Crow blotted his face with his sleeve and then froze, staring at the ground. He took two short steps and then squatted down. “Look at this.” When Newton came over Crow pointed at a part of the dirt pathway visible through the fallen debris.
“Is that a footprint?”
“Yeah. Not too old, either. See, there’s more of them. Someone’s been down here, since it rained last.” He brushed away some of the debris. “Couple of people. See? That set is all over the place. Looks like work shoes. But over here, smoother soles. Dress shoes.”
“Could have been the cops. They were supposed to have come down to the Hollow, weren’t they?” Newton asked.
“Maybe. Don’t know if they came this far in, though.” Crow shook his head as he rose. “Let’s go.”
They moved on for another ten minutes and once again Crow stopped. “That’s it,” he said, nodding toward the place beyond the archway, his voice low and as deflated as a flat tire. “I think we’re here.” He pointed to a spot just ahead where the path widened but was littered with grubby, stunted trees. Some of the trees were middle-aged, twenty-four years old or more, but not one of them looked healthy. Thick, hairy vines were wrapped like tentacles around nearly every trunk and sloped from one tree to its neighbor, and everywhere there were smaller vines with mottled gray-green leaves. Between the trees were fierce tangles of rough-looking shrubs and bushes, which combined with the vines to form wall after unfriendly wall between them and their destination. Along the ground moss ran like a poorly laid carpet, the dark green broken frequently by the bone-white caps of toadstools. Drifting sluggishly through the air was a sickroom smell of rotting vegetation and mold.
“Oh, man,” said Newton, wiping his mouth. “What’s wrong with this place?”
Crow’s mouth was a tight line. “Everything,” he said.
Pointing to the vines and bushes, Newton said, “How are we going to get through that? Can you see a path?”
Crow drew the machete with a rasp. “I’ll cut a path. Stand clear and give me room to swing. I don’t want to take your face off with this thing.”
“Sounds fair,” Newton said, fading back a few paces.
Crow moved forward, frowning at the imposing foliage, his eyes darting around, and then he slashed down with the machete. The blade sheared easily through the closest vine, severing it so that both ends fell away. Sap welled from the severed ends, like blood from a bisected snake, dottling the moss with black drops thick as syrup. Crow and Newton winced at the swinging, dripping ends of the vine. There was a smell like sulfur in the air. “Damn,” muttered Crow. He looked at his blade, half-expecting to see the edge corroded as if by acid, but the flat blade was only stained with smelly sap. “Let’s keep going. Stand back.”
They cut their way into the forest that had grown up on Ubel Griswold’s field, and it was brutal work. Within a dozen yards Crow was feeling tired, and he looked ready to drop. He moved his arm like it weighed about a thousand pounds and someone had poured concrete over both his shoes. Both he and Newton were splattered with dripping goo of a half-dozen shades and viscosities. All of the gunk from the unnameable plants stank like sulfur mixed with spoiled milk. Several times Crow had to stop to control his gag reflex, gulping down huge mouthfuls of air filtered by breathing against the folds of a sleeve he wrapped around his face.
“This is going to take forever,” said Newton, exhausted from watching and beginning to get seriously worried for them both.
He looked at his wristwatch. “It’s two o’clock already.”
Crow wheeled around. “What?” he demanded. “It can’t be that late!”
Newton showed him his watch, and Crow compared it to his own. 2:03 P.M. They stared at each other.
“It can’t be that late already,” Crow repeated.
Newton shook his head. “I know. I don’t get it either. At this rate, we won’t get back to town until past sunset, and let me tell you how much I don’t want to be caught down here at night.”
Crow cursed and drove the machete into the ground and drank some water from his canteen.
Newton pursed his lips judiciously and avoided eye contact with Crow. “So…you want to just bag it?”
“I can’t,” Crow snarled and then hacked the next vine, and the next.
(4)
“If you don’t stop that goddamned crying, Connie, so help me God, I’ll…”
“You’ll what?
Mark stiffened and turned sharply. Val stood in the doorway to the bedroom, her dark hair tousled from the wind, her eyes narrow and cold. “You’ll what?” she asked again. Her voice was as cold as her flat and level stare.
Mark stabbed a finger toward her. “You stay the hell out of this, Val. This is between Connie and me. It doesn’t concern you. So butt out!”
Sprawled on the bed, Connie Guthrie lay with her face buried in her hands, her shoulders quietly trembling, her sobs faint against the louder rasp of Mark’s agitated breathing.
Ignoring Mark, Val said, “Connie? Connie, are you all right?”
“No, she’s not all right!” Mark spat. “She’s on that crying kick again.”
“Why don’t you just leave her alone?”
“Leave her alone? That’s all I’ve had to do since that night. She won’t let me do anything but leave her alone! Christ! It’s worse than living with a nun!”
Contempt showed in Val’s eyes and the twist of her lips. “My God, you are a complete asshole, Mark,” she sneered.
“Oh, kiss my ass! Besides,” he snapped, “who are you to lecture me? At least you’re getting laid. Oh, no! Don’t try to deny it! Don’t you think I know why Crow talked us into going out last night? He just wanted to get in your pants. Hey, I’m not criticizing, Val, don’t get me wrong. I just think I’d like to know what it feels like. Shit, a married man and you’d think I can at least get a frigging kiss from my wife. Hah! Not with the Crying Game over here. I even look at her and she’s all tears and hysterics and all that bullshit. Shit. The way she acts, you’d think it was me who attacked her.”
“Isn’t that what you were about to do when I came in?” Val said coldly, and saw the point strike deep, but Mark’s anger was too big to let a little shame deflate it.
“No, Miss Know-it-all! I was not about to attack her. I’m just trying to get things back to the way they were. I mean, hell, there was a time—and it wasn’t all that long ago—when I could actually touch my wife without her going to pieces.”
“Poor baby,” Val said. “Did you stop to think how she feels?”
Mark looked down at Connie, who still had her face buried in her hands, refusing, or unable, to look up. He slowly raised his head to face his sister and there were hot tears in his eyes. “Just what the hell is that supposed to mean? I was there, Val. I saw what he did. I went through it, too, you know. It wasn’t just her. Ruger kicked my ass and tried to screw her right in front of me. Another couple of minutes and I’d have had to watch my wife have sex with another man. Do you know how that makes me feel?”
Val shook her head in disbelief. “Listen to you. Do you even know what you’re saying? You said you would have had to watch Connie have sex with another man. Is that how you see it? That she was going to have sex with him?”
“Well, just what the hell do you think rape is?”
Val’s voice dropped lower in both tone and temperature. “Rape isn’t sex, dumbass. He was going to hurt her, not make love to her, not screw her, not have sex with her. He was going to hurt her, inside and out. If you think what he was going to do was have sex with her, then you are a total jackass!”