Among The Pines

Sara should have been with the others. They were supposed to stick together. This whole trip had seemed like such a good idea after Kayla missed the official class camping trip. One last adventure–Kayla, Eve and Sara together before they scattered to different states, different dorms, and different lives. One last hurrah before the world pulled them apart.

Now, standing beneath the dizzying cages of branches overhead, Sara could not stop replaying Mr. Hardy’s lecture from the real trip. Something about the buddy system. She can see him right now, in his gym teacher attire. His booming voice effortlessly catching everyone’s attention.

“Listen up. Out here in the woods, the buddy system isn’t just a school rule–it’s survival. You keep your eyes on each other at all times. Two people means someone notices if you fall, or if you wander off the trail, or if...well, if something else notices you.”

Right–how the hell was that supposed to work with three people? Somebody was always the odd one out.

She should’ve asked Elana, her older sister, to come along. Yes, Elena would’ve rolled her eyes and been overly and painfully dramatic...but she would’ve come. And—if Elena would’ve come, maybe Sara wouldn’t feel so small out here. But she hadn’t wanted to look like a baby in front of her friends. Even now, the word scaredy-cat made her face flush.

She pulled her phone out. No service. Of course! A single bar flickered and died the second she tried to dial out. Just as it had teased her all night with maps that wouldn’t load and texts that bounced back like rubber bands. She jammed the useless thing back into her pocket.

The forest pressed closer. The air was thick with pine and wet earth, and the longer Sara stood still, the more the silence seemed to pulsate. It was quiet–it felt like the woods were listening. The woods felt alive and like it was holding its breath.

“Hello?” Her voice cracked and came out tinier than she meant. The sound vanished almost instantly, swallowed up by the trees. She clenched her fists. She was eighteen years old, not a kid. And she was not about to cry over being lost.

That was when she heard it: the laughter.

It came quietly and just behind her shoulder. Sara’s body betrayed her before her brain caught up–she spun, pulling her useless phone back out and desperately trying to open the super useful flashlight app. She whipped the beam wildly across the many trunks and branches. Nothing. Just more of the tall black pines, standing there in judgement.

Her heart thundered in her ribcage. Too fast. Too loud.

The laughter came again, sharper this time, from further ahead.

Relief rushed through her chest, the biggest sigh she’d ever let out broke free in a rush.

Her friends. They had to be up ahead. They had to. She clung to the thought like a lifeline.

“Kayla? Eve?” she called, her voice wobbling between hope and demand. It wasn’t an answer that came–only more laughter.

She went to shove the phone back into her pocket and hesitated... as if hiding it would make her braver. She rolled her eyes, and she broke out into a jog. The beam from her phone strobed as her arm moved with her run. It was hypnotically disorienting. Branches clawed at her arms and dampness slapped against her jeans.

But the laughter changed as she ran.

It rose and twisted—splitting into multiple voices. They overlapped; there were too many to count. Then, the sound wasn’t laughter at all. It was jagged, broken, a chorus of something just wrong.

Sara slowed, her feet dragging against the wet moss. The mouth of a clearing right ahead.

Shapes moved within it.

Not her friends.

Ahead in the glade there were two shadows. The shadows hunched low against the ground, the bodies warped and trembling. Limbs were bent the wrong way; their heads lolled at angles no neck should bear. They crawled like broken marionettes, jerky and soundless.

A wet crack echoed through the clearing.

Sara flinched.

As one, the shadows froze. Then, slowly, both lifted their faces toward her.

Eyes—if they were eyes—caught the moonlight and gleamed like wet stones.

Her phone light flickered, guttered—then died. Darkness rushed in thick as smoke.

Sara’s breath came in tiny, sharp pulls. She wanted to turn, to run...but the forest closed in behind her. The trunks loomed like black pillars, every path swallowed by shadows.

A low hiss slithered across the clearing.

In that last stutter of fading glow, Sara saw the truth: the woods hadn’t lost her friends.

It had eaten them.

Something slick glimmered on the creature’s jaws—something that dripped and pulsed.

One of them tilted its head, a sharp, insect-like click rising from its throat.

That sound multiplied, echoing from beyond the clearing and from deeper in the pines. Another click. Then another.

Not two. Dozens.

Sara took a step back. The moss sucked at her shoes like a hand that was trying to pull her under.

She yanked her foot free with a wet pop.

Another step.

The forest floor heaved.

Something beneath the moss writhed, a slow ripple that traveled toward her like a buried wave. The earth pulsed once—twice—then split with a sound like tearing cloth.

Pale, root-like tendrils slid out. They were slick and jointed, glistening like they were coated in sap.

Sara spun and ran.

Branches whipped her face. Needles scraped her arms. She didn’t care. She only needed distance.

Behind her came the click—click—click. Louder now. Many more, closing in around her. She risked a glance back.

The tendrils were faster than her.

They threaded over the ground, a lashing of pale vines. In their wake, the two figures crawled upright. Their heads twitching around with inhuman precision.

Sara veered left, the moss beneath her feet swelled and began to shudder.

A tendril shot forward, coiling around her ankle. A cold burned through her sock.

She screamed and kicked, but the vine tightened, grinding into her skin like barbed wire.

The clearing behind her glowed faintly–a light that came from nowhere she could see. Within it, the broken marionettes stood, their jaws unhinging in a silent wail.

The ground trembled again.

More tendrils erupted in a spray of black soil, their tips tipped with a wet, needle-thin gleam.

Sara clawed at the nearest tree trunk, nails tearing, as the cold crept up her calf.

Somewhere above, hidden in the high pines, a voice—or something like a voice—whispered her name with a laugh.

Not her friends.

Never her friends.

The moss tightened its grip and yanked.

Sara’s last breath was not a scream, but a gasp as the forest folded shut around her.