The Pines

became choked with stiff waist-high weeds, and her long legs swished wetly through the undergrowth. A sweet smell grew cloying as she waded farther.

She passed a rusting bale of barbed wire. Hornets crawled over the rotting apples that littered the ground now, and among the gnarled trees of the old orchard stood the ruined fragments of a brick wall, pitted, weathered almost to the color of sand. A bullfrog—large enough to eat mice and birds—squatted on the wall, fearless as she passed. Incredibly, even here lay the empty husk of a car, surrounded by the broken glass and trash that lay scattered around fragmented bricks.

Everywhere, walls had tumbled in huge sections and a fine dust had settled like volcanic ash.

The old town.

Sunlight streamed through the small stands of pine, white places shimmering with flies and gnats. A black- dirty cast entombed one arm, the other wrist and both ankles bound to tent pegs. Filthy head bandages had come unraveled in the sand, the earth around them, cratered by the rain, scaled with a pocked crust.

“Joey?” Ernie’s voice cooed gently as he leaned over him. “Do you want water?” Ernie smiled. A thread of saliva fell from the corner of his mouth, beading Joey’s cheek. “Do you see it? Do you want this again?”

But milky opalescence had covered the boy’s eyes.

“You see it, don’t you?” Ernie held a pocketknife with a gray mother-of-pearl handle. Smiling, he touched the sharpened point to the boy’s flesh and slowly pressed. A dot formed, and the tip entered slowly. He cut down.

Not much blood now. Instead, a yellowish fluid leaked out, flowing easily over the thicker, slower stuff that puddled around his body. It accumulated around the blood, thinly circling it before soaking into the sand.

A warm breeze stirred the woods, and a butterfly flitted past.

Fierce heat beat down on Ernie. Pushing orange hair and sweat out of his eyes, he straightened and stared into the pines.

He was tanned dark from living in the open. For a time he’d survived on foodstuffs scavenged from the torn litter of the campsite. But now he was hungry.

He waited for the woods to give him a sign.

Nothing.

Why?

Sighing, he crouched, pulled away the rest of the bandages and tenderly caressed the stubbled head. Then he stood and faced the trees again. “I offer you this!” Clenching his eyes shut, he spread wide his arms, opening himself to the sentient woods. Accept it! His teeth gritted with concentration. My gift ! A chattering hum came from his mouth. Accept my offering. Beginning to go into a coughing fit, he opened his eyes to the sun, and the pines seemed to shiver. Please! On the verge of once more falling to his knees and prostrating himself, he let his vision stray to the boy.

Sunlight fell softly now, and the purple wounds looked almost pretty. There! Startled and jubilant, he stared at the incision across the chest. I didn’t do that! I’m sure I didn’t make that one! I didn’t! He began to laugh. The woods! The pines! In a pool of motionless white light, he reveled. They did it! A sign!

From the trees, the crows were calling.

Often, she found herself drawn here, here to this island of peace, this sanctuary where the stones lay deep and quiet. Silently, she skirted the mounded rubble of ore slag, lumps of refuse from the extinct forge. Stalky weeds sprang from the piles, reclaiming them. She stumbled over an old shoe, cast off in the yellow earth.

Finally sitting down, she flexed her leg. The shattered wall, already sun warmed, felt almost dry, and drowsily, the hornets buzzed. She’d always found a peculiar solace in this place. Heavy with age, it had long since surrendered its fight against the pines.

Vines grew over sun-soaked bricks. She sighed, glad she’d decided to come here, then laughed, because she hadn’t decided, not consciously. Rising, she stretched and approached the foundation hole of the old furnace itself.

The stones here weren’t soft and crumbling, but black and fused together as though spewed forth by an eruption. The hole…

Bottomless.

Something like coldness breathed out from it, coldness and a permeating silence. Everything wooden had rotted away, leaving only this dim brick outline. It was the grave of a town. Black leaves oozed beneath her feet.

Balancing like a child, she walked along the bridge wall between two cellar holes, the only sound the murmur of the sides crumbling into stagnant water as she passed. She gazed into one shuddering pool. Something plunked. A frog? The weaving patterns of water-strider spiders stirred a patch of iridescence, and rippling crescents spun. Disks interlocked and overlapped, trembling at the edges of the granulating bricks, turning them to sediment. At last, her anger seemed a distant thing—the sun had steamed away the breeze, but what remained of it caressed her hair. She glanced up at the rough ring of the clearing, now bathed in sunlight, clear and fresh.

Flowing, the morning’s dream came back to her, not in fragments, but slow and thick as honey: herself straining, here, in this place, screaming on a slab of stone, and the baby’s head, enclosed in a bluish caul, squeezing through the redness. The features looked…not normal. She squirmed from that vision, from the burning agony and tearing. The dream shifted, and she was once again a child, facing the image of Granny Lee’s lined face, explaining about the blood, the old lady embarrassed, the little girl deep in shame. They walked through this empty town, her leg brace chiming against the stones as she tried to avoid places where blood had pooled. Suddenly alone, she flew down the road with mystifying speed, lame no longer. And she walked in the new town, empty as these ruins. Doors flew open to show tables set with drying dinners. But she saw no people. Only caked blood everywhere. In the streets, like a crushed-brick paste. On her legs. She passed a truck with its motor running. And everywhere the crusting wetness, as if it had rained blood. And the moaning of the truck became the droning of a fly, became the buzzing of the hornets.

Shrugging away the images, she blinked at her surroundings. Though still saturated with sunlight, they no longer seemed calm. She heard the agitated voices of birds.

Standing straight, she looked beyond the clearing to the circle of pines. Why did I come here? More than anywhere else, this place made her realize how self-enclosed the barrens were, how cut off from the outside world.

God, I’ve made such a mess of things. Tension pulsed in her stomach. I was only trying to make a life for my husband…for my son. She clenched her teeth. Liar! She struck her thigh with her fist. For yourself! She wanted to laugh at her own ineptitude—her being alone seemed so inevitable, so inescapable. She thought of Granny Lee and wanted to cry. How could you leave me? There’s no one for me. I’m all alone. Oh, Wallace, how could you leave me here? Suddenly blinded by tears that almost came, surprising and frightening her, she put her hands to her face. But I never cry. And they won’t make me leave. I won’t let them. He loved that house. We worked so hard. Someday, I’ll…

He’d been working on the fence when the catastrophic heart attack had come. She’d found him in the yard, his face already gray.

Someday I’ll finish fixing up the place, and then…

The locals had hated her from the first day—an outsider who thought herself too good for them. Once they learned about her African-American background—and she knew she could thank Lonny for this—they’d been implacable. But their respect for Wallace, for his strength and his position in the community, had kept their resentments at bay at least to a certain extent. After his death, it hadn’t taken them long to assert their bigotry. Then she’d found Barry, or he’d found her. She knew he was nothing like Wallace, except in strength. A powerful cop, he had clout around here, and the townspeople, living as they did on the fringes of the law, feared him. Besides, she’d been so lonely.

She drew away from these thoughts, loathing her self-pity. I have to stay strong. Have to. Squeezing her hands to tight fists, she cleared her eyes with the pain of scratched palms.

No, no magic lingered here, and no nightmares either. It was just a town that like so many others had been