Out of The Woods (21 page)

Eden watched through the kitchen window. She’d seen the whole thing. Now Halley and Hope were sitting on the floor in the dark, Halley holding Hope in her arms. The moonlight glistened on Halley’s wide-open eyes. They weren’t speaking.

“It’s like they’re waiting for something,” Eden said.

The horse lifted its head and neck, and looked over at the house. A sudden beating of wings made the horse snort. Eden watched as the eagle landed in the maple tree, on the branch just above the kitchen window.

“What should we do?” Eden asked it, staring upwards.

“Leave them a while longer,” the eagle replied. “Halley will find the answer.”

“But that man from the basement! What if he comes back?”

“Did you see him too?”

Eden nodded. “Of course – it was that man you told me about, the one in the red shirt. Halley fought him.”

“Ah, moonlight is strange,” the eagle replied. It held the branch tightly with sharp talons.

Eden wondered why the eagle sounded sad.

After a pause, it continued. “Halley was fighting. But there was no one else there. She was fighting all by herself.”

Eden went quiet. This would take some time to understand.

Halley drew in a deep breath. She got up and switched on a small lamp that stood in the corner then sat down again.

“Okay. Let’s try some more. You said could see dark green and you could smell the woods. That it was cold, like night or winter. What else can you feel?”

“Do you think it’s a good idea, to try for more? I mean…”

“You mean the man from the basement.”

Hope nodded.

“He’ll come back anyway, won’t he?” Halley said. Her voice betrayed no emotion.

Hope didn’t answer.

“Won’t he?” Halley repeated.

Hope nodded and wrung her hands.

“So…what else can you feel?”

“You mean with my body?” Hope said.

“Yes.”

“I feel…I think…the ground. Like I’m sitting on the ground, and it’s hard underneath me.” Hope shifted on the kitchen floor. “Hard…but soft. I’ve got something in my hand, crinkly sort of – I think maybe leaves. Wait…I’m…we’re under a…tree…under the canopy of a gigantic tree.” Hope’s chin tilted up and she looked at a place on the ceiling, off to the left. “I can see the stars. There are thousands of them out tonight. And Nick’s here – he has his arm around me. It’s heavy, his arm, but I like it. It feels reassuring.”

“What else is happening?”

“He’s talking. Oh, I love the sound of his voice. Its like a soft summer rain in the treetops.” Halley felt Hope relax in her arms for a moment, and then suddenly tense again. “Wait…it…his voice…it sounds different tonight. It has an edge to it. I don’t like it…”

Halley was breathing faster. “The moonlight? Is it fading? I think it’s fading,” she said.

“Yes, you’re right.” Hope paused. She turned around to look at Halley, the gap between her eyebrows narrowed. “How did you know?”

Halley didn’t answer.

Hope turned back. “There’s a cloud over the moon. I can see it. It’s just a little one. Oh…it’s getting more solid, it’s blocking the moonlight.” Her hand covered her mouth.

“What?”

“Nick. He’s talking very quietly. He’s talking about having trouble. Something about enemies and pressure and…”

Hope pushed Halley’s arms from around her and stood up quickly. She faced Halley, breathing fast. ‘But I know every angle of his face, every curve,” she said. “I know the texture of his eyebrows.” She ran a forefinger along her own, as if to demonstrate. “I know that curlicue in his inner ear like I was born to know it.” Her face crumpled in on itself. “How can this be? How can I feel the way I do?”

Halley got to her feet.

“Forget about what you feel. Go on with what you remember. What do you hear?” She tried to keep her voice calm, but was aware of the tightness in her throat – it made the words feel like a huge wave channeled between jetties onto too small a beach. “What do you hear?” she repeated.

“His words…they’re like a floodwater, drowning our love… drowning me…” Hope’s voice cracked. “His eyes…they’re so…”

Hope stepped quickly to the basement door. She took hold of the doorknob, and rattled the door back and forth in its frame, making sure it was still locked. “His arm is too heavy now. I can’t bear the weight of it. I’ve got to get out from under him. The moon…”

“The moon is gone.”

Outside, all was calm. Eden had crept back to Athena, and she slept again in the hollow made by the horse’s legs, curled up tightly.

The eagle kept watch from the maple tree, watching Hope rub her arms as she leaned her back against the basement door.
She has never processed this
, the eagle thought.
She feels the same sensations and emotions that she felt that night with Nick. By now, the memory should be a picture, far removed, not something that can stir her body this way.
The eagle gripped the tree with thick talons. It fought its instinctive urge to screech.
If only I could have been there that night. I might have saved her.

Inside the kitchen, Halley sat down at the pinewood table, keeping her eyes on Hope.

Hope crossed her arms in front on her chest. “I can’t remember anything else,” she said. “It’s too dark. I can’t see.”

“You mean you won’t,” Halley said flatly.

She thought about Eden, about what she’d said just before she left the house: You’ve got to be brave enough to face the truth, she’d said. What did that mean? What truth was Halley avoiding?

She thought about what had been recalled so far: moonlight; dark green; a tree’s canopy; Nick; floodwater. The series of words felt frozen and impenetrable; they yielded nothing. Halley shifted in the chair – her closed pocketknife was digging into her leg. She stretched out the leg and reached into her pocket, but she couldn’t get to the knife. She stood up, undoing the buttons that held the pocketknife in place. Shifting the knife slightly to the right, she sat down again. Hope was watching her closely.

“What? What’s the matter?” she said.

“What’s that in your pocket?” Hope rose to her feet, her whole body tense.

“In my pocket?” Halley was perplexed. “It’s just my knife.”

Hope covered her face with her hands. A dim light began to emanate from the gaps around the basement door, and Hope began to pound repetitively on the glossy black door with her fists. “I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember.” The pounding made the door shake.

“What is it?” Halley said. Her heart felt like it was beating in time with the pounding on the door. “What don’t you want to remember? Hope, what’s the matter? Stop it…Answer me…”

Hope wasn’t listening. She was pounding harder and faster; she’d break the door if she didn’t stop.

“Did Nick have a knife that night?”

Hope shuddered. The pounding stopped.

“No. It was me. I did it. With my knife…I tried to kill myself.”

But something in Hope broke just then. She sank to the floor. “God…no…”

“What?”

“You’re right. He did have a knife.” Hope rubbed her hand back and forth on the kitchen floor, as if trying to erase the memory. “He kept going on and on about these ‘enemies’ of his. About what he was going to do to them…”

Halley’s hands were white, holding the empty mug. “Maybe he was just venting, just getting it out of his system…”

“No…No.” Hope looked up at Halley. “There was too much detail for just venting. He was talking about knifes and stabbing and blood. Even about how he’d planned to get rid of the bodies…” Hope breathed out hard and wrung her hands together. “I could tell he’d been thinking about it for a long time. He said he was afraid he was going crazy, but the way he said it…he had this glee in his voice…”

“What happened?”

Hope’s body closed up. “He reached across my lap and pushed some leaves aside. He uncovered something,” she said flatly. “The moon came out again, just for a second, and the thing Nick was holding
glinted
…”

“The knife.”

“Yes. The knife. It was a hunting knife.” She shivered. “He opened and closed it, really smoothly, like he’d been practicing with it. Its edge…I couldn’t take my eyes away from it…it was so jagged and awful.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. I couldn’t move. Only I stopped leaning against him. He played with the knife for ages without saying a word. I didn’t know what to do.”

Halley pulled the other chair beside her, and patted it softly. “Come sit here.”

Hope shook her head.

“What happened?”

“When Nick finally spoke, his lips had gone all thin and white. I started to shake – he must’ve felt it. He whispered. He asked me if I was afraid of him. I couldn’t answer. He said it again, “Are you afraid of me?” It was louder this time. Each word seemed so long, like he was speaking in slow motion.”

“God.”

Hope’s fist clenched. “I didn’t know what to say. Of course I was afraid. But I couldn’t say that.”

She looked down.

“Why not?”

“If I admitted I was afraid of him…that would mean there was something to be afraid of. If I believed it, he’d believe it.”

“And there you were, alone with him in the dark. And he had a knife.”

“Yes.” Hope looked up, pleading in her eyes. “But he never said he’d hurt
me
. He was talking about those other people. He’s a good man.” Hope rubbed her hands on her arms, as if to warm herself. “I did it to myself. I hurt myself.”

Halley noticed again how little there was left of her flesh.

The memory was eating Hope up from the inside out. “You were afraid if you told the truth – that you were afraid of him – that he’d kill you,” Halley said.

“That’s right.”

“So you lied,” Halley said flatly.

Hope looked startled, and took a moment before answering. “I guess so. Yes. I did lie. I told him I wasn’t afraid. That I was just cold…that I was shaking because I was cold. It started to rain harder. The raindrops were huge – they exploded when they hit the ground. I just wanted to get out of there. He stared at me for so long I thought my heart was going to burst. He didn’t believe me. He couldn’t have believed me.”

“Did he hurt you?” Halley asked quietly.

Hope shook her head. “No.” She shook her head again. “No. He just reached across me and put the knife back, without saying a word. The rain stopped, and we walked home and we never talked about that night again.”

Halley stared at her, and then shifted her gaze to the glossy blackness of the basement door.

“So, when did you try to kill yourself?” she asked.

Hope sat on the floor in front of the basement door, her head in her hands. Halley sat across from her at the pinewood table, turning her empty brown mug around and around, looking at the patterns in the glaze, at the slight indentations and uprisings around the edges, at the tiny air bubbles that had not burst when it had been fired. She put the mug to one side, and rested both hands on the tabletop, palms down. She sat upright and looked at Hope. “The lie you told him,” she said, finally. “You believed it, didn’t you?”

Hope looked up sharply.

“What? What did you say?”

“When you said you weren’t afraid of him.” Halley pressed her palms into the tabletop. “You didn’t believe it that night. That night, you knew you were afraid – you just said so. You knew something was wrong with him. But you had to convince yourself your lie was true. You had to convince yourself that you weren’t scared of him.”

“I don’t understand. Why would I do that?”

Halley leaned forward. She spoke gently. “You couldn’t love him
and
think he was a monster. You had to rub out that night from your mind. You had to convince yourself all those other frightening moments were just ‘coincidence’.”

“I don’t know what you mean. He didn’t actually do anything, hurt anyone. He’s not a monster. It was all talk.”

“Come on, Hope. You’re lying to me now. He hurt you. I know.”

“He didn’t. I hurt myself.”

Hope stood up.

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. You’re confusing me.”

She moved towards the kitchen door.

Halley stood too.

“Finish the story. Tell me what else happened that night. It’s the only way out.”

Hope’s body tensed. “I already told you. He put the knife away. We got up. We went home.”

The basement door began to bang behind her,
bang bang bang.
Hope didn’t even look.

“We went home,” she repeated, more loudly.

“No. That’s not what happened.”

Halley sat down at the table and held her own wrist tightly, wrapping her fingers around the silver bracelet; the bracelet dug into the palm of her hand. “Tell me how it ended. Tell me about trying to kill yourself.”

Hope stood a little straighter. “Nick moved away after my riding accident,” she said. “I didn’t see him much. I met Andy and slept with him. I betrayed Nick. That’s all. That’s it.”

“That’s not it. Tell me how the night under the tree ended. Stay with what happened that night.”

“I can’t. I won’t,” Hope sobbed, and ran out of the kitchen, leaving the door swinging behind her.