Took (6 page)

Erica gazed past me into the fire blazing on the hearth. “I don't know, just something.” She smoothed Little Erica's hair. “Those whispers,” she added. “They're getting louder. They keep me awake at night. Are you sure you never hear them?”

“Like I told you, it's just the wind or the floorboards creaking. Old houses make lots of noises.”

“The wind doesn't say people's names.”

Mom came back and sat down beside Erica. Picking up
The Middle Moffat
, she asked, “What chapter are we on?”

As Mom began to read, I studied her face. Her eyes were red, and so was her nose. I wanted to ask her what was going on between her and Dad. Were they getting divorced? But I knew she'd say,
Don't be silly, Daniel. Nothing's wrong. Everyone has arguments sometimes.
That's the problem with families—too many things no one wants to talk about.

Since I wasn't interested in the Moffat family, I left Erica and Mom snuggled under a blanket and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Down the hall, a strip of light shone under Dad's door. I heard explosions and gunfire, which meant he was playing one of his war games.

Downstairs, Mom and Erica laughed about something Rufus Moffat said.

I'd never felt so alone in all my life.

It begins with a whisper in the dark, always the girl's name, always long and airy. The old woman blows it through keyholes and cracks. She guides it upstairs and down until it finds the girl's ear and nestles there. Air-ric-cah . . . No one can hear it but the girl.

The girl has trouble sleeping, she's fearful, she withdraws and spends most of her time with the dolly. Perfect. The old woman gives the dolly a sweet voice. The dolly uses her sweet voice to tell the girl she loves her, but no one else does. She tells the girl she understands how she feels, but no one else does. Especially her brother. He hates her, doesn't she know that? Hasn't she always known that?

The girl tells the doll how unhappy she is. The children at school are mean to her. They laugh at her clothes, they laugh at the way she talks. On the playground, they gather in groups and turn their backs. Her brother is mean to her too. Her parents pick on her. They love her brother more than they love her. The doll agrees with everything the girl tells her.

One day, when winter is closing in and the nights are long, the dolly tells the girl she wants to go to the woods. The girl is afraid of the woods, she never goes there. She stays inside by the fire where it's warm. She reads to the dolly, she talks to the dolly, she shares her unhappiness with the dolly.

But the dolly insists. She has secrets she will share with the girl, but only if they are outside in the woods where no one can hear and no one can see. “If you really love me,” the dolly says, “you'll do as I ask. If you refuse me, I'll stop talking to you. I'll be what your brother says I am—a lump of plastic. Is that what you want?”

Of course it's not what the girl wants. She puts on her parka and her hat and her gloves, and she goes out into the cold with the dolly. The wind blows her name through the air. It's taken up by a flock of crows and passed on into the darkness—Air-ric-cah, Air-ric-cah  . . .

The dolly shows her a path. “This must be a secret,” she warns the girl. “You mustn't tell anyone what we see or do here.”

And so it continues.

As the days passed, Erica and I spent less and less time together. While she spent her afternoons reading and drawing and playing with her stupid doll, I roamed the woods, exploring trails and searching for hawks. Thanks to my binoculars and Peterson's
Field Guide to Birds of North America
, I could identify red-tailed hawks, sharp-shinned hawks, and Cooper's hawks. I knew the difference between black buzzards and turkey buzzards. Once, I'd even seen a bald eagle.

At first I tried to persuade Erica to come with me, but she'd said no so often, I gave up asking. Fine. Let her mope around the house with Little Erica. It was obvious she'd rather talk to a doll than to me. Pretty insulting, I thought.

On the school bus, we sat next to each other, but we didn't talk to each other and no one talked to us. Erica stared out the window, as if she expected to see something in the woods. I stared straight ahead, trying not to listen to the other kids laughing at the snobs from Connecticut.

One day after school I left the house in such a hurry I forgot my binoculars. I'd been watching a red-tailed hawk for a few days, and I needed the binoculars to see him in the woods. Annoyed at myself, I hurried home just in time to see my sister disappear into the woods on the other side of the house.

I stopped where I was, puzzled. Erica hated the woods—what was she up to? Maybe I should follow her and find out. Hadn't Mr. O'Neill told me to keep an eye on her?

Keeping a good distance between us, I walked as silently as if Erica were a bird I didn't want to frighten away. She'd taken a narrow path that meandered through the woods like a deer trail, circling around boulders and trees. Every now and then she stopped and stared into the underbrush as if she were looking for something.

Finally she came to a clearing and sat on a fallen tree. Cuddling her doll, she began whispering, just as if someone was with her—not the doll, but a person. I peered into the bushes around her, but I didn't see anyone. At least I don't
think
I did—it was more like I sensed a presence.

But no, that was crazy. All I heard was a whisper of wind prying leaves from branches. All I saw were shadows. I backed away from Erica. If she wanted to sit in the woods and hold imaginary conversations, let her. Why waste my afternoon spying on her?

Without making a sound, I crept away, retrieved my binoculars, and went in search of the red-tailed hawk.

By the time I came home, it was almost dark. Erica was sitting on the couch reading to Little Erica, exactly what she'd been doing when I'd left the house.

I lit the fire and sat beside her. “Have you been here all afternoon?”

She looked up from her book. “Of course. Where else would I be?”

“It's such a nice day, sunny and everything, I thought you might have gone outside to play for a while.”

The doll regarded me with her usual blank stare, but Erica frowned at me. “You know I hate the woods.”

I was about to accuse her of lying but then decided against it. Maybe I'd follow her again tomorrow, just in case I'd missed something.

Suddenly Erica leaned toward me and asked one of her typical out-of-nowhere questions. “Do you ever have secrets, Daniel?”

“Sometimes. Why? Do you?”

“Maybe,” she said softly. She smiled and gazed into the fire.

“What do you mean ‘maybe'? Either you do or you don't.”

Instead of answering, Erica began reading to the doll again. “‘Once upon a time a woodcutter had two children, a boy named Hansel and a girl named Gretel—'”

“About your secret,” I said, “the one you may or may not have. Has it got anything to do with the woods?”

“I'm reading to Little Erica now,” my sister said. “Don't interrupt me.”

I wanted to snatch the book out of her hands and throw it into the corner and hurl the doll after it. Instead, I left my sister and the doll on the couch and went to the kitchen to make myself a peanut butter sandwich. As I ate, I heard Erica reading “‘Nibble nibble, mousekin'” in a scary witch's voice, much deeper and raspier than her normal voice. I almost got up to see if someone else was in the living room.

The old woman waits in the woods, but you wouldn't recognize her. She has taken the form of the girl in the cabin. She watches Erica sit down on a log, just where the dolly tells her to sit. Good. The girl is biddable. She does as she's told.

The old woman comes closer. She smiles shyly and waits for Erica to notice her.

“Who are you?” Erica is startled, but not afraid, as she would be if the old woman had come as herself.

The old woman wears a gray plaid dress with a round collar. Her hair is red and curly. Her face is sweet and sad.

“I come to be your friend.” The old woman speaks in a soft, childish voice that soothes the girl.

“I don't have any friends,” Erica whispers.

“You got yourself one now.” The girl sits on the log beside Erica. “That's a mighty pretty dolly you got. Can I hold her?”

Erica holds the dolly tighter. “She's very special.”

“Please.” The girl reaches for the dolly. “I ain't never seen a dolly so pretty as that.”

Erica looks distrustful, but the dolly whispers, “Let her hold me, it's all right.”

Reluctantly, Erica hands the little girl her dolly.

“Oh, I wish I had me a dolly like this one,” the little girl says.

Rocking the doll in her arms, she croons a little song. The tune is familiar, but Erica can't make out the words.

Later, when Erica goes home, she doesn't remember what happened in the woods. It's a secret, even from herself.

After that, the old woman in her little-girl shape meets Erica in the woods every day. She tells her she lives with her sweet old auntie in a pretty little cabin on the tippity top of a hill. “She loves me ever so much,” the old woman says in the little-girl voice. “More'n anybody ever did.”

“More than your mommy and daddy?” Erica asks.

“My mama and daddy never loved me. They made me work hard at chores and beat me black-and-blue and made me sleep on the floor by the fireplace 'cause I was so bad.”

“My parents would never do that.”

“Oh yes, they would. Parents never love their little ones. They can't wait to get rid of them. You'll see. One day they'll get fed up with you and start treating you bad, just the way mine did.”

Erica stares at her, and the little girl smiles. Things are going well. Erica believes everything the girl tells her. “They already love your brother more than you.”

“It's true,” Erica says. “They've always loved Daniel best.”

“My auntie's keeping an eye on you,” the little girl says in her sweet little, false little voice. “She loves you even though you don't know it yet, and she aims to rescue you and bring you to her cabin, where me and you will live like sisters.”

The little girl pats Erica's hand. “Come live with us afore they start into beating you and scolding you and making you sleep by the fire. Why, they could kill you dead one night.”

Erica draws back a little. “You're scaring me.”

The little girl says, “There ain't nothing to be scared of. Come away with me, and I'll keep you safe.”

“Will I have to go to school?”

“School? No indeed. Old Auntie got no use for school. She'll teach you all you need to know.”

Erica nods her head. Yes, she'll come with the little girl. And stay with her and Old Auntie. And never go to school again. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But soon.

The old woman sees the brother watching from the woods. He can't see her, but he knows someone is there. “I must go,” she whispers to Erica, and slips away into the woods.

The next day, I left the house with my binoculars and my bird book, but instead of going to the woods, I hid in the tall weeds near the house and waited. It was a colder day and windy, but in a few minutes Erica ran out the back door, darted across the yard, and disappeared into the woods.

She took the same path, turned off into the clearing, and sat on the fallen tree. Her bright blue scarf blew in the wind, and her red hair swirled.

Hiding behind a tall maple, I watched her closely. Once in a while she whispered to the doll, but for the most part she neither moved nor spoke. She sat still and stared into the woods—waiting, I thought, but for what? Definitely a girl with secrets. No “maybes” about it.

The wind yanked the last of the leaves from the trees and sent them flying through the air. They rustled and sighed and sank to the ground in brown and yellow heaps. Some settled in Erica's hair and on her shoulders. Others landed on Little Erica.

Nothing distracted my sister. Not the falling leaves. Not the squirrel chattering on a branch over her head. Not the crow cawing from the top of a dead tree. She sat so still, I thought she must be holding her breath.

Suddenly she stood up and took a step or two toward the dead tree. She held the doll tightly and whispered to her.

While I watched Erica, I glimpsed a shadow drifting toward her through the trees—dark and formless, like a wisp of fog or smoke. I couldn't tell what it was—an old woman, a little girl, an animal—something small and dangerous, I could sense it. Behind it was something else, something worse, a shadowy, bony thing, taller than a man.

“Erica!” I shouted. “Stop, don't go near it! Run!”

My sister turned to me. “Daniel! What are you doing here?”

The shadow, or whatever it was, vanished, but I grabbed Erica and started pulling her away. “What's wrong with you? Can't you see? There was something there!”

“Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me go!”

“No. You're coming home, right now!”

“My doll,” she cried, “my doll.”

Little Erica lay on the ground where my sister had dropped her, her face in the leaves.

“I have to get her!” Erica twisted and turned, kicking me, flailing her arms. “She wants her! She'll take her!”

“Who wants her?” I yelled. “Who'll take her?”

Erica didn't answer, but she struggled even harder to get away from me, crying and screaming. Holding her was like holding a cat that doesn't want to be held. She didn't have claws or sharp teeth, but she managed to bite me twice and scratch my face.

But I didn't let her go. And I didn't pick up the doll.

Out of the woods at last, I saw Mom and Dad getting out of the van. When they saw me hauling Erica through the weeds, they hurried toward us.