Adam's Woods (23 page)

He was driving the route Eric had used in his story, Burroughs now heading up the hill that Sean had struggled to summit before plummeting down ahead of the van. Entering the woods past the cemetery, he turned on his lights, the road a dark tunnel through the trees. As he turned at the end, he decided to leave them on. Driving into a ditch or tree wouldn't help his cause.

At the top of the hill, his lights illuminating gravel and potholes and the retinas of a small animal low to the ground that scampered away into the woods, the tail lights had disappeared. Eric drove a little faster, thinking that perhaps a bend up ahead had concealed them. After a half-mile of this, he caught a flicker of red in his periphery, and braked hard, skidding on the loose dirt and nearly ending up in the ditch anyway. In control again, Eric backed up and turned onto the unmarked road to continue his pursuit. He was glad Burroughs was an elderly man, and a slow driver. Otherwise he would still be driving straight ahead, to end up God knew where.

The road continued on for several miles, and Eric tried to remember where it might go, if he had ever known. The network of unpaved roads threading through what even they in Lincoln Corners had called the "boonies" had proved more than a match for an adventurous boy and his bicycle. He gave up guessing the destination and instead concentrated on remembering the route as Burroughs turned again, another left, the blinker leaving staccato impressions to float before his eyes. He didn't want to get lost out here.

Finally, the car slowed and made a wide, ponderous turn. Eric slowed and then stopped a quarter mile behind and cut his lights. From the stars he could see out ahead and the silhouette of the trees where their line ended, he knew the land had opened up. Some kind of field, perhaps. He didn't know if he'd been seen, didn't see how he could not have been seen, but had come too far now to go home. He would know what there was to know from this post-midnight ride, if anything. He yawned and stretched, glad that no time clock expected him later in the morning.

Eric waited. He put down his window and heard the car he couldn't see go silent. A minute passed, the clock on his dashboard now reading two-forty three, and he heard the slam of a door. He waited another minute, and knew he had to move. With his night vision improved, he could now make out the road. He drove towards the spot where he'd last seen the pastor's car, until he spied a pull-off, with starlight reflecting on puddles occupying permanent ruts; likely formed by hunters abandoning pick-ups to stalk their prey or teen-agers escaping from their parents to make out. He brought his car forward and parked, then got out, careful not to step in the water, and gently closed the door. Several mostly white signs hanging at eye-level on the trees caught his attention, and he stepped closer thinking they might offer a clue to the identity of the place. "Posted" he made out. "No Hunting" on another. He walked down the road.

At the edge of the trees, he found a service road blocked with a gate. The Pastor's car was pulled up to it and parked, and he saw the disembodied glow of a flashlight bobbing and tracing the road that hugged the edge of the woods, a few hundred yards ahead.

Eric passed the car and skirted a gate post, cursing softly as he stepped ankle deep into water that filled his shoe and pasted his sock to his foot. He followed the light, and glanced to his left at the barely visible electric wire fencing, and then the huddled shapes of cows sleeping upright in the pasture it enclosed.

The flashlight changed course, and by the way it now appeared - there and then not there - Eric knew its operator had entered the woods. He moved faster, but remained vigilant for holes in the road filled with more water or deep enough to twist an ankle. The smell of cow manure filled his nostrils, oddly disgusting and comforting at the same time. A smell of his childhood. And it came to him. Paul Myer’s farm. Paul was a large, stoic man who said little but had always been kind to him as a boy. He had never married, and Eric had then wondered if the faint odor of manure that clung to him even when cleaned up and in his Sunday suit had prevented matrimony. His family had visited the farm on occasion, and he and Adam had enjoyed petting the calves and even once shoveling soiled hay from a dirty stall, as only boys could that don't know yet the dull repetition of manual labor long after any novelty had faded. If he remembered correctly, Paul's house, his barn and silos, lay another half mile or so past the fields of pasture and corn.

He continued on, memories mingling with the dread of his mission, and found a path into the woods. He followed, snapping a few branches that sounded like gunshots. He wondered how much further the pastor would lead him, and where he could possibly be leading him to. On rounding a bend, he took several hasty steps back to find a large tree trunk for concealment. Fifty yards ahead, Pastor Burroughs sat on a large rock at trail side, the flashlight pointed at the ground. After five minutes or so, he stood up slowly, grimaced and eased back down to spend some time massaging his thighs and calves. Eric could faintly hear him humming, a hymn that he unconsciously accompanied with soft words too low to carry the distance between them.

Burroughs stood and began a stiff shuffle deeper into the woods that gained momentum as his joints loosened. The pace was quicker than before, and Eric matched it once the minister had put enough space between them.

How far had they gone now? At least a mile. The path was narrow but well defined, and Eric had to step over several fallen tree trunks that blocked it. He noticed that large branches had been removed with a saw, but the trunks themselves hadn't been touched, as if intentional attempts to make it inaccessible to anything but foot traffic. He knew a lot of rural families kept dirt bikes and quads to ride on trails such as these, and perhaps Paul had grown tired of trying to keep them off of his land.

Still he walked. Another mile, easily. Where could Burroughs possibly be going? To the children’s graveyard? How far would it be entering the woods from here, he wondered. Trying to see the land as if a bird above it, but his knowledge too limited to make any trustworthy calculations, he would have walked right by the building if not for the sharp knock on the door, and then the rattle of keys. Thick rhododendron plants blocked access from the path, and he saw a square of light appear, faint as though from a camping lantern. The geometry of some sort of edifice resolved in the gloom, perhaps fifteen feet square. There were two small windows, but well above where anyone standing could see out of them. Was it a storage shed, or some kind of hunting cabin?

Eric moved into the rhododendron, creeping to its furthest edge, up to the small clearing in front of the building, to have an unimpeded view but to stay hidden. Burroughs fumbled with something, the flashlight stuck under his armpit, and he twisted at an odd angle to train the light on the business of his hands. Finally a lock yielded, but the pastor didn't open the door, as though he had unlocked it for someone else that hadn't yet arrived. He looked up to the stars and stretched out his arms in supplication. His head then fell to his chest and in this position he paused again, then disappeared inside.

Voices drifted through the partially-open door, that of Burroughs and another. Younger. He couldn't hear the words, only murmurs. Then - Did you do it? Did you kill them, Isaac? - he heard clearly, Burrough's voice raised in demand. The other voice responded in the same low, even tone as before, not sharing the excitement. Eric heard a slap, and then silence.

Isaac? His son...here in this cabin? Did you kill them?
Did you kill those children?
What other reason could explain this trip at this hour, the lie of Isaac living somewhere in California, this cabin in the woods. And the question not asked rang louder than the one shouted.
Did you kill Adam?
Because he didn't have to ask what he already knew. He thought he understood the reaction in the church now. Burroughs believed the cabin had been found. The place where he hid his own son to escape the consequence of murdering Adam.

Eric found it hard to breathe, and his cramping muscles begged him to move from his crouch. He tensed in reaction, torn between fleeing the madness before him or breaking cover and confronting them. Rage and confusion, bitterness and betrayal and sadness coursed through him in a volatile mix he didn't trust to guide him in a confrontation. And what if he were wrong? Despite the evidence in front of him, he couldn't place Burroughs at this scene as he read it. Not a man he had so trusted as a child, a trust that had carried into an adulthood where members in that club numbered so very few.

Still reeling and unsure, Eric could only stare numbly as another figure approached the cabin, but from the other side, from the woods and into the clearing. He identified the shotgun and Arnie Fisk at approximately the same time, almost instinctively shouted a warning before remembering where he was, why he was here. Arnie reached the cabin door without breaking stride, pushing hard on the door so that it banged at the furthest reach of the hinges. Eric heard Burroughs' voice again, strained with sorrow and anger, ordering Arnie to leave. Harsh, sharp words followed, voices overlaying voices so nothing intelligible emerged. No! he heard Burroughs shout, this time in horror. There was a pause, scuffling feet and grunts, and the shotgun erupted. Eric flinched at the sound and covered his head with his hands.

He heard running feet and Fisk burst from the cabin and ran back into the woods. He did not carry the shotgun. The sound of his reckless flight gave way to the night's silence. Fearing the worst, Eric had resolved to go inside when another blast forced him back down into the tangle of twisted trunks and waxy green leaves. He was aware of a presence in the doorway before raising his head to confirm it. A figure, not Burroughs, stood poised at the threshold.

Isaac.

He slowly turned his head, and Eric was sure he had been found by the eyes not seen but felt, but they swept over his hiding place and scanned the entire area. Isaac put out his hands in the same gesture as his father, arms out and palms upward, his face to the sky. Eric shivered as he watched the man of Sean's world step through this surreal portal and into reality. And he had. This
was
the man, the murderer that had stolen his brother and his own childhood, the man that crept up the stairs in his mind in the nights after and again in his story. In the shock of the moment, he reverted to being that child again, helpless to do anything but watch and wait.

Isaac stepped outside and walked directly towards him. Eric stifled a scream, the terrified child trying to reassemble the adult, but the pieces refused to stick together and crumbled into a heap. Isaac paused before the rhododendron, and then moved to his left. He stopped, tensed, and walked slowly back. The flashlight that his father had carried to the cabin clicked on, and the beam struck Eric full in the face. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head against the sudden light, and raised his arms in defense, cringing in terror, a whimper escaping his lips, the man screaming from somewhere within but so far away. He felt he had been turned inside out.

"Eric." A word of recognition and nothing more.

The crack of a branch sounded from across the clearing, and the light swung away. Eric opened his eyes but everything had gone dark, and a large spot floating within his vision moved wherever his eyes went, as they searched for Isaac.

So close to his left that he could reach out and touch him, Eric heard Isaac force his way through the rhododendron and then his footfalls on the path behind, the light tinkle of metal accompanying every other step. When the sounds disappeared, when his heart had begun to slow and the shame of his cowardice began to burn like a wasp bite after the shock of the sting had passed, when his vision had cleared - the spot diminished to a transparent purple - he heard a groan from inside the cabin. His rigor had finally passed, and Eric stood up on legs full of shooting needles and stumbled towards the cabin, all occupants accounted for, except for Pastor Burroughs. He paused to listen to the forest. Was the snap of the branch forcing Isaac's flight the sound of Fisk returning, or a nocturnal animal reacting to the unexpected presence of people? He couldn't see or sense anyone at the edge of the clearing. And the gun was still inside; Fisk unarmed didn't frighten him as he once had so recently, in this new context.

He stepped to the door, and then stepped over the gun as he entered the single room. Burroughs lay on the floor further in, in front of a cot, the blanket crumpled at the bottom and the image of Jesus' empty shroud came to his mind unbidden, this place a tomb of sorts but not for the Son of Man. But the stone had been rolled away.

Blood pooled on the floor, emanating from the raw meat that had been the pastor's knee and the lower portion of his thigh. Eric felt pity and the need to help, and disgust and the desire to leave the man to his fate. He didn't think Burroughs knew he was there, but as he looked for something from which to fashion a tourniquet, he heard a weak, raspy voice.

"Eric. I'm so sorry. Water. Please. Over there."

His finger had lifted from a hand resting on his chest, indicating shelving against the wall.