Not having any choice at all.
A vehicle wouldn't work. There was no road to reach the clearing, not even one that came close enough to make driving worthwhile. And he didn't have an ATV or a tractor to use for hauling. He didn't want to haul the girl anyway, drag her along behind some vehicle like a sack of garbage. She meant something to him, and he didn't want to treat her that way. It left only one choice. He'd carry her.
It helped that he was a big guy, and she was small. With being sick and all, she'd wasted away down to nothing. He wrapped her in a sheet and flung her over his shoulder. It was like carrying a bunch of small twigs in a bag.
He grabbed a shovel with his free hand and started through the woods, down the trail that started at the back of his house.
His house
.
After all these years, he still had a hard time thinking of the house as his, even though his parents had been dead longer than he could remember, leaving the house and the land to him to do with as he pleased. He liked to think he had done a good job, that he was making his parents proud if they could look down on him from wherever they were. The girl had helped make the place look nice, just like his mom used to. And now the girl was gone, and he was alone. Truly alone.
Just before his dad died, the old man had given him some advice. His dad had been sick a long time, too, just like the girl. He got thin and pale and started coughing and coughing.
"Goddamn cigarettes," his dad used to say, and then he'd cough and cough some more until it seemed he'd never stop. But when he did, he called Roger to his bedside and asked him to lean in close. "There're a couple of things I need to tell you," he said.
His dad smelled rotten, like something inside of him had gone bad and was now leaking out through his pores. But Roger didn't lean away. He wanted to hear his dad speak because Roger knew it might be the last thing to ever come out of the man's mouth.
"Roger," his dad said, his voice full of phlegm. "I'm not sure you're cut out for living on your own. Are you?"
Roger shook his head. "No, sir."
"Neither was I. That's why I got married to your mother and had you. So I wouldn't have to go through my life alone. Make sense?"
Roger understood and nodded to show it, but another coughing fit sent his dad into spasms. When he settled down, he hocked a bloody loogie into a glass by the side of the bed, then leaned back and closed his eyes. Roger thought he was going to sleep, but his dad started talking again.
"I'm not sure you have much of a chance in the race for a wife, do you? I mean...you ain't exactly a looker, are you?"
Roger nodded. He knew he didn't look right. He was big. Huge. And his head was too small. He had one eye that wandered off beyond his control, and his fingers were thick and meaty. He knew what his dad meant.
His dad coughed again, but not as bad as before. Then he said, "But I don't think it's right that a man like yourself should have to be alone. I think a man has a right to some companionship and company, if you know what I mean."
Roger thought he did. "Do you want me to get a dog?"
His dad laughed and thumped the flat of his hand against the bed sheets. Roger was afraid he was going to start coughing again, but he didn't.
"No, dummy," he said. "Not a dog. A wife. I want you to take a wife. Someone who can help you out with this place. Cook and clean and...all the things a wife does for a man. Do you know what I mean now?"
Roger knew what men and women did together in the bedroom, and he knew his dad was talking about something like that. But he didn't understand what that had to do with him, and he didn't know how he was going to get to a place where he was going to be able to do those things. So he told his dad he didn't get it.
And that's when his dad told him about the clearing.
Carrying the girl and the shovel slowed Roger down. The path was there beneath his feet, but it didn't get used much and was still overgrown from the summer. Branches scratched against his arms and face, and once, an unseen thorn bush scraped across the soft skin of his neck, making him wince. But after a while, Roger stopped even noticing the scratches and the scrapes. He began to feel the power of the place drawing him closer.
It always came upon him the same way. His hands, even burdened as they were by the load he carried, began to tingle, as though they were falling asleep. But Roger knew that wasn't the case. He knew his body was waking up. He paused, adjusted the girl on his shoulder. He looked ahead, though the clearing remained obscured by the forest growth. But he knew it was out there and getting closer. He felt the cold sweat form in his armpits and trickle down his sides. He felt his heart rate increase until his breath came in quick huffs. And he felt the hardening between his legs, the stiffening that felt so good it almost hurt.
Roger moaned.
He kept walking, moving faster now.
When Roger reached the clearing, he dropped the shovel, eased the girl to the ground, and fell to his knees. The sweat dripped down his face, burning his eyes. He wiped it away and examined his surroundings. The clearing remained the same as ever. No grass or weeds grew in its center, and the tall trees at its edges loomed timeless and eternal, like they had been placed there at the start of the world, never to be moved or brought down. The sky above had mostly darkened, and the moon was still rising. Roger's eyes were adjusted to the dark. He reached out, placing his hand on his bundle. The girl he came to bury.
His father hadn't told him much about the clearing that night on his deathbed. Roger listened to every word, trying his best to absorb and retain everything the old man said. But he felt that his father had left certain things out, and Roger assumed that if his dad hadn't mentioned them, they really weren't that important anyway.
His dad did tell him that the clearing meant a great deal to the men who founded Union Township, the original settlement that eventually led to the creation of New Cambridge ten miles to the east. In those earliest days, the men gathered in the clearing, drawn there—Roger assumed—by the same force that drew him back again and again. All the most important decisions relating to the founding of the new community were discussed and made in that spot. What the laws would be. What the form of government would be. Who would live where and on what parcel of land.
Who would marry who.
Roger came back to the clearing to bury the girl because of that. His father had told him, during that deathbed revelation, that a man could feel a great deal of power if he gave himself over to the clearing. And, his father told him, if a man wants to find a wife, he should start looking in the clearing. If a man spent enough time there and opened himself up to the possibilities that flowed through that place, he could find himself with a suitable wife and an end to his loneliness.
"That's the way we determined those things back then," the old man said. "If a man couldn't find a wife, he came to the clearing, and one was found for him..."
Roger believed it.
He started going there before his father died, and shortly before the old man's death, Roger had found the girl and brought her to live with him. But he couldn't have done it—knew he couldn't have done it—without first receiving the power that came from that place.
Roger pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed the shovel and looked for a suitable place to dig. The hardness in his pants continued, pushing against his jeans. Roger used his hand to adjust himself, hoping for some relief, even though he knew of only one real way to ease the pain and discomfort.
But he couldn't do that anymore. The girl was gone. She had died. And even before she died, she was sick, and he couldn't relieve his urges.
But in the clearing, he felt otherwise. Something told him otherwise.
And once he started thinking about it, Roger couldn't stop himself. He knew he was going to be alone for a long time, maybe forever. And hadn't his dad said that the clearing was the place where men drew their power, where men did what men had to do?
Roger bent down and untied the knot holding the sheet tight around the girl's body. Once he started untying the knot, he felt the desire rise within him. It felt like a swarm of bees buzzing in his skull, and he pulled and tugged harder against the knot, his thick fingers butchering the job, making the knot worse and more uncooperative.
"Ahhhh," he cried, his voice rising in the woods.
He continued his fight with the knots until they started to come free. Sweat covered his body now, and he felt like he had a fever. His forehead and the tips of his earlobes burned in the cool night air.
He pulled the sheet apart.
There she was. The girl.
His
girl.
She wore her nightgown, the one she had died in, and her hair looked greasy and tangled from the months of her sickness. Her skin was pale, the bones rising from beneath her flesh.
But Roger didn't care. She was cold already, but he didn't care.
He fumbled with his pants. When he opened them, some of the pressure eased. But not all of it, not nearly enough of it.
He lifted her nightgown and climbed on top of her. He went to work just as the clearing told him to do.
He knew relief was coming, felt it drawing closer with each rhythmic thrust.
He howled, his voice rising and cutting through the night.
When Roger was finished, he lay on his back next to the girl's body. He felt better. Relieved, he thought.
But as he lay there, looking at the stars that dotted the sky and the almost fully risen moon, he knew it was only temporary. He smelled the rich earth, the thick green vegetation and knew that he had to put the girl in the ground. But once she went in there, he would be alone.
Really alone.
No one else in his family had ever lived alone. His mother died first, but Dad had him for company. And right after Dad died, the girl came to live with him. But now he faced the future by himself, with no one to help him or guide him. No one to care for him.
He thought about bringing the girl back into the house with him, just for a little while, but he couldn't bring himself to do that. It would be wrong. Indecent. He couldn't do anything like that in his parents' house.
So he continued to stare at the sky and tried to open himself up to the power of the clearing.
And the answer came to him in just a few minutes:
Why not find a new wife?
As soon as he thought it, Roger knew he had found the solution to all of his problems. He could find a new wife, someone to come and take the girl's place, and then he wouldn't have to be alone in the house. He wouldn't have to be alone at all.
He felt the tingling in his hands again. He felt like there was nothing he couldn't do.
He climbed to his feet, dusting the dirt and leaves off of his skin, and then pulled his pants up, zipping and buttoning them, noting that he felt so much more comfortable now than when he had come to the clearing.
Yes, he thought, I'll find a new wife. A new one just as good as the old one.
He felt a pleasant burst of energy course through his body, a sense of freshness and renewal that he hadn't felt in a long time.
He grabbed the shovel. He had work to finish tonight.
And he had a new task to devote himself to tomorrow.
CHAPTER FOUR
Diana was driving down Highway Seventeen northbound, the main road between New Cambridge and Leesburg, when she reached for the radio volume dial and saw how much her hand was shaking. She brought it back, gripping the wheel with both hands, and shook her head, although there was no one there to see the gesture, just a farmer in his combine, chewing up acres of withering cornstalks and kicking up enough dust to partially obscure the red sunset.
She's crazy
, Diana thought.
Just a crazy woman who wants to mess with me.
And Diana had heard of plenty of people who do things like that—prey on the families of crime victims, tease them, get their hopes up and take advantage of them, all in the name of sick thrills or morbid curiosity. Diana shook her head again. She wouldn't give anyone the satisfaction of violating or victimizing her, and she already regretted losing her cool with the woman, grabbing her arm that way and giving her some sort of power or pleasure. She knew she had to collect herself and be ready to face her own mother. She couldn't go in there rattled or shaken.