In a Dark Wood

In a Dark Wood

By Josh Lanyon

This story was originally published

 
by Aspen Mountain Press

In a Dark Wood

By Josh Lanyon

“We’re lost.”

Luke came up behind me. I pointed, hand shaking, at the cross carved into the white bark of the tree. “We’re going in goddamned circles!”

He was silent. Beneath the drone of insects I could hear the even tenor of his breathing although we’d hiked a good nine miles already that autumn afternoon — and no end to it in sight. My head ached and I had a stitch in my side like someone was jabbing me with a hot poker.

I lowered my pack to the ground, lowered myself to a fallen tree — this time not bothering to check for ant nests or coiled rattlers — lowered my face in my hands and lost it. I mean,
lost it
. Tears…oh, yeah. Shoulders shaking, shuddering sobs. I didn’t even care anymore what he thought.

“Tim…” He dropped his pack too, sat down next to me on the log. He sounded sort of at a loss. After a minute he patted my shoulder. Awkwardly.

I turned away from him and tried to wipe my face on my shirt sleeve.

Feeling him fumbling around with his pack, I watched him through wet lashes. He pulled out his canteen, unscrewed the top and offered it to me.

I took the canteen, swallowed the warm stale water, handed it back. Wiped my face again. Perfect. My nose was running. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t like I had a shred of dignity left.

First dates. You’ve got to love ’em.

But I mean, what kind of fucking sadist chooses camping for a first date?

Fast forward to the end of this one: we’d shake hands at my brownstone door — assuming we got out of this field trip into Hell alive — and he’d promise to call, and with equal insincerity I’d say I looked forward to it.

I’d never see him again — and that was the only bright side to this whole — literally — walking nightmare.

Luke pulled a cloth out of his pack and wet it with the canteen. “Here, look at me.”

I looked at him. He wiped my face with the wet cloth, shocking me into immobility. His own face was serious, his hazel eyes studied me. I closed my eyes and he gently swiped my eyelids, washing away the sweat and tears.

“Better?”

I lifted my lashes, got my lips steady enough to form words. “Oh, sure. Great.”

“I thought you were a travel writer?”

“I’m not an explorer! I write about comfortable hotels with clean sheets and hot water. My idea of roughing it is a two-star restaurant!”

The corner of his mouth tugged as though, against his will, he found this just a little bit comical. What the hell could be funny about any of this?

“Listen, we’re not lost.”

I opened my mouth and he said, “I don’t mean I know where we are. But I can get us out of here, if that’s what you want. I’ve got a compass and we can start walking east and be back to civilization within a few hours.”

I swallowed hard. First off, there was no place in New Jersey that even remotely qualified as “civilization,” but that was beside the point.

Luke said, “And, for the record, we’re not going in circles. Look again at that carving on the tree. It’s not a fresh cut. Look at the edges. They curl, but they’re worn. It’s not your mark. At least, it’s not the mark you made today.”

I blinked at him stupidly.

He said, “I think it’s your mark from twelve years ago.”

* * * * *

Flash back four days ago to a dinner party at my best friend Rob’s place in Manhattan. Rob’d gone all out: Chinese lanterns hang over the table, shadows bobbing against the wall, all of us fumbling around with chopsticks, and the Peking duck from Chef Ho’s exquisite. I’d had three cocktails too many and Rob was egging me on.

“Tim, tell the story about the skull house, come on!”

I laughed, shaking my head.

“Come on,” Rob urged. “Luke wants to hear it. Luke! Tell Tim you want to hear about the skull house in New Jersey.”

Across the table and two faces down there was this very attractive guy, a few years older than me, with dark hair and crinkly hazel eyes. He gave me a wry grin.

This was Luke, the cop who Rob kept trying to fix me up with. “A cop?” I always said doubtfully. “I don’t know.”

“He’s a detective, not a beat cop,” Rob always replied. “He doesn’t give speeding tickets.”

Speeding tickets being kind of a sore subject with me. “I’m not really into cops,” I always said.

“You’re not into anybody,” was Rob’s standard answer. “And nobody is into you, which is your problem. One of your problems.”

And that’s where the conversation ended, except that night Luke was actually present and could speak up for himself.

“Sure, Tim,” he said. “I’d like to hear.”

He had a nice voice, not at all the voice cops use when they’re slapping a parking ticket on your windshield or asking you to pull out your vehicle registration. He had very white teeth and a very nice smile. Did he know Rob wanted to set us up? Er — fix us up, I mean. He probably did, and he’d probably been resisting just as hard as me. He’d certainly kept a polite distance all evening.

I gave Rob a look that promised all kinds of retribution that I wouldn’t remember once I sobered up. He just laughed and poured me another scorpion.

“Come on, Tim,” someone else urged.

Someone else I didn’t know. Rob knew everybody and everybody knew Rob. Most of them didn’t know Rob as long as I’d known him, which was since we were the two most unpopular guys in Trinity School.

I gave in to peer pressure — not for the first time — with a sigh.

“I was thirteen and I was staying with a friend in the Pine Barrens for a couple of weeks during the summer. There wasn’t a lot to do. Mostly we went swimming in this little lake and we spent a lot of time prowling through woods.”

I glanced over at Luke. He set his glass back down, but his lashes lifted and he caught my eye. I couldn’t look away. He didn’t look away either. It’s like tractor beams locking on. People were going to notice. My face felt hot, but that was probably the spicy sea dragon bass.

Managing to tear my gaze away, I said, “Anyway, one day we wandered farther into the woods then we were supposed to go. We get really turned around. Totally lost. Oh wait, I’m forgetting. There was supposed to be this house, see, where — I don’t remember what the exact story was now — the Boogey Man or somebody like that was supposed to live in the heart of the woods. And when hikers or nosey kids like us disappeared, The Forester was supposed to have grabbed them.”

“The Forester?” Luke asked. Everyone else chuckled, reaching for glasses or forks. Only Luke was paying close attention.

I focused inward. “Uh, yeah. I think that’s right.” Weird. I’d forgotten that he was called the Forester.

“So, anyway, we wander around, lost. We’re afraid we’re going in circles, and it’s getting dark. I start marking the trees, making a little cross with my penknife in the bark, which is all white and shimmery that time of evening.”

My heart started to thud against my ribs as it came back to me: the deepening shadows, the ghostly trees, the creeping chill of the woods closing in on us. “And then all at once there’s a house right in front of us. Two stories, really old, falling down. There’s a tree growing out through a big hole in the roof.”

I gestured with my hands trying to make them see this creepy old house being claimed by the woods. “It has an ornate portico thing and little gable windows. Some of the other windows are broken, some of them are still there. The front door is hanging off its hinges…”

I stopped. For a moment it was like I was back in the woods. The smell of moldering house and weird animal scents and…the woods. The hush of evening — even the crickets were silent.

Too silent.

Rob laughed. He’d heard the story before — always when I was drunk. I don’t tell this story sober. I couldn’t help stealing another look at Luke. He wasn’t smiling anymore; his brows were drawn together like he was studying me from a distance and not sure about what he was seeing.

“I took a step forward and something crunched under my foot. When I looked down it was part of a skull.”

Laughter, some expelled breaths, Luke still stared, still frowning. “Skull or a bone?”

“Skull.”

“Human?” someone else asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “At the time we thought so, but we kind of wanted to think so, you know? I don’t think it was.”

I did think it was human, actually, but I sure as hell didn’t want to admit it.

“So what happened?” a woman asked. The light from the blue lanterns bounced off her glasses and made her look blind. A blind lady insect.

“Nothing. We freaked out and ran home.” I laughed. It wasn’t a convincing laugh, but everyone else laughed too.

Everyone but Luke. “Did you tell anyone?”

I shook my head. “We weren’t supposed to be there. We were afraid…”

We were afraid all right, and getting into trouble was only a little part of it.

“Did you ever go back?” the woman asked again.

Even her voice has a kind of insect whine to it. It hurt my head. I reached for my glass. “No.”

“Do you think you could find the house again?” Rob asked slyly, looking from Luke to me. “If you had to?”

“No.”

Luke asked, with a funny smile, “Would you want to try?”

* * * * *

I should have known the weekend would be a disaster when Luke told me later that evening that he would pick me up Saturday at six a.m.

“Morning?” I said uncertainly, hoping against hope that he’d got the a.m. and p.m. thing mixed up.

“Well, yeah. We’ll need to get an early start. There’s a lot of ground to cover, especially if we don’t know where we’re going.”

He was smiling. He had a great smile: his hazel eyes tilted at the corners and his mouth — he had a very sexy mouth — did this little quirky thing. I felt a powerful tug of attraction — something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Still, I knew myself pretty well by then, and I wasn’t at my best and brightest before noon on the weekends. Or any day. “Uh…I’m not much of a morning person.”

“Mornings can be the best part of the day,” Luke said softly, and it was clear he wasn’t talking cornflakes. His gaze held mine; I literally couldn’t look away. My heart did a little flip.

“Do you have a sleeping bag?” he added.

“A…sleeping…bag?”

“We’ll be spending the night, right? Camping?”

“Uh…probably. Yeah.” Oh. My. God. Did he mean—? Were we going to—?

“Don’t sweat it,” he said. “I’ve got you covered.” His eyes actually twinkled. A cop with twinkly eyes? How much had I had to drink? I checked my glass.

So, yeah, the upshot: I went to dinner at Rob’s on Thursday night and somehow walked out with a date — my first in over a year — for the weekend.

“Isn’t Luke
hot
?” Rob demanded, when he called on Friday afternoon.

“He’s pretty cute,” I admitted, massaging my throbbing temples. I tried to focus on the monitor screen.

“Cute?”
Rob exclaimed. “That’s like saying Tom Cruise has nice teeth. He’s gorgeous! That grin. Those eyes. That
ass
.”

“Enough with Tom Cruise.”

“I’m talking about Luke!”

I rubbed my eyes. Tried to read back what I’d written. Garbage. I mean, really, who gave a flying fuck about Scenic Hudson?

“I didn’t even catch his last name,” I said.

“O’Brien.”

“Swell. He probably comes from a long line of Irish cops.”

“Sure, and don’t you know the way of it, boyo,” Rob returned in a tooth-peeling brogue.