The Cellar Read Free

disappearing into the fog, forever lost.
    “Wish I hadn’t.”
    “Let’s undo it. Hold on.”
    The girl braced herself against the dash, and Donna unlatched the seat belt.
    “Okay, let’s get out now. I’ll go first. Don’t do anything until I say it’s all right.”
    “Okay.”
    Climbing out, Donna slipped on the fog-wet grassy covering of the slope. She clung to the door until she found her footing.
    “Are you okay?” Sandy asked.
    “So far, so good.” Holding herself steady, she peered through the fog. Apparently the road had curved to the left without them, and they had nose-dived into a ditch. The rear of the car remained at road level: unless the fog was too thick, it would be visible to passing cars.
    Donna worked her way carefully down the slippery embankment. The Maverick’s front bumper was buried in the ditch. Steam hissed from the crevices of the hood. She crawled across the hood, got down on the other side, and climbed the slope to Sandy’s door. She helped the girl out. Together they slid and stumbled to the bottom of the ditch.
    “Well,” Donna said in a voice as cheerful as she could muster, “here we are. Now let’s have a look at your wounds.”
    Sandy untucked her plaid blouse and lifted it out of the way. Donna, squatting, lowered the girl’s jeans. A wide band of red crossed her belly. The skin over her hip bones looked tender and raw, as if layers had been sandpapered off. “I’ll bet that stings.”
    Sandy nodded. Donna began to lift the jeans.
    “I’ve gotta go.”
    “Well, pick a tree. Just a second.” She climbed up to the car and took a box of Kleenex from the glove compartment. “You can use these.”
    Carrying the box of tissue with one hand andholding up her jeans with the other, Sandy walked along the bottom of the ditch. She vanished in the fog. “Hey, here’s a path!” she called.
    “Don’t go far.”
    “Just a little ways.”
    Donna heard her daughter’s feet crushing the forest mat of dead twigs and pine needles. The sounds became faint. “Sandy! Don’t go any farther.”
    The footfalls had either stopped, or faded so completely with distance that they blended with the other forest sounds.
    “Sandy!”
    “What?” The girl sounded annoyed, but her voice came from far away.
    “Can you get back all right?”
    “Geez, Mom.”
    “Okay.” Donna leaned back until the seat of her corduroy pants pressed against the car. She shivered. Her blouse was too thin to keep out the cold. She would wait for Sandy, then get jackets out of the backseat. Until the girl’s return, she didn’t want to move. She waited, staring into the gray where Sandy had gone.
    Suddenly, the wind tore away a shred of fog. “That was a longer-than-average pit stop,” Donna said.
    Sandy didn’t answer, or move.
    “What’s the matter, hon?”
    She just stood there, above the ditch, motionless and mute.
    “Sandy, what’s wrong?”
    Feeling a prickling chill on the back of herneck, Donna snapped her head around. Nothing behind her. She looked back at Sandy.
    “My God, what’s wrong?”
    Pushing from the car, she ran. She ran toward the paralyzed, silent figure at the forest edge. Ran through the gray, obscuring murk. Watched the shape of her daughter twist into a crude resemblance as the fog thinned until, a dozen feet away, nothing remained of Sandy but a four-foot pine sapling.
    “Oh, Jesus,” Donna muttered. And then she shrieked, “Sandy!”
    “Mom,” came the distant voice. “I think I’m lost.”
    “Don’t move.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Don’t move. Stay right where you are! I’m coming!”
    “Hurry!”
    A narrow path through the pines seemed to point in the voice’s direction. Donna hurried.
    “Sandy!” she shouted.
    “Here.”
    The voice was closer. Donna walked quickly, watching the fog, stepping over a dead pine trunk blocking the path.
    “Sandy?”
    “Mom!”
    The voice was very close now, but off to the right.
    “Okay, I’ve almost reached