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Steffie In The Woods

“He wasn’t just a contact,” Steffie said, “and he wasn’t just a scientist. He was a friend.”

“It doesn’t matter. Nobody can know he’s missing. Nobody can know her existed. Certainly, nobody can know what he was working on.”

Hank McIntyre had left all his clothes, his keys, and his mystery book (unfinished) at his vacation cabin by the lake. If he had had any notes on his experiments, they were gone along with him. If he had been taken, his takers had left no trace of themselves. There were no tire tracks. The gravel walk outside the cabin and the dry detritus under the woods behind the cabin held no footprints, if any feet had passed over them.

“There’ll be some sign of him or his work, sooner or later,” the investigator told Steffie. “We’ll decide what to do about him then.”

Steffie nodded and watched the crew load up and leave. She stayed.

Hank was funny and clever. As the daylight faded, she was reminded that he was even a little silly. In the dim cabin, pale green spots glowed: little ghosts he had made from luminescent clay. They were all over the single-room cabin. On the mantle, on the cabinets, on the end-tables….

On the floor?

She went closer. Not, not a ghost, just a fragment, just inside the door.

She opened the door and stepped outside. And there was another fragment, in the grass.

It took a bit of looking to find another, nestled down by the roots of a clump of weeds. Then one inside the tree line. And another. And another.

He HAD been taken, and he had left her a trail to follow. It would have been invisible in the daylight, but Hank had had to know she wouldln’t leave until she knew what had happened.

She followed through the woods, not directly along the trail, but as far to the side as she could get and still see the crumbs, until she came to a small house in the woods. She half expected it to be made of gingerbread, but it was a pre-fab pseudo-log cabin, made of pressed wood stuck together with shabby little connector rods, like a child’s toy enlarged for grownups.

The windows were a shoddy as the rest of it, and she had no trouble hearing through one.

Increasingly frustrated questions, monotonously defiant answers, then a sharp blow, a thud, and groan.

The front door opened and Steffie heard footsteps on leaves and twigs, the snap of a lighter, and an irritated puff. Cigarette smoke drifted around the corner of the cabin to her, but no voices. This captor was alone.

She wasn’t surprised. Hank was the cartoon version of a math and science guy, slight and weedy. A moderately large Girl Scout could have overpowered him, especially if she had had a gun. A single captor would have made it easier, as well, for Hank to have pocketed a ghost and dropped pieces without being seen.

Steffie was never without a belt, and sometimes a scarf. If push had come to shove, she knew how to weave a thin, strong rope out of grasses.

Hank was just coming to when she dragged his captor’s body into the cabin. She helped him up and guided him into the woods, urging him to sit and recover while she did something inside.

The people who had built the cabin had apparently had visions of homesteading. There were shelves of (empty) Mason jars and rods across the ceiling suitable for hanging herbs and medicinal flowers to dry. And there was a baking oven with a heavy wooden door, just ready and waiting for its first crusty brown loaf.

She built up the fire, a quick process, if you have the materials, the know-how, and someone’s cigarette lighter.

Maybe the erstwhile smoker was dead when she put him into the oven, and maybe he wasn’t, but he would unquestionably be charcoal before the fire died down.

And Steffie would be miles away, with her friend, a briefcase full of her friend’s notes, and a good, stiff drink.

MY PROMPT FOR TODAY: This photo and you know what, plus Steffie the spy

MA