The Girl in the Woods

She started to push the door shut with Roger still in the way. He held up his hand and stopped it.

 

"I do this alone," she said. "Unless you think this is what husbands and wives do together."

 

 

 

Roger didn't know what to say, but he did know that he could never remember his mother going to the bathroom with the door open. The last girl didn't either, except when she was sick. When she was sick, he had to help her to the bathroom, but he didn't stay and watch, so he let the new girl close the door.

 

Roger slipped the knife in his pocket and waited, staring at the closed door. Before long, he heard the faint, spritzing sound of her urine hitting the bowl and the water. The sound gave Roger a funny little shiver that started below his waist and spread to the rest of his body. He liked the sound and wanted to listen to more, but something told him he owed the girl privacy, that he didn't know her well enough to stand there and listen to something so private, so intimate.

 

"I'm going..." he said, but his voice didn't raise, and he let the thought trail off. He didn't want to disturb her, didn't want her to think he was hanging around outside the door, like a pervert. She had already called him a creep, and he didn't like that. He needed to back off a little and let her begin to feel at home.

 

He wandered down the hallway, back to the bedroom. It smelled in there, too. He hadn't changed the sheets since the last girl died, and the smell of sickness and death still clung to the room the way the smell of smoke lingered after a fire. The odor hit Roger in the face, turning his stomach a little. He hoped the new girl could take care of that, too. Change the sheets, clean the curtains and the rug, make the place nice again, like it used to be.

 

Roger went over to the window and lifted it open, hoping for some fresh air. It wouldn't do much, but it might help a little. He heard the toilet flush down the hall, the water running in the pipes. He had given her enough privacy now. They needed to get on with settling in. The girl didn't have any clothes, although Roger thought some of his mother's would fit. They fit the last girl no problem. But Roger also knew that women liked and needed special things, things he didn't have around the house. Hairbrushes, soaps and powders that he might have to buy at the store just to keep her happy for a while.

 

He crossed the room and was about to step out into the hallway when something smacked him in the face, knocking him backward and causing him to stumble and almost fall.

 

It was a sharp, concentrated pain, just above his left eye. He brought his hands to his head and felt around, and his fingers came away sticky and wet with blood. The blood ran down his face, stinging his eyes, and Roger couldn't see. The pain throbbed and distracted him, so it look him several moments to realize he had bigger problems than the cut on his head.

 

It had been the girl. The girl had hit him.

 

He wiped the blood away from his eyes. The plunger from the bathroom lay in the hallway, and Roger understood. She had used the rounded end of the wooden handle like a spear and jammed it into his face. She must have wanted to get him in the eye, to put his eye out and really hurt him, and Roger felt fortunate that she had missed.

 

He regained his balance and went into the hallway, looking for her.

 

But she wasn't there.

 

The girl was gone.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

 

 

 

 

Roger ran downstairs.

 

He didn't see her in the living room or the dining room, but the front door was still closed. He looked through the big picture window that gave a view of the small front yard and the long driveway that cut through the trees and out to the highway. He didn't see her out there either. He moved toward the back of the house and the kitchen, but stopped before going in. His eye had started bleeding again, and he had to wipe more blood away.

 

She might be in there, Roger thought, with a knife or a pan or who knows what else. He needed to be cautious.

 

He peered around the doorframe. He saw the cluttered counters, the big table. And the back door standing wide open.

 

"Oh, no. Oh, God."

 

 

 

Roger lumbered through the kitchen, his footsteps shaking the floors and rattling the dirty pots on the stovetop. He went outside and into the yard. The side doors of the van were open, but when he went over and looked inside, it was empty. She probably thought she could find the bike there, find the bike and ride away. But Roger had disposed of the bike already. It was part of the plan. He looked around the yard and off to the trees and woods. There was nowhere else she could have gone. She had to have run into the trees. And toward the clearing.

 

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