Page 82 of The Woods

Quinn goes to step onto the path and Panda nips at the back of his leg. “Stop,” he says, swatting at her. She growls and bites down again, this time getting the bottom of his pant leg in her mouth.

“Quinn, hurry,” his mom calls out.

He smacks Panda on the nose, but she won’t let go, so he yanks hard to free his leg, hearing the rip of his pants. Before she has a chance to try again, Quinn bolts into the woods, pulling his phone out as he goes for the flashlight.

“Where are you?” he calls.

“Just up here,” she says.

He follows her voice and swings the light of his phone around in all directions. “I can’t see you.” There’s only silence in return. “Mom?”

A loud crack echoes all around him, sounding like a big branch breaking free from a tree. Then everything goes quiet. Too quiet. There’s no wind, no birds, no dripping of rain onto the forest floor. He can’t even hear Panda barking anymore. Turning back the way he came, he sees nothing but trees. The path has disappeared, and so has the opening that leads to his backyard. How did he get so turned around?

“Mom?”

The sound bounces back to him in an echo followed by thick, heavy silence. “No, no, no,” he whimpers, tears in his eyes. A solid, dreadful knowing that he’s made a big mistake fills his body. He should never have come into the woods. That was not his mom calling out to him. He turns in frantic circles, looking for anything familiar, anything to help him find his way out.

He pulls his phone out, even though he already knows what he’s going to find—a black screen, no power, no way to get help. Movement out of the corner of his eye causes him to look up. Only a few feet away, a tall, shadowy figure grows right out of the bark of a thick-trunked tree. Right beside it, another figure is revealed from the bark. Quinn slowly backs away, afraid to take his eyes off the figures, afraid not to.

His heel connects with a tree root, and he stumbles back, falling into a pile of wet leaves. When he looks up, the figures are only inches away from him. He curls into a small ball on the forest floor, so that all he can feel is the chilled damp of the ground and all he can smell is wet earth and rotting leaves. He calls for his mom between choked sobs until a bony hand on the back of his neck silences him. The touch is ice-cold and yet it brings a calm over him that he’s never experienced before. He hears a hissing whisper, not unlike the wind, and the world goes black.

Alice

Alice lay curled in the fetal position on the forest floor, her arms over her head, the damp of the ground soaking through her clothing to numb her skin. Only after several minutes of no voices booming through her head or movement around her did she feel safe enough to uncurl. Pushing herself off the ground, she sat on the log for a while longer, waiting for the trembling in her limbs, the thudding of her heart, and the gasping of her breath to subside.

Now she stumbles along the path as quickly as she can. Having lost all sense of direction, she no longer knows if she’s heading toward home or away. She doesn’t care. She just wants to get out of these woods. Alice finds the deep quiet unnerving. There are no strange bird calls, no rustling in the brush, no whisper of wind through the trees. It’s as though that thing that passed through her has scared everything in the woods silent.

She does her best not to think about the ancient, twisted face of it, the smell, the feel of it passing through her. She stays focused entirely on the path ahead, which seems to widen as she goes. The sudden ping of her phone is so loud in the quiet, so unexpected, that it stops her dead. It pings several more times. She quickly pulls it out of her coat pocket.

Her phone is working again. There are several texts from Quinn from hours ago. Has it really been that long? It’s like time changes as soon as you step through those trees. She could have sworn she’d been in here an hour at most.

Can’t see your location. Call me.

Polly home. Come back.

Where R U? Polly is back.

Come home. Something is weird about Polly.

Alice is relieved to see that Polly is home, but the rest of Quinn’s texts seem frantic. She looks at her location and realizes that she’s on the other side of the woods, not far from Ruth Crowley’s. This well-used path must be hers, she thinks. She texts Quinn back.

I’m okay. Got lost and am on the other side of the woods. As soon as I have a pickup spot will call dad to get me. Stay inside until I get back. Do not go into the woods!

The back of Ruth Crowley’s little log house comes into sight and Alice can’t believe what a comfort it is. There are lights on, which means she’s home. A sob of relief clogs her throat, which she works hard to push back down. She’ll scare the woman to death showing up sobbing, soaked through, and covered in dirt. Alice hurries around to the front of the house, desperate for a friendly face, to be inside, out of the rain, away from the woods.

She knocks loudly on the front door. While she waits, she goes over what she’ll tell Ruth about the thing in the woods. No matter how she explains it, the whole thing will sound ridiculous. Like the ramblings of a madwoman. Even her reason for going in there in the first place sounds dramatic, since Polly is now home safe and sound. Alice will come across like a neurotic, overprotective mother who tells scary stories for attention. She tells herself that if anyone will believe her, Ruth will, and knocks again loudly.

When there’s no answer with the second knock, or any sounds from inside, Alice tries the door handle. It turns and she pushes the door open just a few inches, calling out a hello. A terrible smell hits, and she puts a hand over her mouth and nose.

“Ruth?” she calls. “It’s Alice. I got lost in the woods.” A loud squawk comes in response as the one-legged crow swoops past her into the living room. Alice waits for a minute and follows, staying low in case the bird decides to dive-bomb her again. “Ruth?”

There’s the shuffling of paws and a small yip from the other side of the couch. Alice knows in her gut that something is not right because the smell is even worse in here. With an arm across her nose, Alice braces herself and steps around the couch. There in the middle of the living-room floor, on a homespun rug, is Ruth Crowley.

Or what’s left of her.

The old woman is missing both eyes. Her upper torso is exposed and split right down the middle, the flaps of skin hanging open to reveal her internal organs. Not like the bodies Alice thought she saw in the forest belonging to Geoff and her mother. Those ones had been cleaned out.

The one-legged raven stands beside Ruth’s head and every few seconds pecks the woman’s gouged-out eye socket. The blind fox sits at Ruth’s feet, sniffing the air and letting out protective yips. Alice can see several bite marks on Ruth’s bare arms and cheeks. Only the owl keeps its distance, perched on the arm of the chair that Ruth had been sitting in the last time Alice was there.