“She’s almost done.”
“What?” I asked. “Who?”
“Mara.”
I dismounted my bike and propped it against a moth-haloed lamppost. I
keeled forward with my hands on my knees, panting from the half-mile ride
from Whit’s house to the opposite end of his suburb. I checked my watch, I
was five minutes early.
Why is there a lamp in the woods, my subconscious asked, but I was too
fixated on the boy beside me and the home before me to care. A row of
tightly-sculpted bushes stood belly-to-belly against the entire perimeter
of the house and heavy curtains created a sliver of light in every window
of the first floor. The boy was no older than fourteen, but already sported
a patch of dark whiskers above his lip. “Do you live here?” I asked.
“Shhh!” hissed the boy, then another behind me.
I looked back. Four boys, still as headstones, peeked from behind the tree
trunks. Their eyes were glazed and focused on the back of the two-story
home.
I reached in my pocket, pulled out the newspaper clipping and held it to
the lamplight. “Super-8 camera for sale. Like new. Bag, lens, two rolls of
film included. $40. Call 616-555-9088 for details.” I had scribbled the
address below the number in blocky, boyish handwriting: “557 Sycamore Ave.
Whit’s suburb. 8:30 PM.”
I shoved the paper back in my pocket and addressed the mustached boy as
quietly as possible. “Is this five-five-seven, Sycamore?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
I reeled at the nasty language. My neck prickled and my palms began to
sweat. I nearly leapt on my bike and flew back to Whit’s, but I noticed a
small tape recorder in the boy’s outstretched hand as if he was making an
offering to the home.
I almost asked him what the heck he was recording– but then I heard it; a
song so subtle that it took the boy’s tape player to prioritize my senses.
A girl’s voice; a child. Sweet; high like a songbird without the shrill. It
was a church song. It came from the house.
“T’was grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believed.”
The tiny voice was unencumbered with falsetto or an overzealous vibrato;
gentle, unwavering, innocent... crystalline.
“The Lord has promised good to me.
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.”
The melody didn’t pierce the night, but dissolved into it, giving warmth to
the darkness and calming my racing heart. I found myself in reverent
submission after only two verses, and when a twig snapped behind me, I
hissed, “Shh!”
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.”
Silence. I waited. We all waited. But the song was over.
The night seemed suddenly defiled by the absence of music, as if the
silence itself was injecting a sickness that only another song could cure.
The mustached boy snapped out of his trance. He stopped the recording, held
down the rewind button, then pressed “play” and brought the device to his
ear.
I careened my head and watched as he meandered past the other four boys.
There was movement deeper in the woods–shadows–as if the trees were slowly
multiplying. As my eyes adjusted to the new darkness, I saw them, all of
them, aimless, ghostly, like faceless children lost in Limbo.
I squinted to find my friend. He was twenty steps away and facing a tree.
Again, I narrowed my brow and attempted to distinguish bodies from
branches... then I saw them: wooden planks nailed like ladder rungs to the
trunks of a dozen trees. The mustached boy began to climb, a spindly,
monotonous silhouette, until he disappeared into the canopy of leaves.
One by one the others followed, and when they reached the top, they spread
sideways along the thickest limbs.
Branches rustled and someone screamed. “No!”
“Move over!”
“Get your own dang–”
“Hey, shut the hell up!”
“Shhh!”
“But he–”
“Son of a–” Then a branch snapped and a boy fell–knees and palms first–into
a patch of ferns.
I watched him stand. I watched him slap dust off his pants. Then he grabbed
a wooden rung on a different tree and climbed back to the top.
I looked at the house. In a second-story window–eye-level with the boys–a
light turned on.
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