The sheriff shook off the thought and looked up ahead on the trail. There was a deer eating some grass near a little bridge that looked like something out of the Billy Goats Gruff. God, he hadn’t thought of that in years. He was so scared of that troll when he was little. Scared like Hansel and Gretel.
Scared like the girl with the painted—
“Stop it. Focus,” he said to himself out loud.
The sheriff didn’t know what he was looking for exactly. After all, he and his men had walked almost every inch of these woods that week, despite Mr. Collins’ rage. They didn’t find much. No carvings. No strange symbols. Nothing to indicate that these woods were home to some cult or a ritual killer.
Just a bunch of trees.
And some deer.
And a bunch of beer cans.
Of course, he had expected that. Once the news began to spread about the skeleton, the morbidly curious (aka teenagers) started using the woods to drink beer and fool around. Rubberneckers, he thought. They left cans everywhere. He told his men to start collecting them to make up for the double time in the budget. They laughed when he said that. And when he didn’t laugh back, they started collecting the cans.
The sheriff reached the clearing.
He looked up at the clouds drifting in the sky. Such a pleasant evening for November. It was amazing to think that Christmas was less than a month away. He stared at the tree in the middle of the clearing. It looked like a hand stretching to the sky. Some of its branches were strong. Others twisted like fingers crippled by arthritis.
The sheriff walked up to Christopher’s tree house. He still couldn’t believe how sophisticated it was for a seven-year-old. The ladder. The foundation. The framing. Kate Reese’s son was a genius. It was like a real house.
But this time, the tree house looked different.
As if someone had been working on it all week.
But when he looked down, he saw no footprints.
No evidence.
Just a white plastic bag drifting from a low-hanging branch.
The sheriff touched the tree. The bark was cool and rough to the touch. Like the trees he climbed when he went to elementary school. He had his first kiss under a tree like this. Justine Cobb had braces and a summer dress and beautiful blond hair.
Just like the girl with the painted nails.
Daddy.
The sheriff took his hand off the tree. He shook off the cobwebs and tried to get back to center. He picked up the white plastic bag, fully intending to put it in his pocket and throw it away like litter. But for some reason, he found himself moving the bag in his hand like a kid trying to break in a new leather baseball glove. Over and over and over and
Crack.
The sheriff turned. He saw a deer staring at him. The sheriff looked down at the white plastic bag. He suddenly wanted to get the hell out of these woods. Some voice told him that he had to get out. Right now. The voice wasn’t threatening him.
It was warning him.
He put the bag back on the branch and hurried away. He quickly passed through the mine tunnel hiding the clearing from the other side of the woods. He turned on his flashlight and saw initials etched into the metal tracks. Old names spray-painted on the wood frames like hieroglyphics. As he left the mine, he saw something disturbing.
An abandoned refrigerator.
He didn’t know how his men could have missed this, and they were going to get a piece of his mind when he got back. A kid could play in this, get trapped, and suffocate.
The sheriff walked toward the refrigerator. It was big and white and old with rust on the edges like greying temples. Temples like churches. Like Carl’s wife’s mother’s mass. The refrigerator was filled with a nest. He couldn’t tell if it was for a bird or a raccoon. But there was no sign of either. The sheriff grabbed the refrigerator door to close it.
That’s when the snake jumped out.
It was a rattler. Coiled. Hissing. Hissss. Hissss.
The sheriff backed away. The snake slithered toward him. Hissing like a baby’s rattle. The sheriff stumbled on a log and fell. The rattler came at him. Its fangs out. Ready to strike. The sheriff pulled out his revolver just as the snake jumped for his face.