~ Dark Legacy ~

by

Christine Janssen

Telling herself that Carla was an adult who could handle herself, Victoria changed into her sweatsuit and sneakers, got her red parka, and slipped out the garage door.

The forest beckoned. Eagerly she entered its quiet environs. Although she liked spring best because of its surge of rejuvenation, winter held a peculiar thrall. Leafless trees yielded gnarled branches to her gaze, some twisted together like entwined snakes slithering upward. Red berries appeared vivid as drops of blood on withered vines. The carpet of dead leaves had decayed to the point where her footfalls were soft as a cat’s.

As Victoria rounded a particularly large evergreen, her eye was drawn to the smooth bark of a copper beech ahead. Someone had carved initials in it many years ago, and as the tree grew and expanded, the letters had spread to fat blurs.

She fingered the shallow grooves. Life was like this, she thought. No matter the trauma, the devastation, one had to keep going. She’d lacked the courage to leave Rudy. Now that she was forced to be on her own, she had to find the courage to survive, to face up to Carla, even though the concept of tough love was diametrically opposed to Rudy’s let-my-darling-do-anything mentality that had so alienated Carla from her.

Seeing a big splash of red on the forest floor caused Victoria to frown. No patch of flowers bloomed in February. No vivid autumn leaves could possibly remain on any low shrub. Approaching cautiously, she spied a fluffy ball of white near the red. The ball had short, bloated legs jutting out at odd angles.

The saliva in her throat disappeared. She stopped her advance, fighting a panic bubbling up inside her. The blotch of red looked like a jacket, with an arm flung out as if reaching for help. The red was subtly contoured, as though underneath, it clothed a back, hips, buttocks--

Her mind refused to finish the thought.

Below the jacket, half hidden by undergrowth, was a pair of sweatpants-clad legs, spread slightly apart as though a puppet had collapsed there. When the three-dimensionality of it penetrated her brain, Victoria’s skin ran as cold as if she’d plunged into a meat locker.

She was afraid to come closer, subconsciously knowing what her conscious mind was denying, yet she forced herself forward. Hadn’t she just bemoaned her lack of courage? Wasn’t this the time for courage? What if that person was alive? How could she live with herself if she just turned and ran like the coward she knew herself to be?

Fifteen feet away, then ten feet, five feet as Victoria propelled herself nearer, one fainthearted step at a time. Her heart thrummed like a tympani. Shudders jittered down her back.

From its size, Victoria guessed that it was a woman, lying face-down in the dead leaves, her short blond hair falling forward over her temples. Fighting the sour taste of sausage backing up into her throat, Victoria forced herself to kneel, to search for a pulse in the carotid artery. She inched her shaking hand forward to the space under the chin.

Instead of the smooth column of a neck, Victoria’s fingers grazed the jagged edge of hacked skin, the crumble of coagulated blood. She bolted to her feet. She felt the hair on her arms stand up like porcupine quills. A scream began to build in the back of her throat.

Her mind’s eye played across her brain a series of unbearable flashes: Short blond hair. Red parka. White sweatpants. Trashed house. Attacker at the ATM machine. Wild driver in parking lot.

Had someone thought it was her?

Victoria collapsed to her knees on the rotting mulch, bent over almost to the ground, and retched until she felt as though she’d vomited out all her intestines. And still she knelt, a horrified paralysis numbing her brain and her body.