“blue screen technique” to make imaginary things look real in the movies.
He quickly decided to put all these ideas about ghosts and monsters out of his mind as he looked out at the woods beyond his back yard. The thick forest grew on two sides of the square yard that he now called his own. To his left the irregular brush gradually blended into an oak forest that was cut by a brook a little way down the road. His Dad had told him that they’d never have any neighbors on that side because it was a wetland and part of the reservation, though it looked dry enough to Todd. They did have neighbors on the right, just beyond a row of trees that separated the yards. The house next door, like all of the houses on this road and the small shopping plaza, was brand new. Most of the families had moved in a couple weeks ago, his Dad told him.
Straight ahead, at the furthest end of the yard, the woods grew thickest and probably ran for miles before meeting a road or another house. These thick woods fascinated Todd, and he felt no fear, only wonder as he looked into their endless depths.
He heard the trees silently calling him, huge, grizzled oaks older than his grandfather, probably even older than Dovecrest. They beckoned him, luring him into their embrace with the sweet promises of adventure. Maybe they hid a secret treasure, he thought, or maybe a fossil of an animal or fish instead of the usual fossilized ferns he’d found when they were digging up Grandpa’s sewer pipes. Maybe he could even find an arrowhead. After all, Dovecrest was an Indian, and he lived near here.
His mind filled with excitement as he thought about what the woods might hold. He doubted that anyone had ever been in these woods before. Todd immediately decided that he must be the first to explore this forest, which was, after all, part of his very own back yard. He must explore these woods before any of the other neighborhood kids had the chance.
Then he remembered his father’s warning about wandering off in the woods. He looked at the sky and calculated that it was still light enough to explore for a little while, as long as he didn’t go very far in. Besides, he was a big kid now, not a little baby anymore.
I’ll just go in a little ways, he thought. And I won’t go so far away that I can’t see the house. That way I won’t get lost.
He walked slowly to the edge of the grass and looked back at the house. Dad had turned on the light in his study and was probably working on his computer, while Mom, no doubt, was still fussing with the baby’s room. A tinge of jealousy burned his cheeks when he thought about the new baby. Already his Mom was fussing over it and it hadn’t even been born yet.
Well, at least they wouldn’t notice he was gone, and he’d be back before dark. He’d just duck a little way into the woods, have an adventure, and come right back. They’d never miss him.
He turned away from the house and stepped through the underbrush and into the woods.
-3-
Erik spent most of the day unpacking and helping Vickie rearrange furniture. He couldn’t quite understand the female preoccupation with designing rooms. It must be that nesting instinct.
Yet he was very pleased with the job she’d done on his office—the Thoreau Suite. Naming the room had started as a private joke between them. While on their honeymoon in Miami they had visited a mansion built by one of those turn of the century capitalists. The place had a gold name plate on the door of each room. They’d laughed at the pretentiousness of rich people.
“When we get a place of our own, we’ll name the rooms, too,” Vickie had said.
“What if we only have two rooms?”
“We’ll still name them. They’d be our rooms, right?”
The new house wasn’t a mansion by any stretch of the imagination, but it did have more than two rooms. And Vickie had promised him an office of his own, designed any way he wanted. She had delivered on her promise.
He sat back in his luxurious office chair—an elegant nut-brown leather—and looked at the result. With a simple natural look, including small plants, nature prints, and the Thoreau collage, the room had Walden Pond written all over it. Erik had done most of his work in tiny apartments on a kitchen table. Now, for the first time, he really felt at home.
As happy as he was with the new place, though, he couldn’t stop thinking about the woods behind the house, and Johnny Dovecrest’s visit. Pastor Mark hadn’t done much to reassure him, either. He hadn’t realized the woods were so deep. The first investment he’d make would be a good, sturdy fence to enclose the backyard.
-4-
The trees towered over Todd, reminding him of the time they’d gone to a museum in New York that had an old stone building right inside the place. The old building hadn’t had walls, just these giant stone things that looked like tree trunks without any branches. Like that building, these trees formed a sort of roof over his head, and he could hear the chirping of thousands of birds that were settling down for the night. Somewhere an owl hooted and was answered by the angry caw of a crow. The damp air attracted swarms of mosquitoes, which he absently slapped away from his face. One lighted on his arm, where he smashed it onto a bloody smear.
He walked slowly, occasionally stumbling over a blueberry bush, or being picked by thorns, until he came to a narrow path which, while not overgrown, looked as if it hadn’t been used in some time. He glanced back at the house and saw the light shining from Dad’s room like a beacon from a lighthouse. Finding his way back would be no sweat, no sweat at all. He clutched his geologist’s hammer tightly and moved on.
He remembered a movie he’d seen in first grade about Daniel Boone, and he imagined he was a great explorer as he pushed forward along the path, blazing new trails into the wilderness. The hammer was a tomahawk. His sneakers were moccasins and his Boston Red Sox hat became a coonskin cap as he turned it backwards on his head.
The path narrowed as it edged deeper into the woods, but he hardly noticed. And when the trail ended altogether, he still didn’t notice, so intent was he on his role as a pioneer.
The silent voice drew him on, promising discovery just ahead, perhaps just beyond the next tree. The voice in his mind grew stronger as he moved deeper into the forest, and his excitement increased with the intensity of the voice.
Although the voice didn’t speak in words, it uttered the poetry of a language understandable to the mind of an adventure-seeking boy. Todd eagerly listened and heard.
He came to an abrupt halt as the forest unexpectedly broke into a circular clearing of neatly cropped grass. The last rays of the setting sun bathed the clearing in sinister shadows that seemed to take on strange shapes as the light flickered through the surrounding trees.
But it wasn’t the clearing that stopped Todd in his tracks. It was the huge rectangular black slab sitting exactly in the center of the circle. It was the same stone Todd had seen in his dream—the very same stone where he’d seen Dovecrest’s tortured body.
His breath rushed from his lungs like a popped balloon as he stood paralyzed, unable to do anything except stare at the terrible rock and wonder if it were real, or still a left-over from last night’s dream.
The rock was large enough to make a bed for a tall man, and stood shoulder-high to Todd. Blacker than any rock he had even seen, it reminded him of the coal-dark eyes of Dovecrest, eyes that looked as if they knew all of his innermost thoughts and secrets. He wondered if the blackness were real, or a trick of the shadows.
Then the voice in his mind grew stronger; the rock itself
