The Spirit Wood (12 page)

She rose to her feet and brushed the dirt from the
knees of her jeans.
Still, it's an awfully pretty little sanctuary
,
she thought. So secluded. So unexpected. So quiet. The breeze, she noted, had died down—or else it simply couldn't penetrate here. The leaves had ceased stirring; they hung motionless on the branches. The dandelions, forming a delicate and decorative border to the glade, stood equally still—bright yellow in the sunshine, but utterly still. Meg suddenly noticed that there weren't any bumblebees here either. Or flies. Or, now that she listened, any birds. All through the woods she'd heard, and seen, blue jays, robins, sparrows. Here, there were none. And no squirrels either. No sign of life whatsoever. No sound. No movement.

Diogenes barked, once; his ears were back. He looked at Meg, then into the surrounding trees. Keeping his tail to the burnt circle, he swiveled slightly, like a radar screen tracking a moving object. Meg looked in the same direction, but all she could see was the dense wall of foliage, black branches, dark green leaves. Dodger barked again, pranced nervously in place. Meg felt the strangest little shiver, as if she'd just been chilled by a cool wind—but there was no wind here. She rubbed the goose bumps that had broken out on her bare arms. She strained to see what it was Diogenes was reacting to. He had turned almost entirely in place now, and she looked behind her.

There! Had she seen it, or hadn't she—a black shape, low to the ground, shooting past? It was so fast, so fragmentary, she couldn't be sure it hadn't been a trick of the light, or even a speck in her eye. She looked harder, saw nothing, and at the same time found herself drawing back from the trees, closer to the center of the glade. She felt the gritty edge of the burnt circle under her sneakers. And again, that chill—even with the hot sunlight filling the glade. She had never known anything to be so silent, so preternaturally still. It was as if all sound, all activity, all life,
had fled this spot; the air was warm and terribly close. High, high above her, too far away for any sound to reach her, she saw a plane, a tiny black cross, passing slowly across the bright blue sky. She tried to draw some comfort from that, from the ordinariness of a jet, probably bound for Kennedy airport, flying overhead, going about its everyday business. There was nothing to be alarmed about, she tried to tell herself. Nothing unusual was going on here; there was nothing to fear. She'd go back up to the house, get herself an ice-cold drink, find Peter—probably back in his study now, wherever he'd been—and forget the whole thing.

Diogenes barked again and pumped his tail; he was crouching low now, panting, his muzzle swinging to and fro uncertainly.

“It's okay, boy,” Meg said, as calmly as she could.

“It's okay. We're gonna go on back to the house now.” But when she reached out one hand to take him by the collar, he pulled away in a frenzy, whining and twisting in all directions. Meg had never seen him like this; he was terrified. He backed into the very heart of the circle. And then she felt it herself—as keenly as if she'd put her finger to a hot iron. There
was
something just a few yards away, and it was studying them, sizing them up—even, perhaps, hunting them. She knelt down, instinctively, beside the dog; she could feel the blood pounding in her chest and temples, felt a tightness in her legs, the urge to run. But where? She frantically scanned the lifeless wall around them. Where was there a break, an aperture? Where was the—Two black eyes, hard and glistening like wet stones, met her own. Staring through a tiny gap in the leaves, close to the ground. Around them, more blackness. Hair. The eyes were large, unblinking. They held her gaze, coldly, steadily. Diogenes, either seeing or sensing them, suddenly grew very quiet, laid his head flat against the ground, his paws gathered in under him. The sunlight, as unrelieved as that stare, pressed
like a warm hand against the back of Meg's neck. She blinked; where the other eyes had been, there was now only shadow. And a sound, like a whistle, or the call of a bird she'd never before heard. It echoed through the woods, seemed to sweep around them, coursing through the trees, glancing off the leaves. It was impossible to tell exactly where it came from. But its sweetness was also somehow sinister, its purpose too unclear, its timbre too unfamiliar. Dodger's ears pricked up; he whimpered. There was a snap of twigs cracking underfoot and the sound of brush being pulled aside, cleared away. Whatever had been watching them no longer feared discovery. It was moving toward the glade. Meg saw a dark shape, roughly man-sized, stir behind the leaves, and a flash of something red. Then another shape, behind it and to one side. Diogenes, the hackles on his neck rising, growled, barked a warning. A twisted bough was yanked away by unseen hands, and suddenly one of Nikos's dogs, its ears straightened back and its teeth bared, jumped the low shrubbery and froze. Meg's hands instinctively rose to cover her throat; what could she use as a weapon? She was afraid to take her eyes from the dog but needed a stick, a rock, anything to defend herself with. In her pocket she felt a set of car keys—could she bunch them together? Stab with them? Diogenes inched in front of her; the mastiff let out a low prolonged growl, thrust its muzzle farther forward. Its teeth were ivory white and wet as its black eyes. The fur on Dodger's body bristled out; his head was lowered, his shoulders hunched. The mastiff snapped its jaws, and a thin rope of saliva slid to the ground. Meg clutched the key ring in her closed fist, the keys jutting out between her fingers. She slowly rose; the violets in her hair tumbled down.

“Fritz! Stay!”

There was a crashing in the brush behind the dog, and Nikos, his hat askew on his head, his red necker-
chief knotted around his throat, leapt sideways, his legs scissoring, into the glade. “Stay, Fritz!” and the mastiff dropped its ears. Another figure lumbered into view behind Nikos, hanging back in the shade. A white T-shirt. Angelos.

Nikos took the dog by the back of its neck and kneaded the skin. He studied Meg with a sour, sleepy expression, as if he'd just been disturbed from a nap. She was still squeezing the key ring, her entire body vibrating. Angelos moved more into the sunlight, his broad belly swelling the shirt. Nikos straightened his hat, glanced around the glade as if to be sure no damage had been done. Then he looked back at Meg, and his eyes, she noticed, appeared slivered, like a cat's, against the sun.

“What are you doing here?”

Meg started to answer, but her mouth was too dry; she had to swallow first.

“This is no place to be,” Nikos continued. “There's nothing here,” and his eyes, she thought, flickered for a split second over the burnt circle. “You could have ... the dogs, they run free in here,” and it was only then that Meg noticed Angelos was holding the other mastiff, Fifi, by the scruff. “And that dog,” he said, pointing with one hairy arm at Dodger, “he should be tied up during the afternoon. At the house somewhere. Not running loose.”

Meg felt her fear converting to fury, the adrenaline in her veins swiftly changing direction. She thrust the keys back into her pocket. “I'll go wherever I want,” she said, defiantly. “I don't need you telling me what I can and can't do around here. And if anybody's getting tied up, it's going to be those two.” She glared at Fritz, who, looking as innocent as a puppy now, yawned and licked Nikos's hand.

“Come on, Diogenes.” She strode purposefully past Nikos and the mastiff, over the low-lying bushes, then past Angelos and his own charge. Diogenes kept his
tail well in and occasionally looked back, to make sure they were out of danger, as Meg plowed her determined way through the woods. She cut as straight a line as she could, ignoring two separate intersecting pathways, and emerged a few minutes later on the lower slope of the lawn, not very far from where they'd first entered. The sun was as bright as ever, though somewhat lower in the sky. A gray squirrel scampered, stop and go, across the grass; Diogenes gave chase. She mopped the back of her neck, clammy still, with the collar of her shirt. Here, the afternoon breeze was blowing strongly. A bumblebee whizzed past her nose. The world seemed to have come to life again.

Halfway to the house, she saw Leah pop through an open pair of the French doors and hurry around one side of the fountain. She had one hand shielding her eyes from the sun and appeared to be looking for something. She spotted Meg, stopped, then, pulling her long, loose skirt away from her legs, moved quickly down the lawn toward her. For a second, Meg wondered,
Has something happened to Peter?

But Leah's first question was “Are you all right?” Why was she asking, Meg thought; she couldn't know what had just happened in the glade.

“Yes, I'm okay.” No point in trying to tell the story now. “Were you looking for me? Is there something wrong?” Leah looked worried.

“No,” she said, glancing over Meg's shoulder, down the lawn. “Nothing's wrong.” She looked back at Meg. “You were in the woods, weren't you?” and Meg wondered how she knew. “You have twigs in your hair,” she said, delicately removing one caught in the hair above Meg's temple. Where the violets had been. Then, less urgently, she said, “You had a phone call, from Mrs. Simon. She left her number.”

“Is that why you were looking for me?”

“Yes, that's all,” Leah replied. “I thought you would want to know.”

Meg thanked her and thought for just a second of Mrs. Constantine's admonition; what, she wondered, was Mrs. Simon calling about? Not another party invitation, she hoped. Then, dismissing it from her mind, she asked if Leah had seen Peter anywhere. “I think I've lost track of him.”

“Oh, he's up at the house. In the library.”

“Right now he is?”

“Yes,” Leah said with certainty. “Is broiled chicken all right for dinner tonight?”

Meg said that was fine; Leah asked as a kind of courtesy. Meg always agreed to whatever she suggested. At the house, Leah excused herself, went through the swinging door into the kitchen. Meg climbed the main stairs; Byron's door was closed. In her own room, the door to the study was ajar; from the light within, she could tell that the curtains were drawn and the reading lamp on. She rapped gently on the door, pushing it open. Peter was sitting in the green leather armchair, absorbed in a book. He hadn't heard her knock, and for a moment she just watched him—his curly black hair shining in the center of the pool of light, his bare left arm, the shirtsleeve rolled to the elbow, propping the book in his lap. He never favored that arm anymore; the muscles had regained their tone, and the skin had lost its dead-white pallor. Now, beneath the light covering of fine black hair, the skin glowed with the same tawny color as the rest of his body. He turned a page.

“Peter?”

“Jesus,” he said, swiveling in the seat, “you scared me. I didn't hear you come in.” He let the book flop closed. “You been down at the boathouse?”

“For a while,” she said, and something in her voice, the note of exhaustion, or muted appeal, made him
push his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose and look more closely at her. “You sound pooped,” he said.

“I am.” She came around to the front of his chair, and when he stretched out his legs across the ottoman, she sat down in his lap with one arm loosely draped across the back of the chair. There was the faintest scent of something flowery in the air. “Are you wearing a new after-shave?” she asked, and Peter, seeming puzzled, said, “No, I'm not wearing any at all. Why?,”

“Because it smells nice in here. Like cologne, or perfume.”

Peter waited a beat, then said, “Maybe that's something Leah was wearing. She was in here a few minutes ago, helping me find the key to this bookcase.” Meg saw that the shutters to the locked case were now standing open. “Gramps had it stashed behind the frame of that painting. Pretty ingenious, huh?”

“Very,” Meg said in a carefully noncommittal tone. “What made you decide to get it opened today?”

“I don't know. Just curiosity, I guess. Seemed like as good a time as any. Guess what was inside.”

“Books.”

“Ah, but guess the kind,” he said, gently squeezing her knee. “Erotica. To put it mildly. I haven't had the chance to go through them all—half the spines are unmarked—but so far I've found everything from Aubrey Beardsley and Rowlandson's etchings to really weird stuff in French and Italian. And a lot of these books are a hundred and fifty to two hundred years old. There's quite a collection of the stuff here. Gramps was a connoisseur.”

“Another nice thing to know about him,” Meg said, expecting Peter to smile and make a rejoinder of his own. But he didn't—it was as if she'd just made a crack about the Simons’ party. He just let it pass.

“Did you know Anita Simon called?” she asked.

“Leah mentioned it.”

“I wonder what it's about.” Peter offered no opinion. When he did speak, it was to ask, in a fairly perfunctory way, what she'd been doing that afternoon. Though she'd fully intended to tell him about her frightening episode in the glade, now she found she couldn't do it. She didn't want him to know she'd gone looking for him—and not found him in his study; she didn't know how to tell him about the eerie feeling she'd had in the woods, or the near disaster with the mastiffs. She wasn't sure of the reception the story would get, and she didn't want to risk getting the wrong one. Not now. Not when she was just beginning to feel out of danger. Instead, she simply mentioned that she'd worked in the boathouse for a while and then taken Diogenes for a walk. “Or rather, he took
me
for one.”

“As usual,” Peter said, and Meg could sense that he wanted to be left alone again. She wanted to open up the subject of his mother's call, to give him a chance to talk about it if he wanted to, but that, too, seemed better left unmentioned. She slid out of his lap and, before leaving, asked, in as casual a tone as she could muster, how his work was going. He had reopened the book on his lap—was it one from the locked collection?—and without looking up, he said, “Fine. It's going fine. Would you close the door after you?” The typewriter, she noticed just before pulling the door shut, still had its cover on.