He pulled the tractor alongside the ruined outbuilding. As he stepped from the vehicle, he could already see a depression in the ground ahead where the soil had once been mounded. When he got to the hole, he saw it was empty.
Gone were the organs and bones; all that remained was sludge that had mixed with dirt and writhed with maggots. When Ben leaned in to take a closer look, the reek of it sent him back on his heels. It was the kind of stench that was less a smell than a feeling: a punch to the solar plexus.
As he backed away from the hole, Ben stepped on something that felt like gravel under his feet. It looked like stone, too, but when he picked up a larger chunk he realized that it was shattered bone. There were other pieces, closer to the trees.
A sound sliced through the quiet of the forest. Something like a scream, though there was nothing human about it. Ben peered into the dark maw of trees. A hawk, he thought.
He turned his attention back to the ground and began to notice tracks all over the wet earth. They didn’t look much different from Hudson’s, which made him guess coyotes. Coyotes wouldn’t have had any more trouble sniffing out the dead deer than they would have had digging it up. They would have eaten the deer’s organs, and Ben could also imagine them chewing up its bones. This explanation satisfied him.
Then that scream from the forest again.
There was something plaintive about it that tore at Ben. And as with the temptation of the deer’s shallow grave, Ben couldn’t help himself. He stepped into the trees.
The forest could have been a world away from the wide fields of the Drop. It lay in perpetual dusk, and the temperature was ten degrees cooler. Sounds were different, too: Some were soaked up, while others were given new prominence. Though the woods were so choked with trees and vegetation that Ben couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead, they gave the impression of endlessness.
Moss was slick on the ground, while fungus studded the roots and trunks of trees. The air was heavy with the tang of vegetative rot.
Each time Ben ventured into these woods, he was reminded how different this place was from anything he was used to. It was the palpable age of the trees as much as their scale. Some of these oaks had been old back when the Swanns first set eyes on this valley. The creatures here were also a mystery. Ben knew their names and had seen their pictures in books, but it was hard for him to imagine what they did here in the dark of the forest, unimpeded by man.
The scream had a penetrating quality that made distance and origin difficult to pinpoint, but it was definitely getting louder. And there was a new sound: a rapping like branches caught in the wind.
The shrieks themselves sounded now like the panicked lowing of a cow, though that was unlikely. The closer Ben got, the less sure he was that it was a scream at all. The tapping sound was strange, too. It seemed to move in the dark.
“Hello?” Ben called into the trees. When he saw a clearing ahead, he found himself hurrying for it. There was something disturbing about the trees and the way anything might be hiding behind them. When Ben reached the clearing, he was startled to see a small gray face staring back at him.
It was the statue of an angel. She had wings spread as if about to take flight, the muscles of her calves tensed in preparation. Her head and shoulders were stained from the accumulated wear of bird and tree droppings. Thin scales of lichens stretched through the striations of her plumage.
Behind the angel stood a low stone wall with a single bare window. A chapel, Ben thought, or the ruins of one. He remembered seeing a cross etched onto one of the maps he’d found in the cellar. There wasn’t much left of the little structure. The clearing was a mess of rubble and the detritus of the plants that covered it.
The tapping from the woods was insistent again, and Ben instinctively moved away from the trees. He could not imagine what made the sound, but he was sure it was following him.
He jogged to the far end of the ruin. He couldn’t remember at what point he’d become afraid, but now his pulse drummed in his temples and his breath caught in his throat. There was a field southeast of here, where the cemetery was, but he would have to go through the trees in order to get away from them. He was trying to orient himself when he came face-to-face with a large plaque with an engraving of a creature.
The plaque was propped against the chapel’s one remaining standing wall. The creature was a ferocious thing, formed in Gothic style. Ben could have fit his head in its mouth. It had sharp teeth and long nails, but except for the mouth and an oddly distended stomach, the figure looked almost human.
Any other time, Ben might have admired it. Now he hesitated to turn his back to it. Then the rapping sounded loudly from directly behind him.
“Hello?” he called into the trees. Someone was playing games with him. “Hello?” he shouted again. “Who’s there?”
“There you are, Benj!”
Ben backpedaled and tripped over a root. He landed hard, knocking his elbow against the iron roots of a basswood.
His brother stepped out from the trees.
“Jesus Christ, Ted!”
“Jeez, so jumpy,” Ted said as he picked his way toward him. In his Nantucket reds and Ray-Bans, he looked dressed for the beach. “I was trying to surprise you, but I was going more for Surprise, I’m here! than Surprise, cardiac event!” He helped Ben to his feet.
“Did you hear those sounds?” Ben asked. He worked hard to keep the fear from his voice.
“Yeah, that loud squeaking or whatever? What was that?” Ted stretched and ran his hand through his tousled hair.
“There was this tapping sound, too. Like someone hitting a tree with a stick.” Ben scoured the tree line, but the tapping had stopped.
“It’s a forest, man. Probably the wind. Or maybe woodpeckers? I don’t know.” Ted turned to the engraving of the monstrous creature propped against the wall. “Well, that’s an ugly fellow.”
“First the sound was over here.” Ben pointed. “Then it was over there.”