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  Mom waved to me from the porch, and I broke into a run, suddenly eager to be inside, safe from whatever might be hiding in those woods—things that didn’t exist in Connecticut.

  Four

  After dinner that night, Erica told Mom and Dad about the boy on the bus and what he’d told us. Our parents agreed with me. This was an old, old farm, and no one had lived in the house for a long time. It was exactly the sort of place that inspired people to make up stories.

  “It must be a country version of an urban legend,” Dad said. “Like the man with the—”

  Mom stopped him with a sharp look.

  “The man with a what?” Erica asked.

  “The man with a monkey,” I said, to rescue Dad. I definitely didn’t want him telling Erica about the man with the hook. In fact, I myself didn’t want to hear that story, not here, not at night, not when anything could be out there howling in the dark, watching us through the tall living room windows Mom hadn’t gotten around to covering with curtains.

  “Does the monkey disappear?” Erica persisted.

  “Of course not,” I told her. “He and the man run away from the circus and live happily ever after in a tarpaper shack.”

  Erica laughed. “And they eat wild berries for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?”

  Dad winked at me. “Exactly!”

  Erica snuggled beside Mom on the couch and listened to a chapter of The Moffats, a book Mom loved when she was Erica’s age. And still did.

  But when it was time for bed, Erica said, “I don’t want to go upstairs. It’s so dark outside my window.”

  “Daniel’s right across the hall from you,” Mom said, “and Dad and I are in the next room.”

  “Will you come with me, Mommy?” Erica asked. “And tuck me in and sit with me till I fall asleep?”

  Dad sighed. “Give in now, Martha, and it’ll be the same every night.”

  Either Mom didn’t hear him, or she ignored him. Scooping Erica up as if she were still a baby, she carried her upstairs.

  Dad shook his head. “Your mother is spoiling that child.”

  I shrugged, opened my odious social studies book, and began memorizing the imports, exports, and native products of Germany. What a waste of time Woodville School was. My textbook had been published thirty years ago.

  When I passed Erica’s door later, I heard my sister say, “Are you sure it’s just a legend?”

  “Yes,” Mom said. “Please stop worrying about it. No one disappeared. A girl named Selene never lived here. That boy was a liar.”

  The next morning, Erica and I sat in the front of the school bus, right behind Mrs. Plummer. The bus slowed for the second stop, and Brody got on. Erica stared out the window, pretending not to see him, but I gave him a dirty look. He made an ugly face, sat down behind us, and began kicking the back of my seat.

  As the bus filled with kids, Brody told them where Erica and I lived.

  One girl said she never walked down the road past our driveway. Her friend claimed that her big sister and some of her friends drove up the driveway on a dare. It was few years ago, when no one lived in the house.

  “They heard people crying and wailing and calling Selene’s name. They didn’t see nothing, but they got out of there fast.”

  Erica pressed her fingers in her ears and hummed, but I listened to every word. If I was dumb enough to believe their stories, a family named Estes lived on the farm about forty or fifty years ago, maybe more, no one was sure. It was before they were born, but their parents or maybe their grandparents remembered it. They had a daughter named Selene, and she disappeared when she was seven years old, and no one ever found her. One girl said she was took. Maybe it was the demons in the woods, a boy suggested. Maybe Old Auntie the conjure woman up on Brewster’s Hill got her, Brody said. Or, worst of all, a girl said, Old Auntie’s razorback hog, the one called Bloody Bones, ate her up.

  Nobody agreed about who took Selene, but they all agreed she was never found.

  By the time we arrived at school, Erica was trembling. We waited until the bus was empty and then got up to leave.

  Mrs. Plummer stopped Erica. “Don’t let them scare you,” she told my sister. “It’s just a yarn people been spinning for years, not a speck of truth in it. A girl named Selene disappeared, but she wasn’t ‘took.’ There’s no conjure woman and no Bloody Bones.”

  She rummaged in her purse, pulled out a pack of Life Savers, and handed it to Erica. “Help yourself. You, too.”

  We each took one and thanked her. “They’re not really bad kids,” Miss Plummer said. “Just nobody’s taught them manners. They’ve grown up as wild as bears in the woods. Give them time. They’ll get friendly when they’re used to you.”

  A week passed, and another week followed, but those kids didn’t get used to Erica and me. They didn’t even try. Luckily, Mrs. Plummer saved the seat behind her for us, so no one could say or do anything to us without getting kicked off the bus.

  Even so, they found ways to torment us with stories of Selene Estes. A whisper here, a comment there, a note or a drawing passed to us.

  When we were off the bus, with no Mrs. Plummer to protect us, the boys continued to knock me around on the playground and the girls whispered about Erica. Unlike Mrs. Plummer, our teachers never noticed. Or maybe they just didn’t care.

  Mom and Dad didn’t have any more luck in Woodville than we did—the adults disliked them for the same reasons the kids disliked Erica and me. They were especially offended by our failure to join the only church in town. We weren’t only outsiders, we were godless outsiders.

  As far as jobs went, neither Dad nor Mom found a position in Woodville. Not that there was much to choose from.

  Dad finally got a job at Home Depot, where he wore a big orange apron and helped people find tools, paint, garbage cans, plumbing supplies, and whatever else they were looking for, most often the restrooms.

  Soon after, Mom landed a position as a receptionist at the real estate office on the other side of the parking lot from Home Depot. Nobody there cared where my parents came from or if they went to church. The people who worked at the shopping center were practically all outsiders themselves, from cities such as Charleston. In Woodville, they claimed, you’d never be accepted if you weren’t married to your cousin. Dad laughed at this, but Mom said it was an ignorant way to talk.

  On weekends Dad and I got into the habit of spending our free time roaming the woods and fields, following trails made long ago by trappers and hunters. He was forever stopping to take a picture of a lichen-covered boulder or a mossy log, a tangle of branches, a gnarled tree, a hawk or a crow in flight, but I didn’t mind. I loved being in the woods with him.

  Neither Mom nor Erica went with us. Mom had too much to do, she said, and Erica had no interest in the great outdoors. While Mom busied herself weaving, Erica sat nearby, re-reading the Little House on the Prairie books or playing with Little Erica. Sometimes she drew picture stories in her sketchpads; sometimes she painted with watercolors. She seemed perfectly content until the day ended. When night came, she grew fearful and clung to Mom. She still spoke of hearing scary whispers in the dark corners of her room.

  On this particular day, a Saturday, Mom was working at the Realtor’s office. Erica didn’t want to stay at home alone, so she agreed to go with Dad and me. Although it was sunny, the wind was brisk, so we pulled on heavy sweaters and wrapped scarves around our necks. Erica dressed Little Erica in a sweater that matched hers and wrapped a bandanna around the doll’s neck.

  The wind ripped leaves from the trees and filled the air with whirling gold. Dad tried to capture the last of the foliage, but the color had peaked and many of the trees were bare.

  His camera swinging from its strap, his hiking stick in hand, Dad chose a trail that led uphill, winding around boulders and outcrops of trees. After a while we came to a steep drop-off on one side of the trail, not exactly a cliff, but high enough to do serious harm, maybe even kill you, if you fell. Just l
ooking down, down, down at the rocks far below was enough to make me step back toward the safe side of the trail, far from the edge.

  Erica froze and clung to Dad’s hand. “I’m scared of high places,” she whispered. “Can we turn around and go home now?”

  Leaving Dad to convince Erica that he wouldn’t let her fall, I ran ahead, bounding from rock to rock. If I’d been looking where I was going, I might not have tripped on a tangle of roots half hidden in the fallen leaves, but the next thing I knew, I was flat on the ground on my belly. Struggling to get my breath, I looked through the weeds at a chimney pointing like a finger at the sky.

  Scrambling to my feet, I followed an overgrown path to the ruins of an old log cabin that was slowly sinking into the earth. Overgrown with dying vines, shielded by brambles, its walls tilted and sagged. Part of the roof had collapsed under the weight of a fallen tree, but the stone chimney was straight and true.

  “Dad, Erica!” I yelled. “There’s an old cabin here!”

  They made their way through the weeds and undergrowth, Dad leading and Erica following, clutching her doll as if she might be in danger.

  We walked around the cabin. Dad took dozens of pictures from every possible angle. He even got down on his stomach to get a different perspective.

  “Can we go inside?” I asked.

  “I don’t see why not.” Laughing, Dad knocked at the door. “Just in case.”

  When he pushed the door open, a buzzard flew out. Dad and I leaped out of its way, and Erica screamed.

  “It’s just a big bird,” Dad told her. “A black buzzard. Nothing to be scared of.”

  The buzzard landed on a limb and hunched there, staring at us in disapproval. Suddenly he lifted his wings and took off, vanishing into the sky like a streak of black feathers shot from a bow.

  “Quoth the buzzard, ‘Nevermore,’” Dad said.

  Erica looked worried. “Can we go home now?”

  “Don’t you want to go inside?” Dad asked.

  “No.” She peered into the darkness beyond the door. “Somebody might be hiding in there.”

  “Oh, come on.” Dad took her hand and led her through the doorway, which was so low he had to stoop to go through it, and I followed close behind.

  A little daylight filtered through the vines covering the windows, layers and layers of them twisted together like tangled ropes. The dirt floor reeked of mold. The air smelled of rot and decay and old ashes. I shivered in the damp cold. Suddenly I wanted to go back outside where the sun shone and the air was fresh.

  “It smells bad in here,” Erica whispered. “Please, Daddy, can we go home?”

  “Let’s explore first,” Dad said. “You never know what you might find in an old place like this.”

  Although I would never have admitted it, I didn’t want to be inside the cabin any more than Erica did. Cobwebs hung like curtains from the rafters; things scuttled in the shadows—mice, insects, I guessed. Weird funguses grew in the dampness. What if we dislodged something and the rest of the roof caved in? We’d be buried alive.

  While Erica waited in the doorway, I took a few steps into the cabin. Dad unearthed old bottles, broken pottery, chipped plates and cups—artifacts, he said, to take home and photograph. He was particularly pleased to come across the skulls and bones of several small animals—foxes, raccoons, squirrels, he guessed, that had sheltered and died there.

  The little bones were too much for Erica. She retreated to a low stone wall on the edge of the woods and sat in the sun, her head close to her doll’s head, having one of her imaginary conversations.

  I didn’t like the bones any more than my sister did. I didn’t like the moldy smell or the damp cold either. In fact, I didn’t like anything about the cabin, and I wished Dad would finish taking pictures and get out of there.

  “I’m going outside,” I told him, “to keep Erica company.”

  “Okay. I’ll be done in here soon, just a few more minutes.” With his back turned, he busied himself poking around in a broken-down cupboard, going through things that once belonged to a long-gone stranger.

  I sat beside Erica on the wall, glad for the sun on my back and the smell of autumn leaves.

  “I want to go home,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  “I wish his camera battery would die.”

  “Yeah. How many pictures can he take, anyway? There’s nothing in there but trash and broken stuff.”

  “And bones.” Erica swung her legs harder, banging her heels. “I don’t like bones.”

  While she smoothed Little Erica’s hair, I watched a fuzzy brown caterpillar crawl slowly over the stones. He had a wide black stripe across his back, and I tried to remember if that meant a cold winter was coming.

  The longer I sat on the wall, the more I noticed rustling noises in the woods behind us. An animal, I told myself, moving around in the fallen leaves and underbrush. I turned and peered into the trees, but saw nothing. My neck itched. Someone was there. Maybe Brody and his friends had followed us.

  Erica moved closer to me. “Do you hear it now?” she asked.

  “Hear what?”

  “The whispering.” She dropped her voice so low I could barely hear her. “Air-ric-cah, Air-ric-cah—it’s calling me. Who is it? What does it want?”

  Despite the sun, I felt as if a shadow had passed over us. Even though I couldn’t hear the whisper, I sensed that something was behind us in the woods, hidden, watching us. If I told Erica that, she’d be even more scared, so I said, “Nothing’s calling you, Erica. You’re imagining it.”

  “You must be deaf.” Erica turned away from me and hugged the doll.

  At last Dad came out of the cabin. Erica and I waited silently while he prowled around, taking pictures of anything and everything that stayed still long enough—glassless windows, splintered boards, the dark doorway, the chimney, tall weeds, tangles of thorns. He even lined up the things he’d found inside and took pictures of them arranged like still lifes on the wall. A little skull, a cracked plate, a few dead leaves, gloomy stuff.

  Finally Dad said, “Come on, let’s go.” You’d think Erica and I, not him, were the ones who’d wanted to stay. He waved at his collection of junk. “We’ll come back later with a bag and get this stuff.”

  Frankly, I hoped Dad would forget about coming back. I didn’t want those things in our house. They’d belonged to someone once. Someone most likely dead by now. The past clung to them like a stain you couldn’t wash away.

  We headed down the trail toward home, with Erica and me just ahead of Dad. We went slowly, cautiously, watching our step on the steep trail. Sometimes it’s harder to go down a hill than to climb it.

  Dinner did not go well that night. Mom was upset about her job. Receptionist, ha. A glorified typist, that’s all she was. Her boss was stupid and bigoted. He treated her like a servant—do this, do that, fix the coffee, go to Piggly Wiggly, pick up some pastries.

  “Oh, you think that’s bad,” Dad muttered. “Try moving crates of stuff around a store the size of Home Depot and some manager with a high school education tells you you’re doing it wrong. Me doing it wrong. Me with an M.B.A. You think I like working there, wearing that big orange apron?”

  I ignored them and tried to choke down the stew Mom had spent the afternoon cooking. When I complained that the meat was tough, Dad snapped that tough meat was all we could afford.

  “It’s got fat in it,” Erica said.

  “Well, then don’t eat it.” Dad pushed his chair back and left the table.

  “Where are you going, Ted?” Mom asked. “You haven’t finished your dinner.”

  “I’m an adult,” Dad said. “I don’t need permission to leave the table.”

  We sat in silence and listened to him climb the stairs. The door to his den closed. He’d spend the rest of the night in there, photoshopping his pictures.

  Mom stared at his unfinished dinner. Erica hugged her doll and gazed into space. No one said anything. The shadows of
the old house gathered around us.

  Five

  Dad spent more and more time staring at his computer instead of working on his photography. Mom sat in front of her loom and watched the bare trees sway in the wind, but she didn’t touch the rug she’d begun weeks earlier. She drank coffee and smoked, an old habit she’d gone back to. It calmed her nerves, she claimed.

  She played Joan Baez albums and sang along with sad ballads about death and sorrow. She knew all the words.

  Worst of all, she lost interest in cooking. Ever since the night Erica and I complained about the stew meat, she’d begun buying canned soup and canned stew and frozen dinners that she cooked in the microwave. We ate grilled cheese sandwiches at least three nights a week.

  Once in a while she came home with a rotisserie chicken from Piggly Wiggly or a pizza from Joe’s. As if that were a treat. Back in Fairfield, we went out for pizza at gourmet places. We’d never have eaten one of Joe’s pizzas, full of salt and fat and topped off with runny sauce and rubbery cheese.

  Nobody said anything about the food. Nobody, not even Erica, complained. We sat at the table and ate what was on our plates. Our conversation consisted of requests for salt or pepper.

  Dad worried about money and the leaking roof and dripping faucets. When he wasn’t at Home Depot, he wandered around the house making lists of repairs, but instead of doing them, he played games on his computer, something he’d always said was a waste of time.

  Erica roamed the house with Little Erica. When I tried to talk to her, she had nothing to say. Every question produced an “I don’t know” or a shrug of her shoulders.

  Her conversations with the doll grew longer and more frequent. It made me both sad and angry to watch her living this strange imaginary existence. Sad because she used to be a happy, normal kid with real friends. Mad because she persisted in isolating herself from the family, which caused problems between Mom and Dad.