the pain raging in her knee, and the question of the key: Is it here? She found
it in the ignition, and the truck started right up. She closed the door, and the
darkness returned.
For the briefest division of time she considered backing out to the county road,
but shivered at the prospect of rolling toward the very sounds she'd been
running from all night. She knew right then that she'd take the logging road.
The rivers, the streams, these old roads, they all flowed to Bentman. Right?
She searched wildly for the gearshift. Her right hand swept over the floor
before she realized that the shift lever stuck out from the steering column. She
had never driven a truck this old and had to guess at the transmission pattern.
The clutch pedal tortured her wounded leg when she pressed down on it, and as
she eased it out they bucked backward and stalled. She had guessed wrong.
"Shit."
She turned the ignition key again and tried pulling the shifter toward her and
down. When she let out the clutch the truck moved forward, and the pain in her
knee lessened slightly.
The lights, the lights. Branches raked the sides of the cab as they drove
through darkness. Twice the truck bounced over fallen logs as she grappled with
knobs all over the dash. The headlights came on as the radio blasted, "KLOG,
where every day is Earth Day." She shut it off. The pickup listed to the
driver's side as they rolled over a rotting stump, but up ahead Celia could see
that the dirt road widened enough to avoid most of these obstacles.
Davy looked at her, and she reached across and patted his leg. She didn't know
what to say to him, so she didn't say anything at all.
She checked her rearview mirror and saw nothing behind them but the night. Her
only thoughts were on making it to the sheriff 's office in Bentman.
63
Celia negotiated the dark logging road with great care, avoiding the forest
debris wherever she could, bouncing along as she scanned the cab nervously and
checked on Davy. He was sitting bolt upright, as if he shared her horror. An
eerie greenish light fell across the boy's face; and she found the source in the
instrument panel, which glowed brightly, as if the dash had been dabbed with
radium. She noticed the gas gauge, an eighth of a tank; enough, she thought, to
get them to town.
Every few seconds she also studied the rear view mirror, convinced that Boyce's
dark eyes would soon stare back at her; but the mirror revealed only the flat
nothingness of the night, and she drove on. Still, the uneasiness persisted. It
felt like a cold breath on the back of her neck, a ghostly presence that drifted
along on the fog of fear, and she turned around fully, no longer trusting the
mirror to give life to the world. See, he's not there, she comforted herself.
Thank God. She turned her attention back to the road, and relaxed her neck by
rolling her head. And that's when she saw him break out from behind a bush no
more than twenty feet away. He glared at her, drenched with water and rigid with
rage.
Celia jammed on the brakes, understood immediately that this was a mistake, and
tried to run him over. But the distance was too short, and she couldn't get the
old truck to accelerate quickly enough. As the pickup neared him Boyce stepped
neatly to the driver's side and jumped onto the running board. She watched him
grab for the door handle, and saw that she'd neglected to lock the cab. She
pounded down the button and felt her heart totter on the edge of shock.
Chet pressed his face close to the glass. His mouth moved but she could not hear
him. Her hands choked the steering wheel as he threw himself onto the hood and
stared at her. He beat the windshield with his fist, and she had to move from
side to side to see past him.
He climbed onto the top of the truck, forcing her to look through the smears he
left behind with his wet boots. She heard his body scraping against the metal
inches from her head, and then he pounded the roof so viciously she could feel
it vibrating right above her.
A thump shook the pickup as he jumped into the bed. Now she did see his dark
eyes staring at her in the rearview mirror, and despite clear evidence to the
contrary she believed he'd been there from the very beginning. He pressed both
hands against the glass, and she had to struggle to keep from hyperventilating.
Davy turned around in his seat and recoiled visibly at the sight of his
stepfather. Celia checked his door lock, saw it sticking up, and in the ungodly
glow of the cab reached across him and pounded it down.
She also had enough presence of mind to turn the boy back around to spare him
the bizarre sight of his stepfather, but it was too late. Davy had seen him, and
he had seen that look on his face. Davy was terrified.
Never before.
Chet spit out more of that rat water and tried to catch his breath. His throat
burned. So did his nose.
Never again.
He coughed and fought off a stomach spasm. She'd forced water down his nasal
passages and into his gut. Rat-fucking water. She'd held him down for almost two
minutes at one point, and he'd felt those foul rotting bodies whirl around him,
tails and teeth and claws. Her goddamn husband too. Worst of all, she'd made him
play dead, and he loathed her for that, for reversing their roles, for making
him act like some goddamned girl.
You don't play dead.
But he had, goddamn right he had. Because of her. She'd done that to him. But
there was one big difference, one huge fucking difference, and he savored this
knowledge even now: He would've made damn sure she was dead, picked up the
biggest goddamn rocks he could find and caved her fucking skull in; but she had
walked away. Big difference, the difference between life and death.
His and hers.
Never again.
He repeated these words to himself like a penitent in a pew, and when his lips
no longer moved he watched her drive and nodded his head. The forest was his. He
knew it well. He'd bushwhacked through acres of brush and trees, and now was
eager to ride.
Deeper. Deeper.
Simple thoughts— no more sentences for him. Simple words— breaking loose like
blood clots— here, there, and everywhere.
Celia's eyes captured the mirror briefly. Boyce kneeled so close and the window
was so thin. Old glass, as old as the truck. She trembled at the possibility of
it breaking, and imagined his fingers reaching around her neck. She scooted so
far forward that her body pressed against the steering wheel as she drove. Don't
stop, she told herself, whatever you do, don't stop.
The forest thickened on both sides of the logging road, and it towered above
them. She longed for the valley floor, its level roads and stable lives. She
tried to will them there. Down, she insisted, to the town, people. She wanted no
more of the ridge.
But they didn't descend. They began to climb a hill, and she had to press harder
and harder on the accelerator. She looked at the gas gauge again and was aghast
to see that the needle had dropped to almost empty. She swore silently. She had
an impulse to roll the truck and send Boyce flying, crush his body with the
weight of all this metal.
She tried in her terror to weigh the risks. Old truck— no seat belts. No way to
protect him. Her eyes flashed at the boy. And what if it starts on fire? What if
we're trapped inside? What if the son of a bitch survives? Celia was plagued by
"what ifs"and abandoned any thought of rolling the truck.
She turned and saw his face still staring at her from behind the glass. He
hadn't moved an inch in all that time. How much time? she wondered. Five
minutes? Fifteen? She hadn't a clue.
They drove through a clear-cut ravine. Stumps rose along both sides of the
truck, startling her with their brutal appearance: All this life, all this
death.
And then the road began to narrow as they reentered the woods. Once again
branches smacked the fenders and windshield. She saw the suffocating density of
trees and roots and felt clammy perspiration reappear on her body as a cold
mist. She also saw how the road was likely to end: as a wedge pounded into the
heart of the forest, with the truck squeezed into its very tip. She heard limbs
snapping against the cab, horrible popping sounds that rattled her nerves as
much as the entangling forest rattled the truck. It looked as if the trees had
legs, and as she drove forward they marched beside her in tighter and tighter
formations.
The logging road faded quickly into two ghostly tracks. Open up, open up, open
up, she begged. She wanted nothing so much as she wanted the ceiling of this
forest to yield to the brilliant cathedral of night: the stars, the heavens, the
neat blazing orderliness of the universe above.
But the ceiling never lifted. It remained shut, sealed as firmly as a coffin
lid. Not even the cloak of moonlight could warm the dark limbs that enveloped
them.
They bounced over the rotting remains of fallen trees, and branches bashed the
truck repeatedly. The cab shook as if it were about to fall apart.
A fat limb struck the windshield and revealed a tightly spun web of cracks. It
was as though they had been there forever, sleeping peacefully in the glass
until awakened by this blow. Dozens of jagged angry arms reached out from the
milky center. Celia thought if she could focus on a single piece she might make
out where they were going, but focusing proved difficult and she drove on almost
blindly. She tried looking through a long slim section just above the dashboard
and managed to see the closing ranks of all these trees. The wedge— she shook
her head— the wedge was choking them to death.
In seconds the trail disappeared entirely. The dense forest soaked up their
headlights and left them in darkness. She looked out the side window and saw the
shadowy crush of trees. They horrified her. The forest she had loved was
betraying her at last, turning to final blackness. She felt its long arms
reaching out, taking hold of her, slowing her down.
Boyce shifted his weight. She felt his motion, looked back, and saw that he had
become a lumbering shadow. They now traveled at a speed at which most people
walked. The truck jumped over another log. Within seconds she would see that it
marked a boundary for all of them, from where they'd been to where they were
going. Celia felt the truck slowing even more. She heard the front and side
windows battered and scraped by branches and bushes she couldn't even see. The
sounds were frightening: scratching that grew louder and louder, as if the
forest were a gigantic black cat tearing at the cab with its claws, and they
were its prey huddling inside. The pickup ground to a halt.
She stomped down on the gas pedal. The engine screamed. The tires spun. The
truck shuddered, and Celia felt her anguish like a whip. Here in the deepest
darkness, where life teemed with tentacles of trunks and vine and branch and
bough, she would die. She ground the ball of her foot into the accelerator, and
her leg froze in this position. She heard a loud clump— one of the tires caught
something solid— and they were propelled forward.
The truck rolled onto what might have been road. Celia saw moonlight again and
thought they had come, finally, to the open night of Bentman. She peered through
the cracked windshield as the truck slammed to a stop. Her chest hit the
steering wheel, and she reached for Davy to check his forward motion. She saved
him from the dash and yanked him back onto the seat. When she looked at the boy,
stumps appeared in the window behind him, thousands of them stretching over an
endless hillside, each one rising as a tombstone in a vast cemetery. The logging
road ended here, in this place of graves and rotting roots and severed tree
trunks that poked the eyes out of the night with a cool gray indifference. This
was what had stopped them, the final remains of a giant clear-cut. They paused
at its very threshold.
The rear window exploded. Glass rained on them, and Celia instinctively covered
Davy's head with her hands. She turned and saw Boyce standing above them in the
bed with a large, heavy-looking object in his hands. He pulled violently on a
rope. His chain saw roared.
Celia shoved Davy down to the seat and worked the column shifter. She popped the
clutch, and the pickup bounced in place before the tires grabbed the earth and
started steaming backward.
Boyce teetered with the weight in his hands. He overcompensated for the reverse
thrust of the truck and stumbled forward. Celia saw the steel edge— blurred by
the screaming chain— lunging toward them. She slid down in the seat and once
more pinned the gas pedal to the floor. Boyce missed his target and struck the
roof with his saw. Brilliant sparks exploded off the metal surface, and the
smell of burning oil tainted the air. He recovered, reared back, and rammed the
long vibrating blade into the cab. He grazed Celia's ear before burying the
steel tip in the dash. The saw shut off automatically.
A breath later the rear of the wildly careering truck crumpled as it struck a
huge pine. The sudden stop slammed Celia and Davy's heads into the back of the
bench seat and hurled Boyce into the thick trunk. She had backed into the
forest.
Celia looked at the dark figure sitting in the bed of the pickup. No glass