The Girl In The Woods.

David Jack Bell.

To Molly, of course.

And in memory of absent friends:.

John Johnson and Matt Malay.

Acknowledgments.

Thanks to Shane Staley and Greg Gifune for their faith, honesty, and willingness to answer questions above and beyond the call of duty. Thanks to Mike Bohatch for the cover and the book trailer. Thanks to Molly, who read the ma.n.u.script in our cold house. For guidance and inspiration, thanks go to: Tom and Elizabeth Monteleone, Ed Gorman, David Morrell, Dallas Mayr, Terry Wright, Gary Braunbeck, Scott Nicholson, Robert Dunbar, Jonathan Maberry, Brian Keene, John Marco, James Reasoner, Bill Crider, and Ron Bayes. And to all my friends, family, and readers: Many, many thanks.

Part One: Disappearances.

CHAPTER ONE.

The visions, as Diana liked to think of them, mostly stopped coming when she left her hometown of Westwood, inst.i.tutionalized her mother, and moved to New Cambridge to start her life over.

She remembered one of the last ones clearly, the one that scared her so much she decided it was time to change her life and start over someplace new, far from the hold that the recent past had over her. It was a rainy afternoon, two years after her sister disappeared, and a particularly intense vision had come upon her while she was driving, erasing the present moment of traffic and stoplights in front of her and transporting her to that other place, the one she saw so often and knew so well but couldn't understand.

The clearing in the woods...the tall trees...the moonlit night...the dark, rich earth and the secrets it held...

By the grace of whatever G.o.d or power that watched over hopeless cases like herself, she managed to navigate the car to the side of the road, apparently coasting to a stop and narrowly missing not only another parked vehicle but also two pedestrians, one of whom turned out to be an off-duty paramedic. It was this man who pulled her door open and was leaning inside the car when Diana came back to reality.

"Are you okay, ma'am?" he said. "Are you okay?"

Diana knew what had happened. After two years of the visions, she intimately knew the signs. A pain at the base of her skull. A rapid heart rate. And a fatigue, a deep fatigue that crept into her bones and made her feel as though she hadn't slept in weeks.

"I'm okay," she said. "I just...sometimes I just..."

"Are they seizures, ma'am? Are you on medication?"

Diana focused on the man's face. Young, freshly shaven. Strong. Then she looked beyond him. Moving cars, falling rain. People on the sidewalk living their lives, but some taking the time to stop and stare at the young woman who clearly had something wrong with her. The rain came in the open car, fell against her arm, sending shivers to her spine.

"I'm okay," Diana said. "Really. I just need to move on."

She gently but insistently pushed against the man with her left hand, urging him to go. He moved back but kept talking.

"Ma'am, if it's seizures, you need to see a doctor. You might not want to drive."

Diana dropped the car into reverse-she didn't know how it got into neutral-and started backing away. The man moved back farther, stepped out of the way of the car. The door swung shut. She pulled into traffic, the wipers doing their work across the windshield.

"I'm okay," she said to herself in the car.

But she didn't believe a word of it.

And for the past two years, even as the outward trappings of her life had improved, Diana still had not been able to completely convince herself that she was okay, that she had moved on and slipped free of the past.

The visions had mostly stopped, yes. Her mother was, some days, stable.

But her sister was still gone. And Diana knew that the past was always there, waiting to come back and intrude.

And that is what happened the day she met the woman in the parking lot.

Kay Todd.

Diana was running a little late.

She knew enough about herself to know that her tardiness was a defense mechanism, a childish way to delay the inevitable-facing her mother and her mother's condition. Diana had quit her job and hadn't found a new one, so she had nothing to fill her time before going to the hospital except avoidance. And she was good at that, practically a master.

She scrambled to shower and dress, then paused to check herself in the mirror. She had lost a few pounds over the past couple of months, and she thought her face was starting to look too thin. Her brown hair had grown to her shoulders and needed to be trimmed before the ends began to split. Summer was ending, but she still looked pale, so she took the time to apply a small amount of make-up. If her mother was having a coherent day-more and more of a rarity-Diana wanted to look nice. She grabbed a light jacket since they kept the hospital cool, perhaps an added form of sedation for the patients whose brains were already in deep freeze. And she was out the door of her apartment and turning to lock it when she remembered the candy bars.

As her mother descended deeper and deeper into the ravages of Alzheimer's, she became more and more like a child. She refused to eat much of the time-had, in fact, lost about thirty-five pounds off an already slender frame. But she did eat sweets. So Diana never showed up without a handful of candy bars, which the nurses kept in a locked drawer at their station and doled out to her mother on a daily basis. She went back inside, grabbed the candy bars-Hershey's, dark chocolate-off the counter, and then left, locking the door behind her.

Later, when Diana looked back at the series of events that had been set in motion that day, she remembered the candy bars and wondered if everything would have been different if she hadn't gone back for them. She might have made it to the car a few minutes sooner, and Kay Todd might never have found her.

But Diana knew this was not the case. This was simply another attempt at avoidance.

Kay Todd was determined to find her.

They would have met one way or another.

CHAPTER TWO.

Diana saw the woman approaching from across the parking lot. She looked unsteady on her feet, wobbly like a drunk, and Diana hoped to avoid her, to slip into her car and be on her way. It was a warm mid-September day, one that had started cool, with frost on the pumpkin, and was heading toward a blazing red sunset. The clouds were just beginning to flame along their tips when the woman said Diana's name.

"Officer Greene?"

She was an older woman with the heavily lined face of a lifelong smoker. She wore a maroon windbreaker, its tail fluttering up as she walked, pink polyester slacks and white tennis shoes that were scuffed and worn. Her hair was thinning and gray and cut short like a man's, and when she spoke again, Diana saw a row of discolored teeth.

"Are you Officer Diana Greene?"

"I used to be Officer Diana Greene. I'm not anymore." Diana squinted at the woman, scanning her face, trying to place it. "And you...?"

Someone played loud music in an apartment across the way, a thumping that Diana felt in her chest. Had she met this woman on the job, arrested her or a family member perhaps? Or, worse yet, was she someone from home, a friend of her mother's pa.s.sing through town looking for an update on her condition? This seemed like a long shot since her mother had few friends, and Diana's goal of leaving Westwood and their life there far behind had worked.

The woman smiled and held out her hand. The odor of stale cigarette smoke came off of her in waves, and the tips of her fingers were stained yellow by nicotine.

"I'm Kay Todd. We haven't met." They shook. The woman's hand felt tiny and frail in Diana's, like holding a small, sick bird. "I was hoping we could talk."

"I'm actually on my way somewhere. But if this is a police matter, I'm not on the force any more. You need to go to the station-"

"I've been inside there before, honey," Kay Todd said. "I know how they handle things in there. If you would just let me come in. It won't take long."

Diana looked at her watch. Nearly five. A forty-five minute drive to Vienna Woods, and she had to be there by six. She still had a little time, but she didn't know what to make of the little, rocking scarecrow of a woman standing before her. Something stirred within Diana, some combination of pity and caution, and it must have shown on her face.

"We don't have to go inside your house. We can go to the diner up the way."

"I don't know you..."

"Please," Kay Todd said. Her eyes glistened. "Please. You're going to want to hear what I have to say."

The wind picked up, warm and swirling, tossing leaves across the tops of their shoes.

"Are you telling me this isn't a police matter? That it's something personal between you and me?"

"It's more personal than anything else at this point," Kay Todd said. "You see, I have a daughter, and she disappeared...and I know..."

She didn't finish her thought, but instead made a gesture, something to indicate that they should continue their conversation somewhere else.

Diana's heart fluttered, a quick stirring. She did want to know. She couldn't help herself now. She just followed along, letting Kay Todd lead the way.

They took a booth near the back of the Courthouse Diner, which sat on the south side of High Street, three blocks from Diana's apartment building. An indifferent looking waitress brought them coffee, and Diana added cream then sipped from the mug, hoping to prevent herself from blurting out the questions that swirled in her mind. She wanted to know what this woman wanted, but she also knew that the best way to find out was to simply wait. The story would come.

The diner was mostly empty. A couple of old-timers sat at the counter, b.i.t.c.hing about gas prices, their voices gruff and gravelly. Diana knew they, like her, simply had too much time on their hands and used it to cook up increasingly reactionary solutions to the world's problems. But she also couldn't help but think they were studying her, eavesdropping and judging, as so many older men in New Cambridge seemed to do. She told herself to ignore them, but when someone dropped a dish back in the kitchen, a sharp and brittle sound that cut through the still air of the diner, she jumped a little in her seat.

Kay Todd didn't seem to notice. She was busy stirring cream into her coffee, the spoon making a faint pinging against the side of the mug. For someone with an urgent problem, she seemed to be taking her time getting to it, so Diana spoke up.

"Mrs. Todd..."

"Kay. Call me Kay."

"Kay." Diana couldn't avoid the heavy odor of fried food and greasy meat, and against her will, her stomach rumbled. "I have somewhere to be soon, so if you have something to tell me, you should hurry up."

"Everyone's always in a hurry, aren't they?"

"You brought me here," Diana said, but she saw something in Kay's eyes, a hard edge that hadn't been there before, and Diana wondered about the layers that were concealed within this woman.

"People don't really know about patience, do they Diana? Not like you and certainly not like me."

"I don't follow you-"

"Just listen to what I have to say," she said.

Diana had known women like Kay Todd her whole life. She had grown up around them. Her mother was one of those women. They loved to the best of their abilities, and they lived their lives in apartment complexes or trailer parks, sc.r.a.ping by on Social Security or disability, holding the pieces together as best they could long after the men in their lives had gone away or had the good sense to die. Diana knew Kay Todd had a story to tell, and more than likely it was going to be a sad story. She braced herself.

"My Margie was a student here at Fields University. She worked to pay her way through school and got a little financial aid as well. I helped her when I could, but I didn't have much. And I had another daughter at home. My husband died when Margie was eight."

She paused. Diana recognized her cue.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"That's okay. He was a good man. The only bad thing he ever did to me was die. A heart attack in the bathtub. He was thirty-eight. But we did our best, and like I said, Margie made it to college. She wasn't the best student in the world, but she got Bs and Cs. She was going to graduate. No one else in our family had ever graduated college. No one else had even so much as gone. Then during her last year, Margie dropped out. She decided she didn't like her major, didn't think she was learning anything. She was studying communications but decided that she might want to be a nurse or a social worker. Something that might make a difference, you know?"

Diana nodded. "I'm familiar with the impulse."

"So she quit school. She rented a room down here on Poplar Street and went to work for a cleaning service, cleaning people's houses. Rich people's houses."

She nearly spit when she spoke the last line.

"And you didn't like that she dropped out?" Diana said.

"I wasn't thrilled. I tried not to say anything about it, but I couldn't keep my mouth shut. That's always been my problem. I told her that I thought she was making a mistake, that she should just gut it out and finish that last semester. It was too important to throw all that money and time away so late in the game. She didn't take that very well. She said some awful things to me. She told me that since I'd never been to college and didn't even know anyone who had been to college that I didn't have any right to say anything. She was right, of course. I didn't really have any right. I guess I've come to realize that it's not that unusual to take time off."

"It's not," Diana said.

"We had that blow up when she was home for Christmas. I told her I loved her when she left, but things were icy between us. We didn't talk much. And I was wrapped up in my own life. Daphne, my other daughter, was in high school then. I was working full-time."

"And that's the last time you saw her? At Christmas break?"

Kay nodded. She recited the facts so well that it was obvious to Diana she had spent a lot of time thinking them over. "She disappeared one night in March. That's the last time she was seen. It was a cool night, cloudy, and Margie left her room around eleven o'clock. One of the neighbors saw her on the stairs. She took just enough money for cigarettes and left her wallet, her ID, clothes and everything else behind. She didn't even bring her gla.s.ses. We know she made it to the store because the clerk remembered waiting on her. He recognized her from a picture. But she never made it back to her room. Somewhere between the store and her room, she disappeared. Right there on Poplar Street. n.o.body saw or heard a thing, according to the police."

Despite the hot coffee, Diana felt a cold tingle at the back of her neck. Stories of young women disappearing always had that effect on her.

"I've never heard of her." Diana leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, looking for added warmth. Something about Kay Todd was bothering her. Not only did she speak with the central Ohio tw.a.n.g that Diana had grown up hearing and had tried to purge from her own mouth, but she also possessed the small-town, Midwestern habit of circling around a topic without ever really arriving at it. Diana knew there was something she wasn't being told, that there were layers to this story that were only going to be revealed after extensive peeling. "Kay, what year are we talking about?"

"Again with the hurry." Kay smiled, but there was no warmth in her eyes. "Does it really matter what year it happened? My daughter is gone, and no one has been able to tell me what happened to her. The police say they don't have a single clue. Not a single lead. No blood. No physical evidence. n.o.body heard a scream or a struggle. They say she most likely ran away. Probably sounds familiar to you, doesn't it? The things these cops say?"

Diana started to get the feeling that their conversation wasn't leading in the direction that she originally suspected, that Kay Todd hadn't sought her our because of her connection to the police department but because of something else. And that uncertainty, that lack of confidence in the direction of the conversation, made her uneasy.

"What year are we talking about, Kay?"