The Keepsake

Thunder crackled in the distance; another storm was coming. Nothing to worry about yet, she thought. If the lightning got closer, she’d stay away from the tallest tree and crouch down in a ditch. That was the theory, anyway. The drip of rain from the leaves became steady, drops clattering onto her jacket. The nylon hood trapped noise, magnifying the sound of her own breathing, her own heartbeat. In tiny fractions of degrees, the GPS coordinates inched slowly toward her goal.

Though it was midmorning, the woods seemed to be falling swiftly darker. Or maybe it was just the thickening rain clouds, threatening to turn this slow and steady drip into a torrent. She quickened her pace, moving at a brisk walk now, her boots splashing through mud and wet leaves. Suddenly she halted, frowning at the GPS.

She’d overshot. She needed to go back.

Retracing her steps, she returned to a bend in the path and stared into the trees. The GPS was telling her to leave the trail. Beyond the tangle of branches, the trees seemed to open up, revealing a tantalizing peek of a clearing.

She clambered off the footway and toward the clearing, twigs snapping beneath her boots, her progress as loud and clumsy as an elephant’s. Branches hit her face in wet slaps. She climbed onto a fallen log and was about to drop down on the other side when her gaze froze on the soil, and on the large shoe print stamped into the earth. Rain had worried away the edges, melted the tread marks. Someone else had climbed over this log. Someone else had scrambled through this underbrush. But he had been moving in the other direction, toward the trail, not away from it. The print did not look fresh. Nevertheless, she paused to scan her surroundings. She saw only drooping branches and tree trunks scabby with lichen. Who in his right mind would hang out here all night and all day in the woods, waiting to ambush a woman who might not ever come? A woman who might not even recognize that those numbers on the map were coordinates?

Reassured by her own logic, she hopped off the log and kept walking, her gaze back on the GPS, watching the numbers slowly shift. Closer, she thought. Almost there.

The trees suddenly thi

She walked into the clearing, her jeans swishing through wet grass, the dampness seeping through her pant legs. Except for the drip, drip of rain, the day was eerily still, with only the distant bark of a dog. She walked to the center of the meadow and slowly turned, taking in the periphery of trees, but saw no movement, not even the flutter of a bird.

What do you want me to find?

A crack of thunder split the air, and she glanced up at the blackening sky. Time to get out of this clearing. It was the height of foolhardiness to stand beside a lone tree during a lightning storm.

Only at that instant did she focus on the apple tree itself. On the object that hung on a nail that had been pounded into the trunk. It was above her eye level, partly hidden by a branch, and she had missed seeing it until now. She stared up at what dangled from the nail.

My missing keys.

She pulled them off the nail and whirled around, frantically searching the meadow for whoever might have left them hanging on the tree. Thunder cracked. Like the shot of a starter pistol, it sent her ru

She was gasping for breath by the time she stumbled from the trailhead. Her car was no longer the only vehicle sitting in the lot; a Volvo was now parked nearby. Her hands cold and numb, she fumbled to open the door. Scrambling in behind the wheel, she clicked the locks shut.

Safe.

For a moment, she sat breathing hard, the windshield fogging up from her breath. She stared down at the keys she’d just plucked from the lone apple tree. They looked exactly the same as always, five keys dangling from a ring made in the shape of an ankh, the ancient Egyptian symbol for life. There were the two keys to her apartment, the keys for her car, and the key to her mailbox. Someone had had them for over a week. While I slept, she thought, someone could have walked into my apartment. Or stolen my mail. Or rifled through…

My car.

With a gasp of panic, she jerked around, expecting to see a monster waiting to pounce from the backseat. But all she saw were stray museum files and an empty water bottle. No monsters, no ax murderer. She sank back against her seat, and the laugh that escaped her throat had the faint note of hysteria.

Someone is trying to drive me insane. Just like they drove my mother insane.

She inserted the key in the ignition and was about to start the engine when her gaze fixed on the trunk key, clattering against the others. All last night, she thought, my car was parked on the street near my apartment building. Exposed and unguarded.

She looked out at the parking area. Through the steamed window, she saw the owners of the parked Volvo come up the road. It was a young couple with a boy and a girl of about ten. The boy was walking a black Labrador. Or rather, the Labrador seemed to be walking the boy, dragging him as the boy tried to hold on to the leash.

Reassured that she was not alone, Josephine took the keys and stepped out of the car. Raindrops pelted her bare head, but she scarcely noticed the wetness sliding down her neck and seeping into her shirt collar. She circled to the back of the car and stared at the trunk, trying to remember when she’d last opened it. It had been her weekly visit to the grocery store. She could still picture the bulging plastic bags sitting in the trunk, and remembered lifting them out and carrying them upstairs in a single trip. There should be nothing left behind in the trunk now.

The dog began to bark wildly, and the boy holding the leash yelled, “Sam, come on! What’s the matter with you?”

Josephine turned and saw the boy was trying to drag his dog toward the family Volvo, but the dog kept barking at Josephine.

“Sorry,” the boy’s mother called out. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.” Now she took the leash, and the dog yelped as he was forced toward the Volvo.

Josephine unlocked her trunk. It lifted open.

When she saw what lay inside she stumbled backward, gasping. Rain tap-tapped in a steady tattoo down her cheeks, soaking her hair, trickling like the stroke of icy fingers. The dog broke loose and came tearing toward her, barking hysterically. She heard one of the children start to scream.

Their mother cried out, “Oh my God. Oh my God!”

As the father dialed 911, Josephine staggered over to a tree and sank down in shock onto the rain-sodden moss.