Press vans lined the street in front of the girl's house, their white satellite dishes collecting cold drizzle. Inside one of the campers, a pinched-faced woman sat typing intently into her laptop computer. And inside a bland rental car, an older man talked on his cellular phone, glancing occasionally at his legal pad notes. The rain kept most of the media inside their vehicles, though she overheard two men in parkas standing outside a minivan talking about Sandy Patrick.
Smoke leaked from the carport next door to the girl's house, where a teenaged boy grilled hot dogs and filled his entrepreneurial cooler with Diet Cokes, and on the front lawn neighbors stood in little groups under umbrellas. Ginger saw two girls holding a candle and looking solemnly up at the house. A young female newscaster stood under a striped CBS umbrella and complained to the cameraman that Oprah had already offered the mother big money for an exclusive and she heard Maury Povich had checked into the Hilton out by the airport.
A truck from the local TV station was parked in the driveway. Thick black cords ran out the back end, over the cement walk and through the front door. Ginger leaned inside, saw two men sitting below six screens, simultaneously showing a woman with the same fine features as her daughter say, “. . please, whoever you are, let my little girl go. She's all I have in this world and I—.” Her mouth trembled, refused to make words, formed into the primordial O, and she stuck a Kleenex to her lips and pressed her head into the neck of the bald dentist. His little pony tail shifted, the one the girl always referred to as a rat's tongue.
The man inside the truck swiveled his chair around to face the other man sitting in front of the soundboard. “Bet you ten to one,” he said, “that little girl is already dead.”
“T-R-O-U-B-L-E!” the hippie spelled out, leaning out the screen door of his white house. The smell of rich dirt and sweet pot blossoms wafted around him. “That's what we called the spooky little girls down on the commune. There was one I remember who wore nothing but men's shirts, always had field flowers hanging out of her hair, and told everybody she was Jesus’ little sister.” The hippie shook his head. “Man, it's like I'm trying to tell you, everything is out of whack.”
“I need to keep looking,” Ginger said. She didn't have time to hear one of the hippie's apocalyptic manifestos. “Maybe she's waiting back at my house.”
The hippie looked skeptical. “Just don't call the police,” he said. “She'll turn up next week at the bus station in Palo Alto and the next thing you know we'll see her on Entertainment Tonight hanging on the arm of some movie star.”
“You think?” Ginger said hopefully.
“Sure,” the hippie said, “that's what always happened to all those girls, either that,” his loopy smile tensed, “or something else.”
No, he hadn't seen the girl, though she'd taken to calling him late in the night, singing her favorite songs to him over the telephone and asking if she could come over to score, Steve said as they stood in the living room, just inside the door. He wore a towel around his waist, seemed bored, kept his eyes half closed, his mouth slack.
“She's a freaky chick,” he said. “For all I know she could have walked into the woods and killed herself.”
“Did she say she was going to do that?”
“She said a lot of crazy stuff. How do I know?” he said, glancing down the hall, where Ginger suspected a woman waited in his bed, one of the older ladies who bought him tanks of gasoline and took him out for steak.
Her room was empty. Her sleeping bag wadded up on the bottom sheet, a fine layer of plaster dust covering everything from where the workmen were putting up drywall in the corner. Ginger flopped down on her bed. She held on to this picture, to the exclusion of any thought or sensation, the girl sprawled on her bed sleeping deeply like a child, sweat dampening the nape of her neck. But now this last hope dissolved, leaving her sick with worry. Clenching her eyes shut so hard the usual silver blackness turned to orange, she heard blood thumping in her ears. Please God bring her back and she saw the girl walking around the mall with ten dollars in her pocket for an orange julius and a pair of earrings, the girl scratching a bug bite on the back of her calf and laughing in that self-conscious way she thought of as glamorous, talking about super-models, her favorite Cindy, getting her hair soft as silk pajamas, and the aggressive way she yanked perfume samples out of magazines. If you bring her back, she prayed to God, I'll take care of her myself. She imagined him like a black hole with a swirly ghost face and a booming, computerized voice. Better to pray to Jesus and his bullet-riddled body, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
Highway lights illuminated falling ice like patches of free-form static, and the crimson Steak and Ale sign floated up on the hill like a message from an angry God. Rain turned to ice, so the asphalt was slick as oil, and the few cars on the road slid like old dogs trying to keep their balance. Ginger's umbrella blew back with a tug. Several ribs were broken so she pitched it down into the muddy ditch. Slushy water moved sluggishly into a drainage pipe. Drops of ice hit her face in a sensation cold and sharp but not altogether unpleasant.
Mud froze up in ridges like whipped cream, made soft crushing sounds under the heels of her tennis shoes. Branches rattled against one another like dime-store wind chimes as she moved onto the dirt path past the cat skeleton and the broken-down high chair. Ice glazed the old socks and bits of newspaper, froze bugs to dead leaves, and gathered in mealy drifts on the ground.
The barn was dark. She'd half hoped Ted would be in front of the fire, reading the I–Ching and toasting marshmallows. Ashes surrounded the TV like a moat; plastic carnations scattered over the dirt floor. Moving the toe of her tennis shoe around in the ash, she felt for the deer's head, but it was gone. A sheet of newspaper fluttered at the edge of the ash, diaphanous and nuanced as a scarf, a phantom with a white face. Startled, she thought someone said something, but when she turned her head all she heard was the rain's flat report on the soggy papers in the corner. Drips formed a discordant melody and entered her mind like speech. She listened to the wind flap against the dead leaves on the forest floor. She felt stupid now for thinking the girl might be here. The hippie was probably right: she was headed for Colorado or California or anyone of those states that looked pretty in photographs. Wearing headphones, reading a magazine, the girl was probably curled into a seat on a dark and buoyant nighttime bus.
Wind spun the branches against one another like a chaotic chandelier. Ginger walked out the barn doorway, stood looking into the woods, thought another deer might be moving among the trees, or the ghost deer had come back to haunt the woods, searching for its head. Coming around the side of the barn, she saw a figure and though at first she couldn't make out the features, she presumed it was Ted, but then stray condominium light showed a small hunched man with a long white beard and bulging eyes. Anger shot off him, dense and oppressive as an opened oven door, as he yanked her arm so hard the bone wheezed and strained against her shoulder socket. He swung his arm up and hit her in the face, thumb jabbing into her eye, the ridge of his fingers breaking the bridge of her nose. Blood ran into her mouth and she felt dizzy.
“What?” She didn't understand.
“Shut the fuck up!” He dragged her around the back side of the barn where his van was parked, the back doors open. Rain fell onto her hot face. Squares of condo-complex light floated like luminous fish back in the woods. She screamed until her whole head vibrated, blood flooding the valley beneath her tongue, and she slid deep into herself, searched room to room: the flashlight's beam illuminated a scattered pile of jigsaw-puzzle pieces and a pot filled with old rice. The tip of a branch caught her arm, bowed then snapped, sent shards of ice flying. The man threw her inside the van, where the girl lay bound and stretched on a mattress, her pupils shiny and huge as moons reflected in water. Ginger rolled her butt up, flexed her feet, and kicked hard at the troll's chest. He sucked air, staggered sideways. The girl screamed through her gag, vowels and consonants mumbled and undecipherable as animal speech. Ginger tried to pull her up at the waist, but the girl's wrists and ankles were secured with a piece of cord that ran underneath the mattress. She yanked at the cord, as the girl thrashed her head back and forth, tears leaking out the corners of her eyes. There was no give and Ginger heard the troll rattling the foliage just behind her, his breath rasping up from his lungs. She turned, saw the raised knife gleam, then felt a tug at the side of her mouth and a soft sound like lettuce ripping, and above her head the sky filled with radiant light, illuminating the veiny backs of leaves, and she thought, It's an angel coming down to save me. Branches quivered and shook as four white horse legs broke through the green canopy and the unicorn flapped its luscious white wings in a succession of tiny flutters that allowed him to land expertly on the van's roof. A brown bear wearing a bow tie, its paws entwined in the long mane hair, rode bareback.