Chapter 6 #2
My cousin says he seen one … Sally’s story about blood thieves kept running through my mind.
But it had been three years, Jackson said.
And they’d caught the blood thieves and staked them through the heart and buried them out near Bynum.
Miles away. The only thing outside worth worrying about was that possibly rabid raccoon, and it was almost certainly dead by now.
By the time they wander around acting strange in daylight, they aren’t long for this world.
The shadows in the studio were thickening.
I glanced over my shoulder, then looked resolutely away.
The whitewashed walls were bright in the moonlight, but darkness had pooled along the floor, at the foot of the bookcases, and grew like a stain behind the wooden chest in the corner.
My sense of intruding in a stranger’s room was stronger than ever.
It wasn’t my room, was it? It belonged to some other woman that Halder had employed.
Had he driven her away with his temper? Had he fired her?
Was she destitute somewhere, or had she washed up at a girls’ school, teaching watercolors, not for love or skill but because watercolors were something that young ladies were supposed to learn, like music and deportment?
I realized that I was close to crying and bit my knuckle, angry at myself. Don’t let the old bastard get to you. Mrs. Kent warned you what he was like.
Yes, and she’d warned me not to think he’d marry me either. The thought wrung a laugh from me. God! I’d sooner wed the Cuterebra.
I pinched the bridge of my nose until the feel of impending tears had been driven away. Don’t be ridiculous. Do you think good scientific illustrators fall out of trees? It took Halder a year to replace your predecessor. He won’t be in a hurry to replace you.
I didn’t know if that was true or not. What I did know was that Halder did not seem to like anything that upset the routine of his days. Mrs. Kent said he always ate the same breakfast at the same time.
The frogs were calling. I picked out chorus, bronze, and one tree frog calling, HNEEEEEEE! in a high, nasal whine that drew a reluctant smile from me. I propped my chin on my hand, staring into the dark.
One of the fireflies drew my eye. It somehow seemed to be blinking wrong.
Wait, is that a firefly? The frequency seems erratic.
It took me a moment to realize that I was seeing a light in the woods, and what I had mistaken for blinks was the shadow as it moved through the intervening trees.
I watched it, baffled. Mrs. Kent? But it was going in the opposite direction of the Kents’ house. I racked my brain for a possible destination. Jackson had told me there was a stream back there, but I hadn’t ever visited it. And I already knew Sally didn’t go home.
The Devil walks these woods at night, Phelps had said. Did I believe that?
No, I didn’t believe it. The Devil, if He existed, lived in the hearts of men.
And anyway, I doubt Satan needs to carry a light.
There was the old story about Stingy Jack, who wandered between heaven and hell, carrying a lit coal in a turnip, but I had significant doubts that an immortal Irishman was loose in the Chatham woods.
And I really didn’t believe in blood thieves, who were probably cougars anyway, and cougars definitely didn’t carry lights.
Which meant that there was a real human out there on the property doing … something. But what?
I couldn’t think of many good reasons for someone to wander around the woods in the dark. Halder might go checking for nighttime insects, I supposed, but surely Halder was asleep by now. Searching for a lost animal? Could one of Mrs. Kent’s chickens have wandered off?
Well, it was none of my business, of course. I had no reason to go wandering through the woods at night.
An unexpected pang of relief went through me at that thought. I zeroed in on that feeling, isolating it and pinning it to a card like one of the beetles downstairs. Why am I relieved? I can’t actually be scared of the woods, can I?
I had spent half my life wandering through the Carolina woods.
When I was seven years old, I caught a copperhead and brought it to show my father.
The woods were mine, not like property but like family.
I certainly wasn’t going to be put off from them by a religious zealot’s ranting about the Devil, or Jackson’s stories about blood thieves or cougars or whatever they were supposed to be. I was most definitely not scared.
The light paused for a moment, then moved on.
Possibly if I had already undressed, I would have decided that I didn’t have anything to prove. But I had only taken off one boot, and it was the work of a moment to shove my foot back in and hurry downstairs.
The back door was latched from the inside. Not Mrs. Kent, then. I dithered for a moment about continuing on, but curiosity has always been my besetting sin. I unlatched the door and slipped out.
A gibbous moon illuminated the landscape, which was good because I hadn’t grabbed a light of my own. For a moment I thought I’d lost the trail, but then I caught a bright flash between the trees, and scurried after.
The light bobbed along ahead of me. It was going very slowly, and I had no problem following it, even in the relative darkness. I set my feet cautiously, wary of ankle-breaking holes.
After a few minutes, it occurred to me that I was also trying not to make any noise.
It’s not that I’m scared of the woods. But you don’t know who has the light, and people are much scarier than trees.
Just as I thought that, I stepped on a sweet gum ball that rolled under my foot.
(If you have never stepped on the spiky seedpod of Liquidambar styraciflua, you cannot know the depth of a Southerner’s loathing for them.) Damnation, I thought, barely catching myself before I fell. And then, belatedly, Oops.
The light stopped. A familiar voice called out, “Who’s there?”
Halder?
Why is Halder out here in the woods?
Is he researching some kind of nocturnal insect? That seemed most likely. Regardless, I didn’t particularly want to encounter the grumpy old bastard. He’d probably accuse me of spying on him again.
Which, in fairness, you kind of are doing …
I stepped behind a tree and waited. After a moment, Halder grunted and turned away, walking deeper into the woods.
Lucky escape. Well, you know what the light is now. Time to go back to the house and go to bed.
… And yet you seem to be following Halder.
I wasn’t sure why I was doing it. It was definitely unwise. If he caught me, I had no idea how I’d talk my way out of it. And it was certainly no business of mine if he wanted to wander around his own property with a lamp after dark, collecting specimens for the killing bottle.
Nevertheless, I padded after him, setting my feet as carefully as I could.
The ground was mostly pine needles and even last year’s leaves were very damp from our days of rain, so there were no betraying crunches.
Halder didn’t turn around again. As we got closer to the stream, the frogs and katydids were calling so loudly that he probably couldn’t have heard me if I shouted.
(and if something grabs you and hauls you into a tree and begins draining your blood, no one will ever know what happened to you.)
I scowled in the dark, annoyed with myself. Don’t be ridiculous. The blood thief was a cougar, that was all. Probably the last one in the county. Jackson was just scaring the new girl with ghost stories. The only thing in the woods that I was scared of was Halder, and only in case he spotted me.
So why was I following him?
Because he’s not catching insects.
The thought arrived with absolute certainty. I picked at it, wondering why I was so sure of that. Intuition, my father used to say, is just an observation that you don’t realize you’ve made. What had I observed?
Halder stopped at last. I stepped behind another tree and watched as he shifted the lamp from one hand to the other, then set it down. He could do that easily because … he wasn’t carrying a net.
That was the observation I hadn’t realized I’d made. No net. No gear of the sort a naturalist would carry. Just a lantern.
As my eyes adjusted, I realized Halder was standing in front of a little low building, not much larger than a well house.
I heard him mutter as he fumbled with the lock, then he picked the light up again and pushed the door open.
It closed behind him a moment later with an oddly metallic clang. No light leaked under the door.
I was left alone with the frogs and the katydids and the dark.
After about five minutes, I was bored. Whatever curiosity had moved me was wearing thin. There was nothing to be learned here, and whatever Halder was doing inside the small building, it was his own affair. For all I know, that’s where he keeps his collection of pornographic etchings.
I turned back. I was only a few yards into the trees when I heard the door clang behind me. Shadows rose around me as the light swayed back and forth.
A thicket of saltbush proved just tall enough to conceal me.
I waited until Halder had passed and followed at a distance.
He was moving more quickly now, muttering to himself.
I caught “… serves him right…” and “… this long…” and then, with startling clarity, “Keep me out of the Megatherium Club, will they?” but most of the words were lost, if they were even words in the first place.
When we reached the clearing around the house, I stopped at the edge of the woods and waited.
If Halder locked the kitchen door, I was going to be in a tough spot …
but no. I suspect it never even occurred to him not to use the front door.
He went around the front of the house, pausing only once to glance behind him.
I waited in the shadow of the trees until I heard the front door close, and then gave it a few more minutes.
At last, when I judged it was safe—or at least when I was thoroughly sick of waiting and every mosquito in the county had arrived to feast—I slipped across the grass and into the kitchen.
The house was dark and quiet. I made my way to my room, feeling a stab of panic whenever a board creaked underfoot.
But no one popped out of a closet to shout “Aha!” or point an accusing finger at me. I slipped off my shoes, washed my face and hands, and went to bed, still wondering what, if anything, Halder had been doing out there in the dark.