Page 41 of Backwoods
“That sounds good,” Amiya said. “Is there anything to eat and drink?”
“Of course. You’ll get the best we’ve got to offer, and no less. It’s what your role requires.”
Amiya was afraid to ask her next question, but she couldn’t let it go: “What is my role?”
Miss Lula smiled at her. She had perfect teeth, Amiya noted.
“Betty didn’t tell you?” Miss Lula asked. “You’re going to be the Master’s mistress.”
26
“Iran away from home,” Raven said. Sitting on the rock, she gazed into the bubbling creek, but to Nick, her eyes seemed to be focused on a faraway place. “I grew up in Charlotte. North Carolina.” She laughed, but it was a sour sound. “Had the bright idea that I would run away to Disney World, in Orlando. I’d live with Minnie Mouse and the Disney princesses, like Tiana and Merida. How stupid, right?” She glanced at Nick but didn’t wait for a reply before she continued. “I was thirteen, totally naïve, but I knew Ihadto get away.”
“Get away from where you lived?” Nick asked in a soft tone.
“My mom’s boyfriend. He was more interested in me than he was in her, I guess. I told her about it after he came into my room one night and got in bed with me, and touched me in my private places. You know what my mom said? She said I was jealous and didn’t want her to be happy, that I was trying to steal her man.”
Nick felt ill. “I’m so sorry.”
“It got worse from there, with him. He knew he could do whatever he wanted and my mom wouldn’t believe me. I had saved up some money in a piggy bank so I left, took the bus. I had enough bus fare to get me to Atlanta. I guess I should havestayed there, I had some cousins there, but I didn’t know how to get in touch with them, and I didn’t totally trust them anyway. I thought they’d turn me in to my mom. So I hitched some rides. All I had to do was smile at these guys and bat my eyelashes and they would take me with them. See?”
She smiled at Nick, demonstrating, and despite her bedraggled condition, he could understand how she had been able to successfully charm her way into vehicles with men who ought to have known better.
“But you didn’t make it to Orlando,” he said.
“My last ride, he had to drop me off outside of Macon, he said, because he had to go home to his wife. I had to start walking. I thought I’d just run into another guy at a gas station or something. But . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“But what?” he asked.
“To you, this will sound crazy because you don’t understand this place . . . but I wasdrawnhere, like this.” She pantomimed a fisherman reeling in a fish.
“Drawn here? Like this place was some kind of magnet?”
“Right!” She snapped her fingers. “I was passing by, on the road that I remember outside here, and I heard things coming from here, amazing things, and I got closer and saw the big fence.”
“There’s a ‘No Trespassing’ sign on the fence. And the fence surrounds the entire property.”
“But Iheardthings coming from here. Kids laughing. Families having fun. People singing. It sounded like?—”
“Disney World,” Nick said, and felt a coldness rush through him.
“Like a carnival, a fun place.” She nodded, her eyes sparkling, as if she were still enchanted by the memory.
“I went through this weird gap in the fence, sort of like a magic door, ’cause it just appeared all of a sudden,” Raven said.“I kept hearing that carnival, just ahead, and smelling delicious food, and I saw a Ferris wheel—seriously. It sounds so stupid to say it now. It’s obvious this place tricked me. But that’s what was there back then, as clear as this water running through the creek.” She stuck her hand in the brook and splashed water on her fingers.
Nick didn’t know what to think about her story. What she claimed was absurd and impossible. But if she had given him her correct age—seventeen—that meant she had been on the land for four years (if she even knew how to keep track of time), living in deplorable conditions. Psychologically, such a life would have had a damaging effect on her critical faculties.
(But why did I feel a chill?)
And in such a state of mind, she could believe that she had really been drawn here because it had seemed as if a magical amusement park lay just ahead.
“Anyway, one of the helpers found me and took me to the big house,” she said. “It definitely wasn’t that amazing castle you see in all those Disney movies.” She laughed, a bitter sound. “Not during the day anyway.”
“How did the others wind up here?” he asked. “Any idea?”
“We all have our own stories, I guess, but everyone who’s told me how they got here, they seemed to be going through tough times, too, whenever they got close to this place. Homeless or depressed, or whatever. And they heard or saw different things than I did. It’s like the land knows what we want deep down, and it uses that tocallus . . . to lure us onto the property.” She shuddered.
“Who are these so-called helpers? Tell me about them.”
