In the Woods, Bears

Chapter 6 - The Lake

At the fourth no-trespassing sign, Kennedy paused. She could still turn around. There were most likely other ways to get to Bell's Lake besides the long, winding private road. Fingertips resting on the picture in her pocket, she hesitated. Getting shot would be awful. But if she was a coward, she would never know anything. Kennedy continued her stroll along the poorly maintained driveway. All she wanted was two names. If the family that lived here were her relatives, could her birth parents still be here? Would the people know where they were? Throat tight, she tried to practice the words she wanted to say if an older version of the boy in the photograph answered the door. "My name is Kennedy. I might be your kid." If she was a secret. Or a mistake. She might get shot anyway. Did they bury people in the woods who showed up unannounced? She didn't have a photograph in one of their yearbooks to blacken out.

"Beware of dog." And "Trespassers will be shot," signs halted her forward progress. A rusted gate blocked the road, but it wasn't locked. Stupid, her mother was right, she was stupid. With the house in sight, she couldn't stop. Inside her head, a lecture in her mother's voice began as she placed her hands on the latch. Keep to yourself. Never trust strangers. Don't take chances. Stay in your own yard. In need of oil, the hinges screamed as she swung the gate open. Just in case there were dogs, she closed the gate behind her.

Holding still, Kennedy listened for movement in the brush. Nothing. The grass in the yard was overgrown and slapped against her legs as she walked across the lawn, leaving a clear path behind her. The closer she got, the worse the house looked. There were faded signs posted on the front door and the porch was missing a few boards. The low basement window on the right side was busted out.

Nobody lived here. Taking careful steps, wary of the sagging boards, she walked up and read the faded paper posted on the door. A foreclosure notice announced that the bank owned the house. It looked like it had been two years, but the date was faded and blurry. When she reached for the doorknob, the door swung open at the first touch.

Disaster and disarray. Broken furniture littered the living room. A couch had been flipped backward to the wall. Deep scratches lined the old-fashioned wallpaper. The TV was busted out. Beyond, the kitchen fridge hung open, its black interior coated in ancient mold. Doors had been ripped from the cabinets. Some kids had spray painted the walls with their names and a small fire had been started on the kitchen linoleum. It was a miracle the house was still standing.

Dark curiosity pulled her through the destruction. Stepping over strewn clothing and a plastic bowl, she made her way down the hall, half expecting to find desiccated bodies on the beds. Like a horror movie, every step stirred dust, making the rays of light breaking into the house glitter with particles. Deep grooves lined one door, cutting through the door frame and the drywall. When she tried to open the door, she found it locked. Looking at the destruction all around her, she gave the door a kick. Solid, the reverberation of the contact stung her foot. Not a hollow door.

Don't think. Act. Before she could chicken out, she aimed her kicks at the drywall until it caved in. Gripping a broken edge of the wallboard, she jerked it toward herself to open the hole further. Instead of wood, the studs were metal at a standard eighteen inches apart. Maybe steel? Avoiding wires, even though the electricity was off, she kicked the drywall on the other side out as well, until she had opened a space large enough to squeeze through.

Because the dimly lit room had filled with dust, she fought down a sneeze. The shades in the room were drawn. Shaking off drywall dust and cobwebs, Kennedy stood in the center of a baby's room. From this side, the row of locks on the door was impressive, with four heavy bolts with slides on the reinforced door. "Holy Crap."

To see the room better, she pulled the shade down until it shot upward, exposing bars on the outside of the window. The pull snapped hard when it reached the top, making Kennedy jump. A jail. Unmarked by violence, except for the wall damage she herself had done, the room was frozen in time. A peach crochet blanket rested in the crib. The pile could be hiding something. Why am I like this? She didn't want to know if there was anything under the blankets, but she couldn't leave the house without knowing either. Handmade with soft peach yarn, she drew the baby blanket back, holding her breath as she exposed a stuffed black bear with a velvet nose and shiny dark eyes. No bones. No babies.

Her breath released with an audible whoosh. Sinking her fingers into the soft fur, she lifted the toy and held it against her chest as a distant memory floated upward. This bear was a twin to the one she had owned in the before time. Tilting her head upward to stop her eyes from welling with tears, she saw the glow-in-the-dark stars placed on the ceiling above the cradle.

Why would someone lock a baby in? It made no sense. A nursing rocker, changing table, and a single bed comfortably furnished the undamaged room. Was the mother locked in here too? Under a table lamp, there were a handful of books about the first year of childhood. Like spiders across her skin, she imagined what it would be like to be a prisoner in this house. But what kind of prisoner could lock or unlock their own door?

Superstitious, she left the way she had come, squeezing through the hole of her own making instead of unlocking the door. Kennedy had reached the porch before she realized she was still holding the bear. Who would know? The family was long gone. Lifting her phone, she took a picture of the faded notice, capturing the owner's names. Would their pictures be blacked out in the yearbooks? Shuddering, she stepped backward down the steps into the overgrown grass. She'd come this far. Shouldn't she see if she could find the rock? The smell of water was in the air. It couldn't be far.

Toward the back of the yard, she saw a narrow line of crushed grass leading toward a strand of pines, bigger than a deer path. She wasn't the only one who ignored the signs. The hill sloped down and then the path veered left, opening into a clearing where she saw the big flat rock from the photograph. A shiver rolled through her. Nothing had changed. Fighting a wave of fear, she climbed up onto the rock and stood where her parents had once been.

She wanted to feel something. The lake spread out behind her, glittering and blue below the shelf of rock. Just over the tops of the pines, she could see the roof of the house. His? Hers? Had they trespassed with their friends by bribing the dogs? Turning toward the water, she counted the houses speckling the edge of the lake, fingers of wooden docks poking into the water. In the distance, a boat bobbed, someone fishing. Did her parents come here all the time? Is this where they fell in love? Had she been here before? In a belly, dreaming dreams of what her life might be like. Brilliant blue, the sky spread above her, cloudless, with a relentless sun burning above.

After placing the stuffed bear on the granite, she pulled off her shirt and jeans to stand barefoot in her underwear on the rock. Kennedy adjusted herself into the position her mother had held in the photograph. Hand on her hip, she tried to find a connection to a past only as solid as one single photograph. Warmth spread into the bottoms of her feet, tempting her to lie down on the big inviting rock. Stuffed bear next to her, she spread her body flat, and soaked in the heat like a lizard. Kennedy rolled over to heat her other side and noticed the scratches on the rock, faint and worn from the wind and rain.

Sam loved Jenny. The letters were shallowly scratched into the surface. The more she looked, the more of them she found. Gin and Cam. Quill and Margret. A few had dates, but most did not. There were fresh ones, and names so faded that she couldn't make out more than a letter or two. Hands curving around the edge of the slab, she felt the void of the drop below the massive rock, water far below. Was it deep? Did they jump? Did they leap into the void with a heart-pounding thrill, falling forever toward the cold lake below? Was it shallow? Did the reckless break themselves? Were their bones in the silt?

At the very edge, her belly flipped with fear even though she was safely laying flat on the rock, her chin resting on the curving edge as she felt with her hands. Deeper, grooved so that she could place a whole finger in the shallowed out letters, was a larger word, two. Closing her eyes, she felt the shapes until the letters made sense: "Bell's rock." Who carved this? Did you skip school to come here? She opened her mouth and tasted the granite with her tongue, unsure why she did it, just craving more information, some way into the mystery.

By the time she was ready to leave the rock, the sun had slid across the sky toward the top edge of the towering trees. Skin pink and burned, she dressed as the bear waited for her. Tying her tennis shoes, she thought about leaving him here to keep guard, but he found his way into her backpack.