I played outside alone.
That was the unwritten rule.
When I was a kid, both of my parents worked from home. They preferred silence and strongly encouraged me to go outside after school. Between the ages of six and ten, I spent a few hours each day in the backyard, which kind of sucked.
The space was large and had half a dozen mature trees, but there wasn’t much to do. Plus, the furthest end of the yard was all mud and roots from dead trees on the other side of the chain link fence.
The property on the other side looked abandoned. A portion of the small house in the opposing backyard had crumbled. It may have been a heritage ruin. There are a number of such rotting locations in Bridal Veil Lake. It’s like the town makes them historical landmarks to avoid having to deal with them.
I never found the front of the property on the other side of the block, where all the houses are somewhat modern looking and clearly not wreckages of stone. The “heritage site” must be enclosed by a newer neighborhood or sitting on somebody’s property, and they didn’t want to deal with it any more than the town did.
Whatever the case, I usually avoided going to the back of my yard because it was creepy and easy to trip on the roots and fall into the sucking mud. My stressed-out parents weren’t happy if I came in filthy, which, of course, limited play options further.
I generally sat on the limestone rocks I’d gathered from the back of the yard and waited to be allowed in, often watching the abandoned property for lack of a better option. Staring at my own house had also irked my parents for some reason.
On a gray day in January, when more rain than snow had fallen, I sat thinking about my Christmas toys inside my bedroom. It was foggy, and I couldn’t see the back half of the yard.
“Aric,” a woman’s voice said quietly but clearly.
“Hello?” I thought somebody was calling from the other side of the fence. I’d never seen anyone back there, but it was possible. How she would know my name I didn’t know, but it’s not a huge town. Be pretty funny if the property I believed abandoned belonged to a friend’s parents.
“Hello?” I asked again. I got off my rock and took a few steps to try and see better. No one responded. I got a shiver and nearly fell over when my dad was suddenly standing behind me.
“Come inside, Aric,” he said. “It’s supper time.” He sounded irritated. I found out why when I got to the table and my mom was there, wearing the same expression.
“What were you doing outside?” my father asked. He unfurled his napkin with a wrist snap.
“Outside? Nothing.” I wanted to add “as usual” but knew I’d get in trouble for it. Punishments were always chores and I didn’t want to waste more time not playing with my new toys.
“What was all the noise then?”
“What noise?”
“Somebody screaming bloody murder,” my mom said.
I shrugged. “I didn’t hear any screams.” Also, they heard screaming and didn’t come outside to see if I was okay? I was too young at the time to understand the full assholes my parents were.
“Enough,” my dad said. “You’re clearly lying. Eat. We will discuss the consequences afterward.”
There was no point in arguing. I ate, and only had to do the dishes after. Light punishment for lying, unless they didn’t really believe I had. I finished up, played with my toys, and got ready for bed.
I had trouble falling asleep. I had to go to bed too early so my parents could pull some more hours of work in peace. The quiet play in my room was too distracting, obviously.
Wide awake, I crept to the window. It was dark outside and still foggy. Hours of my days were spent looking at nothing, I lamented. School was pretty boring. Recesses were too brief. Having friends over was forbidden. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere. I started to cry.
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhh,” a woman soothed. I saw no one, and yet my eyes were drawn to the yard below, where a shadowy figure now stood in the fog. “Don’t cry, Aric,” she said, but like directly into my ear. I swear I felt a gentle breath against my skin.
I didn’t respond. I backed away from the window, slowly, and crawled into bed, pulling the blanket over my head. Pressure from a hand fell against my leg and stroked it gently. I was scared. But not enough to dare violate the silence my parents required.
I’d rather die, I realized.
The ghostly hand continued until I, at last, gave in to imagining a caring adult was comforting me. I slept but not through the night. Only a few hours passed when a prolonged cry of abject horror filled our home.
My parents, not yet finished work for the night, burst into my room together. The covers were ripped from my hands, and they both began with many false accusations.
There were too many to recall, but they all amounted to something like, “You don’t care about this family.”
“I wasn’t screaming,” I said. “Please listen. It wasn’t me.”
“Not another peep!” my father shouted before they left and slammed the door. I felt hopeless. Their disbelief put us all at risk. Somebody had screamed inside our house. Were we really just going to ignore it? Why wouldn’t they believe me?
I got dressed. Let them die, I thought. I was done. This would be my first attempt at running away. Naturally, I would need money to begin a new life. I had none, but understood people might pay me for services rendered. I would be a painter. I put a single plastic tube of paint and a small brush into my coat pocket and was ready to go.
It was easier to escape out the back door. The backyard looked darker and filled with even thicker fog. I only had to walk down the side steps and around the deck to get to the driveway gate.
“Aric,” the woman said. “Aric, don’t leave me. I’m cold.” Her voice was a loud whisper between my ears. “Aric, come. Please. Come and get me out. Aric, I’m stuck in the roots. The mud, Aric. Aric, Aric, Aric, Aric. Please.”
She sounded so desperate. I went into the fog and to the muddy portion of the yard, tripping immediately on the first root to catch my foot. I landed in a pile of leaves, not realizing I’d reached the chainlink fence faster than expected.
My fingers felt smooth skin in the dark. I recoiled and stood up. There was a face in the leaves. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish; she was gasping for air.
“Are you alright?”
It was a dumb question.
“I’ll call the police.”
“Help me,” she shrieked. It wasn’t some telepathy this time. It was her mouth, her lungs.
I lurched further into the leaf pile, cold mud mouths sucking my shoes off. I was up to my knees and could see her face more clearly. She was young and pretty and utterly afraid.
How was she stuck? How was I going to get her out? As I stood there trying to figure out what to do, she continued screaming and my parents appeared from the fog.
“She’s stuck,” I told them urgently.
They were confused and appeared at a loss for words.
My hands found her arms beneath the pile.
That’s when her expression changed from fear to childish glee. Something - not hands - grabbed me back and started to pull. It is so much easier to pull someone down than up. I fell into the leaves, my face against hers. She smelled of vegetation and soil and coppery blood.
“I was older when I found out,” she whispered in my ear.
I fought hard against the roots pulling me down with her. I’m not sure if it was me that was able to spin around or if she - whatever she was - simply allowed it.
My parents were there. Just watching with a mixture of excitement and fear. Little smiles curved their lips.
I reached for them. “Help me.”
My mother moved closer to my dad. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said something I couldn’t hear into her ear.
The roots, her hands, continued pulling down until the dull light of night faded. I held my breath, buried under the mud.
“A little longer. You must know,” she said.
The urge to draw air began fast; you use more oxygen when you’re afraid. One breath of dirt would be the end, wouldn’t it?
“You want to know what they said,” the woman said, the lady of the leaves. “I can tell you but I think you already know. Does that make your choice easier?”
What choice? I only thought about the question.
She answered similarly. “The choice to stay with me, someone who loves you, or to go back.”
With someone who doesn’t.
She didn’t confirm or deny the idea.
I want to live.
“So be it,” she said.
Suddenly, I was breathing cold air rapidly and struggling to stay conscious. I was vaguely aware of my parents but couldn’t be sure of what they were doing. There was a car ride or an ambulance, and then I was in a hospital, where I recovered.
The doctor explained I’d fallen and bumped my head. I nearly drowned in the mud until my dad pulled me up. With my parents in the room, there was no point in denying this version of events.
I waited until we were in the car to challenge them. “You didn’t help me,” I said as my mom pulled out of the parking lot.
“What’s that?” my dad said, looking at his phone.
“When she pulled me into the mud,” I said, “You just watched. You didn’t help.”
My dad finally looked at me. “Huh? What are you saying?”
“She was in the leaves,” I said.
My father looked alarmed. “Who was in the leaves, Aric?”
“I don’t know, a woman. A young woman. She pulled me under the mud with the tree roots and -“
“I think we should go back to the hospital,” he said to my mom.
“He’s just confused,” my mom said. “We’ve been working too much. Our stress is becoming his.” She faced the road. “We need to do better. Why was he outside in the first place?”
“There’s a question,” he said. “Why did you go out last night, Aric?”
“I… after the screaming… I heard…”
“Why were you screaming, Aric?”
“Let him answer,” my mom chided my dad.
“Sorry, sorry, Aric.”
“I wasn’t screaming,” I said. My parents exchanged a quick glance, and I knew it was over. I was outnumbered by superior foes. They had their narrative, and, to be fair, it made more sense than mine. Therapy was on the horizon.
My parents took some time off from work. I didn’t have to go to school, and I got to stay in and play with my toys. We watched movies and ordered a lot of takeout. I was starting to feel better and accept that I really had been stressed out and confused to the point of hallucinating.
The following week, however, my dad wanted to show me something in the backyard. I hadn’t been out there since that horrible night.
“Come on,” he said. “I found something you’ll want to see.” He walked in front of me as we went to the back of the yard, obscuring the view until we were on top of the spot. A filthy mannequin head sat on top of the pile beside a one-armed plastic torso and a pair of legs.
“I haven’t found the rest yet,” my dad said. “I was wondering about what you’d said in the car and found the face right away. Why would somebody bury this here? And when? Must have been a long time ago. It was all tangled in roots.
I know what I saw. I remember the feel of her smooth cheek against mine. The house beyond the chain link fence, with its rotted trees, held a single shadow in a tiny window before it moved out of sight.
“It’s for the best,” I said.
“What?”
“That’s what you whispered to mom. It’s for the best. The lady in the leaves pulled me under. I begged you for help. And you said, ‘It’s for the best.’”
My dad looked guilty. He looked at the mannequin pile, evidence he must have planted, and gestured weakly in his defense. “I… Aric, you were confused. I’m sorry you think we’d… do something like that.”
“Who was she?” I pushed. “Who is buried here?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said and walked away, leaving me again. I crouched by the mannequin for a moment before movement in the yard caught my eye.
She stood, unobscured, between the dead trunks, and naked except for some leaves and dirt in her hair, on her body. Her smile was mischievous and sad, if that makes any sense. I think maybe that’s just the way her face is and why someone killed her.
They didn’t like the way she smiled.
When my mom called from the back of the house, the lady waved and walked behind a tree. I did not see her again, but never forgot her lesson. My parents were not trustworthy.
The years that followed were difficult. I ignored the clumsy attempts my parents made to repair our relationship and stayed out of the house and around Bridal Veil Lake as much as possible.
Therapy and medication only brought more clarity to confirm my suspicions of their motives. I went to the library often to try and learn about the property behind our home but couldn’t find anything.
That’s where I found your flyer, AP Cleriot.
I started searching through my parents’ stuff when they were at work and I was supposed to be in school. That’s when I found the photo. That’s when I found my lady in the leaves again.
I waited until my eighteenth birthday to place the photo on the dinner table. They’d just finished putting down the cake, singing happy birthday.
“Who is she?” I asked.
But they didn’t answer.
“I’m leaving,” I told them. “It’s for the best.”
I haven’t been back since, and I’m no closer to figuring out the identity of the lady and what happened to her.