23. Saturday, November 4, 2023 #2
“Hey guys,” she calls out, and they all stop what they’re doing to look over at her.
There’s no mistaking it, now that she knows what she’s looking for: the flash of black that slides across all of their eyes simultaneously.
It’s not the pendant lights and it’s not her imagination. The woods have gotten to them all.
Alice
She’d made an excuse to leave the house, then got in her car and started driving with no idea where she was going.
Instinctively she found herself back on familiar streets, parked in front of her old house.
She sat in her car for half an hour, staring at the house that used to be hers with tears streaming down her cheeks, her back and lower belly aching despite the two Advil she took.
As the cobalt-colored dusk descended, she watched the inside lights come on.
She watched a woman inside pull curtains closed against prying eyes—hers.
She had been so quick to want to escape from that house, but now she would give anything to walk back through those doors and call it home.
The longing for the past, one in which Lucy is alive, when there is no need to escape to the woods, is so strong it cramps her gut and burns her throat.
But there’s no going back. If they were to return to that house they would also return to the sorrow of losing Lucy.
And the loss would outweigh the comfort of familiarity.
Alice thinks of Ruth Crowley’s words from her dream last night. Is that what the woods have done? she wonders. Wiped my family clean of the pain, leaving me to hold it all?
Knowing she can’t sit in her cold car all night asking questions she has no answer to, she grabs her phone and calls her friend Libby. Her house is only two blocks away and Alice is hoping she can go over there for a glass of wine and a heart-to-heart.
Libby picks up on the second ring. She’s happy to hear from Alice and only then does Alice realize that she didn’t text her after the Halloween party.
Libby asks what was wrong with Polly that night and if she’s okay now.
Alice realizes she doesn’t know if Polly is okay now, or if anyone in her family is.
She bursts into tears. Libby’s immediately sympathetic, asking what’s wrong, what she can do, and it opens the floodgates in Alice.
Alice tells Libby everything. Starting from the beginning with the dead animals, right up to her fleeing her house when her family looked at her with black shadows sliding across their eyes.
Libby mostly listens, interrupting now and again to get clarification on something, gasping over the thing that Alice saw in the woods, offering comfort when Alice tells her the part about finding Ruth Crowley dead.
“What do I do?” Alice asks her friend, sounding as lost as she feels.
“I think you need to talk to your therapist, Alice,” Libby says without missing a beat.
“Get her take on all of this. Losing Lucy was an incredibly traumatic experience. Moving is also very stressful. Quinn in a new school, Polly suffering from PTSD, you in a new neighborhood and unfamiliar surroundings. It’s no wonder you’re struggling.
It’s too much change, honey. And then add hormones and perimenopause to all of that?
You’re dealing with a shitstorm right now. It’s too much change.”
“Perimenopause?” Alice shrieks. “Are you fucking kidding me, Libby?”
There’s silence on the other end of the line.
A realization slowly clears away the fog of emotion that Alice was in only minutes before.
She is alone in this. No matter who she tells, they will think it’s all in her head.
Whether they blame it on perimenopause, trauma, stress, or anxiety, she is the one with the problem.
The one left holding the bag. The one responsible for everyone else.
For the first time since finding the house in the woods, Alice feels a deep and profound empathy for Justine Gordon.
“I’m sorry, Libby,” Alice quickly says. “I didn’t mean to snap. You’re probably right, it’s just everything piling up.”
“I’m not saying that I don’t believe what you’ve experienced,” Libby says. “I just think that there are reasonable explanations for all of it. That maybe it isn’t as sinister as you think.”
“No, you’re right,” Alice says through a clenched jaw.
“Come for a visit,” Libby offers. “We’ll have some wine and talk things through. There’s nothing we can’t solve together.”
Alice doesn’t tell Libby that she’s just around the corner and could be there in under a minute. Instead, she makes tentative plans for a get-together for the following weekend.
“In the meantime, call your therapist,” Libby pushes. “You don’t need to manage all of this on your own, Alice. You’re a wife and a mother, but that doesn’t mean the burden of it all has to fall to you all the time. Ask for help.”
Alice pretends to agree with her friend, despite knowing that bearing the burden of it all is exactly what is expected of her.
Alice says she has to go, and Libby makes her promise to text or call once a day.
“I’m worried about you and so is Kathy,” she adds.
Alice tells her not to be, that their talk has already made her feel better, and then they hang up.
With no place else to go, Alice starts the car, pulls out from the curb, and heads home.
Alice
The house is in total darkness when she gets back.
This doesn’t help the feeling of apprehension she has pulling into the driveway.
She is trying to stay level-headed, not allow herself to plunge headlong into fear or speculation.
She will get to the bottom of things in a rational, pragmatic way.
This is the pep talk she gives herself getting out of her car and walking up to the front door.
Not even a front light has been left on for her.
She fumbles her way inside, turning on lights as she goes and calling out hello but getting only silence in return.
It’s 7:30 on a Saturday night. Where could they all be?
she wonders. She calls out for Panda, surprised that the dog hasn’t come to greet her.
Even she’s abandoned Alice. She decides to go out to her mother’s cabin and see if she knows where everyone is.
Stepping onto the back deck Alice is amazed at the heavy quiet and the depth of the darkness.
She stands there for a few seconds until her eyes adjust to it.
The sharp chill in the air makes Alice think it might snow later.
Not a single light is on in her mother’s cabin, but Alice still steps inside, just to check that everything is okay.
“Mom?”
The place smells different. Not the scent that Alice equates with her mother’s presence—a mix of paint, Vermouth, and Chanel perfume—but the woods.
A rustling in the corner startles Alice, and only then does she notice the glow of cat eyes in the darkness, three pairs, tucked away in hiding spaces around the room.
She bends down and tsks softly to call them to her, but they hunker farther into their hiding spots.
One of them, she can’t tell which, lets out a low growl.
She stands up to go, feeling a pang of jealousy at being left out of her family’s plans.
Nobody even texted to let her know where they were going.
Turning to open the front door, she stops when she sees a figure crossing the lawn.
It’s too dark to make out any features but the height and stride make her think it must be Quinn.
Then another figure steps out of the woods only a few feet away who looks like Polly.
Across the yard, another shadowy figure walks out of the woods: Geoff.