He pulled over and got out of the car, heading straight into the woods. I didn’t want to follow him through those dense leaves and thick branches, stepping on twigs that snap at your feet, but I wanted even less to be left alone. I hurried after him, careful not to brush against the poison ivy that I knew must be everywhere.
“It’s over here,” Ted said. He pointed to something, but all I saw were trees. It was early afternoon, a sunny day, but I would have believed it was dusk.
“Now, this may be difficult to hear,” he started.
And then he told me anyway. The story of a couple that got lost while hiking. As soon as it got dark, they grew ravenously hungry. It hit them out of nowhere, like a curse whispered by the wind. Their stomachs, the husband later told police, felt like bottomless wells. Their bones shone through their skin in the moonlight.
“See this tree?” Ted said, pointing to one with an engraving in it: J + L. “They came in this way. Same as we did. Ordinary people like you and me. Except—these woods… they change you.”
“Change you?” I echoed, wrapping my arms around myself. “What do you mean?”
His eyes glinted, twin sparks igniting. “Shh-shh-shh,” he said. “Listen.”
The husband was convinced they wouldn’t make it through the night unless they found something to sufficiently fill their stomachs. But not a single animal scurried by. Leaves did nothing. Berries were no better than air. The wife, weakened by her hunger, eventually passed out, leaving the husband to search for sustenance on his own. Hours went by, and still there was nothing. The husband became desperate and deranged, his body feverish with starvation.
“But the wife, you see,” Ted said, “was six months pregnant. And the husband had a knife.”
I dropped to the mossy ground. Closed my eyes and covered my ears. I screamed so I couldn’t hear the ending, even though I’d already guessed what it was. Hunger that makes you a monster. Parents and weapons. I screamed until my throat felt ripped to shreds.
Then Ted’s hand was on my shoulders. He shook me until I opened my eyes and looked up at him, towering over me like just another tree.
“That was an Experiment, Fern. Now come on, let’s get back to the house so I can interview you while the fear is still fresh.”
As he walked away from me, I was momentarily soothed. The story wasn’t real. Of course it wasn’t. Hunger curses, fathers that carve their child right out of the womb—how could I have believed it?
“So nobody died in here?” I called after Ted, brushing the dirt off my legs as I stood.
He turned. Walked backward toward the car so he could see me as he spoke. “I’m sure lots of people have died in here,” he said.
* * *
The woods stop at the edge of Ted’s property. Or rather, Ted’s property is an acre-deep notch set into the woods. The trees keep going for another couple miles, with other houses perched on open lots along the way, and if I were to keep driving, I’d eventually get to The Diner, to Rusty’s, to the tiny high school from which I graduated in a class of fifty. But I’ve reached Ted’s driveway now, that steep dirt slope, and I have to make the turn.
As I drive up, I see him sitting on the porch swing, a book in his hands. My heart kicks for a second. He’s been waiting for me; things are already different. When Eric and I visit, we usually have to let ourselves in, wait around in the dim, dusty living room until Ted comes down the stairs, announcing that he’d forgotten we were coming.
But now, he waves without looking up as I park. His eyes linger on a page before he turns it, folds the corner down, and stands. I’m gathering up my purse when I notice him scratching hard at his wrist. Same as I did last night. Ted’s fingers rake over his skin, but unlike me, his itching has a physical cause: the red patches of psoriasis snaking along his arms.
I glance at my own wrist, at my faint pink scratches, and the dream from last night replays. The images are sharper now, as if brought into focus by the flash I had on the road.
Astrid’s hands were reaching. Astrid’s waist was grabbed by a too-tight arm. Astrid’s wide, terrified eyes were begging for help.
The nausea surges up, even stronger than before, and I open the car door just in time to lean over and puke onto the dirt.
“Well,” Ted says from the porch. “Okay then. Welcome home.”
three
Ted doesn’t give me a chance to unpack, or even brush my teeth after throwing up. I keep flicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth, trying to scrape off the sick, but it isn’t working. I need toothpaste. Mouthwash. I need time to process these images of Astrid, which made me lose my breakfast in the first place.
But Ted can’t be stopped. As soon as I drop my bag at the bottom of the stairs, he hooks his hand around my wrist and pulls me out toward his car, the same green Subaru he’s been driving since I left home for college.
“We’re going to Rusty’s,” he explains.
He plops me into the passenger seat and shuts the door, then walks toward the driver’s side with a particular jaunt I know too well. He’s excited about something. Worked up. Inspired.
“I need typewriter ribbon,” he announces as he lurches down the driveway. “And you need packing supplies.”
“Typewriter ribbon?” I say. “You’re—working? What about retirement?”
He waves his hand as if swatting away a fly. “That’s just from Wicker. But I’m still working, of course. It’s amazing how productive the mind can be when it’s not shackled by the arbitrary edicts of academia. My brain is fizzing, Fern. Like a can of soda that’s been shaken up. I would have gotten the ribbon this morning, but I waited for you, you’re welcome very much. Figured you’d want to go as soon as you got here, for boxes and all that.”
I shake my head, trying to catch up. A wave of nausea crests in my stomach once again. “You haven’t bought boxes yet?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then what have you been packing with?”
Ted looks at me as he brakes at a stop sign. His eyes narrow. “Nothing,” he says. “I haven’t been packing at all. That’s why I need you. You’re always so good at that organizational stuff. Plus, I told you, my mind is a live wire! Packing would waste all that brainpower.”
He’s about to step on the gas again, but I jerk my arm out to stop him. There’s a mother goose, followed by six goslings, beginning to cross the road. They’re oblivious to the dangers of traffic. Of tires. Of impatient men behind the wheel. The only awareness the goslings have is of their mother, the animal that will teach them how to move through this world.
Ted sighs as we wait, and I allow myself to feel the impact of what he just said. He used that phrase again—I need you—only this time, it’s clear that the need is merely a practicality. My stomach roils at how stupid I was to believe it was something else—an expression of love, a desire for connection. Of course it wasn’t, Eric would say. It’s Ted we’re talking about here.
As soon as the geese edge past our car, Ted zooms ahead. I tug on my seat belt, make sure it’s tight. I hate how quickly he drives down Cedar streets. You never know what will dart from the woods, what family of animals you could crush in an instant.