Took (11 page)

When the girl was finished, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and blew her nose on the napkin.

Mrs. O'Neill stroked her tangled hair. “How would you like a nice hot bath?”

The girl frowned. “I don't much care for baths.”

“Let's go upstairs. When you see the tub, you might change your mind.” Mrs. O'Neill led the amazingly docile girl up the back stairs. I waited to hear yelling and screaming and thuds and thumps and doors slamming, but instead, the water ran into the tub and all was quiet.

I fixed a cup of hot chocolate and stood at the kitchen window. The wind was blowing harder now and the short day was running out of light. The second night without Erica was almost here.

After a while Mrs. O'Neill came downstairs carrying the girl. She'd changed her from a scary little wild creature into an almost normal kid. Her hair had been washed and combed, her face and hands were clean, and she was wearing one of Dad's old plaid flannel shirts, last seen hanging on a hook in the bathroom. It fit her like a long nightgown.

“She needs to rest,” Mrs. O'Neill said. “I don't want to put her in your sister's room. Can she sleep in your bed for a while?”

I hesitated, but where else was the girl to sleep? At least she was clean now. Reluctantly, I led the way to my room.

By the time Mrs. O'Neill laid her down, the girl was asleep. Covering her with a quilt, she looked at her in the dim light. “You poor child,” she whispered. “Where have you been all this time? What's happened to you?”

“Do you think she's Selene?”

“Let her sleep. We'll talk downstairs.” Mrs. O'Neill led me into the hall and closed my bedroom door. Glancing at Mom's closed door, she said, “Don't wake your mother. She's exhausted.”

I followed her down the back stairs to the kitchen. Now that it was dark, the wind blew harder. It tugged at the corners of the house and wailed, as if it wanted to come inside. The sound made me cold all over.

“Help me lay out the food,” Mrs. O'Neill said. “The men will be back soon, cold and hungry.”

Women from town had sent casseroles, sandwich platters, cakes, and pies. It surprised me that they'd cared enough about us, the outsiders, to help. Except for the O'Neills, no one had made any effort to welcome us until now.

While we set out dishes, Mrs. O'Neill said, “We knew Selene Estes, John and I.”

“He told me that Selene was best friends with your daughter.” I looked at her. “But she'd be almost sixty years old now. And that girl upstairs appears to be my sister's age. How can she be Selene?”

Mrs. O'Neill shook her head. “When I first saw her, I was struck by her resemblance to Selene. It wasn't until I bathed her that I began to think she really is Selene—not only the same hair and the same eyes, but even the same birthmark on her shoulder.”

“Maybe she's faking it,” I suggested. “Play-acting a story everybody knows.”

“That doesn't explain the birthmark.” Mrs. O'Neill paused to set out ladles for the macaroni and the baked beans.

“The trouble is,” she went on, “I can't think of any other explanation for your sister's disappearance and this child's appearance.”

Maybe I was as crazy as everyone else in this valley, but the more Mrs. O'Neill talked, the more I began to think the girl upstairs might actually be Selene Estes. In this valley, anything could be true, even a conjure woman walking the hills with her pet hog and stealing a girl every fifty years.

“It's happened before, you know,” Mrs. O'Neill said. “When Selene disappeared, the search party found a little girl in the woods. Nobody knew who she was, and she couldn't tell them.”

“What happened to her?”

Mrs. O'Neill sighed. “They put her in an orphanage. She wouldn't eat or drink. In less than a month, she died without ever saying who she was or where she came from. But somebody remembered that a child had disappeared fifty years previously. So it seemed the old stories were true after all.”

I was about to ask more questions, but the sharp sound of barking dogs scattered my thoughts. I ran to the window. The day had ended and flashlight beams sliced the darkness, illuminating a tree here, a man there. The search party was coming back.

The back door banged open, and Dad led a group of men into the kitchen, big men in work clothes, stomping their feet, red-faced from the cold, talking in low voices.

“Where's your mother?” Dad asked me.

Before I could answer, Mom came stumbling down the back stairs, still half asleep, from the look of her. “Have you found Erica?” She gazed around the room wildly, her eyes flitting from one person to the next. “Where is she?”

The searchers drew together, holding sandwiches but too polite to eat them.

Dad drew Mom close. “I'm so sorry, Martha.”

Mom beat her fists against his chest. “You didn't look long enough. You must have missed something, you, you—” She collapsed against him.

He held her up, kept her from falling, stroked her hair, tried to comfort her.

“Believe me, ma'am,” Mr. O'Neill told Mom, “we searched every inch of these woods. We didn't find a trace of her. Neither did the dogs.”

Mom turned to me. “Where's that girl you brought home? The one with Erica's doll, the one wearing her clothes? Ask
her
where my daughter is. Make her tell you!”

Everyone in the room seemed to stop breathing. No one moved. No one spoke. The only sound was the
tick-tock-tick
of the kitchen clock and the wind rattling the windowpanes.

“What girl?” Dad asked, looking from Mom to me. “What's she talking about, Daniel?”

Before I could answer, Mrs. O'Neill said, “She's talking about Selene. Daniel found her. She's upstairs sleeping.”

The group of searchers huddled together, half-finished plates of food in their hands, and mumbled to one another. I heard Selene's name once or twice, but their voices dropped even lower into whispers. Men shook their heads. They looked worried. Frightened, even. A couple of them made excuses and left the house. I heard a car start, saw its headlights, watched its taillights as it sped away.

“What's wrong?” Dad asked Mr. O'Neill. “Why are they leaving?”

“It's the girl,” he said slowly, as if answering the question embarrassed him. “They're saying that Old Auntie's got your daughter, and there's no use looking for her.”

While Dad stood there, flabbergasted, the last three men thanked us for the food and drink and edged out the back door. In the yard, engines revved, headlights lit the field, and in a couple of minutes the search party was gone.

Mr. O'Neill turned to his wife. “Maybe you should get the girl, bring her down, let Ted see for himself.”

Mrs. O'Neill started up the back stairs, and I followed her. Stopping at my closed door, she tapped gently. “So as not to startle her,” she whispered.

When no one answered, she opened the door and peeked inside. The window was wide open, and the curtains blew like streamers in the cold air.

Mrs. O'Neill ran to the window and looked out into the night. All that moved were the shadows of trees tossed by the wind.

“She must have gone back to the cabin,” I said. “Someone should go after her.”

Mrs. O'Neill shook her head. “There's not a man from these parts who'll go near that cabin at night.”

“Not even the police?”

“Every one of them grew up here. They've heard stories all their lives about Old Auntie. Most of them swear they've seen her and Bloody Bones in the woods or alongside a dark road.”

I watched Mrs. O'Neill hurry down the back stairs, and then I took a quick look around my room. A sweater and pair of jeans I'd left on a chair were gone, and so were my old running shoes. I tiptoed across the hall and checked Mom's room. Little Erica was gone too.

I went to the top of the back stairs and listened. Mom was crying, and Dad was calling the state troopers. “Surely they don't believe in this superstitious nonsense,” I heard him say.

Mr. and Mrs. O'Neill were talking in low voices. It sounded as if they were cleaning up the kitchen.

Taking care to make no noise, I crept down the front stairs, grabbed my parka and hat from the coatrack by the door, and slipped quietly outside. For a second, I hesitated. What if I got lost? I needed someone to come with me, someone who knew the way.

Brody had refused to go near the cabin in broad daylight, but maybe I could talk him into going to the top of the trail with me—it was a long shot, but who else could I ask?

By the time I was in sight of Brody's ramshackle old house, I heard a dog bark, then another. In the dim light of the half-moon I saw three or four of them coming down the driveway toward me. What should I do? If I ran, they'd chase me. Maybe if I stood still, they'd just sniff me and leave me alone. They looked like hounds of some kind, not very big, hopefully not very fierce, either.

They stopped about two feet away and kept barking. A light on the front porch came on, and the front door opened.

“Brody!” I yelled. “It's me, Daniel! Call off the dogs.”

A gruff male voice called, “You the boy from the Estes farm?”

“Yes, sir.” The dogs surrounded me, sniffing and muttering to one another in dog language.

The man whistled, and the dogs ran up the drive toward the house. “Come on,” he called to me. “They won't hurt you.”

Keeping an eye on the dogs just in case he was wrong, I climbed the porch steps.

“I saw you at the house,” he said. “I was in the search party. I'm sorry we didn't find your little sister. We done our best, but—” Shaking his head, he called Brody. “The boy from the Estes farm is here. He wants to see you.”

Brody came to the door. “What you want?”

“Can I talk to you about something?” I shot a quick look at his dad, hoping Brody would get the message that this was just between him and me.

“If it's about your sister, I already told you what I think.”

“Well, it's actually about Selene.”

“Selene?” Mr. Mason leaned closer. I smelled beer and cigarette smoke on his breath. “It's really her, then?”

“The O'Neills think so.”

“Where's she now?” Brody asked.

I gave up on trying to keep things between him and me. “I don't know. She ran away.”

“Went back to the cabin, I reckon,” Mr. Mason said.

“That's what I think.” I looked at Brody. “Maybe Erica's there, too. Will you go up there with me?”

Mr. Mason put a hand on my shoulder. “You go on home, boy. Ain't a soul in this valley will go there with you. Certainly not my boy.”

“She's my sister,” I said. “I have to get her back.”

Brody shook his head. “How you think you'll do that? Just knock on the door and say, ‘Please, Miss Auntie, give me my sister'?”

Mr. Mason sighed. “Do like I said, boy. Go home. There's nothing you nor me nor anyone else can do for your sister.”

“But—”

Mr. Mason stopped me. “Go home. Before you freeze to death.”

I left them standing on the porch, watching me, as if to make sure I went home. I walked off in the right direction, but once I reached the end of their driveway, I headed into the woods.

I hadn't gone far when I heard a noise behind me, as if something was following me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw nothing. If I ran, whatever it was would chase me. So I kept walking and hoped it was a fox.

“Wait up, Daniel.” Brody ran toward me. He had one of the dogs with him. “You're going up there, ain't you?”

“Are you coming with me?”

“Not me, but I brought Bella. Don't know if she'll protect you, but if you get lost, she'll bring you home.” He held out the dog's leash, and I took it.

“She's a good old dog.” Brody bent down to scratch behind Bella's ears. “Part beagle, part fox hound, part something bigger—just a mutt, really, but smart as all get-out. You tell her ‘home' and she'll lead you there.”

“Thanks.” I patted Bella, and she wagged her tail. She had a pointed nose, a sharp face, and perked-up ears. Her fur was white with dark patches, and her legs were long. She was sleek and slim, and I could tell by her eyes that she was smart, like Brody said.

“You be careful.” Brody stepped back, and I didn't know if he was talking to the dog or to me. “I got to get back before Dad misses me or Bella. He says you're crazy to even think about going near Old Auntie's cabin, but being you're a stranger here, he reckons you're just plain ignorant.”

Brody backed away into the woods. “Good luck.” With that, he was gone into the night as quickly as he'd come.

Bella looked after him and whined, but she seemed to know she was supposed to stay with me. “Come on, girl,” I said, and she darted ahead, as if to lead the way.

I watched her prance along and wished she were mine. It comforted me to think of coming home with Erica and then getting into bed with Bella curled up beside me.

But Bella wasn't mine, and I wasn't sure I'd bring Erica home or even come home myself.

I followed the dog up the trail. Every now and then an owl hooted, sometimes close by, sometimes far away. Once in a while Bella stopped and looked into the woods, as if she saw things invisible to me. She growled or whined, glanced back at me, then went on. She never tugged at the leash but kept a steady pace. She'd been on this path before, I thought, probably hunting raccoons or something.

As the trail grew steeper, Bella paused more often, her body tense. She walked slower, dropping back until she was almost by my side. The wind blew harder up there, and the moon slid in and out from the clouds, sometimes lighting the path, sometimes casting it into darkness. I shivered; my teeth chattered—not just because I was cold, which I was, but also because we'd reached the drop-off.