Erosion
Withered Carnation
As two woodsmen were butchered not a mile from her house, Chris Higgins was experiencing what she would later realize was the happiest moment of her life.
The men were in the thick of the forest, close enough that they might have been able to scream for her help, if the first's windpipe hadn't been punctured and the second's tongue chopped off, like a cow's, drenching him from his bottom lip to the collar of his checkered insulated shirt with red blood. They were a team of brothers, mushroom hunters, rifling through the forests they encountered on their hike across the country (which, incidentally, had officially reached its end). Sure, the locals had told them to stay out of the woods around Old Camp Blood... dangerous old structures, they said... lots of animal attacks in these parts, they said... an old bum on a bicycle had even claimed the land was cursed. They'd heard stories like that, the brothers, in the other places they'd hiked, and since they'd encountered no ghosts, they went ahead with their search. This was where it got them: tied, or more like strapped, to a tree, a sharp and well-maintained old knife hacking at their throats as life and consciousness faded away.
Simultaneously, Chris tried to wipe the invisible mud from her canvas sneakers. She knew her mother would see it, even if she didn't, so she dragged her feet along her porch. She was looking down, at the shadow of the canopy above her and the way it made her red sneakers look murky, so she had almost walked into the gift box sitting on the swing before she noticed it. It looked like a gift box, anyway: it was wrapped with a pink ribbon. Gaps in the shiny material revealed small round holes punched into the cardboard. As if to confirm its contents, something inside shuffled, and the swing rocked and creaked beneath it. Forgetting the mess that was supposed to be on her sneakers, Chris dashed to the box, tore off the bow, and opened the lid.
A small black kitten blinked yellow eyes at her.
When it got used to the light, it patted the hand she extended to it, nicking her skin with its tiny claws. She laughed before she realized it was funny. How long had she been begging her parents for a pet? How many birthdays and Christmases had come and gone, each time her father promising her a puppy or a pony, only to replace them at the last minute with a new record player or television; expensive things for which she felt obligated to be grateful, but deep down knew would never chase a ball with her or eat from her hand? And here it was, not even a holiday, but the first Friday of summer vacation! She scooped up the cat. Cradling it, Chris noticed for the first time it wasn't completely black; its stomach and back paws were splotched white.
She was so excited, she almost forgot to clean up the box, but she knew she'd be in trouble if she left it here. Her father had just finished the wood, and it was supposed to rain tonight. Her parents were particular. At least, that's what Rick always said; Chris wasn't sure exactly what 'particular' meant in that context. It definitely had something to do with not leaving cardboard on the porch to get rained on and ruin the varnish. Since she didn't want to put down the kitten, afraid it might run away or just disappear if she let it out of her sight, she hoisted it onto one shoulder, tied the ribbon in her hair, then picked up the box with her free hand.
"Hey, mom!" She said, barreling through the porch door, into the living room.
Her mother, Emily, stood with her back to the door, admiring something her slight figure blocked from view. Another new painting? A landscape of some kind, although all Chris could see of it behind her mom's sallow blonde head was green and smeary. Emily clucked at it before trying to straighten it, something rendered impossible by what her father called 'the house settling.' "Wipe your feet," she said, without even looking.
Today, Chris was happy to oblige. "Thank you for the kitten," She said.
Emily turned, brow furrowed, fixing Chris with that hard look that had such a way of making her feel self-conscious about every hair that crept out of her braids, every wrinkle in her blouse, and in this instance, the knee of her jeans she'd torn proving to Rick she could so climb the fence behind the convenience store (she hadn't ripped them climbing. She'd ripped them falling off). This time, her eyes lingered on the kitten resting its head on Chris's shoulder, batting her pigtail, and trailed up to the ribbon tied in her hair. She blinked as if these imperfections would disappear if she concentrated hard enough.
"Keep it in the barn when it's not in your room," She said, finally. "I don't want paw prints all over the floor. And take that thing off your head. It looks ridiculous. I don't want any daughter of mine looking ridiculous."
"I'll throw it out with this," Chris said, holding up the box. "I'm thinking of naming her Cowslip."
"It's a cat, and you want to name it after a cow?"
"No, the yellow flowers down by the lake. They're all over."
"It's yours. Name it what you want. I suppose we'll have to get it fixed, then. I don't want the barn crawling with cats."
"I'm going to give her some water."
"Water?"
"Yeah. I'd be thirsty if I was sitting a box all day. Is there any tuna left?"
Emily turned back to her painting. "Just make sure you use the bowls beneath the sink. I don't want my dinnerware set missing pieces."
Box and ribbon in the garbage, Chris brought Cowslip and her new bowls to her room. She couldn't imagine leaving her in the barn; she could see its faded red paint from the window, and could almost feel how dusty, dim, and scratchy it was from the comfort of her hammock. She put Cowslip's bowls right beside it, where she slept, filled the first with the tuna she'd taken from the fridge, and the second from the bathroom faucet. The kitten took a few hesitant licks of both, then tumbled around the floor, curious about this new place. There wasn't much here that could hurt her, either; Chris had decorated it like a room she'd seen in a storybook from school, with swans and goldfish painted on the walls, a silken folding screen painted with flowers she spread over her hammock when she wasn't using it, matching curtains, and a yellow dresser that held her TV and a small metal samurai. Cowslip jumped between them, winding around the statue. Heroic knight menaced by giant kitten!
That was the happiest moment of Chris's life.
It was also the moment the first of the two unfortunate hikers succumbed to his pain and blood loss and died. Chris's birthday was long over, but someone's was coming.
ooo
Like most children, Chris was good at spotting puzzles, if she wasn't quite yet an expert at solving them, and so she knew she was living in one. Furthermore, she knew her parents had hidden a piece of it. She didn't know what that piece was, but it seemed sometimes like the whole town was in on it; like everyone from Harold at the convenience store to Officer Dorf preening on his new motorcycle were conspiring with them to keep it from her. She could hear it in the sound of the whispers they used to talk about the forest, see it in their hooded eyes when they heard news of some careless out-of-towner mauled by a bear, feel it in their hands when they shoved crazy old Ralph out the diner door with a hissed, "You're scaring the children!" whether she and Rick were scared or not. Sometimes Chris was scared, she admitted, by the wiry and wrinkled old man and his unintelligible ranting. Rick swore he wasn't ever. Both of them were curious, though, and neither of them could figure out what chunk of the puzzle they were missing. Chris wasn't sure she wanted to. Any time she thought about it, it felt big enough to cast a shadow over her- over Higgins Haven, over Crystal Lake, over maybe even the whole world- and it made her want to run away. She didn't care where she ran, so long as it was somewhere that darkness couldn't touch.
ooo
If the two hikers had been able to call for help, it's likely Chris would have heard them. She had sensitive hearing. Often, she'd be downstairs in front of the big television in the family room, Laverne and Shirley turned up so loud her father would yell at her for it, and she'd whip around with a stunned "what's that?" only to find out "that" was the faucet in the upstairs bathroom dripping. Certainly, she heard something much subtler the next day. Cowslip had found her way out of the house and hopped away. Chris had chased after her, amazed at how fast she bobbed into the distance, darted along the lakefront and into the forest, where Chris was forbidden to go. She looked over her shoulder, wondering if anyone would see her disobey, and that was when she heard a sob so mournful it chilled her more than the morning air. It wasn't a threatening sound. Chris wondered what could be making it.
There was a woman kneeling in the muck at the edge of the water, just barely out of both the lake and the trees. All Chris could see of her from where she stood was the back of her head- a lot of curly blonde hair spilling out of a loose bun and waving everywhere- and the knitted gray sweater over her hunched shoulders. Just as Chris was beginning to think she should not intrude, one of the woman's tears hit the surface of the water... and when the ripples cleared, she saw Chris reflected behind her.
She turned so quickly Chris would have expected her to fall or at least stumble, but she didn't; she pivoted and stood in one fluid motion. Her eyes were red, but her face was a mask. The mask smiled as she dabbed her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief, trying to dry her tears and clear her running mascara at the same time. She seemed to Chris to be doing a lot of things at once.
"I'm sorry," Chris said. "I'm only looking for my cat."
She shook her head. "I'm the one who should apologize. I didn't mean to come this far around the lake. Sometimes, when I'm thinking, I lose track of where I'm walking."
"You shouldn't have to apologize for that. There's a snowbird a few cabins down, his wife jogs the path every morning. Mom and dad don't mind."
Her smile was more genuine this time, but something about it made Chris think perhaps she was not exactly the same as the snowbird a few cabins down. "You're a sweet girl. Thank you. Is Ira Higgins your father? You look like him. You have his black eyes."
She nodded. "Chris. That's what everyone calls me, except Rick, who calls me Chrissy because his stepfather's name is Chris and he doesn't want to get mixed up when he's trying to talk about both of us at the same time. That happened at dinner once. Did you see a cat come this way, Ms?"
"Mrs. Voorhees," She said. "No, I haven't. Would you like me to help you find her?"
"If you're okay, I mean, and not busy. I'm not allowed in the forest. It'd be a big help. There was another animal attack there yesterday. Rick said the one guy's whole head had been chewed off, and the other didn't have a drop of blood left in him, it was all gone-"
"Oh, you tell Rick he doesn't need to be talking to you about things like that, or he'll give you nightmares," Mrs. Voorhees said, pacing into the trees, scanning.
"I do, but he does anyway. I don't think he thinks about it. If it creeps in his head, it comes right out his mouth, and doesn't stop anywhere in between. That's what dad says."
"What did you name her? Your cat?"
"Slip. Cowslip, really, but yesterday when she tried to cross the kitchen floor she skidded on the tile and slipped all the way across, so mom and dad have been calling her 'Slip' and it's kind of stuck. I wish I had a picture of her, but I just got her."
"But this is her, isn't it?" Mrs. Voorhees pointed to a tree, where Cowslip sat, peering down at something on the forest floor like a vulture.
Chris thought for sure she'd have to go into the forest and climb up to get her, but the kitten leapt to a lower branch, and from there to the ground. Chris still couldn't believe what a jumper she was. Rick had an old beagle, and she was used to seeing him lumber about. He never leapt onto a television, or from branch to branch like that. Chris caught her as she darted by and pulled her, squirming, to her shoulder.
"Yes. Thanks." Another thought occurred to her. "How'd you know she was a girl cat?"
Mrs. Voorhees thought a moment, then said, "I didn't think about it. I must have just assumed. Maybe it's just because she's so lovely."
"That's true," Chris said, and needed no further explanation.
As she walked back towards her house along the waterfront, Chris looked over her shoulder. Mrs. Voorhees was again sitting by the water, staring into it. She didn't think anyone could look so sad, and she didn't like it. She looked around, but there was nothing but Cowslip, now on her feet again, chewing on a yellow bud sticking out of the mud.
Chris grabbed a handful of the flowers and began to braid. This might have taken another girl longer, but it was something she did all the time; after all, it wasn't like there was a whole lot else to do here, with Emily always barring her from getting too dirty. In a few minutes, Chris dashed back to Mrs. Voorhees.
"Here!" She said, holding out a bracelet woven of yellow flowers, "Cowslips!"
Before she could take the offered present, Cowslip leapt from the ground and snatched a big tuft of flowers, running back to the house with them. Mrs. Voorhese tipped her mouth into her hand, and first Chris thought she was crying again. But she was laughing, and it made Chris giggle, too. Mrs. Voorhees took the bracelet (what was left of it, anyway) and slipped it over the fraying cuff of her sweater. It was big enough to fit over the cloth with slack. "I love it!"
"Yellow's pretty on you."
The mask returned. "Strange you should say that. You know, the last person who told me so was my son."
"You've got a son? Where do you live? If it's not too far, maybe he could come over some time. The barn's got a hayloft, it's lots of fun to jump out if you're not chicken, although mom hates it when I trail hay in the house, and Rick would like having another boy to play with..."
Chris trailed off when she realized Mrs. Voorhees was crying again. It wasn't the uninhibited sobbing of before, when she hadn't known anyone was watching, but a quiet choking sound she muffled with her handkerchief.
"I used to walk here with him. He was impossible to keep up with. He loved being outside. He was your age," She explained, "The last time I saw him. He was smiling, too."
A grownup would have known the standard phrases. Even a child older than Chris would have known to say "I'm so sorry" or something about condolences and him being in a better place. But aside from being young, Chris had very little natural tact, besides. Instead of saying what was expected, she threw her arms around Mrs. Voorhees and said, "That's horrible!"
Because she'd been braiding flowers, her hands were grass-stained, and now she was grabbing Mrs. Voorhees's nice sweater. She expected to be pried away with a scolding as soon as she thought about that. It's what Emily would have done. However, Mrs. Voorhees only hugged her back and said, "Yes, it is horrible."
ooo
"Would you look at what your cat brought in the house?"
Emily was so upset, she didn't even ask Chris to wipe her feet (Chris did anyway). She was holding a dustpan as far away from her black, splotched apron as she could without dropping it, her face almost white by contrast. Chris peeked inside. She had to study the bristles, the glossy black poking every which way, the doughy yellow and stringy pink, before she recognized what it was. Then she gagged.
"Eww! Why didn't you throw it away?"
"Because it wasn't my cat that killed it!" She thrust the dustpan at Chris, covering her mouth with one hand. Emily was a lot smaller than Mrs. Voorhees, Chris noticed, almost bird-like herself, and her hand almost covered the whole bottom half of her face. "It's your job to clean up after it! If you can't do that, then maybe you're not responsible enough to have a pet! That's what I keep telling your father, you're not old enough, and then he has to go behind my back and..."
"It's okay. I've got it. See? I'm taking it out to the burn pile right now. Where'd Slip go?"
"I put that thing in the barn. Don't bother bringing that dustpan back. I don't want it."
Chris did dump the contents of the dustpan on the heap of boxes and sticks her father kept in a grassless part of the field. She had to shake it, and it left streaks of something thin, pink, and liquid behind it as it slid. Although, Chris was disgusted, she couldn't help but stare at it a little. Was that blood? Rick said the one guy's whole head had been chewed off, and the other didn't have a drop of blood left in him, it was all gone. It wasn't what she'd imagined blood looking like. She threw the dustpan after it, then looked over her shoulder at the red barn.
It wasn't an old barn. Chris was older than it was. It always managed to look ancient to her, though. Sunlight beamed through gaps between the boards, making the peeling paint look even more faded. She could only see the brown shadows that hinted at the first few stalls; the ladder further back was lost in darkness. Chris hated going in there. It was piled with the junk her father brought home broken and hadn't fixed yet, some of which was garish, like dead animals preserved by taxidermy, it was a gross sepia yellow no matter what the weather was outside, and it made her sneeze. She'd run through it to climb that ladder and jump into the piles of hay outside, when they were bailing, but more often she'd just climb up the rope outside to avoid the walk. She couldn't imagine Cowslip liking it any better, but then, she didn't like to climb the stalls or hide in boxes.
"Slip?" She called, opening the door. It whined. "Here, kitty-kitty!"
Chris said this automatically, because she was supposed to, but she wondered if cats came when you called them. She'd noticed Cowslip didn't normally respond to her unless she wanted the attention. She was a very self-oriented creature, Cowslip; she went where she pleased, places Chris wouldn't have thought it possible for her to reach. When Chris walked under the hayloft, for instance, she spotted the cat sitting on a canteen hanging from a nail on a post, shifting her tail as if this was the most natural place in the world to be. Chris called her again, but Cowslip was in the mood to play, not listen. She leaped to the stall, skitted to the windowsill, fell and landed in the hay, on her feet, and darted like a snake into an old cabinet. Chris gasped- she couldn't help it- and got a mouthful of dust and hay.
Prying the stall gate, Chris approached the cabinet. She hoped Cowslip hadn't hidden the rest of that bird in here, or any other surprises of the ex-living variety. Her father still wanted to fix this. At least, he said he did. He also said he wanted to get her a pony. Neither had happened yet. Come to think of it, Chris also hoped there wasn't anything living inside except her cat. She didn't want to open it and find a rat or a bunch of mice scurrying around the shelves. She closed her eyes and yanked the handle.
Something leapt out at her, and it wasn't a mouse, or even her cat. It was something solid that smacked her in the lip and made it bleed before finally landing on her foot. Chris jumped back, too late, and opened her eyes.
It was an axe.
So that's where he put it, she thought. Her dad had been looking for the axe everywhere, had even wound up buying a new one to split wood for the fireplace. It was grimy, but Chris leaned it against the cabinet. She'd have to remember to tell dad about it at dinner tonight. She swept Cowslip from the top shelf, got scratched across the nose more for her trouble, and carried her back into the house.
Emily had just finished setting up her easel and palette when she looked up and saw Chris's face. "What happened?" She asked.
"I found dad's axe, that's the good news. The bad news is, it fell on me."
"It looks like a scratch."
"It scared her when it fell."
Emily frowned. "Let's get it bandaged. I don't want you getting an infection."
"You just got everything out. It's not too bad; I can wash it off."
"If you're sure."
Chris was absolutely sure. Emily tried her best, but she still remembered the time her mother had unthinkingly tended a scrape on her knee with turpentine still on her hands. Cowslip followed Chris up the winding stairs to the upstairs bathroom and squeezed inside before she managed to close the door. She sat on the bathtub while Chris dug a washcloth out of the closet.
Chris watched the water run down the sink, pink like the stuff left on the dustpan, as she dabbed her nose and lip. It was funny, but she'd never before thought of water as something that could kill her. That was what killed Mrs. Voorhees's son, though; she'd said as much before they parted, that he drowned in the lake just outside Higgins Haven. Chris sometimes sat there with her feet in the water, looking for minnows. She dropped the washcloth. Was that disrespectful, like sitting with your feet in someone's grave? Was, that, in some way, even worse than being buried in a grave, dying in the water? At least if you were in a coffin, you were already dead. Wouldn't drowning take a long time? And Mrs. Voorhees's son had only been Chris's age when it happened?
Deep in thought, she'd forgotten to turn off the water. She reached for the faucet and noticed the washcloth she dropped had plugged the drain. The sink was filled almost to full. She'd better do something about that; Emily wouldn't want water all over the floor. She reached in to unplug it, but yanked her hand back out again. Her wrist felt so light, as breakable as a doll's...
This was new. Chris had never been afraid of the water in her life. She leaned over the sink, staring at it, trying to find something different. All she saw was her reflection. Chris hadn't realized she was scowling until she saw herself, and the face was all the less pretty for the four little red lines and purple splotch right in the middle of it. She stooped more, until her face touched the surface, then even more, until she had to hold her breath. How long could she stay under before she blacked out and the pain went away? She'd read a story in school about professional divers who could hold their breath for superhuman stretches of time, but she wasn't sure they were true. Suddenly, she wasn't sure whether a lot of stories she'd heard in school were true or not.
And if it wasn't long enough... she suddenly wondered... would Emily be crying for her all those years later, like Mrs. Voorhees?
She pulled back, gasping. That had been no superhuman feat. She doubted she'd been able to hold her breath thirty seconds. Her movement dislodged the washcloth and the water drained away. Well, all but a little that sloshed over the edge and landed on Cowslip's head and back. Offended, the kitten shook herself out like a towel.
ooo
The neck snapped the instant it hit the tree; the side of the head melding with the bark in a mulch of red and brown. The glasses on his face first twisted, then broke, then fell into a pile of sticks knocked down by a storm. They crunched. The head and the body attached to it followed them into the pile, making a much louder crunch. It was almost instantaneous, the whole ordeal; the officer, meddling in the deaths of those hikers, never knew what hit him. The hikers had lasted so much longer.
A few minutes after that, Chris struggled through the front door. She was trying to carry something large and unwieldy as she opened it, and at the same time be quiet, and it was dark outside on top of that, even. She didn't have to be so quiet. Although she didn't want to wake her parents, the wind was making enough murderous racket to hide her footsteps. The thump Chris's bundle made when she accidentally smacked it against the doorframe and the silent curse that slipped out after that would've been inaudible over the thrashing trees and rattling windows. She had to set her burden down to close the kitchen door behind her. She hadn't wanted to risk the front door, but the downside was, this one opened to a steep, crooked staircase, and she didn't want to trip and knock herself out (that would really get her caught). She struggled with it to the edge of the dock.
There, she unwrapped it.
Emily didn't like Chris playing with "boys' toys." She said they would give her ideas, although she would never elaborate on what kind of ideas they were supposed to give her, so Chris would know to avoid them if she found them somewhere else. Rick must not have gotten any ideas from them. He thought they were safe enough to present to Chris: models of monsters he ordered through the mail and put together himself, comic books about caped superheroes, dolls that didn't look much different from hers, except they were boys and wore green. This was the biggest thing he'd brought her, and she had a world of trouble hiding it already, what with no traditional bed to shove it under. It was metal dump truck, bright yellow, with large rubber wheels and a bed that cold hold a whole pail full of sand, rocks, or the arms and legs of the dolls Chris dismantled, which is what she usually put in it.
A canoe was tied to the dock. Chris pushed the truck inside, then undid the knot and climbed in herself. She felt a little guilty, since this had been a gift. If Rick asked where it was next time he visited, she'd tell him she gave it to someone less fortunate. Her mother made her do that to any contraband she caught her with, and besides, it wasn't really a lie. Nobody was less fortunate than a dead boy.
The wind fought Chris as she paddled. The boat was light, she was light, and there was only one oar. It didn't help that the lake was full of debris, like tree limbs and mud clots, or that the choppy waves carried her right into them. She didn't know how long it took her to make it to the deep center of the water, or how long she'd be able to stay there with the wind trying to take her back to shore.
She'd intended to row out, deliver her package, and row right back. Now that she was here, though, she squinted, wondering if she'd be able to see the camp that was supposed to be on the other side of the lake. She felt an overwhelming presence, as if she were being watched intently, but from where? She saw no flicker of a campfire. Silly, no one would light one in this kind of weather. The high school kids snuck up there to have parties, steal pieces of cabins, or just explore, but they probably wouldn't be doing that now, either. Chris could see nothing in the blackness, not even the trees. It was like there was no shoreline at all this far out. And nobody's crazy enough to be out but me.
Chris rolled the yellow truck over the side of the canoe, and shuddered as it pitched to the side, so close to the water she might have been able to see herself if the surface weren't so agitated. Just before it rolled over completely, the truck toppled out of the boat with a splash, and she righted after a few bobs. Chris had wanted to watch its descent, but there was nothing to see. Its bright paint was out of her sight before she knew where to look for it. She'd expected it to float a little, but it was too heavy, and sank, sending up a few bubbles after it. It was hard to see even those with the wind.
It wasn't such a fight to get back to shore. Chris had the most trouble getting out without falling into the shallows. She bit her tongue in concentration as she swung her legs back onto the pier, keeping hold of the canoe with one hand and grabbing at the rope with the other. Carefully, she tied it back in place. She tried to think of how it had looked, what kind of knot her dad had used; her mother's meticulous eyes would instantly spot something out of place. She saw nothing but the rope. It was the snap of a twig that caught her attention.
She jolted, freezing mid-motion, as if that would make it harder for her mom or dad to spot her, if they'd noticed she was missing and come to look. She carefully looked over her shoulder, at the farmhouse, but there were no faces in the upstairs windows.
But there was one in the forest.
She only saw it an instant, but it was unmistakable. Nothing looked quite like human skin. Chris was absolutely sure that was what she was looking at: someone was standing at the edge of the trees. The foliage was too thick, black, and tangled in the night, and the visitor too far back, for her to tell more than that, but she wasn't alone anymore.
Whoever it was, they didn't move, but suddenly Chris wanted to get back in the house as quickly as possible. She didn't care so much anymore about tying the boat neatly.
ooo
It was a quiet afternoon. The trees overhead seemed frozen in time, the leaves were so still and silent. Chris felt like she was walking through one of her mother's paintings, only even more solid; those, after all, were oil, and no matter how dry they looked, it was never a good idea to touch one.
"Let's see if we can find the old camp," she said that morning, when she and Rick were out of sight of his house. It wasn't the first time one of them made that suggestion. Both Rick and Chris brought it up every so often, and neither of them refused the request; only scaredy-cats were afraid to wander off the wide commercial trail and sneak down to the old diving board, from which you could easily spot the dilapidated cabins. Everyone knew that, so the other children brought back tokens of their bravery: a wooden letter from the sign on the counselor's cabin, a broken arrow from the archery range, a beer can, a rabbit bone. Rick and Chris didn't have anything to show, because they never made it that far. Halfway down the trail, one of them inevitably lost his or her nerve, overcome by fear of meeting an adult or a bear, and the other got to tease 'em about it for the rest of the day. Today, it looked like Rick would cave first.
"I'm getting bitten by mosquitoes," He said, slapping the side of his long face, so his sandy hair stuck up. "Mosquitoes carry malaria. You know what happens when you get malaria? You turn yellow and you can't stop shaking. You know what else? I overheard Officer Dorf this morning, saying the last policeman that came down this way still hasn't come back, and that in a few more hours he'll be officially missing. He's probably officially missing now. That was this morning."
"I can hear water," Chris said. "I think we're almost there."
"Can I ask you something? The forest beside your farm is camp property, right? So why don't we just cut through that, instead of going the long way around? It'd save us walking."
"I'm not allowed in the forest by the farm."
"Like you are allowed in the old campgrounds?"
"Are you getting scared?" Chris giggled. Rick had a point. The reason she wasn't allowed in the forest was because it technically belonged to the Christys, and they both knew why they walked all the way up the road to the old parking lot: it gave them more time to chicken out. Chris's smile disappeared, though, as another picture popped into her head, a picture of the edge of the forest, in the pitch-black of night, of thrashing trees and choppy water, and of someone ghostly white staring at her from behind a tree. Now, where had that come from? It made her shudder.
Rick smirked sideways, something the other girls at school thought was cute. "Now you're scared. Hey, look! There's a snake! Come on and help me catch it."
He was pointing at an old tree stump, hollowed out by mice on the inside. She strained in the brightness leaking through the leaves overhead and could just barely make out a shadowy green coil. It shifted as they approached.
"What if it's poison?"
"S'not. You can tell by looking at their heads. The poison ones sort of have arrow-heads. There are only two kinds of poisonous snake in the county, anyway, and neither of them are green. The rattlesnakes are brown, and the moccasins are black. Go around the back and stomp, and I'll grab it when it comes out."
It didn't work that way, though. The snake did move when Chris ran around the back and stomped, but instead of sliding into Rick's hands, it slithered out a crack in the side- one Chris wouldn't have thought big enough- and vanished into the underbrush.
"Aww!"
Chris watched the wild flowers shake where the snake had escaped. "What would you have done with it?"
"Let it go, when I got it home. Mom always makes me."
"You bring home a lot of snakes?"
"Just frogs, mostly. Sometimes turtles. I get them from the fishing pond. Maybe if we go there now, we can..."
But Chris had been following the snake's progress, and it had led her to something gleaming gray in a ray of sunlight. She dashed to it.
She almost ran right into the back of the cabin, and the condition it was in, she might have knocked it over. The paint had flaked away in spots, settling on the ground like snow and leaving the wall mottled. She peered around the side and saw more: a whole row of little cabins, sitting in a clearing, some of them heaped with leaves from last autumn. Beyond it was a mess hall, and further than that, a boathouse, sitting beside the lake. The diving board was half-sunk.
"We're here," Chris said.
Maybe it was just too bright, but Chris felt suddenly disappointed. She didn't know what she'd expected, but with the mystique everyone built around the old campgrounds, she had thought they would impress her more. This reminded her of the skeleton of a tyrannosaurus she'd seen embedded in a clump of stone on a field trip. Big, and probably intimidating when it was alive and not sticking out of the ground in pieces, but now just kind of sad and gloomy. She couldn't even hear birds.
"You're right. Let's go to the pond."
Rick kicked a can beside her. "Aren't you going to take something back with you? Nobody will believe we were here if you don't."
"Everything's so grimy." Chris was suddenly very aware she didn't want anything from this place.
Still, Rick edged further out. "Let's try to find an arrowhead."
It didn't look like he was in any mood to scour the ground for an arrowhead, though. He, like her, looked ready to dash-and-grab, if not just dash. Chris was on edge already, and when she saw movement, she froze. Her heart thumped when she realized it was someone she recognized. Hefting a garbage bag on her shoulder, picking up cans, bottles, and paper littered on the porch of the Fox cabin, was the unmistakable form of Mrs. Voorhees.
Before she could even think about ducking out of sight, the woman looked right at them both, stunned.
Was she angry? Excuses poured out of Chris's mouth before checking in with her head first, just like her father said Rick did. "Mrs. Voorhees, we're sorry, Rick and I were chasing a snake, it came this way and we didn't even mean to, we just followed it, like you said you did the other day, and we'll never do it again, we promise!"
Mrs. Voorhees stared at both of them. Something was wrong, Chris noticed. The last time she'd seen her, she was warm, but guarded. Now that mask was gone, and she looked more genuine; but also lost, timid, confused, almost dull.
"Not s'posed to talk to strangers," She said, almost squeaked, and backed into the Fox cabin without watching where she was going.
That was enough for Rick. He lit out through the underbrush, and Chris had no choice but to follow.
ooo
Television that night showed another family scene of dinnertime chat, a smiling mother and rugged father listening intently as their little boy told them all about his day at school, as if they had nothing else to worry about. This, after her own dinner, in which her father hadn't let either her or her mother get in a word edgewise, so busy was he complaining about town hall and their refusal to do anything to update the town's sewage system, even though he'd gathered a group of intrepid heroes to challenge them, the ranks of which included Crazy Ralph and the cantankerous Ethel Hubbard, who'd complain about anything you wanted, if you just pointed her in its direction. At least her mother hadn't had to listen to it. She'd been sitting at the table, but her brain was still with her easel in the next room, and she'd responded to every question with 'yeahs' and 'uh-huhs,' which were all her father really wanted anyway. Nope, didn't work like that for her, ever.
Chris had found that if she didn't want to be the last person to know what was really going on, she had to listen from the second floor after bedtime. That wasn't difficult; the hall beside the spiral stairs was little more than a catwalk, blocked off from thin air by a rail that was more like a fence, and if she lay on the floor beside the bathroom, she could hear everything going on downstairs without being seen. She just couldn't get too close to the edge. That night, she sat down there, Cowslip on her lap.
Most of what she heard was of no interest. Her father was still going on about the sewer, and her mother talked about painting, and a new statue she bought at a flea market at a great steal. If you paid for it, how was it stealing? Chris wondered sleepily. She was just about to go back to bed when she heard a name that did interest her.
"I met Christopher at the grocery store," Emily said. "Do you know what he told me his son told him? That woman has been down here again, and Chris has been speaking with her."
Her father hesitated, then said, "I'll speak to her."
"You'll do more than speak with her, you'll get rid of her. I don't want my daughter exposed to that."
"She's harmless."
"Oh, really? Then, maybe when Chris comes home confused and frightened because she started a conversation with Pamela and suddenly finds herself talking to one of the other ones, you can explain why."
"What are the chances of that happening?"
"Let's say it doesn't, then. You know she wasn't even married when that boy came along. You know why Elias walked out on her. What sort of harmless conversations do you see a woman like that having with Chris?"
"All right, all right. I'll tell her not to come down to this side of the lake anymore. Don't get hysterical, Em."
Chris had heard enough. Nestling Cowslip in her arms, she crept back to her room and crawled under her fuzzy blanket. That woman? Pamela? "The other ones?" She struggled to put these together in her head. When she started to get a picture, she didn't like it very much, and closed her eyes tightly. But that only made it worse, so she opened her eyes a little, and watched the birds and fish on her wall. They didn't fly or swim. They floated in place until she fell asleep.
ooo
Though Cowslip hadn't been with her long, she'd taken to curling up right in the crook of Chris's knees, and stretching out over her legs as she slept, like a furry pair of socks. She wasn't there this morning. Chris woke up with cold feet. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, put on the pink slippers beside her hammock, and plodded to the stairs.
She felt a chill sweep over her as she peered over the bannister. There was her mother, still in a nightgown, and her father, both kneeling beside something black on the floor. Emily heard the stairs creak and whipped around, paler than usual. Chris squeezed between the two of them and picked up the cat, refusing to believe her fingers when they detected no warmth beneath the fur.
"What's wrong with her? Is it too early to take her to the vet?"
They were both stupid questions. A quick glance around the room, at the paint thinner Emily had unthinkingly left out beside her easel, which now sat on its side, the puddle where it had spilled onto the wooden floor almost dry; well, that told her exactly what happened. It was too late to take Cowslip to the vet.
At first, Chris wouldn't believe that. She cried, but the tears were small, more out of courtesy than genuine emotion; why get worked up when the cat was going to spring up and want her breakfast at any second? It was only when this did not happen, when even after Chris was dressed that Cowslip refused to move, that she lost control. She wasn't merely crying then. She was practically choking.
She didn't remember how she'd gotten away from her mother and father. She didn't remember where the satin pillowcase came from, or how she'd managed to heft it and its new occupant into the canoe at the dock, untie it, and row out to the center of Crystal Lake. All she remembered was holding that pillowcase to her chest and willing it to stir. It didn't. It had already stopped being Cowslip.
It's all my fault, she thought. She could have closed the door to her room. Cowslip had food and water there, and she slept there anyway, so why leave it opened? Why hadn't she put her in the barn, like Emily wanted? It was safe there, and at least in the summer, warm enough. Cowslip liked it there. Why hadn't Chris thought of Cowslip getting into the poison and reminded Emily to put it away? She trusted me to protect her and I failed.
"I'm sorry," She said, and pushed the pillowcase over the edge.
It didn't sink like the truck. It floated in place, like the animals on Chris's bedroom wall, as if Cowslip didn't want to leave yet. Slowly the cloth took on more water; gradually it struggled, until it finally became too heavy to fight any longer.
In the water beneath the water, once she was able to squint past the gray reflection of the sky above, Chris saw the piece of the puzzle she'd been missing. That was the shadow over the world, what she saw beneath the lake; not black so much as brackish, what happens when you pile up dirty glass and then stand on it and look down. Chris knew she was done and should go back to the farm now, but she didn't want to. She didn't want to go back, ever. Wasn't going back ever, not to her house, not to shore. It wasn't any safer there than it was here. It felt less safe for its falseness. Here, at least, the shadow made sense.
She stretched out at its feet in the small canoe, just like Cowslip used to stretch out at hers, and closed her eyes.
ooo
There was hissing, like static, somewhere in the distance. Had she fallen asleep with the TV on again? Chris stretched, sat up, opened her eyes. At first, she was disoriented. She was rocking back and forth, but this wasn't her hammock. It was the swing on the front porch. She looked out over the front yard, the little dirt road leading from the porch to the dock. The lake rippled with heavy rain. That was what pounded on the canopy above her, rain. Beyond the dock, the barn was soaked so thoroughly it almost looked brown.
How did I get here?
When she took a better look at the puddles forming around her, that thought quickly morphed into, Why am I outside in this?
Chris opened the front door, the beginnings of a headache building behind her left eye. When she opened the door, Emily's easel was set up in the living room, but Emily wasn't beside it. That was strange; why was it out if she wasn't going to work? She was always so worried about the oil paint smearing.
A chair scraped the floor in the kitchen, so that was where Chris went. She found her mother and father both, sitting close together, talking in hushed whispers. They both grew quiet when they saw her. It irritated her, so she marched past them, to the refrigerator.
"Honey," Emily began.
"Did either of you feed Slip?" She asked. "I fell asleep, and now it's past noon. She likes to have lunch at noon."
"Chrissy," Her father said, squeezing Emily's hand, "Your cat, she..."
"...ran away," Emily finished, suddenly.
This got a sharp look from her father. Well, of course it would. "Cats run away all the time," Chris said. "They aren't like dogs. They don't get lost. She'll come back when she gets hungry."
"What if it doesn't?" Emily asked.
"She will," Chris said. Why were they both being so weird?
"But if it doesn't, wouldn't you like me to get you a new one? An even prettier one, with cinnamon hair just like yours? Everyone says pets should look like their owners."
Chris scavenged some old salmon patties from the fridge- Cowslip would like those better than her cat food- and shrugged. Maybe agreeing would stop her mother acting like such a breakable porcelain doll. It was hard not to think of Mrs. Voorhees, solid and lively, and how she made Emily look like such a wraith by comparison. When she had taken the salmon upstairs, she broke it into tiny pieces, so Cowslip wouldn't choke on them when she decided she wanted to eat them.
ooo
There were times Chris felt oppressed by an approaching presence, and just wanted to run away. Like other children, she ran to her dreams for escape. Like other children, she did not always remember her dreams when she woke up. The biggest difference between Chris and those other children was that Chris did not always have to be asleep to dream. She just had to be very, very frightened.
Emily, for once, was as good as her word. When a week had come and gone, and Cowslip had not returned, she took Chris to the pet store and picked her out a cinnamon-colored tom, one that matched her hair. Emily didn't want her little girl-doll looking mismatched. He wasn't a bad cat, either; maybe a little lazier than Cowslip had been, and he never menaced the toy samurai beside her TV, but he was charming in his own way. She named him Hero. Rick thought it was after a comic he'd given her. She never had the heart to tell him it was after the sandwich Hero had leapt onto the table to snatch off her father's plate.
In the end, though, there were things she could never account for. That, though she had been mortally afraid of the dark, she never slept with her door open anymore. That she ran in a panic to snatch Hero into her arms and carry him back to the house whenever he wandered too close to the lake.
Most of all, that she was never quite happy again.
THE END