VACANCY & ARIEL

“How do you know she’s a mover?” I asked, irritated—Henley’s woods lore had gotten us nowhere and I thought my voice deserved to be heeded.

“I don’t know nothin’. I jus’ figger that’s how it is. I got a good feelin’ we hang around here, she’ll come to us. But it’s your dollar.”

I was, I discovered, not up to shouldering the burden of decision. Or maybe I just wanted Henley to be the one who was wrong—I was losing hope that we would find her. The sky cleared that evening; the stars shone bright and there was a three-quarter moon. Aloft in the water oak, wired on caffeine pills, I felt afloat, grounded in silvery light. The points of the leaves were tipped with illusory glitters—they seemed to hiss when they touched my skin. I wished I had a joint to smooth things out, though I doubted Henley would approve. I made him out below to the right, half-hidden among the shadowy foliage. Still as an Indian. Likely replaying old Mountaineer games in his head, or boning up on his botanical knowledge. Every time we passed a plant he’d say its name, as if I cared. “That there’s black kohosh,” he’d say. “And that’s cardinal flower…that little ’un next to the crust of fungus.” I told myself to lighten up on Whirlie.

He’d proved to be a good traveling companion. He put up with my bullshit, after all, and he told amusing stories about his life in the redneck paradise. Turned out he had a sister by the name of Girlie. Whirlie and Girlie Henley.

“She come out a few months premature,” he’d said. “Daddy was gonna call her Early, but mama wouldn’t have it.”

I zoned out for a while, lost in the stars. Tiny sparkles against the black. A cold breeze made me shiver, bringing a bitter scent. I began to feel queasy and wondered if the game I’d eaten was backing up on me. I was too self-absorbed to recognize these for signs of the Willowy Woman’s presence and the first I knew she was nearby was when I heard Henley squawk, this followed by a thud from below. I peered down, trying to see him.

“Hey…What’s going on?” I asked shakily.

Then I spotted her peeking from among the leaves to my left. Henley had been right about her face. Milk-pale, long and narrow, it had an exotic angularity and simplicity such as might be depicted in a comic book artist’s vision of beauty, too streamlined to be real, and it was more compelling than the face of any human woman I had known. Her eyes were dark, almost no whites showing around enormous pupils, and the eyebrows were black upswept streaks. Sharp cheekbones mimicked the angle of her eyebrows; her mouth was wide and full, predatory yet sensual. The face of an avenging angel such as might have been drawn by Neal Adams or Jim Steranko. But real, vibrant, almost hallucinatorily intense. She emerged further from the leaves, snarled black hair waterfalling to her waist, and stared at me as if I were the one thing in the world that mattered.

Nausea roiled the contents of my stomach and a fierce rotting stench clotted my nostrils, but I remained transfixed by her. The descriptions given in my colleague’s notes all spoke of her as naked, but she wore a faded oversized dress and a down jacket patched with strips of duct tape—castaways she must have scavenged from a dump. She seized hold of my shirt and lifted me…but not easily. Her arm trembled with the effort. Nonetheless, she lifted me and I was certain she was going to drop me from the tree, just as I assumed she had done with Henley. But then her intense expression was washed away by one of confusion. Her eyes widened, her lips parted, and she let out a gasp. She wrapped an arm about my waist and began to descend through the tree, carrying me like a sack of flour. Disoriented, the leaves slapping me in the face, shots of moonlight splashing into my eyes, I struggled against her grip, but she held me fast. Once we reached the ground she deposited me at the base of the trunk and stalked off several paces, moving with a gliding step. I realized that she was nowhere near seven feet tall. Closer to six, I’d say. Then I recalled that it had been some time since the last sighting. She had dwindled and grown weaker since that night.