She tossed her heavy hair back, and regarded us quizzically, hands on her hips. I felt the blood rise, to color my neck and stain my cheeks. This turned the edges of her lips up. She knew she had the upper hand.
"We were just taking a stroll." I stammered, while Nathan inspected the leaves on
the ground as if they were a new and exciting scientific discovery.
"This forest is a dangerous place. Ever heard the name Clare McNally?"
I had not, but Nathan's eyes lifted sharply from the ground. I suspected from his reaction that he knew something about her.
"It is rumored that she got lost amongst these trees and simply could never find her way out. Many people say they see her still, wandering aimlessly through the boughs, ever searching for rest." She watched our faces to see if her nasty tale was having the desired effect. What she saw must have satisfied her, because she continued,
"She was only seventeen-years-old when she disappeared. They dragged the sound at the edge of these trees and brought hounds in to sniff her out, but she was never found. No trace of a body, only a sad trail of footprints leading into the woods. The ground froze over the day she went missing, etching the shape of her feet into the soil, it was the only clue ever discovered, and the only lead that clearly showed that she had not been alone, since there was an extra pair of prints, prints that were unfortunately too blurred by the rough weather for the cops to find the culprit. No one owned up to making them, her boyfriend was questioned, as well as a few other possible suspects. Nothing surfaced. No one admitted to seeing a thing." She had been working at a loose clump of earth with her toe, while she spoke, but as the words dried on her tongue, she looked back at us both. Then added to her speech,
"Scary story, don't you think?"
"Yes, but I don't think I've ever heard it told quite like that." Nathan responded. His voice
was an octave or two higher than normal, and held the slightest suggestion of a tremor. The same thing I heard in the timber of his voice, was pounding in my blood. If she meant to make us afraid, she was succeeding.
"Really. What is it you know about Clare? I would have thought the saga was a little before your time, It happened well over twenty years ago, or so I've heard.". The way she tacked the last part of her sentence on after pausing a moment, drew my attention. Trudie was more than vaguely interested in Clare McNally.
"How come you know so much then, it happened before your time also?"
"Before my time... Yes," She seemed disorientated by my words, as if I'd assaulted her, but she recovered herself quickly,
"I've always been interested in unsolved mysteries, lost causes and sad demises. Aren't you?" She never got her answer, because suddenly the wind whipped at the leaves around our feet and flung them to swirl in a frenzy about us. The circle of sky above the clearing darkened. A crack of lightening zigzagged its way out of the gray sky and shattered a tree. It disintegrated before our eyes. Then after a second of absolute silence, the entire glade burst into flames. The fire streaming out at us on the raging wind. It happened so fast. So instantly that for a moment we stood stock still staring at the carnage like it was a scene in a movie. Then Nathan collected himself, he screamed out a lungful of air
"Run..."
I was standing behind both of them, so when we turned, in our effort to escape the hungry yellow edged tongue, I was ahead of them, but I heard their desperate footfall behind me as I made for the puncture of light at the edge of the green that indicated a gap in the bush.
I have never really understood how people succumb to fire, how they do not manage to get away once they see the flames ignite, but once you've seen an inferno in action, once you've seen the fire throw itself about at an unimaginable speed, once you've seen fully grown mature trees 'pop' like so much dried tinder, you no longer question the power of flames. The most terrifying aspect, however, is the smoke. It clouds and eddies under and around the flickering heat, making it impossible to see, making it impossible to breathe. If the flames don't get you the smoke might.
*
I lived, and apart from an angry scar across my shoulder, which I will carry for the rest of my life, I escaped unharmed, physically. Emotionally, and mentally I was a wreck. Nathan and Trudie did not get off as lightly. I never saw either again, and although I told the story of what happened in the trees that day, most listeners put my telling down to an imagination overwrought by grief and trauma. You see, no one other than the two of us saw Trudie leave the party that day. By all accounts, and according to all witnesses she never did.
My uncle, Curtis and aunt Ellery, fared far worse than me. Nathan was the sun and moon around which they lived. It was a well known fact that uncle Curtis dreamed of succeeding through his son, at all the things he had not managed to achieve in his own right. They folded like a pack of cards, Curtis sought solace in the whiskey cabinet, while Ellery gave herself over to social causes. They stayed together, but when next I visited them they were strangers to each other and had aged twenty years in four. The grand structure that was their house seemed to have tired with them, it was as if every surface had been dusted with exhaustion and as if every alcove sighed with the pain of Nathan's loss.
It was on this occasion that the true nature of the incident was exposed, and the reason, if there can be one, reared it's ugly head, to speak, across the divide. I was in the hall at my uncles house, hovering around the low key function my family had put on to celebrate the birth of Nathan's elder sister's first child, my uncle had become similarly detached, and I found myself in his company for the first time since the accident.
"Well, Cal, I cannot tell you how glad I’m to see you. I have always wanted to speak to you about what happened on the day of the fire. You know Nathan's body was never recovered, you were the last to see him alive. I need to know all you have to tell.” His aging face was animated, he was begging alms of closure from me. I had never had the option of telling him what had happened. I'd been rushed off to hospital, then on to my own home more than a hundred miles away, to make my recovery.
"We followed Trudie into the forest that day...." Before I could finish, my uncle cut in,
"Yes, I've heard people say that you are adamant that you followed this elusive woman into the forest, but everyone saw her remain at the party. Strangely no one knows how she came to be there, personally I did not see her, and as far as I can ascertain she was not invited to attend. She must have attended as a partner to one of the other guests. In the confusion that followed the fire, she was not sort out. You were taken off for treatment and told your side when she was long gone. She could not be traced. What did she look like?"
"Copper hair, young. Very lovely, we were both very taken with her. I think she must have died in the fire, despite the fact that no one reported a missing girl. The weirdest part was that she told us a horror story about a young girl who had gone missing in those very woods more than twenty years ago, who left nothing more than a trail of footprints with an unknown persons prints the only thing to keep her company. Do you know anything of it?" My uncle looked for all the world as if I'd struck him a hefty blow, his face literally went gray,
“She took Nathan, for what I....” Then he fell to the floor, gripped by a seizure of the heart. He lived, but to this day I have not had the opportunity to speak to him again. I don't think I want to....
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