Wildwood Road (13 page)

Too cold. She wasn't dressed for the cold,
he thought.
Where was her jacket?

But the lost girl had not seemed as though she was cold. When he had gotten her into the car, Jillian still snoozing in the back, Scooter had not seemed cold at all. Just lost. A bit numb. Distant. As the car now rolled on past the place where he had nearly killed the girl, where he had picked her up, he went over his memory of her again. Her house—or at least the place she had guided him to—was quite a walk from Old Route 12. Or it seemed that way. Michael wondered if, as the crow flies, it might have been shorter. She could have stumbled into some woods behind the house and become lost, wandered for a time. Other kids would have been out trick-or-treating, but not Scooter the lost girl. No jacket. And no sense of direction. Even if she was on the younger end of possibility—he figured her for eight, but she might have been as young as six—she still ought to know uphill from downhill.

And the house was uphill. Even as he drove, Michael glanced up the side of the valley on his right, where the trees soaked up the autumn sunlight. Uphill. His memory was vague, but that was one thing he was sure of. The place was at the top of a long, winding road, overlooking the valley.

“Shit.” Michael hit the brakes, glancing over his shoulder. A soccer mom in a minivan blasted her horn at him as she swerved to avoid a collision. There were no other cars behind him, and he waited while several cars passed going southwest, then pulled a U-turn.

The grinding music on the radio had given way to an ad for windshield glass replacement. Michael punched the button and the radio clicked off, plunging the car into silence save for the engine and the rapid beat of his own heart in his ears. He backtracked a short way, letting the car roll along the shoulder until he reached the spot that had drawn his attention.

A narrow side street with trees grown up on both sides. There was a pole, but no sign on top of it. It was deceiving. Anyone who did not know better would assume that it was some dead end, or some minor street that looped around to nowhere. But Michael knew better.

“Turn right here.” Scooter had recognized the street, and to his astonishment, he had remembered it, too. Hidden away.

A FedEx truck rumbled past him, shaking the car. When the street was clear, he took a left and went up that road. The sense of familiarity that swept over him was both encouraging and unsettling at the same time. There were houses set back in the woods, but he wasn't paying much attention to them. The next turn was a left. That much he recalled. Perhaps a quarter of a mile up the street, and there it was.

Michael had to stop, engine idling with his foot on the brake, and stare at that left turn. It seemed somehow impossible. His experience on Saturday night had such a dreamlike quality that to find this place while he was awake, while the sun was shining, seemed unreal.

He turned left, the road immediately curving right, turning uphill.

His memory of the rest of the journey was unclear. There was nothing for him to do but explore, and so he began. For more than an hour he drove around the back roads that branched away from that street south of Old Route 12, rising up the side of that hill. There were new developments and others that had been built as far back as the fifties. Down one street, he spotted a house still bedecked with a showcase of Halloween decorations. It sparked his memory. He had passed this way.

Similar clues let him fill in his path. Michael had the copy he had made of the map of the area, and he marked the streets with a green highlighter that had snuck out of the office in his pocket.

An A-frame house. Perhaps not the same one, but he would take that risk. How many of them could there be up here? The style was rare enough that it was worth betting the odds.

His stomach rumbled. Michael realized he was hungry. He let the car roll to a stop in front of the A-frame, and a smile played across his features. Hungry was such a normal thing. He passed several people bicycling, two women power-walking, and an overweight, bearded man smoking a cigarette while he walked his dog. But that was it. No sign of
her.

The ghostly girl who had spent the night haunting the corner of his bedroom seemed less real, less tangible, after hours in the car.

Because this feels real. This makes it real.
The hidden road was there. The suburban neighborhood with the garish Halloween decorations. The A-frame.

If he searched long enough, he was certain to find that long, curving street that would take him up to the circle at the top of the hill, to that dilapidated, sprawling old house with its shattered lantern and hanging shutters, with its dark-eye windows. The home of the lost girl.
Where I belong,
she had called it. And what an odd way to say she was home.

But it was not long before his optimism began to bleed and weaken. Michael tried every side street that appeared to lead uphill. Several wound around and did, eventually, make it near what appeared to be the apex of this particular ridge. But none of them led to that house. To
her
house. As he began the third hour of his search, Michael used the word “fuck” more than he had in a month. With his map out, he marked all of the streets he had traveled, and in time, he found himself at the top of Briarwood Terrace, in a circle that deadended much like the one where Scooter lived, and he was at a loss.

With a sigh he climbed out of the car, killing the engine and pocketing the keys. He pulled the map out and laid it on the hood, bending over to examine it more closely. The wind ruffled the edges of the map. He traced his highlighter over Briarwood Terrace and stared at the names of streets, at the green lines that showed his search.

East,
he thought.
It's got to be further east.
Michael ran one finger over the paper toward the eastern edge of the map. Then he stepped back and glanced around, looking at the trees on the horizon in a full circle. Yes, to the east, the ridge seemed to rise even higher. It was hard to gauge the distance, though, because the blue sky was darkening, the shadows on the treetops growing deeper.

A shiver went through him. Michael glanced around, frowning as he peered into the trees behind the century-old Victorian behind him. Nothing moved in the woods. Most of the leaves had already fallen. Yet he felt the cold, familiar feeling of someone watching.

Nervously he gathered up the map and looked around again. The only way out was to drive back down the way he'd come, so he was nowhere near the street he was looking for.
But maybe I'm getting closer,
he thought.

As he climbed into the car and started it up, he noticed once again that the sky was a deeper blue than it had been. Nightfall was still a ways off, but much closer than he would have liked. Jillian was expecting him home so they could go out for dinner with Bob Ryan. Michael brought up his right hand and ran his palm over his stubbled chin. He would have to shave before he dressed for dinner.

Time to go home.

It was frustrating to abandon his search, but he did not feel the hours had been wasted. The map showed him where he had searched and where he had not. And he had let his stomach growl emptily for long enough. These were compelling reasons to go home, to come back another day. But in his gut, the real reason was obvious. The woods were casting long shadows on the road now; sometimes the night could be clever, stealing across the valley on cat feet, darkness swallowing day before anyone was prepared. It was that time of year. The night coming earlier with every passing day.

Yes, it was time to go home.

But only for now.

With an entire day gone by without any strange incidents, and with the landmarks he recognized as solid evidence that the previous weekend's events had actually taken place, he was more convinced than ever that he was suffering some obsession. A psychiatrist might be able to help, but finding the house and the girl would go a long way toward erasing that obsession, and setting him free of it.

He would find her. And that house.

Now that he had begun, Michael was not the type to give up. Once or twice as he searched a strange thought had occurred to him, that perhaps the house did not want to be found. Ridiculous, but that was what a couple of hours of sleep could do to him.

No, Michael would find that house. He would find answers.

J
ILLIAN WATCHED THE WORLD GO
by outside the windows of the train. She loved the autumn, even after dark. The houses she could see had warm lights on inside, and she saw many with smoke rising from their chimneys. She could practically smell that wonderful scent of burning wood that made a chilly night so much more pleasant. Sometimes she and Michael liked to make hot cocoa and sit on the front steps of the house on a night like this, smelling the chimney smoke and watching the stars.

A sigh escaped her lips and she pressed them tightly together. She was worried about her Michael. Regardless of the tests the doctor had ordered for him, she was fairly certain there was more to his anxiety and hallucinations than someone slipping him a mickey in his beer. If anyone even actually called it that. A mickey? What was the origin of that phrase?

Her mind was wandering because she let it. Better that than to think about her certainty that Michael needed a shrink. No shame in it, absolutely. But a hallucination was serious business. She was hoping it was a combination of factors. Stress, overwork, and some asshole drugging him might all have combined to do it. Jillian had a dozen little speeches that she ran through her mind, telling herself it was really nothing. That it would be taken care of by the doctors. Michael would be all right, mind and body, in no time.

But that was a bullshit placebo for the little burning ember of terror that sparked in her heart at the idea of something truly awful happening to him. She couldn't bear even the thought of it. In all her life no one had ever really understood her, ever seemed to even
want
to know all of her, never mind being capable of it, except for Michael.

He's going to be fine.
A couple of days of sleeping late and working at home were exactly what he needed. Dr. Ufland and Dr. Lee would take care of him, and Jillian would do her best to distract him from thinking about such things.

The truth was, as excited as she was about dinner tonight and about the prospect of running for the council, she had been tempted to cancel. It felt wrong, somehow, to be thinking of herself. But that would only feed Michael's anxiety. And a night out like this might be exactly what he needed.

The train began to slow. Jillian let her gaze focus beyond the windows again, and she could see over the backyard fence that ran behind a row of houses. It always fascinated her, seeing people's lives from that angle. There was laundry out hanging on a line, despite the temperature. One house had piles of raked leaves that had not been picked up and had started to blow around again. Another had an old car up on blocks—a rusty Thunderbird, if she recognized it correctly—and a stretch of earth that had been a garden only a couple of months earlier.

From the train she could see people's backyards, the things that they were hiding from the world behind the faces put on by the fronts of their homes. She tried to picture her own backyard and could not even remember what was back there.

With a hiss and a loud clanking, they slowly crawled into the station. It had been recently renovated; the lampposts on the train platform were elegant, reminiscent of another age. Already there were Christmas decorations hanging from the posts. Wreaths with bows, and holiday lights. The sight gave her a bit of hope in her heart, a reprieve from her worried thoughts.

He'll be all right,
she told herself again.

Jillian was running late. She had phoned Michael from the office to let him know, but there had been no answer at home. On the machine she left a message that he should just meet her at Dorothy's Restaurant, that they were supposed to be there by seven o'clock. Much as she would have liked to go home and change, there was nothing to be done for it. She looked all right to go out for dinner, in a chocolate-brown tailored suit with a hunter green turtleneck under the jacket. But after being in the same outfit all day, it would have been nice to freshen up.

Life was simply like that, sometimes. You had to roll with it.

From the train station, she drove directly to Dorothy's. It was almost a quarter after seven by the time she pulled into the lot. The restaurant was on the expensive side, despite its strangely quaint location. It was actually the first floor of the home of the family that owned and ran it, and the entire place was decorated in homage to
The Wizard of Oz.
The food was wonderful, though, and the place was small, so reservations were difficult to come by. She had felt a bit of trepidation at not having been able to reach Michael, and the underlying concern for him that had been with her all day, but as she stepped out of the car and started toward the front door of the restaurant, other concerns took precedence.

Can I really do this?
she wondered. Jillian was a woman with opinions, and the will to do something about it. But her image of politicians in general was so poor that the idea of becoming one of them was laden with doubts. Then again, what was that saying? Something about the only thing necessary for the bad guys to win was for the good guys to do nothing.

Well, I'm not a guy, and I'm not riding a white horse or anything, but
. . . She did not finish the thought in any concrete way. There was no need. Her feelings on the subject ran deep enough that it wasn't necessary to formulate them into full-blown sentences. Jillian Dansky certainly did not picture herself as some kind of hero, or martyr, but she did believe that she could help. That she could do some good.

When she walked into the restaurant, the buzz of conversation struck her and set her at ease. There was a large fireplace on either end of the long dining room, and both were blazing. Behind a podium by the door was Dorothy herself, a fiftyish woman who refused to dye her graying hair, but wore it in a stylish cut.