Free In a Dark Wood by Josh Lanyon Page A

He gave me a wry grin.
    This was Luke, the cop who Rob kept trying to fix me up with. “A cop?” I always said doubtfully. “I don’t know.”
    “He’s a detective, not a beat cop,” Rob always replied. “He doesn’t give speeding tickets.”
    Speeding tickets being kind of a sore subject with me. “I’m not really into cops,” I always said.
    “You’re not into anybody,” was Rob’s standard answer. “And nobody is into you, which is your problem. One of your problems.”
    And that’s where the conversation ended, except that night Luke was actually present and could speak up for himself.
    “Sure, Tim,” he said. “I’d like to hear.”
    He had a nice voice, not at all the voice cops use when they’re slapping a parking ticket on your windshield or asking you to pull out your vehicle registration. He had very white teeth and a very nice smile. Did he know Rob wanted to set us up? Er — fix us up, I mean. He probably did, and he’d probably been resisting just as hard as me. He’d certainly kept a polite distance all evening.
    I gave Rob a look that promised all kinds of retribution that I wouldn’t remember once I sobered up. He just laughed and poured me another scorpion.
    “Come on, Tim,” someone else urged.
    Someone else I didn’t know. Rob knew everybody and everybody knew Rob. Most of them didn’t know Rob as long as I’d known him, which was since we were the two most unpopular guys in Trinity School.
    I gave in to peer pressure — not for the first time — with a sigh.
    “I was thirteen and I was staying with a friend in the Pine Barrens for a couple of weeks during the summer. There wasn’t a lot to do. Mostly we went swimming in this little lake and we spent a lot of time prowling through woods.”
    I glanced over at Luke. He set his glass back down, but his lashes lifted and he caught my eye. I couldn’t look away. He didn’t look away either. It’s like tractor beams locking on. People were going to notice. My face felt hot, but that was probably the spicy sea dragon bass.
    Managing to tear my gaze away, I said, “Anyway, one day we wandered farther into the woods then we were supposed to go. We get really turned around. Totally lost. Oh wait, I’m forgetting. There was supposed to be this house, see, where — I don’t remember what the exact story was now — the Boogey Man or somebody like that was supposed to live in the heart of the woods. And when hikers or nosey kids like us disappeared, The Forester was supposed to have grabbed them.”
    “The Forester?” Luke asked. Everyone else chuckled, reaching for glasses or forks. Only Luke was paying close attention.
    I focused inward. “Uh, yeah. I think that’s right.” Weird. I’d forgotten that he was called the Forester.
    “So, anyway, we wander around, lost. We’re afraid we’re going in circles, and it’s getting dark. I start marking the trees, making a little cross with my penknife in the bark, which is all white and shimmery that time of evening.”
    My heart started to thud against my ribs as it came back to me: the deepening shadows, the ghostly trees, the creeping chill of the woods closing in on us. “And then all at once there’s a house right in front of us. Two stories, really old, falling down. There’s a tree growing out through a big hole in the roof.”
    I gestured with my hands trying to make them see this creepy old house being claimed by the woods. “It has an ornate portico thing and little gable windows. Some of the other windows are broken, some of them are still there. The front door is hanging off its hinges…”
    I stopped. For a moment it was like I was back in the woods. The smell of moldering house and weird animal scents and…the woods. The hush of evening — even the crickets were silent.
    Too silent.
    Rob laughed. He’d heard the story before — always when I was drunk. I don’t tell this story sober. I couldn’t help stealing another look at Luke. He wasn’t smiling