Campbell Wood by Al Sarrantonio

on a bench by the curb outside the school. She had still been on the bench at lunchtime when Kaymie had gone outside to play volleyball. The woman was tiny, wrapped in rags like one of the bag ladies Kaymie used to see in New York City. The ball had gotten away and rolled to the fence, and when Kaymie bent to pick it up she knew the creature's eyes were on her. Lifting the ball, she looked up quickly to see, under the hood of rags, a dark, creased face like a monkey's. Their eyes had met and Kaymie felt her stomach muscles tighten.
    Kaymie tried her best to ignore her after that and was glad when it was time to go back inside. She soon forgot about the old woman.
    Her fifth-period English class was held in a room overlooking the front of the school. When Kaymie's eyes wandered to the window about halfway through the class she saw that the woman was still there. She looked like a bag of sticks propped up. Her head rose, and Kaymie had the feeling that the woman was looking straight up through the window of the classroom and staring at her.
    When the last bell of the day rang, Kaymie almost dreaded leaving school. Sure enough, there was the old woman, in the same spot on the bench.
    Kaymie's school bus was parked down the line, and there was no way to get around passing the bag lady. Kaymie tried to hurry, turning her eyes away until she felt something like a bird's claw on her arm.
    "Wait."
    The voice was stronger than Kaymie would have imagined.
    Kaymie tried to keep walking. "Let me go—"
    "Talk with me," the old woman said, and Kaymie was forced to turn and confront her.
    The face was old, but the eyes weren't. They looked almost like the eyes of a baby, bright gray and piercing. Strong. Not the eyes of a madwoman. Kaymie couldn't help being drawn to them.
    "I really should go," she protested.
    "Sit and talk with me," the old woman said, in a surprisingly gentle tone. "I knew your grandmother."
    Kaymie found herself sitting on the bench next to the old woman.
    "You really knew my grandmother?"
    The woman nodded, and her rags, or the tiny body beneath them, trembled for a moment. "I raised her," she said in a whisper, looking at her gnarled hands. Then she turned back to Kaymie.
    "You're a strong and healthy girl."
    Kaymie said nothing, thinking that maybe this woman was crazy after all.
    "What do you know, child?" the woman asked, again in that gentle voice. There was pity, mixed with something else—anxiety?—in that tone.
    "I don't know what you're talking about," Kaymie replied. "I have to get my bus—"
    "Do you know anything? Does your father know anything at all about it?" The woman put her claw-like hand on Kaymie's arm again and Kaymie pulled away.
    The woman's grip tightened, remarkably powerful. "Look in the house."
    A spasm went through the woman, and her grip on Kaymie loosened. She straightened with effort.
    "You must go," she said. She turned and touched Kaymie's arm, weakly now. "When you find it, you must come and see me in the wood. That is what must be done. I will talk with you, it won't matter what happens to me then." She bent over, gasping, then sat up once more. Kaymie used the opportunity to slip from her grasp and step back.
    The old woman looked up. Her face was racked with pain but her eyes were clear.
    "See me then."
    Kaymie backed off and just made it into the bus before the doors closed and it moved off.
    She looked back through the rear window to see the tiny huddled figure, almost blending in with the bench, sitting alone and shivering.

9
     
    F or the first time in his life, Mark found himself completely caught up in his career. His byline was appearing everywhere, and this in turn was generating new commissions, which made a circle that, it seemed, would go round and round for some time to come.
    He was in the Ferman Library almost every day. He nearly had the place to himself, since winter vacation had set in at the campus and only a peppering of graduate students and other