The Silence Beneath the Pines Read online

  THE SILENCE

  BENEATH

  THE PINES

  Copyright 2019 by Randileigh Kennedy

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, people, or places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are simply products of the author’s imagination, and any similarity to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any way whatsoever without written consent from the author.

  For Lane – my first and greatest friend from the Galena Woods. I cherish our childhood adventures and all the time we spent together meeting “halfway” between our houses. I will forever appreciate growing up “in the middle of nowhere” with you.

  Prologue

  When you find yourself alone in the woods with nothing other than complete silence beneath the pines – a sound so deafening, it’s somehow even louder than your own heartbeat – there’s no solace there. No comfort. No peace. It’s only you and your thoughts, and it leaves you questioning whether or not the monster you’re running from is in fact - - you.

  You know what? Maybe there’s some truth in that. Maybe I am a monster. But then again, perhaps everyone feels that way after committing a murder.

  Chapter 1

  ~ 20 Years Prior ~

  “Be home before dark,” my mom called out from the kitchen as I pulled a thin sweatshirt off the coat hook by the front door. “And for heaven’s sake, please include that Grout girl so I don’t get another call from her mother. It’s uncomfortable. Can’t you guys just let her play with you?”

  “Delainey Grout is the weirdest kid I know.” I sighed dramatically. “She laughs too loud and she’s always wearing bird shirts.”

  “What on earth is a bird shirt?” my father chimed in from his usual post-dinner spot on the plaid couch. He never missed an episode of Jeopardy. Ever.

  “You know, like shirts with birds all over it. Kind of like the cat sweatshirts Grandma Ruby wears all the time, but with birds. They’re not even neon or cool. They’re just weird. And she cheats, too, did I tell you that? None of the kids like her.”

  “What is sixteenth century poetry,” my father Dave stated loudly toward the TV, clearly no longer paying attention to me.

  “Just include her,” my mother scolded. “Even the weird kids need friends. Set an example. Teach her the games and show some kindness.”

  “It’s Hide and Seek, Mom. She knows how to play. She just sucks at it,” I explained. “Everybody knows you have to close your eyes when you count. But she doesn’t. She’s horrible and she cheats and she wears bird shirts. Please don’t make me be friends with her.”

  “You don’t have to be best buddies, Hailey. Just be kind. Be the girl I’m raising you to be.” My mom poured on the guilt as heavily as my dad had to salt her cooking. It was smothering me.

  “I’ll try.” I shrugged again, fully annoyed at this point. “I have to go, I’m already late!” I quickly zipped up my sweatshirt.

  “Before dark, Hailey,” my mom reiterated one last time as I darted out the front door toward our evening meeting spot.

  Galena Woods was a heavily tree-laden area nestled in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The pine trees were thick and the ground was covered in rocky dirt and crispy dead needles. Our small neighborhood was relatively remote – it was about twenty-five minutes outside the tourist town of Mountain Ridge, Nevada, near Lake Tahoe.

  The scenery was magnificent. The tops of those massive pines gave way to beautiful, often year-round snow-capped mountains. Although our smattering of about forty log cabins sounded like a sizeable community to some out here, it was still pretty secluded from the rest of the geographic area, with one dirt road leading in and out to the main highway. Anyone living further east was bussed into Reno for school, but up here in the woods – our bus took us into Mountain Ridge. There was always a difference between those Mountain Ridge kids and us. Simply put, they were lake people and we were tree people, which meant they had money and we had love. That’s what my mom always told me, anyway.

  Despite how far we were from town, there were still seven or eight houses within our neighborhood with kids my age. Well, I was only nine, the youngest, but the others I played with were all between ten and twelve years old. When school was out for the summer, we met up most nights after dinner to play games in the woods. The freedom out there was immeasurable; no parents nagging at us to clean our rooms or practice our spelling lists. We could even use curse words out in the woods if we wanted to – none of the adults would ever know. It was an unspoken rule that all of our adventures in the woods remained our communal secret. Other than cursing, however, our time out there was innocent, spent playing games every night until the sun went down.

  “Hailey, you’re late!” Jake shouted at me as I ran toward the group of kids clustered around the number tree. We called it that because it was ‘base’ so to speak – the place we counted at with our eyes shut for all our games. It was a massive old pine with drooping branches set back alone some feet from the other trees. It stood out amongst the others, and was therefore the perfect spot for our meet-ups because it was so recognizable.

  “Cut her some slack,” Ethan added defensively. He was Jake’s eleven-year-old twin brother. Nicki, my best friend, was already there as well, leaning up against the tree. Mya and Alex, the other regulars, were walking toward the tree from their side of the woods, also running a few minutes behind. There we were – the ‘Psycho Six’ as Jake coined. Of course that was last summer when he thought the word psycho started with the letter S, but the name stuck nevertheless.

  “So what is it tonight?” Nicki asked once we were all gathered by the tree. “Hide and Seek? Monster in the Woods? Ghosts in the Graveyard? Kick the Can?”

  “Oh shit, I see the monster coming right now,” Alex said, shaking his head. Nicki swatted at him, urging him to hush.

  Sure enough, we all turned to see Delainey Grout walking right toward us.

  “Ugh, why can’t that girl take a hint,” Jake said in a frustrated tone. “She’s so weird. Quick, everyone start playing so it’s too late for her to join!”

  “Not it!” everyone shouted quickly in unison, other than Jake.

  “Go, I’ll count,” Jake urged, nodding toward the deeper edge of the woods. We all scattered. I was already too-well hidden behind a fallen tree trunk and some thick underbrush to hear their conversation. I imagine it went something like, “we already started playing, so get lost, weirdo” – Jake wasn’t exactly well spoken. But despite our harsh, unwelcoming attitude toward Bird Girl, she always stuck around anyway, joining our games without permission. I expected she would do the same tonight, assimilating in without an invitation.

  Within five or six minutes, we’d all been found. As usual, Ethan was the last one to be discovered. He always managed to climb up high into a thick pine where he couldn’t be seen from the ground unless you were able to look straight up from the trunk. It was plenty warm out for an August evening, but that’s why I always wore light sweatshirts when we’d play – I preferred having something to cover up my arms from sap and scrapes on the chance I’d be forced up one of the trees myself.

  “I’ll count next, I don’t mind it,” Delainey offered once we were all back at the number tree.

  “Of course you like counting. It’s because you cheat,” Alex huffed quietly. “What are those on your sweatshirt, pigeons?” The other kids laughed, but I felt a bit uncomfortable with the teasing. I was no saint by any means, but I tried not to be intentionally cruel if I could help it. Not to her face, anyway.

  “They’re bluebirds,
moron,” Delainey shot back. “It’s the state bird. You should read a book sometime.”

  “And you should go home and play with your imaginary friends,” Mya added. “We already have a game going here.”

  “Yeah, we already started,” Ethan said with a softer tone. He could be mean when he wanted to be, like his twin brother, but for some reason with girls he always had more of a softness in his voice. He often got into fights with other boys at school though, so I wasn’t sure why the difference in gender mattered to him. His brother was a jerk to everyone. Likely the only reason I didn’t get picked on at school was because I was part of the Psycho Six. I liked to think it offered me some kind of protection from the bullies at school, because no doubt Jake would’ve stood up for any of us if it came down to it. Ethan too.

  “That means you can’t play until we’ve all had our turn,” Mya continued. “Ethan, your count.” Without any further discussion we all bolted off to find our next great hiding spot.

  The trees were dense enough on their own to shield us from plain sight, but there were also plenty of other great spots. There were a few sporadic cabins, or remnants of what used to be cabins I should say, about a hundred yards from base. There were plenty of old doors and rotting pieces of wood to hide behind there.

  Only one old cabin remained standing back that way, but the road to it had been long overgrown. Rumor had it the owner was still alive, living there, but he never left the dwelling. Old Clint Grimes had lived there since he returned from Desert Storm. He’d lost his eyesight while overseas, so upon his return he became somewhat of a hermit. We never heard any sounds coming from his tiny, rundown cabin – yet none of us were brave enough to ever hide too close to it on the chance he was in fact still alive and still there. It gave us the spooks. We considered the entire area around his cabin to be out of bounds.

  We played Hide and Seek for at least an hour, each of us taking our turns while Delainey sat on a large rock, waiting to be invited in. She at least deserved credit for that – she was persistent.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Ethan suggested as we gathered around the tree to decide on a different game. “Let me confer with my friends first to see if they’re all willing to be kind enough to let you join in, Delainey.” He flashed an innocent smile, then ushered us ten feet back from the tree for a quick huddle.

  “Can we vote no?” Jake snickered.

  “Maybe we can get her to give up on us,” Ethan said persuasively. “Monster in the Woods. I’ll hide under that brush pile we found last week by the west cabin.”

  “Which way is west? That way, or…” Alex questioned, pointing in the wrong direction.

  “Put your arm down, dumbass,” Jake shot back, clearly annoyed. “You’re going to give away our plan. It’s that way, over by that old broken greenhouse.” He stealthily nodded over to the right. There were two dismantled cabins that direction, and they were distinctively different. One was just a pile of wood and doors, while the other had a lot more metal, glass, and stone around it.

  “Jake and I were out there last week shooting our BB guns through the glass panels and we dug some stuff up. There’s a huge metal frame thing, covered with some wood. If you lift that up, there’s a pretty big dug out area underneath. We can all fit.”

  “Doesn’t that seem out of bounds? We’re not supposed to hide past those cabins. She’ll never find us there,” I stated matter-of-factly. “It’s impossible for her to even know that’s there.”

  “Exactly,” Ethan added with a raised brow. “We’ll hide out until she gives up. She’ll think we vanished. Then tomorrow we’ll make up a horrible story.” Ethan pulled a Swiss Army knife out of his worn jeans, lifting up the edge of his dirty black t-shirt. “We’ll tell her there was an actual monster in the woods. We’ll tell her it did horrible things to us – it scratched us up and hurt us – and it’s all her fault for not finding us. We’ll scare her from ever coming back out here.”

  Jake let out a quiet, maniacal laugh, and Alex nodded.

  “Watch.” Ethan cut small scraping lines into his skin, right above his hip bone. “It will look like the monster attacked me with his claws.”

  “Awesome, give that to me!” Jake said a little too loud. He also sliced his skin, tracing a couple lines up his left forearm.

  “I…I can’t cut myself,” I stammered, staring at the drops of blood that dripped from Ethan’s waist onto his jeans.

  “We don’t have to, we can use my mom’s makeup to give us bruises,” Nicki suggested. I liked that plan so much better.

  “Indian burns!” Mya’s eyes lit up as she thought of it.

  “This stays here though. Don’t tell your parents or we’re hella screwed and they’ll never let us back out here,” Ethan continued. “Ready?”

  Honestly I wasn’t sure about the plan. It felt wrong. I wished someone would’ve been more direct with her, telling her to go away and leave us alone. I wished that would’ve been enough, though admittedly I knew that wasn’t effective. I looked back at the stupid bluebirds on her shirt, and suddenly I no longer cared about her feelings. Birds were annoying and they crapped all over my bedroom window from their nest in our awning. She had to go.

  We dismantled our huddle and Ethan spoke on our behalf.

  “These generous people applaud you for waiting patiently, and you may now join our game,” he said with fake enthusiasm, motioning toward the number tree. “What do you guys think, Kick the Can? Monster in the Woods?”

  “Oooh, Monster,” Delainey said quickly before any of us even had the chance to rig the selection. It was too perfect. Ethan’s mouth curled up into a sinister smile, and Jake and Alex’s faces looked similar.

  “Only if I get to hide first,” Ethan replied with an animated arm gesture. She nodded in agreement.

  Monster in the Woods was probably our favorite game. It was essentially a backwards Hide and Seek. One person hid while everyone else counted, then everyone broke away from each other to find the hiding person. Once you found them, you discretely hid with them, one by one. Once the last person discovered the group, everyone would scream and yell, “Monster in the Woods!” The creepiest part of the game was when you began crossing paths with less and less people, as that meant everyone else was finding the hiding spot before you. No one wanted to be the last one out there, all alone.

  We huddled around the number tree with our heads down and our eyes closed. I periodically glanced over at Delainey to make sure she wasn’t cheating. Our eyes locked only once.

  As soon as we hit one hundred we all scattered in different directions. The trickiest part of this plan would be making sure Delainey didn’t notice us all heading toward the west cabin at staggering times. I noticed people taking their time, heading in different directions first to throw her off the scent.

  Roughly seven or eight minutes into the game, I passed Delainey staring up the trunk of a huge pine.

  “I knew he would be up high,” she stated under her breath.

  I walked by, looking up to see what she saw. Sure enough, Ethan’s signature black Converse shoe could be seen high up in one of the branches. I was confused for a split second, but then quickly relaxed. Ethan was a lot of things – a bad student, an instigator, dangerously adventurous, and sometimes even a bully at school – but he always kept his word. Always. He had to be at the west cabin like he said. I was sure about that. He probably threw his shoe up into the tree on his way to confuse her and keep her idle in one spot to give us more of a chance to disappear.

  “How do you know he’s up there?” I shrugged, pretending I never saw the shoe – as if she was in on a secret I didn’t know.

  “Ah, just a hunch. Although he could be up any of these, who knows. But I found this one first, so I get to climb it before you.”

  “Fair enough,” I replied with a shrug. “I’m going to check down by the creek,” I declared, pointing the opposite direction. “I guess if you go missing, then I’ll start looking up all the trees.” I offere
d her a half-smile and she did the same. As I walked farther into the woods, I could hear her attempting to climb the limbs of the pine she was standing under. I smiled big now, amused by Ethan’s craftiness. The shoe was definitely a decoy. Well played, Ethan. I headed toward the creek, then zagged further west once I knew I was out of Delainey’s eye sight.

  Sure enough by the time I made it to the west cabin and found the metal frame and overgrown brush, I was the fourth one there. Ethan, Jake, and Mya were already inside; we were just waiting on Nicki and Alex.

  “Give me your wrist, Hales,” Mya said quietly as we all cowered into some kind of makeshift ditch. I was thankful Jake was holding out a small pocket flashlight. The brush and metal over us covered all of the remaining light leftover by the setting sun.

  I reached my wrist out to her. She slid up my sweatshirt sleeve and wrapped her hands around my forearm, twisting them quickly in opposite directions.

  I yelped out in pain.

  “Shhh, you’re going to blow this,” Jake hissed.

  “What are you doing?” I shot back at Mya, pulling my arm back in toward my chest.

  “Indian burns. We have to mark our bodies,” Mya replied in a loud whisper.

  “Geez, now?” I huffed back. “Can’t we do it right before we meet up tomorrow?”

  “Shhh,” Ethan and Jake both sneered in unison. There were footsteps around the brush over our heads. We all remained perfectly silent.

  The footsteps stopped, as did my heart. I froze.

  Moments later, there were three taps on the metal frame of the door resting over our heads.

  I still held my breath.

  A few seconds passed, and then the frame creaked and the brush lifted, allowing the remaining daylight to filter into our bunker. Alex and Nicki stood there with stupid grins, looking quite proud of themselves.

  “She’s up in a tree by the creek,” Alex said with a snicker, climbing in to our dirt hole. Nicki followed him in. We all slid over, pressed tightly against one another to make room.