Teresa hoped the child would never discover that the blood on the porch had belonged to her mother. It was likely that her father had instructed her to scrub the house clean to remove the traces of something he was concerned about.

“Who do you think hurt your mommy?” she finally asked.

Lucia had no doubt.

“The ghost who lives in the woods,” she said.

“Oh, yes, the ghost. Have you ever spoken to him?”

The girl shook her head.

“He watches me, but he never comes near. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk because he doesn’t know how to. Except for last night. He was the one who rang the doorbell.”

Teresa felt something surging inside her.

“So the ghost who watches you from the woods is the same one who came to your house yesterday?” she asked, wanting to be sure.

The girl nodded.

“What does he look like?” she asked. “Can you describe him to me?”

“He has a skull instead of a head.”

-36-

-36-

There was a new predator in the forest, charging through the trees with a fierce roar. Its coat was black and lustrous, with a skull and crossbones on each flank. It ripped off branches and shrubs and plucked rocks from the earth. Bird nests fell to the ground in its wake, breaking with the sound of frightened, flailing wings. From the belly of the beast came a shrieking, howling cacophony.

The SUV advanced in a mad dash along barely distinguishable paths. It carved its way through gaps that were too narrow, leaving petrol fumes in its wake. It forded a stream, raising waves of water and volleys of ice. In its progress through the woodland, it encountered occasional signs of human expansion: man-made clearings where the trees had been cut down and the undergrowth uprooted, and where excavator vehicles now stood, resting, like sleeping metal pachyderms. The new ski resort was beginning to take shape and that shape was deforestation.

Inside the vehicle, four boys were shouting and drinking beer, high on alcohol and a savage elation.

“Faster!” one of them yelled, raising his fist toward the sky through the open window.

He felt like a wrathful, destructive god, emboldened by his youth to abhor restraint and despise beauty.

The vehicle scrabbled furiously over a slope, slipping and hissing as it went. Its tires peeled the moss away and gripped at the soil beneath, but then it skidded, landing back on the dirt road with a thud.

The boys laughed, throwing squashed, empty cans outside the window. The driver scaled through the gears and the engine revved up. They drove at breakneck speed through the hairpin turns on the road that led up the mountain.