Bridget shrugged. “Well, not really.
Devil’s Gulch
sounds kind of hokey to me, like some spot you’d visit on a tour of Disneyland.”
Mallory frowned at her. “I thought you—of all people—would understand. You knew one of the three boys who were killed in that forest. You saw the dead bodies.”
Bridget shifted in her chair. Suddenly, it seemed too hot and close in the little cubicle. “Well, except for someone claiming they spotted Andy and the Gaines twins heading toward Gorman’s Creek, no one ever said they were actually killed there.”
“I’m saying it,” Mallory whispered. “I’m saying it now. I’ll show you what I mean, Bridget. Let’s go to Gorman’s Creek. Let’s do it now, before you get scared and change your mind.”
Bridget wasn’t scared. She just found Mallory Meehan hard to like. She was bossy, tactless, and overly critical of others.
Walking alongside her, Bridget tried to overlook Mallory’s many faults and quirks. After all, since early childhood, Mallory had been ostracized and tormented by her peers. No wonder she was a bit mean and difficult. To her credit, she certainly was an interesting character to know better.
Eccentric
. Bridget had a feeling Mallory would indeed write that book.
Still, as they headed down Main Street on that overcast spring afternoon, Bridget hated herself for hoping no one saw them together.
A car passed by, and someone stuck his head out the passenger side. It took Bridget a moment to recognize Fuller Sterns. “Hey, Mallory!” he yelled. “You ugly piece of shit! You suck!”
The car picked up speed, then turned a corner, its tires screeching.
“Oh, never mind him,” Bridget said, giving her classmate a nudge. “He’s a major asshole.”
Mallory stared straight ahead with her haughty, superior look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied.
“I’m talking about Fuller Sterns,” Bridget said. “He’s a jerk. He—” She stopped herself.
Mallory didn’t seem to be listening. Had she actually learned how to filter out the taunting and name-calling? Was that possible? Bridget didn’t say another word—for several blocks.
As they headed down Briar Court, Bridget gazed at the Fesslers’ house at the end of the street, and the dense forest beyond that. Above them, the skies were darkening, and the wind kicked up. Bridget shuddered. She didn’t want to be stuck in the ravine if it started to rain.
“Don’t you feel as if someone’s watching us?” Mallory asked in a hushed tone. She nodded toward the Fesslers’ house. All the lights were off inside.
“Oh, quit trying to creep me out,” Bridget said, grinning. “The Fesslers are all pretty harmless.”
“Huh, a lot you know,” Mallory grumbled. “C’mon.”
She led Bridget along some hedges around the Fesslers’ side lawn to a gap in the barbed-wire fence. They slipped past the opening and started down a crude trail through the woods. The narrow, dirt path was muddy in spots. Rocks and exposed roots became obstacles along the way.
It had been years since Bridget had explored Gorman’s Creek. Mallory forged ahead with the confidence of someone well acquainted with the terrain. Trees engulfed them, blocking out the sky. Branches swayed with the wind, and leaves rustled.
It was hard to imagine that this narrow path had once been a driveway to the Bowers family’s dream house—before their dreams were destroyed.
Cursed ground
, Mallory had called it. Mrs. Fessler had taken this same trail to the pond, where she drowned herself. And one warm June night, thirty-odd years ago, a teenage Janette Carlisle had snuck down this path with her boyfriend, not knowing what he’d had planned for them.
There were ghosts in this forest. Bridget wondered if Andy and his two friends were among them.
It had been over a year since that night she’d stood at the end of the cul-de-sac, watching the policemen search these woods with their flashlights. They still hadn’t found the person or persons who had murdered those boys.
Bridget wondered what Mallory planned to show her in these woods. How could she shed any light on the unsolved murders? Bridget remembered how all the boys’ shoes and socks had been taken away. Had Mallory found them buried somewhere here?
“C’mon, the Bowers house is this way,” Mallory announced. She veered off the path. The forest was so thick, Bridget could only see Mallory in fragments—darting between the trees and shrubs.
“Hey, you know, Mallory,” she called, a tremor creeping in her voice, “I thought you were going to show me something to prove Andy and his friends were killed out here.” She weaved around bushes and small gullies, trailing after her guide. It seemed to be growing darker by the minute. “Listen, I’ve got burrs on my socks and I can tell it’s going to rain. If you don’t mind, I’d like to turn back. This isn’t exactly my idea of a terrific time.”
“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat,” Mallory called back to her. “C’mon over here.”
Bridget maneuvered around the woods to a clearing, where Mallory stood. The trees in this small patch of land were dwarfed by all the others around them. The spot had been cleared for the Bowers house seventy-two years ago. But nature had taken back the land. Bushes had crept up through cracks in the concrete foundation that remained. A brick fireplace and broken chimney were weather-beaten and covered with mold. On the stone steps, spray-paint graffiti—probably from twenty years ago—was faded. Those steps had led to the Bowerses’ front door; but now they didn’t lead anywhere.
Bridget had explored Gorman’s Creek back when she was a kid. She remembered stopping by these “ruins” with her friends. But she’d never really understood what had happened there, and what had been lost. Many others had been there before as well. Bridget noticed the old candy wrappers, empty soda pop bottles and beer cans where the Bowerses’ living room must have been. A couple of the rusty, faded beer cans were so old, they had triangular punctures on the top—from can openers.
“Take a look down there,” Mallory said, pointing to the creek below. “You can see what’s left of the house. Darn, we should have brought binoculars.”
Bridget came up beside Mallory, who stood a few feet from where the ground sloped down to a plateau. Below that, the terrain took a sharp hundred-foot incline to the creek. They were gazing down at the treetops. Bridget moved closer to the edge so she could get a better look at the creek. She could hear the water rushing.
“Watch out,” Mallory warned. “If you fall down there, I can’t help you. I have vertigo. You know, acrophobia? I get nervous just standing this close to the edge.”
Bridget made her way down the slight embankment toward the plateau. To keep from falling, she held on to bushes and the exposed roots of a tall tree.
“You’re on your own, Bridget!” Mallory warned. “I’m not going down there.”
Bridget wasn’t listening. Between the trees, she could see a pile of rubble that had created a dam in the creek below. The stream ran over and around the wreckage, which after seventy years had almost become part of the terrain. Amid the debris, Bridget noticed planks of wood, half a window frame, an old, broken wicker chair, and even a child’s rocking horse.
“What do you see?” Mallory called.
“You really should come down here,” Bridget said soberly. “Take a look for yourself.”
“No way,” Mallory argued. “I told you, I have acrophobia. It’s a
condition
. I don’t like confined places either. I have claustrophobia too. What do you see?”
“Some of their furniture is down there,” Bridget replied. She figured the rocking horse must have belonged to the little girl, buried in the mud slide.
“Most of the furniture that survived the fall got picked through, the good stuff anyway,” Mallory said. “The Bowerses didn’t want it, didn’t want anything more to do with the place. The mud slide happened in the middle of the Depression, so a lot of bums made off with their stuff. I guess the word spread on the hobo trails that there were clothes and furniture here for the picking. That’s how these woods first became dangerous for the townspeople and their kids. There were always a couple of hobos around here ready to slit someone’s throat for a few dollars.”
Bridget had seen enough. She glanced around for an easier way to climb up from the bluff. She noticed a crude trail around the other side of a big tree that jutted out—almost diagonally—above the cliff. It looked ready to topple over—as the Bowers house had.
Approaching the tilted tree, Bridget spotted something in the ground—a trapdoor made of old wood planks, now covered with moss. A nearby shrub almost camouflaged it. Bridget squatted down for a closer look.
“Where are you?” Mallory called, panic in her voice. “I don’t see you.”
“I found something down here,” Bridget replied. She noticed a rusty latch on one side of the door and a broken padlock on the other. Only God knew what was beyond the door, what was
nesting
in there. Bridget hesitated another moment, then reached down and tried to pull open the moss-covered door. It stuck at first, so she gave it another tug.
“What are you doing?” Mallory called. “You’re making me nervous, Bridget.”
The trapdoor let out a groan as Bridget pulled it open. She peeked into a little crawl space—about the size of a phone booth. It must have been a storage bin of some kind—for logs or coal. Bridget guessed it was about eight feet deep. She opened the door wider, and it let out another creak.
“What was that noise?” Mallory cried. “Oh my God, the tree’s falling!”
For a moment, Bridget believed her. She dropped the lid to the storage space. The sudden noise—or something—made Mallory scream.
Bridget scrambled past the tree and up the slope. She stumbled. Rocks and chunks of dirt dislodged under her feet and flew down the precipice. Bridget scurried up the hill to where Mallory was standing with both hands over her mouth.
“What the hell are you screaming about?” Bridget asked, out of breath. She dusted the dirt off her jeans.
“I heard that weird, splintering noise,” Mallory whined. “I thought the tree was tipping over.”
“The tree’s fine, stupid,” Bridget replied, with a depleted laugh. “But you almost gave
me
a friggin’ heart attack.” She took hold of Mallory’s arm to lean against her, but Mallory pulled away.
“Don’t call me stupid,” she snapped. “I’m smarter than you are. I have an IQ of 141.”
Bridget saw tears in her eyes. “I didn’t mean anything by it, Mallory. I even call my brother ‘stupid’ sometimes, and he’s one of the smartest people I know.”
“I thought you were going to get killed,” Mallory said in a shaky voice. “And—and you’re the only person in our class who’s nice to me. I don’t have any other friends.”
Bridget felt so sorry for her at that moment. She couldn’t think of anything to say. She smiled awkwardly, then shrugged. “Hey, listen, let’s get out of here. Okay, Mallory?”
Mallory hesitated. She seemed reluctant to leave what was once the Bowerses’ living room. “But don’t you want to see the pond where Mrs. Fessler drowned herself? And the tree where that couple—”
Bridget was shaking her head. “I’ve seen the pond, Mallory. And I really don’t want to look at the tree. I—I’ve seen enough. It looks like rain coming. I need to get home.”
“I still haven’t told you why I think those three boys were killed out here,” Mallory offered as they forged their way back to the trail. “Want to hear my theory?”
Not really
, Bridget was tempted to say. But she kept walking, and watched for tree roots, rocks, and other obstacles in her path.
“I already proved one part of my theory to you.” Mallory dropped behind Bridget as the trail narrowed. “I screamed, a couple of times, and loudly too.”
“Loud enough to wake the dead,” Bridget muttered.
“But nobody came. Nobody heard me. There’s no other place in this town where you could scream and scream, and no one would hear.”
“That’s no proof they were murdered in these woods,” Bridget said. “Their bodies were found fifty miles from town. There are a lot of places they could have been killed between here and the old Oxytech plant. Lots of other places where no one could hear them screaming.”
Bridget shuddered at the memory of seeing their dead bodies in the plant’s rail yard. She didn’t want to talk about this anymore.
“But the three of them were last seen walking toward these woods,” Mallory argued. “And who lives at the beginning of the trail? The retard, that’s who. He saw them—”
“Mallory, I really hate that term,” Bridget growled, walking faster.
“Okay, but he’s still not right in the head. And I’ll bet he knows these woods better than anybody else. He could have killed them and hidden the bodies some place the police wouldn’t find them.”
Bridget thought of that crawl space she’d just stumbled upon. But she quickly shook her head. “Sonny Fessler is harmless.”
“I’ll bet those three boys thought the same thing.”
“Have you ever seen Sonny behind the wheel of a car?” Bridget countered. “How do you think he got the bodies from here to that chemical plant fifty miles away? Do you think he used his Schwinn?”