1
The woods near his home stretched for what seemed like miles. If you weren’t careful, you could get lost. So he was told since the time he was a child, never to stray into the woods. The trees that stood on the edge of his yard were like a border between this world and the world of the forest beyond. A world forbidden to him. A world of magic. A world of wonder. And a world of nightmares.
Now he was no longer a child. And yet the woods still held such a power over him. At times he would stand and stare into them, wondering what was there. What secrets were contained within? There were many to be found.
2
His parents were dead. They died the year before, in a car accident. He inherited the house that was once his home. He had no siblings, and so he was alone, utterly alone. Even before their deaths he was prone to melancholy, passing his time in quiet bouts of sorrow and loneliness. Their deaths seemed foreshadowed by his melancholic nature and so it was that when they died, he was too jaded by the sharp blade of his bleak nature to feel anything at all, except an impenetrable emptiness that could not be filled.
The time spent after their death was done in solitude. He spent most of his days in the house. It was quite large for a family of three. So it was that he remained in this house, this house of brickwork, this house with a wrap around porch and steps that led into a neighborhood of American suburbia.
He had no job. Although he had a college degree, it was of the useless variety. A degree in business would have been better, so said his father. But the son wanted to be a writer. So he did what his parents had hoped he wouldn’t do, he majored in creative writing. And now he had nothing. Except, he did have their fortune.
And he would not always be alone.
3
He owned a dog. A German shepherd to be exact. So in a sense he had someone’s company, but still a dog doesn’t quite compare to the company of other humans.
It was a cold December day when his dog ran into the woods. The woods of his childhood, the woods he was told never to go into. At last as a man, he would do what was forbidden of him.
He called her name. He heard her bark as he walked past the trees that marked the border between his world and the world of the woods. He shouted for her once more.
Before he knew it, he was lost. A blustery wind blew past him. The trees swayed.
He turned and he saw a sight he did not expect. A woman. She sat upon a log, beside a frozen stream. Despite the cold all she wore was a white nightgown. Her hair black, her skin pale, she was attractive, not beautiful, but pretty.
He approached her.
She stared into the distance, seeming not to notice him.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“No,” she answered. “I am alone.”
He thought her response was strange. “Yeah, but what are you doing out here in the cold?”
“I am stuck here. I cannot leave,” she answered.
“Why?” He replied.
“It doesn’t concern you,” she told him.
He supposed it didn’t. “Have you seen my dog?” He asked, changing the subject.
“She’ll be fine. She knows where she comes from,” the woman assured him.
“Oh so you have seen her?”
She nodded. “She’s home. She made her way back. You will find her there.”
“You think so?”
“I am certain of it.”
Somehow in her fragility she was becoming more and more attractive to him. He wanted to know more about her and that was why he sat down beside her.
“Do you live nearby?” he asked.
“I used to.”
“Did you move?”
“No.”
He was confused. He didn’t understand what she meant. She said she used to live nearby, but then she said she hadn’t move. Which was it then? He decided to ignore what she said and to move on.
“What are you doing here?”
“Not living,” she answered.
He was spooked and decided he should be on his way. She seemed not to care.
4
As she had told him, he returned home and there his dog was. She must have backtracked her way out of the woods. He shivered not from the cold but from fear and the feeling of unease he had when he saw her there. The woman knew. What else did she know?
That night he dreamt of the woman. Her face was that of a skull’s. Worms crawled out of her empty eye sockets and she whispered to him, “Help me…”
5
He went back into the woods. He wanted to know more about her. She was there. He knew she would be. She sat on the same log as before. Her nightgown was the same and her gaze as sorrowful as before.
This time, she was the first to speak. “You’re back.”
“I guess I am,” he answered.
“How’s your dog?” she asked.
“She’s fine,” he answered.
“Good. I am glad.”
“Why are you here in this place?” he asked.
“Because I lost something precious to me, precious to all of us,” she answered.
“What was it?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she answered.
“Try me.”
“I won’t rest until it is found,” was all she said.
She grew silent. Frustrated, he left her.
6
He had on the television. It was a true crime documentary on serial killers. It happened to be about killings in his area. The crimes were never solved and since they happened almost eighty years ago, it seemed unlikely they ever would be.
Some of the bodies were never found. But it was believed that the women who went missing at the time were his victims. The youngest victim was sixteen while the oldest was twenty-five. All of them were pretty and each one was kidnapped from her home. The killer was careful hence he was never caught. The twenty-five year old looked exactly like the woman in the woods. It was undeniable. They were the same woman.
He broke out in goose bumps. As he thought about it, it made sense. Her cryptic responses, all made sense in the context that she was dead.
He was afraid of her and yet drawn to her. He had to go back.
7
He sat next to her.
“You’re dead aren’t you?” he asked.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter. The important thing is I know. I know you were murdered, along with twelve other women. I’m sorry.”
“It can’t be helped. What is done is done.”
Before meeting her again, he did his research. The women were kidnapped, raped, and murdered, by strangulation. He was sorry she had to die such a loathsome death. A death in which she was denied dignity, one in which she died in terror and pain, the kind of death that people fear the most, that is the ignominious death, the degrading death, a death in which one is no longer regarded as human, but is rather reduced to that of a mere object. And such a death can only be perpetrated by what is figuratively a beast in human form, a human who kills other humans for pleasure.
“Why are you still here?” he asked.
“Because this is where he buried me. So long as my remains are unfound and are not given a proper burial, I will never move on. I can see the light beyond me, but cannot reach it.”
He knew she wanted to leave this world. She yearned to. Beyond the divide between the living and the dead were people she wished to see once more, a husband, two children, and her parents. The people who were left behind to mourn her death, the people who passed on, and even though she died before them, they passed on before her, crossing the other side, while she was left to wait in limbo.
“I’ll help you,” he said.
“Thank you,” she answered. He left and when he was gone, she smiled, but it was not a smile of joy or pleasure, it was a smile that was cruel, wicked, and dreadful to look upon, and her face turned into that of a rotted corpse. If he had seen that, he would not have helped her. But that was the point.
8
The next day he set out with a shovel. He deduced that she was buried near the spot where he found her sitting. She had to be there. He needed to be quick though; a snowstorm was expected to occur soon. But it was not supposed to happen until the next day.
He arrived at the spot. She was not there. Determined to find her body, he dug.
But he would not find her. She lied.
Her skeletal remains were in the woods. That was true and she was the victim of the serial killer, but no matter how much he dug, he would not release her from these woods, for this was her haunt. This was her home. Such was her misery, hatred, and anger, at having had her life cut so short. She could not and would not move on. She chose not to cross into the light and by this point; her anger was such that the light would not have accepted her even if she tried to cross over.
He was exhausted and still he dug throughout the spot. The air grew colder. Flurries of snow came down. Over time the rate of the snow increased. Before he knew it, he was blinded by a blizzard.
As it was happening, he was visited with images and impressions from her death. The nightgown he saw her wearing was the one she died in. The killer came into her home. She was alone. The killer waited for her husband and children to live and then he struck. There was a struggle. She fought for her life. She resisted. But it was no use. He took her somewhere far away from the house into the woods. There he raped her.
She did not want to die. She wanted to watch her children grow. She wanted to grow old with her husband and live to have grandchildren. She wanted to die in bed, perhaps surrounded by her family, in a hospital, doped up on painkillers, when she was well over eighty, senile and tired, ready to move on. But the beast bested her. He was too strong. He put his hands around her neck, snuffing the life out of her.
The young man trying to save her felt this. He felt her pain. He felt her anger. It was becoming his. He was losing consciousness. He was slipping and he fell to the ground. The snow piled up, inch by inch.
The last thing he saw before totally losing consciousness was the woman. She stood over him. The snow did not affect her in the least. She bent over and kissed him on the forehead.
“Now I’ll never be alone.”
And then he died.