Chapter 20 #2
The barn was quiet, as if the animals were soothed by the rain. The four-wheeler sat at the front of the aisle, waiting for me. I pushed it outside, wincing at every groan and creak it made, and turned the key. The engine sputtered and heaved at first, but eventually kicked in.
Away from the house and the barn, the night was black as pitch.
My heart was racing by the time I reached the end of the driveway; I could barely see my hand in front of my face, and the idea of fumbling with a dead body suddenly terrified me.
The real and rational fears of being discovered faded at the prospect of a malevolent corpse.
How many taboos had I broken today, killing a man of God while his back was turned? When he was in the right?
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there in the driveway, choking on my own fear, but I finally swung off the four-wheeler and trekked through the wet grass. I dragged the tarp and the length of logging chain behind me like a desolate ghost.
In the end, it wasn’t so hard to find the body in the dark; a shaft of light from the house glinted off the glasses.
The process of rolling it onto the tarp and securing the chain felt like it took hours, my trembling hands and the slippery canvas foiling me at every turn.
To drag it back to the driveway and heave it onto the four-wheeler was another matter entirely, and there were several times the body slipped from my grip and thudded to the ground, accompanied once by the faint crack of a breaking lens.
After a while, my paranoia of leaving evidence behind was buried beneath the fear that I simply wouldn’t be able to lift it, and I’d be stuck here so long that someone would find me.
At long last, the pastor’s body was slung over the back of the four-wheeler and I was riding as fast as I dared for the woods.
It had been ages since I took any kind of vehicle into the forest, and the familiar paths my feet knew were no good now.
The forest was a nightmare tableau, jagged shapes peeling from masses of shadow, lurching like men, only to sift back into the dark.
The evergreens reached out to drag dripping needles through my hair, and the oaks scrabbled their bone-like branches as if to snatch the body.
The four-wheeler lurched and twisted through the trees, bouncing so hard over buried, rotten tree trunks and rocks that I nearly lost my burden.
When I reached the edge of the neighboring cornfield, I realized I’d missed the pond entirely, and it was another half an hour before I found my way to the little dilapidated lean-to where the rowboat was stashed.
I cut the engine, and with the wheezing, uneven hum gone, I could hear the pond.
I hardly ever came this close to it, and unlike the rest of my sanctuary, there was nothing familiar about it.
I didn’t know its moods, didn’t know how it changed from winter to spring to autumn; it was only ever a malevolent thing living in the heart of my woods, and it was thus now.
The lap of water against the banks sounded like the slap of a wet hand groping for purchase.
I could imagine some drowned thing crawling up the bank, trying to escape the grasp of the pond just to be dragged back again.
Bathed in cold sweat, I clambered off the back of the four-wheeler and went to the lean-to.
I kept my hand on its weather-beaten, cobwebbed side, inching my toes forward as if perched on the edge of the abyss.
The planks were slippery with a sludge of soggy vegetation, and the stink of fetid water and rotting wood filled my nose.
The pond seemed to be growing its boundaries faster than the rest of the sanctuary, and where once there had been ten feet of solid ground between the bank and the posts of the structure, less than a yard now remained.
I dragged the boat out by its prow, the ancient wood digging splinters into my fingers.
There was no bringing the four-wheeler closer; I was afraid to leave tracks in the muddy ground that led up to the bank.
I rolled the pastor’s body off the vehicle and into the boat, wincing at the sound it made and thinking too late that I should’ve checked the boat for holes.
Perhaps it would be better if there were some, I thought. Perhaps I should sink the boat along with the body—
And then I’d have to swim to shore.
The thought alone made me turn and retch into the bushes, down on my knees in the dirt and the wet ferns.
For a moment I thought I’d pass out, my body drained of anything it could possibly give, but the wave of dizziness passed.
I pushed myself back to my feet and began to heave the boat toward the pond.
The first shock of cold, sucking mud was like a hand wrapped around my ankle; I almost ran screaming for the trees.
I swallowed the sound, my tongue clicking in my dry mouth, and moved around to shove from the back of the boat.
It was then the clouds parted like a stage curtain, revealing the moon in all her silvery glory.
The shaft of glowing light glinted off the wet plastic of the tarp and illuminated the surface of the pond like a black mirror. The shadows at the far edge resisted the moon’s gaze, and I thought I saw the shape of a man, but when I blinked, it was gone.
I gave the rowboat one last shove and, with energy born of terror, splashed into the shallows and leaped over the side.
The entire thing rocked precariously, ripples spiraling away like traitorous messengers going to wake the rest of the pond.
I leaned down, feeling until I grasped the rough handle of the single paddle, then wrenched it free from beneath the weight of the body.
The boat rode low in the water, and even though I knew it was the weight of a grown man and the logging chain and the rocks, I felt like the pond was trying to pull me under.
Rather than floating, I was creeping my way along the back of some giant beast, the sensation of malice so tangible that I was loath to even dip my paddle in.
When I finally reached the middle of the pond—the place I could only hope was the deepest—I began to fumble with the tarp and the rocks.
I didn’t dare only tie them to the outside, because who knew how long the strings of twine would take to rot?
I crammed them into the bundle of tarp with the body, my fingers occasionally brushing cold, dead skin.
The rocks met resistance, but I didn’t stop, shoving them in until I heard the crunch of cartilage.
When I could fit no more, I tied a few on the outside for good measure, then stood up, bracing myself precariously, and heaved the body over the side.
It was lost to my view in no more than a second, the dark water claiming it with rapacious greed.
The shadow of the boat blocked the moon, and I stared hard after it, feeling nothing as it disappeared, no regret and no relief.
I only hoped he would stay down there, and that the pond, for all its hostility, would side with me over him, over them.
I picked up the paddle again and rowed for shore, expecting every moment to feel cold water rising to my ankles.
But I reached the shore unscathed, no wetter than I had been when I arrived.
I beached the boat and fled back to the four-wheeler, back through the forest and the meadow and the safety of home.
As I closed the barn door behind me once more, I was stopped in my tracks by a slice of warm light cutting across the porch. I approached slowly, squinting to make sense of what I was seeing, no longer sure if my eyes could be trusted.
The door was open.
I stood there senselessly for a moment, trying to remember if I’d felt the solid thud of wood meeting frame when I left. The rain began to pour again, and I bolted up the steps, my heart rising in my throat like a viscous bubble.
The house was empty. It was still warm inside, the fire burning down to embers.
There was no tick tick tick of little hooves across the floor, no impatient bleat to greet me.
I ran through the house, praying to gods I didn’t believe in that she’d taken up a new place to hide.
I hunted through the bathroom, the laundry room, even the loft, hope rising at the sight of each unexplored corner just to die as I turned it.
I stumbled back out onto the porch and to the gate, raising my hand as a shield against the rain. The rattle of it was unrelenting and intrusive, a sound that tried to crawl inside my head and get into my bones. If she called for me, I wouldn’t hear it. Would she hear me?
She doesn’t even have a name.