The Lonely (19 page)

Time to Leave The Woods

It was 7:30. The Mother would have been doing the thing that worried mothers do on TV—sitting at the table with her hands wrapped around a mug. She'd have poured herself a cup of warm something, groping at it without drinking, wearing something loose, seemingly thrown on in a fit of terror but still flattering. She would wonder if I'd told her about a place I'd go on a warm June night. Wonder and wonder and then feel guilty that she couldn't remember.

I was ready for someone to come and find me. Quite ready in fact. Gray dusk was fast becoming black night. Half of the planet behind a closed eyelid. I couldn't escape the things coming for me. Creatures crawling out of real, woodsy dark to feast on the dead; or in my case, what they wrongfully believed to be dead.

I am dead. I died a few hours ago, my body as still as any other corpse, but I just didn't realize it. That's why it's been so hard for me to look around. My whole body held still by a big, cold hand closed tight around me, white and smooth, skin hanging over tendons like a wet towel over a rack, nails long and crisp as corn flakes. This hand held me still and quiet and I couldn't fight it.
I
am a figurine and
I
am trapped inside. Finally, after all of these hours, I'm completely made of wood.

While all around me the dark world had devoured everything. Finished off The Woods as I knew them, about to enter my whole body the way that it enters a sleeping hand. Filling me up with stillness. The trees around me began to quiver, losing their drive to remain inanimate. The darkness licked its lips, tasting up the forest floor, drinking from my pool of blood. Shadows growing, spreading like a disease, and the things that had been restricted by their borders would be able to move freely.

The occasional headlight brought a distorted wave of illumination into my world. It was different out there. Things would know that I was dead. New sounds bounced off the trees; owls, heavy winds forcing their way loudly between branches, increasingly aggressive bugs burrowing their way toward me, picking at me too eagerly, a squabbling sound below. I hope I'm still alive. I hope I haven't been feasted on yet. Footsteps crunched somewhere near. The Something Coming.

A car went by, momentarily illuminating everything. I thought I saw them grab Something with their light. Those eyes again, peeking from between trees. Closer this time. Then complete darkness.

“Hello? Hello? If someone is out there, please help me, my legs are stuck under this rock. I've been bleeding for hours and hours, please. I don't want to be here anymore!”

It was The Something Coming. It was finally here. Now that the dark world had enveloped me entirely, The Something Coming felt safe enough to show itself. I don't care what it is. I don't care. Be whatever you want, Something Coming, I need a change anyway.

Another car went by and I screamed at the top of my lungs, thinking that someone inside might hear me. They must not have. Because they didn't stop. Maybe I really was already dead. Maybe I wasn't making a sound at all. Were my lips moving? Were they? I moved them around, stuck my tongue out, made loud, bizarre squeaks, growled. Was I making a sound? I couldn't tell anymore. Then everything seemed to go silent. Nothing rustled or chirped. I became deaf, blind, trapped in the smooth white hand that had become like a box, the exact size and shape of my body. I pounded and squirmed and clawed at the box. Scratched and tore until I'd left my fingernails somewhere along the gouges. The silence was decimating me.

But then I wasn't blind. And I wasn't in any box either. My fingernails were still intact. Another pair of headlights definitely illuminated a flash of red in the trees. Hair, perhaps? A bright, unnatural red. Someone was out there.

“Hello, hello, HELLO! I know you're there. I know you're there, I saw you! Now help me with this stupid rock or there'll be trouble. I'll tell everyone that I was dying under a rock and you didn't help me.”

Another car went by and the eyes emerged from behind the tree. A whole body topped with red hair made its way out of the shadows toward me. It was Julia. I guess she'd decided to come back for me after all.

“Hi Easter,” she said, as she walked slowly toward me.

The look on her face had The Terrible Thing written all over it.

“So you found it.”

“Yeah. I found it.”

“What are we gonna do?” I asked.

It's the thing I'd wanted to ask her all along. The thing that she would have eventually pried out of me had she not crushed me with a rock instead and took off for The House.

She shrugged. I closed my eyes and saw The Terrible Thing:

Easter was able to sneak out pretty easily this morning. She knew that if she wasn't gone when Mrs. Bellows woke up she'd have to answer for whatever came over her in the Craft Room last night. The bad thing she'd been about to do all on her own, without Julia to blame.

She changed into warmer clothes, stepped slowly out of the room (careful to avoid the creaks she knew so well), grabbed the bike from the side of the building, and rode it all the way home. Wind whipping her gripped white knuckles, so tight on the handlebars that they began to ache before she reached The Tooth House. Her key fit in the lock. There was no reason it shouldn't, but she wasn't sure. Mrs. Bellows had said that they should have controlled contact with one another, scheduled visits only. That The Parents needed to solve their own problems before Easter came back. She said, “You should really find one another again.” And for some reason that had caused Easter to burst out laughing and The Mother cried and The Father barely moved, like callouses formed into the couch.

The Parents would still be sleeping, for at least a while. Easter crept up the stairs and straight into the bathroom, aching to stare at herself in a way that she couldn't in the shared bathrooms at Mrs. Bellows' Apartment Building.

But The Tooth House Bathroom was cold, unlike it had ever been before. Cold and still and simultaneously empty and full like the air before first lightning cracks. The shower curtain was pulled shut, so she opened it.

The Mother lay still as a reptile in the tub. The red, red water so still it might be Jell-O, into which The Mother had accidentally fallen and cooled, just her oval face and arms and knees sticking out. She would have been happy to be so still.

A shard of The Father's broken razor, the razor that Easter smashed, fallen out of The Mother's full-of-death hand, splattering the blue tile in red dots.

The Terrible Thing. The Terrible Thing. The way that she'd wished for something like The Terrible Thing over and over again. Thought that it would fix her, transform her into someone better.

The Father probably hadn't noticed yet. But he may have. It's simply so unremarkable, so much more a nuisance than anything else, he's waiting for a more opportune time to deal with it. Like a burnt-out light bulb in a rarely used closet. He'll get around to it eventually. And Easter wished that he were the dead one, not The Mother.

“Are you sad?” asked Julia.

And I nodded. And I nodded and I nodded.

And Julia asked, “Do you want me to roll the rock off?”

And I nodded again. Even though it was supposed to be Lev who saved me. Supposed to be him so that we could walk away happily ever after and I wouldn't be lonely anymore. And he would invite me underground to have dinner with his family in their very dark dining room. But it was Julia who was here and Julia who I really loved. So she rolled the rock off. And my legs were perfectly fine, full of blood and life and all the electricity that a young girl's legs should be full of. I got up, with Julia's help, and made my way toward the path.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“The House.”

“You aren't going back to Mrs. Bellows'?”

“No.”

“How come?”

“Because someone needs to do something about The Mother.”

“Who are you supposed to call?”

“Phyllis, maybe? She'll know what to do.”

Julia nodded.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I don't know yet.”

And Julia nodded.

I'd go back to The Tooth House and I'd call Phyllis and then probably the hospital.

And then I'd stay in The Tooth House with The Father and I'd live upstairs the way that she had. And he'd live downstairs like always.

And there was no room for Julia anymore because I was all full of bugs. And they were moving around in there, making me less lonely. Little implants whose little legs would polish me into someone who felt better and acted better. More normal. Powered by the bell, which rang somewhere always whether I heard it or not. Ceaseless so a person hardly notices. Like the twittering leaves all day long.

It had transformed from a hot June day to a cool June night. My feet crunched into the forest floor. Julia followed close behind, squirrels hopping around her feet, following too in their way, but I knew she wouldn't leave The Woods. She belonged in here now, my sliver in the universe, and this is where I'd keep her from now on.

Acknowledgments

Very special thanks to Lisa Samuels, Ali McDonald, and Brian Farrey-Latz for making this book happen, and to all my early readers: Paul Clairmont, Delia Byrnes, Heidi Tannenbaum, Sam Swenson, Alex Hartley, Madison Hogarth, and my parents Debbie and Tom Hogarth. THANK YOU!

Photo by Paul Clairmont

About the Author

Ainslie Hogarth was born and raised in Windsor, Ontario, but currently resides in Toronto. She has an undergraduate degree in English Literature and Philosophy and a Masters in Creative Writing. She watches a lot of movies and has a lot more books in her head.
The Lonely
is her debut novel. Visit her online at ainsliehogarth.com.