Garden of Darkness Read Free

against the blacktop. The car’s headlights fanned into the heavy woodland, glancing off the child’s white gown and long blond hair.
    “Stop!” Brenda called.
    In a blur of white, the child reached the edge of the headlights’ range and plunged into the blackness beyond.
    Brenda ran after her.
    Across the road, legs flying, heart hammering.
    Past the headlights and into the thick grove of trees that moved into an infinity of straight rows.
    Back at the car, Joe stood with a dead flashlight in his hand, trying to comprehend what was happening. He wasn’t good at making decisions without Brenda’s help.
    Should he move the car? Someone might come around the corner and hit it. Should he forget the car and go after his wife?
    He stepped to the side of the road. He paused and listened.
    Nothing.
    He walked across the shoulder, down the ditch, and back up, stopping where the thick trees began. They were all the same. Some kind of aspen, their trunks as big around as a person.
    “Brenda!”
    His voice bounced back as if hitting a solid wall.
    His heart was beating hard now. Cold sweat crept down his spine. “Brenda! Don’t go in there! We’ll get somebody to help. We’ll call the cops!”
    He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. No signal.
    “Brenda!”
    He moved forward, forcing one foot in front of the other. He stopped at the trees; he wasn’t sure why. “Brenda!”
    Then he heard a scream. From deep within the trees. A bloodcurdling cry of terror followed by silence.

 
    Chapter Two
     
     
    In Tuonela, night came early and dawn came late. While the rest of the county was awash in morning sunlight, the steep valleys and ravines of Tuonela remained cloaked in thirty more minutes of darkness.
    Under the glow of a street lamp, Rachel Burton carried a cardboard box containing her African violet and Christmas cactus to the U-Haul, and slid it across the front seat. Her body hummed with sudden urgency, telling her to jump in the truck and get the hell on the road even though she wanted to give her apartment one final perusal.
    Should have left earlier.
    She’d planned to leave last night, but she’d told herself that was foolish.
    Wait until morning. Wait until light.
    The sense of urgency increased.
    Rather than going back inside, she hurried up the steep steps that led to the three-story Victorian and what was now the city morgue. She locked the wooden door and slipped the key through the mail slot. Without giving the building and her upstairs apartment another glance, she turned and walked away.
    Free.
    Almost.
    She pulled herself into the cab of the short truck. Her belongings didn’t fill it, but a van hadn’t been big enough. She let the engine idle a minute, then put it in gear and turned up the hill to climb from the deep valley that stopped at the Wisconsin River.
    Heading west. To California.
    The vehicle groaned and creaked, laboring its way out of the dark hole, finally reaching level ground, sunlight glinting off the rearview mirror. Her heart began to hammer more seriously now.
    She was leaving. For good. She was going to make it this time.
    Evan didn’t even call to tell you good-bye.
    To hell with him. To hell with Tuonela.
    Very soon she would be a thousand miles from this place. Very soon it would no longer seem quite real, no longer seem so important. It didn’t deserve to take up so much space in her head. Soon she would remember it for what it was: a dying town. A bleak, sad, dying town where bad things had happened.
    The vehicle took her through the slumbering flat-lands, where houses had been built on a grid and streets didn’t turn in on themselves. Out past the Quik Stop and Burger King, Applebee’s and Perkins.
    The flatlands looked like a million other Midwestern towns, built overnight strictly for convenience.
    This part of Tuonela hurt your eyes and pained your heart in a way only a true lack of beauty and individuality could. But it was better than the other part.