There’s a pine tree with a trunk so wide that three people could hide behind it, about a hundred feet from the Thorsons’ house. It’s far from the road, so no one driving by will catch me in their headlights or spot my old blue bicycle buried in a patch of shrubs.
The bark of the pine is rough, jagged, gnawed like a sheet of rusted metal. Gluey sap trails from the knotholes. If I press against it, it will rip out strands of my long hair.
The tree doesn’t want me here. It would like to scratch me, sting me. It would like me not to be so close. The woods want me gone.
I peer out from around the trunk.
There’s enough moonlight pushing through the hazy sky that I can see everything. The woods. The lawn. The low, shingled house. I can see his bedroom window.
It’s on the very end of the house, the only window in the short stretch of wall. There are curtains, gray ones, but they’re almost never closed. On quiet nights I can hear him practicing. Composing. Fractured bones of music tumbling through the window.
There’s no music now.
First he’ll shower. Sometimes he’ll eat, if his mother talks him into it. Then he’ll head to his room. He’ll pet his cat. He doesn’t always turn the lights on. But I know when he’s there.
I shift my foot on the thick pine needles. Inch forward for a better view.
The woods watch us both.
A crunch of tires. Voices in the trees. Car doors slam.
Someone has parked on the shoulder of the road, out of sight of the Thorsons’ house. I can hear them, two, three, four of them, their running feet on the pine needles as light as a family of deer.
Gold limbs and sleek brown hair flashing past me. Frankie. Her friends scamper in the trees to my right. One of them holds up a glass bottle, threatening to splash it. All of them laughing. The woods hold their breath.
I crouch beside the big pine. They don’t notice me.
Frankie flits to the bedroom window. I watch her climb onto a stump, tap at the glass. A second later the window rises.
Anders stands inside. I can see the outlines of his face, moon-blue planes and shadows.
I can’t hear their words. They don’t talk long.
No, I think. Anders. Don’t go. Don’t go.
Frankie leaps off the stump. She runs back into the trees, where someone else is shrieking, “Stop it, you lunatic!” and laughing.
“Let’s go,” says Frankie’s voice. “I want to drive around for a while.”
I take a breath. He’s not leaving.
“What, am I just your chauffeur?” says a guy’s voice.
“Not just my chauffeur,” says Frankie. “Come on.”
Someone else laughs. Voices evaporating. Slam of car doors. Tires whirring away, away, until the road is quiet and empty again, and the woods come back to life.
They lean closer now. They whisper to the long, low house. They stroke it with their shadows.
I keep my eyes fixed on the window.
Then it starts.
The music.
Nothing is born already finished. Already perfect. Nothing should be.
But this is. Every time.
I hold my breath.
They’re here. The dark things.
No one is around to watch me, to notice what happens to my eyes when I let myself see. No one to notice how they burn.
I scan the woods.
Dark things are everywhere. In the shadows. In every trembling needle on every pine tree. Darkness slithers from their bodies, from their too-long, crooked limbs. They’re right here.
But so am I.
I stand perfectly still. Until the music stops, and afterward. Half an hour. An hour. The moon combs through the branches above me, reaching down with tiny filaments of light.
The window stays shut. The light stays out.
At last I feel the woods shift. The weave unravels. The night sky sifts through. The trees lean back, silent again.
Anders is asleep.
He’s safe for tonight.
For a sliver of a minute, I let myself imagine him in his bed, cotton sheets against his skin, his eyes shut, his lips relaxed, apart—
I shove myself away from the tree.
I yank my bike out of the bushes. It’s a very used Schwinn, colored sky blue with matte house paint. Its wheels tick softly as I climb on. I pedal through the woods, weaving between trees, letting the branches touch but not catch me, letting the moonlight lead me back to the road.
The road is deserted. Still, I stick to the pavement’s very edge, balancing the bike on the weedy shoulder. At County N, I turn.
Our road is narrower. Twistier. There’s nothing on it, not for two more turns. Nothing but Aunt Mae’s place.
Aunt Mae’s place is an old farmhouse, although the woods have already taken back whatever fields once surrounded it. It’s pale blue and very used, just like my bike. There are no lights on inside. I leave the bike on the porch and unlock the front door with my key.
Just down the short hallway, in the living room, the TV mumbles to itself. Faint pulses of blue light wash the walls. Aunt Mae leaves the TV on almost all the time. For company. She rarely has any other kind. Now and then someone will leave a bottle or some home baking in a bundle on the porch. Every once in a while, an old lady will drive out for a visit, the kind of old lady who carries a rosary and a bottle of holy water and saints’ medals in her purse, whose eyes never quite focus, who asks Aunt Mae to sit and pray with her. And sometimes kids from town come out here, too. They smash pumpkins on the driveway. Toss toilet paper into the trees. Leave nylon witches’ hats on the mailbox.
But now she has me.
I tiptoe far enough down the hall that I can make out the shape of Aunt Mae on the couch, her head on the armrest, her body covered in blankets. I watch until I see her eyelids flicker, her chest rise and fall. Then I head the other way, quietly, into the kitchen.
The kitchen smells of lemon balm and rust, with a light layer of mildew. I pull one of the empty jam jars from the cupboard and run the tap until the water is slightly less than warm. I drink. Wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. It was a long night.
It isn’t quite over.
I climb the narrow staircase. My room is to the left, above the kitchen. The eaves are low. Slanted walls, two windows, iron-frame twin bed. On the dresser, a row of ten votive candles in little glass cups. I strike a match on a sandpaper strip and light them all.
On the wall above the candles hangs a picture. It’s smaller than a postcard, smaller than a photograph printed at a drugstore. It was posted on a metal music blog last fall, taken by someone with a decent camera. I printed it out at the public library.
In the photograph Anders is onstage. Lips parted. Eyes almost shut. The fluttering wicks turn his image to oily black and gold.
I close my eyes.
Anders. Anders. Anders.
I repeat his name like a chant. Like a song of my own.
Anders. Anders. Anders.
We’ve lasted one more night.
Around the house, the woods creak and whisper and groan.
But they are shut outside. Anders is asleep, in his own quiet house. And I am here.
I blow the candles out. I fold back the blue cotton quilt with its yarn knots and its fading flowers, untie and pull off my shoes. Then, at last, I climb into bed. The woods will whisper to me all night long.