16

Sylvia

There are no straight roads through Big Woods. It’s hard to tell where you are and where you’ve been once you start driving into it. The roads are narrow and twisty, the sunlight snuffed out by the trees. Some of the street signs have been knocked clean off; others dangle from their metal rusty poles like loose teeth, so it can feel disorienting, like you’re driving through a maze.

After the children’s bodies were found, I drove out there; I had to see it for myself. I had never been out there, never had a reason to go out there, and didn’t know all that much about it.

As best I could tell, half of it is in one county and half of it is in another. Oil and gas leases make up most of the area, but there is also private land with long driveways that wind through thick brambles. Some have mailboxes and others just have threatening signs tacked onto trees that say things like No Trespassing: We Don’t Dial 911.

And who knows who actually owns what piece of land. It’s just a tangled net of forest that stretches between Starrville and Longview, pulling the two towns together.

There was that single article in the paper—Is Big Woods a Haven for Devil Worshippers?—but other than that, the police didn’t release much information about where the bodies were found.

The day I went out there was in summer. I parked next to a gas well and started walking through a scorched field. Locusts scattered in the fried grass; their buzzing gave me chills. I tried to imagine where the bodies could’ve been found, but it’s twenty thousand acres deep and when I heard the low rumble of a truck pass by not once, but twice, I ran as fast as I could back to my station wagon. My heart was hammering as I fumbled with the keys, but I managed to get inside and slam down the beige lock.