl go, let her go back to town and her life, she would tell and there would be hell to pay.
So he kept the first girl, and he would keep this one too.
* * *
When he brought the new girl back to the house, she didn't cry at first because she was still a little out of it from the punches. He parked the van at the rear of the house and carried her upstairs to his bedroom. He couldn't bring himself to sleep in the room where his parents slept, but he had made the concession of moving their bed—their big bed—down the hall to his room so that he and his wife could share it like married couples did. And that was the bed he placed the new girl on while he waited for her to come around.
She stirred and groaned a little bit. She still wore her biking clothes, spandex shorts and top and black shoes. Roger decided to loosen the tape around her ankles, and then he took the tape off of her mouth. It made a ripping noise and left a nasty red stripe across her soft, freckled skin. Roger felt bad because he had hurt her, and she already had a bruise forming on her cheek where his fists landed.
He studied her face carefully. She had a small nose and dark eyebrows, and in the sunlight that came through the bedroom windows, he saw small, almost invisible hairs along her jaw line. Her hair was dark and pulled back in a tight ponytail, although some of the strands were coming loose, and he reached out to smooth them back behind her ear when she started moaning some more. Her eyes fluttered open, and Roger pulled his hand back like he'd touched a hot stove.
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