Chris stayed in New York. It was the downside of being self-employed: when the work was there you had to take it, especially with times being so tough. But he loved the Maine woods: they reminded him of his childhood, he said, when friends of his parents would offer them the use of their camp at The Forks for a couple of weeks each summer. So this was a nostalgic trip for him, particularly since his mother had passed away in January, and Andrea could hardly have refused to accompany him. She had been a little reluctant to go traipsing through the woods during hunting season, but he assured her that they’d be fine, especially decked out as they were in reflective orange.
Orange was not her color.
Orange was not anybody’s color.
She looked to the sky. There was an oppressive clouding to it, which concerned her. There might even be rain coming, although she couldn’t recall it being forecast.
‘Damn it,’ said Chris. ‘There should be a stream around here. If we follow it, it’ll take us back to town.’
He looked left and right, hoping for some glimmer of silver, listening for the sound of running water, but there was nothing, not even the song of a bird.
She so badly wanted to shout at him: I don’t hear a stream. Do you hear a stream? No, because there’s no fucking stream here. We’re lost! How long have you been leading us in the wrong direction? How fucking hard can it be to distinguish between north, south, east, and west? You’re the great outdoorsman. You have the compass and a map. Come on, Tonto, figure it out!
He turned to look at her, as if she’d screamed so loudly in her head that some atavistic part of his brain had picked up on it.
‘It should be here, Andrea,’ he said. ‘I’ve been heading east, following the compass.’
He sounded bewildered, and he looked like a small boy. Some of her anger at him diminished.
‘Show me,’ she said.
He handed over the compass, and pointed a manicured finger at the map. He was right: they seemed to be heading east, and at their rate of progress they should have been at the Little Head Stream by now. She tapped the compass, more out of habit than anything else.
Slowly, the needle turned 180 degrees.
‘What the hell?’ said Chris. He took the instrument back from his wife. ‘How can it be doing that?’
He jabbed at the compass with his own finger. The needle didn’t move.
‘Could we have been going west all this time?’ asked Andrea.
‘No. I can tell east from west. We were heading east. I think.’
For the first time, he sounded genuinely worried. They had an emergency kit, and some food, but neither of them had any desire to spend the night out in the woods without the proper equipment. In fact, they weren’t fans of sleeping outdoors at the best of times. Both of them liked their creature comforts, and a long day’s hike was made worthwhile by the promise of a little luxury and a good meal at the end of it.
She looked up at the sky again, but there were only glimpses of it to be seen between the trees. They were thicker here, and more ancient. Some of them must have been centuries old, their trunks distended and tumorous, their branches like broken limbs that had been set wrongly. The terrain was rocky in places, and there was a stench on the air. It smelled like old stew made with innards.
‘Maybe you could climb a tree and get our bearings,’ she said, and giggled.
‘That’s not helpful,’ said Chris.
He scowled at her, and she giggled again.
She didn’t know why she was laughing. They were lost, and while it wasn’t as bad as being adrift in the woods when snow was falling and there was a chance that they might freeze to death, their cell phones had no signal, they still only had limited supplies, and the temperature was bound to fall once darkness came. Nobody knew that they were out here, either. They’d checked out of their motel in Rangeley shortly after dawn, just in case they found somewhere more interesting along the way north, and their car was now parked on the main street of Falls End. It might be days before someone noticed that it hadn’t moved. She’d told Chris that they should have made a provisional booking somewhere in Falls End, but he’d replied that it was too early to start thinking about that, and the town seemed quiet anyway, and if they made a start on the hike they’d be back by late afternoon. That was one of his other faults: he hated committing to anything in advance, even a motel room in a small town. When they went out to dinner in a new city, he would walk her from restaurant to restaurant examining each menu in turn, always looking for the perfect food in the perfect place. There had been evenings where they had walked and debated for so long that everywhere good was either closed or full by the time Chris made a decision, and they’d ended up eating burgers in a bar, her husband simmering at missed opportunities.
‘And what’s that stink?’ said Chris.
‘It smells like cheap meat was boiling in a pot, and then it went off,’ she replied.
‘It might mean that there’s a house nearby.’
‘Out here? I didn’t see any road.’
‘You notice how thick the trees are? There could be a four-lane highway a stone’s throw from here, and we wouldn’t know about it until we heard a truck.’
There’s no highway out here, she wanted to say. There isn’t even a hiking trail. We lost that when you decided to ‘explore’, and now look at the mess we’re in. She remembered a cartoon she’d seen in a magazine once, depicting a family in the wilderness surrounding a father who was examining a map. The caption read: ‘What matters isn’t so much where we are as who we blame for it.’
‘If there’s a house, there may be a phone,’ Chris went on. ‘At the very least we can ask for directions back to town.’
Andrea supposed that he was right, although she wasn’t sure how much time she wanted to spend dealing with someone who lived so deep in the Great North Woods. Anyone who had come this far to find some solitude wasn’t necessarily going to welcome two lost city dwellers smelling of sweat and DEET into his lovely, secluded home.
‘There!’ said Chris. He was pointing to his right.
‘What?’
‘I saw someone.’
She looked, but could see nothing. The branches of the trees moved, creating a faint rustling. Odd: she had felt no breeze.
‘Are you sure?’
‘There was a man among those trees. I’m sure of it. Hey! Hey! Over here! We’re lost. We need a little help.’ He put his hand to his forehead to shade his eyes. ‘Sonofabitch. I think he’s heading away from us. Hey! Hey!’
Andrea still couldn’t see anyone, but she joined in with her husband’s shouts, just in case the man was concerned at the presence of a solitary male on his territory.
‘Please,’ she called. ‘We don’t mean any harm. We just need to get back on the trail.’
Chris folded the map and stuffed it into his rucksack.
‘Come on,’ he said to her.
‘Come on where?’
‘We’re going after him.’
‘What? Are you crazy? If he doesn’t want to help us, that’s his business. Chasing after him isn’t going to make things better.’
‘Jesus, Andrea, there has to be some kind of code of the forest, right? It’s like the law of the sea. You don’t leave people stranded when they’re in trouble. All we’re looking for is directions.’
Andrea had never heard of a code of the forest, and she was pretty sure that none existed. Even if it did then, just as with the law of the sea, there would be those who did not abide by it. She didn’t know what the forest equivalent of a pirate might be, and she didn’t want to find out. People went missing in these woods, and some of them were never found again. They couldn’t all have been eaten by bears, could they?
‘What if he has a gun?’ she said.
‘
He set off after the man only he had seen. Andrea trailed after him. She had no choice. The woods were
