The Wrath of Angels

II



What beck’ning ghost, along the moonlight shade

Invites my step, and points to yonder glade?

‘Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady’,





Alexander Pope (1688–1744)





9





North again: north of New York, north of Boston, north of Portland. North, to the last places.

They were lost. Andrea Foster knew it even if her husband wouldn’t admit it: he never admitted his failings if he could avoid it, but she could tell that he wasn’t sure of where they were. He kept looking at his map as if its neat details of hills and trails bore any relation to the haphazard reality of the forest around them, and consulting his compass in the hope that, between paper and instrument, he might be able to find his bearings. Still, she knew better than to ask if he had any idea where they were, or where they were going. He’d just snap, and sulk, and an already irksome day would deteriorate further.

At least they’d remembered to bring the 100 percent DEET spray so the insects were being kept at bay, although probably at the cost of some kind of long-term damage to brain cells. If it came down to a choice between being eaten alive in the woods right now and a deterioration of her mental functioning somewhere down the line, she’d take her chances with brain death. He’d assured her that insects wouldn’t be a problem at this time of year, but here they were: small flies mostly, but she’d also had to fight off a wasp, and that had bothered her more than anything else. Wasps had no business being alive in November, and any that survived would be in a foul mood. She’d killed the wasp by swatting it with her hat and then crushing it beneath her boot, but she’d seen others since then. It was almost as if, the deeper they went into the woods, the more of the insects there were. There was still some repellent in the dispenser, but it was running disturbingly low. She wanted to get back to civilization before it ran out entirely.

It was warm too. Logic said that the shade of the trees should have cooled them some, but that didn’t seem to be the case. She had found herself struggling for breath on occasion, and her thirst never seemed to be slaked no matter how much water she drank. She usually liked day hikes, but after this one she’d happily spend a couple of days in a nice hotel, drinking wine, taking long baths, and reading a book. Once today was over and they were back in Falls End, she’d talk to Chris about heading up to Quebec or Montreal a little earlier than they’d planned. She’d had enough of the great outdoors, and she suspected that, secretly, he had as well. He was just too stubborn to admit it, just as he was too stubborn to hold up his hands and confess that, if they weren’t quite up shit creek, they could smell it from where they were.

She’d only reluctantly agreed to this trip. Pressure of work meant that Chris had been forced to cancel his summer vacation plans, so she and their daughters had joined her sister and her kids in Tampa for ten days while Chris stayed in New York. It was the downside of being self-employed: when the work was there you had to take it, especially with times being so tough. But he loved the Maine woods: they reminded him of his childhood, he said, when friends of his parents would offer them the use of their camp at The Forks for a couple of weeks each summer. So this was a nostalgic trip for him, particularly since his mother had passed away in January, and Andrea could hardly have refused to accompany him. She had been a little reluctant to go traipsing through the woods during hunting season, but he assured her that they’d be fine, especially decked out as they were in reflective orange.

Orange was not her color.

Orange was not anybody’s color.

She looked to the sky. There was an oppressive clouding to it, which concerned her. There might even be rain coming, although she couldn’t recall it being forecast.

‘Damn it,’ said Chris. ‘There should be a stream around here. If we follow it, it’ll take us back to town.’

He looked left and right, hoping for some glimmer of silver, listening for the sound of running water, but there was nothing, not even the song of a bird.

She so badly wanted to shout at him: I don’t hear a stream. Do you hear a stream? No, because there’s no f*cking stream here. We’re lost! How long have you been leading us in the wrong direction? How f*cking hard can it be to distinguish between north, south, east, and west? You’re the great outdoorsman. You have the compass and a map. Come on, Tonto, figure it out!

He turned to look at her, as if she’d screamed so loudly in her head that some atavistic part of his brain had picked up on it.

‘It should be here, Andrea,’ he said. ‘I’ve been heading east, following the compass.’

He sounded bewildered, and he looked like a small boy. Some of her anger at him diminished.

‘Show me,’ she said.

He handed over the compass, and pointed a manicured finger at the map. He was right: they seemed to be heading east, and at their rate of progress they should have been at the Little Head Stream by now. She tapped the compass, more out of habit than anything else.

Slowly, the needle turned 180 degrees.

‘What the hell?’ said Chris. He took the instrument back from his wife. ‘How can it be doing that?’

He jabbed at the compass with his own finger. The needle didn’t move.

‘Could we have been going west all this time?’ asked Andrea.

‘No. I can tell east from west. We were heading east. I think.’

For the first time, he sounded genuinely worried. They had an emergency kit, and some food, but neither of them had any desire to spend the night out in the woods without the proper equipment. In fact, they weren’t fans of sleeping outdoors at the best of times. Both of them liked their creature comforts, and a long day’s hike was made worthwhile by the promise of a little luxury and a good meal at the end of it.

She looked up at the sky again, but there were only glimpses of it to be seen between the trees. They were thicker here, and more ancient. Some of them must have been centuries old, their trunks distended and tumorous, their branches like broken limbs that had been set wrongly. The terrain was rocky in places, and there was a stench on the air. It smelled like old stew made with innards.

‘Maybe you could climb a tree and get our bearings,’ she said, and giggled.

‘That’s not helpful,’ said Chris.

He scowled at her, and she giggled again.

She didn’t know why she was laughing. They were lost, and while it wasn’t as bad as being adrift in the woods when snow was falling and there was a chance that they might freeze to death, their cell phones had no signal, they still only had limited supplies, and the temperature was bound to fall once darkness came. Nobody knew that they were out here, either. They’d checked out of their motel in Rangeley shortly after dawn, just in case they found somewhere more interesting along the way north, and their car was now parked on the main street of Falls End. It might be days before someone noticed that it hadn’t moved. She’d told Chris that they should have made a provisional booking somewhere in Falls End, but he’d replied that it was too early to start thinking about that, and the town seemed quiet anyway, and if they made a start on the hike they’d be back by late afternoon. That was one of his other faults: he hated committing to anything in advance, even a motel room in a small town. When they went out to dinner in a new city, he would walk her from restaurant to restaurant examining each menu in turn, always looking for the perfect food in the perfect place. There had been evenings where they had walked and debated for so long that everywhere good was either closed or full by the time Chris made a decision, and they’d ended up eating burgers in a bar, her husband simmering at missed opportunities.

‘And what’s that stink?’ said Chris.

‘It smells like cheap meat was boiling in a pot, and then it went off,’ she replied.

‘It might mean that there’s a house nearby.’

‘Out here? I didn’t see any road.’

‘You notice how thick the trees are? There could be a four-lane highway a stone’s throw from here, and we wouldn’t know about it until we heard a truck.’

There’s no highway out here, she wanted to say. There isn’t even a hiking trail. We lost that when you decided to ‘explore’, and now look at the mess we’re in. She remembered a cartoon she’d seen in a magazine once, depicting a family in the wilderness surrounding a father who was examining a map. The caption read: ‘What matters isn’t so much where we are as who we blame for it.’

‘If there’s a house, there may be a phone,’ Chris went on. ‘At the very least we can ask for directions back to town.’

Andrea supposed that he was right, although she wasn’t sure how much time she wanted to spend dealing with someone who lived so deep in the Great North Woods. Anyone who had come this far to find some solitude wasn’t necessarily going to welcome two lost city dwellers smelling of sweat and DEET into his lovely, secluded home.

‘There!’ said Chris. He was pointing to his right.

‘What?’

‘I saw someone.’

She looked, but could see nothing. The branches of the trees moved, creating a faint rustling. Odd: she had felt no breeze.

‘Are you sure?’

‘There was a man among those trees. I’m sure of it. Hey! Hey! Over here! We’re lost. We need a little help.’ He put his hand to his forehead to shade his eyes. ‘Sonofabitch. I think he’s heading away from us. Hey! Hey!’

Andrea still couldn’t see anyone, but she joined in with her husband’s shouts, just in case the man was concerned at the presence of a solitary male on his territory.

‘Please,’ she called. ‘We don’t mean any harm. We just need to get back on the trail.’

Chris folded the map and stuffed it into his rucksack.

‘Come on,’ he said to her.

‘Come on where?’

‘We’re going after him.’

‘What? Are you crazy? If he doesn’t want to help us, that’s his business. Chasing after him isn’t going to make things better.’

‘Jesus, Andrea, there has to be some kind of code of the forest, right? It’s like the law of the sea. You don’t leave people stranded when they’re in trouble. All we’re looking for is directions.’

Andrea had never heard of a code of the forest, and she was pretty sure that none existed. Even if it did then, just as with the law of the sea, there would be those who did not abide by it. She didn’t know what the forest equivalent of a pirate might be, and she didn’t want to find out. People went missing in these woods, and some of them were never found again. They couldn’t all have been eaten by bears, could they?

‘What if he has a gun?’ she said.

‘I don’t have a gun. Why would he shoot me? You know, Deliverance was just a movie. Anyway, that was somewhere in the South. They’re different down there. This is Maine.’

He set off after the man only he had seen. Andrea trailed after him. She had no choice. The woods were thick, and she didn’t want to lose sight of her husband. The only thing worse than being in their current situation would be to find herself in it alone. He was setting a fast pace now. That was Chris all over. Once he eventually got an idea fixed in his head, he’d pursue it full speed to its conclusion. Like a lot of men she knew, he couldn’t follow more than one clear line of thought for any length of time, but he had a determination that she sometimes lacked.

‘Wait up, Chris,’ she said.

‘We’ll lose him.’

‘You’ll lose me.’

He paused, his left hand outstretched to her from the top of a small incline while he continued to look ahead.

‘Is he still there?’

‘No. Hold on, he’s back again. He’s staring at us.’

‘Where?’ She strained her eyes, squinting into the forest gloom. ‘I still can’t see him.’

‘I think he’s raising his arm. He wants us to follow him. Yep, that’s definitely it. He’s showing us the way.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘What else would he be doing?’

‘Uh, leading us deeper into the woods?’

‘Why would he want to do that?’

Because people are just bad, sometimes. Because he means to hunt us.

‘I don’t know. He might want to steal from us.’

‘He wouldn’t have to lead us deeper into the forest to do that. He could just hold us up right here.’

Chris had a point, but she still felt uneasy.

‘Let’s just be careful, okay?’

‘I’m always careful.’

‘No you’re not. That’s how I got pregnant with Danielle, remember?’

He flashed that grin at her, the one that had attracted her back at college, the one that had made her climb into bed with him the first time, and she responded in kind with that sly, sexy smile that always caused the hairs on the back of his neck to rise up, and other parts of him to rise too, and both of them made the same wish: that they were in bed together with a bottle of wine half-drunk beside them, and the taste of it on their lips and tongues as they kissed.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ he said.

‘I believe you,’ she replied. ‘But no more hiking for a while after this, promise?’

‘Promise.’

She took his hand, and he squeezed it. As she stood beside him she saw the man for the first time. Perhaps it was the cloud cover combining with the natural gloom of the forest, but it seemed to her that he was dressed in some kind of a cloak. He wore a hood over his head, so that she could not see his face. He was clearly beckoning to them, though. Her husband had been right about that.

She felt an ache in her stomach, a cold pain. She’d always had a good sense about other people, although Chris just tended to smile indulgently when she spoke of it. Men were different. They were less attuned to their own potential vulnerability. Women needed that added awareness of the dangers that surrounded them. She’d passed it on to their girls, she hoped, attuning them to it. This man meant them some harm: she was sure of it. She was just glad that the girls were safe with her parents in Albany and not out here in the woods. She tried to speak, but then Chris’s hand slipped from hers, and he was moving again, following the slowly waving figure, following him deeper and deeper into the woods.

And she followed after.