There he was, perched on top of the sign, a little black, red, and white ball of bird, puffed up proudly, with an ash-colored beak. As Finley approached, he flew off with an alarmed squeak, alighting in a branch above her. He looked down accusingly. Don’t go far, Little Bird. Stay where Daddy can see you. It was an echo on the air, something uttered long ago.
Finley stared at the bird, wondering. If she’d come here yesterday, before hearing the squeak-clink, which caused her to research the sound and finally discover the call of this bird, would his song have caught her attention? She asked herself her favorite question: What would Carl Jung say? He’d say that when there was a series of acausal events—the squeak-clink, the appearance now of the bird she’d read about online—that there must be a cause, even if that cause wasn’t explainable by science. Jung never discounted the rarity, the anomalous occurrence; he embraced it, explored it. He knew that science didn’t have all the answers to the true nature of the universe.
“They took this trail,” said Jones coming up behind her. She didn’t startle; she’d heard him approach.
She was still waiting to feel something, to have some kind of experience. But there was nothing, just the slightest buzz of unease, a tickle really at the back of her consciousness. This wasn’t going to work; she should have known. Nothing ever worked the way it was supposed to; she was going to let everyone down, just like she always did.
“Merri Gleason watched them walk off together,” he said. He turned and pointed back at the bay window that had taken on the gold of the sun.
She listened as he recounted what she’d already read online. A young man had stopped Wolf Gleason about a mile down the trail, pretending to be lost. While they spoke, someone hiding in the trees shot Gleason in the leg. He fell off the path, down the slope. The children had gone up ahead but came running back at the sound of gunfire. Gleason’s son was shot; the girl was taken. It was four hours and near dusk already before the ranger came looking for them.
“Local and state police were out here three days looking. Dogs. Choppers,” said Jones. He walked as he talked, looking everywhere—down on the ground, up into the sky, farther up the path. “The whole thing. Ten miles north through the trees. I was one of the volunteers.”
He shook his head, looking back at her. She dug her hands deeper into her pocket, feeling useless, searching for warmth.
“There must have been a vehicle waiting,” he said. “They could have been long gone by the time anyone started looking.”
He took out his flashlight, and they stepped onto the trail, started walking. They walked for a while, Finley clutching the girl’s change purse in her hand. Jones moved up ahead of her just a bit, now shining his flashlight about, though he really didn’t need it, the sky still held a little light. What was he looking for? She was about to ask.
It happened just like that, as if she had stepped through a doorway. Suddenly the sun was brighter, and she was moving fast, breathless. Up ahead, a man old, skeletal but strong, his face a jagged mountain, yanked a screaming girl by the arm up the path. He was dragging her as she kicked and fought like a wild animal.
“I swear to you,” he said through gritted teeth, yanking her hard. “I’ll kill you, you little brat.”
He had a rifle strapped around his back. “Then I’ll go back and kill your family.”
The girl quieted for a moment, whimpering. But then she dropped her weight to the ground. She was tiny, with a wild mass of blonde hair.
“Daaaaadddddyyyyyy,” she shrieked, desperate, panicked. The sound cut through Finley, sharp, serrated. “Daaaadddddyyyyy.”
The old man delivered a hard blow to her face, and the girl opened her mouth wide in a silent wail of pain and misery.
Finley was there, but she wasn’t there. She moved to stop the man, but she had no body, no will. She was just an observer. The helplessness of it was excruciating. She’s a child. Let her go! The words were loud, but she had no voice to speak them.
“Go back and finish it,” the man growled at someone Finley couldn’t see. He expertly removed a hunting knife from a sheath at his waist and handed it over, never losing his grip on the child who thrashed and shrieked.
“I don’t want to, Poppa.” It was a young voice, but thick and slow.
“Do it.”
Finley felt a churn of petulant anger, a sullen resistance, but also the cold finger of fear poking into her belly. Then she was moving back down the path away from the man and the girl. A disembodiment, a floating.
Up ahead, a boy, towheaded and slender, lay on the path, his expression blank and glassy, a great stain of blood on the thigh of his khaki pants, his shattered glasses next to him on the path.
“No,” he whispered. “Bring her back. Mommy.”
She wanted to go to him, to comfort him somehow. He was so young and so frightened, in pain. She ached with it. Do something for him!
“Leave him alone,” called a distant voice. At the edge of the path, she looked down at the man twisted, down on the slope off the path, his face obscured by the trees. He tried to claw his way back. Moving so slowly, grunting with effort.