Chapter 76
There is a pounding from below. I’m standing in the middle of The Forest of the Dead.
The sheets and blankets are strewn across the floor.
I am soaked with sweat. When I saw the preacher, my body convulsed, ripped itself from the dreamworld.
The bent crooked figure. The serpentlike smile.
I tore the blankets off because the feeling of anything else was too much to bear.
It was as though every nerve in my body that was capable of feeling anguish was lit on fire all at once.
The pounding continues. I hear someone calling my name.
It must be Joan. I step cautiously toward the door.
The sleep medication is still strong in my system.
My vision is strange and blurry and tilt-y, but I stagger my way down the hall, gripping the banisters.
I have to tell her what I’ve discovered.
But when I fling open the door, it’s not Joan. It’s Alice.
“Elinor,” she says. “I was just coming by to check on you.”
Check on me why? I realize that I must appear crazed. My hair is matted down with sweat, and I’m sure my face looks drugged.
“Yes. I’m fine,” I mumble. “I was just taking a nap.”
She’s so much taller than I am. And she looks down at me through narrowed eyes, and it feels like she can see right through me.
“Yeah, well, the phone lines are out. I know Topher is gone, so I wanted to make sure you are okay, being pregnant and all.”
I realize then that everything behind Alice is swirling white. In the time that I’ve been asleep, the snow has increased to a full-on blizzard. My heart starts to hammer. The realization of how alone I am out here hits me like a train. I never told Alice that Topher was gone.
The woman who brought me the journal lives in Newfield Village now. Her name is Alice Clark.
Why did she bring it to you? I’d asked Hank Chester.
I think she wanted to find justice for what happened.
“I’m fine,” I say again. “Thank you for checking on me.” And then I close the door firmly and set the alarm.
I collapse against the door, trying to slow my heart. I don’t feel right. I need water. I’m about to walk into the kitchen when the knock comes again. Instantly, the thudding in my chest accelerates again.
“I’m fine, Alice,” I call. “You should get home.”
“It’s Joan.”
I open the door and pull Joan inside. Then I collapse onto her, sobbing. She is surprisingly strong. Her slight frame is able to hold me up. Between the weight in my belly and in my heart, it feels as though I must weigh ten thousand pounds. She rubs my back lightly, shushing me like a baby.
“What’s going on?” Joan asks me finally, guiding me to a couch.
I tell her everything. My voice breaks as I talk; sometimes all I can get out is a whisper. Telling her about the innocents hanged, about the baby taken from its mother, is almost unbearable. It feels as if I say it in words, I will make it real. As though my words hold some dark magic.
When I finish, her face is as white as the snow outside. And just as cold. She stands, picks up the antique table next to us, and hurls it across the room.
“We need to find them,” she whispers.
“I know.”
I sit on the couch, trying to coax out a thought that’s begun to mess around in the back of my brain. It feels like the answer is here. It feels as though the answer is right in front of us. Or has been right in front of me.
I think of the room of painted trees. The way it has always haunted me.
The way I always thought it was hiding something.
I think of the raccoon. The porcupine. The flying black birds, with wings in curving V’s.
But now as I’m picturing it in my mind, one of the birds looks different.
It’s near the wardrobe. And it isn’t in the shape of a V, as though it’s flying toward or away from me.
It’s a black bird on its side, painted as the crow flies, it’s in the shape of an arrow.