Out of The Woods (26 page)

“That’s strange,” Halley said. There had been no other ferns for a long time, and certainly no trees to speak of.

“I bet it’s an underground river! Maybe there’s even a cave! With treasure…”

Halley put her arm out to stop Eden.

“Remember the trap Gail set with the backpack? Let’s take it slow.”

She stepped forward cautiously, testing the ground with each step. When she reached the ferns, she gently pried them apart. In doing so, she uncovered the narrow entrance to a cave. The white light of the fog penetrated only a few feet inside. Beyond that was absolute darkness. She heard the sound of dripping water, and then another sound.

It was the sound of a child, crying.

It’s not the baby.
The cry lacked the confident urgency of an infant. This person had no expectation of being helped. In fact, it sounded like they were trying hard not to be overheard.

“You’d better wait here,” Halley said. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

Cautiously, Halley entered the cave, thumping each foot down hard to give any snakes plenty of warning to slide off.

“But I want to come,” Eden said softly.

Halley looked over her shoulder. The glare of the fog made her eyes hurt; it was already difficult to see Eden. “I know…but… look, I’ll be right back. You…you keep watch.”

“For what?”

But Halley didn’t answer. A few feet into the cave, she came to a fork.
It might be the first of many. If I get lost down here…

A chill ran through her. Wary in the half-light, she raised her left hand to the wall. It was cold and damp. Feeling around, she noticed the cave’s walls had no support beams – it was formed from solid stone. Halley fought the urge to remove her hand and turn back.

The child cried again. Halley stared down the tunnel. It was too dark to see.
Okay, I’ll keep my left hand here, and take all the left-going branches first…”
She stretched her right arm in front to make sure she didn’t run headfirst into any dead-ends.

After the first fork, it was completely dark. As she walked, she tried to draw a mental map of the cave’s layout, but it was impossible. There were too many turns and tunnels, and the lack of light was disorienting. For a moment, she shut her eyes to try to concentrate. Even though it was no darker with her eyes shut, it was so disconcerting to walk that way that she opened her eyes again immediately. She could see nothing.

Keeping her left hand on the wall was troubling. Each new thing she felt was a shock: the slippery patches she had to fight not to pull away from; the webs that wound their way around her arm. Once, she brushed against a small, furry creature which skittered away in alarm; she did pull her hand away that time, and she stood breathless and absolutely still for several moments. When she was certain the thing had moved off, she reached for the wall again, and was relieved to find it smooth to her touch.

The sound of the crying child echoed down the tunnel, large in the dark. Halley tried to hurry and was grateful the floor of the tunnel was flat.

Unexpectedly, she bumped rock with the fingers of her stretched-out right arm, sending a jolt of alarm through her. She was motionless for a moment, and then moved her left hand from the cave wall and placed it next to her right hand. Stepping sideways, she felt along the front wall with the fingertips of both hands, until she had reached the cave wall on the right. There was no way through. She’d come to a dead-end.

The crying continued, but it was muffled.
That doesn’t make sense. Where’s it coming from?
Halley leant her ear against the wall. The crying became louder.

“Where are you?” she said urgently.

There was a sharp intake of breath.

“Who’s there?” It was a child’s voice, pretending courage. “Dad…is that you?” There was a pause, and then the child asked more quietly, “Are you still mad at me?”

“It’s not Dad. It’s Halley. Where are you?”

“I’m behind the wall.”

Halley heard relief in the child’s voice, coupled with something bitter. It was the sound of violated trust. “Why are you there?” she asked, knowing the answer as soon as she voiced the question.

“It’s where you put me.”

Halley felt a sudden hollow in her stomach. The truth of the words spurred her into urgency. Scrabbling at the wall with her fingernails, she tried to find ingress. It surprised her how quickly she was able to pull out the first stone, and then stone after stone after stone. “Wait for me,” she shouted into the darkness. “I’ll be right there!” Her voice sounded stricken; it made the blackness of the dark feel infinitely more engulfing.

The little voice didn’t answer.

Halley pulled out stones from the cave wall until there was a small opening, and then dragged herself through face-down, head and shoulders first. She opened her eyes wide, but could see nothing. In the dark, it was her fingertips that noticed a change in the floor. The space she was entering no longer felt like rock. It felt like wood.

Like floorboards.

The smoothly varnished wood made her fingertips slip. She pushed herself forward into the space with her feet. She had only moved a little way when the top of her head bumped against a wall. The space was only a few feet wide. She pulled her knees in close to her chest, and climbed her hands up the cool back wall. She moved slowly, getting one leg at a time underneath her, and straightening cautiously to stand. It was a very small space, but it extended quite high. She explored the dark with her fingertips, feeling first along the walls. On the right-most wall, her fingers lit upon a small patch of rectangular smoothness. She knew the feel of it: it had once been a sticker of Shaun Cassidy, gleaned from Teen Magazine. She remembered placing it there when she was thirteen, remembered the slight lift in the left corner where the adhesive had not held. She ran a fingernail under the edge, not enough to pry it loose, but enough to feel the familiarity of the sensation. Even without vision, she knew where she was: she was back in her house, inside her own childhood closet.

She was strangely unsurprised.

The closet had been emptied. In the dark, Halley went through an inventory of what was gone: her clothing; her shoes; her box full of diaries with their tiny childish locks; her riding boots and helmet. The two clothing poles were still there, one at a height of three feet, the other at five – she must’ve sensed where she was before actually knowing, because she’d subconsciously avoided them when she stood up.

Halley crouched down below the lower of the two poles, and moved her right hand as if drawing a circle on the back closet wall. Immediately, a round opening appeared. The dark closet flooded with warm yellow light. Halley turned quickly to reassure herself that the way back to the cave was still there. Then, in a movement smoothed by habit, she squeezed herself through the hole in the rear wall she had opened.

She was inside the small secret room that she’d created inside her closet, in her five-year-old imagination. The stuffed bear sat between her and the small child, who was no longer crying, who, instead leant with her back against the wall, watching Halley with startled eyes.

Halley looked at the bear.
Fluffy. He does look like a warrior bear.
Halley patted the bear on the head, picked it up, and held it out to the child.

She didn’t take it. Instead, she shivered and hugged her bent knees tightly into her chest, as if she would make herself smaller and smaller, until she disappeared. Her cheeks were marked by dirt, streaked in lines where tears had run.

“Where’s Bad Dad?” she said. “You didn’t let him follow you here, did you?” She shifted her body, as if to try to see behind Halley. “Close the hole! Quick! Close the hole!”

Halley looked behind her.
No, I’ll leave the way back open.
She turned to the child again, and saw that she had resumed crying, but silently this time. Halley dropped the stuffed bear to the floor, and held out her arms. For a moment, the child hesitated. Then, she threw herself into Halley’s arms and held on tight. Halley ran her hand over the child’s fine, smooth hair, soothing her. She waited until the shaking had subsided before asking, in a gentle voice, “I know how you got here, but why are you still here?”

The child pulled away from the embrace and looked at Halley in confusion.

“Because you…you said…you said I should stay. You said it was safer here.”

She wore green jeans, rolled up at the ankle, and a dirty blue t-shirt. Her feet were bare. She would be cold at night.

“But why are you all alone? I didn’t leave you all alone…”

The little girl’s lip trembled. “I didn’t used to be,” she said. “For the longest time, there were others. Eden, and Hope and Gail…even Mom was here.” A wistful expression flickered across her face. “One by one, they all left.” The little girl waved her hand towards the opening Halley had made. “Through there. Then there was just me.” She picked up the discarded bear and hugged it tightly. “And Fluffy. Fluffy didn’t go.”

Halley closed her eyes
. What have I done? A new place to begin? Oh no.
“Oh, little one, I’m so sorry…I didn’t know that would happen.” She gathered herself. She was the grown-up. “I’m here now. I’ve come to get you out.”

“But…it isn’t safe, not out there. Mom’s dead. Gone. Who’ll protect me from Bad Dad?” Her eyes caught on Halley’s red t-shirt. She reached out and touched the sequined crown, and then slowly ran one of the edges of the sequin under her small fingernail. “I like this…”

“Like a Queen, right?”

“Mmmm…” She touched the tiny pearls. “If you’re a Queen, does that make me a Princess?”

Halley smiled. “Of course.”

The little girl kept playing with the sequins and pearls. “How come I don’t have Princess clothes then?” she mused aloud.

“Princesses don’t always have to wear dresses. Cool Princesses wear jeans. It makes it easier to play.”

“Like this, you mean?” The child jumped up from Halley’s knee, leaving the bear in her place, and skipped around the small round chamber, bouncing, lifting her skinny legs high off the ground. When she was breathless, she threw herself again on Halley’s lap.

“Just like that. That’s great,” Halley said. “Maybe you’ll be a gymnast one day.” Halley hugged her tightly for a moment.

The girl sat back and her eyes shone.

“I don’t want to be a gymnast. I want to be an adventurer!” She sobered suddenly. “But I can’t – I can’t leave here.”

Halley held her gently away. “Yes, you can.” She stroked the child’s soft hair. “I was wrong. You don’t have to hide here to be safe.”

The little girl frowned. “But Dad – you said he might hurt me, with Mom dead. Like he hurt my brother. Bad Dad, Always Mad. At me. You said I had to hide here.”

“Dad wasn’t really bad,” Halley said. “He was the same good dad when he was in the basement banging things around, when he was in the kitchen shouting, when he hit your brother, and when he was hugging you.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“Yes, he was. He was very sad, and because it hurt so much to be that sad, it made him angry. But angry isn’t bad. It’s just angry. Just a feeling. He won’t always be so sad.” Halley lifted the little girl’s chin so their eyes met. “And he won’t ever, ever hurt you.”

“I don’t understand.”

It was hard to explain to a child, but she had to try. “It broke his heart when Mom died…”

“Like when I broke my arm?”

“Sort of. Do you remember how much that hurt?”

The little girl nodded, big-eyed. “I felled off the Monkey’s bars. It hurt lots…”

“It hurt him like that when Mom died, but even worse.”

The little girl rubbed her arm. “Ow.” She looked thoughtful.

“What?”

“Is that why he took away my dresses? Because he was so sad?”

“You outgrew the dresses,” Halley said. “Mom made them for you…and…well…she wasn’t there to make any more.” Halley looked at the little girl’s green jeans. To her, they had become imbued with the same love her mother’s dresses had contained, a love born of her father’s providing for her the best he could, trying in his way to move her some distance from the pain of her mother’s death. He couldn’t clothe her in the past; he had tried to dress her for the future. If he couldn’t help her be a little girl in dresses, maybe he could help her be a warrior. That’s what he’d tried to prepare her for. As if he’d known what was coming.

Halley swallowed. “He loved you, little one. That’s why he went to the basement to be angry. That’s why he stayed in the kitchen. He couldn’t stop being upset at Mom dying, but he tried to protect you.”

“He hit my brother.”

“He did. That was wrong.” Halley paused – it was important for the little girl to really hear her, to have time to think about what she was saying. “Dad was human and he made some really bad mistakes. But he tried to protect both of you, the best he could. He loved you.”

“I…I hated him. Sometimes…” The little girl looked ashamed. “When he was Bad Dad. But Mom told me it bad to hate. So I bad too…”

Halley hugged her tightly. “You’re only little. It’s okay. It’s okay to be angry at him. Even to hate him sometimes.”

“Really?”

“Um hmm. He loved you. No matter what.”

“I think I love him too. And hate him too. Is that okay?”

“Yes…that’s okay,” she said. Halley looked in the little girl’s sad eyes. “He was much better at loving you later, you know. There’ll be a horse named Athena and wildflowers, and…” She took a deep breath. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”

The little girl looked down.

“I can’t go. And you can’t go either.”