The Pines

dug the car keys out of his pocket. “Who was he?” As he leaned in, the wave of escaping heat struck him like a blow.

Without releasing her hold on the child, she looked up. “His name is Al Spencer,” she told him in a strangely calm voice.

“You mean he’s the guy…?”

“Yes. He owns the gin mill where they killed that man, where Lonny lived.”

“But what happened here?”

“He was just walking up to the store. Then he saw us.” She tightened her grip on the boy, whose expression registered nothing, neither alarm nor particular awareness. “It looked like he just went mad, screaming like that. He almost grabbed Matthew. If I hadn’t pulled him back…”

Wincing at the brightness, Steve stared across the square. His shirt stuck to his chest and back, and the heated air seared his nostrils, throat, lungs. Yet he realized the man had been wearing a flannel jacket. That was pretty crazy, he decided, almost as crazy as looking for a monster. He thought about that while walking around to the other side of the car.

“Move over.” He got behind the wheel. “I’m going to drop you home. You look exhausted. I’ve got some phone calls to make. I’ll put out a report on this Spencer character. Then there’s an errand I want to run. Okay?”

“You found out something in there? A lead?”

“I don’t know.” He rolled down the window. “Maybe.” Starting the engine, he glanced around at the town square again, empty save for the faces at the store window.

“Steve? I wouldn’t blame you if you just left us,” she said softly, turning away as the boy squirmed against her. “You probably should.”

“My head is splitting.” He put the car in gear. “Let’s not talk about it anymore right now.”

“Last night. That howl.”

“’Thena, please.”

“It was just…announcing itself.”

“Stop this.”

“Letting me know. Letting me know it would be coming for him. For Matthew. It wants him. Don’t you feel that? For some reason, he’s always been the center, the focus. And me. It wants me too.”

This is the last, the last thing, and then it has to stop. He’d left the Volkswagen about a half mile back. Insane to be out here in this heat. His shirt was glued to his back. A howling in the woods. He hiked through the pines in what he hoped was the direction of Mother Jenks’s. Every dog for miles dead, and she says she heard… He trudged on, feeling foolish. The man who did the killing is dead. If danger remains, it’s back at that house. But how to tell Athena? And what kind of future could they have together under these conditions? They must get help for the boy. Perhaps she’d consider sending him someplace, just for a time. Just until they can figure out what’s wrong with him. He picked up the pace. Lord, the mess in that kitchen. She’d told him the dog had torn the place up, but that hadn’t seemed likely. And that bruise on her neck. That really bothered him the most.

It had all been too much for her. Finding her brother-in-law’s body that way, then Barry’s death, then seeing that poor son of a bitch blown away right in front of her the other day. Too much for anyone. She’s not thinking clearly. Yes, the boy must have professional help, and he’d make her see that.

And then perhaps they’d have some time for themselves.

He walked through the drugged quiet of the woods, trying to stay on the all-but-invisible trail. This has to be the path the old guy meant. He’d stick with it another five or ten minutes; then, if he still hadn’t found the house, he’d turn back.

The ground grew rougher, and clumps of brownish moss scratched the soles of his shoes. Stumbling through a shallow depression, he kicked up a piece of brick burned black on one side. He chose a suitable walking stick from the dry litter of the forest floor. Five more minutes, then I’ll head back.

But the woods drew him on.

He passed a small area of swampy ground, but even that looked dry, and many of the pines seemed lifeless, their branches ending in sharp brown clusters. Sand crunched softly underfoot, almost the only sound. Beginning to imagine that eyes followed him, he looked around. Matted vines, dried stiff, curved and knotted through the thicket, forming dense caves of vegetation all along the trail. The sensation of being watched intensified, and he spun around.

In the trees, darkness moved. A large crow stared from the pines, pointing with its beak. And another. Huge birds, silent and iridescent. Everywhere. Easily dozens of them watched him, some the size of small dogs. A few yards away, one clumsily glided down to the trail. It hopped toward him.

Lousy carrion birds. He turned away, and now they were in front of him as well. He stomped forward, waving the stick. In a glossy explosion, one cawed heavily away as he approached, beating its wings fiercely yet scarcely clearing the ground.

Ruined looking even from a distance, the shack stood well off the trail. Yet he knew this must be it. There didn’t seem to be any easy approach. As he left the path, the footing grew onerous with slime and creepers and brambles, thorned vines perversely clutching at him. Spiked tentacles slashed at his face as he forced his way through. He stumbled into a ditch, rank with rotted leaves, and found himself ankle-deep in muck. Heaving against the shell of a tree, he boosted himself out of the gully, sand-scoured bark crumbling beneath his fingers.

Lord, no wonder the crows are here. One wall and the roof had gone entirely, and in a corner lay the twisted black mass. Place could have burned weeks ago. He gazed into the ruins, amazed that he felt no horror and no surprise. The old lady might’ve already been dead when it happened. Soft as charred honeycombs, sticks of wood crumbled underfoot. She might’ve been. No telling. And if he hadn’t been looking for a corpse, he might never have seen it, burrowed there into the ash, nestled like an animal. Place might have been struck by lightning during that last big storm. A leg bone as small as a child’s was exposed. Nearby an iron pot lay on its side by what had been a rough fireplace. Or a cooking accident maybe. But he knew Athena would never accept this. Better look around.

He walked behind the shack. His shoes squished as mud gripped his heels. The walking stick sank deeply and pulled out of his hand, as he sank to the calves in warm, vomitous muck, his legs disappearing into too-soft mud and sawgrass. He clawed at the trees, some of which had also partially burned, their blackened forms twisted as though with death agonies. He clawed at the stiff rushes, screaming through the surge of bile in his throat.

Catching at a thick root, he dragged himself out and hung against a trunk for a moment, waiting for his heart to slow.

The bog began to quake, and ripples spread in shivering circles across the surface as he stared. An earth tremor? Or did some huge creature stir in the depths of the quicksand? He peered around at the woods as if seeing them for the first time. A feeling of presence penetrated him, a sense of the pines: malignant, sentient, lethal.

The troopers only killed a man. This had not died. This could not die. He felt no breeze now, yet an animal moan stirred from the trees.

There on the ground before him, the moss looked squashed down. As he watched, it began to spring back. A few yards away, he saw more faint imprints. Freshly made. He recognized them for what they were immediately, having read their description a dozen times. Humanlike. Humanlike tracks surrounded him, bare footprints with slime just seeping in.

The woods grew dim and gray around him, color bleeding away with the rasping of his breath and the throbbing in his chest. And he grew aware of something more, a sense of…ripeness. It was ready now, no longer hiding, the pines now too dry to nurture it.

He took a step, then another. He began to run.