And Then She Was Gone(9)

“Then go get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow night. I love you.” Stacy blew a soft kiss into the phone.

“Love you too. ’Night.” Michael hung up.

Stacy slumped back into the seat. She crossed her hands over the steering wheel and stared across the road to the park. A warm breeze blew through the open window; it was a beautiful night. She took a deep breath, enjoying the balmy summer air.

She knew if she cut through the park, it would be only a short twenty-minute walk from here to home. And she had gone to the park a few times with Michael during her lunch break, and thought it was a lovely place. She could leave the car overnight, then Michael could fix it when he got home and they’d save the money for a tow.

Satisfied with her plan, Stacy grabbed her handbag, closed the window, locked the car door, and crossed the street.

The entrance to Hamilton Park was marked by a beautiful stone archway. Modeled after Roman architecture, its twin stone columns towered fifteen feet high on each side, suspending a rounded arch between them, and thick, pitted iron gates were welded eternally open.

Inside the park, old-fashioned streetlamps lit the paved main paths. A web of smaller unlit paths crisscrossed the park, but Stacy elected to stick to the lighted areas. As she walked, she made plans in her head of all the things she would need to buy over the next few months: nursery furniture, baby clothes, and one of those instant baby thermometers. Her shopping list grew longer with each step. While she hurried along, she spoke aloud to herself. She didn’t care; no one was around, and she had no one else to talk to.

“Perhaps in a little while, we can buy an affordable car. Reliable. Maybe a mini-van. If we get used, then I might be able to stay home—for a little while at least.”

She looked up, and suddenly realized that beyond the sporadically lit path, the park was dark. Completely dark. Her happiness dissipated like the breeze as Mr. Chambers’ words from earlier suddenly struck her: “It’s a beautiful park—during the day.”

During the day…

Stacy was passing by a monument—a neoclassical column of marble that stood twelve feet high. The top of the column was decorated with four stone faces of older men, one facing in each of the four compass directions. Stacy felt as if those faces were scowling down at her in silent judgment as she passed. She shuddered and turned away.

The park now felt different. The rolling hills and groomed grounds no longer reminded her of families walking and children playing. Now, unnervingly, they reminded her of a cemetery.

She sped up.

The faster she walked, the louder her heels rang on the tar. The tap-tap-tap of her shoes matched the rapid pace of her heart. A bench ahead drew her focus. At first it looked like her couch on laundry day, covered in a mound of clothes. But as she drew closer, the mound moved.

A homeless man sat up and glared directly at her. He had apparently laid two filled trash bags over himself, and as he rose, the contents of one of the bags spilled onto the walkway.

Instinctively, Stacy moved to the far side of the path. The man crouched low over his bags, looking like a rabid raccoon protecting his spilled trash. He glared at her, his eyes barely visible behind bushy eyebrows, his yellow teeth poking out from his unkempt beard. He cursed under his breath as he watched her pass.

Stacy took a deep breath and upped her pace. Her mother’s words of warning now filled her with dread. She clenched her bag to her chest and hustled on.

The lovely park’s tall oaks and flowering shrubs had turned ominous. A dead tree’s branches clawed at the sky like skeletal fingers. Just a few yards off the path, everything was shrouded in the murk, and dark shadows played tricks on her mind. Every sound now took on a foreboding tone: branches groaned and creaked; leaves rustled; an unseen creature scurried along the undergrowth. Goose bumps crawled across Stacy’s skin. Her shoulders hunched inward as she marched forward like a hiker in the winter woods, her body leaning forward against an invisible storm.

She was almost jogging now. The heel of one of her leather shoes had dug a deep blister into the back of her foot.

As she crested a hill, she stopped suddenly. Up ahead, the path dipped down again—into darkness. Peering, she could just make out another of the old-fashioned streetlights, but it was unlit, as lifeless as a dead tree. And without it…

Stacy looked around like a startled bird. The heat of the night now felt thick and oppressive. She took a deep breath and tried to marshal her resolve.

She started forward, her skin prickling as the night air wrapped around her. Like a child, she found herself holding her breath as she hurried through the darkness. With every step, a shiver crawled down her spine. But when she heard the rush of water from a fountain up ahead, she knew she was almost out of the darkened area. And when she saw the next streetlight through the trees, shining like a welcome beacon, she breathed a sigh of relief.