22. Saturday, November 4, 2023
Alice
She’d spent hours in the back of a police car at Ruth’s cottage answering questions.
She’d even watched them carry Ruth’s body out in a black bag, but it wasn’t until the fox, the crow, and the owl were carried out in cages that she’d broken down.
Both birds had flapped their wings frantically, and the fox lifted its snout and made a screaming sound that sounded like grief.
Like the noise she made when the doctor told them Lucy had died.
After she’d recovered, she’d called Geoff to tell him what was happening. He’d insisted on coming to be with her, but she’d told him he wasn’t allowed on the property because it was a crime scene. Nobody had told her that. For some reason she couldn’t quite pinpoint, she didn’t want him there.
“How you finding it out there in the ‘murder house’?” the police officer asks, chuckling.
He takes one hand off the steering wheel to air quote the last two words, then peers at Alice from the rearview mirror.
He’s stocky with a friendly face and eyes.
Not like the younger police officers that she dealt with at Ruth Crowley’s place, whose levels of detachment made them seem more robot than human.
She tries not to scowl at the officer’s question. “It’s a beautiful property,” she answers. “Does take time to settle into new places though. Change is hard.” He doesn’t say anything as he eases the car into a slow turn with one hand on the wheel. “Do you know the place?”
He gives a curt nod. “I grew up in the area. And I know your place well. I was an investigating officer on the Justine Gordon case. Been through that house a hundred times at least trying to make sense of things.” He sighs heavily, and she can feel the toll it’s taken on him.
“She claims that the woods made her do it,” Alice says.
The police officer laughs again and Alice can tell from the slight wheeze of it that he’s either a smoker or used to be. “I’ve been through every inch of those woods and I never saw a single thing in there that didn’t belong.”
“Did you go in the cave?”
He looks up, startled. Stammers, “Of course. Plenty of times. Although some might disagree. One of the other officers said he saw something that spooked him when he was searching for the older boy.”
“What did he see?” Alice asks, leaning forward slightly, remembering “Tom” from the podcast.
The officer answers with a shrug. “Just came out of there looking like he’d seen a ghost. Said there was no way he was ever going back in.”
“But he didn’t say why?”
“Nah.” The officer shakes his head. “You don’t talk about things like that on the job. And he was a young cop, green. Ended up transferring because he caught so much flak from the other officers about it. But—” He stops short. “Oh, forget it.”
“No, tell me.”
They pull onto her street, and he doesn’t say anything, as though he’s debating whether or not he should. Only when they’re driving down Alice’s driveway does he open his mouth again to speak. “I’ll be honest. I may not have seen anything in those woods, but I sure felt it.”
“Felt it how?”
“Like something was always watching me. I’ve been in plenty of woods in my life but there’s something different about yours. Can’t really explain it other than that.”
Alice nods. She knows the feeling well. The officer pulls up in front of the house, which is dark except for the front light that Geoff left on. The officer pushes a button and she hears the click of the car doors unlocking.
“Are you calling Ruth Crowley’s death suspicious?” Alice asks for the first time that night, her hand on the door handle.
The officer shakes his head. “I’m not sure yet what we’ll be calling it.
There was no sign of struggle or break-and-enter, but her wounds were unusual.
Could just be a case of those animals turning on her though.
” He sighs heavily again, shaking his head.
“That’s why you don’t keep wild animals as pets.
Not even injured ones. In any case, an autopsy will be done.
Hopefully we’ll get enough information from that to determine the cause of death. ”
Alice is about to get out of the car, but on an impulse tries a different tack.
“Not long before she died, Ruth told me her sister’s story.
How she went crazy because her family abandoned her and then got into some dark stuff.
Witchcraft. Apparently conjuring something.
A local man said that some kids claim to have seen it.
That they called it the Witch in the Woods.
Did you notice that weird symbol painted on the floor at the front door of Ruth’s house?
With a Latin inscription? Donum Silvis. It means ‘gift of the woods.’ Do you think there’s any way it could all be related? ”
The officer shifts in his seat to turn and face her, eyes narrowed as he scrutinizes her in the light from the house, probably to see if she looks as crazy as she sounds.
“Ruth Crowley was always a big storyteller. And yeah, her sister went a bit crazy. Had to be institutionalized. But she was no witch. Just a sad old gal. Only thing she could conjure were complaints from the neighbors about how run-down she let the place get.”
“But the symbols. On the floor at Ruth’s front door. Could they mean something?”
“Only if we could be sure Ruth didn’t put them there herself.
That could be pretty hard to determine though, with her dead and all.
” He sighs again and rubs a hand hard across the rough skin of his forehead.
Alice senses that his patience with her is running out.
“Look, Ruth Crowley was an eccentric, lonely old woman. Losing her sister like that had a terrible effect on her, made her paranoid and angry. So, try not to overthink anything she told you. She’s in a better place now.
Not stuck out in the woods all by herself. ”
A shiver runs through Alice at his last few words.
The officer gets out of the car and comes around to open Alice’s door for her. “Don’t leave town for a few days,” he says before she can get out. “You’re not a suspect or anything, but we still may need to get in touch.”
“Thank you for bringing me home,” she says as she slides out of the backseat.
The officer glances at the woods around them. “No problem. Hope you can get some sleep after the night you’ve had.”
A crow caws as if on cue, causing both Alice and the officer to jump. They laugh together at their dramatic reaction. “Yeah, I’m not gonna lie,” he says, “these woods put me on edge.” He takes one last look around before getting back in his car.
Alice steps into a house that is dark and quiet.
She’s glad none of her family are awake.
She’s not up for a retelling of the night’s events.
Despite being bone-tired, she goes to Quinn’s bedroom before her own.
After his flurry of frantic texts, she didn’t hear anything back.
She asked Geoff if he was okay when she called, and he’d said Quinn was doing great.
Alice found that hard to believe but she let it drop, deciding she’d get Quinn’s version when she was home.
Panda is lying across the threshold to his room, guarding the closed door. She whimpers when Alice approaches.
“What’s up, girl?” Alice whispers, bending down to pet the dog. “Did you get locked out?” She stands up and opens the door, nudging Panda gently with one foot to go into the room. Instead, the dog hops up and scurries away.
Panda stands at the entrance to the kitchen, staring back at Quinn’s door, whimpering.
Alice shushes her, and the dog skirts around her to resume her position on the floor in front of the room, but not in it.
“Silly dog,” Alice whispers, scratching her on the head.
“Are you keeping him in or keeping us out?” Her own question stops her short.
Opening Quinn’s door, she steps over the dog and tiptoes to the side of her son’s bed.
Bending over to get a closer look at him, she inhales that all-too-familiar smell—damp earth, leaves, the woods.
She wants to shake him awake, ask him if he went into the woods after her, if he feels any different.
She wants to look into his eyes and make sure he’s still her Quinn.
Something stops her. Instead, she leaves his room and goes to check on Polly.
Polly’s door is open just a crack, so she’s able to slip in without a sound.
Her curtains are pushed wide open, revealing the wall of trees that sits just beyond.
Alice tiptoes to the side of Polly’s bed and listens to her breathe, just like she used to when she was little.
Back then, she listened for two sets of breaths.
Polly and Lucy slept in the same bed for the first nine years of their lives, arms and legs entwined so that at times it looked like one body and two heads. Impossible to tell apart.
Bending down the same way she did over Quinn, Alices inhales as quietly as possible. Laced with Polly’s fragrant shampoo, it’s there, unmistakable—damp earth, leaves, the woods.