Dead Center

Chapter 4: The Long Way Around

I believe sometimes you have a choice in what inspiration you choose to follow and other times you really don't. - Trent Reznor

If she lay still, completely still, without breathing or making a sound, Sandra could hear the woods speak. Not in any known language, but words nonetheless. Every night since Richard's body was discovered, she would listen the trees moan and the branches creak. His body was found dead in the middle of the woods, next to an old shed. The shed was small, 10 by 7 feet, maximum. Inside they found a suicide note, a bed and an encoded journal. Sandra still had the journal in her bedside drawer, her father's coded messages had turned out to be too hard for her to crack, but she'd keep trying. She volunteered to identify the body, her mother was too sick to do it. His skin was pasty, like he'd been out of the sun for too long and his brown mangy hair flowed down to his shoulders. There was no sign of trauma, but Barry (the only doctor in town who was qualified to perform an autopsy) said that he had small bruises on all his fingertips, the bruises looked like needle pricks. Sandra didn't cry when she saw his pale, thin body lying on the cold metal table. The official cause was diphenhydramine toxicity: sleeping pill suicide. She hadn't cried since, but had, once, told her mother that she missed him. The leaves hissed as the wind shook them. Her grandmother's house was right up against the woods, it had been built before the woods had had received its accursed name. She listened to the animals scamper, she imagined rabbits running for their lives, owls swooping down to catch unwary mice and the shed, the shelter her father had coveted. He had disappeared two weeks before his body was found, told her he had some research to do, never said where. It wasn't the first time he'd disappeared, but it was the first time he didn't come back. They found his body coincidently. A young boy had gone missing that day and the local law informant had, naturally, decided that the woods would be their best bet. One of the members of the search party had spotted the shed and broke down the door. What he found was a man lying stomach up on a wooden framed bed with a jar of commercial sleeping pills lying next to him. Ironically, the lost boy wasn't in the woods, he had over at the lake with some other kids. Sandra breathed and turned onto her side. The wind whistled through the leaves as she drifted off to sleep.

She awoke the smell of fried eggs and oil. She was hungry, so she got up. She checked the periodic table calendar against the wall opposite her bed: 1 September, Austrian chemist Carl Auer Baron von Welsbach was born today it read. Today, on Carl's birthday, she was going to the shed, to her father's deathbed. Her grandmother greeted her just as she reached the bottom of the sixteen-step staircase. She ate, lied to her grandmother about where she was going, grabbed her jacket from its hook and left through the front door. The wind was pinprick cold, the rain like tiny ice shards. Sandra pulled the cap over her head, covering her ears. She began to run, down the winding walkway, through the front garden and onto the streets, cursing as she stepped into a puddle. She had lapsed into a moderate jog by now, running toward Ruth's house.

The Jewish girl answered the door looking puffy-eyed.

"I'm heading out to the shed, "Sandra said, ", you coming?"

"Give me five."

"Five what?"

"Minutes, Sandra."

"Minutes? We don't have minutes. Seconds, we have seconds." Ruth closed her eyes as she sighed. She was tired.

"Where's your parents?" Sandra asked, falling into a slow jog. Ruth came hobbling behind her.