The other girl's death had disrupted his routine. He used to be able to count on his days having a pattern, a comfortable sameness from one to the next that he could rely on, but that wasn't the case any more. It started going away when the girl got sick, but her sickness had brought routines of its own. Bring her chicken broth and toast in the morning. Carry her to the bathroom after that. Change the sheets if she soiled them. Repeat the whole thing at lunch and dinner. But once she died, Roger was alone, and he didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to find his way back into a routine.
Even before the girl died, Roger found himself spending more and more time in the clearing.
While the girl slept, achieving temporary relief from her pain and sickness, Roger went hunting, just like he had when he was a kid and his dad was still around. He didn't find much game in the woods. A lot of the deer were gone, the numbers reduced by the surrounding development and an outbreak of wasting disease. But Roger could still find squirrels and birds to shoot, anything to distract him from the dying girl he had to return to in the house. He would occasionally make his way to the clearing on these hunting excursions, but it didn't speak to him during daylight. He'd go there and just sit on a rock. He'd look down at the ground and he'd wonder why someone like the girl, someone who had never hurt anyone in her whole life, had to get sick and die. It happened to his parents, too. Nice people. Good people. And then the girl. Soon they would all be gone.
He supposed that someday he too would die and get put in the ground. But who would do it? Who would even know he was there, dying and then rotting in the old house, his body turning into a skeleton on the bed? Who would miss him? Who would cry for him?
Roger couldn't bear to think that way for very long. He'd get up and leave the clearing and go back to hunting, or just wander around the woods.
But at night, everything was different. At night, the clearing did speak to him. Not like human voices, not anything he could hear, but something he could feel. The clearing vibrated in his bones and jangled his nerves. It made his skin break out in goose pimples and sweat drip from his every pore. It felt like some power, something he couldn't see, whispered among the tall trees and the undergrowth, rustling the leaves and shivering the grasses, and then passed through his skin and into his body, filling him. Possessing him.
He became something else when he was in the clearing at night. Something stronger, something hungrier.
And the hardness always returned between his legs, swelling up until it hurt.
He knew there were ways for men to relieve that swelling, painful urgency on their own. His dad had talked to him about it once. But Roger didn't like to do it that way. He tried to from time to time—even tried it in the clearing—but it always left him feeling more hungry afterwards, like he'd just had a taste but the real meal still hadn't been served.
He had even brought the shovel with him to the clearing that very morning and began digging into the rich earth, working down to the place where the dead girl lay. He thought if he could just bring her back out again, just one time, he might be able to find some temporary relief. Roger even went so far as to shovel a couple of spadefuls of dirt out of her grave, his hands shaking and his mouth watering like a dog's while he did it. But he stopped himself and threw the shovel aside. It wasn't right. It just wasn't decent to disturb the dead that way. He knew she was already rotting, her skin falling away and getting eaten by worms. Her eyes sinking back into her skull.
He shook his head. No, he just couldn't bear to do it.
He sank to the ground and almost cried. He felt the hot tears form behind his eyes, waiting to spring out and run down his face. But he fought against them. He knew what he needed to do. He knew what the clearing wanted him to do. And just thinking about it, there in that spot, made Roger feel better, like there was hope that he wouldn't always feel this way or always be alone.
And he knew that the problem wouldn't get solved out there, in the clearing, but had to be taken care of somewhere else. Someplace where there were people.
Girls.
He stood up, dusted himself off, and went to find the shovel. He had thrown it out of the clearing and into the knee-high grass that grew beneath the trees, but he needed it back to replace the dirt he had removed from the girl's grave. He didn't want to think about leaving her grave disturbed or imperfect. She deserved better than that.
But he didn't know if he could find the shovel in the thick grass. Roger moved in the direction he had thrown it, stumbling over some loose rocks and almost falling down. He thought it might be smart to just come back another time when his head was clearer, find the shovel then and take care of the grave, but he didn't think he could walk away knowing that he hadn't replaced the dirt. So he kept on going, eventually bending down and feeling in the grass with his hands. He felt dirt and leaves and touched something small and slimy that must have been a slug.
"Come on," he said. "I know it's here."