Boy from the Woods (9781311684776) (26 page)

Julia
sat
down heavily at the kitchen table,
the book in front of her.

When she
opened the diary, Anne’s childlike handwriting stared up at her
from the pages. Julia wiped away a lonely tear, clenching her
fists. The police just
had
to find her sister, and maybe
she’d discover some clues in here to help them do that. Quickly,
she flipped through the pages until something in the margin caught
her eye. It was a whole string of hearts, connected by an elegant
line that looked like a vine. The hearts were colored in with green
felt pen. Julia’s heart sped up as she started to read the
decorated diary page.

“Me and Sabine started our work on the tree house, and when
she went home I stayed behind to walk a bit deeper into the
forest.
And something
happened there. It was like a dream! There was a beautiful boy
there, sitting on a tree trunk. He started to talk to me and he
said he thought I looked beautiful too! He said I look like a
princess. But I’m not supposed to tell anyone I saw him there. I
think he might be the Prince of the Forest!! Is he actually
real?”

“So today I asked him whether he was the
prince of the woods, and he told me I had guessed right. I can’t
believe it! He says the portal to his palace is somewhere in this
forest, and that is why I can’t tell anyone about him or about our
meetings. He’s trying to hide the entrance to Fairyland so no one
else can find it. Before I went home, he danced with me and he even
kissed me, just like in the storybooks. I’m so in love!!!”

“He gave me some mushrooms today. He said
that if I ate from them, I’d be able to see the fairies living on
the other side of the portal for just a few seconds. It was so
weird. First I saw all kinds of beautiful and wonderful things, but
afterwards I had to throw up. I guess it’s because I had to come
back to the human world.”

“I sat in his lap with his arms around me,
and I ate another one of those fairy mushrooms. It felt like I was
floating. He said he’d make me his princess when he returns to his
palace. Every day he tells me I’m pretty!! He’s my dream
prince.”

“He was angry with me. I showed him a
drawing I did of his face, and he tore it up. And then he yelled at
me, saying I should never tell anyone about him or the entrance to
his realm because something terrible would happen if I did. I was
planning to tell Julia about him, but now I’m scared. Why was he so
angry? Isn’t he in love with me anymore?”

Julia’s
stomach turned
as she pushed the diary
across the table and leaned back in her chair. This was so
perverted and
wrong
on all levels that she couldn’t stop trembling.
So it really
was
that blond boy she’d met in the woods. That sick
pedophile had touched Anne. He had held her in his arms, kissed
her, fed her shrooms. He’d lied to her so he could turn into her
fairytale prince. And she, Julia, had innocently told Anne this
very morning that the prince couldn’t hurt her and couldn’t force
her to keep seeing him if she didn’t want to.

And suddenly,
she remembered the phone call Anne had received while she was in
the bathroom.
Maybe it hadn’t been one of
her classmates at all. Maybe it had been that boy, telling her to
come see him in the forest. So that’s why Anne had seemed so
anxious and insecure.

Julia
startled when the doorbell rang. Fighting back
her tears, she got up to let the cops in. She had to be coherent
for their interrogation. The diary could be used as evidence, too,
so it was a good thing she’d found it.

But it wasn’t
the police. When she opened the door, Thorsten was standing there.
“H-hey,” she stammered. “Weren’t you supposed to work until
three?”

He stepped inside.
“I clocked out a bit early. I was worried about
you.”
He cast her an inquisitive look. “And rightly
so. You look terrible. Have you talked to Anne yet?”

Hearing her sister’s name
was too much.
Julia burst out in
tears.
“No,” she wailed. “Anne is gone.
She’s disappeared. And I’m so scared that this
boy may have hurt her.”

“Hold on.
What
boy?”

“The boy from the woods,”
Julia whispered. “The boy she drew.
The
boy she talks about in her diary.” She headed for the kitchen on
trembling legs and showed Thorsten the diary and the sketches,
relating the story about bumping into the mysterious
Legolas-lookalike in the forest, the drawings Anne had made, and
the creepy stories she’d come home with.

“The police
are on their way and
I’m sure they’ll
take the guy in for questioning,” Thorsten reassured her, a grim
look on his face.
“He’ll think twice before bothering
Anne again.
I don’t think he has hurt her
– he wouldn’t dare. He knows she made sketches of him, after
all.”

“I hope
you’re right,” Julia replied dejectedly. She got out her cell –
still no messages.
“But, Thorsten – what
if she
doesn’t
come home?
What am I gonna
do?”

“Let’s give it some
time.”
Thorsten put his arms around her,
rocking her back and forth gently when she started to cry again.
“Just calm down.”

A few minutes
later, the front door swung open and Ms. Gunther stepped inside,
three police officers following in her wake. She looked at her
oldest daughter anxiously. “Anne is still gone?”

Julia blinked
at her mom.
It was time to tell her all
the other things she’d discovered, but she didn’t even know where
to start. Luckily, Thorsten stepped in and showed the police the
diary and the drawings, telling them everything Julia had told him.
He also gave them the address of the mysterious boy in the
sketchbook.

“We’
ll go there and check it
out,” the detective leading the team promised them. “I think I’ll
get out a search warrant immediately. If he’s keeping that little
girl in or around the house somewhere, we’ll find her.”

“Can we come?” Julia asked timidly.

The detective
shook his head. “You don’t want to, really. It won’t be pretty.
I’ll be back here as soon as I
can.”

The police
left and
Ms. Gunther slumped down on the
kitchen bench next to Julia and Thorsten. “I should have paid more
attention to her,” she mumbled vacantly. “I should have been home
more. I shouldn’t have let her wander around alone so
much.”

Julia’s heart
cracked when she heard her mom blaming herself.
Admittedly, she’d thought the very same things herself just
a few days ago, but it wasn’t her mother’s fault this had happened.
Besides, what could she have done differently, anyway? She was a
single mom with two daughters.

“Don’t do
this, M
om,” she whispered, pulling her
closer. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. How were we supposed to know
what was happening in that forest?”

“I’m sorry,” her mom replied, a desperate sob
in her voice.

Thorsten got
up. “I’m gonna ask Sabine what she knows one more time,” he said
determinedly. “Maybe the right questions will jog her memory. My
mother said she knew more about Anne’s wanderings in the
woods.”

Julia looked up.
“Are you coming back?” All of a sudden, she
badly needed his support. He gave her the strength to believe in a
happy ending.

He nodded.
“I’ll be back
soon,” he
promised.

Ms
. Gunther jumped to her feet
and started to bustle around the kitchen, viciously scrubbing all
the countertops with a sponge. “I can’t sit around like this,” she
explained when Julia caught her eye. “I’ll lose my mind if I start
thinking too much.”

Julia smiled
wanly, left the kitchen and sat down on the bottom step of the
stairs
clutching her cell phone. The
first thing she did was call Axel to tell him about the events of
the day.

“What?” he exclaimed
disbelievingly. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.
We were on our way to Moritz’s band practice anyway, so
we’re already on the bus.”

“We?” Julia parroted.

“Yeah, Gaby
and me
. We’ll be there before you know
it, okay?”

When the
doorbell rang, both Julia and her mother almost tripped on their
way to the front door, but it wasn’t the police. Thorsten was
there
, flanked by Sabine. The girl
anxiously looked up at them all. “I didn’t know she was doing
dangerous things,” their youngest neighbor said in a strangled
voice. “She always looked so happy when she came back from the
forest. And she said I shouldn’t tell her secret to
anyone.”

Ms
. Gunther put a consoling hand
on Sabine’s head. “You can’t help it, sweetheart. Why don’t you
tell us now? Tell us all you know about Anne and where she always
went.”

“Well, she said that if I ever stumbled upon
some kind of door in the woods, I shouldn’t go through it, because
it would upset the Prince of the Forest.”

“A
door?”
Julia thought of the portal Anne
had talked about in her diary.

“Yes, that’s what she said. I thought it was
weird. You find doors in houses, and there are no houses in the
woods. I thought she was just telling me about stuff in her story.
I knew she was busy writing and drawing things for it.”

“Isn’t it
possible there’s some abandoned cabin somewhere in the
woods?”
Thorsten suggested.

“No idea,” Julia
replied.
“I’ve never encountered anything
like that, but then again, I mostly stick to the trails when I go
running or biking.”

“Maybe we should go look for her?” Sabine
looked around the circle of grown-ups, her lip trembling.

Thorsten nodded. “I think
we will, but not with you tagging along.
I’m not losing any more little girls to that forest
today.”

Sabine pleaded with her brother, but to no
avail. She sulkily followed him out the door.

It didn’t
take long for Axel and Gaby to show up on their doorstep. Gaby ran
up to her best friend and hugged her tightly as Julia wordlessly
buried her face in Gaby’s dark hair. “Oh my God, Gab, this whole
day is like a nightmare,” she sniffed, barely audible.

Axel hugged his aunt, and they all kept quiet
for a few seconds. Then Julia pulled away from Gaby and took her
and Axel to the kitchen to show them the sketches and the diary.
Meanwhile, her mother made tea for everyone.

“That
sick
fuck
,” Axel spat, shoving the diary across the table when he
was done reading. “You know what? I hope the police lock him up for
the next thirty years. People like this shouldn’t be allowed out
ever again.” He fell silent, his face white as a sheet. Gaby gently
took his hand and pumped it encouragingly, which caused Axel to
slump against her shoulder with a weak smile aimed in her
direction.

Julia
observed her two friends from across the table and felt the ghost
of a smile cross her face. It looked as if yesterday’s movie night
had been good for Gaby and Axel.

When the
d
oorbell rang yet again, it was Detective
Spitzer, who had visited the boy’s house in Eichet, followed by
Thorsten.
The elderly man entered the kitchen, his
face grave.

“So?”
Ms. Gunther looked up at him fretfully.

“We didn’t find Anne.” He
grabbed a chair and sat down heavily.
“We
conducted a house search, but we couldn’t find anything suspicious,
or not much, anyway. We did find some magic mushrooms in the boy’s
bedroom. His name is Andreas Mittelmayer. We took him into custody
for an interrogation at the station, so I’ll keep you up to date
and call you later in the day.” The officer took a minute to drink
from the mug of tea Julia handed him, and then continued in a quiet
voice: “Having said that, we found some other items in the house
that raised our suspicion. Different kinds of chloroform… but Mrs.
Mittelmayer is a vet, so she needs narcotics for her job sometimes.
Besides, you can’t use chloroform to drug someone by surprise.
That’s an urban myth.”

When
D
etective Spitzer had left, the five of
them remained seated at the kitchen table as if stunned.
Anne hadn’t been in Andreas’s house. So where
was
she? Was it possible she was
still roaming the woods?

“Let’s go look for her,”
Thorsten burst out.
“For Anne, or for
that mysterious door she was talking about...
anything
.
We have to take action.”

“I’m going to
phone Gran
dma and Aunt Verena,” Julia’s
mother announced.
She grabbed Julia’s hand in passing.
“Don’t stay out too long, okay? And please take your phone with
you.”

Julia nodded.
She and Thorsten each got their
own
bikes, while Gaby and Axel borrowed Ms. Gunther’s bike to ride it
together. Gaby sat on the baggage rack and tightly held on to Axel,
who was cycling.