13 Views of the Suicide Woods Read online

  Kate turned to face her partner. On any other occasion she’d be smiling at his awkwardness, or at least putting on the pretense of holding back a smile. Not today. Today, she looked pale and half gone. Glancing over her shoulder, he spied a flash of weather-muted yellow. It was a jacket that used to be Day-Glo. The weather had brought it low and dulled its vibrance. For a moment it looked as though someone had hung it on a tree as if to dry it or at least just keep it up off the damp forest floor. A blink and another look showed him differently. The figure in the distance was propped up by the tree, arms and branches entwined like lovers embracing. There was probably also a rope helping keep the corpse erect, but Rick couldn’t see it. No matter how many times he saw a scene like that—and he’d seen it a few times—he never understood how someone could hang themselves to death with their feet on the ground. I think I’d stand up. I’d just . . . have to stand up.

  There wasn’t time to stop and log it and call it in. They had to keep moving. The longer they delayed, the less likely they were to find the man they’d been sent to rescue. He made a mental note to return here once their primary goal was achieved. He didn’t want to, but that was someone’s son or husband or father. It was someone who deserved to be taken home. It was someone.

  “Should we be shouting his name or something?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Neither of them had ever been summoned to look for a living person in the woods. Rick was sure that there was some kind of procedure for searching for a suicide in progress that would make the process safer and more effective, but if it existed, Brattle PD didn’t want to discuss it or teach it or even acknowledge it. Instituting a protocol meant acknowledging that this was a regular occurrence, and that meant admitting that there was a problem, which no elected official from mayor on down to dog catcher wanted to do. He needed the win, though. After fifteen years, Brattle was getting to him. He was hearing the call.

  “Let’s just push on,” Kate said. “If he hasn’t already pulled the trigger, I’d rather not give him a reason to speed things up.”

  “Copy that.”

  8

  Pocket . . . knife. Pocketknife. Skip fumbled with weakening fingers at his right pants pocket. Since his father had given him a Buck Knife for his eighth birthday, he’d never been without a blade in that pocket. Friends counted on him to have it. A misbehaving string on a blouse at dinner was like a show. “Hey, Skip. You got that knife?” they’d ask with a smile and hold up an elbow to let the loose thread dangle. He’d produce the knife with a flourish and perform as requested. His newest one was a C.K.R.T. Ripple. It was lightweight and opened easily and had a lovely black handle with an elegant gray blade that gently arced up into a point. One year Mandy had gotten him a Japanese tanto-style knife as a gift, but he just felt too silly pulling it out with its odd angles and non-reflective black blade. He wasn’t a ninja; he was just a guy who liked to be dependable. He was the person who was able to easily open that box, cut the twine used to tie down the hatchback door, to trim an errant branch on the rosebush.

  The rope. Cut the rope.

  He pawed at his hip. His hands were numbing as his vision narrowed and the world got a little grayer. Pulling up the bottom of his parka, he slipped the knife from his pocket and brought it up in front of his face. Carefully unfolding it, he reached behind his head to find the rope. A light breeze blew through the trees and his body swayed and disoriented him more. His dulled fingers found the line—strong sport rope designed for shock and to hold several times the body weight of a climber scaling a cliff face . . . or a mountain. It was built for safety, but it suited this other purpose just fine. Even though that purpose no longer suited him, the rope was doing a workmanlike job indeed.

  The fog of the woods infected him—clouded his mind and muddied his thoughts.

  Cut. The. Rope.

  He reached up with his knife hand and began to saw through the line. The knife slipped several times and he never felt it bite. Not until it bit into his hand and he instinctively let go. He felt it bounce off his shoulder as it fell to the ground.

  Useless.

  9

  Danny carefully stepped around and looked up into the face of the man hanging from the branch. The man’s purpling tongue protruded from between white lips and his eyes rolled wildly as he kicked and struggled with the knot at the back of his head. Danny bent down and picked up the knife the man had dropped in the spongy needles carpeting the forest floor. It was nice. Sharp and well cared for. He looked up and the man’s eyes rolled around one last time before fixing on him. They welled with tears. His lips moved. “Help me,” the hanging man mouthed.

  Following the rope up over the branch and back down with his eyes, Danny climbed the tree and found where the man had tied it off. He clearly knew how to tie a good knot that wouldn’t come loose. Not while there was tension on the line anyway. He also knew enough to tie the end low to the ground. He didn’t want to slip while tying it to a branch, and break his arm or leg instead of his neck. All he had to do when he got up into the tree was pull the loop end over his head and jump.

  Danny cut the line. The man fell the last five feet, crashing down in a heap in the cold mud. Rain made a quiet pat pat pat pat noise on their jackets. The man loosened his noose and tried to speak, but his crushed larynx wouldn’t allow words. Instead he took in a long, rasping breath. And another. And another. Danny had saved his life. He had pulled a man back from the void, back into the world.

  10

  Kate was the one who caught the flash of red in her peripheral vision before it dropped out of sight. She grabbed the back of Rick’s jacket and pulled.

  “Hey what’s—”

  “Mr. Clover,” she shouted at the memory of the streak. “Skip Clover! Is that you?” She jumped off the trail and began bounding through the woods as fast as she could, scrambling and slipping over sodden deadfall and slick underbrush.

  “Brattle Police, Mr. Clover! Your daughter sent us to find you. Mr. Clover?”

  They ran ahead heedless of roots that jutted up, threatening to trip them, break their ankles, dash their heads against hidden stones. They felt the pull of need. Oh, please, just a few seconds. Hang in there for a few seconds more, Skip, Kate thought. No matter how hard it was to pull a body out of the woods, it was nothing compared to having to sit down with a wife, or a child, or a parent, and explain that someone they loved was never coming home again. Every time she did it, she felt like a piece of her died. It was a death of inches, each grieving family bringing her closer to her own day in the woods. She pushed harder, ran faster, jumped farther, closing the distance between her and the red. Her own voice became a distant echo as her ears went dull and began to ring at the sound of the shot.

  11

  Danny stared at the man lying face down, bleeding into the earth. From behind the trees he heard them coming. They shouted. Their feet pounded. But nothing they did or said could bring down the mountain. Nothing could wear it away. There was no answer to its summons but one.

  “What have you done?” shouted a man with a shining badge on his chest.

  Danny tilted his head at the cop, trying to understand why he couldn’t see. “I gave him to the mountain. The mountain wanted him and I give him to it.”

  “Put down the weapon!” The woman pointed her own gun at him. She wasn’t ready to do what needed to be done. Not yet.

  Danny raised his pistol to show her how.

  12

  “I.A. is going to call it a clean shoot, Kate,” Captain Wright said, holding out his hand. “But I’m still going to need your piece.” She unclipped the holster from her belt and handed it to him before resting her forehead back on her palms, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. The posture eased her headache, but more than that, it blinded her to the scene around them.

  Still, she couldn’t help but hear when they zipped up Rick’s bag.

  13

  While she waited for the call, Mandy thought about the night
before with her father. Although he looked the same as he always did, somehow he seemed heavier, as if gravity was pulling at him harder than it did anyone else. His normally square shoulders slumped and he stared at his plate, never making eye contact. She thought of asking him what was wrong, but she already knew. He struggled daily to pull himself out of the hole her mother had dug. Some days he got up over the edge of it and the sunlight shone on his face and he was the man he’d been before. Before it all came apart. And then some days she could see, he just lay down, deep in the pit, and prayed for the rain to come and fill it.

  She’d made small talk about her classes and professors, about her plans for the summer, and all the places she’d love to see. She talked about spending a semester abroad in Spain or maybe southern Italy—somewhere warm. Somewhere they grew lemon trees on apartment balconies and she could tour vineyards and taste wine out of the barrel. She told him she was changing her major to Agricultural Sciences. “You know, since U. Brattle doesn’t have a Viticulture and Enology department like UC Davis does down in California.” He’d encouraged her to transfer to a school with a wine program, but she’d refused, saying that U. Brattle was good enough for her undergrad. She’d get a summer job on a vineyard and then do her masters at one of the big wine schools after that.

  “Why don’t you go now?” he’d asked. “Why put it off?” She told him she wanted to stay close to home for a while—another couple of semesters at least.

  “I’d miss you too much, Daddy,” she said, squeezing his hand. He’d smiled and squeezed back. His shoulders straightened a little and he looked her in the eyes as she told him something else meaningless while they finished up dinner.

  That night, he hugged and kissed her goodnight before she went to bed in the room where she’d grown up. She lay there in the dark wishing he’d come to tuck her in like he had when she was little. He used to pull the covers as tight as he could. Her mom would complain and say that he was going to suffocate her, but Mandy always giggled and lay flat, letting the covers get tighter and tighter like a hug. And he would bend down and kiss her forehead and say “Sleep tight,” and they would both laugh.

  She clutched her phone now, afraid that she’d miss the call from the police saying that they’d found him and that he was all right. That he was just out for a hike and got lost and it was all a big misunderstanding. You knew all the time that you were going to write that fucking note and leave. Just like Mom. She looked out her window at the mountain. It called and people answered, leaving everyone they loved—that loved them—behind. She hoped that what Skip had told her so long ago about entropy was true. That the wind and the rain would wear it down and leave it flat someday. I hope it never stops raining here. Not for a billion years.

  She walked back into her bedroom and slipped under the loose covers. Waiting.

  THE TEXAS CHAINSAW BREAKFAST CLUB

  OR

  I DON’T LIKE MONDAYS

  She dreamed.

  Shopping malls and parties at Blair’s house with that boy she liked—Sean from the wrestling team—blended together the way one’s surroundings changed in a dream, seamless and natural in shifting absurdity. Allison glided from a neon setting to pastel to a muted room down a passage that reminded her of the time her parents had taken her on a tour of the Paris catacombs. How could she have gone from Ralph Lauren to the underworld without noticing? Why was it getting so dark? Nobody would be able to see how cute her blouse was if the lights were out. It smelled like her grandpa’s cellar. Mold and rust and rotting wooden boxes.

  Why are we going downstairs? Your parents don’t mind if we toke up in your room. Blair? Blair, can you hear me? Can anyone hear me?

  No one answered.

  He dreamed.

  The shield on his arm weighed him down, but penetrating the underworld required armor, no matter how burdensome. Slaying dragons, saving damsels, fulfilling the quest, these things weren’t for the faint of heart or weak of limb. They required fortitude and drive. The kind of heroic attributes Reginald the White brought to the campaign. A paladin’s heart beat under his cuirasse.

  Hey, queer ass! Make a saving throw.

  It’s a cuirass. You know, a breast plate.

  Whatever. Roll, queer ass.

  The lights in the library rec-room dimmed as the twenty-sided die tumbled away from his hand, bouncing from eleven to nine to fifteen, coming to rest beyond his reach, beyond his ability to alter the outcome of chance. No matter the number of plusses on his blade and his gauntlets, there it was pointing at him like the arrow loosed from a goblin’s bow.

  You rolled a one, loser. You failed your saving throw.

  Reginald the White’s world went black.

  She didn’t dream.

  Neither did she sleep. Leslie scooted as far back as she could. The sharp stones jutting from the uneven rock wall jabbed into her back as she scuttled away from the dim circle of light in the middle of the room. A lone bulb in an aluminum cone shone down on the iron ring bolted to the floor. The metal cuff bit painfully into her ankle as she reached the end of her chain. Her gauze skirt pulled and the rough floor caught at her tights. She didn’t care about her clothes or her back. If she didn’t get out of the shackle she’d end up like the guy hanging from the hook at the opposite end of the cellar.

  With his head slumped down, the boy’s blond bangs hung in his face, but Leslie could still tell that it was John Wilden at the end of the hook. He was the one who’d cut the sleeves off his letterman’s jacket so everyone could see his stee-roided arms better. His body didn’t twitch or sway or do anything but hang there, still. Although she couldn’t see it, she imagined the hook piercing through his back into his ribs, through a lung, drowning him in his own blood. He dangled at the end of a short chain, a long line of crimson slobber hanging from his lips like a drooling dead idiot.

  She looked around, imagining her escape. Even if she got out of the cuff, where would she go? No bulkhead opening led out into the back yard. There was no low, slender window to break and yell at some passerby on the sidewalk. The only way out of the basement was through the locked door at the top of the stairs. The way she presumed she’d been brought in. She couldn’t remember, but it was the only way that made sense.

  To her left, the dweeb was stirring. He snuffled like a baby, blowing up a puff of dirt from the floor that made him gag when he tried to take another breath. Rolling onto his back, the boy rubbed at his eyes with balled fists while he coughed the rest of the cellar dust out of his throat. Leslie wanted to hiss at him to shut up. Be quiet or he’ll come back! Instead, she waited for him to fully come around before trying to communicate.

  She tried to shrink deeper into the shadows, to be invisible, but the cuff and taut chain kept her leg straight. Four other chains extended away in compass directions from the center ring: one to the dweeb, one to the sleeping princess opposite him, and two more yet to be attached. Leslie figured one of those might have been meant for the jock. She’d been awake for a while though and he’d always been hanging from the hook. If he ever had a place in the circle, it was before she’d come to.

  “Where the hell—”

  “Shh!” Leslie hissed, leaning forward, hoping it’d seem more insistent. The dweeb stared at her with a look of stupid disbelief on his face as he carefully sat up. His mouth hung open the way it always did. She’d seen him walking down the halls of Shermerville High, mouth gaping like he was trying to catch flies—as her grandfather would say—occasionally sighing as he tried to catch his breath from the exertion of being upright. Except he probably has asthma. He breathes through his mouth because it’s hard for him to get enough air in his lungs. He’s gasping, not sighing. He’ll probably die from all the mold and dust down here way before it’s his turn on a hook.

  The boy began panting and looking around frantically for the pack that always seemed to be growing out of his back like some space parasite—the evil intelligence that controlled his brain and made him obsess over knigh
ts and wizards and fantasy shit instead of being normal like everybody else. Well, normal like the princess and Wilden. People like Leslie and the dweeb . . . they were something else. Not normal.

  Leslie snapped her fingers twice. The dweeb turned his panicked face toward her. She hunched her shoulders and with a hand up by her cheek pointed toward the workbench at the end of the basement. Sitting on it, below the jock’s Chuck Taylors was the dweeb’s bag. All of his shit was spread out, gaming books and pencils and a couple of little felt bags she figured had dice and maybe those little pewter figures, and—there it was!—his inhaler sitting in a puddle of drooled-out blood and spit.

  “My Albuterol!”

  He scrambled toward the table, but his chain snapped tight, stopping him long before he got close enough to reach it. He tugged at the restraint a couple of times before letting out a long wheezing sob. Leslie wrapped her arms around the leg she could pull up and hid her face, waiting for the sound of steps overhead.

  “Shit! I need that,” the dweeb said. His rasping breath punctuated his statement better than a line of desperately drawn exclamation points. “I can’t breathe.”

  If you can talk, you can breathe, dork.

  Finally, the princess began to wake up. She held her head like she had a hangover. She probably did. Leslie’s own skull pounded like she’d killed a bottle of vodka. Of course, she hadn’t. Whatever their captor used to knock them out didn’t leave a person feeling fresh and well-rested. Try CHLOROFORM! All the hangover and none of the fun. At least the princess wasn’t hyperventilating and freaking out. Yet.