Forest of Shadows Read online

  “I’ll be honest with you,” she said during one of their early sessions. “Somniphobia is a very difficult phobia to tackle. For some people, it can even take years. You and I both know that the root cause of your problem lies with your wife’s untimely death. Your mind has created this fear as a protective mechanism to keep you from suffering a similar fate. The key is resolving the issues with your subconscious. It won’t be easy, but I need you to stick with it.”

  Over the years, he had taken a multitude of medications to help him sleep, as well as to quell the panic attacks that plagued him during the day and night. For sleep, he took Ativan, Halcyon, Valium, Dalmane and lately, Ambien. His anti-anxiety pills ran the gamut from Xanax, to Zoloft, to Klonopin and Wellbutrin.

  There was one other issue, well beyond the borders of phobia.

  Guilt.

  He suffered from a relentless case of remorse that he was sure could never be erased. That he and Anne’s last night together was marred by their fight. Did she know that he still loved her? Or did she die filled with anger, not realizing how empty his words had been? They were questions he would never be able to answer, so he would have to forever live with that guilt. As long as he could keep it from ruining Jessica’s life, he was happy to carry that cross.

  Time had passed, measured by the pencil marks on Jessica’s door frame as he charted her growth, and though he was taking less medication than in the past, it was still a necessary evil in his life.

  The bottle of Ambien stared at him from its perch on the high bookshelf. He considered taking one and just going to bed. Then he checked his email and saw that ten more messages had rolled in since the last time he’d logged on at midnight.

  “Sleep be damned.”

  Chapter Six

  It took an entire joint and a couple of beers, but Judas Graves was finally calm. He crushed the can of beer, cocked his arm back, aimed and let it fly in the direction of the garbage can at the far end of his kitchen. It clanked off the wall, landing wide and to the left of its intended target. Basketball was never his strong suit.

  Things had been rough lately. The shit that went down today took the cake.

  Work was hard to find, harder than hooking up with a girl in this town. The few chicks he’d bagged had only come to his place with the promise of good weed. Sure, he had plenty of dry spells, just like any other red-blooded Alaskan male. You learned to deal with them or you went crazy.

  A job was a different story. There was no way he’d charm his way into a potential employer’s heart by waving a nickel bag in his direction. Judas had barely made it out of high school, spending most of his time easing the pain of life with whatever he could get his hands on. Since turning twenty-one, he’d settled on pot and alcohol, in moderation, most times. The damage to his reputation was already done and most places wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. The fact that he was a white transplant in a predominantly Native American town didn’t help matters much.

  So it was no wonder that he’d chomped at the bit when the real estate agency hired him to do some cleaning prep for some of their more weather-beaten homes. Most of the places were little more than dilapidated log houses, built in the late sixties, battered by the elements on the outside and kept in a perpetual state of slovenliness on the inside by their aging owners. Mary Longfeather at the White Eagle Real Estate Agency, the town’s newest and possibly least necessary business, warned him it would be hard work. Her agency had recently purchased the houses, if you could call them that, by another real estate office from two towns away that had closed its doors due to the retirement of its owner and sole agent.

  “Almost all of the previous owners were single men,” Mary had said. “I think it’s also safe to say that they were heavy on hunting and light on housework. You’ll see what I mean when you go in the houses.”

  “No sweat. They’re probably no worse than my place,” he joked. “What happened to the owners?”

  “They all passed away.” She paused and picked up a file from her desk. “Except this one.” She pointed to the address and a picture of a veritable mansion of a modern log home. “This one was abandoned by the occupants some time ago. Looks like they just up and left without so much as a forwarding address. That’s one way to beat paying a mortgage,” she said with a hint of nervousness.

  Something about the address and the story of a family hitting the road and never coming back tickled Judas’s memory, but he didn’t care enough to give it a second thought.

  Mary gave him a cash allotment to pick up cleaning supplies. He had to give her a receipt for all of his purchases, so there was no way for him to skim a twenty off the top for himself, but that was cool. At least he’d be making some dough.

  All of the houses were on the outskirts of the town, seemingly dropped at random by some great log cabin maker in the sky decades ago. The roads leading to each house were barely penetrable, especially for his fifteen-year-old Ford pickup that was in desperate need of everything. Whoever bought these dumps was going to have to invest some real capital in clearing and smoothing a path from the main road. Rocks, pits and large fallen tree branches provided a worthy endurance test for the Ford. The clearing to the first house was studded with so many foot-deep sinkholes that he actually bit his tongue twice as the car dipped to the left and right.

  Mary Longfeather was right. The first two places were dumps. She was also right about the previous inhabitants being hunters. The old, warped wood of the porches and kitchens were stained brownish red from the blood of decades of kills. The walls were lined with the heads of prize game. He guessed the families didn’t want anything to do with them, opting to leave them for the next lucky family or in this case, Judas.

  It took him three days to make those two houses presentable. He decided to reward his hard work by taking on the modern cabin out on Fir Way. It may have been the road farthest from town, any farther and it would have been swallowed up by the vast, endless bush, but least there the access road and driveway were relatively paved. The place was huge but new. Best guess would put it at fifteen years old, give or take a few years. He vaguely remembered talk about the house when it was built, but he’d been too young to care at the time.

  He stepped up onto the porch that wrapped around the entire house and was drawn to the square keypad to the right of the front door. No one had alarms in Shida, not even the businesses. The town’s version of high crime was the occasional drunk and disorderly on a Saturday night or an even rarer domestic disturbance that usually ended with a husband getting his ass thrown out of the house for a couple of days.

  “Groovy,” he said and began punching buttons at random. The electricity had been cut off long ago but it made him feel like a rich dude entering a secret mansion.

  The inside looked like something out of a magazine. A spiral staircase was to his right while the living room to his left was twice the size of his entire apartment. It was connected to what he supposed was a dining room with two bay windows overlooking the forest that lined the back yard.

  Better yet, the place was almost spotless. It just needed a little mopping, some light dusting and a spritz of Windex on the windows. The furniture had long been removed so every move he made echoed throughout the vast, empty house. He went back to the car and lugged his cleaning supplies inside, snapped his headphones on and started dusting around the windows, countertops and anything that had an edge that could collect dust. Next, he filled the mop bucket and got to work on some light mopping. It took about a half hour to do the entire bottom floor, after which he went outside to fire up a joint and let the floors dry. The sun felt good as he lay in the grass and closed his eyes, drinking in the pleasant summer air.

  He awoke two hours later. The sun was still out but losing its mid-afternoon strength.

  “Great. Just great,” he muttered. He was going to have to haul ass if he wanted to get the house done on time. This was supposed to be his easy job. If it took more than a day he was up shit’s creek.r />
  He dashed into the house, grabbed some window cleaner and paper towels and made quick work of the downstairs windows. One floor down, one to go. He dropped another CD into his walkman and carted his duster, mop and bucket up the spiral stairs, cursing as some of the dirty water sloshed over the side onto the clean floor below.

  There was a long hallway with four doors on either side and another large door at the very end. He decided to tackle one room at a time instead of dusting the entire floor, then mopping, then windows. The first two were sizeable bedrooms, the third a bathroom with two sinks. He’d never seen anything like it in his life.

  The next room must have been the master bedroom. Larger than the others, it also had a bathroom with a toilet and sink set off to the left. It had a skylight and large crossbeams nestled into the ceiling. The sun was starting to set by the time he finished cleaning it, spurring him on even faster.

  He prayed aloud that the last room at the end of the hall was nowhere near as big. As he shuffled down the hallway and came to the final door, he noticed deep scratch marks etched into the shiny wood. Judas traced his fingers along the jagged criss-cross of unsightly lines.

  “Damn waste of a door. I’da killed my dog if he did this.”

  When he opened the door he was relieved to find that it was the smallest bedroom on the floor. His job was made even easier when he saw that the sole window had been boarded up. That just left dusting and mopping. He gave the bucket a shove with his foot to move it to the center of the room and started wiping down the molding around the inner door. After clearing the molding of all accumulated dust, he turned to grab his mop and sucked his breath in hard.

  The mop and bucket were gone.

  Judas pulled the headphones from his ears and scanned the empty room.

  Where the hell did the mop and bucket go?

  His heart kicked up the tempo. He stayed perfectly still, listening for the sounds of a possible intruder. Maybe someone saw his truck outside and decided to play a stupid game of “drive the house cleaner nuts”. That was a short enough drive. He didn’t need any help there.

  “Hello,” he called out. “Anyone else in here?”

  The house was silent, save for the sound of the wind blowing outside.

  Maybe he was more burnt than he thought. Could be he left the mop bucket in one of the other rooms and only thought he brought it in here. He sighed, disgusted with himself and started to walk out of the room.

  He fell through the floor, landing in a puddle of mop water on the living room floor. The mop and bucket lay scattered to his left.

  “What the hell?”

  His head throbbed where it had collided with the floor. In fact, every bone in his body ached as he’d landed flat on his back. He looked up, fearful to see the damage done to the floor and ceiling. Damage he was sure to be blamed for and in turn taken out of his pay, which would most likely leave him with nothing.

  But when he looked up, there was no hole in the ceiling. Just sturdy slats of unbroken, grooved spruce.

  Chapter Seven

  Mom’s Bar was just like any small neighborhood pub. Five or six stools lined up along a battered wood bartop, a couple of black tables and chairs nearby, a pool table that cost a dollar in quarters for a game on a table that had seen better days, a new jukebox that had your standard collection of barroom CD’s: The Best of Jimmy Buffet, Jimi Hendrix, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Van Morrison, Van Halen, Metallica, Bob Marley, and a smattering of new rock and pop acts. Mom’s perpetually smelled like cigarettes and old beer, as did Agnes, the bartender. Agnes was pushing sixty, dressed like she was still twenty and thirty pounds lighter, and was quick to give buybacks to her steady customers.

  John saw Jack Casella at the end of the bar and pulled up a stool next to him. Aside from Agnes, they were the only ones in the bar. Jack and Agnes were watching the television and smoking. Jimmy Stewart glided past the screen riding a horse and wearing a cowboy hat five times the size of his head. He looked ornery.

  “Hey Jack, Agnes,” John said.

  “Well if it isn’t himself,” Jack said and slapped him on the back.

  Agnes went to the tap and pulled him a draft. There was only one beer to choose from at Mom’s. You either had Schaefer on tap or you drank the hard stuff. The fact that it was always cold as hell and only cost a buck made it hard to refuse.

  “So, what brings you to the confines of Mom’s on a sunny afternoon? Not that I mind the company on my daily liquid lunch break. No offense to Agnes, of course.”

  John smiled. “I was on my way back to the house, figured I’d find you here and I was in dire need of a cold Schaefer.”

  “It’s been a while. Me and Agnes were beginning to think you didn’t like us anymore.”

  John had met Jack Casella almost ten years ago when they worked together at the phone company. They had stayed in touch, sliding easily from close work acquaintances to even closer friends. They had been coming to Mom’s for years, though lately, Jack had been making it a daily habit.

  “Aren’t you going to eat anything?” John asked.

  “I have everything I need right here,” Jack answered, holding up his glass.

  “I don’t know how you function for the rest of the afternoon. I remember when we used to go for a few beers on Fridays and I was totally useless when we got back to the office.”

  “Who says you weren’t useless before we went out to drink?”

  Jack smiled.

  “Is today Wednesday?” he said.

  “All day.”

  “That would make it Dr. Anderson day. How’d it go? Better yet, tell me what she was wearing.”

  Jack had accompanied John to his early sessions with Dr. Anderson and had lusted after her ever since. Dr. Anderson was easy to lust after.

  “Session was the same as usual. I’m no saner than when I went in.”

  “And?”

  John took a long drink. “Red sleeveless blouse, white slacks, red high-heel shoes. And her hair was down.”

  “Any cleavage showing?”

  “Christ, you’re hopeless.”

  “I’m married. I live to window shop. If you don’t mind my asking,” Jack said, his tone sober, “have you made any progress? I mean about the panic attacks. You’re not still having them as much, are you?”

  “Hard to say. I’m on so much medication now, there’s no way of telling whether that’s getting better or not. I have talked to her about weaning myself off them, mostly to see if I’ve gotten any better at handling an attack. Plus, I hate having to take this shit. Sometimes, man, I don’t know which is worse, the attacks or the meds.”

  Jack nudged his side. “At least you’re fighting to get better. So what did the sexy Dr. Anderson have to say about your desire to just say no?”

  “She thought it was a good idea and we’ve charted out a plan.”

  “You nervous?”

  “Not about that. Especially since I’m the one who brought it up. No, there was something else she mentioned that kind of got me on edge.”

  He looked to Agnes and held up their empty beer glasses. She tilted her head towards the tap, meaning he should help himself.

  “She said she thinks it’s time I made some changes in my life.”

  Jack took a sip and twirled his glass in his hands. “What kind of changes?”

  “Anything. She’s right. Here I have the money to do whatever I want and I haven’t even taken a vacation in five years. I live in the same house, follow the same routine day in and day out, talk to the same people, like I’m nestled in some kind of comfort zone except if I was so comfortable, I wouldn’t have so much anxiety. She says that maybe the things I think I need to stay calm are the very things that have made me such a mess.” John traced his finger around a ring of condensation on the bar. “She put it a little bit nicer and more professional than that, but you get the idea.”

  “Well then, to changes.” They clinked glasses. “I suggest going slow at first and simply changing your und
erwear.”

  John snickered. The beers were starting to make him lightheaded and it felt good.

  “Here’s the only catch, and it could be dumb but it’s how I feel. Yeah, change would be great and yes, I agree it’s time I lived my life a little. It’s just that…”

  He paused.

  “It’s just that, with each change, I’ll lose another piece of Anne.”

  They passed the next hour mostly in silence, watching an old western, drinking dollar beers and working hard at dulling the pain of a five-year-old memory.

  Chapter Eight

  “Far out, man.”

  Teddy Hawkins sank his considerable girth into his ratty couch while Judas talked. He popped open a beer and felt the foam spill over his hand and onto the carpet, but he didn’t dare take his eyes from his pasty friend.

  “So, what happened when you went back and told Mary Longfeather?” he asked. His eyes were as wide and white as ping pong balls.

  “What do you think?” Judas huffed. “She accused me of getting stoned on the job and canned my ass. I really could have used the money, too. If I’d have just kept my mouth shut and finished the other houses.”

  He lapsed into silence, pondering his lost wealth.

  Teddy pushed his long black hair from his face and struggled to sit forward. One hand plunged into the depths behind a couch cushion while the other fought hard to balance his beer.

  “Were you stoned?”

  “I only smoked half a jay, then I slept it off. No, dude, I was straight when it happened.”

  “And you fell right through the floor?”

  Judas shivered slightly. “Yeah. Except there wasn’t even a hole in the ceiling. Man, I just ran the hell out of there as fast as I could.”