The spring leaps out of black wet stone, runs shrill and fast in its narrow channel, overhung by long fern fronds. Above, in the rock wall, there are dark crevices. Each hole is just the right size and shape to hold a god. One by one I slide them into their new homes. I shake a little as I do it – it’s hard to hold so much power in my hands.
Dawn touches the sky with pink in the east by the time I’m done. I stand back and look at my work. Behind the rock wall I feel the gods hum, spreading their tendrils of power. The white birches stand tall in their clusters, watching. I’m so weary. Each time I do this I am destroyed. But it’s my duty. I have to take care of them. Mommy has made that clear.
The woods are waking up. It is a long walk back in the new day, back to home and everyday things. I am carried on the furious joy of birdsong. ‘I miss you,’ I tell the birds. But at least they are safe from the Murderer here. I pass the yellow machines without a thought. Let them tear up the earth. The gods are safe in their new home.
Found the tape recorder in the refrigerator. I don’t … nope, not even going totryto figure that one out.
No recipe. I thought maybe I should say, in case I forget – I moved them.
Maybe I’m just doing this because I want to talk to someone. Being with the gods makes me feel more alone than being alone. With Lauren gone, I need things that remind me who I am. I am so afraid that I’ll just disappear and never come back.
This isn’t making me feel any better. I feel stupid so I’ll stop.
Dee
Everyone on Needless Street had a flyer through the door. Still, when yellow diggers come down the road like lions, she catches her breath. Their great metal mouths are still crusted with the dirt of old kills.
Dee comes out of her house to watch. It seems safer, somehow, than staying inside. A couple of the other neighbours are standing around, mouths and eyes wide.
A man with orange hair steps out in front of one of the diggers. He shouts to the driver. His big dog strains and whines so he takes it by the collar. ‘I hope you’re not going to use that neon paint to mark the trees,’ he yells up at the driver. He is pointing at some canisters that sit in the truck. ‘It’s toxic.’
The driver shrugs and adjusts his hard hat.
‘I’m a ranger,’ the man says. In his hands the dog trembles with eagerness. ‘It’s terrible for the ecosystem.’
‘Got to mark it somehow,’ the man says comfortably. ‘Neon stands out day and night.’ He nods and the engine roars. The digger moves off like a dinosaur.
Breath tickles Dee’s neck, lifts the hair on her nape. He is so close to her that when she turns, thrilling, his beard almost grazes her cheek. She can smell his distress, like crushed nettles on his skin. Ted sways. She realises that he is very drunk.
‘No,’ he says. ‘They can’t, they can’t do this.’
He says some other things and Dee replies, she couldn’t say what. She can’t hear through the buzzing in her head. She knows that look, of a secret nearly revealed. Ted has it in his eyes.
When he runs up the trail after the diggers, she catches her breath. He’s running towards something, she’s sure of it. Something hidden in the forest. Dee knows she can’t follow Ted. He’d see and then it would all be over. She must desperately hope that whatever is hidden cannot be accessed in daylight.
She goes indoors and sits at her post, biting her lower lip to shreds. Maybe she was wrong not to follow. Maybe she missed her chance and he’s moving Lulu right now, taking her into the wild … Dee watches the forest with burning eyes.
Half an hour later, Ted comes back into view on the shadowed trail. Dee’s heart burns and leaps. There is distress in his every movement. He shakes his head from side to side as if in passionate argument with himself. Whatever needs doing is still yet to be done. She hasn’t missed it. There will be action, tonight.
Dee puts on hiking boots and lays out sweaters and a dark jacket, puts water and nuts in her pocket. Then she sits like a stone and watches Ted’s house. Clouds pass and the sun sinks lower over the treeline. Dusk covers everything.
When she hears the distinctive triple thunk of the locks, the creak of the back door, she is ready. She feels, rather than sees him leave the house in the black. As he passes under the streetlight she sees the backpack. It is full of something that bulges in odd angles and curves. Tools, a pick, a shovel? He moves along the road into shadow. Now there are no more lights, just soft night and the moon overhead, shining like half a dime.
She follows at a distance; his flashlight guides her like a star. When he stops at the entrance to the woods and looks around, shestops too, sheltering behind a tree trunk. He waits for a long time, but she lets the night speak, lets it tell him that he is alone. When he goes on into the forest, she follows.
As they pass the work site, Dee hears Ted come to a halt ahead. The trees are thinning, perhaps into a clearing. She crouches among the bulldozers. Ahead, to the east, she hears the sound of a shovel cutting the earth. She hears whispering. She shivers. It must be Ted, but his voice sounds strange, like leaves rustling or the creak of living wood. Her calves and thighs cramp but she doesn’t dare move. If she can hear Ted, he can hear her. The moon climbs and the night seems to grow warmer. Perfect weather for snakes.Shut up, brain, Dee thinks grimly. What can Ted be doing? She thinks about trying to edge closer but her every movement sounds loud as a gunshot. She sits and listens. Time passes, she doesn’t know how much, it might be an hour or longer. His whispering and the rhythmic cut of the shovel mingle with the night sounds of the forest.
At last there comes the sound of boots approaching and Dee starts. She has been teetering on the edge of sleep. She crawls quickly on numb legs under a digger. The moon is behind a gauzy screen of cloud but she can see enough. Ted carries something heavy on his back. The shovel in his hand is crusted with earth. He has dug something up. She struggles to her feet as silently as she can.
At the top of the rise to the west the moon gleams on still water. The lake, no more than a mile distant.An hour’s hike between Ted’s house and the place where Lulu went missing, Dee thinks, burning inwardly. Tonight Ted has proved that he can cover ground quickly with a heavy load. Yet the police just let him go. No matter what she tells them, they’ll probably just let him go again. They don’t care. Lazy, burnt out, incompetent … Dee realises that she is trembling. She reaches out blindly, and grasps a slender branch for support. The forest seems full of sibilant whispers. The dryscratching of a long belly sliding over leaves.Ophidiophobia, she tells herself.That’s all it is, Dee Dee.But now even the word is like a snake. It makes coils in her mouth.
She tries to take the next step. Tries not to think of what might be lying in wait on the ground in front of her.There are no snakes here, she repeats firmly to herself.All the snakes are asleep underground. They are more afraid of you than you are of them.But her breath comes fast. Her feet are welded to the ground. She is scared of the forest, of being lost in the trees, of being alone in the dark with a murderer. Most of all she is scared of the tree roots, which seem to twitch, looking at her with vertical pupils in the moonlight.
Don’t be stupid. Walk, she commands her legs.They aren’t goddamn snakes.Still she is paralysed, still as marble. Something rustles in the leaf mould close by. She can almost feel the long body approaching.Walk, she thinks, with every inch of her will.
Ahead, Ted’s dancing light flickers and then vanishes among the trees. Dee is alone with whatever is coming through the dark. Soft, constant sound of a muscular body sliding.
Dee opens her mouth wider, wider, until her jaw strains and cracks. She screams in silence. She turns and runs for home. The whispering sound follows her, slithering fast, almost on her heels.
