A noise emerges from the woods, a terrible dragging sound, and as the children slip back into the dark edges of the trees, a man emerges. He never steps into the moonlight but I can tell he is large, over six feet tall, and strong. He has the shoulders of a man who spends hours using them, and strapped to his back are the woodsman’s tools: pick-ax, shovel, handsaw, hammers.
Behind him is a sleigh, or a wagon, on which a wrapped object lies. The object is not long, maybe four feet, but something deep within me recognizes its general shape and my stomach clenches in a tight fist of fear.
He stops and for the first time in all my dreams, he looks around the meadow as though he senses my presence.
For a moment, I think he doesn’t see me. I exhale and step backward but my bare feet hit a twig and in the still of the forest, the noise is a crack of thunder. I freeze and the Woodsman’s head slowly turns toward me.
My blood turns to ice in my veins.
My bowels loosen and I tighten my thighs to staunch the flow of urine that I’m about to release. Fear like I’ve never felt before runs through every nerve, every cell in my body, and I sense a scream building in my throat.
“It’s too late,” he whispers. “You’re already dead.”
At six o’clock the angry buzz of the alarm clock jolted me awake. I sat up. The room was cold and quiet; Seamus must have gone downstairs for a sip of water or to commandeer a patch of early morning sunlight on the living-room floor. As I rolled out of bed, my bare leg brushed against a damp spot in the middle of the mattress. Puzzled, I leaned over it and the sharp smell of urine hit me.
I’d wet the bed.
I threw the sheets in the washing machine and left a voice message with Dr. Pabst’s office. He was helpful when I saw him before; perhaps he’d have some new insight into my dreams. I reached a secretary who was delighted to tell me that there had been a cancellation and Pabst could see me that morning.
I tried to ignore the shame that crept over my body when I thought about the wet spot in my bed. Fear is a natural human emotion. My bladder was just full; it was the Peanut’s fault. Maybe I had a UTI.
I told myself these things but I knew who had caused the bed-wetting.
It was the Woodsman.
I showered and made breakfast and let Seamus out into the backyard. In the morning light, from my perch on the patio, I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I thought about crossing the yard and checking the far side of the fence, but my feet were bare and the grass was wet with dew. Seamus did his business and then came right back in, with none of the whining he’d done the night before.
Before I left for the day, I checked my personal e-mail and immediately wished I hadn’t. There was only one message, from Brody, laced with expletives and apologies. The team had run into a snag in Denali; some of their core samplings had degraded and were useless. They would need to re-create most of their research, from the beginning. It didn’t make sense to return to the mainland, and then go back, so they were staying, possibly as long as another three weeks.
Brody wasn’t coming home anytime soon. Celeste Takashima’s perfect face, with her dark almond-shaped eyes and thick black hair, flashed in my mind. Their affair had been brief and intense and was long over. At least that’s what Brody had told me. But he’d also told me that part of his contract included a clause by which he had the ability to vet his team, and avoid ever having to work with the woman again.
Some clause.
“Stay cool, Gemma,” I whispered to myself. “You don’t know that she’s up there.”
I told myself that but I didn’t believe it.
Chapter Eighteen
Dr. Dean Pabst hid a keen intellect and a wicked sense of humor behind an extra two hundred pounds and a bad toupee. Despite the old saying, the world does judge books by their covers, and as his weight increased over the years, Pabst lost a number of clients, clients who felt that a man who couldn’t control his own size certainly couldn’t speak to their issues of self-control and life skills.
Pabst was good, though, and I trusted him. He was a keeper of secrets, of dark feelings and tangled thoughts that, in the sanctity of his office, tumbled from my mind and freed up space for the good things. It was strange to admit, but Pabst knew me better than anyone else on this planet.
The doctor settled into the easy chair behind his desk and I took my customary seat in the armchair that faced him. I hadn’t been to his office in a few years and I was pleased to see not much had changed. The spider plants in the windowsill looked healthy; the books on the shelves that lined the wall remained dust-free and orderly. The blue carpet was worn and the temperature was pleasant. It was a neutral space conducive to confession and healing.
Pabst began. “He’s returned, has he? I was afraid he might. Gemma, I fear the Woodsman will never leave you, not until you put some distance between the children’s murders and yourself.”
“I know, I know. That’s what you said the last time we spoke. But I can’t find the distance. I don’t know how.”
I hated how whiny I sounded. Pabst had worked so hard to get me in the habit of detailed journaling, diary therapy so to speak, and it was no one’s fault but mine that I let that practice slip. Life has a funny way of waylaying our best-laid plans; life keeps us busy in ways that seem, at the time, more important than self-care and introspection.
Maybe that was just an excuse, though. Maybe I was too afraid to take such deep, continuous searches into my own psyche.
Pabst stared at me over eyeglasses that were small on his pudgy face. He hadn’t worn glasses before; and I realized that Pabst had to be approaching seventy years old. Between his age and his weight, I feared for his health.
He said, “You do know how, Gemma. You’ve got all the tools, right there, in that toolbox we set up in your mind. You don’t give yourself enough credit, my dear. You never have.”
I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat. “Dean, I thought we had done it. I really did; he was gone for so long. I don’t understand why he’s come back, now.”
“Gemma, you do know why the Woodsman has returned. You are afraid to say the words out loud, because that will give truth to them. But you must,” Pabst said.
I nodded. “It’s the baby. This little girl who’s not even here yet has changed everything. She’s called the Woodsman back, and this time he’s brought friends, dead children who seem to think I’m the only damn person who can help them. Why is that, do you think?”
Pabst shrugged. “It’s not meant for us to understand the ways of the dead, Gemma. That’s not how the world works. You told me once that you’ve never cried for your parents. And yet you are unable to stop crying, in a sense, for the McKenzie boys. Often, it is easier for us to grieve for those we don’t know, than it is to grieve for those we love most.”
“My grandmother used to beg me to cry. She said she couldn’t stand seeing me so cold; that it wasn’t natural. But I never felt cold, Dean. I didn’t. I felt there was a dam inside me, and if I cried one tear, the whole thing would burst. That’s not cold, that’s self-control. That’s a good thing.”
Pabst nodded. “This is very normal, especially for children. Instead of allowing the grief to heal their pain, they direct their energy toward strengthening that dam, building it up higher and stronger. At some point, though, and that point is different for everyone, the dam becomes too high, and too strong.”
“And you think that is what’s happened to me?”