Laurie didn't like the woods. She kept thinking she saw movement in the bushes to the sides, shadows amid the ferns, figures that ducked behind tree trunks whenever she turned in their direction. It was unsettling being here, and she was sorry she'd come.
To her left, there was a face formed from the tangle of branches. She did not know if it was really there or if it was a trick of the leaf-filtered sunlight, but the small random shadows on the bare intertwined twigs highlighted a cruel, pointed-nosed face.
She glanced over at Dawn.
Who smiled.
They continued deeper into the woods, and her apprehension increased.
"We're almost there," Dawn said.
"Where?"
"You'll see."
Laurie stopped. "I don't want to see," she said. "I
want to go back. The fun's over."
Dawn's smile took on a strange secretive quality. "The fun hasn't even started yet."
"I'm out of here." Laurie turned, started back the way they'd come, but she immediately slipped on one of the slimy leaves, fell, and before she could get up, Dawn was crouching above her, squatting down. Laurie saw a pink-slittedvagina beneath the dirty tattered slip.
Screaming, she rolled away, jumped to her feet.
Dawn tapped the pull tab on her finger. "I'm your husband," she said.
What the hell was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to get out of here? Laurie glanced quickly around, saw only thick brush and unfamiliar forest.
Above, the sun was blocked by layers of tree leaves and branches.
"It's time to do your wifely duty." The girl lifted the hem of her tattered garment, revealing the split-V of her crotch. "Get on your knees," she said. "And lick it. Lick it clean."
Laurie took off.
She wasn't going to learn anything here, she wasn't going to find out anything that would help her. She was going to end up dead, and she ran as fast as she could away from the girl, through a copse of overgrown man zanita, the red branches scraping the skin of her arms, the small thin leaves slapping against her face. She turned, ran parallel to the path on which they'd come, but nothing looked familiar to her, and when she adjusted her course, running at an angle to intercept the path, she found nothing.
She stopped, breathing heavily, drenched with sweat from the humid air, and looked wildly about. Her sense of direction was completely screwed up, and she did not know which way was the House. Her heart leaped in her chest as she saw the figure of a man in a derby in her peripheral vision, but when she whirled to face the figure, she saw that it was only a skinny sapling with a bushy and irregularly shaped top. From somewhere behind her, Dawn called out her name in an amused, playful voice.
"Laurie!"
That's why her parents had forbid her to come here.
The woods were hers.
"Laurie!"
She started running again, heading in the direction in which she thought they'd come. There was still no sign of the path, but whatever direction she was traveling, she was getting farther away from Dawn, and at this point that was the most important thing.
Ahead was an indentation in the ground, what looked like a partially filled pit, and as she raced around it, Laurie glanced in and saw the bones of cats and rats and other small animals emerging from furry reddish brown mud. There was a partially eviscerated goat as well, lying lengthwise across the bones, and the stem of a red rose protruded from between its clenched teeth.
She continued on without slowing. She was horrendously out of shape, and not only did her lungs feel as though they were going to burst, but the muscles in her legs were cramping, and she knew she would not be able to go on much longer.
"Laurie!" Dawn yelled.
Her voice sounded closer.
She was almost ready to give up and give in, to try to fight it out with the girl if it came to that, but ahead she saw light through the trees, a thinning of brush, and what looked like the black bulk of the House against the sky. She increased her speed, utilizing her last remaining reserves of strength, and ran out from between the trees.
Both of her mothers and both of her fathers, standing on the ground next to the back steps of the porch, turned toward her as she dashed across the open space toward them. "Oh, there you are," her biological mother called out.
Laurie turned around to see Dawn standing at the edge of the trees, stomping her feet, gnashing her teeth.
And then she was gone.
Laurie stared at the place where the girl had been and saw only overgrown weeds. She did not stop, did not slow down, kept running toward the House, but she could not help wondering what had happened. Had Dawn gone back into the woods? Had she somehow transported herself someplace else, back, to the House perhaps? Laurie had the feeling that the disappearance was not intentional, that it had been forced or imposed upon the girl rather than instigated by her, and she hoped that was true.
She was almost to the back porch, and this close she could see that all four of the adults were frowning at her.
"What's wrong?" her biological father asked.
"Oh, Mother!" Laurie cried, but she ran into the arms of Josh's mom, not her own birth mother. She recognized the feel of the woman as she hugged her, the smell of her, and a whole host of memories flooded back, and whether it was that or the release of tension from her escape in the woods, she started crying. She sobbed into her mother's blouse, and the woman held her, patted her back, told her everything was all right.
"Are you okay?" Josh asked, and she remembered his baby voice, remembered when he had talked this way, and that instigated another flood of tears. She pulled away from her mother, wiped her eyes, smiled through her sobs, and dropped to one knee to hug her brother. Although he was obviously confused, he did not struggle against her and there was something that looked like understanding in his eyes. Neither he nor his parents broke character--they all pretended as though she were the daughter of the people they'd come to visit, a girl they liked and felt sorry for but didn't really know--but more was at work here than that, and beneath that surface level was an underlying complicity, an acknowledgment that something else was going on.
Her biological mother offered a grim smile. "We were looking for you. It's time for lunch."
"I'm starving!" Her father clapped his hands together.
"Let's eat!"
Laurie felt suddenly embarrassed, self-conscious, and she dropped back behind the rest of them as they walked up the steps to the porch.
"It's such a beautiful place you have," Josh's mother said, turning and looking around the property from over the railing.
Her father, her biological father, nodded proudly.
"We like it."
Lunch was already on the table, and they ate soup and salad and sandwiches, the adults engaging in polite conversation and completely ignoring what had just happened outside. Laurie and Josh ate in silence.
After they finished, her mother collected all the plates, refusing an offer of assistance from Josh's mom, and promised to return with glasses of homemade lemonade for everyone.
"You should taste her lemonade," her father said.
"Best in California."
Conversation started up again, the war this time, and she excused herself from the table and walked into the kitchen, where her mother was using an ice pick to chop ice on the sink counter.
She took a deep breath. "We have to talk," she said.
Her mother did not even look up. "About what?"
"You have to stop seeing that girl," she said. "Stop seeing Dawn."